I’ve just spent the last two days reporting on a story that took me to two different Los Angeles courts. All day Tuesday it was Edmund D. Edelman Children’s Court, where I watched a father and mother trying to retrieve their kids from the clutches of the foster care system. Not pretty.
The on Wednesday I was in LA’s downtown criminal court—never exactly what you’d call a slap happy romp. Heard a lot of brand new nightmare stories about the problems at LA County jail. Other new nightmare stories about California parole policy. More on all that soon.
And I’ll be back with real blogging tonight.
You could probably pass the bar with all the time that you’ve spent in courts.
I was thinking about bad public defenders. Why don’t you or someone establish records on them in your area and find out who is doing his job and who is not?
Establishing records on bad public defenders? What about bad private attorneys who practice criminal defense? What about bad attorneys who prosecute? What about bad judges? What about bad members of the community who end up being bad jurors? Need I go on?
One at a time.
Celeste is currently away covering various high-speed chases in the Los Angeles area and will have a first-hand report on the injustice of police using road spikes to ruin perfectly good tires of the person they are pursuing.
Not a chance of that Woody. Without those chases we’d have nothing to watch on the local news!
I watched that slow-speed “high-speed” chase yesterday, and it was hilarious. At one point the guy was doing donuts in the middle of an intersection only on the rims, while the police sat there and watched him. What are these guys thinking when they’re running?
If I were stupid enough to get involved in something like that, I think that I would pull into the parking deck of a mall or office tower out of sight of the helicopters, jump out, and make myself scarce.
If you look at some of the real high-speed chases on COPS, they typically have one in Henry County, Georgia on I-75 just south of Atlanta, which is a route for drug trafficers. COPS should just keep a permanent crew in L.A. and Henry County.
How were the chases, Celeste?
I figure she just got tired of us and gave herself the day off. Hope she’s treating herself to a nice massage and a pedicure.