You're Adults! Don't Egg Houses With Your Teens Or Snort Coke In Front Of A Cop!

Polilce say this 44 year old woman took teens
out on a destructive egg throwing spree in Ogden, Utah. 

The stereotype is once you get past, say 40, you're really supposed to be the adult in the room.

But not really, as these two cases show.

The first involves a woman named Jennifer Terry, 44, of Ogden, Utah, who got some teens in her car and went around Ogden and environs and getting the kids to throw eggs at houses and cars, says Fox 13 in Salt Lake City.

She was charged with one count of causing a catastrophe. That title of that crime does sound a little extreme, given that the fine city of Ogden remains standing and mostly intact.

Still, the egging causing thousands of dollars in damage. It adds up: One house had $2,300 in damage because the eggs trashed the stucco.  Terry faces up to a year in jail.

Fox 13 went to Terry's house to ask for an explanation, but she's not talking. A police report says Terry told them she was having family problems and just didn't care.

The next case also provides us with a helpful tip: If a police officer pulls you over for a routine trafic stop it's probably not a good idea to do a line of coke in front of him.

An incredulous Seattle Police officer arrests
 a 73 year old man after the man snorted coke
in front of the officer durin a routine traffic stop.

According to Jalopnik, the 73 year old man - yes 73 years old, no typo - was pulled over by Seattle Police officer Nic Abts-Olsen for a minor driving offense.

The officer was about to let the guy go with a warning when he saw the older guy casually snorting a bit of cocaine.

Seattle Police helpfully put a dash cam video of the incident on YouTube, and you can watch the video at the bottom of this post. It's totally worth viewing.

Key piece of dialogue:

"What's in your left hand," asks Abts-Olsen
"Nothing," the man repled.
"SHOW me what's in your left hand," Abts-Olsen demands.

The driver then tries to say they're just vitamin pills, but concedes, yeah, it does kinda look like cocaine, doesn't it. And it was, says police.

The money quote comes when Abts-Olsen is arresting the man and says, "What would posess you to do that in a traffic stop with a police officer right behind you? I just don't understand."

The man being arrested replies, "I don't understand, either."

The 73 year old was booked into Kings County Jail, charged with possession of narcotics.

Here's the dash cam video:

Cruel Judge Lets His Hatred Of Gays Potentially Harm Baby Girl

Everyone seems to agree these two women make
fine parents, except for one activist Utah judge, who
says gay people like them are always unfit as parents,
evidence be damned.  

UPDATE:

As I pretty much expected, the judge who ordered the baby taken away from this gay married couple reversed himself, at least temporarily.

Judge Scott Johansen came under withering attack for taking the kid away from the two female foster parents, who are hoping to adopt the baby.

The judge is now letting the couple keep the kid for now, but has scheduled a hearing on December 4, and he's still got lots of misgivings about placing the baby with a gay couple.

This despite the fact that the two women have demonstrated their competence at raising a kid.
And despite the fact that his ruling appears to violate Utah and national law.

Even the Republican governor of Utah criticized this judge.

Meanwhile, the Human Rights Campaign filed a formal complaint with the Utah Judicial Conduct Commission. We'll see where that goes.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION

Yesterday, a judge in Utah ordered a one year old girl be taken away from her foster parents within a week.

The foster parents weren't abusing the kid. They are a married couple. Financially stable. No history of violence, crime or weirdness. Routine investigations showed the baby girl was doing well in this household. She was thriving. She seemed healthy and well-adjusted. The foster parents were providing her everything she needed.

So what's the problem? Well, Utah 7th District Court Juvenile Judge Scott Johansen decided that the married couple in question are lesbians, they are unfit to parent because they are gay, says the Salt Lake Tribune in a story extensively picked up by other media.

Which means the girl, who by all accounts was well cared for and loved by April Hoagland and Beckie Peirce, now faces an uncertain and unstable future in Utah's foster care system.

The judge didn't provide any facts to back up his claim that a household with same sex parents is dangerous to a child, but made a vague reference to "research."

Says the Salt Lake Tribune:

"Johansen did not provide specifics of that research in court despite questions from attorneys for the Utah Division of Child and Family Services and the Guardian Ad Litem Office assigned to represent the child, Hoagland and Peirce said."

The studies the judge referred to might be from a widely discredited study by University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus, which said that children do more poorly with gay parents than with straight parents.

The Regnerus study was flawed, say experts, because of unreliable data or data that indicated the children in question were actually living with single parents or under different circumstances than with married, same sex parents.

Most other studies on the topic concluded that on average, children with gay parents do at least as well as those with straight parents.

According to Utah law, foster parents must be married couples or single individuals age 21 or older. They muset be U.S. citizes or permanent legal residents, they must pass background checks, must be financially stable, must be able to support their family without assistance from the state, they can't foster parent children and run a day care center at the same time, and must be healthy enough to care for the kids.

The Utah Division of Child and Family Services have reportedly investigated Hoagland and Peirce thoroughly, as they're supposed to do with every potential foster parent. The couple did just fine with the investigation and the child welfare agency supported the idea of the couple foster parenting the child.

Who, by the way, was to have eventually been adopted by Hoagland and Peirce. Which would have permanently given the baby girl a stable household where she could grow up to presumably be a nice stable adult.

According to the Tribune:

"'We have a lot of support,' Peirce said. "DCFS wants us to have the child, the Guardian Ad Litem wants us to have the child, the mother wants us to have the child, so the only thing standing in the way is the judge.'"

Of course, there's a big outcry over Judge Johansen now, so maybe this will get fixed. I've heard criticism, especially from conservatives, over "activist judges" making up their own laws.

Still, it's unclear how an appeal, of possible, would work.

Johansen is a classic example of an activist judge. He ignores case law, and interjects his own religious beliefs.

Hey, if Johansen doesn't like gay people or the fact some are parents, fine, he can do that. But he has to apply the law as it is written.

As I noted, this judge appears to be willing to damage a child in the name of hating gays.

By the way, this judge has been pretty jerky in the past, too. He slapped a teenage boy in the courthouse back in 1997 and has ordered a woman to chop the ponytail off a 13 year old girl who had apparently misbehaved.

But the damage he caused this time is too much.

I just hope the judge isn't a foster parent.

Police Hate Guy Having Fun In Utah Town

Steve Unger, the dancing man of Utah, isn't going to
face criminal charges after all for having the audacity
to dance on public streets. 

There's a 68-year-old guy in Utah who likes to dance in the streets of the communities of Cottonwood Heights and Holladay, Utah.

It was fun for him, and fun for passersby who saw the man having his own little bit of fun. Smiles and fun can be contagious, after all.

But police put a stop to that, says television station KUTV.

Dancing man Steve Unger faced charges of disorderly conduct, failure to identify himself and interference with an arresting officer.  Being in a good mood, and eccentric and fun is bad, bad, BAD!!!

It started like this, says KUTV: 

"Nearly every day, the 68-year-old retiree dons selections from his brightly colored wardrobe, ties a bandana around his clean-shaven head, throws on the ear buds, plugs into his smart phone packed with tunes and heads outdoors.

He walks and dances up to 10 miles, a can't-miss figure, sometimes bouncing a rubber ball as he 'glides' along streets, avenues and lanes."

Most people seem to like Unger, smiling and waving as he does his thing. But one person apparently didn't, and called the cops.  The person who called said Unger was blocking traffic.

Cottonwood Heights' finest showed up and watched him for awhile, then went in for the arrest. The cops questioned Unger, who admits he initially declined to hand over his ID, since he thought he wasn't doing anything wrong.

But then then arrested him. Maybe the poor cops felt disrespected because Unger didn't ask how high when the cops said jump or something. After all, he didn't immediately hand over his ID and grovel and beg for forgiveness.

KUTV says Cottonwoood Height Police Chief Robbie Russon said his officers acted appropriately dealing with Unger and said there are two sides to the story of his charges.

But Russo for some reason didn't provide the cops' side of the story. Not sure why.

Unger had faced a November 18 jury trial after a judge last week declined to dismiss the charges.

However, in a recent update from FOX 13 in Salt Lake City, we learn the local prosecutor said he was dropping the charges.

After the charges were dropped, Russo backpedaled, saying that his cops never intended to harass Unger, but only wanted to assure his safety and that of passing motorists.

Yeah, sure. Like dancing is dangerous and passing motorists couldn't seem him. "In this case, both Mr. Unger and the CHPD could have done a better job of communicating at the time of the incident," Russo said.

Yeah, nothing like bad publicity to prompt the police chief to issue a lame PR type statement that really says nothing. But oh well, let's not dwell. Unger is free to keep dancing.

Maybe the the fine members of the Cottonwood Heights, Utah police department should take dance lessons, too. Couldn't hurt!

Store Clerk Offers Hilarious Play By Play Of Inept Robber In Her Store

The sales clerk, right, takes her time loading
cigarettes into a bag the robber, at left wants.  

The video in this post has understandably gone viral.

It's surveillance footage of a store robbery in Salt Lake City, Utah.  

Yeah, yeah, I know, there's LOTS of footage out there of store robberies.

But in this case, the woman who was robbed offers a helpful play by play narrative of what's going on the video, which makes it so much fun.

The security button she kept pushing didn't work, so the cops didn't show up during the long, drawn out incident. (Pro tip for robbers: If you don't want to get caught,  make your heist clean and quick: Get your stuff and get out.)

Police did manage to catch the dufus robber five minutes after he left the store. (The clerk got the robber's license plate number, as the leisurely pace of the getaway allowed her to write it down.)

Authorities said the robber Marc Kammerman, 41, and an accomplice, Manmeet Bhatia, 22, were found hiding in a car in a car wash. Police were immediately suspicious of the car in the car wash since it was pouring rain at that moment.

Here's the video:

Crisis In Ogden, Utah: City Orders Cardboard Play Fort Razed

The cardboard castle in Ogden, Utah, that has
some city officials up in arms.  

A dad in Ogden, Utah had a whole bunch of big empty boxes. He must have made some big appliance purchases or something.

He was going to throw them out or recycle the cardboard, of course, but first he decided he'd have a little fun.

Jeremy Trentelman built a giant castle out of the boxes, complete with a  slide, trap door, tunnel and windows  or his two young children, ages 3 and 2, reported the Salt Lake Tribune.

Trentelman said he was going to take the cardboard castle down soon. After all, cardboard isn't all that durable in the outdoors.

Now he's going to leave it up longer. Because Ogden City Code Enforcement swooped down quickly.

The enforcement officers said the castle constitutes "waste materials or junk," and he would have to take the castle down within 15 days or face $125 in fines.

"It was a great project for all of us to build, and now it's just fun watching them play in it, and watching their imagination run wild is just fantastic," Trentelman said.

Trentelman said it's absurd that code enforcement acted so instantaneously, so he's going to keep the cardboard castle up longer, out of spite.

Like all code enforcement department's Ogden's is understandably worried about piles of materials that could pose fire, safety and health risks. Secondarily, they want to keep the city looking pretty.

Which all means there's good reason for most city zoning codes, in Ogden and everywhere else.

What gets me is when zoning officers strictly enforce city ordinances in a way that make no sense. Clearly, the Ogden cardboard castle wasn't going to be there forever. Maybe the city prefers children not play outside or use their imaginations.

Maybe code enforcers they feel they have to enforce the codes when they make no sense, because, after all, they do have to follow the law.

That's when you get stupid things like crackdowns on Little Free Libraries. Those are little kiosks that people put in front of their houses so people can voluntarily put books in, then take them out for awhile to read, then put back in the kiosk.

Nice thing, but code enforcers say those are structures. You can't have a fun little convenient little free library.

Some cities said they would allow the Little Free Libraries only if people pay for permits, and they can get the money to do that from local arts organizations, say these crack code enforcers.

Or as The Atlantic put it:

"We've constructed communities where one must obtain prior permission from agents of the state before freely sharing books with one's neighbors! And their proposed solution is to get scarce public arts funds to pay for the needless layer of bureaucracy being imposed on the thing already being done for free."

There've also been big crackdowns on people who dare to plant vegetable gardens in their front yards.

Apparently, your front lawn is supposed to be a useless expanse of wasteful grass, and not something that can provide food, and, if properly cared for, some beauty to a neighborhood.

In most of the enforcement of libraries, gardens and in the Ogden castle, action was prompted by an anonymous complaint. Apparently every neighborhood has at least one miserable killjoy who can't STAND to see anyone have any kind of fun, and in their wimpy, anonymous fashion, try to put a stop to it.

Back in Ogden, a protest movement is growing. The Salt Lake Tribune said a Facebook event is on calling for people to build cardboard castles in their front lawns.

Uintah: Worst Public School On The Planet Literally Snatches Food From Kids Because Parents Behind On Payments

Congratulations to Uintah Elementary School in Salt Lake City for being by far the worst public school on the planet.

Uintah Elementary School in Salt Lake City, where
the lunchroom bully is apparently the school's
so-called nutrition manager.  

I bestow this "honor" on Uintah because some food service managers there who were pissed off because some parents were behind on their kids' lunch payments, snatched the lunch trays away from the kids whose parents who hadn't paid, and threw them in the trash, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. 

This of course happened in front of the students' classmates, so the food managers bullied the kids, set the Worst. Possible. Example., wasted food, and are basically evil people.

I can't believe so far nobody has been brought up on child abuse charges over this. Nobody has been fired yet, either, which is amazing, though I'm sure that will happen. At least I hope so. A lot of heads need to roll here.

At first, the school offered a pretty weak apology.

"If students were humilated and upset...that's very unfortunate and not what we wanted to happen," said school district spokesman Jaosn Olsen said, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

Oh, come on!  That's EXACTLY what whoever was responsible for this wanted to happen!  The idiots, who put new meaning into the word "vindictive" WANTED to humiliate the kids, it seems to me,  because they wanted to take it out on somebody. They couldn't reach the parents to humiliate them, so let's pick on the kids!

So I guess there's school sanctioned bullying and child abuse.   It does make me wonder if the idiots in charge of Uintah Elementary School let bullying go on unimpeded.

Another sad thing there are probably a number of educators and food workers and administrators at Uintah Elementary School who have the students' best interests at heart.  The Tribune article noted some employees in the school cafeteria wept when they saw what was going on, but were powerless to do anything about it.

By bullying these kids over really what was a pittance in lunch money, the people who did this surely demoralized the educators who do give a damn about the kids and want them to thrive.  So those good educators are probably less effective now.

Way to create an environment where kids learn!

Since then, after the initially weak "apology" and no doubt because there was a huge, building and understandably torrentially angry outcry among parents, the school put out a Facebook message.

The Facebook message said in part:

"We understand the feelings of upset parents and students who say this was an embarrassing and humiliating situation. We again apologize and commit to working with parents in rectifying this situation to ensuring students are never treated in this manner again."

Notice the careful language here, avoiding responsibility. It refers to upset parents and students who say  this was an embarrassing situation. The word say suggests an attitude of "Well, they SAY they were embarrassed but they're just trying to draw attention to themselves."

The rest of the Facebook post is full of excuses. Well, we tried to get ahold of the parents, we did give the affected students some fruit and milk, yada yada yada.

The school did concede this should have been handled in a different manner.

Ya think?

What in the world was the school trying to gain? They weren't recouping any money from parents who didn't pay because they threw the food out. The school said they threw the food out because it couldn't be served to other kids who did pay once it was placed on a tray.

THEN LET THE DAMN KID EAT HIS FOOD AND DEAL WITH HIS OR HER PARENTS LATER!!!!  I can't believe anybody is that stupid so as to just throw their food away.

Of course, they're not that stupid  As I said, somebody in that school really wanted to humiliate those kids.  Certainly not the majority of people who work there, but one or two people. It only takes one bully to really make a mess of things.

Now this story has gone viral, and the decent people of the world are sending terribly angry messages to the school from all over the world. You should read the comments on their non apology apology Facebook post! 

Feel free to go there and post your own thoughts. (Though please, no threats or ugly language please.)