“Harris was asked if there would ever be a time when she might ask for the death penalty. ‘We take each case on a case by case basis…and I’ll make decisions on each case as they arise,’ she said.”
IMO, there’s wiggle room in here. There wouldn’t be much point in going for the death penalty in a case that she didn’t think she’d get a death penalty decision from a San Francisco jury, of course.
IMO, her position(s) won’t make or break her chances to replace Jerry Brown. I’m sure she’ll have ample opportunity to explain everything to the voters over the coming months. We’ll see…
These particular products weren’t meant for sale to Californians, so let’s assume that similar hairsprays and gels and whatnot, you know, all those things that you’ll see on sale tomorrow, have been given the O.K. Feel free to shop away.
All the deets:
Brown Removes Pollution-Causing Products from Store Shelves
Oakland-Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. today announced a court judgment against Pro’s Choice Beauty Care, Inc., a New York-based hair care product distributor, blocking the company from selling “pollution-causing” products that also exacerbate respiratory illnesses.
The judgment also requires the retailers Rite Aid, Long’s Drug Stores, CVS Pharmacy, Walgreen Company, Ralphs Grocery Company, Kmart and Target to remove these products at all California stores.
“Pro’s Choice sold thousands of containers of pollution-causing hair products to consumers who unknowingly exposed themselves and the environment to harmful pollutants,” Brown said. “Today’s agreement will remove products from store shelves that pollute our air and exacerbate respiratory diseases such as asthma.”
Pro’s Choice, the largest distributor of professional hair care and nail products in the country, buys U.S. brand-name products overseas and re-imports the products to sell them below suggested retail value. The products are then redistributed to pharmacies, grocery chains, and wholesale clubs throughout the country.
In late 2006, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and several district attorneys notified Brown’s office that many products supplied by Pro’s Choice contained air contaminants well above the state’s limits on volatile organic compounds (VOCs.) Despite numerous tests and repeated violations and requests for compliance, Pro’s Choice continued to sell these products to retailers.
Brown’s office filed a lawsuit against the company in 2008. The company was charged with violating California’s Health and Safety Code 4200 et seq., which protects air quality and prevents companies from intentionally discharging pollutants into the air.
VOCs significantly contribute to the formation of smog. Under California law, depending on whether the product is a hair spray, mousse, gel or styling product, each must meet California’s stringent standards for VOC content. According to the American Lung Association’s 2009 State of the Air Report, California has five of the top-ten worst smog areas and the highest rate of asthma in the country.
Some of the non-compliant products Pro’s Choice resold to retailers include:
- Big Sexy Hair Dense at a Target in Modesto, CA;
- Redken Fabricate at a RiteAid in Modesto, CA;
- Sebastian Threads Microber Cream at a K-Mart in Lodi, CA;
- Sebastian Shaper Plus at Ralphs in Sacramento, CA;
- John Paul Mitchell Freeze and Shine Super Spray Firm Hold at Longs in Stockton, CA; and,
- Short Sexy Hair Hard Up Gel at Rite Aid in Torrance, CA.
Today’s judgment requires Pro’s Choice to:
- Stop selling or distributing products that violate the limits of VOCs;
- Pull all of the products found in violation;
- Identify and sort products that are non-compliant before distributing them for sale in California;
- Obtain written verification from the manufacturer
Here’s what the little monsters know – they know that if they tag a big old transformer box or what have you, then it’ll simply get painted over by the City or a property owner, sometimes with a quickness. But painting over a mural, such as the one called Gold Mountain at Romolo Place in North Beach near the intersection of Columbus and Broadway, well that throws all the stakeholders into paralysis and their scribblings will remain for tout le monde to see.
Ideally, you’d have the original muralist come over and do a touchup for free. Ideally. But the long-lived tagging on Gold Mountain has epoxy in it, so it’s really hard to take off of the wall without erasing everything. And then after you do a fix-up another tagger will come along, despite your use of anti-graffiti coatings and whatnot.
Now honestly, I’m not sure how much good putting up video cameras would do unless you had somebody to watch a live feed 24-7. I mean the value of showing the SFPD grainy night-time footage of some skinny, 5′ 8″, hoodie-wearing hood isn’t much, right?
For all I know these tags are still there today, with more added on, possibly. I’ll check it out the next time I’m in the area.
The Gold Mountain Mural is located at Romolo Alley, near Broadway and Columbus, on the side of the Swiss American building owned and managed by Chinatown CDC. It is the joint effort of Ms. Ann Sherry, the muralist, and Chinatown CDC depicting the lives of Chinese Americans in San Francisco. It was created in 1994, and once restored in 2004 due to heavy tagging. At that time, to honor her, we added the image of our local heroine, Ms. Betty Ann Ong. Ms. Ong is the American Airline stewardess who was the first one to contact ground crew informing them of the plane being hijacked on that fatal flight into the World Trade Center on 9/11.
Recently, this historic mural caught the eyes of the President of the National Museum of Murals and Mosaics in Philadelphia, and will be featured in their online museum website.
Once again, due to tagging, we will start restoring the mural in the near future. We have so far secured some funding to install surveillance cameras to safeguard the mural. Once restoration is complete, we will daily monitor the mural and assist the SFPD to apprehend taggers. (Volunteers interested to help can contact Cathie Lam at 415-984-1461.)
“San Francisco- On the heels of troubling allegations of evidence tampering against a former San Francisco Police Department Crime Lab technician, Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. today announced that his office will provide a team of specialists to assist in a thorough independent audit of the laboratory.
“My office will assist San Francisco police to get to the bottom of these serious evidence-tampering allegations,”Brown said. “It’s critical that we act immediately to get the San Francisco crime lab back in service and restore the public’s trust in our criminal justice system.”
At the request of San Francisco Police Chief George Gascon, crime specialists from Brown’s office will assist San Francisco authorities in re-testing of evidence, improving internal controls and taking whatever steps are necessary to return the lab to full operation.
Today’s announcement follows allegations that Deborah Madden, 60, a former San Francisco Police Department Lab technician, jeopardized numerous criminal cases by tampering with police evidence.
The San Francisco Police Department will continue to lead the criminal investigation into Ms. Madden’s conduct.
Wide angle, telephoto, infrared LED lighting, hook it up to the Internet for free, watch it live from you smart phone, hook up more hard drives for extra storage – this thing has it all.
Or maybe, you could point some of your extra cams at a nearby intersection, such as problematic Fell crossing Masonic or horrible Octavia Boulevard crossing everything – Market, Haight, Page, Oak, Fell, the works. You’d be the hero of the hood by being able to demonstrate just how somebody got injured.
Or just do it to impress your neighbors in the Richmond or Sunset districts. You wouldn’t even need to hook up the cams - just mount them all over the place and then everybody will go, “Oh, that must be the new brothel and/or growhouse in the neighborhood.” Don’t think they’ll mess with you after that. Respect!
What makes San Francisco’s monthly Critical Mass an illegal bicycle parade is the fact that nobody gets permits. ‘Cause getting a permit is hard - it would entail doing stuff that costs a lot of money and it would make you a magnet for lawsuits, so who needs that, right?
I’ll tell you, the biggest shock that drivers have when they get stuck at an intersection is that they get no sympathy from the cops.Drivers without criminal records tend to stay by their cars and watch the parade of bikes.
OTOH, drivers with criminal records, well, Critical Mass is a test of their ability to maintain. Some fail.
Do I think San Francisco has the will to kill Critical Mass? No. But do I think Police Chief George Gascon is planning on shaking things up, in the coming months, you know, when rain no longer threatens* and the number of cyclists is bigger? Yes.
Am I missing something here? Is there some reason why the SFPD shouldn’t have CED’s? Our Sheriff’s Department and the California Highway Patrol have access to TASERS when they’re on the job in SF, so why not the police?
“I’m going to wear a powder blue fucking suit, and a white shirt and a red tie and a fucking breast cancer pin…”
Comes now the fight loser “Michael” (who appears to be on a first-name-only basis with DJ “JV“):
“First of all, I’d like to aPOlogize to AC Transit…”
It goes on and on, Black History Month, 5150, bygones, veterans, arthritis, murder, parole, apologies, brothers, stolen money, leaking, ass kicking, Strike Force(?) Showtime TV, 10,000 kids, cocaine - it goes on and on.
Can’t remember which morning-zoo / dawg-pound joint this screengrab came from. Oh yes, it was from WILD 94.9 FM:
Now-famous 62-year-old Bay Arean Thomas Bruso (akaEpic Beard Man, Tom Swift, and Tom Vietnam) picks fights as he rides AC Transit in the East Bay, of course, (incident video now available in high def) but he also has been known to take BART to visit San Francisco from time to time. For example, here he is near Market Street back when he was just 48, as seen by Caliber photographer Troy Holden:
“Back in 1996, I was working at the intersection of 2nd & Market. Each and every day the man pictured above would walk by my shop, wave a loaf of sourdough in my face, and scream obscenities about the San Francisco 49′ers.”
Let’s find out, courtesy of footage of Tom at an Oakland A’s game last year. Is this a proper use of a Taser? I don’t know. It ended up being a time-saver for the cops, certainly. Would they have felt justified in shooting Tom with bullets at that moment? Obviously not. The question after any Taser discharge is what would you have done if you didn’t have the Taser, right?
Speaking of Tasers and the East Bay, check out this excellent report from Demian Bulwa about how the BART Police Department ran the initial stages of its Taser program.
That’s a poorly-run operation. What about the California Highway Patrol? They seem to do be doing better with Tasers these days. For them, a Taser is just another arrow in the quiver. Check it, a CHP officer on San Francisco’s Octavia Boulevard with his two primary weapons, a Smith & Wesson Model 4006 semi-automatic and a TASER International X26:
So why shouldn’t the SFPD have Tasers? We already trust them with handguns and assault rifles, right? We’ll end up with a few more lawsuits but with fewer dead civilians. Sounds like a win, overall.
And finally, let’s hear from the RAND Coporation. They pondered the use of Conducted Energy Devices (CEDs) for the NYPD and had this to say:
“Our key less-than-lethal force recommendations:
We reviewed reports of about 455 NYPD shootings from 2004 to 2006 and identified 25 cases where we judged that had a less-lethal weapon been available, officers may have used it to subdue suspects instead of using their handguns.
We also note that when other departments have deployed Conducted Energy Devices or CEDs, commonly known by the brand name TASER, injuries to both suspects and officers have declined.
We recognize that some groups have criticized the deployment of CEDs, raising issues of safety, overuse, and misuse. As such we recommend that the NYPD undertake a pilot program for the deployment of CEDs.
Such a program should allow patrol officers in selected precincts to be trained and equipped with CEDs that can incapacitate suspects from a distance. We believe there is evidence that if NYPD officers had access to this device, some number of officer-involved shootings could be avoided, and injuries to both suspects and police officers will decline. A carefully designed pilot program conducted over six to 12 months in a few select precincts would give the department enough information to determine whether the devices would alter the way the NYPD officers apply force and whether the weapons could be used properly.”
