164 Sunset Avenue, 12:45 PM Friday (must be liquid lunch)
Well, maybe not these particular students. Or this particular address.
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9 comments:
Oh to be young again, to know it all, to disregard consequence, To feel immortal.
Jobs security for the Amherst Police and defense lawyers.
And a vision of things to come.
i notice the owner is the mother of an amherst police officer and she also is the owner of many other "path" houses...when her son responds is that a conflict of interest...or is he part owner????
I believe not -- on both counts.
They say you're not your mother's keeper. Or something like that.
My attitude is that the mother ought to be arrested along with the tenants -- if a landlord was arrrested every time a tenant was, do you think the APD would need to arrest very many tenants before the problems ceased -- anda perhaps son can arrest mom...
Seriously Larry, I have yet to hear any definitive explanation of why the property *owners* (not managers) shouldn't and/or can't be arrested whenever there is a noise disturbance at a property they own.
Assuming the ordinance would withstand a 1st & 14th Amendment challenge -- and it wouldn't -- and also assuming it is "legal" to arrest someone accused of an offense for which there is no possible sentence of incarceration -- and that isn't either -- then why not arrest property owners too?
I can assure you that you would only have to arrest a few -- just once -- and you would see some immediate changes. Knowing that they could get arrested, they'd be outside their property at night, a dB meter in one hand and a cell phone in the other -- they'd be requesting the APD for assistance but they pay property taxes too.
A lot of them would be hiring detail officers which would mean that the APD, the APD union(s) and possibly other agencies (e.g. MSP)would have to work out some protocol as to which (and whose) officers would get this highly desired overtime pay with the manpower needs of the shift still being met.
Understanding that people don't want to be arrested, and neither wanting vigilantes with baseball bats nor hysterical nuisance calls about every car with a loud muffler, the APD would be wise to establish/publish a protocol as to what constituted "cooperating with them" and the Chief to issue a standing order not to arrest those who did -- be they tenant, owner, or both.
(The APD and Enku Gelaye would be wise to establish such a protocol now because there are groups of people who wander in uninvited and often don't leave when you ask them politely, and it is only a matter of time before you have something like uninvited guests being tossed off upper-story balconies and the perps using the defense of "necessity" along with the underlying "Castle Defense" statute -- arguing that "self help" was necessary because they couldn't call the police -- and you will all have a mess worse than the Jason Vassell situation.)
But seriously Larry, why not arrest the owners too? You are legally responsible for the harm that someone else does with your vehicle -- why aren't you equally responsible for the harm they do with your rental property?
During the First Gulf War, there were protesters outside the White House and while they could sing, chant, bang on drums and anything else they pleased, they couldn't go over a total noise level of 60 decibels.
Remember that there is a "content neutrality" requirement on any restriction on speech -- the government can't even require the speech be coherent.
Ever since the days of Hammarabi, the public has had the right to know exactly what conduct is prohibited -- and the principle of civil rights is that the government can't just make up laws on the scene to fit a situation -- that a person of average intelligence has to be able to absolutely tell the difference between that which is permitted and that which is prohibited.
In order for the noise ordinance to pass muster under both a 1st Amendment "content" challenge and a 14th Amendment "due process" challenge for specificity, it needs to specify exactly what decibel level, measured at the property line, and at exactly what time (eg after 9 pm) -- and to meet "equal protection" requirements, it would need to apply to absolutely every form of human generated noise. An exception for emergency noise would have to be universal, at least within a category.
This would mean that your night high school football game would have to be under whatever dB limit there is, as measured from the property line of the nearest residential property.
If the ACLU actually believed in half the things it claims to, it would already be insisting on this. If there really were "liberals" in Amherst, they would too -- notwithstanding that, it is only a matter of time before someone takes one of these cases to trial and asks the arresting officer "exactly what is the noise level you measured from the property line, and how did you measure it?"
Ha! Somebody saw your caption about a movement in the weeds and cleared the weeds around the sign you took a picture of. Now it's just a moment in the clouds. That one they can't clear.
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