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Sheriff Closes Jail to Those Who Are Mentally Disabled

February 13, 2012

Summit County Sherrif Drew Alexander is planning to close the Summit County Jail to those whose mental illness. People with mental disabilities often cannot judge right from wrong and find themselves charged in criminal cases. The conditions in many county jails are horrific. In Summit County, the wait for a prisoner to see a psychiatrist is three to five weeks.

In Cuyahoga County the rule is that a prisoner is transported with no property. Period. No meds for the mentally ill. Talk about being set up to fail!

Ohio.com has an article with many more details here. A PDF of that article is available here. Thank you to the Akron Beacon Journal for bringing this to our attention.

Minority Neighborhoods

January 31, 2012

For some time a police officer has been able to justify a search based on the person being searched being in a "bad" neighborhood. The officer testifies that he or she has experience with drug dealers in a particular neighborhood.

In an interesting twist, this quote was dropped in a recent 10th District Court of Appeals decision:

The Fourth Amendment jurisprudence has not proceeded to the point that a police officer can pull a citizen out of a parked vehicle merely because the citizen is parked in a minority neighborhood and acts surprised when he or she suddenly sees a police officer standing right outside his or her vehicle.

SOPA wasn't the only bill that went into the trash: TCPA

January 29, 2012

Recently the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, was put forward by groups who wished to severely limit on-line speech. Once those supporting this bill realized what a storm of protest they were facing they quickly backed away and the bill died. Another bill was dying at the same time: the TCPA.

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act, or TCPA, has a fine sounding name. Except, it did all but what it suggested. The real push was to open cellular phones, pagers, hospital phones and other emergency telephones to robo-callers. As it is now, a robo caller cannot include those numbers. A number of law makers joined with the US Chamber of Commerce and the robo-calling lobby to try to pass a bill to open those phones. Thanks to the National Consumer Law Center and other comsumer advocates, the real reason for the bill was brought forward and those sponsoring this nonsense decided not to advance the bill.

High court to decide student free speech rights

January 16, 2012

The Los Angeles Times reported that the U.S. Supreme Court will take up the issue as to if a school can punish a student for speech outside the control of the school. Typically, the student makes a horrible and patently false claim against a teacher the student doesn't like.

The teacher has every right to then go after the student in court for libel. When a defamation is written, it is libel. When spoken it is slander. There is much law on how each version should be handled.

But, in these cases, it is the school that reached out beyond it's walls to punish the student for things done at the student's home.

The Los Angeles Times article can be found here. A PDF of the article was saved here.

Thanks the the Los Angeles Times for this information.