Genius: Greenville Police Announce Weekend Patrol Cutbacks … To The Media
Who then tell the mobs of people who were the problem. I understand that given the financial situation of the greater Greenville area the idea of a 20 man weekend patrol dedicated just to making sure kids weren’t raising hell downtown could never be a permanent solution. Unlike the Greenville P.D., the local media and Democrats in general I also understand that there’s no benefit in telling the enemy when you’ll be pulling out. Now that police have announced this cutback, how long will it be before the “youth” (some of whom were in their 20s so they were not kids) start brawling in the streets again?
After several calm weeks downntown, Greenville Police will be cutting back on the number of officers enforcing the city’s curfew, starting this weekend.
The department will reduce the number by half, from 20 to “about 8 or 9″, according to spokesman, Sgt. Jason Rampey.Rampey says that the message has gotten out, and fewer teens have ventured downtown on weekends in recent weeks.
He also thinks the beginning of the school year has affected the numbers.City leaders enacted the curfew last summer, after mobs of several hundred teens were caught on camera causing problems.
Don’t want to be a naysayer but if you have young people who run the streets at night brawling and stealing if there aren’t cops around in a state with an atrocious drop out rate I’m going to go ahead and say there’s enough of a crossover between the two groups to make the whole “school’s in so we’re safe” theory bogus. I’m betting that many of the victims of attacks are gone, but that just means the muggers will have to come after adults instead of teens who can be lured into the park with the promise of K2.
Good work guys. Maybe I should issue a press release to tell you when my house is empty for your next slow news day.
Surprise! South Carolina Unemployment “Decrease” Was Not a Good Thing
Not that the hacks at rags like The Greenville News would let you in on the big secret. The unemployment rate went down because a number of people were dropped from the rolls so they were no long counted … even though they’re still unemployed. But worse is that as the private sector has shed jobs as government expanded:
A shrinking labor force and increased government hiring are making the job numbers look better than they really are, according to a new policy brief from the South Carolina Policy Council.
Despite a decline in the state unemployment rate from May to June (11.1 percent to 10.7 percent)—something typically viewed as a good thing—there were fewer people actually employed in June than in May. As of June 2010, there were 1,919,404 persons employed in South Carolina, compared to 1,920,479 as of May.
Workers who have dropped off the unemployment rolls are not included in unemployment figures. The pool of potential workers (i.e., those looking for work) shrank once again from May to June 2010—from 2,159,200 to 2,149,600—a contraction of 9,600 persons.
[...]
Since the beginning of the recession in December 2007, private sector employment in South Carolina has declined by 124,100 jobs, or 7.71 percent. By comparison, public sector employment has increased by 19,600 jobs, or 5.75 percent.
Why is that bad? Well for all you people educated by the communists who run the schools I’ll explain. Every government job is paid for by several taxpayers. With the salary plus benefits they receive it would be too expensive for multiple public service workers to be paid for by one taxpayer obviously. With that in mind you want an economy where the private sector is much larger than the public sector so that we have more people paying into the government than being paid by the government.
But we’re heading in the opposite direction, a California economy where the state is paying out more than it takes in. Once that happens it will be impossible to dig out of the hole. Don’t let the Tea Party optimism fool you, the states that are in bad fiscal shape will not be saved by the right sweeping into power, it’s too late. The only thing states can do is try to keep from getting as bad as places like California.
To do that we need to grow private sector employment and profits and shrink the liabilities the state has. The press here should be telling you the truth about the situation but they’re not. Why?
Long Time Greenville Establishment Crony John Castile Named City Manager
Not a surprise since John Castile was the deputy city manager. Castile has worked in the local government since the mid 90s except for a brief stint in a non-profit that was started with a cash grant to city to fight drugs. From the WORD website:
Castile first came to work for the City of Greenville in June 1995 and worked in the Recreation Division until May 1999 when he left the City to serve as Executive Director of Within Reach, a non-profit organization originally developed to implement a $5 million drug-elimination program grant secured by the City to address drugs in its at-risk communities. In September 1999, he was recruited back to the City of Greenville by then City Manager, Steve Thompson, who had identified the City’s need to create a high-level position that could provide problem-solving across the entire organization and could manage city-wide projects versus individual department-driven projects.
Hmmmm. If I’m reading this right Castile “left” the city government to run a non-profit that was being funded by a grant to the city, and stayed at that non-profit for five months. That non-profit, Within Reach, has no website and the last number I could find for it ((864) 467-4305) has been disconnected. The reports are that it was a anti-drug program but in its last filing (2005) it was listed as running a daycare center and youth services. It also listed their income at $50,099. Within Reach may be defunct but the organization is still used in sales pitches for membership to groups like Greenville’s Interfaith Forum. Sounds like he did a bang up job.
Of covering his tracks.
The 467 prefix this “non-profit” used is coincidentally the same one dedicated to Greenville county government. Lucky for Castile that he was able to get a number that was easy to remember number when he “left” public service.
The story has a stink to it, but the local hacks are too busy lauding Greenville’s first African American city manager to care about whether John Castile’s previous dealings with your tax money were on the up and up.
Rotten Reporting: Associated Press Thinks Supreme Court Ruling “Casts Doubt” on Chicago Gun Ban
Or more specifically the Supreme Court ruled today that the Second Amendment right of all Americans to keep and bear arms invalidates state and local laws that ban gun ownership for law abiding citizens. They ruled that the earlier Heller decision upheld the individual right of Americans to own guns in all localities. Even to a journalist this seems pretty clear cut.
But not to AP writer Mark Sherman, who demonstrates hard left living in denial syndrome with his coverage:
WASHINGTON (AP) – The Supreme Court says the Constitution’s “right to keep and bear arms” applies nationwide as a restraint on the ability of government to limit its application.
The justices on Monday cast doubt on a Chicago area handgun ban, but also signaled in their 5-4 decision that less severe restrictions could survive legal challenges.
Notice the quotes. But the crux of the matter is that this ruling doesn’t “cast doubt” on Chicago’s handgun ban, it straight out declares that it’s unconstitutional and thus, illegal. Mark Sherman couldn’t bring himself to report the facts, so he downplays it. Why?
Because we no longer produce reporters who understand or care about objective facts. Until we fix our higher education system, this is the best we can expect from the mainstream media.
h/t Newsbusters
Greenville Police Quash Mini-Riot in Falls Park
Though Greenville News “reporter” E. Richard Walton does his best to paint a clearly chaotic scene as just another day at the park, even the most liberally biased reporting can’t pretty up this picture.
From GreenvilleOnline:
One person was arrested and two teenagers were detained after scattered fights broke out near Falls Park on Saturday night in downtown Greenville.
A squad of 15 to 20 police officers brought the crowd under control near 11 p.m.
The two teenagers were detained shortly after the 10 p.m. curfew, when anyone younger than 18 and unaccompanied by an adult must be off the streets in the downtown area.
Greenville Police Lt. Mike Hudson said one woman was arrested.
Hudson said he ordered every officer who “wasn’t on a (911) call” into the area.
15-20 officers aren’t needed to “bring a crowd under control” due to “scattered fights” and a few rowdies in a downtown don’t usually prompt whoever is in charge that evening to order every cop not dealing with an emergency to flood an area. Sorry Mr. Walton, but I’m thinking this incident was more serious than you’re making it out to be.
Being a homebody I’m rarely downtown these days, but I’m told that there’s a rough element out and about. Falls Park is popular at night for both the atmosphere and the drugs. The plaza next to Spill the Beans is known to be a “corner” for dealers and the park itself provides plenty of unlit areas where kids like to get high among other things. Parents are apparently still in the habit of dropping off their spoiled brats with a wad of cash in the downtown on the weekends, and frankly we should be charging them for the damage those kids are causing.
At the very least the parents of the children involved should be forced to pay for the hours our police weren’t able to deal with other crimes while babysitting their ill-spawn brood.