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In for a good hand-spanking. Maybe even some yellow snow.

A 14-year-old boy was written a ticket for shining a laser at a helicopter on Sunday evening near a Beaumont, Texas, airport. Yours truly resides in Beaumont.

Beaumont police received a complaint from the chopper pilot who said that a green laser light was aimed at his aircraft. The incident happened around 8 p.m. as the craft approached the Beaumont Municipal Airport. The pilot lit his landing lights to illuminate the area and he reported seeing two individuals on the ground in front of a residence, police said.

The pilot landed at the airport and drove by the residence where he saw the laser light. The home was slightly more than a mile away. Police met with the pilot shortly afterward at a nearby supermarket.

Officers then dropped by to the residence and talked with the boy’s parents. The adults confirmed their son had a green laser pointer and called him outside to speak with the police. The boy confessed to shining the laser at the aircraft.

” … and did not realize how dangerous shining a laser at aircraft could be for pilots,” the police report added.

"I can't see, temporarily," but it's not the dog-doo snow cone that's blinding me. Photo: FBI
“I can’t see, temporarily,” but it’s not the husky wee wee that’s blinding me. Photo: FBI. Reference: “Nanook Rubs It” by Frank Zappa

Well gee whiz! I suppose the teen never watches television or reads internet stories about airline pilots being temporarily blinded by laser light.

The police press release said the laser was confiscated and the teen was written a “citation for pointing a laser at an aircraft.”

I looked up the specific Texas Penal Code that addresses such an offense. I was quite surprised that the offense is only a Class C misdemeanor. That is the same offense level as a parking ticket. The maximum fine for a Class C is $500 with no jail. Who knew?

The offense intensifies to a Class A misdemeanor if ” … the intensity of the light impairs the operator’s ability to control the aircraft … “ The maximum punishment for an ordinary Class A misdemeanor is a $4,000 fine.  A jail term of one year, or both the maximum fine and maximum jail term, may be imposed upon a guilty verdict, according to Chapter 12.21 of the Texas Penal Code.

Federal laws can be more severe with fines and sentences of up to five years in prison if convicted.

It just seems that getting a slap on the wrist for something so potentially harmful is so … nothing. Maybe the citation is all police can do legally or maybe it’s the side of town regulating the charge. I will be interested to hear if someone is brought up on similar charges and what they receive if found guilty. I mean, I don’t wish something like that on anyone. I’m just saying.

Remember kiddos: Don’t point your laser pointer at ANY aircraft. And whatever you do, don’t eat that yellow snow!

 

 

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Sandra Bland: Suicide or Homicide? Will people find the answer believable?

My friend Paul sent me a message from Tokyo today asking questions about the Texas traffic stop video of Sandra Bland, who was arrested and was later found dead in jail:

 “I want to know, as the driver does, what is she being arrested for? What has she done? What can the cop order her to do — and based on what?

“By Texas law, do you have to ‘step out of the car’?”

All good questions that Paul asks. And certainly there are answers though perhaps not nearly enough for some. Here are some supposed answers assembled by The New York Times. It seems as if some editor told a reporter on a short deadline to have pronto so many inches of print or whatever they measure news with these days. It’s okay. It’s not like plagiarizing a lead. Sorry, inside joke.

The answers in the article are enough for a start in that netherworld called justice where truth often finds itself the prisoner. When one sees the video more times than is good for one’s own mental stability and reads what was said in the video it would seem a tie ball game as to whom is the most surly. Texas State Trooper Brian Encina surely has the advantage though wearing a badge, Taser and firearm.

Having covered one of the early cases involving a police dash-cam video — this too involved a Texas state trooper — my belief is that audio plus video recordings don’t always equal instant truth.

In reality, the widely disseminated video of Sandra Bland’s arrest might stand moot if another video or a witness appears with some concrete evidence of how the prisoner died in custody. In the Perry Mason world this used to occur every day. But life isn’t Perry Mason and perhaps that is why I haven’t seen episodes of this show in three or four decades.

It’s sad to say that this isn’t the first story I have read or heard about in which a black person died under mysterious circumstances in an East Texas jail. I also have written stories about black people, men, who died under suspicious reasons in East Texas county jails.

My first such story was also my first freelance try. I worked on “spec,” meaning no money until the story is finished and approved by the editors, in this instance it was Texas Monthly during the late 1980s that disapproved. I chalked this up to my inexperience. Oh well, my expenses were reimbursed.

This story too was controversial. A black man from Louisiana was jailed and allegedly beaten to death with a “slap stick” by a cop because he was making too much noise. I investigated another claim — this was in an adjacent county to the aforementioned case —  in which a black man had supposedly committed suicide in jail, according to the official reports. As in the Bland case, the family in the case I investigated didn’t believe their loved one took his own life.

Is there a connection here? Is there a longstanding — the cases I investigated as a journalist were in the 1980s and 1990s — epidemic of black people being killed in East Texas jails that reaches into today?

Unfortunately and with a bit of irony, the answer is “yes,” “no” and “no answer” is found in black and white. Cultural differences from as far back as the Antebellum South to today permeate discussions, not to mention the unmentionable. The black perspective is often that white redneck cops are a danger to blacks in general. And, of course, “Brothers don’t kill themselves.” Clarence Page, the black, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the Chicago Tribune, calls such thinking a myth.

It is difficult to find the truth. It is a task made harder with that noise which is the world spinning around and around. If the truth is that Sandra Bland was murdered it will not make anyone happy. The same can be said if it is proven that she did kill herself. But something short of proof seems an even more likely outcome.

And the burden of proof? Why it will likely be a heavy one indeed.

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The Reb flag is down. We’re back to Step 1 with a mass murder.

The Confederate Battle Flag was taken from its pole today on the grounds of the South Carolina capitol in Columbia, S.C. It should have left a long time ago. It is likely it should have not been there at all. I think that flag has no real use except in museums, history books and movies about the Civil War. To me the battle flag is akin to the Jolly Roger flag that once indicated piracy on ships in the 18th century.

Those symbols might have been fun for us redneck kids of the mid 20th century in East Texas — a place that has always been more Old South than cowboy country. But the CSA battle flag symbolizes an open-ended hostility toward the United States and the black folks whose lives were captured in Africa and sold to American folks who believed they needed slaves to make them rich or richer.

As someone who has given more than 10 years to the United States military and government, I have become appalled with those who have shallow dreams of another Texas secession. I speak of people like our former Gov. Good Hair. Yes, I know Rick Perry was an Air Force pilot who flew C-130s. Good for him. While I appreciate his service, it doesn’t necessarily mean he is a patriot or particularly blessed with useful gray matter. For heaven’s sake, he thought Texas had the right to secede. It doesn’t.

My feelings on the battle flag has evolved over the years. It wasn’t the flag of the confederacy.

Although I think removing the flag in South Carolina is a positive development it should make us think more about our other symbols. I see today that just after the battle flag was removed in South Carolina, the FBI director admitted that a screw up in the background checks for weapons allowed the alleged killer of nine in S.C. to buy a gun. This shooting that killed so many in the Carolina church led to the outrage over the Confederate flag.

And so, here we are back at the beginning. Where nine people died needlessly. I mean, are we just ignoring the fact that nine people were murdered in a church, hoping the problem will go away?

Will it end in Houston or Dallas or any other Texas city when the state of Texas allows licensed handgun owners to openly carry their pistols next year? Are will this be the Old West once more, with people putting notches on their belts? Jeez, it is time for our people in the US of A to WTFU (Wake The F*** Up!)

 

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TD Bill. Time for you to mosey.

The loud beeps from my work Blackberry and my personal iPhone have unnerved me this afternoon as they do.  Normally, when that happens it is at night, But this, Tropical Depression Bill I believe it is now called, has been pouring down the rain this afternoon.

The flash flood warning for the Beaumont-Port Arthur Metropolitan Area has been extended several hours until 7:45 p.m. CDT for all counties except for the northern part of Newton County. The National Weather Service office in Lake Charles, La., says one to three inches of rain has fallen over the area. I would have to guess that “locally” heavier amounts have fallen.

It's always raining something around Beaumont, Texas
It’s always raining something around Beaumont, Texas

Like all tropical systems, Bill has had its quirks. When it landed on the south-central Texas coast my area on the utmost Texas coast got a serving of on-and-off showers. This started happening more than 24 hours ago. I didn’t go out much yesterday, I had no need to do so. But I walked out a couple of times to the lightest of rain and a nice “breeze” of about 12 mph. As the storm degraded to a tropical depression, the rain has picked up in eastern Texas. Thus, the flash flood warnings.

Those of us here about 30 miles from the Gulf have slight elevation. Beaumont, where I live, is about 16 feet above sea level. I don’t know, if I ever knew, where that “mountain” of elevation is. Perhaps it is at Spindletop, the salt dome where the Lucas Gusher blew in on Jan. 10, 1901. That is the famous gusher that is known as the “birthplace of the modern petroleum industry.” Names such as Texaco and Gulf Oil became familiar after those companies started up after the gusher.

This is all to say that the area around Beaumont is mostly flat as an oil-topped pancake. I have seen a lot of water here in the nearly 10 years I have lived here. Or 12-something if you count two other times I was a resident here. Most of that water came in large amounts, such as with Hurricane Ike which was a flood-surging machine. Many of the other localized floods were just high enough to miss most automobiles. There is a trick in driving through street flooding, at least to get out of it. That involves not creating a wake. Just pretend you are driving a small fishing boat.

It’s still raining. I am no longer working for the week so I can kick back and stay out of the water unless someone wants to pay me to do so.

Bill will be problems for Oklahoma and then off to maybe the Tennessee Valley and beyond once it clears out. Hopefully, we won’t worry about ol’ Bill for much longer. I hope those beyond don’t have to fret about it either.

 

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Yes the water’s rising. To some, it’s old hat.

“Is it raining?”

That is what most folks ask me when I get a phone call from someone living somewhat of a distance from where I live. Yesterday it was a guy in the District of Columbia. Today it was a man in Dallas.

If you have been watching the news in the United States during the past couple of weeks you will see that Texas has had some trophy raining.

It began with the flash flooding in the “Hill Country” of Central Texas, primarily around San Marcos, Wimberley and other areas between Austin or San Antonio. Hays County, where San Marcos and Wimberley is located, really took a pounding. Houston, another low-level city was flooded. Then it was Dallas’ turn. Two of the 10 largest cities in the U.S. waterlogged.

In actuality, the flooding has seemingly settled into the area where I live — in Southeast Texas — for more than a month.

Areas of the Sabine River, south of Deweyville in Newton County, has hung on the precipice of flooding for some time. The area I am referring to has an elevation that would struggle to make 10 feet. Many of the residents see this as just a part of living on the river.

Some times are worse than others though. Recently, the Sabine River Authority has had to let loose some of that mass of water that is kept by Toledo Bend Dam. The dam, like the river, separates the Texas-Louisiana border. The dam is located about 100 miles north of Deweyville and Indian Lake. Both the dam and “greater” Deweyville are located in Newton County. Across the river bank are Beauregard and Calcasieu parishes in Louisiana.

Although the river authority reports that it has “cut back” on water releases, the equivalent of 12,474,852 gallons of water per minute are flowing downstream to regulate the elevation of the largest man-made lake in the south and the fifth largest in the United States.

Local television reports that folks around the area below Deweyville are taking it all in stride. They’ve seen it all before. Some people think the people who live just off the river bank are a little on the insane side. But, be it ever so humble …

Hell, if the water keeps rising they’ll ride their roofs downstream if they have to do so. How high’s the water mama? Well, the present forecast calls for the river to crest tonight in Deweyville. But if it keeps raining, we’ll find out high the water really will be in south Newton County.