I've wanted to do something like this for a long time...

How many times have you seen police cars cutting through traffic or parking illegally and just known--just known!--that there was no official business going on to justify their actions? Well someone is finally confronting them and exposing them on--you guessed it--YouTube. Although the setting is New York, the principle is universal.

From The Red Tape Chronicles on MSNBC, a pretty cool site:

"Jimmy Justice" shoves his camera in the face of a New York City parking enforcement officer who left her car in front of a fire hydrant. He starts filming and he taunts her.

"You're supposed to be enforcing the law, and here you’re breaking the law," he says with all the outrage he can muster after his camera caught her shopping at a drug store while parked by the hydrant. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

She rolls up the window and drives away, but not before offering the traditional New York single-fingered farewell wave.

Jimmy Justice -- he keeps his real name a secret for obvious reasons -- stalks New York streets looking for official parking cheaters to film. Finding them never takes long. “Justice” talked to MSNBC.com as long as we promised not to reveal his identity.

"Writing summonses is not about public safety; it's about revenue,” says the vigilante. “These people are tax collectors. It makes the whole system into a big joke when they violate laws."

See the whole story and some video at The Red Tape Chronicles.

Fret Not Ye Extras!

Extras injured during filming of Tom Cruise movie in Germany

August 20, 2007

ASSOCIATED PRESS

BERLIN -- Eleven extras were injured when they fell out of a truck during filming of a new movie starring Tom Cruise, police said Monday.

The 11 were taken to hospital as filming stopped on the movie, provisionally titled "Valkyrie," which stars Cruise as Germany's most famous anti-Hitler plotter, Col. Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg.

All but one of the 11 were treated and released. The extent of the 11th man's injuries from Sunday's accident was not clear. Another person who fell out of the truck was unhurt.

Germany's Bild daily reported that Cruise himself was not involved in the weekend filming.

Police said in a statement that a bolt on a side panel of the truck apparently came loose as the vehicle turned.

The accident happened during filming of scenes around the Finance Ministry in Berlin, which was once the Nazis' aviation ministry.

Cruise's casting has attracted controversy in Germany because the actor is one of the best-known adherents of Scientology, which the German government considers a commercial enterprise that takes advantage of vulnerable people.

Some critics maintain that one of its members should not be playing what some consider one of the Nazi era's few heroes.


Oh, that's okay everyone. The Cruiser will call aliens down and they'll get these people up and back at it in no time with a healthy regimen of vitamins and a little daily exercise.

He may be nutty, but I do enjoy most of his movies. Except for a few real stinkers like MI:2.

Reason No. 465,781 not to reside in Deeetroit

The blog below was published on the Detroit Free Press website on August 20, 2007. Yeah, it requires no further comment from me:

Welcome to the Motor Theft City

By ONEITA JACKSON
FREE PRESS BLOGGER

When I moved to Detroit six years ago, the official neighborhood welcome Week One was my car window being shattered.

Outside my job a few months later, a second welcome, just in case I missed the hospitality committee the first time: another theft attempt. The rogues didn’t get the car I had then (my mom’s 1979 mint-condition Chevy Caprice Classic), but stole a coworker’s 2001 Jeep Cherokee. Since then, I’ve observed that the psyche of the Motor City thief is deeply connected to the valuable industrial product of the city itself. Cars. Cars (rims, tires, airbags, the whole car itself…) equal cash.

And because I live in a neighborhood where the houses are nice and the cars nicer (i.e., more inviting and more accessible) and police presence is best friends with the words “almost nil,” we’re always getting hit, homeowners and renters alike.

Last week, the warm and fuzzy hospitality committee was particularly busy.

I saw three committee members in action just before dawn Sunday morning.

I called 911 with the license plate of the getaway car and the direction they were going in, but when Detroit police officers arrived 26 minutes later, the committee was well on its way.

No kidding.

When I spotted the would-be thieves sauntering through the neighborhood about an hour later, I called 911 again.

The officers arrived — hey, aren’t you my neighbor? — and the little hoodrats, who looked to be between the ages of 12 and 16, had disappeared up the street.

I pointed, showing my neighbor-officer where they went and offered more information:

“I read the license plate number to the 911 dispatcher,” who didn’t take my name or number when I asked if she needed it. “She didn’t give it to you?” My neighbor-officer said no.

“She didn’t give you the license plate number!” Oneita the Angry Neighbor yelled, arms flailing. “Good grief, I’ve forgotten it now!”

The lady whose car I saw the would-be thieves working on called 311 to make a report later Sunday evening, and the person who took the call told her she didn’t need to make a report because there was nothing they could do.

“With whom am I speaking?” my neighbor asked. The person on the phone said, “You don’t need to know my name.”

Oh, my.

I switched garages Sunday to one that is a few steps closer to where I live. Friday morning, that one was hit.

I woke to a neighbor yelling a string of expletives outside my window at 6:42: “I don’t believe this ---!” Curse word. Curse word. Curse word. “I’m tired of this!”

I raced to the garage where we park. I saw my car was fine. She was going off about her window being busted — it’d happened before in the other garage where we both used to park — and she was infuriated.

Two other cars in the garage were sitting on blocks.