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AFTER THE BLUE WAVE: Alarm prompted by stunning upset by 3 ArapCo Dems gives way to routine
KARA MASON, QUINCY SNOWDON and GRANT STRINGER, Staff Writers
The shock and awe of the so-called blue tsunami on Election Day last November seems to have given way to business as usual in Arapahoe County instead of yielding the end of times.
There was no shortage of surprise nor histrionics last year as state office after office went to Democratic candidates, mostly in a very big way.
Even popular Republicans in relatively low-profile state offices were either beat or beaten out of their incumbencies by Democrats.
The Colorado "blue-nami" moved the state markedly left in the midterm elections, choosing the nation's first openly gay governor, ousting a five-term GOP congressman and capturing key state offices held by Republicans.
The Arapahoe County Government Administration Building in Littleton.
Photo by Philip B. Poston/Sentinel Colorado
Unexpected political casualties were also racked up in places like Arapahoe County. Traditionally Republican strongholds were undone by what many political watchers say was a sonorous anti-Trump sentiment in Colorado.
The county's popular Republican sheriff, clerk and assessor were surprisingly ousted, by big numbers in some races.
An Election Day that saw Democratic Congressman Jared Polis win as an openly gay candidate also washed away Aurora's five-term GOP U.S. House Rep. Mike Coffman.
The vote was tied to Trump across the state.
Carly Everett, 24, an independent voter from Littleton, said Trump's attitude toward immigrants and racial rhetoric was the reason she voted a mostly Democratic ticket.
"It's about Donald Trump, and a lot of bad things going on right now are about him," Everett said after voting in Morrison. "I voted mostly Democrat to oppose the direction the country is headed."
The unexpected victims of voters intent on punishing Trump were Arapahoe County Sheriff Dave Walcher, Clerk Matt Crane and Assessor Marc Scott.
Rich Sakol, chairman of the Arapahoe County Republicans, said it was absurd that someone with Walcher's qualifications and incumbency lost to a little-known upstart in a county that reliably elects Republicans.
"If you look at the qualifications of Dave Walcher, he's the most qualified sheriff probably in the state of Colorado," Sakol said just after Election Day. "Anyone who spent any time looking at his qualifications versus his opponent would have voted for Dave Walcher. And people didn't.
"Colorado's a swing state, and today it swung against us."
The election upset led to dire warnings about flawed critical county agencies. In Centennial, the sheriff department acts as town police. A push to investigate ending that agreement brought Walcher in as a consultant to investigate cost and feasibility.
Predictions degradation of all kinds county services made the local political rounds.
But nothing happened.
Police calls get answered. Licenses plates get issued. Property assessments are completed.
Political watchers and local officials say the blue wave seems to have destroyed a handful of political careers and not much else.
Arapahoe County Clerk Joan Lopez. Photo by Philip B. Poston/Sentinel Colorado
County Clerk: Lopez washes away Crane
On a typical afternoon the Arapahoe County Clerk and Recorder's Office in Littleton is buzzing. A nearly full room of people are waiting to be called on by tellers to update vehicle registrations. A steady stream of residents file out of the county's glass palace onto their next errand.
County Clerk Joan Lopez acknowledges that few people pay attention to the happenings in her office until they have to — like when they have to renew the tags on their cars, get a marriage license or vote. Some people don't even realize that Lopez's seat at the helm of the department is an elected seat. That is until election season hits.
Her name was on the 2014 ballot and 2018 ballot for Arapahoe County.
Lopez won the office in November by a little more than 2 percentage points over her predecessor and former boss, Matt Crane, a Republican who was appointed to the seat in 2013. He'd worked in the office since 2007.
The two also faced off in 2014, but then Crane beat Lopez by 13 percentage points. That was before the so-called "blue wave" that put Democrats in office across the country. Despite the prediction that Democrats would fare well during midterms, there wasn't a major indication Crane would lose his seat. He was well-liked and evaded public scrutiny, even from many of his political opponents.
Voter turnout in Arapahoe County was more than 64 percent this past year, which is about 16 points higher than the national average. About 59 percent of voters turned out to vote across the state in this year's Midterm Election, according to stats listed on the Secretary of State's website.
Lopez's victory solidifies a nearly clean, Democratic sweep in the contested races for county offices this year. Democrats also defeated Republican incumbents in the races for sheriff and assessor in Arapahoe County. The local coroner and treasurer were also up for re-election, but both ran unopposed.
Even though she's an elected newbie, Lopez knows the office well. She's worked there for 17 years, mostly in the motor vehicle division. Her new title has come with a lot of work and some controversy so far.
When Lopez first applied at the office, nearly two decades ago, she said she wanted to work in elections because she grew up in a politically active family and knew the importance of voting. She didn't get that job, but she did win over the then-director of motor vehicles who hired her on the spot. Lopez started the next day.
These days, behind the tellers in Lopez's office, things are a little calmer, but still busy. And organized. So much so that Lopez's bright pink blazer matches the tips of her pink French manicure.
She's been at the helm of the clerk's office for nearly six months, "the best job I've ever had," she said with a big smile. Despite knowing the office well, the transition into the clerk position didn't come without challenges.
"I came in with no leadership team. I kind of ran around in circles with fire in my hair, thinking what's going to happen," Lopez said.
She hired a team of deputy clerks, who Lopez said she feels are the best for their respective jobs. Her deputy clerk of elections is graduating in August with a master's degree in cyber security — which she said she sees as a major asset to the office — and her chief deputy clerk has helped run several elections in Denver.
"I made sure the people I hired were experts in their fields. I felt like that wasn't done recently," Lopez said. "I think it's important they actually know each department thoroughly."
Since arriving as clerk, Lopez said she's put an emphasis on making services more available across Arapahoe County, which includes swaths of Aurora, Littleton, Centennial and smaller municipalities. In some branches, only certain services are available. Lopez wants to change that.
"My goal is to have all services at every single office. My rockstar recording deputy has done a pilot (program), implemented at the Centennial office," she said. "You could get a marriage license, but couldn't record it there. There's now a recording person there, we plan to do that in Aurora eventually too."
During Crane's tenure and across the state, there's been a push to get more resources to communities, like vehicle registration renewal machines that have debuted in local grocery stores.
On top of the pilot program her office is implementing, Lopez also wants to make voting more accessible. That's been her big aim, she said.
"Early voting is my biggest priority right now," she said. She wants more people to know the process and that they can vote before Election Day.
Since coming into the office, Lopez boasts registering 4,000 new voters. She notes she wants more access to non-English speakers too.
"Our elections deputy is working on bilingual ballots, and posting them online," she said. "We really don't have funds to do more than Spanish at this point, but we'd like to have at least five languages by 2020. Hopefully the budget is there for it."
Arapahoe County Clerk Joan Lopez sits in the conference room of the Arapahoe County Government Administration building, during a June 25 interview with the Sentinel.
Photo by Ali C.M. Watkins/Sentinel Colorado
Since, Lopez met with The Sentinel in late June, there have been murmurings that a recall effort may be launched against her, one that if it gains momentum, Lopez's office will have to oversee, as there's nothing in the state constitution dictating that another jurisdiction or the state take over when a county clerk is the target of a recall.
As of this week there wasn't a petition filed with Arapahoe County, but a county spokesperson said that if a recall petition was found to be valid and an election were to happen, the board of county commissioners would appoint somebody else to oversee the election.
An endorsement she made earlier this year has been the source of much scrutiny the Democrat has endured since winning her seat.
Arapahoe County has long run Aurora's municipal elections, but this year some city council members questioned Lopez's ability to run a fair election because of an endorsement she made for Ward IV candidate Juan Marcano, a fellow Democrat. While city council races are non-partisan, politics often play some kind of role beneath the surface.
Aurora Councilman Charlie Richardson, who's running for re-election to his Ward IV seat, especially took issue with the endorsement, raising the question of whether Lopez could be trusted to run the election.
"I think it's important to say it's hard enough to run for public office today with all the work that goes into it, all of the campaign rules and finance," Richardson said during a city meeting after discovering the endorsement Lopez made via a Facebook post. "I just don't need the office that's responsible for conducting the election to support, endorse and donate to my opponent."
Lopez is also the former registered agent for a group called Hardcore Democrats. The goal of the group is to "promote Democratic candidates for school board, city council, coroner, sheriff, county clerk, treasurer, RTD board, town council and district representatives only for the Democratic party."
According to state records, she was the agent for the group until mid-March. Lopez said that change was made because of the perception it may give to voters.
Lopez affirms the process is secure and that she wouldn't use her status to give any candidate insider information.
"I understand those concerns, but I can assure everyone that our elections have always been and will continue to be a fair and transparent process. Our elections team is staffed with highly knowledgeable individuals who have years of experience coordinating elections and adhere to all rules and regulations set forth by C.R.S. Title 1 Elections," Lopez said. "All candidates must also adhere to certain laws to ensure fairness. During election season, tabulation and ballot security is conducted by bipartisan teams. We also have a pre-audit and post-audit event that anyone is welcome to attend."
So far, Aurora hasn't signaled to Arapahoe County that there will be any kind of change in the coordinated election, according to the county clerk's spokeswoman. The city's election commission ran through several options the city has, including running its own election, contracting with another county and writing provisions into the agreement to ensure transparency. But none of those options were particularly easy to implement or enforce, members of the commission said.
Richardson said he wouldn't further push the issue of operating election differently, saying he feels any partisan involvement has stopped.
Arapahoe County Republican chair Dorothy Gotlieb penned an editorial questioning Lopez's fairness, writing "Can Arapahoe County voters truly accept that Clerk and Recorder Lopez is — and will be — fair, and will conduct elections beyond reproach. Can you?"
— KARA MASON, Staff Writer
Arapahoe County Sheriff Tyler Brown speaks to a room of deputies, July 8 at the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office.
County sheriff: Brown drowns Walcher
It's been just seven months since Tyler Brown pinned on his Arapahoe County Sheriff badge for the very first time.
And in the first half of 2019, the 36-year-old sheriff has spent significant time meeting a staff of some 750 personnel and a community of nearly 650,000 people. It's been a whirlwind introduction to bureaucracy for the young peace officer, who said swapping radio chatter for calendar invites, and moving from patrolling the street to sitting through lengthy board meetings has taken some getting used to.
"It's been a drastic change," Brown said when comparing his former role as a patrol officer in the tiny Denver hamlet of Mountain View with his current role as Arapahoe County Sheriff. "But it does take time sitting at a conference table to make sure all the moving parts are in the right place."
Brown shocked political observers from across the spectrum last November when he bested heavily favored Republican Dave Walcher to become the top cop for Colorado's oldest county. Despite being out-fundraised by a ratio of about 11 to 1, Brown defeated Walcher by nearly 8 percentage points, or roughly 20,000 votes.
Now, he's learning to walk the walk.
Brown inherited an aging jail, a bevy of political skeptics, and a Centennial City Council interested in looking into how it could create its own police department and bow out of a longstanding agreement between the local sheriff's office and nascent municipality.
Brown's quietly endeavored to dispatch most of those initial hurdles. Principally, he's worked with Centennial city officials to pen a revised but extended agreement between that city and the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office to have the latter continue to police the rapidly growing burg. The new agreement halved the previous contract between the two entities with an option to automatically renew the arrangement after five years, according to Brown.
Local sheriff's deputies have acted as Centennial's police force since the city was incorporated at the start of the century. Some 150 deputies currently patrol the city of more than 110,000 people. And those residents keep deputies busy; there were about 1,000 more calls for service in Centennial city limits than in all of unincorporated Arapahoe County last year, according to the Sheriff's 2018 report.
Still, Centennial city officials declined to pursue creating their own police department after they were told it would cost tens of millions of dollars to get a new agency up and running, according to recent media reports. Centennial City Council members tabbed Walcher to study the subject immediately after the 2018 election.
Walcher has declined to comment publicly on his work with Centennial. While he confirmed he has since started a new position with the City and County of Denver, he once again declined to comment on his work in Centennial or his time as Arapahoe County Sheriff for this story.
Brown, who began his law enforcement career with Aurora's Code Enforcement Division in 2007, said he was proud of the work he and his staff put into getting the Centennial contract squared, as well as a new program embedded within the agreement that will provide resources for mental health workers to go on calls with deputies in an effort to stem arrests of mentally ill people. Deemed the behavioral health response program, the new effort is designed to "bring mental health professionals into the field on specific calls for service to hopefully … get people who are in a mental health crisis services at home instead having to arrest them," Brown said.
Reducing the number of arrestees with mental health problems may also help with Brown's other significant public service campaign: allocating more money for the Arapahoe County Detention Center. Brown and his staff have been loudly advocating for a new facility on social media and at public meetings in recent months.
The aging jail near the Denver Broncos training facility is overcrowded, underfunded and unsafe, officials say. The jail recorded 24 assaults by inmates on jail staffers last year, the highest number in the facility's history, according to the sheriff's office.
Updating the jail is a project Brown said he inherited from Walcher, who in turn inherited the issue after he was appointed by the penultimate Sheriff Grayson Robinson.
Democratic County Commissioner Nancy Jackson said repairs at the jail have reached a boiling a point, and "nothing is off the table" in terms of updating the facility.
"It's like when you've got a car and you fix it and you fix it and then you realize it costs more to fix it than it does to get a new car — that's where we are with the jail," she said last month. "We're not asking for silk curtains or anything, but we are asking for plumbing that works, and it needs to be safe for deputies and the people that work there."
A new community steering committee tasked with recommending how county commissioners should address the jail's problems is expected to present its findings later this summer.
Aside from any drama with Centennial and the jail, Brown said he's been working to introduce himself to people he understands could be skeptical of his sudden ascension.
"I think new breeds uncertainty and uncertainty breeds a little bit of fear, and that's a given in any situation," the former college baseball standout said. " … I think we've won a lot of people over. If they were concerned, we've definitely extinguished those flames."
George Brauchler, the county's Republican District Attorney, was the first elected or appointed official to meet with the freshman sheriff after he was elected.
Brauchler, who supported and endorsed Walcher's unsuccessful re-election bid, said he was impressed with Brown's candid nature.
"As a guy who has known Dave Walcher for decades — I think he was one of the best sheriffs in this part of the country — I was taken with (Brown's) earnest interest in trying to do this job the right way," Brauchler said in March. "I never felt for a moment, and I still don't, like he had a political agenda, which is what you would expect out of law enforcement."
That there was not a mass exodus of staffers upon Brown's arrival was a positive sign, Brauchler said.
"There are a significant number of people who were in Dave Walcher's leadership who have stuck around, which tells me Tyler is not interested in cleaning out," he said.
Brown said his only early staff changes included a new undersheriff, public information officer, bureau chief, and a brand new captain.
"I didn't really see a need to shake things up," he said.
— QUINCY SNOWDON, Staff Writer
Arapahoe County Assessor, PK Kaiser, looks over the 2018 Abstract of Assessment and Levies, July 8 in his office.
County Assessor: Kaiser crashes over Scott
When Aurora voters filled in the bubbles on their ballots last November, they were greeted once again by a familiar name: PK Kaiser.
He's long been a persistent Democratic candidate for various Aurora and state offices, and last year, was the party's pick for Arapahoe County Assessor.
Kaiser's running for that office looked unlikely to some locals — especially on the Republican side — because of his lack of experience for the complex and bureaucratic county gig. The assessor's office mainly assesses property values, a crucial job that determines how much homeowners and property owners will pay the county in taxes.
Kaiser has also dabbled in controversy, including his alleging that a local Muslim religious leader was radicalizing Aurora youth. He made the charge in a 2017 letter to Sentinel Colorado, and he later retracted the allegation.
Now, months into the job, even Kaiser's opponents have no gripes about his work leading the county assessor office. He has also just completed his first season of valuing properties and notifying owners, and is currently fielding standard complaints about valuations.
Kaiser's run for the quiet, bureaucratic job came after a series of failed campaigns for more political offices.
He ran unsuccessfully to represent Aurora's House District 40 in the state House of Representatives in both 2010 and 2012.
He made bids for city council. In 2014, he also ran for his current job, Arapahoe County Assessor, but lost that race.
Kaiser did not have direct experience in assessing properties, unlike many assessors such as former Arapahoe County assessor Marc Scott, who work their way up through the county office ranks. Kaiser defeated Scott, a Republican, in November with a more than seven-point lead.
Kaiser is a real estate broker. He said he has not taken a contract since he took office as the county assessor, dodging a potential conflict of interest.
Although Kaiser's victory flipped the head assessor's office from Republican to Democratic, he said he retained all the staff from Scott's tenure. He describes his staff as "apolitical and professional."
He took the job at a particularly challenging time of development and growth.
Scott, the former assessor, told Sentinel Colorado last fall the total taxable value of property in Arapahoe County was likely to swell to more than $100 billion in 2019.
There are about 220,000 taxable properties to be regularly assessed in Arapahoe County as well as thousands more non-taxable properties including government buildings, schools and churches, Scott said.
In recent months, though, Kaiser and his staff have delivered a typical assessment of area properties.
This year, the office mailed 213,000 notices of value for real property, Kaiser said.
Property owners can, and do, contest their property assessment if they deem it unfair. The time period to do so just ended on July 1.
Kaiser said owners contested about 3-4 percent of the total property assessments. That's in line with the appeal rate in previous years.
He said his office expected a moderate increase in residential appeals while the protests in commercial, industrial and agriculture properties came down from the previous period. Vacant land parcel protests were higher due to larger land parcels splitting into small residential parcels, Kaiser said.
His office has since adjusted about 60 percent of residential appeals, but people still protesting the assessment can file an appeal with the county Board of Equalization before July 15.
Kaiser's tenure so far has drawn little criticism, if any.
Dorothy Gotlieb, chairwoman of the Arapahoe County Republican Party, said there was no criticism of Kaiser's performance that she was aware of. She said nothing "noticeable" has changed from prior procedures in the office.
"Not having much knowledge of assessment, he leaves things to his more knowledgeable staff," she said.
— GRANT STRINGER, Staff Writer
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Everyone agrees that Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey is a classic. But I'm here to praise the underrated, even abused sequel, Peter Hyams' 2010.
There are similarities, of course, as you'd expect from an original and its sequel. The special effects in both films are spectacular, and fairly well grounded in the science of the time. The relevant designs of 2001 are accurately replicated in 2010, so that if you watch them back to back, the continuity is pretty seamless. Both begin in the past, and end with moments of transcendence.
But the tonal difference is total.
In many ways, 2010 is the total antithesis of Kubrick, and I think that accounts for part of its less-than-stellar (no pun intended) critical reputation. Kubrick's film is all intellect, a cold and sterile depiction of Man (as opposed to a man) journeying into the future with the help of discreet alien intervention. To fully understand it, you have to read Arthur C. Clarke's novel, which I suppose is one big indicator of its serious intellectualism.
2010, on the other hand, is all about emotions. Its primary focus is character relationships: Floyd and Kirbuk; Chandra and HAL; HAL and Bowman; Curnow and Max. The film filters everything through its people, whereas Kubrick filtered his people through their technology, thus equating them with their machines, whether a spaceship or an animal's bone. Even the aliens, for Kubrick, are only known by their devices (the monoliths). In 2010, though, the aliens' presence is demonstrated through their relationship with the humans (such as Bowman's widow and mother), and the potential life on Europa.
The cast of 2001, while adequate, was kept functioning on such a bland level that no one registered as fully human. You have to be pretty dead-souled to call your four-year-old daughter on her birthday and make it sound like a business conference call, but that's exactly what Heywood Floyd does: the fact that's he's calling her FROM SPACE is more important than the fact that he's talking to his daughter on her birthday.
For 2010, only Keir Dullea (astronaut Dave Bowman) and the voice of Douglas Rain (as irreplaceable as the voice of HAL as Anthony Daniels is for C-3PO) returned. The other major returning character, Dr. Heywood Floyd, played in the original by William Sylvester, was now played by Roy Scheider.
Sylvester was perfectly fine for Kubrick, and has been solid in other genre films as well (Gorgo and The Devil Doll, for example). But by casting Roy Scheider, an actor known mainly for his tough, urban films like Marathon Man, The French Connection, and The Seven Ups, director Hyams deliberately gave us an actor, and character, with whom we immediately identified, who lacked both the plastic good looks of traditional leading men and the dead-eyed anti-presence of William Sylvester. Scheider came across fine as a scientist and academic, but he also seemed like a guy you might enjoy having a beer with. You can't imagine having a beer with anyone in Kubrick's film, with the slight possibility of HAL.
Still, there's no denying that 2001 was a game changer, while 2010 is simply (IMO) a very good film. From that perspective, the latter will always be in the literal and critical shadow of the former. But you know what? I enjoy watching 2010 more than I do 2001. I enjoy hanging out with Scheider, Helen Mirren, John Lithgow and Bob Balaban a lot more than watching William Sylvester sleep on his journey to the moon, or Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood dally around the Discovery.
And I bet secretly, you do, too.
Alex Bledsoe is author of the Eddie LaCrosse novels (The Sword-Edged Blonde, Burn Me Deadly, Dark Jenny, Wake of the Bloody Angel, and He Drank, and Saw the Spider), the novels of the Memphis vampires (Blood Groove and The Girls with Games of Blood) and the Tufa novels (The Hum and the Shiver and Wisp of a Thing).


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South-Central's serial killers
Here's a horrifying story from the Los Angeles Times about South-Central LA in 1984-1994 (recently renamed South LA to shed some memories):
Multiple killers, more than 100 victims
By Scott Gold and Andrew Blankstein
During a 10-year period beginning in 1984, several serial killers operated in South Los Angeles, all of them targeting young, poor, African American women.
... The recent arrest of another man accused of being a serial killer active in that era, Lonnie David Franklin Jr. — allegedly the long-sought Grim Sleeper — prompted jubilation and noisy public pronouncements. The celebrations served to obscure, once again, a terrible truth about South Los Angeles: During a 10-year period beginning in 1984, multiple serial killers operated there, all of them targeting young, poor, African American women.
All told, between 1984 and 1993, more than 100 women, almost all African American, were killed by men targeting more than one victim in South L.A. and the surrounding neighborhoods, police say. So far, police have positively linked 30 of those deaths to five men:
Franklin, 57, has been charged with 10 counts of murder. Turner, 43, is on death row after raping and strangling 10 women, one of whom was six months pregnant. Louis Craine was convicted of strangling four women between 1984 and 1987; he later died in prison, at 31. Michael Hughes, 54, was accused of killing eight, four in South L.A. and nearby Inglewood. And Daniel Lee Seibert confessed to killing 13 across the United States, two of them in South L.A.; he died in prison, at 53, in 2008.
Biological evidence suggests that at least two more men, who have not been apprehended, were each responsible for at least four more deaths, officials said. That would mean at least seven serial killers were preying on women in the same neighborhood at roughly the same time.
During the years in which they were active, the South Los Angeles killers never earned the noir nicknames of the region's other infamous killers — the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler.
Those other crimes were notorious sagas that gained national attention and had parts of the metropolis in a state of panic. By contrast, few people in South L.A., including parents of victims, were even aware of a serial killer operating in their neighborhood — much less five or more. While the more publicized cases had distinctive hallmarks, in South L.A. there were so many people being killed, almost all of them from the margins of society, that it was difficult for neighbors or police to pinpoint any patterns.
The rapes and murders of dozens of young women were, effectively, lost in the crime wave.
"Could you imagine — more than 100 women killed and nobody notices?" said Margaret Prescod, who founded an organization 24 years ago to press for a more aggressive response to the killings and now hosts a radio show. "Could you imagine it in Beverly Hills? Palos Verdes?"
This reminds me of a theory I've been noodling with: that the domino-like impetus for much of the recent Housing Bubble/Bust began, more than anywhere else, in the LA Basin south of the Santa Monica Freeway. A lot of people who were already there were trying hard to get out (for reasons readily understandable from this article) and a lot of people in other countries were trying hard to get in.
In the very long run, the gentrification of South-Central LA will be a huge deal -- the climate is too nice for it not to happen someday. (Financial Warning: Someday may not come until after you are broke.)
By Steve Sailer on 8/03/2010 Labels: crime
By the way, in case you are wondering, since there has long been the assumption that serial killers are white, I looked up this Daniel Lee Siebert name from the article as the most likely to be white, and I think he was white.
the shooter in connecticut is a black american. that's probably enough to torpedo the majority of the television coverage of this latest shooting. i suspect most news outlets will lose interest in this one fairly quickly.
apparently, his employers were going to fire him for stealing. guess he had other ideas.
it's now getting to be kind of sad how predictible the white girlfriend and white girlfriend's mother come flying out of the woodwork to tell us all about how good of a guy the perpetrator was and how he would never do something like this.
this is worse of a trend in the UK but it's kind of bad even in the US.
i'm not sure what the end game is here, a society in 2050 where black americans are routinely bulldozing people and their white relatives go on the offensive trying to defend them.
basically, the current system for handling football players and basketball players when they break the law, but extended to the general population.
DYork said...
Interesting that the article author didn't mention the race of the killers. Looks like all but one were black.
Again only when black = victim is race mentionable in polite society.
A good topic would be "Race, the media and serial killers". Most people I would guess have no idea the significant number of black serial killers. Obviously black males are perpetrators of single murders far beyond their percentage of the population. But they are also estimated to be 20% of the serial killers, often targeting not poor black women but White women as well. The recent arrest of LA's serial killer John Thomas is an example.
I believe all of greater L.A.'s most recent five serial killers have been black. Lonnie Franklin Jr., John Floyd Thomas, Chester Dewayne Turner, Ivan Hill and Michael Hughes. I wonder if Louis Craine makes six.
La Griffe on serial killers:
http://lagriffedulion.f2s.com/serial.htm
Of all the things I've always found unfathomable about LA -- and there are many -- the single most puzzling has always been why the poor occupy the majority of the city's Great Weather Zone, a place virtually unmatched in all the world for pleasantness, while so many middle (and even upper-middle) class people have lived in behind the first set of hills, in places with below average weather.
What other possible reason is there for living in LA other than the weather. If you live in a section of LA where the weather is like Phoenix or Dallas, why wouldn't you move to those cities, which are better than LA in almost every single respect other than weather?
A while back, La Griffe du Lion wrote an essay about this.
Basically the idea was that even though Blacks & Hispanics have a much higher propensity for violence [their mean is far out to the right of the White mean], their criminality bell curves are nevertheless much sharper [lower standard deviation], whereas the White criminality bell curve is much flatter [higher standard deviation], so that at the far right tail [where serial killers live], the White curve eventually swamps the Black and Hispanic curves.
One scary possibility here is that if there are that many serial killers in a low-IQ vicinity like South Central [with a broad, flat, low standard deviation criminality bell curve], then there must be a heckuva lot more of them in a higher-IQ vicinity [with a broad, flat, high standard-deviation criminality bell curve].
On the other hand, another possibility is that the police and the medical examiners and the district attorneys covering South Central were so stupid, lazy, and inept that they just weren't capable of catching the serial killers - but that in higher-IQ vicinities, you get a higher quality of policeman and medical examiner and district attorney, who have more success at tracking down, convicting, and incarcerating their would-be serial killers.
Another possibility is that the serial killers do indeed exist in the higher-IQ vicinities, in much higher numbers, but that they are so much more intelligent than the authorities that they never get caught [ergo the little children on the milk cartons and on the posters at Walmart are never found].
In fact, it would be a pretty interesting exercise [in a cross-disciplinary nexus of psychology and criminology] to try to figure out the IQ necessary to catch a serial killer [or to catch any given criminal, for that matter].
Clearly a police detective with an IQ of 120 shouldn't have all that much difficulty catching a car thief with an IQ of 80, but can a police detective with an IQ of 115 catch a serial killer with an IQ of 145, or 160?
Or can a quota-hire minority police detective, with an IQ of 90, catch a fellow minority serial killer, with an IQ of 105, or 110?
On average, that might not be possible.
John Craig said...
One of the more interesting developmens of the internet age is that we can now read the comments from readers after an article about a crime where race was an angle. Yahoo News has such a feature and the NY Post has such a feature. They are a wonderful way to gauge the public temperature (and they are also a great way to let the public's raw emotions boil to the surface). I always read the comments after such an article in the Post because they're generally more amusing than the article itself, and I suspect most Isteve readers would be surprised how many racially aware people there are out there. The comments always quickly break down to white vs. black.
The reporters, who must conform to standard journalese, don't play up the central racial angle, but the readers do it for them.
OT: any thoughts on Omar Thornton, the black Conn beer truck driver who after being caught stealing shot up 8 coworkers? At some point Thornton made unfounded claims of racism. The report doesn't give the races of the victims, but this looks like potentially a hate-crime to me.
How is this different from Africa?
I've often wondered why, even though most of us have a middle name, only a serial killer is known by all three of his. I imagine it's to save a person named "Daniel Siebert" or "Henry Lucas" or "John Gacy" from strange looks every time someone learns his name.
In more current crime news, black man caught stealing at the beer distributorship where he worked shoots 10 people at his workplace, killing 8 of them, before killing himself. Family blames this on racial bias.
I believe that the reason that serial killers are said to be generally white is because the race of serial killers appears to be roughly proportionate to their incidence in the population. Whereas the casual street violence murders are very heavily black, the stalking, deliberate targeting murders are more racially balanced.
Even so I think there's a small preponderance of blacks even among these twisted hunters of humans. I seem to remember that the blacks have a serial murder rate about 5% or 10% higher than that of whites. Of course for "regular" murder the black rate is 700% or more of the white rate.
These rates are not well known to the general public because they are not typically reported on TV or what's left of newspapers.
Christopher Paul said...
There you again about the climate. As if SoCal is the only habitable spot left in the universe. Well, the climate hasn't kept whites in their droves from fleeing to affordably form their families elsewhere. The truth is, only fatties and old fogies like Steve think it should be 60 degrees and cloudy in July and cold every night of the year. The rest of us are taking a long look at Miami.
Chief Seattle said...
The Seattle Times conveniently left out a picture of yesterday's CT mass shooter. So I'm left to assume he was just another angry male, probably spurred on by Glen Beck and Limbaugh.
TV says serial killing is a white thing.
I believe TV. TV is my friend!
"Could you imagine — more than 100 women killed and nobody notices?" "Could you imagine it in Beverly Hills? Palos Verdes?"
Of course we cannot imagine it, Margaret! We cannot imagine it because people actually care about one another in Beverly Hills and Palos Verdes. And even not-rich white folks care about each other. Compare the flooding in Fargo, ND with the flooding in New Orleans.
And that is why black people have always fought for integration: they gave up on their own race and tribe and desperately want to move in with white folks in white neighborhoods where they can be taken care of and where their daughters and sons won't be raped and killed by black folks, and where they can "act white" and survive to adulthood..
The only problem is that they always want to invite Cousin Pookie and Ray-Ray over to visit, and the next thing you know they be breakin' into the neighbor houses and shiznitz like that.
But, yeah, Margaret, I can relate. You don't see that crazy-azz killin' in Beverly Hills and Palos Verdes. A real shame, ain't it?
Arizona just dealt with our own black serial killer, with more details emerging all the time:
http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2010/08/04/20100804baseline-killer-case-new-details.html
But the shooter complained to his White girlfriend that he has been a victim of racism on the job and nobody helped him.
Black racist mass murderer = try to ignore.
Black victim of White racism driven to kill = give attention to the case as another example of White America's shameful racist legacy and the poor angelic black folk brought down by it.
The vibrantly Latino Richard Ramirez feels ignored.
Paul Mendez said...
A serial-killer that targets young, poor black women is likely to be black himself, if only because he would have to be able to go unnoticed in the neighborhoods where one finds young, poor black women.
The Atlanta murderer of young black men in 1979-81 was originally assumed by the media to be a racist, white KKK type. Turned out to be Wayne Williams, a gay black man.
A Klansman trolling black neighborhoods in Atlanta woulda kinda stood out.
Hey, Steve, don't count on the gentrification of "South Los Angeles" until it happens in lots of other places in Southern California that are west of Interstate 405 -- i.e., have an even better climate than "South L.A."
Torrance, Lomita, Carson, Long Beach all have poor areas.
But the how-is-it-possible-this-place-hasn't-been-gentrified comment applies most of all to Ocean Beach in San Diego. Stunning setting full of the homeless, bums, head shops, pawn shops, liquor stores and dive bars.
When these places are gentrified, then maybe it will be "South L.A.'s" turn.
John Floyd Thomas had targeted elderly white women over a 30 year span. This killer of white women had been dubbed The Westside Rapist. Some think he killed more than any LA serial killer ever.
By late 2008, the LAPD was trying everything to catch the Grim Sleeper, one of the killers of black women. All known black sex offenders of a certain age were called in to give a DNA sample under the law enacted in 2004, Prop 69.
One John Floyd Thomas, an insurance claims adjuster (and friend of Earl Ofari Hutchinson), dutifully gave his DNA. Thomas didn't match the Grim Sleeper profile, but he was linked to two elderly white women murdered as far back as 1976. He has since been linked by DNA to the murders of three more women, all white and elderly.
So Thomas was caught by accident. The priority was on the Grim Sleeper, not the Westside Rapist.
Thomas had been convicted several times of rape (always white women), and contrary to myth, had served short prison sentences. Not only that, he had a good job and was friendly with the esteemed Mr. Hutchinson.
Plenty of ironies here.
Well, as we have all learned from the eternal controversy over Willie Horton, noticing and fearing black killers be racis'. Therefore, the media could not and should not have noticed that there was a pack of serial killers in South Central.
After all, white opposition to crime be racis'. This opposition is merely the wholly irrational white prejudice that people who have been convicted of raping, robbing and murdering tend to commit rape, robbery and murder, which are all undesirable acts. This is, of course, a fallacy, and banning crime is nothing more than an excuse to put blacks away! (Why they feel black "criminals" should be locked away is a mystery and it's best that we not contemplate such things.)
As an inevitable corollary, blacks, who literally cannot be racis', necessarily do not oppose crime. Therefore, black women in South Central do not care if they get murdered and would not be interested in hearing about such occurrences.
Add Venice to the areas that should be gentrified, but are not.
Gentrification is very hard to pull off, in New Orleans I knew a couple of people with big plans for the lower Garden District, very beautiful houses, who were not able to pull it off. The crime waves just beat you down.
As far as catching serial killers, almost all of it seems to come from DNA analysis and dragnets. For example, the Grim Sleeper was caught because a relative had a somewhat matching profile, and the detectives targeted the rest of the family (the killer's son was in jail and had DNA sampled).
I don't think that the coverage of the CT spree-killer Thornton ("my victims were racists!") will have the effect the media thinks it will have.
Tscottme said...
Does black culture in the US or Africa value human life?
Regarding those areas west of the 405: Steve has long shown zero interest in the South Bay and its shadows. His L.A. stops at the 10.
Whiskey, what part of Venice are you referring to? Because the area near the boardwalk is too nutty, the area around Lincoln is too gritty, and the nicer area with the canals seems plenty gentrified already (and appropriately overpriced).
Plus, Venice is a district of the city of L.A., which no one wants any part of. Culver City, right next door, gentrified rather painlessly. Its police actually come when you call.
"Black victim of White racism driven to kill = give attention to the case as another example of White America's shameful racist legacy and the poor angelic black folk brought down by it."
you could be right. maybe i underestimate their ability to spin the story. this one could become yet another instance of turning the world upside down so the african killer is actually the victim here. up is down, left is right, red is blue, when africans attack it's because they are victims, not perpetrators.
the speed with which this spin often happens for many african athletes is blinding. it truly is dizzying speed, where a total asshole, who has been an asshole his entire career, is suddenly a helpless, defenseless victim and it's just not fair how the entire world is coming down on his head. the NFL is completely, probably irrevocably compromised by this principle.
this is especially true in track & field when they are caught using sports drugs. instantaneously, and i mean, in like 0.0 seconds, they transform from arrogant, cocky invincible superhumans who openly sneer at their white competitors, and become innocent, helpless children, the victims of their own white coaches and trainers, who "tricked" them into taking enough sports drugs to kill a horse. "I didn't know what I was taking, they just told me to take it." oh, poor, defenseless, 28 year old man child, those evil whites tricked you. we should all help you and protect you from those heartless drug testers and evil, institutionally racist track & field organizations who want to apply the rules equally to all competitors. they want to ban you? it's so NOT FAIR that you might not be allowed to compete in this sport again! it's THEM trying to ruin YOUR life, and not any other way. the IAAF is hurting YOU. you didn't do anything wrong! let's all forgive your cheating and pretend it didn't happen. 3 years from now we'll never talk about it again and you'll be back to being a total asshole.
"Clearly a police detective with an IQ of 120 shouldn't have all that much difficulty catching a car thief with an IQ of 80, but can a police detective with an IQ of 115 catch a serial killer with an IQ of 145, or 160?"
You raise an important point. Police departments around the country need to start recruiting from Mensa to defend against the Hannibal Lecter threat.
"Gentrification is very hard to pull off, in New Orleans I knew a couple of people with big plans for the lower Garden District, very beautiful houses, who were not able to pull it off. The crime waves just beat you down."
For gentrification, it helps to have some sort of industry attracting high wage earners (either that or a steady supply of trustafarians). New Orleans long ceded its natural geographic role as the main Gulf Coast port to Houston, and there isn't much industry there besides tourism.
Peter A said...
"If you live in a section of LA where the weather is like Phoenix or Dallas, why wouldn't you move to those cities, which are better than LA in almost every single respect other than weather?"
Maybe because those are two of the most boring,ugly, culturally starved cities in the US? Dallas does have its charms, to be fair. Phoenix, not so much.
In the very long run, the gentrification of South-Central LA will be a huge deal -- the climate is too nice for it not to happen someday.
That's how the theory goes: the places with great climate should be full of wealthy, functional individuals who outbid all the riff-raff. In practice, it doesn't seem to pan out very often. Oakland will probably always be Oakland, don't you think?
Black Americans live in Bizarro World. For example, this story from today's headlines:
"A masked man armed with an assault-style rifle fired dozens of shots on a birthday party at a house in an inner-city Indianapolis neighborhood early Tuesday, killing two people and wounding six before fleeing, police said.
Around 30 people were attending the
birthday barbecue when the shooting
happened shortly after midnight, Indianapolis police Lt. Jeff Duhamell said. A motive was not immediately known."
Who barbecues on Tuesday morning just after midnight?
that last comment was relevant. In reality, West Oakland (where Frank Robinson and Bill Russell grew up), has the best climate anywhere. Never gets as hot or muggy as L.A.
OT, but the Post has an update on that FDNY story you've blogged about before: "Judge blocks hiring of 300 new firefighters".
ATBOTL said...
La Griffe seems to be underestimating the number of Hispanic serial killers. Some of the most famous serial killers have been Hispanic: Juan Corona, Richard Ramirez(AKA the Nightstalker) and Rafael Resendez Ramirez. I can think of several Puerto Rican serial killers in NYC that did not receive national media attention. To the extent that Hispanics are underrepresented among serial killers in some these studies, it's probably because the studies go back to the 60's when the Hispanic population was very small.
I came across a print copy of the LAT today and saw that this story was top center, and even had photos of the four black + one white serial killers above the fold. Surprising they'd do that.
La Griffe seems to be underestimating the number of Hispanic serial killers...it's probably because the studies go back to the 60's when the Hispanic population was very small.
Not just the 'Hispanic' population, the US-born 'Hispanics.' If you were a serial killer, would you stay in corrupt, violent, incompetently policed Mexico/sub-Mexico or move to the US? A killer must be less likely to get caught in Mexico City's slums than even LA.
Yeah, guys like Hannibal Lecter and Meir Wallach-Finkelstein.
Chris said..."I came across a print copy of the LAT today and saw that this story was top center, and even had photos of the four black + one white serial killers above the fold. Surprising they'd do that."
Surprising? To whom? Certainly not to me. Did you read the article to which Steve linked yesterday? The implication was that while the area in which these murders occurred does have a lot of crime, if the victims had been...oh, say, white...there would have been more awareness and the LAPD would have worked harder.
From the article: "...in South L.A. there were so many people being killed, almost all of them from the margins of society, that it was difficult for neighbors or police to pinpoint any patterns.
'Could you imagine — more than 100 women killed and nobody notices?' said Margaret Prescod, who founded an organization 24 years ago to press for a more aggressive response to the killings and now hosts a radio show. 'Could you imagine it in Beverly Hills? Palos Verdes?'"
It's of more use these days to the left than to the right to point out that a criminal is black. Institutional racism, impoverished neighborhoods, failing schools, disparities in the justice system, etc. all contribute to the high rate of crime among black people, so say those who choose to spin it that way. So that the crimes committed by blacks are just more proof of white racism.
Back when serial killing was thought to be a white thing, one of the explanations (rationalizations) here, on Amren, and elsewhere was that this was because it took a "high IQ" to kill for years and not get caught.
I take it the psychological profile of serial killers has changed now?
One scary possibility here is that if there are that many serial killers in a low-IQ vicinity like South Central [with a sharp, steep, low standard deviation criminality bell curve], then there must be a heckuva lot more of them in a higher-IQ vicinity [with a broad, flat, high standard-deviation criminality bell curve].
""Could you imagine — more than 100 women killed and nobody notices?" said Margaret Prescod, who founded an organization 24 years ago to press for a more aggressive response to the killings and now hosts a radio show. "Could you imagine it in Beverly Hills? Palos Verdes?""
Maybe the "Stop Snitching" ethos has consequences.
http://newamericamedia.org/2010/07/stop-snitching-creator-sentenced-to-20-years.php
Funny how "Truth" is strangely silent on topics like this one.
He must be out watering his car.
"I take it the psychological profile of serial killers has changed now?"
do we know for sure these guys are not smarter than average? maybe they are, maybe they aren't. but it's possible they are.
african NFL players are smarter than average, for instance. offensive players are about as smart as euro americans, maybe a little smarter.
Truth said..."Back when serial killing was thought to be a white thing, one of the explanations (rationalizations) here, on Amren, and elsewhere was that this was because it took a 'high IQ' to kill for years and not get caught.
I take it the psychological profile of serial killers has changed now?"
New information may indeed cause existing theories to be modified so as to fit all the facts available, yes.
It probably does take a higher IQ to commit murder in otherwise low-crime areas and go undetected (e.g., Bundy operating on college campuses, Gacy in a working-class neighborhood) than to murder in an area already so rife with violence that any one murder doesn't stand out.
From the LAT article:"...in South L.A. there were so many people being killed, almost all of them from the margins of society, that it was difficult for neighbors or police to pinpoint any patterns.
The rapes and murders of dozens of young women were, effectively, lost in the crime wave."
That said, I've always thought in serial murder, as in the detection of crime itself, luck is as important as intelligence, skill and experience. One of the most successful (i.e. prolific) serial killers, Gary Ridgway, always struck me as downright dumb (Wikipedia states his IQ as 82) but incredibly lucky.
"New information may indeed cause existing theories to be modified so as to fit all the facts available, yes."
But I think you misunderstand; when it was thought that black guys didn't do it, it was, "because it's a high IQ endeavor." - rationalization
Now that black guys do it it's: YOU SEE, I TOLD YOU BLACKS DO IT!
Truth said..."But I think you misunderstand."
You think?
Earlier I said..."New information may indeed cause existing theories to be modified so as to fit all the facts available, yes."
Let me translate: When it was thought serial killing was a white thing, that was b/c only white murderers were smart enough to go undetected. Now that we know black guys are also serial killers, that whole higher IQ thing just went out the window.
Initially, I was trying to be tactful by being oblique. Apparently, you mistook my being oblique for being dense.
"Back when serial killing was thought to be a white thing, one of the explanations (rationalizations) here, on Amren, and elsewhere was that this was because it took a "high IQ" to kill for years and not get caught.
I was never under this illusion. There was a black serial killer operating in the black neighborhood adjacent to where I grew up. It was a big local news story for a little while. When they caught him, he was a high school drop out ex-con. So I always knew that blacks could be serial killers and it didn't take a genius to do it.
I think the media is responsible for the idea that serial killers and others who perpetrate sensational crimes are intelligent. In every movie and TV show, the bad guy is incredibly cunning, makes ingenious booby traps, has an appreciation of classical music etc.
In the spirit of the MSM's agonizing over the Hartford shootings, we should ask: "What did these women do to deserve their getting killed?"
One pertinent fact everybody here seems to be missing is that serial killing is more a function of sociopathy and a deviant sexuality than IQ. And sociopaths -- as well as sexual sadists -- come in a full range of IQs.
The smarter serial killers probably rack up higher numbers not only because they're more skillful at avoiding detection but also because they're more skillful at manipulation, i.e., convincing women to get into their car, putting them at ease, etc. This is why a sociopath with a normal sexuality is more likely to be a successful womanizer. A sociopath with a deviant sexuality, however, is a very dangerous animal because in his world, your life is worth less than his orgasm.
It's my impression that while there is a racial difference in IQ, there is also a racial difference in deviant sexuality -- with whites more likely to be deviant. (I can't back this up with any statistics, it's just an impression: blacks are into basic rutting, whites have whole panoply of perversions needed to turn them on.)
Also, keep in mind that there is a difference between a guy who rapes a girl because he just wants to get laid and then kills her afterward so she won't report him, and a guy who needs a dying (or at least extremely frightened) girl to turn him on, like Ted Bundy. (Bundy was also reported to have had sex with the corpses of a few of his victims.) Both men are sociopaths, but they are different types of killers. It's my impression that black serial killers are more likely to be the former type, whites more likely to be the latter.
Anyway, all these thing have to be taken into account when discussing serial killers.
Anonymouse: John Floyd Thomas had targeted elderly white women over a 30 year span... an insurance claims adjuster (and friend of Earl Ofari Hutchinson)... was caught by accident.
jody: do we know for sure these guys are not smarter than average? maybe they are, maybe they aren't. but it's possible they are.
JFT's Wikipedia page says that he was in the Air Force in the 1950s [briefly, before a dishonorable discharge].
And the Air Force has always had the highest standards for IQ scores on the AFQT [or whatever the equivalent would have been, back in the 1950s].
And while I don't know diddly-squat about the day-to-day operations of an insurance agency, it wouldn't surprise me if an insurance claims adjuster needed an IQ out towards the vicinity of 110 [just to have any hope of e.g. grappling with an Excel spreadsheet].
Along those lines, Arthur Hu's Wonderlic-to-IQ conversion table has "bookkeeper" listed at IQ 108 to 118.
So suppose John Floyd Thomas did have an IQ of 110, or maybe even 115.
And suppose he was being pursued by a quota-hire police detective, with an IQ of 90, or 95.
I.e. suppose John Floyd Thomas had an IQ that was about 20 [or 25] points higher than the people who were trying to catch him.
Would it then be realistic to expect that the much stupider police detective could catch the much smarter serial killer?
John Craig: The smarter serial killers probably rack up higher numbers not only because they're more skillful at avoiding detection but also because they're more skillful at manipulation, i.e., convincing women to get into their car, putting them at ease, etc.
Along those lines, a black serial killer with an IQ of 100+ is going to be preying on black victims with IQs in the 80s, 70s, and 60s, so he is going to have an enormous intelligence advantage in reconnoitering, hunting, capturing, and killing his prey.
Evil Sandmich said...
Cleveland had their own black serial killer quite recently who went after black women:
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/04/more_charges_filed_against_ant.html
It doesn't help police when the victims aren't quite responsible citizens and are prone to disappearing for weeks at a time voluntarily.
"Anonymous Mr. Anon said...
Funny how "Truth" is strangely silent on topics like this one."
I made the post two above your's already there, Count van Count.
"Initially, I was trying to be tactful by being oblique. Apparently, you mistook my being oblique for being dense."
Alright Kylie, I'll give it a third shot...nah, actually I won't it's a waste of time, but anyway when are you meeting Kudzu Bob for a drink, he seems like a nice young white nationalist just ready to start a family?
"Truth said...
I made the post two above your's already there, Count van Count."
You hadn't when I submitted my post. I don't control the comment queue. But fair enough, you piped up on this. Anything to say about the latest beer summit? Like, trying to convince those people that they weren't really murdered by a black man, so what are they worried about?
By the way, your moniker is no less anonymous than mine is.
"ATBOTL said...
I think the media is responsible for the idea that serial killers and others who perpetrate sensational crimes are intelligent. In every movie and TV show, the bad guy is incredibly cunning, makes ingenious booby traps, has an appreciation of classical music etc."
I think you are right. Police work has gotten better, and different jurisdictions actually communicate with each other regularly, which was not always the case when a lot of the most infamous serial killers made their names. A lot of these fiends are not much different than a tiresome bore who is obsessed with some tedious and silly hobby (model trains, fantasy football, collecting commemorative ball point pens, etc.). The only difference is that, in this case, his tedious hobby involves murdering and dismembering people.
Which, by the way, reminds me of this classic skit by Dave Foley:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2jtu3hDhMU
"Anything to say about the latest beer summit? Like, trying to convince those people that they weren't really murdered by a black man, so what are they worried about?"
I'm not sure what difference it makes, a black man of questionable sanity murdered some white people he barely knew, so what? It seems to happen at least once a month where a white person murders some white people he barely knew, and Steve ignores it; do you know something I don't know? Are white people murdered by white people a little (most white murder victims) bit less dead?
Are white people murdered by white people a little (most white murder victims) bit less dead?"
No, white people who are murdered by blacks are no more dead than those murdered by whites. But white people who have to deal with blacks are more likely to end up murdered, raped, robbed, or beaten.
"But the how-is-it-possible-this-place-hasn't-been-gentrified comment applies most of all to Ocean Beach in San Diego. Stunning setting full of the homeless, bums, head shops, pawn shops, liquor stores and dive bars."
Ah, yes. O.B. Where the debris meets the sea.
"But white people who have to deal with blacks are more likely to end up murdered, raped, robbed, or beaten."
Now that may be true, and it may not be true, but I'll give you something that is true; white victims of rape, murder and assault are overwhelmingly victimized by whites. Look it up!
Now that may be true, and it may not be true, but I'll give you something that is true; white victims of rape, murder and assault are overwhelmingly victimized by whites. Look it up!"
Depends on which whites you are talking about. I don't live in a trailer park with a bunch of toothless meth addicts. I live in a city with a large black population. My chances of being robbed or assaulted by blacks are probably greater than my chances of being robbed or assaulted by whites.
By the way, since a lot of crime statistics class people who are clearly mestizo latin-american as "white", the crime rate among real (european stock) whites is lower than the (faulty) statistics would indicate.
Anyway, with that brief digression, I'll let you get back to making excuses for black criminals.
>Who barbecues on Tuesday morning just after midnight?<
Probably not Kagan's neighbors.
"Depends on which whites you are talking about.
No, it really doesn't my good man; if you can trace your heritage to Europe you are a white person, and all white people in America are more likely to be killed by another white person than a black person. I did not make up the stats, the DOJ and the FBI did.
"Anyway, with that brief digression, I'll let you get back to making excuses for black criminals."
Exactly where did I do that?
BunBun4life said...
The myth and the LIE that 'serial killers are all white' kept Atlanta serial killer Wayne Williams from being captured more quickly, leading to several more deaths.
Generally, serial killers kill within their race; however, black serial killers frequently focus on white victims. Carl Eugene Watts, John Floyd Thomas, Jr. (probable 30 vics, sentenced to 7, all elderly white women he raped & killed) You RARELY hear of a white serial killer targeting only blacks & that is often a sexual predilection, such as being attracted to blacks. Many of the black serial killers who murder whites just hate white people and are racist.
@the person who said white men raped white women OVERWHELMINGLY more often than were raped by blacks, that's not really true. Considering blacks only account for 14% of the US population (hispanics are now 16%) the past few years average of around 70% of white rape victims perceived their rapist as white. Anywhere from 17 to 27% perceived their rapists as black (depending on the year). Usually 100% or almost 100% of black rape victims said their rapist was black.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Fannie Mae Dees Park is a unique park in Nashville, Tennessee as it features a large colorful mosaic dragon sculpture that slithers through the landscape, giving the park the name the Dragon Park.
Located at 2400 Blakemore Avenue, the park was created in 1978 and was named after Fannie Mae Dees, a local civic leader.
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With the dragon as the centerpiece, Fannie Mae Dees Park also features a large playground, big grassy areas, pavilions, a fountain with bottle filling station and picnic shelters, which are available for rental. It is open 24 hours a day to serve those who want to play, relax, unwind, run and restore some lost energy. It is the perfect place for a retreat.


text:
California attorney general's opposition to T-Mobile/Sprint deal will be the deciding factor in CPUC's review
21 January 2020, by	Steve Blum	• becerra, cpuc, monopoly, sprint, t-mobile
Advice from California's attorney general hasn't played much of a role in the California Public Utilities Commission's review of major telecoms mergers in recent years, but T-Mobile's proposed takeover of Sprint will be different. Attorney general Xavier Becerra's forceful opposition to the merger will, all but certainly, figure prominently in whatever decision the CPUC makes.
When evaluating major transactions involving regulated utilities, state law requires the CPUC to "request an advisory opinion from the attorney general regarding whether competition will be adversely affected and what mitigation measures could be adopted".
Mere advice or not, the AG's office expects the CPUC to listen. Or at least it did in 2015 when it gave a green light to the Frontier' purchase of Verizon's wireline telephone systems. The opinion from then-attorney general Kamala Harris warned that even though California law considers it "as advisory" and does not require the commission to defer to it, "the attorney general's advice is entitled to the weight commonly accorded an attorney general's opinion" and "attorney general opinions are generally accorded great weight".
Three big telecoms deals have been reviewed by the CPUC in the past five years – Frontier's takeover of Verizon's territories, Comcast's three-way purchase and market consolidation deal with Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable and, after that was killed by federal antitrust enforcers, Charter's takeover of Time Warner.
I've looked through the records of those three cases, and a formal opinion from the California AG appears in only one – Frontier/Verizon. It found that allowing Frontier to take over operation of Verizon's decaying copper lines would "not adversely impact competition", since the two companies didn't compete directly with each other and the deal wouldn't block new market entrants. That finding was cited among the many reasons the CPUC approved the transaction, albeit with a long list of conditions.
No mention was made, though, of AG opinions in the course of the CPUC's review of the two cable transactions. It's worth noting that the same logic might be applied – like telcos, cable companies don't directly compete with each other in local markets.
That's not true of T-Mobile and Sprint. They're fierce competitors, particularly at the lower end of the mobile broadband and voice market, and approval of their merger depends on whether DISH can plausibly replace the competitive heat that would be lost if they combine. That's a far more complicated question to answer. I think it's a safe bet that the AG's office will respond to the CPUC's pro forma request for advice, and it won't be ignored.
What Becerra will tell the CPUC about T-Mobile/Sprint merger
California's attorney general has more than one roadblock he can try to throw into T-Mobile's path to a takeover of Sprint. The antitrust suit that Xavier Becerra and other state attorneys general filed in a New York federal court is one possibility. Closing arguments were made in that case last week – the judge hearing it didn't ask any questions, so there are no clues about what he's thinking. His decision is expected in the late February/early March time frame. Maybe.
Becerra's other option lies with the California Public Utilities Commission, which is also reviewing the deal. Assuming it's treated as a major merger (i.e. involves a utility company under CPUC jurisdiction with at least $500 million of annual Californian revenue – that's one of many points lawyers are wrangling), California law says…
Before authorizing the merger, acquisition, or control of any…telephone corporation organized and doing business in this state…the commission shall find that the proposal not adversely affect competition. In making this finding, the commission shall request an advisory opinion from the Attorney General regarding whether competition will be adversely affected and what mitigation measures could be adopted to avoid this result.
That opinion is requested and delivered privately, and typically doesn't become public until the CPUC publishes a proposed decision. But it's not hard to guess what Becerra will say. After the New York hearing wrapped up, Becerra put out a statement saying…
There should be no question now: this attempted megamerger would thwart competition in the telecom market and harm consumers from California to New York, and everywhere in between…At trial, we have repeatedly demonstrated the dramatically increased market concentration that would result if T-Mobile and Sprint were to merge.
Right now, Sprint and T-Mobile compete intensely with each other on price, features and quality. That's competition we can't afford to lose.
As you might expect in the middle of litigation, Becerra didn't publicly suggest any "mitigation measures" – his stated solution is to not allow the merger at all. If that's the advice he's offering privately, then the CPUC will either have to try to block it (whether it can or not is another billing bonanza for the lawyers), or reach into the evidence presented and demonstrate why Becerra is wrong.
It's one thing to sort out the arguments made by litigating parties – in this case it's the CPUC's public advocates office, the Communications Workers of America, consumer advocacy groups versus T-Mobile, Sprint and, following megabuck payoffs to buy their support, DISH and the California Emerging Technology Fund. It's quite another for the CPUC to argue T-Mobile's case against the California attorney general.
Penalties, but not prevention, for deceptive ISP billing practices
17 January 2020, by	Steve Blum	• att, comcast, frontiercommunications, minnesota, monopoly
Cost of Cable Fees in an Average
Monthly Cable Bill (2018). Source: Consumer Reports
It's common practice for big, monopoly model broadband providers to promise low prices to new subscribers, then tack on arbitrary fees after they're locked into long term contracts. AT&T was recently slammed for adding a property tax surcharge to some customers' bills – no one has figured out yet why AT&T thinks it can do that in the first place, let alone why it more than doubled the charge – California property tax rate hikes are tightly restricted. Frontier Communications also adds fees on top of the rates customers have agreed to.
Comcast is a frequent target of consumer billing complaints, and state attorneys general are listening. Just about a year ago, the Minnesota attorney general took Comcast to court over billing practices. The case was settled on Wednesday. According to the Minnesota AG…
Part of being able to afford your life means knowing the full cost of what you're getting, getting what you were promised, not being overcharged for things you didn't ask for, and not being unfairly charged to get rid of things you didn't ask for. But when people signed up for Comcast, that's what happened to them…This settlement will help put money back in Comcast's customers' pockets where it should have been in the first place. Just as importantly, it provides millions of dollars' worth of debt relief. And we've made sure that going forward, Comcast customers will know exactly how much they'll pay for service before they sign up for it. That should put an end to unpleasant surprises.
Another deceptive billing case in Washington state last year resulted in Comcast being hit with a $9 million fine, plus orders to make refunds to customers.
It's not just broadband service – arbitrary fees are added to the full range of products and services that telephone and cable companies provide. A study by Consumer Reports showed that the typical cable TV customer pays an extra $450 a year, just because. The graphic above breaks that down.
So far, little has been done to stop deceptive billing practices in the first place. That could change. The Federal Communications Commission's declaration that broadband isn't a telecommunications service passed the buck to the Federal Trade Commission, which might or might not get around to doing something about it. State governments also have a role to play – a federal appeals court opened the door to broadband consumer protection laws and other state-level regulation last year. So far though, no one in Sacramento has shown much interest in walking through it.
Pai offers net neutrality rules custom made for AT&T's, Comcast's business models
16 January 2020, by	Steve Blum	• broadband, ces2020, fcc, netneutrality, public policy
Ajit Pai's three-year delayed debut at CES as Federal Communications Commission chair last week was a friendly, and at times lighthearted, conversation with Gary Shapiro, the CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, which produces the show. Pai used the opportunity to float what he seems to thinks are consensus network neutrality rules. What he's really proposing is to cement major ISPs and mobile carriers' monopoly model business plans into federal law.
Shapiro led off by asking Pai about the FCC's decision to scrap network neutrality rules two years ago. Pai endorsed net neutrality legislation. But of a sort…
Let's focus on the things that we can actually agree on, those core principles of an open internet that we all agree upon – no blocking, no throttling, no anticompetitive conduct, transparency – I've just described in five seconds a bill that should sail through congress, but this has become more of a political issue than a policy one.
He left a couple of items off the list, at least the list that net neutrality advocates keep: paid prioritisation and zero rating. Those are two related practices that big, monopoly model Internet service providers – AT&T and Comcast, for example – and mobile carriers dearly want to hold onto.
When an ISP zero rates particular content, it doesn't count the bytes consumed against a user's monthly data cap. Paid prioritisation happens when an ISP creates a fast lane for content it owns – say, AT&T sending you Road Runner cartoons that it owns faster than Disney movies that it doesn't – or charges the owner a fee for the same treatment.
Both practices create a hierarchy of content, as a result of an ISP's ability to manipulate data streams to suit its bottom line. There's not a meaningful difference between deliberately speeding some content up, versus deliberately slowing – throttling – other content down. Limiting legislation to a carefully wordsmithed consensus allows telcos and cable companies to write U.S. telecoms policy, and lock in privileges for decades to come.
"Fleas of a thousand dogs" add gravitas to T-Mobile/Sprint merger as court challenge wraps up
T-Mobile and Sprint square off today against a coalition of state attorneys general in a federal courtroom in New York, during closing arguments in a trial to determine whether their proposed merger violates antitrust laws. It's one of the last hurdles for the deal, which has been under regulatory review since 2018.
Approval (or not) by the California Public Utilities Commission is also pending, as is a separate, more technical federal court review in Washington, D.C.
"We are desperately waiting for the outcome of our merger activities", Jan Geldmacher, president of Sprint's business to business division said at CES in Las Vegas last week. Nonetheless, he believes "a positive end is near".
He backed his optimism up with a New Year's greeting, perhaps in the hope of persuading opponents of the righteousness of his cause. "May the fleas of a thousand dogs infest the arse of anyone who fucks up your new year", he said. "And may their arms be too short to scratch it".
The AGs and the deal's Californian opponents will risk that itch, but the federal justice department won't. It urged federal judge Victor Marrero to defer to its wisdom and approve the deal. In arguments filed last week, the AGs said they have a say in the matter and, particularly, so does the judge…
The States have a special role in enforcing the antitrust laws on behalf of the public. TheSupreme Court has made clear that neither the States nor this Court need defer to the federal government's approval of a merger. The States are independent enforcers of the antitrust laws, and it is the role of the Court—not any federal agency—to decide the lawfulness of the merger.
The AG's latest (last?) filing laid out their case for blocking the deal. It boils down to two points: 1. going from four national mobile broadband companies will concentrate market power to the point that prices will rise and service will fall, and 2. there's reason to believe DISH can add meaningful competition, even if it keeps its build out promises. The AGs doubt it will.
Don't expect fiber or 5G in rural communities, FCC commissioners say
14 January 2020, by	Steve Blum	• 5G, ces2020, fcc, fttp, rural broadband
Fiber and mobile 5G are fine for cities and suburbs, but rural communities can look forward to satellites and fixed wireless broadband service, according to the Federal Communication Commission's republican majority. Speaking at CES in Las Vegas this week, FCC chair Ajit Pai, republican commissioners Michael O'Rielly and Brendan Carr, and their democratic colleague Geoffrey Starks were upbeat about 5G, fiber and, as Carr put it, the "new wave of innovation and services".
But that wave will only break on urban and suburban beaches, at least via conventional broadband service.
"To say we're going to have fiber throughout the United States is both not realistic – it's not technically doable", said O'Rielly. "There are communities where satellite service is the exact answer".
Pai said 5G infrastructure that connects a smartphone to fast broadband access – the standard 5G use case – will be built in cities and suburbs. Rural 5G deployments will support other services – fixed wireless broadband, for example – that might or might not be offered by mobile carriers on mobile spectrum. His rural broadband advisor, Preston Wise, who spoke on a rural 5G panel, said the rebooted version of the FCC's primary broadband subsidy program – now called the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund – will be used "to deploy fixed broadband in parts of rural America", although he held out the possibility that some of the money would go toward fiber to the premise (FTTP) projects.
Rural FTTP doesn't fit very well into the business plans of incumbent monopoly model telecoms companies. Rural electric cooperatives, on the other hand, are deploying fiber. Pai hopes to encourage rural utility co-ops to apply for FCC subsidies – he said he doesn't care which broadband carriers get the money.
I hope that's true. Although electric co-ops and wireless operators figured prominently in the last round of FCC broadband subsidy auctions, they were only allowed to bid on communities that AT&T, Frontier Communications and other legacy telcos didn't want to serve.
Legacy telcos were given a right of first refusal and they exercised it. Satellite and fixed wireless fit their rural business plans perfectly. Letting them dictate rural broadband technology choices, as O'Rielly seems happy to do, will lock in a deep divide between rural and urban communities for many decades to come.
Newsom's broadband budget language doesn't translate to infrastructure
13 January 2020, by	Steve Blum	• broadband, casf, gavin newsom, infrastructure, public policy
Broadband references are sprinkled into California governor Gavin Newsom's state budget proposal but, taken at face value, he's focused on shifting money from hard capital infrastructure projects to soft programs and annual operating budgets.
Although tagged as an infrastructure investment in Newsom's budget summary, his "Broadband for All" initiative is about operations, comprising four elements: mapping, education spending, "optimising" existing resources and "prioritising connectivity across executive actions and policies".
The California Public Utilities Commission already has a fine mapping program, which Newsom wisely intends to expand. It's the brightest broadband item in his budget. If the CPUC is allowed to combine availability data with comprehensive network maps, inventories of state owned facilities and construction cost data, and make it public, then independent broadband infrastructure projects become more feasible.
Feasible, but not funded.
Consistent with past practice, Newsom proposes to spend $261 million on broadband facilities and information technology acquisitions for schools over the next five years, which is praiseworthy (as are many other items in the $153 billion budget) but has rarely improved broadband infrastructure that's directly available to consumers and businesses. Keeping broadband top of mind in state government is likewise a good thing, and when agencies look outward and cooperate with private sector telecoms companies – Caltrans' dig once program is a good example – the general public benefits. More often, though, connectivity improvements are limited to meeting agencies' internal IT needs. Still, it's a step in the right direction.
It's Newsom's third bullet point – "optimising use of existing resources" – that threatens to divert what little money California spends on general broadband infrastructure development to other purposes. As his budget summary explains…
Informed by GIS-based mapping, the state will review existing fund sources available for broadband adoption and activities. This review will include the California Teleconnect Fund, the California Advanced Services Fund [CASF], and federal funding opportunities to maximize the return on existing investments. In total, these funds provide approximately $900 million over the next five years that can be targeted to critical broadband activities statewide.
The California Teleconnect Fund subsidises broadband service for schools and other organisations. Federal broadband funds are speculative at best – so far, California is shut out of the federal agriculture department's newest broadband infrastructure subsidy program.
What's left is CASF. Which holds the only money – somewhere around $300 million – that California earmarks for general broadband infrastructure construction. Which isn't specifically listed as one of California's "critical broadband activities".
Adoption – digital literacy and broadband subscriber acquisition programs – gets a mention. Schools are in for a lot of love. Libraries and state IT departments get a nod too. Broadband for businesses and consumers? Nada.
Schools and community programs are wildly popular; government operations are Sacramento's core business. Subsides for independent broadband infrastructure are neither, and are opposed by monopoly model incumbents who pay lawmakers millions of dollars to pay attention. Newsom's budget offers no challenge to that status quo.
WiFi and 5G win spectrum that the satellite and car industries lose
10 January 2020, by	Steve Blum	• 5G, ces2020, fcc, spectrum auctions, WiFi
Despite his enthusiasm for federalising any policy that touches on telecoms, big footing state and local governments isn't at the top of Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai's 5G wish list. Pai and three of his fellow commissioners spoke at CES in Las Vegas earlier this week. When asked about the main barriers to widespread deployment of 5G broadband service, Pai listed cost, spectrum and the availability of trained construction crews.
Although there's not a lot that a telecoms regulator can do about workforce training or construction costs, spectrum availability is the FCC's core responsibility.
Pai promised to "push" more frequencies, licensed and unlicensed, into the broadband market. But opening up new spectrum for broadband means taking it away from or sharing it with other users, which quickly devolves into a zero sum game in Washington, D.C.
The satellite industry stands to lose 280 MHz of spectrum in the 3.7 GHz to 4.2 GHz ranges – AKA the "C" band. The FCC plans to auction off those frequencies to mobile carriers for exclusive, licensed use, presumably later this year.
The FCC has a plan to repurpose 45 MHz in the 5.9 GHz range, transferring it from the automotive industry and opening it up for WiFi and similar unlicensed uses. Carmakers "had not lived up to the promise" of their 75 MHz of dedicated short range communications (DSRC) spectrum, said Geoffrey Starks, the lone democratic commissioner to speak at CES. The FCC's plan would assign 20 MHz of the balance to cellular-type vehicular communications – C-V2X in the jargon – and maybe leave 10 MHz for whatever uses the automotive industry eventually develops for DSRC. Or maybe not – WiFi has a huge fan base.
Sharing is contentious in D.C. because it's often federal agencies that are being asked to give up exclusive use of frequencies they've had to themselves for decades. "I've learned in Washington there are three things you don't discuss three things in polite society, religion, politics and sharing of spectrum", Pai said.
California's consumer privacy law is a call to action for federal regulators
09 January 2020, by	Steve Blum	• ab375, ces2020, ftc, privacy, public policy
Federal Trade Commission chair Joseph Simons was on the undercard for Consumer Technology Association CEO Gary Shapiro's "fireside chats" with federal policymakers at CES in Las Vegas on Tuesday. Warming up the audience ahead of Federal Communications Commission chair Ajit Pai's long awaited CES debut, he urged congress to give his agency the U.S. privacy cop job that California now holds by default. The FTC is already pursuing privacy enforcement actions under existing law "because the big tech platforms are becoming so consequential to our lives and so large", Simon said.
Simon favors federal privacy legislation over the state by state approach. "Of course, now we're dealing with California", he said. There's a place for state-level consumer privacy legislation, but "it depends on how the states evolve and how the federal law evolves". So long as a state law tracks with federal requirements he seems to be okay with it, but if it doesn't he wants congress to step in. In other words, states can tinker with the details so long as they stay in the federal privacy policy sandbox.
There is bipartisan agreement in Washington, D.C. that the sandbox should be built, but democrats and republicans disagree on a couple of key issues. Two FTC commissioners – democrat Rebecca Slaughter and republican Christine Wilson – took part in a separate panel discussion later in the day. They both favor federalising consumer privacy rules. Wilson said that California's privacy law, along with the European Union's privacy regulations, makes federal action urgent "because interoperability is needed".
They disagreed about a couple of key details, which largely define the partisan gap on privacy legislation: whether congress should completely occupy the field and preempt states and whether private individuals – in reality, trial lawyers – should be able to sue companies that don't follow the rules. Democrats, like Slaughter, tend to say yes to both; republicans, like Wilson, are on the no side.
FCC promises more of the "P-word" – preemption – in 2020
08 January 2020, by	Steve Blum	• ces2020, fcc, pole attachment, public policy, small cells
Due to the nature of the program, you're going to have to go through metal detectors.
CTA staffer to long queue waiting to see Ajit Pai.
Ajit Pai made his first appearance at CES as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission yesterday, sitting down for a talk about the coming year with Gary Shapiro, the CEO of the show's organiser, the Consumer Technology Association. Much of the conversation was about 5G infrastructure, and the public policy that surrounds it.
More preemptions of local and state authority over wireless sites, utility poles and the use of the public right of way are on the FCC's agenda. Pai reiterated his belief that wireless policy should be made at the federal level, including policy that's traditionally in the hands of states and local governments.
"We want to see a consistent, easy to understand set of regulations that anyone can innovate around", Pai said. Mobile carriers and infrastructure companies want "a consistent level of regulation" as they build out 5G networks. Which means rules should be set by the FCC and not state legislatures or city councils. Pai intends to "encourage" state and local governments to approve permit applications small cell sites and other wireless facilities. "Multiple layers of government" are "not conducive to infrastructure investment", he said.
His wingmen in the FCC republican majority echoed his comments. Commissioners Michael O'Rielly and Brendan Carr, along with democratic commissioner Geoffrey Starks, took part in a panel discussion later in the afternoon at the Las Vegas show. O'Rielly put it bluntly…
It's not just small cells. It's going to mean more macro towers. That means dealing with difficult issues on placement when states and localities want to either extract too much money or try to dictate what services will be offered. That's problematic and I've been talking about this for a long time. It does come with the P-word, which is – it requires preemption. And that is something the commission is going to have to continue to do.
Cities and counties should expect more "bold actions", as Carr put it, from the FCC.


Taking into account that 68% of all observations will fall between -1 and 1 standard deviation, we can expect that 68% of the time his returns will be between 5% and 25% (15% expected excess returns plus or minus 10% expected volatility).
If we look at 2 standard deviations, which will account for 95% of all observations, we can expect his portfolio to generate returns of between -5% and 35% (15% +/- 20%). In any given year this translates to a 93% chance of profitability for our retired dentist. Not bad, as I'm sure you'd agree.


text:
Essex Tier 4: What are the rules for celebrating Christmas in Tier 3 and Tier 4?
Families could be split between tiers this Christmas
Matthew SmithLocal Democracy Reporter
A woman wearing a face mask passes Christmas lights outside shops (Image: Kirsty O'Connor/PA Wire)
Millions of people's Christmas plans have been cancelled at the last minute as Essex and much of the South East were placed into a strict new tier of restrictions.
Tier 4 has seen non-essential business forced to close and a ban on travel into and out of the affected areas.
As recently as Wednesday (December 16) Prime Minister Boris Johnson had been optimistic three households would be able to mix between December 23 and December 27 in a significant relaxation of the rules.
However, last night that was scrapped amidst concerns that it could lead to a more rapid spread of a new 'mutant strain' of the virus, which could be much more contagious.
Let us know what you think on the new restrictions in our Tier 4 survey below:
Despite hopes of a unified approach to Christmas after months of tiered restrictions, there will now be a number of different rules across England which could split families.
In Essex, even families within the same county could be forced to have very different Christmas Days, with Uttlesford, Colchester and Tendring remaining in Tier 2 and allowed to mix with two other households on December 25.
We've rounded up the major questions people are asking when it comes to celebrating Christmas this year.
Can I meet other people on Christmas day in Tier 4?
The answer for most households will be no.
The new rules aim to completely restrict households meeting, and everyone living in Tier 4 should only leave their homes for limited reasons such as buying essentials, exercise, work and education.
There are some exceptions including meeting within your established support bubble, including childcare bubbles.
As with the November lockdown, children will be allowed to move between separated parents.
People in Tier 4 will also be allowed to meet one other person outside in a public place, so this would be fine on Christmas day as well.
New Essex area has replaced Basildon as the Covid capital of England
Every town and village in Essex that will stay in Tier 2 over Christmas
Can those in Tiers 1, 2 or 3 meet on Christmas day?
Yes, the relaxation period has been cut to just one day but remains in place for people living in the other three tiers.
This means that up to three households will be able to mix on Christmas Day, although the Government has insisted people should have smaller Christmas celebrations this year.
What has happened to the five-day relaxation period?
After other nations in the UK started to advise against a longer period of relaxation, England has now followed and cut that down to one day in Tiers 1, 2 and 3.
The rules on three households remain in place, but they should not mix on any days either side of December 25.
Can I travel from Tier 4 to Tier 3 on Christmas day?
No, the rules state that travel into and out of Tier 4 should not happen unless there's an essential reason.
This will apply from Sunday (December 20) until the restrictions are reviewed and there is no Christmas exception.
Find out the latest coronavirus case figures in your area by entering your postcode below:
Will the rules be eased for New Year's Eve in any tier?
No, the Prime Minister was clear that there would be no relaxation period to see in the new year and the usual tier system would apply.
It is not yet known whether any areas will be removed from Tier 4 following the first review on December 30, although Health Secretary Matt Hancock has warned that the restrictions could last until the vaccine has been widely distributed.
M25 traffic briefly held after multi-vehicle crash near Waltham Abbey - recap
M25One car was stuck by the barriers
M25M25 traffic briefly held after multi-vehicle crash near Waltham Abbey - recapOne car was stuck by the barriers