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How About Mandatory Criminal Background Checks for All Social Interaction?
State Rep. Kevin Ambler is once again pushing his bill that would require dating websites - like Match.com and eHarmony - to perform criminal background checks on paying customers in Florida before they would allow them to use their service. If the service didn’t agree to do the checks, they would be required to tell customers [...]
Continue reading...Because Marijuana is Hard to Spell…
25. March 2008
Jacksonville.com has the following headline on their homepage: “Fernandina Beach woman arrested with suitcase full of weed” To be fair, the author does use the term marijuana to describe the drug inside the actual article. And it is actually quite amazing how much of the substance the woman was carrying: When they arrived, Duckworth was getting out [...]
Continue reading...Local revolving door to speed up in 2008
12. December 2007
A change in federal sentencing rules means that a number of crack cocaine offenders - many of whom are from Jacksonville - will soon be eligible for release. They would get out eventually anyway, of course, but having the sentences of 772 offenders retroactively shortened seems like a bit of a surge in releases. [...]
Continue reading...Corey gets time with public at FOP
5. December 2007
State Attorney candidate Angela Corey joined members of the public at the Fraternal Order of Police lodge on Beach Blvd on Monday for a community action forum. One of the major topics was crime, especially notable with the total number of homicides in Jacksonville at 141 as of December 5. The FOP endorsed [...]
Continue reading...Manns goes back for a year
5. December 2007
Henry Manns has been sent back to prison for a year, with 4 years of supervised release afterwards. He was caught in Texas in September driving a rented car with a huge pile of cash, but was not arrested until October. All of the charges this time around involved violating his probation, and [...]
Continue reading...Jacksonville’s original kingpin may go back to jail
21. November 2007
Earlier this year, Henry Manns - Jacksonville’s first “cocaine kingpin”, who made piles of money in the 1980s by putting drugs on our streets - got out of prison and returned home to a huge, well-publicized welcome party. Federal prosecutor Ronald Henry, who led the case against Manns and also sprung him, declined to discuss the [...]
Continue reading...Teenager murdered in an apparently random act
12. November 2007
Occasionally there are disagreements that lead to killings, and lately there have been a lot more cases of people resorting to murder in disputes. In past years, these were likely to end in violence or sharp disagreement. This year, the tide seems to be turning - and nowhere is the change more apparent [...]
Continue reading...Jury duty may become more interesting
1. November 2007
The Florida Supreme Court has approved several new changes for juries, one of which allows members of a jury to ask questions of witnesses during a trial. The new rule was one of 18 measures approved by the court, out of a total of 48 recommendations proposed by the Jury Innovations Committee. The [...]
Continue reading...Don’t blame me, bro!
27. October 2007
University of Florida police attempt to restrain an uncooperative Andrew Meyer in September of 2007. Photo courtesy WJXT. The University of Florida police officers who were involved in an altercation with Andrew Meyer back in September have been cleared of wrongdoing after a Florida Department of Law Enforcement report said that they acted properly and within state [...]
Continue reading...And now for #122
23. October 2007
Duval County has reached a total of 122 murders so far for 2007 - a dubious distinction highlighting serious problems that have yet to be addressed. According to the Times-Union’s homicide database, 130 murders were recorded for the entire year of 2006. With slightly over two months left to go, we may [...]
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8. April 2008
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