Shooting in Coatesville today

The alleged shooting happened at around 8pm somewhere near Pennsylvania in Coatesville's 4th or 2nd Ward.

A juvenile might be involved.

The Daily Local News is working on an article:

"News
COATESVILLE SHOOTING - Man reportedly shot in the leg last night. Reporter: Michael N. Price, mprice@dailylocal.com"

FROM:

WHAT WE ARE WORKING ON

GOOD NEWS, we might not ever have another murder in Coatesville! Update

The bad news is that it would be because of Pennsylvania's "Castle Doctrine Law" or "Stand Your Ground Law".

A stand-your-ground law states that a person may use deadly force in self-defense when there is reasonable belief of a threat, without an obligation to retreat first. 


The National Rifle Association backed Castle Doctrine Law was signed by Governor Corbett on June 28, 2011. 

So far our local drug dealers have not used Pennsylvania's "Shoot First Ask Questions  Later" law as an excuse to murder a rival, so far.

Pennsylvania drug gangs haven't used our "shoot first ask questions later law" as drug dealers do in Florida. But give it some time; Florida's law went into effect 7 years ago. Pennsylvania's law is so new our drug dealers don't know it exists.

"In Pennsylvania, since the law's adoption, it has been cited in two cases that involved men killing their wives' boyfriends. In both cases, the men were not charged. (To illustrate that this isn't strictly a gun issue, one of those cases, near Pittsburgh, involved a man killing his wife's lover with a bow and arrow.)"

From:
York Daily Record/York Sunday News

Mike Argento:Stand-your-ground law backfires in Trayvon Martin case

 MIKE ARGENTO York Daily Record/Sunday News

"Whatever the result of the investigation into the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., the case should lead gun-happy state legislatures, including Pennsylvania's, to review 'stand your ground' laws.
"
From:
The Times Tribune

Stand ground for justice

3/30/12 2:03 PM

I added a link to a New York Times OP-ED by someone who is one of the world's top law enforcement experts. John Timoney. You may remember him as a former Philadelphia Police Commissioner.


"Trying to control shootings by members of a well-trained and disciplined police department is a daunting enough task. Laws like “stand your ground” give citizens unfettered power and discretion with no accountability. It is a recipe for disaster."


"Police officers are trained to de-escalate highly charged encounters with aggressive people, using deadly force as a last resort. Citizens, on the other hand, may act from emotion and perceived threats. But “stand your ground” gives citizens the right to use force in public if they feel threatened. As the law emphatically states, a citizen has 'no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground.”


MORE AT:

March 23, 2012
Florida’s Disastrous Self-Defense Law

By JOHN F. TIMONEY Manama, Bahrain 

Laying off police officers is a suicidal act for the City of Coatesville.

In a letter dated April 28, 2006 concerning choosing a new chief for the City of Coatesville Police Department District Attorney Joe Carroll wrote:

"Chief Bellizzzie did an excellent job in what is probably the most difficult law enforcement position on Chester County. The police department in Coatesville is understaffed and overworked, and has been for many years."

That last sentence, “The police department in Coatesville is understaffed and overworked, and has been for many years.” was written when the Coatesville PD had more staff members than we now have.

We cannot afford to lose police officers in Coatesville; if anything we should be hiring additional officers.

It’s about immigrants, all immigrants

In today’s New York Times there is an op-ed about Saint Patrick’s Day being not so much about the Irish as immigrants. In his op-ed Mr. Behrens points out that before the Irish immigration, caused in part by the great famine, there the word “immigrant” was not used. The people that came to America before the Irish were either settlers or slaves.

Immigrant is not a proud name it’s a name put upon people along with some other names:

“It’s embarrassing to listen to prosperous 21st-century Americans with Irish surnames lavish on Mexican or Central American immigrants the same slurs — “dark,” “dirty,” “violent,” “ignorant” — once slapped on our own, possibly shoeless, forebears. The Irish were seen as unclean, immoral and dangerously in thrall to a bizarre religion. They were said to be peculiarly prone to violence. As caricatured by illustrators like Thomas Nast in magazines like Harper’s Weekly, “Paddy Irishman,” low of brow and massive of jaw, was more ape than human, fists trailing on the ground when they weren’t cocked and ready for brawling.”
From:

It’s About Immigrants, Not Irishness

By PETER BEHRENS

Brooklin, Me.

I would add one thing about people we call “immigrants”. When they first come here they find jobs, sometimes several jobs a day. They save most of their money, and work together with family and friends. When they are ready they buy or create a small business. After a generation they are business leaders in their communities. After several generations they are ready to call new people coming here by that derogatory name; “immigrant”. It happened about that way with the Irish, Polish and Italians.

The Mexican immigrants in Chester County are now at the business owner stage. As a group, Mexican Americans are one of the drivers of Chester County’s economy.

If Mexican, Indian and several other nationalities of people did not migrate to Chester County, PA, USA real estate salesmen would have a more difficult time selling the mansion style 7 bedroom homes built in Chester County in the early 21 Century. 

Code for America in Coatesville?

We have some information based systems in Coatesville such as our traffic signal devices/cameras and SeeClickFix.

Code for America is an effort to identify projects that can benefit from web based solutions

CODE FOR AMERICA

 

“Code for America What We Do

Working with city managers, we help to identify projects that can benefit from web-based solutions. Code for America recruits both the development teams and the participating cities through competitive application processes. Once identified and funded, each city project is connected with a web development team that can further scope the project, develop an action plan, and deliver an appropriate solution over an 11-month development cycle. Throughout the development cycle, CfA mentors, trains, and coordinates the teams and facilitates their relationships with their city management clients.

The applications that Code for America fellows build fit a certain model: 1) They are web applications – think Facebook, Yelp, Zillow, or Picnik; 2) They will enable cities to connect with their constituents in ways that reduce administrative costs and engage citizens more effectively; 3) They support the move toward transparency and collaboration; 4) and finally, they are shareable – which means that an application built for one city can be used by any other city.

Fundamentally, it’s all about helping American cities use web technology to do a better job of providing services to citizens.

As the program continues, we will host a suite of web applications all cities can use, fostering the adoption of CFA and outside open source projects by cities across the country and around the world.

Read more about our program for city governments here.
Read more about our program for web designers and developers here.”

Information & Financial Assistance for Harcum Collage Coatesville

Harcum College Coatesville

Information Session & Financial Aid Assistance

Attend One:

  Saturday, March 24, 2012, 10am

  Monday, March 26, 2012, 6:30pm

Life Transforming Ministries Office

643-645 E. Lincoln Highway

Coatesville, PA 19320

Attend if you (parents welcome) are interested in an Associates degree in

• Early Childhood Education
• Human Services
• Leadership Studies

For More Information Contact a Higher Education Advocate at

(610) 810-1556

CoatesvilleCollege@gmail.com

  

RSVP recommended but not required

Sponsored by Harcum College & Life Transforming Ministries

www.QuietRevolution.org/College

"Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."  Romans 12:2

They're finally taking the warrants out of the box.

The box that warrants for code violations and parking tickets have allegedly been piling up in at the City of Coatesville Police Department for more than a year.

I have been saying and writing that you could expose code violations on "See Click Fix" and our Coatesville Codes Officers could issue code violations and nothing could happen because the warrants would not be served. Few people paid any attention to it, most likely because they don’t understand the State Constable system in Pennsylvania.

For reasons unknown Chester County Common Pleas Court Judge MacElree stopped Chester County from paying State Constables on February 9, 2011. 

I wrote about this on February 15, 2011:

Unenforceable laws?

I wrote about it again on:

 FRIDAY, MAY 6, 2011

Are our local codes warrants and parkingtickets piling up in boxes?

 And on:

SUNDAY, JULY 31, 2011

Constables and the Judge  & Codes enforcementand parking enforcement

The City of Coatesville has finally begun to work around Judge MacElree’s decree and has begun enforcing the law again:

Coatesville contracting constable services

By ERIC S. SMITH
esmith@dailylocal.com

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

It was not just codes violations. Until now paying a parking ticket was on the honor system. Warrants for overdue parking tickets were also allegedly in a box at the City of Coatesville PD.

COMING THURSDAY MARCH 15, 2012

"Come together with fellow supporters to watch a new documentary about the first three years of the Obama administration. Produced by Davis Guggenheim, producer of 'An Inconvenient Truth”', “The Road We’ve Traveled” is a fantastic look at the progress we’ve made and the people who have led throughout."


Obama Biden the Road We've Traveled

My favorite so far in Bruce Springsteen’s “Wrecking Ball” is “Jack of All Trades”.

It reminds me of my Dad mostly. Without thinking about it much I know how to fix stuff, it’s just from watching him work as a boy. Like a lot of people who lived through the great depression he could remodel his house, fix nearly everything and grow food for his family.

James A Pitcherella at Lukens Steel Co.

My dad’s hero was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. If you ever heard my dad talk about his days in the mill before the unions you would know why. FDR brought an end to the 70 hours a week with the occasional extra that brought it to an 82 hour week, with no vacation time. FDR gave the unions the power to make the 40 hour work week stick.

Since President Reagan’s time the Republicans have been knocking down everything that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt put in place, so now we are back to depression times.

The fat cat robber barons and banks were the easy target of angry people in the first Great Depression.  Bank robbers like John Dillinger and Willie Sutton were folk heroes of the working man. The same kind of fat cat Wall Street people caused this depression but the anger is not narrowly directed at them.  Even though President Obama wasn’t around when the economy crashed some mostly old white men blame this depression on a Black President. See:

The Patriot Movement Explodes

Active ‘Patriot’ Groups in the United States in 2011 

SPLC identified 1274 anti-government “Patriot” groups that were active in 2011. 

By Mark Potok, Senior Fellow

One very big reason for the Department of Justice to get of their asses and prosecute investment bankers is that lot of people would probably cheer someone who violently brought down the current crop of investment bankers.

In his song, “Jack of All Trades” Bruce Springsteen writes:

“If I had me a gun, I'd find the bastards and shoot 'em on sight”

The thing is most Americans do have a gun. We are one of the most heavily armed countries in the world; “U.S.most armed country with 90 guns per 100 people”

A report on the ‘Patriot’ Movement and Bill Moyers on Engineered Inequality

The “American Dream” is dead.

Right now the “American dream” that everyone has an equal chance in life, that your children can look forward to a better life then you did is dead; well maybe not dead but in a money takes all government induced coma.

The collapse of the economy that most people know was precipitated by a Ponzi con perpetrated by wealthy investment bankers has brought what was once a nebulous feeling that the American dream is dead front and center in the consciousness of the 99%.

FROM “BILL MOYERS AND COMPANY”:

“Bill’s guests – Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, authors of Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, argue that America’s vast inequality is no accident, but in fact has been politically engineered.  

How, in a nation as wealthy as America, can the economy simply stop working for people at large, while super-serving those at the very top? Through exhaustive research and analysis, the political scientists Hacker and Pierson — whom Bill regards as the “Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson” of economics — detail important truths behind a 30-year economic assault against the middle class.”

Jacob Hacker & Paul Pierson on Engineered Inequality

March 1, 2012

The other ½ of this post concerns the latest issue of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report, Spring 2012.

“The radical right grew explosively in 2011, the third such dramatic expansion in as many years. The growth was fueled by superheated fears generated by economic dislocation, a proliferation of demonizing conspiracy theories, the changing racial makeup of America, and the prospect of four more years under a black president who many on the far right view as an enemy to their country. 

The number of hate groups counted by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) last year reached a total of 1,018, up slightly from the year before but continuing a trend of significant growth that is now more than a decade old. The truly stunning growth came in the antigovernment “Patriot” movement — conspiracy-minded groups that see the federal government as their primary enemy.”

I'm rooting for President Obama and nearly all Democrats. I believe that the extreme right base is pushing the Republicans into the unelectable category. I think President Obama will win in a landslide that could push the Republican Party off of the political map. We would essentially have a one party country. It then may be possible to re-introduce an updated form of the Glass–Steagall Act, create jobs with massive infrastructure updates and tackle global warming. It took 30 years of removing the steps from the upward mobility ladder to end the American Dream. Hopefully it won’t take that long to put the steps back on the ladder.

But as November nears and the inevitably of an Obama landslide is apparent there could be a violent backlash.

The Year in Hate and Extremism 2011

Issue Number: 

 145

 |

Spring

2012

As the election approaches, radical antigovernment groups skyrocket.

From the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report, Spring 2012:

“But what may end up affecting the American radical right more than any other single factor in the coming year is President Obama and the presidential election campaign. If the primaries generate more attacks on the nation’s first black president based on complete falsehoods — that he is a secret Muslim, a Kenyan, a radical leftist bent on destroying America — it’s likely that the poison will spread. And if he wins reelection next fall, the reaction of the extreme right, already angry and on the defensive as the white population diminishes, could be truly frightening.”

“American Faith Party” Is the religious monster the Republicans created about to devour them?

It’s no longer the party of country club power brokers.  Religious extremists are now the establishment in the Republican Party.

In his post,  "Rise Of Faith Within GOP Has Created America's First Religious Party" Howard Fineman has effectively defined the evolution of the Republican Party from country club to religious extremist. 

This is an excerpt transcribed from the video:

“The Conservative movement under Ronald Reagan and even under the Bush family was a kind of three legged stool that had economics in one leg, strong foreign policy especially anti-Communism on the second leg and the social issues, primarily abortion, on the third. 

Well what’s happened is; the first two have kind of fallen away and all the energy and enthusiasm even, if not especially, during a time of economic problems in this county, seems to be in this area. And it’s not just abortion; it’s questions of, definitions of, marriage traditional marriage gay marriage and so forth; even questions about contraception. 

We are getting to really fundamental questions about what the government can say about faith practice and what faith practice says about government.
It evolved since evangelicals first got involved with Ronald Reagan thirty years ago. Now basically people who used to be used by the establishment of the Party have become the establishment.”

FROM: 

Rise Of Faith Within GOP Has Created America's First Religious Party

Voters know that the  Republicans own the depression. No amount of spin can change that. Their unmentionable solution to end the depression they created is to eliminate Social Security and Medicare and cut taxes for the wealthy. So instead of talking about those things they talk abortion, contraception and gay marriage. 

Pennsylvania’s HB 1077, ironically called the “Women’s Right to Know” act, is Pennsylvania Republican’s version of the vaginal probe laws the Republicans are concocting in each state. One hundred twenty PA House members have co-sponsored the bill including Chester County’s Tim Hennessey. 

The vaginal probe laws are sure fire winners among the Republicans Evangelical, and Catholic base. But how will the government vaginal probes sit with the normal people? The 

Republicans in the US Senate are backing away from the anti-contraception Blunt Amendment.  But about the time of the fall elections personal stories of vaginal probes will be circulating. The Republican Party can't win with their severe anti-women agenda. And Republicans are stuck with pushing vaginal probes into women.  

The instant Romney is the Republican Party pick he will do an about face on his public statements concocted to please religious nuts.  But old-time establishment Republicans like Romney don't fit into the new America Faith Party, God's Only Party or what ever name finally sticks.  

Is the religious monster the Republicans created about to devour them?

$25 Billion; it’s the reason we still have prohibition of drugs in the USA.

“Two weeks ago, Guatemala's president Otto Perez Molina, a right wing conservative and former army general, stunned observers when he declared the U.S. inability to cut illegal drug consumption leaves his country with no option but to consider legalizing the use and transport of drugs. He vowed to galvanize regional support.”

"The Obama administration has been quite clear in our opposition to decriminalization or legalization of illicit drugs,’ said Restrepo.”

FROM:

VP Biden goes to Latin American amid drug debate

By MARTHA MENDOZA

AP National Writer

                     

Sometimes I wonder if the Obama Administration is influenced by drug money.  Let me rephrase that. It’s a $25 Billion dollar industry. How much of that $25 Billion makes its way to the Obama Administration?  

How long will it be until South American countries insist that we legalize drugs here in the United States?