The last NYPD cops assigned full-time to New York City public schools are being moved out — despite nationwide calls for heightened security in the wake of last month’s Florida shootings.
As the nation mourned the 17 victims of the school massacre at Parkland, Fla., the NYPD was removing Sgt. Raul Espinet from his post at Francis Lewis HS in Fresh Meadows, Queens — where he had worked for more than a dozen years. Parents, teachers and students are livid over the beloved cop’s departure.
“My colleagues think it’s outrageous — and really stupid,” teacher Arthur Goldstein said. “We’re not enthusiastic about arming teachers, but we liked having a cop around.”
Espinet’s position was eliminated because cops in Mayor de Blasio’s new community policing units will visit schools while patrolling the neighborhood, according to the NYPD. School safety agents are stationed at all schools, but are not armed.
The once-common practice of putting an armed cop in schools waned in the 1990s. All were gradually eliminated, but Francis Lewis, one of the biggest high schools, slipped by. Bayside and Benjamin Cardozo high schools also recently lost their full-time NYPD officers, according to parents.
Espinet is one of the last — if not the last — school cop to go.
“I’m not aware of any other school with a full-time police officer assigned to it,” said Lt. John Grimpel, an NYPD spokesman.
Parents at the overcrowded Queens school, crammed with more than 4,400 students, are protesting the change.
“The community officer is in no way an acceptable replacement,” says a PTA petition launched last week.
The PTA is demanding that the NYPD and city Department of Education bring back an armed cop to Francis Lewis. It has collected more than 1,000 signatures in just two days, according to co-president Linda Lovett.
“It’s ridiculous,” Lovett said. “All over the country they are telling you ‘arm the teachers, get an officer in your school.’ New York City had a designated officer and they are actually cutting the program . . . they are making us less secure.
“You are talking about 5,000 people in a one-block radius, and you’re telling me you can’t designate one officer?”
Cop were originally put into New York City schools not to prevent school shootings, but to curb the overall criminality of students that broke out in epidemic proportions in the 1960s, including one infamous incident where a student set a teacher on fire.
Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and De Blasio seems hellbent on repeating all the mistakes of sixties radicals.
Yesterday I had to have Jigsaw, my 14-year old Golden Retriever, put to sleep due to cancer. There will be a blog post forthcoming on my other blog in a day or two. In the interim, instead of politics, here’s a video of Golden Retrievers playing.
OK, we’ll make it ever-so-slightly political. Here’s Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s Golden Retriever Pancake getting a Christmas present and freaking out from happiness.
Love your doggies as much as you can while you can…
My oldest dog is dying of cancer, which has rather put a crimp in my time and desire to blog, so posting may be a bit sparse for a few days. Enjoy an abbreviated LinkSwarm:
ICE conducts more raids in California. Evidently enforcing federal law is controversial when it conflicts with the Democratic Party’s goals of importing more illegal aliens… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
The popularity of incumbent Democratic senators up for reelection this year in states Trump won is under water.
Oberlin College “got woke” and now they’re going broke, thanks to declining enrollment and a variety of Social Justice Warrior idiocies, including sexual misconduct showtrials and #BlackLivesMatter pandering. Now they’re complaining that they can’t get a fair trial in their own namesake town because everybody hates them.
Austin American-Statesman sold to GateHouse media for $47.5 million. The sale doesn’t include the land the Statesman building sits on, which is worth considerably more than the newspaper… (Hat tip: Dwight.)
She’s now resigned. Not over the affair itself, mind you, because Democrat. But because of the taxpayer money used supporting the affair.
Mayor Megan Barry, a one-time rising star in the Democratic Party with big plans to remake Nashville, resigned Tuesday after pleading guilty to cheating the city out of thousands of dollars as she carried on an affair with her bodyguard.
The resignation marked a swift fall for Barry, who stunned the city in late January when she confessed to an extramarital relationship with the former head of her security detail.
Snip.
Barry and her former bodyguard, police Sgt. Robert Forrest, separately pleaded guilty to felony theft. Barry’s resignation was part of a plea bargain with prosecutors. She and Forrest were sentenced to three years’ probation.
Barry also agreed to reimburse the city $11,000, while Forrest will return $45,000 that authorities said was paid to him in salary or overtime when he was not actually performing his duties as security chief.
In court, Barry didn’t say how she stole money from the city, but investigators have said they believe she engaged in the affair while she was on city-paid trips and Forrest was on the clock.
What was a favorite spot for Barry and Forrest to be together on the taxpayer’s dime? Would you believe cemeteries?
And cheers to Ace of Spades HQ for this: “Mayor Barry holds as a central religious principle that sex is intended by God to be a covenant between a mayor, her bodyguard, several tens of thousands of dollars of public money, and maybe some of the honored dead as spectators.”
With over 99% of the Texas primary vote in, there were no alarms and no surprises. All the statewide Republican incumbents won their primaries, though George P. Bush and Sid Miller garnered less than 60% of the vote against underfunded challengers.
Greg Abbott pulled in 90% of the vote, handily beating Barbara Krueger and Larry SECEDE Kilgore, the later of whose 1.3% of the vote gives lie to the theory that Texas is currently a hotbed of secessionist fervor.
Ted Cruz garnered 85% of the vote against four underfunded opponents.
On the far left side of the the aisle, conventional wisdom also triumphed. Lupe Valdez (43%) and Andrew White (27%) are headed to a runoff, leaving Cederic Davis Sr., Grady Yarborough and Seth Payne (and my own runoff prediction) in the dust.
As expected, Beto O’Rourke won over two underfunded challengers, but at a mere 61.8% of the vote, he was hardly the juggernaut Democrats were making him out to be. Liberals have been talking up the chances for their fair-haired boy to take Ted Cruz, but I wouldn’t bet the mortgage on it; O’Rourke garnered less than half the votes Cruz did.
Other Democratic race results: For Lieutenant Governor, Mike Collier edged Michael Cooper 52% to 48%, and for Comptroller, Joi Chevalier eeked out a 52% to 48% win over Tim Mahoney.
Other races:
Texas Second Congressional District: Republicans Kevin Roberts and Dan Crenshaw head to the runoff separated by less than a thousand votes in a 9 candidate field. (Previously.) On the Democratic side, lawyer Todd Litton won outright.
Texas Third Congressional District: As predicted, Republican state senator Van Taylor stomped his primary opposition with 85% of the vote, and lesbian-rights lawyer Lorie Burch and “the other” Sam Johnson are headed to a runoff for Democrats.
Texas Fifth Congressional District: Republican state Rep Lance Gooden and former Jed Hensarling fundraiser Bunni Pounds head to the runoff, leaving former Rep. Kenneth Sheets and Ted Cruz regional director Jason Wright behind. Democratic candidate Dan Wood was unopposed in his primary.
Texas Sixth Congressional District: as predicted, Tarrant County Tax Assessor-Collector Ron Wright went into the Republican runoff leading Jake Ellzey 45% to 21%. The top two Democratic contenders, Ruby Faye Woolridge and Jana Lynne Sanchez ended in a dead heat, each with 36.9% of the vote, setting up a bruising black vs. Hispanic runoff.
Texas Sixth Congressional District: As expected, Republican John Culberson won handily, but the real interest there is in the Democratic Party match, where the DCCC-targeted Laura Moser (yes, the DCCC went out of their way to attack a progressive political candidate in their own primary) made the runoff five points behind Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, but way ahead of the establishment-recruited Alex Triantaphyllis. Expect a nasty, no-holds-barred runoff.
Texas Twenty-First Congressional District: As expected, Chip Roy heads into the Republican runoff with a significant lead. However, his runoff opponent is not the expected William Negley, but Matt McCall. (I wonder if name confusion between Matt McCaul and adjacent district Republican incumbent Mike McCaul benefited McCall here.) However, on the Democratic side, Mary Street Wilson came out of nowhere to edge the well-heeled Joseph Kopser by two points going into the runoff, leaving AFL-CIO endorsed former Nancy Pelosi staffer Derrick Crowe on the outside looking in.
In State Senate District 9 Republican primary, which got a lot of attention, Ken Paxton’s wife Angela Paxton beat Don Huffines’ brother Phillip Huffines.
Texas 114th State Congressional District: Lisa Luby Ryan defeats Jason Villalba!
Sadly, both Charlie Geren and Giovanni Capriglione survive to bedevil conservatives.
Soros’s current target is Bexar County, Texas, District Attorney Nico LaHood, Peter Hasson reports in the Daily Caller. LaHood is a Democrat who opposes sanctuary cities and describes himself as “a conservative guy.”
Bexar County, which includes San Antonio, is the fourth most-populous county in Texas. Knocking off LaHood would be a significant step forward for the Soros agenda.
Soros has already blown through around $70,000 supporting LaHood’s primary opponent, Joe Gonzales, by way of Texas Justice & Public Safety, a political action committee or PAC. The sum includes more than $30,000 devoted to mailers attacking LaHood as “bigoted,” “racist,” and “Islamophobic” in both the English and Spanish languages.
“Donors pumped a total of $67 million into state-level campaigns from the beginning of 2017 through Jan. 25, and a whopping $57 million of it, or about 86 percent, went to GOP candidates.” Note: That’s article covers only state (rather than federal) races. Tidbits: Republican incumbent Governor Greg Abbott not only raised more than all his Democratic opponents combined, he raised more than the next ten names on the list combined. And the aforementioned Bo French shows up in 22nd place.
Over the first 45 days of 2018, O’Rourke raised $2.3 million — almost three times more than Cruz’s $803,000, according to new reports filed by Cruz and O’Rourke with the Federal Election Commission.
O’Rourke spent $2 million, while Cruz spent $1.2 million, according to the filings. They also show a narrowing cash-on-hand gap: O’Rourke reported having $4.9 million in the bank, compared to Cruz’s $6 million.
A Tweet from the 45th President of the United States of America:
I want to encourage all of my many Texas friends to vote in the primary for Governor Greg Abbott, Senator Ted Cruz, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and Attorney General Ken Paxton. They are helping me to Make America Great Again! Vote early or on March 6th.
Hey @AnniesListTX: I noticed that a grand total of 5 candidates out of the 23 you're supporting this cycle don't already have "Rep." in front of their names. https://t.co/v38kUuoJGT Seems like your goal has shifted to "Incumbent Democrat Protection"…
Saturday’s attack on Zafar Iqbal in the northern city of Sylhet was just the latest in a series of stabbings of secular or atheist authors and bloggers in Muslim-majority Bangladesh.
Iqbal, a long-standing champion of free speech and secularism, remains in stable condition in hospital where he is being treated for stab wounds to his head.
Police detained 21-year-old Faizul Hasan, a former Islamic seminary student, and were investigating any ties to radical groups.
Colonel Ali Haider Azad Ahmed from the Rapid Action Battalion police unit said Hasan told investigators it was “his duty as a Muslim to resist those who work against Islam”.
“He has said Dr Zafar Iqbal was an enemy of Islam,” Ahmed said.
More recent reports say Iqbal survived his attack and is out of danger.
According to Wikipedia (the source of all vaguely accurate knowledge), “Iqbal is known for his stance against Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh and has spearheaded criticism of its leaders, several of whom are undergoing trial at the International Crimes Tribunal for their role in the Bangladesh liberation war in 1971.”
Alas, he’s not in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database under either Zafar Iqbal or his birth name of Muhammed Zafar Iqbal, which suggests none of his extensive Bengali language works have been translated into English.
He also evidently had one of his works turned into “a full-length 3D animated film,” which turns out to be about the quality of early Machinima efforts:
Seems like a successful guy. That, and being a prominent atheist, is enough to get you on the radical Islam death list…
Because I blog about national and international events as well as state and local events, I haven’t covered some state issues as extensively as I might have.
One of those is the down-ballot race between incumbent George P. Bush and Jerry Patterson (who formerly held the office before his unsuccessful Lt. Governor run in 2014). I didn’t want to vote for Bush, or against him, based merely on his last name. Also, I still haven’t had time to research the Alamo controversy that’s one of the key bones of contention in the race.
And then I came across this tweet of Land Commissioner Bush campaigning for Republican State Representative Jason Villalba:
What a great day for #TeamVillalba and #TeamBush. Working together to keep Texas the best place in the country to raise a family! We had a wonderful group of folks come out to walk for us and together, we hit over 1000 doors today – WooHoo!! @georgepbush#TxLege#Wowpic.twitter.com/rjx3Nxp39O
It is now official. Netcraft has confirmed: Slashdot is dying.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Slashdot community when posters confirmed that the site had not been updated since March 1 and that much of the functionality (including login) was broken. Coming on the heels of a yet another slew of Social Justice Warrioring posts about women in tech, this news serves to reinforce what we’ve known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray.
You don’t need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict Slashdot’s future. The handwriting is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won’t be any future at all for Slashdot, because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for Slashdot. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose readership. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
We've been having site performance/uptime issues including a DDOS earlier in the week (Slashdotted?). DevOps working round the clock until we're back at full capacity. No ETA but hopeful for sometime Saturday. Rumors of our demise are greatly exaggerated. Thanks for your patience
3/3/18, 9:30 PM CST: The front page has finally started updating again, but some stories still seem 404, and there’s no story about the outage itself, which is odd…
