Cedar Posts and Barbed Wire Fences: Hope Solo Again

  • Subscribe to our RSS feed.
  • Twitter
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Facebook
  • Digg

Thursday, 24 October 2013

Grass Roots North Carolina - Fires A Warning Shot Accross CMPD Chief Monroe's Nose

Posted on 14:30 by baba ji
Cedar Posts has obtained a copy of a letter apparently sent on Tuesday to CMPD Chief Rodney Monroe.
 
 
GRASS ROOTS NORTH CAROLINA / FORUM FOR FIREARMS EDUCATION
P.O. BOX 10665
RALEIGH, NC 27605
877.282.0939
 
http://www.GRNC.org

October 22, 2013

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department
601 East Trade Street
Charlotte, NC 28202

Attn: Chief Rodney Monroe

Dear Chief Monroe: Reports from gun dealers at two recent gun shows, as well as internal communications within your department, indicate you are attempting to regulate gun sales from individuals to dealers, and possibly between individuals who are not dealers under N.C.G.S. Article 45, (Part 1, "Pawnbrokers and Cash Converters") by classifying them as "cash converters."

Specifically, your officers have been distributing and requiring use of the enclosed "CMPD Gun Show Gun Purchase Form."

Please be advised that: (1) As outlined below, the "cash converter" statute clearly does not apply to gun shops or private transactions; and

(2) The imposition of a local gun law or regulation is in violation of § 14-409.40 ("Statewide uniformity of local regulation").

As passed in Session Law 2011-325 and then recodified in S.L. 2012-46, § 66-387(2) defines "cash converter" as follows:

(2) Cash converter. - A person engaged in the business of purchasing goods from the public for cash at a permanently located retail store who holds himself or herself out to the public by signs, advertising, or other methods as engaging in that business.

The term does not include any of the following:

a. Pawnbrokers.

b. Persons whose goods purchases are made directly from manufacturers or wholesalers for their inventories.

c. Precious metals dealers, to the extent that their transactions are regulated under Part 2 of this Article.

d. Purchases by persons primarily in the business of obtaining from the public, either by purchase or exchange, used clothing, children's furniture, and children's products, provided the amount paid for the individual item purchased is less than fifty dollars ($50.00).

e. Purchases by persons primarily in the business of obtaining from the public, either by purchase or exchange, sporting goods and sporting equipment, provided the amount paid for the individual item purchased is less than fifty dollars ($50.00).

Please note that neither gun show vendors who purchase firearms from individuals nor private transfers between individuals meet the definition of "cash converter" for the following reasons:

1. Although your form is entitled "CMPD Gun Show Gun Purchase Form," nothing in the statute addresses gun shows any more than it addresses flea markets or other venues, leading any reasonable person to conclude that you are attempting to stigmatize gun shows;

2. A gun show vendor is not "a person engaged in the business of purchasing goods from the public for cash at a permanently located retail store." Not only do gun show purchases not take place at a "permanently located retail store," many gun show vendors do not even possess such locations.

3. By any reasonable plain language interpretation of the statute, it even more clearly excludes private transfers between individuals not engaged in a firearms-related business;

4. I am unaware of any gun show dealer who "holds himself or herself out to the public by signs, advertising, or other methods as engaging" the business of buying firearms particularly at the show itself, with the possible exception of pawnbrokers, who are specifically exempt as described below;

5. The cash converter statute specifically exempts both "Pawnbrokers" and "Persons whose goods purchases are made directly from manufacturers or wholesalers for their inventories," which would, in all likelihood, encompass nearly all gun show dealers.

Accordingly, Grass Roots North Carolina strongly advises you to cease and desist in your apparent attempt to register guns and gun owners in contravention of both Article 45 of the North Carolina General Statutes and § 14-409.40.

Failure to do so will result in legal action.

Please note that under § 6-21.7 ("Attorneys’ fees; cities or counties acting outside the scope of their authority"), we will also seek to recover associated legal expenses.

I can be reached directly at (704) 907-9206.

To preclude further action, please reply within five (5) business days.

Respectfully,

F. Paul Valone

President, Grass Roots North Carolina Executive Director, Rights Watch International
Read More
Posted in | No comments

Monday, 21 October 2013

Monday's Odds and Ends - Law and Order Edition

Posted on 15:49 by baba ji
Serial Dead Beat Tenant April Dawn Willocks - Here's a story that says maybe the economy is not so healthy after all. Apparently, April Willocks aka Dawn Wilcox, aka April Wilcox has a long list of landlords and other creditors hot on her trail.




Not to mention the local cops and North Carolina Highway Patrol.

Seems the single mother has been jumping from apartment to apartment, following eviction after eviction. Apparently the former wife of a Charlotte restaurateur has found a way to live rent free or at least so she thinks. Ms. Willocks has racked countless "Summary Ejection" filings in Mecklenburg County alone over the last 10 years, the most recent one filed just last week.

Eviction actions filed by case number in Mecklenburg County:

2011CVD019770
2012CVM034878
2013CVM024080
2013CR 202898
1999CDV7920
2001CVM27311
2011CVM36992
2012CVM34878
2013CVM24080
2011CVD19770
2011CVD21339
20013CVM29899
2014CVM340
 
Other lawsuits:
Amsted Park
FIA Card DBA Bank America
Kingsley Home Owners Association
Brock & Scott

Staying just one step ahead of the law has been her M/O. That is until she was stopped for speeding in a work zone and was arrested for (DWLR) driving with a revoked license on September 10, 2013.

Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office 2012
 
Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office 2010
Apparently Ms. Willocks lost her NCDL thanks to one or more drunk driving arrests in 2010, 2011 or 2012. But she has reportedly been seen driving around Charlotte with impunity.
 
CP Bonus: Thanks to a CP reader, apparently Ms. Willocks is a promo girl for a liquor wholesale operation out of Florida known as Independence Spirits, LLC. the maker of "Sweet Revenge" a strawberry flavored "high proof" Liquor.
 
A couple of prior addresses this woman has used under different aliases:
 
11910 Royal Castle Ct, Charlotte, NC 28277
 
821 Selwyn Oaks Court, Charlotte, NC 28209
 
Confessions - Admittedly I'm a fan of "This American Life" and host Ira Glass. I simply love the framework that is used to tell a story. Often a story that is too in-depth to tell via mainstream media. Too controversial or too detailed for most of America to follow. 
 
And isn't that what a blog like Cedar Posts should point out?
 
 
Admittedly at first I was hesitant to even admit I found this interesting and in fact vastly enlightening. I feared I would offend some of my police friends and family. 
 
But imagine if you where charged with crime you didn't commit, and that crime was murder. What if the evidence was overwhelming and no one believed you were innocent? What if all the facts, charge card signatures and surveillance photos provided it was you? Would you confess to a crime you didn't commit?
 
The answer of course is NO! or at least that is what one veteran police detective used to think, until he reopened a cold case and reviewed the charges he help bring against a women named Kim.
 
"It was 1994. A man was found dead by the Anacostia River in Washington, DC. He'd been tied up and savagely beaten. Someone had taken his wallet and used his credit card at a liquor store, a drug store, and a Chinese restaurant. Police also had a surveillance photo from an ATM that looked like this woman named Kim. From public documents, they saw that her handwriting matched the signatures on the credit card slips.
 
Jim Trainum was the lead detective on this case. It was one of his first major homicide investigations. And when he started interrogating Kim, she just denied everything. She told him she didn't know the dead men. She'd never signed any credit card slips. So they sat there for hours going back and forth. Then early that afternoon, Kim started to crack."
 
Eventually Kim admitted to the crime, the trouble is she didn't kill anyone in fact she had nothing at all to do with the murder. In fact she couldn't have, but still she confessed to killing someone. Why?
 
The audio link is here. And the complete transcript is here.
Read More
Posted in | No comments

Wednesday, 16 October 2013

22 Feign Injury After CATS Bus Fender Bender

Posted on 00:34 by baba ji
From the Charlotte Observer:
 
Twenty-two people were injured during a bus crash in uptown Charlotte.


Paramedics said they treated a total of 22 patients following the wreck at Fourth and Caldwell Streets. All the patients have nonlife-threatening injures.
 
The cause of the wreck is still under investigation. Pictures from the scene showed the No. 1 bus to Mount Holy stopped at an intersection. A blue Ford pickup truck and a tan car also appeared to be involved in the crash. The bus was struck on the windshield near the door.
 
Nine patients were taken to Carolinas Medical Center. Three went to CMC-Universty and ten were transported to Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center.
 
Cedar's Take: 22 of Charlotte's finest citizens are injured on a city bus during a fender bender, can you imagine the calamity? Perhaps the Observer should publish the names and photos of the injured so that we can offer our prayers?
 
But the truth is public shame, or embarrassment are no match for these citizens. Never mind that people who needed medic, fire, police or hospital care had to wait while these "victims" where treated.  We have a nation of people who as infants uttered "gimme" as their first words.   

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/10/15/4390681/uptown-bus-crash-injures-22.html#.Ul46CGt5mSM#storylink=cpy

Read More
Posted in | No comments

Tuesday, 15 October 2013

In Case You Missed It - Xerox Glitch Gives Welfare Recipients An Early Christmas

Posted on 00:06 by baba ji

In some Walmart stores, customers emptied shelves like it was Black Friday, while in others, no one could buy anything -- all thanks to a weekend of glitches with the nation's welfare system.
Problems involving Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards, the government payments to the poor that are administered by states with the help of private companies, plagued at least 17 states Saturday and Sunday, creating retail riots. At Louisiana stores in Springhill and Mansfield, cards registered no spending limits, prompting recipients to go on buying binges.
"It was worse than any Black Friday,” Springhill Police Chief Will Lynd told local station KSLA-TV
Customers said shelves were picked clean in a mob scene that left employees rattled. Walmart spokeswoman Kayla Whaling told the station the company made a conscious decision to keep ringing up goods rather than to cut people off.


"We did make the decision to continue to accept EBT cards (and purchases on WIC and SNAP) during the outage so that they could get food for their families," she said.
But when order was restored and the cards began reading properly, it became clear that some customers were out to take advantage of the taxpayer-funded program. One woman had $700 worth of merchandise in her cart and an EBT card with a balance of just 49 cents.
The glitches, which were apparently triggered by a a system failure at Xerox, which handles processing for many states, left other users unable to buy anything. At a Mississippi Walmart, customers rioted and even left the store with groceries without paying after they were unable to use their food stamp cards on Saturday, according to the Clarion-Ledger.
The mini riot happened at the Walmart in Philadelphia, Miss. Shortly thereafter, managers decided to temporarily close the store.
“For the safety of our customers we did make a management decision to close the store," Whaling said of the Mississippi incident. "We’re looking into everything; looking at surveillance video and working with the local police.”
While Walmart, as the nation's biggest retailer and grocer, was affected most, the glitch hampered customers at other stores, as well. In Massachusetts, nearly 1 million EBT card users were unable to access the SNAP food program or withdraw cash, said Matthew Kitsos, spokesman with the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance.
“We didn’t have answers for them, except for that there were problems in the state,” the manager of a Market Basket in Somerville, who asked that his name not be used, told the Boston Herald. “A lot of people are depending on them. They have kids; they depend on that money.”
Xerox spokeswoman Karen Arena told USA Today that some Electronic Benefits Transfer systems were experiencing connectivity issues after a routine test of a backup system at a location in the Midwest caused an outage. U.S. Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Courtney Rowe underscored that the outage was not related to the federal government shutdown. Xerox runs EBT card systems for 17 states. All were affected by the outage.
Reports surfaced around 9 a.m. Saturday that customers' EBT cards were not working in stores. Other affected states included Alabama, California, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia.




Read More
Posted in | No comments

Monday, 7 October 2013

FOX Anchor Has A Blonde Moment

Posted on 10:46 by baba ji
Charlotte native and cutie Anna Kooiman inserts foot - The Fox News Channel anchor has apologized for falsely saying that President Barack Obama had offered to pay for the operation of a museum of Muslim culture "out of his own pocket" during the government shutdown.


Anchor Kooiman, a former WCCB reporter in Charlotte, made the remark Saturday on "Fox & Friends" during a discussion about the closed park facilities. She said it didn't seem fair that a World War II monument in Washington was closed, especially in the context of other things funded.

She didn't name her source, but Kooiman appeared to be influenced by a satirical news site that rhymes with Yum Yum, (just kidding it wasn't "The Onion" but rather the lesser known "National Report") that said Obama would use his own money to keep a Muslim culture museum open.

 Kooiman tweeted an apology Sunday:

"Just met w producers- I made a mistake yday after receiving flawed research abt a museum possibly closing. My apologies. Won't happen again."
Read More
Posted in | No comments

Sunday, 6 October 2013

Watch Learn and Then Ask Yourself When Would You Draw Your Weapon

Posted on 18:06 by baba ji

Oregon State Police released this video of John Van Allen, 34, as he is pulled over for speeding on I-84 about 100 miles east of Portland.

Allen exits his car and begins walking toward the state trooper eventually pulling a weapon and firing at the trooper. Allen is shot during the exchange, and is later was found dead in his car a half-mile down the road.

Oregon State Trooper Matthew Zistel sustained a bullet wound in his side and was treated at a local hospital and releasd.

Three juveniles ages 10, 13, 15 located in the back of the car were uninjured. Allen is a South Carolina native and was reportedly on his way to South Carolina.

Cedar Asks: When did you draw your weapon? At what point did you stop being polite? How close did he get to you before you knew it was more than a guy with a bad attitude?

Detailed coverage from the Oregonian here.
Read More
Posted in | No comments

Friday, 4 October 2013

In Case You Missed It - Shannon Christy

Posted on 05:00 by baba ji
There are few things in life as enjoyable as the exuberance of youth and the love of the water. Watch through the eyes of David Martin and CBS Sports videographers and you can feel the overwhelming dismay as their story takes a totally unexpected turn.


Cedar's Take: I can't imagine the emotions the reporters, producers and editors dealt with putting this story together, but it is so worth telling. As I have said many times "All glory is fleeting". CP
Read More
Posted in | No comments

Wednesday, 2 October 2013

In Case You Missed It - Staff Sgt Timothy McGill

Posted on 13:30 by baba ji

Schoolchildren salute as they line the street watching as the coffin of Army Staff. Sgt. Timothy McGill is carried through his hometown of Ramsey, N.J., Monday, Sept. 30, 2013. Residents lined Main Street in Ramsey as they paused to remember the soldier killed in Afghanistan. The 30-year-old Special Forces soldier was one of three troops shot on Sept. 21 by an Afghan wearing a security forces uniform in an attack near the Pakistan border. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/10/01/4358111/the-daily-edit-100213.html#storylink=cpy
Read More
Posted in | No comments
Newer Posts Older Posts Home
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

Popular Posts

  • (no title)
  • Lisa Pistolis Sentenced To Six Years Will Do Less
    On Tuesday Lisa Pistolis, pleaded guilty to one count of felony DUI with death resulting and one count of felony DUI resulting in great bodi...
  • Media Hype is killing Mike Brown and Eric Garner
    "Hands - Up, Don't - Shoot" is a myth perpetuated by mainstream media. Mike Brown did not have his hands up. The myth continue...
  • Pistolis, Lisa Victoria SCDOC Inmate 00360136
      Lisa Pistolis began serving her 6 year prison term on May 30th after being transported from Charleston to the Camille Griffin Graham Corre...
  • If You Think The Obama Presidency is Circus - Just Wait To You See The Clowns They Invite to the White House.
    A pair of LGBT activists who were invited to the White House for a first-ever White House "gay pride" event last Friday stirred ...
  • You Want An Indictment?
    How about you indict black culture, hateful rap lyrics that promote killing cops, fathers who abandon their sons and brag about how many bab...
  • Pilot of Embraer Jet Had Survied Crash At Same Airport Before
    Health Decisions (Durham, NC) CEO Michael Rosenberg was reportedly at the controls of the Embraer Phenom 100 as it crashed into a Gaithersbu...
  • Crackheads Among Us
    The Charlotte Observer is reporting that James Edward Robinette Jr., 49 and Eva Marie Rankin Robinette, 35 were arrested and now face drug c...
  • Tragic End Two Young Lives Lost But For CSX Employees The Horror Lingers
    The deaths of Hanna Elizabeth Rigley, 18, and Arielle McKenzie Troutman, 16 on the CSX railroad tracks that parallel Charlotte's Monroe ...
  • White House Snubs France Then Admits Mistake Sort Of
    The White House admitted a major faux pas was made when President Obama snubbed the people of France and basically the entire world.  "...

Blog Archive

  • ►  2015 (4)
    • ►  January (4)
  • ►  2014 (131)
    • ►  December (6)
    • ►  November (4)
    • ►  October (11)
    • ►  September (10)
    • ►  August (17)
    • ►  July (9)
    • ►  June (3)
    • ►  May (3)
    • ►  April (12)
    • ►  March (22)
    • ►  February (19)
    • ►  January (15)
  • ▼  2013 (183)
    • ►  December (3)
    • ►  November (1)
    • ▼  October (8)
      • Grass Roots North Carolina - Fires A Warning Shot ...
      • Monday's Odds and Ends - Law and Order Edition
      • 22 Feign Injury After CATS Bus Fender Bender
      • In Case You Missed It - Xerox Glitch Gives Welfare...
      • FOX Anchor Has A Blonde Moment
      • Watch Learn and Then Ask Yourself When Would You D...
      • In Case You Missed It - Shannon Christy
      • In Case You Missed It - Staff Sgt Timothy McGill
    • ►  September (17)
    • ►  August (8)
    • ►  July (7)
    • ►  June (6)
    • ►  May (12)
    • ►  April (23)
    • ►  March (35)
    • ►  February (31)
    • ►  January (32)
  • ►  2012 (182)
    • ►  December (11)
    • ►  November (9)
    • ►  October (10)
    • ►  September (25)
    • ►  August (39)
    • ►  July (22)
    • ►  June (20)
    • ►  May (23)
    • ►  April (23)
Powered by Blogger.

About Me

baba ji
View my complete profile