Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Look it up—conspiracy to assault is just not "aggressive coaching."
I have to admit that I still find myself referring to our local professional football team as the Los Angeles Rams. Of course, there was a time when the team was the Cleveland Rams, before moving to L.A. in 1946. So if someone asks me about great Rams quarterbacks, I think of Roman Gabriel or Norm Van Brocklin—and not Kurt Warner. The odds seem pretty good they will be the L.A. Rams again in the not-too-distant future. I realize this doesn’t sit well with Chesterfield residents who have forked over big bucks for the Personal Seat License, just to have the right to buy a season ticket. Now I never thought of the football Cardinals as the Chicago Cardinals, because when they moved to St. Louis in 1960, I was only 7 years old, and too busy …
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Former cop considers the risks that could scare off suburbanites, or anyone.
If the Delmar Loop wants people from Chesterfield and West County to be regular customers, shouldn't these "anomalies" be addressed? I was amused when local officials described the trouble on the Delmar Loop— which included crowds of 300 or more teenagers getting into fights, followed by three people shot—as being an “anomaly.” How many more of these “anomalies” before fewer and fewer people flock to U. City? Not from Chesterfield, or other suburbs out this way. Let’s go back over the last three years. On Halloween night 2008, Todd Shepherd, an African-American with a deep resentment of whites, went to the Delmar Loop specifically to kill a white police officer. He found University City Police Sgt. Michael King, sitting in his patrol car…
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Singer and jazz quartet fill other venues; now to be at St. Timothy’s church.
The very talented jazz vocalist Christi Jon Bye—backed up by an outstanding jazz quartet, featuring Carolbeth True on piano, David True on drums, Glen Smith on bass and Larry Johnson on sax—are performing at St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church at 808 Mason Road, just south of Olive. The same group recently filled the Second Baptist Church on Clayton Road as part of a jazz series. Carolbeth True, an adjunct professor of piano at Webster University and Bye are regulars at the Sheldon’s morning jazz series. Johnson, a Catholic school music educator and an adjunct professor at Lindenwood University performs throughout the Midwest with the groups Fantasy, Wild, Cool and Swinging and The Charlie B Group. This is a great opportunity to start off …
Thursday, February 2, 2012
It's some of the news around Chesterfield that's made the author laugh.
Tragedy on Baxter Road means continued good weather: Winter weather has avoided us so far and apparently good weather will continue. At 10am on Thursday morning a groundhog was attempting to cross Baxter Road close to the Stone Meadow subdivision, when it was struck and killed by a 1991 Dodge subcompact car. The groundhog never saw the Shadow, meaning we should be in for an early spring. It's nothing but a commercial: Akin to Ralphie Parker in the now-classic movie, A Christmas Story, when his Secret Decoder Ring spelled out “Be Sure to Drink Your Ovaltine,” that's how I felt at a recent Chesterfield City Council meeting. The meeting room was crowded with people who wanted to tell the council it would be trampling the Second Amendment …
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Tech company calls it quits; local office closes.
For drivers in the St. Louis region who took out their cell phones and punched in 5-1-1 to check for traffic delays before starting a trip—they will have to find an alternative beginning February 1. The MoDOT service for the St. Louis area ends January 31. For the past five years MoDOT 5-1-1 has been provided by Navteq, a computer mapping and traffic reporting service owned by the Finnish company Nokia. The contract between MoDOT and Navteq expired last June, but the service continued on a month-to-month basis. In December, Navteq announced it was discontinuing its traffic reporting service and closing regional offices across the country. An editor with the St. Louis Navteq office told Patch that MoDOT wants to restore the 5-1-1 service in…
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Take a look inside: Monarch Fire; Town and Style, Rockwood, and MO State Oops.
Monarch Fire Prevention District: From November 30 to December 30 the Monarch Fire Protection District scheduled 14 meetings. Nine of them were closed to the public. I don’t know, but does the Skull and Bones Society at Yale hold as many secret meetings? Monarch isn’t alone. The West County EMS & Fire Protection District in Manchester for years held a closed meeting before every regular meeting. You would hope a month would go by where things were running smoothly enough for one of these fire districts to survive on exclusively open public meetings. “A public governmental body is permitted, but not required, to close its meetings, records and votes when they relate to certain issues listed in Section 610.021,” according to the Attorney …
Friday, December 9, 2011
Battalion chief takes his own life 16 days after being fired over his role.
The apparent suicide of recently fired Monarch Fire District Battalion Chief Fred Goodson got me thinking about several things, including my career in the world of public safety. I spent 30 years being a cop. That included spending ten years doing fire and arson investigations off-duty mostly for insurance companies and teaching fire investigation to firefighters and police detectives. I also wrote articles for fire and police management magazines. This allowed me to travel all over the country and the world visiting police and fire stations. I got to know a lot of police officers and firefighters over the years. As a cop I loved what I did. You had the best seat for one of the greatest shows in the world. Perhaps the worst parts of the…
Jean Whitney
11:27 am on Wednesday, April 11, 2012
I was glad to get this information from Hoffmann, about what sort of crime the bounties are, under the law. Hoffmann spent many years in law enforcement. more ›