Porta-Potty Pyro

Few and far between are the homeless in my Russian Hill neighborhood. Our clean streets welcome the European tourists with their maps and their impeccable posture. The crime rate in this part of the city rarely draws attention. Until recently.

Over the last four months we've seen a spike in crime. Not violent or indiscriminate crime mind you, that would cause an uproar in a district of the city that feels entitled to the safety of its sidewalks and well-lit piece of mind. This recent outbreak is not of crime overall, but a particular and peculiar brand of arson: porta-potty pyrotechnics.

The outrageous antics and the lack of suspects even garnered the interest of the New York Times. No details are known about infamous arsonist(s); if it is, indeed, a lone lighter, no one can say for sure.

The relative calm of the neighborhood at night leaves few people on the streets to bear witness to such flamboyant acts. Leaving only the hardened puddle of melted porta-potty-blue and the residual oder of burnt feces and plastic to remind the tourists, exercise fiends and stroller-pushing nannies of the atrocities that occur on the streets after the affluent retire to bed.

Google's Quest for World Domination

Talk about creepy, as if we didn't have enough options for staying "connected" to one another. Google's Latitude allows you to expose yourself to your contacts, via a tracking mechanism downloaded to your phone, and track your contacts' every move.

This new "tool" only further increases the anxiety I feel whenever I venture out into the schlepping masses. I want to avoid people when I go out and this device might make that easier to do, providing me the location of those I want to avoid. However, the tool relies on the presumption of mutual transparency -- you share with me and I share with you. But it can complicate my efforts if I'm avoiding you but you know where I am.

I could set my location manually, so it looks like I'm at the movies when I'm really at the dinner you weren't invited to. My boyfriend could set his location to the gym or stuck in traffic, while he's really at the bar or still at work. The idea that we can double check someone's whereabouts is complete nonsense if the location pin-pointer is completely discretionary.

What's going to happen if people begin sharing their whereabouts on Facebook or via Twitter? Could the police subpoena records of locations tracked by the device? Google still knows your "real-time" whereabouts, regardless of the location you reveal to your contacts.

I understand the advantages of this tool for Google, but I don't see the advantages for users. The only thing Google Latitude will get you is ads targeted to your location and uninvited encounters with contacts you made no plans to see.

Kid Undercover; Chicago Cops Clueless

If a 14 year-old shows up as a Chicago police station wearing a police-like uniform shouldn't someone notice he's not a real cop? Apparently not. Should the kid be the one in trouble? Apparently so.

Such was the case two Saturdays ago when a boy walked into the station wearing what resembled an officer's uniform. He was told to go to the patrol room and then assigned to man a patrol car with another officer. The boy willingly obliged and spent the next five hours securing the city's streets, then returned to the station. Only back in the squad room, after five hours on the job, did officers realize that the boy's uniform wasn't legit: the star featured by regulation uniforms was missing.

The Chicago PD bumbled any coherent explanation for how the boy went undetected so long. Saying only that he looked older than 14 and had once taken part in a youth program sponsored by the department that would've familiarized him with some of the procedures.

Aren't these cops trained to detect crime? To look for things that appear amiss? Not only was the kid not wearing a department issue uniform, he wasn't even carrying a guy. Why wouldn't the partner he spent five hours with notice a missing gun or the fact that they were wearing different uniforms or that he'd never seen the kid before? I'm glad I don't live in Chicago.

Repossession by Force

Diamonds are forever, unless you break up and someone wants the ring back. Breast implants, however, are even more permanent. When gift giving, buyer beware: breast implants (or implants of any kind, for that matter), aren't returnable and should your lover leave don't expect her to leave the implants at the door before she slams it shut.

Apparently no one sent Thomas Lee Rowley the memo.

After Rowley's girlfriend left him the 28-year-old Victorville man decided to take matters into his own hands. Telling his roommate, "I'm gonna cut 'em out and get 'em back." Rowley set out to reclaim the implants, he says, he purchased for his 26-year-old ex girlfriend.

Waiting in the bushes outside his ex's mother's house, Rowley held a large kitchen knife. When his ex approached he leaped from the bushes and plunged the knife into her head and breasts more than six times. While his efforts were too imprecise to allow him to repossess the implants, they did serve to puncture one.

Rowley is now on trial for attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, stalking, burglary, and false imprisonment. Too bad he didn't get the memo: if you give a woman breast implants, she takes them with her when she leaves.

Ex-Future-Son-In-Law

Stupidity may not run in the family of 36-year-old Marcelino de Jesus Martinez, but it certainly runs in the neighborhood.

Police arrested Martinez last month for agreeing to sell his 14-year-old daughter to their 18-year-old nebighor, Margarito de Jesus Galindo, in exchange for 100 cases of beer, a few cases of meat and $16,000 in cash. In California a girl as young as 16 is eligible to marry with her parent's consent; however,in California marrying a 14-year-old is never legal, regardless of parental consent. With $16,000 in play, why not purchase a fake birth certificate?

This sort of exchange might well have gone unnoticed, with the poor girl betrothed as a means to her father's ends. Yet, Mr. Martinez isn't as shrewd a business man as the deal suggests. When Galindo failed to fulfill the terms of the agreement, Martinez went to the police for help. This being a business arrangement, Martinez believed that the police were obligated to help him get his due.

Martinez's call to police landed him and his ex-future-son-in-law in jail. Martinez for attempting to sell his daughter into slavery for lewd and lascivious acts, statutory rape and cruelty to a child by endangering health. Galindo was arrested on suspicion of statutory rape, but prosecutors have not determined whether to file charges against him.

What makes the case a quagmire for authorities is Martinez's ethnic affiliation with an indigenous Mexican Trique community. It's common practice for Triques to arrange marriages for girls as young as 12. In such cases the exchange of money isn't seen as a payment for the child, but as a marriage dowry and the meat and beer the family's contribution for the wedding reception. State law, however, outranks cultural traditions, especially when those traditions involve the wellbeing of children.

Dance Team Disbanded

In tough economic times why would Jonesboro High School limit the employment opportunities of its young women by disbanding the school's dance team?

The kibosh came after parents witnessed the team's halftime performance during a January 13 basketball game and found the students' moves and grooves too edgy for the venue. The school forbid the women from practicing and performing for the rest of the year.

Watching the team's performance, in a now defunct You Tube video titled "The Sluts of Jonesboro," it's reasonable to see how some parents, meaning mothers, were offended. Why let their daughters give away what most men would pay for?

The stripper-esque dance routine, choreographed and executed by the students could look very good on a resume, for the sort of job opportunities that rarely require a resume when you look very good. In small towns like Jonesboro, a career as a "dancer" is as aspirational as any and more achievable than most.

Isn't high school is supposed to prepare students with skills they'll need to survive in the world? What makes the dance team's goals less valid than the basketball players, most of whom are far less likely to actually use their balling skills to support themselves or their family?
Jonesboro DanceTeam 2009

Police chase man who circles back, steals police car

When a police officer spotted two suspected burglars early this morning, he gave chase. Leaving behind his unlocked police cruiser. While the officer continued pursuing the suspects through the darkness, he became a crime victim himself. Exhausted after the unsuccessful chase the officer trotted back to his vehicle, as he approached one of the two men he'd been pursuing jumped into the driver's seat and sped past the reasonably dejected officer.

By dawn the Fairburn police had located the stolen car, but alas the ingenious thief continued to elude his captors and his victim. This is just embarrassing and doesn't speak well of the police force in Fairburn, Ga.