A friend's wife is turning 31 today, so we had a different kind of birthday party. We all met at a bar on the northern part of Burnet Rd, and were given two clothes pins. Head south, stop in at 5 additional stops, provide proof, and make it to the final stop, Draught Haus, with the most clothes pins, and you win. Well, this was a great idea, and I we had a minimum of 3 CHL holders with us, if not more. Well, luckily, my team was the only team to make contact with APD. I ensured all three guys I knew with CHL's had no guns on them, and thus no alcohol / guns violations. Our group of 4 guys were stopped by the friendly neighborhood LEO's and detained for roughly 20 minutes, and cited for JAYWALKING. No one was hurt, no one was drunk, just cited for crossing midblock. During our 20 minute stint, we had two additional black and whites show up, and all 4 officers on the scene were friendly, and the citing officer was even apologetic, stating that he had no choice but to cite, due to our Kaiser Acevedo
in charge of APD. We saw an old lady even jaywalk across the same spot we were cited for, and the youngest looking of the officers was about to go cite her, and I joked to the one officer, "Hey, can we cite that officer for jaywalking, too, if he goes to get her?" and he laughed and told the young guy to forget it. All in all, this was a good encounter, but with a city who constantly rants about being understaffed, and who took 3 hours to respond to a vehicle break-in with $2000+ worth of tools stolen from one of those three CHL holders present Saturday night, they really need to reconsider their priorities. And a $190 fine for crossing the street...
Kaiser Acevedo
has stated that since last year we had the highest number of traffic fatalities in the Austin area in recent history, that he is requiring a much higher citation percentage per contact. Last year, they said they cited roughly 20% of the time, and he's wanting 80%+ citations now. Glad he's got his minions out citing for crossing outside of a crosswalk, instead of protecting a community against criminals. You know, the alarmingly high rate of house break-ins we're currently seeing locally, or the street racing scene, pan handlers, drug dealers, prostitution ring about 3 miles from where we were at... I could go on! Sorry, I'm just a little peeved about the nerve of some self-righteous, modern-day carpet bagger from California imposing his constitutionally-questionable morals on the citizens of Austin. If this doesn't get dismissed, you can bet I will be taking my business elsewhere, costing the city every dollar they made off me in tax revenue. </rant>
