Don’t Shoot; Don’t Kill Him
A fellow named Ryan Giroux killed a man and shot two others in a Mesa, Arizona, motel room yesterday, police say. He fled the motel, acc’d’g to the cops, stole a car, shooting its owner, and sped to a stranger’s residence where, while trying to rob the person who lives there, shot the poor soul. Giroux, police add, then dashed to another apartment complex where he shot another fellow. Running from that apartment, Giroux took a hostage briefly then holed himself up in yet another apartment complex where a manhunt team comprised of officers from five different law enforcement agencies apprehended him five hours after the spree began.
Let me tell you a little bit about this Giroux fellow. He’s accomplished a lot in his 41 years on this mad planet. He’s amassed seven felony convictions, including theft, burglary, and robbery, in three different states. He was convicted once of assault with a deadly weapon. He was nabbed shoplifting from a convenience store in 2006 by two police officers with whom he fought. The officers testified that he was carrying a pistol at the time and repeatedly tried to reach for it as he grappled with them. He was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for the incident.
Giroux is a known gang member who wears prominent tattoos indicating his affiliation. His very appearance screams danger. He admits to having a problem with meth which, he told authorities after being released from prison, turns him into an uncontrollably violent man. While on probation after prison, he missed one probation department appointment and, in another incident, left the scene of an accident without contacting police.
Ryan Giroux
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It can be assumed that the law enforcement officers surrounding the apartment complex where Giroux was arrested knew all about his history. They most assuredly knew about his alleged trail of deadly violence that morning.
Still, police took great care not to shoot to kill him. They fired a taser at him, cuffed him, and brought him to the hospital for treatment before taking him downtown for questioning and processing.
Had Giroux been born with dark skin, it’s doubtful he’d have emerged from that convenience store parking lot fight with the cops with his life. The fact that he’s still alive after yesterday’s drama further proves the point.
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Time For Planning
Is the Plan Commission full of knuckleheads or is it merely the planning process in this throbbing, thriving megalopolis that’s knuckleheaded?
Under the rules of this town, the mayor gets to appoint five of the nine Plan Commission members. (Acc’d’g to the PC’s web page, two of the spots are vacant at this time, one of them the mayor’s.) Those who are thankful that three-term boss Mark Kruzan is taking a powder after his stint concludes Dec. 31st are hopeful the new chief exec will clean house starting with the Plan C’mm’n. The idea being, I suppose, that a passel of fresh faces will be less likely to approve the next Burj Bloomington that’ll come in at 200 stories.
Coming To Kirkwood?
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I’ve got it on good authority that Plan Commission members regularly receive their packages of documents only 48 hours before meetings, during which they have to decide the fate of this parking lot or that single-family home addition. Or, the next Burj.
Take February’s mtg. for example. Commissioners had a mere two days to consider the merits and drawbacks of the site plan for the proposed 146-room hotel at 210 E. Kirkwood Ave.
Compare that to last summer’s E! Online voting for the 2014 Best. Ever. TV. Awards. Viewers originally were given a window from Wednesday, July 2nd, at 6:30am to Sunday, July 6th, at 5pm to vote. But awards organizers decided even that five-day span was insufficient for the residents of this holy land to select, say, Glee over The Vampire Diaries, so they gave voters three whole days more.
We have, it is apparent, our priorities in this nation.
Perhaps the new mayor should look at the process in addition to the personalities involved.
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One Thing Liberals And Conservatives Can Agree On
I’m with Ashley Judd on this one. The avowed liberal has been receiving online abuse, threats, and harassment since she committed the unpardonable sin of tweeting about her love for the Kentucky Wildcats men’s basketball game.
Judd
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No, no, I’m not with her re: her Wildcat mania. They are, after all, a semi-professional sports team masquerading as a group of college students that does not need my spiritual or emotional assistance in any way. Their coach makes more than any public employee in Kentucky. More than any ten public employees in the state, for that matter. Oh hell, let’s be frank — John Calipari is making this year a guaranteed total of $6.5 million. In human terms, that would be what some 130 spanking new assistant professors make at that bastion of higher knowledge. Or, what approximately 282 entry-level administrative assistants make there.
The labors of one “John Vincent Calipari (hereinafter ‘Coach’ or ‘Employee’)” as well as the efforts of the respective coaches of some 350 other NCAA Division I basketball teams around this holy land are so meaningful to their respective fandoms that because Ashley Judd had the temerity to reveal her rooting interest in Calipari’s gang on social media, she was rewarded with threats of forced sodomy, rape, miscellaneous violent sexual depredations, and was labeled a whore, a cunt, and countless other pejoratives.
“Not okay,” she wrote in a Twitter response. And to prove how serious she is, she spent much of Monday filling out police reports on as many threateners and verbal abusers as, I suppose, her pen had ink for.
Good. Embarrass the little bastards. Better yet, throw their threatening, hate-filled, entitled asses in jail. Let them see what forced sodomy is all about.
I’m also with former Major League Baseball pitcher and avowed conservative Curt Schilling. He took to social media to crow about his young daughter making her college softball team. Tweeters, naturally, responded with many suggestions regarding bats and her anatomy and other sado-sexual concepts. Schilling actually tracked down a number of the offending tweeters. Among others, he found a college DJ, a fraternity vice president, an employee of the New York Yankees, and at least seven college athletes before he stopped tracking.
Schilling
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He ID’d them to their bosses and superiors. The athletes have been suspended by their respective coaches. The Yankees employee was fired. Once Schilling got tired of fingering these dopes, he posted a couple of other guys’ offensive tweets with their avatars and screen names intact. He wrote in his blog 38pitches:
I wanted to let you internet sleuths have a go. Here are two guys that, as you can see, thought they were somehow funny and tough at the same time.
[Schilling posts screenshots of their tweets.]
These guys went to town. if you guys reading this that know how to find people on the ‘net want to have at it, please do.
It doesn’t matter which end of the political spectrum you occupy: if you want to be counted among the Decent Human Beings of America, you’ll want these cyber-psycho-criminals stopped.
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Free Parking
Just asking: Is it true that some or all municipal employees who drive city cars don’t have to feed the meters downtown when they’re on city business?
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The Political Arts
Each of the four candidates for mayor are scheduled to speak about how the arts might fare under their hoped-for administrations at the Waldron Arts Center starting next week. Thanks to Cardinal Stage Company managing director Marc Tschida and the theater outfit’s media maven Heidi Harmon for the tip. The Cardinal is sponsoring these four Arts Talks with the candidates in the Waldron’s main auditorium:
- Darryl Neher Thursday, March 26, 9:45pm
- John Linnemeier Friday, March 27, 9:45pm
- John Hamilton Sunday, March 29, 9:15pm
- John Turnbull Thursday, April 2, 9:45pm
Herald Times editor Bob Zaltsberg will moderate the Neher talk and WFIU’s Yael Ksander will do the same for Hamilton’s. Moderators for the Linnemeier and Turnbull talks haven’t been found yet. It’s assumed that both Linnemeier and Turnbull will be found before their respective talk dates.
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