November 25, 2009
Citation for Gesture Costs Pittsburgh
By Sean D. Hamill
PITTSBURGH — The City of Pittsburgh has agreed to pay $50,000 to a man who sued after being issued a disorderly conduct citation for gesturing offensively at a police officer.
Offensively? Musta been da bird.
The settlement, in which the city also agreed to retrain its officers in the limits of disorderly conduct law, was reached with Dave Hackbart, 35, after research undertaken by his lawyers found that police citations for swearing or offensive gestures were common here.
From March 2005 to July 2009, the research found, Pittsburgh officers cited 198 people for disorderly conduct on the basis of that sort of behavior, even though the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has consistently found such citations unlawful on free speech grounds.
“Hopefully we’ll send a message to other police officers across the state, where this is a consistent problem, that this is not legal,” said Sara J. Rose, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, which helped represent Mr. Hackbart in a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city.
Pittsburgh’s deputy police chief, Paul J. Donaldson, said the city had retrained officers in the law twice since 2006 but would do so again, to emphasize that “the disorderly conduct statute can’t be used to protect the police from all verbal indignities.”
Mr. Hackbart was charged on April 10, 2006, while trying to parallel-park. According to his lawsuit, another car pulled up and blocked him from parking, frustrating Mr. Hackbart, who gestured with his middle finger at the other driver.
I knew it.
When a third driver objected to the gesture, Mr. Hackbart delivered it to him as well.
Yeah.
That driver turned out to be an officer, Sgt. Brian Elledge, who wrote the citation. Mr. Hackbart was found guilty by a magistrate and fined court costs. “I felt really let down by the system,” Mr. Hackbart said. “I challenged it as a matter or principle.” Of the $50,000 settlement, he will get $10,000; the rest goes to his lawyers.
Pyrrhic victory, pun intended.
Mr. Hackbart said that the case had raised his interest in law and that he had he quit a job as a waiter and gone back to school to become a paralegal. He is considering going on to law school. “A lot of good things have come out of this,” he said. “Hopefully it’s a big deterrent and it helps other people down the road who are in my shoes.”
Showing posts with label Pittsburgh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pittsburgh. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Kerouac at Bat
New York Public Library, Berg Collection, Jack Kerouac Archive. Jack Kerouac’s fantasy baseball team cards, circa 1953-56.
More Photos >
Almost all his life Jack Kerouac had a hobby that even close friends and fellow Beats like Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs never knew about. He obsessively played a fantasy baseball game of his own invention, charting the exploits of made-up players like Wino Love, Warby Pepper, Heinie Twiett, Phegus Cody and Zagg Parker, who toiled on imaginary teams named either for cars (the Pittsburgh Plymouths and New York Chevvies, for example) or for colors (the Boston Grays and Cincinnati Blacks).
He collected their stats, analyzed their performances and, as a teenager, when he played most ardently, wrote about them in homemade newsletters and broadsides. He even covered financial news and imaginary contract disputes. During those same teenage years, he also ran a fantasy horse-racing circuit, complete with illustrated tout sheets and racing reports. He created imaginary owners, imaginary jockeys, imaginary track conditions.
All these “publications,” some typed, some handwritten and often pasted into old-fashioned composition notebooks, are now part of the Jack Kerouac Archive at the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library. The curator, Isaac Gewirtz, has just written a 75-page book about them, “Kerouac at Bat: Fantasy Sports and the King of the Beats,” to be published next week by the library and available, at least for now, only in its gift shop.
Slide Show ‘Kerouac at Bat’
Among other things, Mr. Gewirtz has learned that Kerouac played an early version of the baseball game in his backyard in Lowell, Mass., hitting a marble with a nail, or possibly a toothpick, and noting where it landed. By 1946, when Kerouac was 24, he had devised a set of cards with precise verbal descriptions of various outcomes (“slow roller to ss,” for example), depending on the skill levels of the pitcher and batter. The game could be played using cards alone, but Mr. Gewirtz thinks that more often Kerouac determined the result of a pitch by tossing some sort of projectile at a diagramed chart on the wall. In 1956 he switched to a new set of cards, which used hieroglyphic symbols instead of descriptions. Carefully preserved inside plastic folders at the library, they now look as mysterious as runes.
More Photos >
Almost all his life Jack Kerouac had a hobby that even close friends and fellow Beats like Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs never knew about. He obsessively played a fantasy baseball game of his own invention, charting the exploits of made-up players like Wino Love, Warby Pepper, Heinie Twiett, Phegus Cody and Zagg Parker, who toiled on imaginary teams named either for cars (the Pittsburgh Plymouths and New York Chevvies, for example) or for colors (the Boston Grays and Cincinnati Blacks).
He collected their stats, analyzed their performances and, as a teenager, when he played most ardently, wrote about them in homemade newsletters and broadsides. He even covered financial news and imaginary contract disputes. During those same teenage years, he also ran a fantasy horse-racing circuit, complete with illustrated tout sheets and racing reports. He created imaginary owners, imaginary jockeys, imaginary track conditions.
All these “publications,” some typed, some handwritten and often pasted into old-fashioned composition notebooks, are now part of the Jack Kerouac Archive at the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library. The curator, Isaac Gewirtz, has just written a 75-page book about them, “Kerouac at Bat: Fantasy Sports and the King of the Beats,” to be published next week by the library and available, at least for now, only in its gift shop.
Slide Show ‘Kerouac at Bat’
Among other things, Mr. Gewirtz has learned that Kerouac played an early version of the baseball game in his backyard in Lowell, Mass., hitting a marble with a nail, or possibly a toothpick, and noting where it landed. By 1946, when Kerouac was 24, he had devised a set of cards with precise verbal descriptions of various outcomes (“slow roller to ss,” for example), depending on the skill levels of the pitcher and batter. The game could be played using cards alone, but Mr. Gewirtz thinks that more often Kerouac determined the result of a pitch by tossing some sort of projectile at a diagramed chart on the wall. In 1956 he switched to a new set of cards, which used hieroglyphic symbols instead of descriptions. Carefully preserved inside plastic folders at the library, they now look as mysterious as runes.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Steelers Are Secretly Shopped
Here is a perfect illustration of sloppy English: if the story states the team is being shopped around, how can it be called a secret?
Inside, the headline of the story is Rooneys Quietly Shop the Steelers, which is better said. Just being a stickler for accuracy, not picayune.
Stanley Druckenmiller, billionaire chairman of Pittsburgh's Duquesne Capital Management, has expressed interest in acquiring the Steelers, people briefed on the negotiations said.
Stanley Druckenmiller was a portfolio manager at Dreyfus when I worked there. He went on to work with George Soros, and they each made a fortune shorting the pound sterling.
The Rooney family's divisions over the future of the Steelers are a classic example of the challenge facing second- and third-generation owners of a family business. Looming estate taxes and diverging interests among the children and grandchildren of the founder raise pressure for a sale, bringing emotional family issues into play.
It's happening with the Anheuser-Busch company now, as well.
The Rooney brothers own 80% of the Steelers through Rooney Enterprises LLC; the McGinley family, their cousins, own 20%. Rooney Enterprises also owns the Yonkers Raceway just north of New York City and its profitable casino; the Palm Beach Kennel Club, a faded Florida dog track that now has a poker room; and other holdings, including a horse farm in Maryland. The Steelers are by far the family's crown jewel. Art Rooney Sr. – a colorful, cigar-chomping sportsman who kept the team going in its early years through his skill as a horse-race handicapper – bought the club for $2,500 in 1933.
Good investment by the patriarch.
After decades of losing, the Steelers became a powerhouse in the 1970s, fielding marquee players such as quarterback Terry Bradshaw and Franco Harris.
If Bradshaw's position is spelled out, shouldn't Harris's be also spelled out?
Inside, the headline of the story is Rooneys Quietly Shop the Steelers, which is better said. Just being a stickler for accuracy, not picayune.
Stanley Druckenmiller, billionaire chairman of Pittsburgh's Duquesne Capital Management, has expressed interest in acquiring the Steelers, people briefed on the negotiations said.
Stanley Druckenmiller was a portfolio manager at Dreyfus when I worked there. He went on to work with George Soros, and they each made a fortune shorting the pound sterling.
The Rooney family's divisions over the future of the Steelers are a classic example of the challenge facing second- and third-generation owners of a family business. Looming estate taxes and diverging interests among the children and grandchildren of the founder raise pressure for a sale, bringing emotional family issues into play.
It's happening with the Anheuser-Busch company now, as well.
The Rooney brothers own 80% of the Steelers through Rooney Enterprises LLC; the McGinley family, their cousins, own 20%. Rooney Enterprises also owns the Yonkers Raceway just north of New York City and its profitable casino; the Palm Beach Kennel Club, a faded Florida dog track that now has a poker room; and other holdings, including a horse farm in Maryland. The Steelers are by far the family's crown jewel. Art Rooney Sr. – a colorful, cigar-chomping sportsman who kept the team going in its early years through his skill as a horse-race handicapper – bought the club for $2,500 in 1933.
Good investment by the patriarch.
After decades of losing, the Steelers became a powerhouse in the 1970s, fielding marquee players such as quarterback Terry Bradshaw and Franco Harris.
If Bradshaw's position is spelled out, shouldn't Harris's be also spelled out?
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