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Salida has been a fairly contentious place of late, mostly as a result of our city council, which has been passing all manner of stupid laws.
For instance, if you stay in one place (or within 200 feet of a place) for more than five minutes between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., you are loitering and thus eligible for a $50 fine plus court costs.
Last month, a friend and his brother-in-law (both must remain nameless here, since their case hasn't gone to court, but Anonymous Friend is 50 years old, owns a house, has two children and operates a thriving business -- unlike many of my other friends, he's not even close to being a derelict), walked downtown from his house, had a couple of beers, and started walking back to his house.
They saw some flashing police lights, walked over to see what was happening, and observed a policeman citing several teenagers for loitering.
The policeman asked Anonymous Friend, Can I help you,
sir?
Anonymous Friend replied No, I'm just a citizen
observing the police at work.
The policeman asked Anonymous Friend to step back, which he did, then said something into his shoulder microphone and resumed his duties of augmenting the city treasury by issuing loitering citations.
A couple of minutes later, Anonymous Friend was
surrounded by policemen. The first cop pointed to him and
said I want him arrested for interfering with me.
That happened. The brother-in-law was merely cited for
loitering as he stood and watched.
See how Salida is much more progressive than, say, Los Angeles. Here, if you stop to watch your employees in the performance of their work while they're on your time, you're committing a crime.
There, well, they let somebody videotape them when they were thumping away on Rodney King -- if they'd been as smart as Salida cops, they'd have arrested the videotaper for interference, seized the camera as evidence, and we'd have never heard of it.
I'll tell you I sleep better at night, knowing we have police like that on the job. But my days are tougher -- the loitering law applies then within 1000 feet of a school, there's a school across the street, and so if I stand in front of my own house and talk to a neighbor for more than five minutes, I'm a criminal.
Another of the city's new and improved laws concerns obstructing traffic. Some kids were charged with violating it, and got a jury trial where their father defended them.
They were acquitted, since nobody could demonstrate that they had, in fact, kept cars from going down Fifth Street. So the city has raced to pass a new and improved ordinance.
The municipal judge -- a fellow who has actually read the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution and is thus a dangerous subversive in modern Salida -- actually allowed a jury to acquit teenagers in a city courtroom. And perhaps even worse, he also occasionally suspends fines and court costs.
So the city plans to pass a law forbidding the judge from suspending fines or court costs. Also, the current statute requires the municipal judge to reside in Chaffee County; they want to change that to allow a judge from adjacent counties.
In other words, if teenagers somehow manage to avoid conviction under the current laws, pass some stronger laws. If the judge allows acquittals, get a new judge. If the judge suspends sentences, take that option out of his hands. And if you watch the local police at work, you're committing a crime.
Now, I bring all this up for two reasons. One is that I think more people should know about our wonderful city government -- the more people who know how easy it is to get shaken down here, the less trouble we should have with traffic and growth.
The second is that the mayor, the city council, the local newspaper and the rest of the local establishment assure us that these laws are totally valid and are based upon tested ordinances in other Colorado towns.
Well, I read a lot of Colorado newspapers, and I've never read of any such laws in any other town -- unless perhaps they're talking about Victor under martial law during a strike in 1904, or one of the internment camps during World War II.
So, if there really are other Colorado towns with laws as stupid and oppressive as Salida's, and a municipal government panting to make them worse by the moment, please advise me, so I can plan my travels accordingly this summer.
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