August 31, 2011

Kudos to the woman who last Friday gave us an anonymous tip on a vacant house along South Topping that was being burglarized.

Police showed up in a hurry and arrested four squatter/burglar types who had apparently occupied the empty house for over three weeks and in the process, sold anything that wasn’t nailed down to support their crack-head lifestyle.

When officers arrived on the scene, the thieves were in the process of loading up the property owner’s old pick-up truck with salable metal, preparing to tow it to the scrap yard. This ever observant canine is happy about the four deadbeats that got locked up but wonders how much time the scofflaws will get in a system that favors loiterers, prostitutes and scumbags of every stripe.

Change the prosecutorial paradigm and maybe, just maybe the community will begin a shift for the better.

• • • •

You can’t get there from here. Literally. Thanks to the North Face Endurance Challenge that caused streets to be closed throughout the metro, getting from point A to point B Saturday was a major pain in the back side. If the folks at North Face thought we’d blithely go along with their little road race and not utter so much as a peep about being inconvenienced, they’ve got another thing coming. For the record, this athletic li’l newshound welcomes such events to our neighborhood, like The Cliff Hanger, disc golf tournaments, kite festivals, even the big Halloween event that closes Gladstone Boulevard annually to the delight of over 6,000 kids.

But, to exhibit the kind of arrogance North Face Endurance Challenge race organizers exhibited by: a) not returning numerous calls to their contact of record, Hawkeye, and b) not releasing any details about the race until three days prior to the big event, just shows a complete disregard for the communities they inconvenienced, as well as the entrepreneurs they deprived of revenue. Close streets and isolate City Market on Saturday morning – now there’s a brain trust! Seriously.