27 February 2008

do speed humps keep out undesirables?

the alexandria city council committee and council meetings continue to be a gold mine for blogosphere fodder. small wonder the city doesnt really want a professionally ran channel four or city website with the streaming video, eh?



in this clip of a lively exchange between alexandria, la. city council president louis marshall and city of alexandria chief operating officer, kay michiels, council prez marshall just cant seem to be able to make the leap in understanding why speed b/humps are not a good idea.

council prez marshall even claims that speed b/humps help to keep out "undesirables" exactly how so we're not sure since he didnt elaborate. anyway, it brought to mind this kalb & mike magnoli, 26 september 2007 report:.



in this video one can plainly see that speed b/humps reduced the response time of alexandria police officer david foshee who was responding to a fight which had broken out and had drawn a "large crowd." it would seem that if someone in a "large crowd" or otherwise, was wanting to do harm to a police officer, that the police officers having to slow down to a crawl to traverse a speed b/hump would leave them most vulnerable to a gunman or brick-bat thrower.

an alexandria resident, shamekica deal, interviewed in mr. magnoli's story says "they (alexandria police) need to patrol more in the neighborhood..."

central la politics points out that council prez marshall's comments are "amazingly stupid" especially "coming from a black man, because it is more often than not blacks who fall victim to being called those "undesirables".

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