Help us find Annie
In the Future, everyone will be declared a criminal
Here's a sampling of what governments around the country and the globe are doing to their subjects citizens:
London, September 7, 2007: Use a phone, go to jail
Motorists who use a hand-held mobile phone or fiddle with a satellite-navigation system while driving could be jailed for up to two years. Prosecutors have said they could be charged with dangerous driving in a dramatically tougher approach to such offences. Those caught fiddling with an MP3 music player or texting on a mobile at the wheel could also face the charge.
Prosecutions will be brought whenever it is judged that using the equipment posed a danger, such as forcing a car to swerve or causing a distracted motorist to jump a red light. ...
The current offence of careless driving, which applies to those who drive unsafely by using a mobile or equipment such as a satellite-navigation system, carries only a £2,500 fine or community order.
Los Angeles, September 1, 2007: Fix a Fence, go to jail
He built a fence, a retaining wall, a patio and a few concrete columns to decorate his driveway, and now Francisco Linares is going to jail for it. Linares had been given six months to get final permits for the offending structures or remove them as part of a plea agreement reached in January, when he pleaded no contest to five misdemeanor counts of violating the Rolling Hills Estates building code. If he failed to do one or the other, Linares faced six months in county jail. On Monday, Torrance Superior Court Judge Sandra Thompson chastised Linares, a Farmers Insurance district manager, for not completing what he agreed to do in January and then handed him the maximum sentence without possibility of house arrest or probation.
The article goes on to note that some of the work Linares did was to repair a fence and retaining wall that he was told were on "public property." So, he was improving the community's property at his own expense. No good deed goes unpunished.
Update: The Daily Breeze has mysteriously removed this article from its web site, along with a follow-up that allegedly said Linares would NOT be going to jail. Thus, the link points to a cached version of the piece.
Caroline County, MD, August 21, 2007: Kill Raccoons, become a felon
[This story was reported on WBAL.com. At present, I cannot find a link to it. Check back.]
Two Maryland men have been convicted of killing bald eagles in unrelated cases, state wildlife authorities announced Tuesday.The first case started in January when hunters on the Eastern Shore discovered a dead bald eagle that appeared to have been poisoned. An investigation led to a Caroline County man who wanted to get rid of nuisance foxes and raccoons, so he injected a pesticide into a chicken egg and left it outside. A fox ate the poisoned egg, died, and then was eaten by the eagle, which also died. Robert N. Patrick Jr., 51, was fined $1,275 recently on a federal charge of violating the Bald Eagle Protection Act and using a restricted-use pesticide. Sgt. Ken Turner, spokesman for the Maryland Natural Resources Police, said Patrick did not mean to kill an eagle, but that his actions inadvertently caused the death of the bald eagle. "They're scavengers as well, so if you have some roadkills out there, it's not below an eagle to fly down and get a free meal," Turner explained.
So Mr. Patrick is responsible for the entire food chain...
The second case happened in southern Maryland, where a St. Mary's County man was convicted of shooting and killing wildlife off the back porch of his apartment. Police say neighbors of Francis G. Long Jr., 31, of Bushwood, called police to tip them off about the shootings. Investigators found a dead bald eagle on his property in March, along with dead turkey vultures, a dead skunk and a dead woodchuck. Only the eagle and vulture are protected species, but Long would have been prohibited from firing a gun from his porch in any case, Turner said. Turner said the dead bald eagle was immature, meaning it did not yet have the species' distinctive white head, so Long may not have known he was killing a bald eagle. Long pleaded guilty earlier this month in a temporary U.S. District Court in Hyattsville.Long was fined $2,500. Authorities also revoked his hunting license for a year and placed him on a year's probation.
Vultures a protected species. Who would have imagined it? What's next: crows? rats?
Annapolis, MD, August 21, 2007:
Keep crab pots in your yard, Go to Jail
A man is in jail after Anne Arundel County tried for seven years to get him to clean up the old boats, crab pots and other debris in his backyard. George Hartsuff was jailed earlier this month for not obeying a July 5 court order to clean debris from his yard. When authorities returned after giving Hartsuff 30 days to clean his yard, they found junk including an Arizona Iced Tea vending machine in the yard. Anne Arundel County District Court Judge Robert Wilcox sentenced Hartsuff to 60 days in a county jail. If his yard isn't cleaned up by then, he could face more jail time. "This cycle will keep going until the property is cleaned up," county spokeswoman Tracie Reynolds told The (Annapolis) Capital. Hartsuff's lawyer, Christopher Flohr, told the newspaper the case was "unfortunate" and that Hartsuff has been working to clean his yard. "The property had been significantly cleaned up with four full 30-yard Dumpsters of trash taken away," Flohr said in a statement.Reynolds said the county inspectors have been trying to get Hartsuff to clean his split-level home since 2000. The county first took him to court in 2002. "It's been ongoing where the site would get cleaned up a bit and it got messy again," she told the newspaper. "But it was never fully brought into compliance."
Compliance: there's the operative word in this egregious case. It's not about anything other than the county exerting its muscle. If Anne Arundel County law is anything like that in Baltimore County, the government could have sent employees or contractors to do the cleanup, then attached a lien to the property to cover the costs.
How does this genius, Judge Wilcox, figure that Mr. Hartsuff is going to get the cleanup accomplished while he's behind bars?
Message to everyone: these are the governments that you elected to serve you, unless you were a coward and stayed home from the polls.
Where does it stop?
Recommended reading: The Ballad of Carl Drega, by Vin Suprynowicz.