I Wonder...

The Enquirer has reported on this Sayler Park couple charged with starving their newborn baby to death.  From browsing the comments, lots of people have jumped all over this couple.  Commenters have called them drug abusers, stupid, the reason for contraception, etc.  All these things could be true.

But after reading the story (and this earlier one) carefully, there's nothing to suggest any of these things.  There was no mention of drugs in the story at all.  The couple had no criminal record (though her uncle and and mother were arrested the same day for bank robbery, which does not look good).  And they had from the sound of it three healthy kids already.  And the story says there was formula in the house.

Maybe they weren't bad people.  Maybe the baby refused food (it happens).  Maybe they were ignorant of their options, didn't have insurance, and were afraid to go to the hospital.  Maybe the baby had a condition. 

Who knows.  There's no way to tell unless personally involved in the case.  The prosecutor must have had additional information, right?

If he did not, then he broke up a decent family and sent three kids to foster care (which is no picnic) for a long time.

CCV Preparing For Election Year

I guess with no anti-gay, anti-lesbian agenda on this year's ballot, the Citizens for Community Values is feeling a little need for attention. Which would explain why they called for a press conference in front of City Hall denouncing CityBeat for accepting money from legal customers in return for gasp publishing ads! What is this business they call "advertising," and why has nobody ever told me it was illegal before?

This is wrong on so many levels, it's comical. Allow me to enumerate.

1. CityBeat is guilty of nothing but accepting payment for ads, which of course lots of people do. Even if their customers were not legal, wouldn't the job of arresting and prosecuting them fall onto the shoulders of law enforcement? Why would anyone expect CityBeat to police its advertisers? Wouldn't that be the job of, um, the police?
2. The letter sent to CityBeat from CCV is lacking. As CityBeat points out, there is no where to send a reply as they request. Also, it is signed by 39 people, most of whom are reverends and pastors I've never heard of, the chief of police, county sheriff, and some random attorneys. I wonder if any of those reverends and pastors have ever told their flocks that the federal government introduced AIDS in the black community.
3. I'm not fan of prostitution. I think it's exploitative and a general drag on neighborhoods, but as they say it's the oldest business in the world. But if I was a fan, I certainly would not look in CityBeat to get my kicks. If the CCV was really concerned about this, they should target the Yellow Pages, the internet, and the late-night TV ads that run while I watch syndicated episodes of Friends at 11 pm at night. They should work with the law enforcement privately, perhaps with CityBeat's help. Vice squad usually doesn't hold a press conference at City Hall when they are preparing a bust. To this point, this line from the letter is laughable:

   "...it has been brought to our attention that the adult classified ad sections of both your weekly print edtion and your online edition have become primary avenues through which the sex-for-sale industry in greater Cincinnati markets their destructive services."

Many good comments over on Cincinnati blog about this (this one in particular). Also, see the Cincinnati Dealer's take.

By "Bodies", Maybe She Meant Young People

I'll start off with this incredible story told by Mark Mallory:

“I stopped at a car wash out in Colerain Township and a woman out there told me that maybe she would come downtown if there weren’t so many bodies piled up in the streets. And I thought she was joking, but she was absolutely serious,” Mallory said. The woman later told him she hadn’t been downtown in 17 years.

First of all, WTF? Second, I really hope that this woman represents a minority of suburbanites and that, while many may not patronize downtown, they do not believe there are bodies piled in the streets. (C), I've got news for you lady, Colerain ain't exactly Shangri-la. Once you get over the fact that you have to drive on this everyday:

Photo by Angel Franco/New York Times

on your way to the highway, realize that as more subsidized housing gets sent out your way, crime will be soon to follow.

(BTW, the picture above, found through Building Cincinnati, is not Colerain Ave. Did you think it was?)

The quote eventually made its way into a story about a new advertising campaign promoting downtown and downtown safety, which also included these stats about downtown in 2007:

1. $110 million in completed construction and renovations.
2. $243 million in ongoing projects.
3. 26 new retail/restaurant/entertainment venues.
4. Available retail space to a five-year low.
5. 100+ new and renovated housing units.
6. 8,000 residents in downtown and its surrounding areas.
7. 94 percent occupancy rates for apartments.
8. 8 percent growth over last year in the economic impact of hotel room bookings.
9. 74 percent of respondents said they felt safe downtown, according to a 2007 DCI survey.
10. 80 percent of respondents rated downtown as clean.

So, Colerain lady, don't come downtown for another 17 years. We ought to have cleaned up the bodies by then.

"I Live In Cincinnati"

Joe Deters's controversial editorial in the last issue of Cincinnati Gentlemen certainly raised some eyebrows. In the lastest issue, 3CDC's Steve (I guess he's no longer Stephen) Leeper responds about progress made in the city center.

Now, Leeper has attracted plenty of criticism in his tenure as head of 3CDC. People who are upset about moving the fountain, who say that 3CDC just wants to gentrify OTR, who doubt the corporate makeup of 3CDC's board, who still criticize his work in Pittsburgh - they all end up pointing the finger at the man in charge of 3CDC. And that's Leeper.

But in the few times I've heard him speak, I have to say I like what he says. And I like his results. Fountain Square is not just for lunchtime anymore. OTR is showing steady and, dare I say, equitable progress overall, a few bumps notwithstanding. And the Banks have broken ground. If you'll remember, those were the three charter projects that brought the organization into existence. And as far as Pittsburgh goes, he accomplished everything he was tasked with doing, whether or not it was what Pittsburgh needed at the time.

So reading his editorial did nothing do dampen my opinion of him. I liked it very much. You should read the whole thing, though I will quote the passage I liked best:

Millions of people are playing a role in this investment. You're contributing if you are: one of the 9,000 people who now live downtown; one of 250,000 people who attend the Broadway Series at the Aronoff Center; one of 100,000 people who attend the ballet, opera or May Festival at Music Hall; one of 3 million people who attend a Reds or Bengals game; among more than one million people who visited one of six urban museums from Mt. Adams to the riverfront; one of more than 40,000 people who skated on the Fountain Square ice rink this winter season; and one of thousands of children and teens who attend summer movie nights on the Square.

You're supporting the investment if you're developing new housing and retail units in the Gateway Quarter or you're buying one of those condos or opening a new store. Restaurateurs who are opening new spots downtown and in OTR are supporting the investment, as are the thousands of customers from throughout the region who are packing those venues every night. You're supporting the investment when you rebuild a new Art Academy of Cincinnati and School for Creative & Performing Arts to create an arts and culture mecca in OTR and you're supporting the investment by sending your children to those schools.

...And as a community, we should not concede defeat to those that violate the public trust by discouraging residents or visitors from going into the city based on negative perceptions and comments.

Outraged

I'm outraged at the proposed installation of public urination cameras. This is not a safety issue and will not reduce the number of public urination incidents. In fact, as the article states, it will only raise the number of dangerous "getting caught in the barn door" zipper accidents. This is purely a political and revenue move for the city. When will they learn?

Deters - WTF?

By now you may have seen excerpts from the rant by Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters in this month's Cincinnati Magazine. I am almost afraid to link to his excerpts for fear of boosting its score on Google - so I'll try the Google bombing method instead: stupid asinine ignorant dumb dumb dumb brainless dense imbecilic dipshit inane irresponsible naive short-sighted absurd simple-minded.

I will have to buy the issue to read the whole thing, but the excepts alone just made me mad. Then I started reading the comments and they made me madder. If Deters and the like had their way, there would be a giant jail the size of a stadium sitting just outside of downtown, incarcerating half of the county population. The other half would never leave their homes.

I won't rebut line by line, as others have done that far more effectively already. I will say two things: as the top law enforcement officer in the county, I understand his bias, but he should have more interest and more responsibility in thinking forwardly about the area in which we live than in making sweeping comments that prop up his buddies and reinforce the fallacies that keep people out of the city and in their homes. Two, I love/hate Cincinnati's conservative label. I don't think conservatism is necessarily a bad thing and has many appeals, but when the same old conservative names spout off the same old rhetoric, they're just giving the I-want-to-be-in-Cincinnati-when-the-world-ends outsiders more cannon fodder.

More blogs about Deters' effluvia:

• CityBeat: Deters' Attack On The City
• Cincinnati Blog: Throwing Fruit From The Cheap Seats
• The Nati Life: here and here
• Beit Carr: The Battle For Our City
  

First Homicide Of 2008

You may have heard about the first homicide of 2008, at Ocho Rios in OTR. Dude was shot inside the club on the dance floor. Think about all the times you've been on a crowded dance floor. Incredible. What's more incredible? That in a crowded dance club filled with a thousand people, there were no witnesses.

I Know About Bad Bosses

So the chief of police, Thomas Streicher Jr., has come under fire for not spending around $2 million or so of money city council gave him for the explicit purpose of providing high-visibility walking patrols to high-crime neighborhoods in the city. There are two issues here that interest me.

One, the conservative in me has always had a real problem with budget-based organizations, such as government and most non-profits. The primary motivation for businesses, make money or close, is not there. Operating income for non-profits will always be there, every year, mostly regardless of performance, as long as flaws are not egregious, and/or they stay on top of their grant-writing. It's just different. And just like in the movie Falling Down, I believe that there are cases where departments find ways to spend their budgets just so that their budgets are not reduced the following time around.

So when the chief of police saves $2 million dollars and offers to return it, something has gone haywire. Is this incredibly awesome, showing that budget-based groups can save money? Or is this wrong, showing that the public has not received services it has paid for? In this case, when the money was specifically allocated for walking patrols, and there was none (which is different from having walking patrols, but they were cheaper than first thought), I lean towards the latter.

Two, the chief of police has come under fire in the media time and time again. While the media is not gospel, something is fishy. He has browbeat federal monitors, resisted federal rulings, and yelled and thrown tirades at civilians in an office setting. That's just the off the top of my head. These do no good for the image of our city's safety and community relations, which is what I'm most concerned with. Then I read the CityBeat article which quoted from the expert study:

"Among its findings, the study stated the police department is “overwhelmed and defensive,” while its operating culture was described as a “systematically defensive posture hamstringing operations and affecting all basic systems.”

Perhaps more important, it stated that rank-and-file officers felt ignored and treated unfairly by department leadership. It found that there was major mistrust of supervisors by officers, with only 28.1 percent believing that discipline within the department was fair and uniform and that most police officers — 64 percent — said their supervisors are more concerned with being obeyed than understood."

I've been in that environment before, and such an environment is poison. When leadership is neither respected nor trusted, a group will waste money, time, and health and not quickly achieve any purpose which provides reason for that group to exist.

No matter how the $2 million should have been used, if that report is true, it is damning.

Statistics 101

The latest crime rankings making the rounds ("City Crime Rankings: Crime in Metropolitan America", published by CQ Press), that ranks Cincinnati as the 16th most dangerous city in the nation, is so statistically unsound, they might as well have placed all the cities in a hat and drawn names to get the rankings. The AP article already mentions two flaws, and I'll add another one:

1. Different states define different crimes in different ways. So right there your data point is inconsistent.
2. The study assigned a crime rate score to each city with zero representing the national average, but the study excluded Chicago, Minneapolis, and other Illinois and Minnesota cities. What kind of average is that? That's like finding the average income in America and leaving Bill Gates out (which by the way is why median is usually more useful).
3. The FBI crime data the study uses is based on per-capita crime. But in metro cities that have annexed surrounding suburbs such as Indianapolis, Columbus, and Louisville, the per-capita crime rate will always be lower than cities like Cincinnati.

I couldn't agree more with the FBI response on the findings: "Consequently, they lead to simplistic and/or incomplete analyses that often create misleading perceptions adversely affecting communities and their residents."

Cincinnati takes another hit.

War On...?

Not much time today. Off to Bowling Green this afternoon, back tomorrow.

From AlterNet (a bleeding heart blog, but I happen to agree on this one):

What would you buy if you had an extra $42 billion to spend every year? What might our government buy if it suddenly had that much money dropped onto its lap every year?

For one thing, it might pay for the entire $7 billion annual increase in the State Children's Health Insurance Program that President Bush is threatening to veto because of its cost -- and there'd still be $35 billion left over.

Or perhaps you'd hire 880,000 schoolteachers at the average U.S. teacher salary of $47,602 per year.

Or give every one of our current teachers a 30 percent raise (at a cost of $15 billion, according to the American Federation of Teachers) and use what's left to take a $27 billion whack out of the federal deficit.

Or use all $42 billion for a massive tax cut that would put an extra $140 in the pockets of every person in the country -- $560 for a family of four.

The mind reels at the ways such a massive sum of money could be put to use.

Why $42 billion? Because that's what our current marijuana laws cost American taxpayers each year.

Read more. This November, avoid voting for City Council members who support last year's ridiculous marijuana ordinance.

Nesselroad-Slaby

For god's sake, more coverage of Brenda Nesselroad-Slaby? As if two weeks of unrelenting stories and video of her police interview and video of her dropping off doughnuts moments before Cecilia's death weren't enough, now we have exclusive photos of... the inside of her car.


At least the print edition doesn't have the the same photo front and center, like it did recently with a vidcap from her police interview.

Not to say I haven't read each and every one of those articles (I did not watch the videos!).

Because the Enquirer is right about one thing: the story provokes, I believe, some interesting opinions on topics ranging from equality in our justice system across race and class, to the frenetic lives many middle-to-upper class Americans are leading right now.

In a society that is moving faster and faster, observe: a 40-yr-old mother with a 2-yr old and a 5-yr old, an assistant principal, earning $70-$80k/yr. Put another way, a career woman holding off children like many career women these days, doing well for herself compared to most women, her daughter's not-too-common name, and her own hyphenated surname. From her interview today, she had tried to do be everything to everybody, a super mom and a super administrator.

Let me point out some other things. Admittedly, I am biased because I hear about some nightmares in education every day. Nesselroad-Slaby was at the bakery by 6:30 am, at work by 7 am for her 7:15 am school-openeing meeting that was to last 8 hours. The woman was up by 6 am at the latest. I know that there are millions of career mothers who have never left their children in their cars. But all it takes is one time. And how many of them consistently wake up before 6 am every morning?

Some months ago, a poor, young, single African mother was arrested for locking her two children in the closet while she went to work. Her children were taken away. The children were fine save some bruises, hungry - I think they had pissed themselves or something. Apparently, she had done it many times before. This mother was single and poor. No father to watch the kids. No money for daycare or a babysitter. No father to earn extra money. Have to have a job. America is worst in the world when it comes to policies for working mothers. What was she supposed to do? Now she has a criminal record. Her young children will grow up in foster care for quite some time probably. Any chances her son/daughter will contribute to a single parent family himself/herself?

The mother who accidentally forgot her 2-yr-old daughter in her car deserves no charges and no jail time. Honestly, I don't believe the poor, African mother deserved any either. In the single mother's case, of course she made a (bad) choice to leave her children at home, when she should have sought help from either friends or from government programs that are available. But if she didn't have any friends, and these programs are not ideal or she didn't even know about them, then it doesn't leave many options. I'm not sure what the solution would have been for her case, but locking her up and taking away her kids certainly does not get at the root causes.