Henson who was promoted to Captain in September, has his hands full with both property crimes and homicides in an area of Charlotte that has seen the "quality of life" as well as the value of life decline at an astounding rate over the last ten years. Henson replaced Captain Jeffery Pless who was "reassigned" to the watch commanders office.
Cedar's Take - I expect that CMPD will report "crime is down".
Raintree Crash Has Responders Scratching Their Heads - This Toyota was wedged between a number of good sized trees early of the morning of Tuesday April 24, 2012 after the driver lost control while driving along Raintree's Four Mile Creek Road. Crews eventually cut down the trees in order to remove the small truck. The driver was transported with serious injuries, no word on his condition.
Clicking on any one of the above photos will take you to more of Davie Hinshaw's photos of the mess that greeted first responders.
CMPD Training Academy Shake Up - Reports via several sources that a serious house cleaning is under way out on Shopton Road. Seems that someone was "scrubbing" candidate's records including issues with credit reports in order to keep their scores acceptable and "pack' the pipeline. While there is no official word, rumor has it that a captain and sergeant cleaned out their offices recently.
What is most interesting is that staff at the academy voiced concerns about how certain "things" were being handled but those concerns fell on deaf ears, until someone did an end run and contacted CMPD's Human Resources directly.
Questions about the recruitment process first came to light during the Marcus Jackson fall out, which had Chief Monroe promising extensive reforms to prevent this sort of this thing from happening. (Jackson is scheduled to be released from prison one month from today).
Other Rumors - Reports that CMPD's recruiting trip to Puerto Rico is a complete bust as the one and only recruit has returned to San Juan to "pursue other interests".
Charlotte's Trolley Car Fiasco - Republican contenders for Sue Myrick's congressional seat were throwing around the Charlotte Trolley as example of wasteful spending last night. So just for laughs I drove down Trade Street/Elizabeth Avenue towards Charlotte's Presbyterian Hospital this morning.
From Charlottetown Avenue (formerly Independence) to Hawthorne two tracks run down each side of the street. Trouble is the cars don't fit, so you end up straddling the tracks which makes you either really close to the curb or the oncoming traffic. What I know about trolleys is limited, but in New Orleans they have the right away, as cars stop for traffic light trolleys don't which is the advantage of riding a trolley for short distances. But in Charlotte there is no way to move over for a Trolley heading in the same direction. The area is congested to the point where it took at least five minutes to cover the 3 blocks. Most of the time students were walking faster than I was able to safely drive the distance. I imagine that adding a couple of Trolley cars to the mix and it will become total grid lock.
While the landscaping is nice it has done little to prompt businesses to move to the area. The Visualite is still there, but it looks run down and the attempt to revive Anderson's Restaurant under a different name has failed. The area looks to be about 50% vacant retail/office space or vacant lots.
Regardless of the pros or cons for the trolley, from my vantage point it looks like a poorly planned idea that someone gave even less thought to the execution.
0 comments:
Post a Comment