Posted on

New Year's: For a neighbor, out with the old for one last time

 Two other subjects on which to write about came and went about an hour ago when I heard the sound of a diesel engine outside. I’d heard that sound before — a local city ambulance.

 The paramedics were  soon joined by a supervisor and was followed by several police cars. I could tell when they emerged from my neighbor’s apartment that things didn’t look good. That turned out to be with good reason. 

 My neighbor was dead. A friend of his went to check on him and from what he and the police said, the neighbor, Doc,  probably had been dead anywhere from a few days to a week.

 I liked Doc. I wouldn’t say we were friends but we were pretty close acquaintances. He lived next door and whenever we saw each other and had a minute we’d talk. He had just started receiving disability checks earlier this year after the battle that many have obtaining the disability status. As I told the police, he seemed to be in pain all the time. I’m not sure what all kinds of medical problems he had but I think he may have also had neuropathy as I do. As for the cause of his death, I’m sure the coroner will determine that if the body is in a sufficient state. But the bottom line is likely natural causes.

Doc was 62. I’m not sure. The cops ran his license and he might have been 59 or 60. He was in the range of late 50s to early 60s.

 When Hurricane Ike hit and we were all without power I sat out in the yard with Doc and my former neighbor Gene where we talked about anything and everything. It was then that I got to know Doc better. However, I never really knew him well.

 I’ve mentioned here before that when I saw my neighbor, he would often rant over something he heard on Fox News, fair and balanced.

 The  friend who found Doc after having the manager opened the apartment was, after knowing each other for more than 20 years, pretty much his real next of kin. He had a couple of ex-wives and a daughter, but they were not close, according to his friend. The police were having a difficult time figuring out who to call. Who will be responsible for disposition of his body and what he owns?

 It’s sad for someone’s life to come to an end like that. Also, it didn’t escape me nor did it pass by his friend that Doc was going out on New Year’s Eve. His friend particularly was disturbed by that especially after having discovered Doc”s lifeless body at year’s end — I’m lost for words here trying to be respectful and tasteful for a change — after the man had been dead for perhaps more than a few days. I trust most of you understand what I’m saying.

 We tend to look at New Year’s as out with the old and in with the new. We have the vision of the stork bringing in the new baby while behind the scenes the Grim Reaper is doing his deeds. But in the end we are all part of the process, what Joni Mitchell sang so lovely, “The Circle Game.” A cycle. We see it all the time.

 But that doesn’t particularly make that cycle more appealing when one goes away for good, that is, if it is someone you know.

 Speaking of, the morgue SUV is getting ready to take Doc away. So long Doc. It’s been good to know you.

Posted on

In sports … A Mike Leach-Al Gonzales connection?

Texas Tech fired Mike Leach as head coach today, just before the Red Raiders take on Michigan State in the Alamo Bowl. Leach was accused of mistreating wide receiver Adam James by ordering the player into small, dark rooms after James suffered a concussion. James is the son of ESPN analyst and former SMU and NFL player Craig James.

One can only wonder if the allegations are true. Especially in light of other Texas Tech hires including retired basketball coach Bobby Knight, and the pro-torture former U.S. Attorney General in the Gee Dubya Bush administration, Alberto Gonzales.

Did Gonzales order Mike Leach to torture Adam James at Texas Tech?

Gonzales is a visiting professor at Texas Tech and is a diversity recruiter. No figures have yet been released as to how many Muslim students Professor Gonzales has managed to sign at Texas Tech, located in Lubbock. That is, with or without torture.

Goin’deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeppppppppppppppp

The Houston Texans held on for a second straight week to beat Miami and to escape once again with more Ws than Ls. Now, the entire AFC will not have to fall into a fresh opening in the ground and disappear in order for the Texans to capture a wild card playoff spot. Perhaps, just the equivalent of an AFC conference will have to be kidnapped.

With the Texans facing New England for their last game, Patriots coach Bill Belechick is reportedly playing coy to questions as to whether hotshot QB Tom Brady will play since the Pats are assured the AFC East title. That’s fine with me (see INDIANAPOLIS). It doesn’t matter to New England whether Houston wins. It does to Houston, but the Texans need a various combination of planet alignment and voodoo for the team to head towards its first playoff game ever.

Jim Caldwell, a name which will live in infamy

And what is up with Indianapolis Colts coach taking out his stars including QB Peyton Manning with a slight lead and an ultimate loss to the New York Jets? That was, of course, the end to a possible perfect season for the Colts. Caldwell, the coach, didn’t want Manning and other stars to hurt a pinky or something. Team president Bill Polian is now wondering why most of Indianapolis wants to mount his coach on a fiery stick. Hmm. That’s a tough one Billy Boy.

And finallllllllllllllllllllllllllly I’m hidden inside this bowl

Not too many days longer until the national college title game between Texas and Alabama. It seems many who know what they are talking about when it comes to football pick the Crimson Tide. Sorry, I have to go with Mack Brown and his boys, not to be confused with Johnny Mack Brown.

But before the BCS championship, we’ve got the Tampa Tampax Bowl, the Preparation H Herbert Hoover Bowl, the Snap-on-Tools Idaho Bowl, the Watts 40-Oz. Bull Bowl, the Smith and Wesson Cut and Shoot, Texas, Bowl, the Flaming Gay Bowl at San Francisco, the I-Shot-the-Sheriff-Rastafarian Bowl in Kingston, Jamaica and so forth …

Posted on

Inquiring minds want to know. So why don't we?

 Beaumont police shoot a guy outside Sears at Parkdale Mall last night. That’s kind of important to me. I shop there. Sometimes I have to do work at some of the stores there. It’s about two miles up the road from where I live. I’ve been going there since I was a long-haired kid, back to when the this wonderful, covered shopping mall first opened in 1973. I would kind of like to know what happened with the shooting.

 Here is what we know according to the three local TV stations and one daily newspaper here in Beaumont,  Texas. A 60-ish Hispanic man was allegedly acting erratically inside a store at Parkdale Mall. He was supposedly banging a shopping cart repeatedly against a wall or door. (windows?) something inside the store. Police arrived at the scene around 9 p.m. last night and found a crowd had formed and the man had — in cop-speak as relayed by the young reporter — “displayed” a knife. Twice after the man “displayed” the knife at police officers, the cops shot him and the subject of the incident was soon pronounced dead at Christus St. Elizabeth Hospital. The officer who shot the man, still yet to be identified by police, is on administrative leave.

 Now all of the above tells me a little, but the individual reports from the Web and watching the news last night left me wondering and wanting more information. I’ve worked a number of homicides during my years as a reporter and the first omission I see in these news reports were a lack of witness quotes or sound bites. I realize the incident happened just slightly before the 10 o’clock broadcast and most likely around the newspaper’s nightside deadline. But one station, Fox-affiliate KBTV4  has a 9 p.m. broadcast and its studios are in opposite sides of the mall from the Sears store. Their reports were less than illuminating.

 I try to give my local media the benefit of the doubt most of the times. I know what a difficult and mostly thankless and pitifully paying job theirs’ is. But I would guess most every reporter who covered this story, at some time, shops at the mall. They go there when they want to get “man on the street” interviews. And also something that is important to me and should be important to the local media is that a cop shot and killed someone with a knife. Was it, as cops sometime say, “a righteous” shooting?

 Also, one remark by a reporter last night appeared to give the police much more than the benefit of a doubt when she said that after being around police it is known that if they or others are threatened “they respond as they see fit.” I really take issue with that statement. First of all, it absolves the police of any wrongdoing even before the shooting review begins and probably before the body of the dead man is cold. It leaves the impression that police are always justified to shoot and kill in every situation.

 So-called “police-involved shootings” (more cop speak), are never clear cut. They are even less so when a knife is involved. I have witnessed a standoff between police and a knife-wielding individual. I also have viewed a video in court in which a man with a machete was holding police at bay in his home. In both instances, the men involved were arrested without any injury. This was in a different city and in one where I worked as a reporter.

 Forget the old saw concerning journalists collecting the “who, what, where, when, why, how.” Some of these are more important than others and some of the others can be collected when wrapping up. And forget that time is slip, slipping away, at least until it starts feeling like a bad gas pain. The 10 p.m. broadcast is upon us. The deadline might run past 10 but not much more or  it could start cutting into the newspaper’s profit. Yeah guys, I know you have deadlines. But you could have had sound bites or quotes from people who might have seen something rather than strictly basing your story on the local police spokesman. Even if they string yellow crime scene tape from the Sears store all the way to Highway 69.  It’s amazing what you can do when you are under deadline. That’s why press associations and other organizations award journalist for best deadline reporting.

 Now for the follow-ups. The editors will want follow-ups until they make the public sick watching or reading them. So how about having some real information in them? Why did the officer shoot the man outside Sears? Was he justified? Did the officer have non-lethal alternatives even though he was justified? What kind of knife did he wield? The mall has unarmed security. Did they respond? Could they do anything other than call for police help? Why was the individual who was shot allegedly acting erratic? Does his family or friends know why? What was the man like in everyday life?

 These are some of the questions that I would like to see answered. The local media in Beaumont did a very poor job, at least in my eyes, of covering the shooting of this man at one of the city’s most prominent places and during the time of the year in which it is the most thick with people. I realize there are many different factors why they may have fallen short in their coverage. Still, this one could have been a whole lot better.

 Hopefully, the follow-ups will be much improved because a lot of folks want to know what happened. I want to know.

Posted on

Maintenance hour?

I have played phone tag with Verizon’s technical support regarding my Broadband access. After a trouble-free period, it has this kink where it switches from the faster Broadband to the much slower National Access. I’ve talked with several people, now the trick is getting the right one who knows what they are doing and will do it for you. It’s more difficult than you’d think. This could take all afternoon, so wish me luck and perhaps I will be back sometime today or tomorrow. — Mr. EFD

Posted on

No surprises

It was no surprise that political fallout was the focus of the attempted bombing over the weekend of an airliner that was landing in Detroit.

It’s Christmas. Most officialdom is elsewhere. President Obama was vacationing in Hawaii. Hey, there’s nothing like taking cheap shots at your opponent when he’s thousands of miles away.

Our favorite carbuncle, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., was on CNN almost it seems before passengers were herded off the Northwest Airlines Airbus that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to blow up upon descent from a Amsterdam to Detroit flight. Abdulmutallab managed only to ignite a small fire and roast his chestnuts.

With no one else to answer their questions, the national media had the Republican noise machine handy to lay the blame. Yes, everything wrong is Obama’s fault 24-7 so why should this be any different?

That Abdulmutallab’s father, a wealthy retired Nigerian banking mogul, had supposedly warned the U.S. Embassy  that his son might be teetering over the edge into radical Islam is no doubt disturbing. And also unnerving is that the alleged screw-up bomber flew from Nigeria and Amsterdam to the U.S. while being on some kind of watch list.

But if one might remember, we’ve seen this all before and worse. Do you recall the so-called Shoe Bomber? Even worse what about people known by the FBI to have taken flight training just to take off and not land, and ended up murdering 3,000 people in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania? Oh mighty members of the right who want to lay all the blame on the Obama administration might recall but won’t say so that all of this happened during George W. Bush’s tenure.

Should the Obama administration have had some improvements made in airline security during the past year? One would hope so. However, when I last flew two months ago it was indicated I was on some kind of government security-threat list. I know this because I was unable to print my boarding pass online and was told as much by airline personnel. I wasn’t subjected to any strip search, however, and I was able to print my boarding pass on the return flight. And I have a very common name, for God’s sake.

So yes, the Obama administration deserves some blame. But so does George W. Bush. Probably so do many others. At least, thankfully, no more life has been yet lost due to these cowardly zealots. Before piling on the Obama administration, the flighty public should take a breath, read, and figure out what’s going on with everything before joining in with the angry crowd of right-wingers who have no other agenda than regaining power in Congress and the White House.