April 11, 2007 11:43 - Fire damages San Marcos landmark
Commentary
By Bill Peterson
Some cultural change is gradual, and other cultural change goes down in a blaze. The latter occurred this week in San Marcos, at a great loss for future generations of adolescent mischief.
The old Blevin Street hospital, a structure more than 100 years old that served variously as a boys school dormitory, hospital and Texas State fraternity house, took heavy fire damage Sunday night. San Marcos authorities reportedly arrested a 25-year-old Kentuckian, Nicholas Lane Ryan, along with a 15-year-old boy Monday, charging them with second-degree arson.
San Marcos resident Chris McCrocklin told the San Marcos Daily Record that he and his wife saw four people pile out of a white sedan behind the building Sunday night, remove material from the trunk and go inside. Soon after, flames from the building, shooting up to 100 feet high, were from the building were visible for miles.
The building hasn't been put to a legitimate use for nearly ten years. In the meantime, the 12,500-square-foot building was rumored to be haunted, and it became a rite of passage for San Marcos youth and Texas State students to chance the spooky interior.
Hundreds of San Marcos residents crowded around the old building as it went down in flames while fire crews from Hays County and New Branufels fought the fire.
The building, originally built in 1903 as Fisher Hall, began as a boys dormitory for a private secondary school, the Colonial Institute. It is on the National Register of Historic Places. But Hays County Historical Commission chair Kate Johnson told the Austin American-Statesman that the fire damage amounts to "a total loss."
To reference this entry please copy the url in this link: (Permalink)
April 13, 2007 21:32 - Captain Hernandez
By Bill Peterson
KYLE –A salary survey commissioned by the Kyle City Council returned last month with news that the city pays its police below market value, with few exceptions.
Among the exceptions was the city's pay for Lieutenant Pedro Hernandez, whose position is one of only two on the entire department paid above the entry-level median for local departments of similar size. However, said consultant Katherine Ray of Ray and Associates, the lieutenant in Kyle functions more like a captain, anyway, so he isn't paid all that well, after all.
Perhaps the city gave Hernandez a pay raise this week, anyway, after promoting him to captain, the job he has essentially been doing all along. An 11-year veteran who started his career as a reserve officer, Hernandez is the longest tenured employee of the Kyle Police Department (KPD).
“I have been very fortunate here in the City of Kyle," said Hernandez. “The city has been good to me, the chiefs have been good to me, and the citizens have been good me.”
As captain, officially now, Hernandez will supervise the department’s patrol officers, detectives, animal control officers, dispatchers, and administrative assistants. He also will serve as liaison to other law enforcement agencies and civic organizations, while advising Chief Al Moore on various matters.
“The quality of our police force is a key factor in Kyle’s success and we know that Captain Hernandez has played an important role in developing the department,” Kyle City Manager Tom Mattis said.
To reference this entry please copy the url in this link: (Permalink)
April 14, 2007 23:20 - On asking questions later
Commentary
By Bill Peterson
On April 6, former local state Representative Rick Green received six months
of deferred adjudication for attacking the present state rep, Patrick Rose, at a Dripping
Springs polling place on Election Day last November.
Green might have gotten off quite easily.
Last Dec. 15, a little more than a month after the election, Rose signed on as
a joint author for HB 284, an expanded castle law allowing citizens to use deadly force
as a first resort against attackers. The bill passed 30-0 in the Senate (28 Senators co-
authored the Senate version, led by San Antonio Republican Jeff Wentworth) and 133-13
in the House. Gov. Rick Perry signed the bill on March 27. It goes into effect on Sept. 1.
Along with a 1995 provision allowing citizens to shoot first when their homes
are invaded, the new law allows the use of force as a first resort when they're in their
cars, places of employment or anyplace where the citizen has a right to be. The new law
also protects citizens from civil action, just in case they were mistaken when they shoot
people who they merely thought were attackers and really weren't.
One wonders how the melee on Election Day could have turned out differently if
the new law were in place.
Would Rose not have had reason to believe Green wanted to kill him? If you
saw "The Last Man Standing," about their 2002 House race, you believe Green really
wanted to mangle Rose.
Not to suggest that Rose would have pulled a gun on Green if the new law were
in effect on Election Day, but the new law might have allowed it even if Rose didn't know
for sure that Green carried deadly force. Bare hands can be deadly force, too.
All that's required for protection under the new law is that the "shoot first" actor
has "reason to believe" he is protecting himself from unlawful and forcible offense, and
that the actor didn't "provoke" the attacker. Whatever "provoke" means. And "reason to
believe" is scary.
We're going into really murky epistemological waters. Philosophers have been
working around the clock for centuries trying to make sense of "reason to believe."
There's a lot more to it than common sense, and a good many people don't even have
that. Most dangerously, a shooter can have "reason to believe" and be flat-out wrong. He
might have bad reasons. Many people do.
Intuitively, one applauds the idea that a citizen can pull a gun on a carjacker
and blow his head off. But the new law raises as many questions as it answers. Gun
murderers can use the "shoot first" law as a defense. It's already happening in Florida,
where such uses of the law are tying up the courts.
In the end, it's on the courts to decide which instances of self-defense are still
legal under this vaguely worded law. Until then, it's not clear that Texas is any safer, and
it might even be less safe.
To reference this entry please copy the url in this link: (Permalink)
