The sale of firearms locally is on the rise because of the budget.

“People are coming in and saying, ‘I want to buy a gun today,’” Barrett said. “We’re specifically seeing people say, ‘I want it because I’m not going to be able to get the protection that I need from the sheriff’s department.’”

This can’t miss. Luckily, folks will not be able to conceal these weapons …

Faced with the potential loss of more than 200 deputies due to budget cuts, McGinness said earlier this month that he may consider issuing more concealed weapons permits.

So, we have this going for us. From the comments area:

People have to be able to protect themselves and their families!!! Yes, case studies are proven about when honest, law abiding citizens are armed and ready that crime does go down.

I wonder if case studies would also prove that if folks installed a soft serve ice cream machine in their kitchen obesity would go down.

Have you noticed how everyone’s favorite new crutch phrase is “because of the budget” to justify/explain away everything that is going wrong in our state? It only recently surpassed “due to the recent economic downturn” and totally leap-frogged “and the worst has yet to come” to reach the top spot.

The best example I’ve seen lately is from this article about the potential for public urination in our city and county parks with the closure of restrooms.

“We’re going to have heavy cuts to our park staff and our park maintenance and also to our recreation,” Combs said. “We’ll be closing community centers and pools and children’s programs. All the decisions are difficult. We regret this, but right now that’s what we’re forced to do because of the budget.”

In case you heard about this story and thought, hey, what the heck, I think I will relieve myself in the rose garden at McKinley Park, you better think again. The Sacramento police are on to you:

Sacramento police Sgt. Norm Leong said park visitors will simply have to plan ahead if the bathrooms are closed. Anyone caught going to the bathroom in parks may be cited, he added.

Right, as long as nothing happens to the number of police officers patrolling these areas we should be safe from public pee’rs.

A press release from the Elk Grove Police Department came across my desktop today:

ELK GROVE, CA – Earlier today, Elk Grove Police Officer Ali Khalil was arrested by agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and served with a complaint alleging several felonies associated with mortgage-related financial transactions. None of the allegations were related to Officer Khalil’s official duties as an Elk Grove police officer. Officer Khalil, age 29, has been a member of the Elk Grove Police Department since 2006. Officer Khalil has been placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of an internal investigation, which is standard practice when an officer has been charged with a crime.

We obviously have no details at this point about the nature of the charges or the crime, but the role of mortgage predators brokers in the housing industry has played a huge factor in our economic meltdown. Some brokers were above board but many others were not. These unscrupulous individuals played a significant role in suckering banks and borrowers into bad mortgages. Many of these old brokers are now setting up shop as refinancing experts and mortgage assistance houses (word of advice: do your own research and deal with your lendor directly). They basically splashed everyone with mud and are now offering to take people to the cleaners.

Eyebrowraisingly, it seems police officers are not immune from felonies arising out of the housing industry (though this not to say that he is charged with crimes that he did while on duty – we don’t know). Also, this officer was charged by the FBI but the EG PD still has to do their own internal investigation, during which time the accused is still on paid leave (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

I, for one, would like to see a more aggressive effort by the state government to ban unscrupulous mortgage broker marriage. We need fewer of those people and the more we can do to stop them from procreating, the happier we’ll all be.

UPDATE 6/2: Further details available at the Bee. Thanks to the SacRag faithful for keeping me on my toes. Vigilance!

According to people who know stuff about things, we NorCal folks are a bit plagued by a rash of auto thefts. A recent study found the top ten cities in which your car is most likely to get stolen.

Good news: Sacramento wasn’t in the top ten.

Bad news: almost every surrounding city except Plymouth, was.

According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, Modesto has the highest rate of car thefts in any American city. Stockton comes in at #6. SF Bay area comes in at #7, and Fresno rounds out the list at #10. What can we take from these statistics? I say if you’re leaving Sacramento, take a train.

SEE UPDATE BELOW. Obviously we want the media to publicize Amber Alerts and report on murders. But there seems to be a disconnect between the media’s tendency to tout its own policies on not reporting certain details of crimes and its tendency to run for days with details of other crimes. What has happened in Tracy is completely devastating. When a story starts its life as an Amber Alert, but ends up being a story about a grisly murder, shouldn’t the media not want to have the victim’s face and name and the unspeakable details about what happened to her plastered all over the front page and sold as the top story?

Continue reading “UPDATED: Media disconnect in the Tracy case” »

With the overwhelmingly lukewarm response to previous editions of Make Us Laugh, I thought it would be fun to throw this one out there. Comment with your witty snark and we’ll let you know who made us laugh.

Man Arrested for Exposing Himself Every Wednesday

An Arbuckle man has been arrested for allegedly exposing and fondling himself in public every Wednesday for at least the last several weeks, according to the Colusa County Sheriff’s Department…They say he’d stand at a window inside his home and exposed and fondle himself. The undercover officer arrested Sweet after witnessing his alleged crimes.

Shocker, I know, there’s a typo in the article.

Ah, humor. You remember humor, right? Laughing, chuckling, ROTFL’ing (for the kids). We could all use a little does of low brow levity, right?

The Sacto 9-1-1 brings us the following onion-esque jewel…

A dispute over bowling etiquette grew into a fight, an alleged assault with a bowling ball that knocked out one man’s tooth and an arrest in Rocklin early this morning…The alleged assault occurred about 12:40 a.m. at the Rocklin AMF Lanes at 2325 Sierra Meadows Drive when two groups of bowlers got into a fist fight, Rocklin police Sgt. Terry Jewell stated in a news release…Two bowlers had approached the lane at the same time, and their dispute over who had right of way grew into a brawl involving six people, Jewell said.

The photo of the alleged assailant is a little too onioney. Are we being had?

This lap dance story is rich:

When Helen Hart tried to jump start business at her house by putting up a sign for adult tap dancing classes, the 79-year-old grandma started fielding calls for adult lap dancing services.

“I get maybe three to 17 [calls] a week,” Helen said. “I’m nearly 80, so age does mean something. Can you imagine a man coming to the door and I open the door and I go, ‘Yeah?’ He goes, ‘Oh, never mind.’”

It’s made even richer by Helen’s sense of humor…

This lap dance story is not so rich:

Sacramento’s Sheriff’s Department is calling for a ban on lap dancing, but only for two adult bars the county has been battling for years over zoning issues…”The physical nature of the lap dance creates an unsavory element, if you will. I mean, it attracts an unsavory element that leads to prostitution, loitering around these businesses,” counters Sgt. Tim Curran, spokesman for the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department…”There’s no hands touching the customers or customers touching the girls, not at all,” said Mull. He also said in a time of high unemployment and fewer dollars flowing into government coffers, the lap dance ban makes no sense. If the bars have to close down, he said 130 jobs will be lost.

I don’t think the hands touching thing is what concerns people here…but, I could be wrong. You could always just invite the unsavory element to your house for a Pole Dance party!

Happy “Furlough Friday” all. It’s your last one…

And to celebrate I thought I’d share this little gem from cbs13.com

A car full of women slammed into a South Sacramento home this morning crashing through several walls and nearly hitting several sleeping children.

Blah, blah, blah, RTOI. We’ve seen this before.

Police say the four women who were inside the car got into some sort of fight at a Denny’s on Mack Road. When officers arrived to break up the fight, the women sped off, leading cops on a high-speed chase into the South Sacramento neighborhood.

Right, right.

Police believe alcohol was involved. The driver has been arrested on suspicion of evading police, resisting arrest, assault and lynching.

You know, the usual…

The Bee’s Stan Oklobdzija (at least I think that’s how the Sacto 9-1-1 blog works) checks in with an interesting side note about the city’s murder rate for 2009:

Even if someone is killed between now and March 5, this will be the longest period without a homicide in the city of Sacramento since 1999, records show.

Don’t everybody throw your hats into the air in triumph at the same time, lest a falling hat commit a homicide on its way down.

(But on a serious note, that’s pretty great news. I can’t believe there hasn’t been a homicide since New Years!)