XIAM007

Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World

Saturday 28 September 2013

3-year-old found with 14 bags of marijuana in backpack... -

3-year-old found with 14 bags of marijuana in backpack... - 

Marijuana


New York City police said a 3-year-old girl was found in school Friday with more than a dozen bags of marijuana in her backpack.

Police said an employee of the New LIFE School in Harlem smelled marijuana on the girl at about 1 p.m. Friday.

They said the employee called police, who discovered 14 bags of the drug in the girl’s backpack.

As part of the investigation authorities questioned the girl and her parents.

On Friday night police arrested Kelly Mena, 24, in connection with the incident. Mena was charged with criminal possession of marijuana and criminal sale of marijuana.

Authorities said that Mena is apparently a friend of the girl’s father and that he allegedly placed the marijuana inside the girl’s pink Minnie Mouse backpack.

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Free Shotguns Giveaway In Orlando Neighborhood - in an effort to reduce crime -

Free Shotguns Giveaway In Orlando Neighborhood - in an effort to reduce crime - 



In an effort to reduce crime, the Armed Citizens Project (ACP) is offering free shotguns to residents in an Orlando, Florida neighborhood called Sunshine Gardens.

Ron Ritter is the Armed Citizens Project director in Florida. He is trying to convince gun dealers to give free or heavily discounted firearms to homeowners in Sunshine Gardens. The group also offers free gun training courses.

ACP members have been leaving fliers on homeowners’ front doors that say: “The Armed Citizen Project of Florida is seeking volunteers to reduce crime in your neighborhood by arming volunteer households with one free shotgun per household.”

Some gun control advocates have condemned ACP’s “controversial” shotgun giveaway, criticizing the fact that Sunshine Gardens is only 20 miles away from where George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin.

But ACP members insist their efforts are simply to reduce crime, and point out that what they are doing is completely legal.

Ritter said, “This is perfectly legal, permitting guns to be handed out… These guns have to be transferred through a [federally licensed firearms] dealer.”

ACP was started in Texas after a World War II veteran was burglarized and had no way to defend himself. The group offers free firearms and self defense instruction to those who live in at-risk areas in Texas. Now they are expanding into Florida.

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Merely holding a cellphone in a car is illegal in Ontario, appeal court rules -

Merely holding a cellphone in a car is illegal in Ontario, appeal court rules - 



Ontario’s top court says it’s illegal to hold a cellphone while driving even if it’s not transmitting and no matter how briefly it’s in a driver’s hand.

The Court of Appeal for Ontario released a pair of decisions Friday ordering two people convicted under the Highway Traffic Act for violating the ban on using cellphones while driving.

In one case, Khojasteh Kazemi argued that she had just picked up her cellphone, which had fallen off the seat to the floor of her car when she stopped at a red light, when a police officer spotted her holding it.

A lower court judge dismissed Kazemi’s charge, ruling that there must be some “sustained physical holding” in order to convict, but the Appeal Court overturned that finding.

Road safety is best ensured by a complete prohibition on having a cellphone in one’s hand at all while driving
In the other case, Hugo Pizzurro was caught driving with a cellphone in his hand but argued the Crown couldn’t prove it was capable of sending or receiving at the time.

But the Appeal Court concluded the language in the law requiring a capability of sending or receiving applies only to devices other than cellphones as cellphones have that capability built in.

“Moreover, to impose the requirement that a cellphone held by a driver while driving was capable of receiving or transmitting would be unreasonable both for enforcement and for prosecution,” the court ruled.

“The legislature could not have intended that result.”

The Ontario legislature’s purpose in enacting the law was to ensure drivers focus “on one thing and one thing only: driving,” the court wrote, quoting then-Transportation Minister Jim Bradley.

“Road safety is best ensured by a complete prohibition on having a cellphone in one’s hand at all while driving,” the Appeal Court wrote in the Kazemi decision.

“A complete prohibition also best focuses a driver’s undivided attention on driving…In short, it removes the various ways that road safety and driver attention can be harmed if a driver has a cellphone in his or her hand while driving.”

The Appeal Court made similar comments in the Pizzurro case.

“To hold out the possibility that the driver may escape the prohibition because the cellphone is not shown to be capable of communicating, however temporarily, is to tempt the driver to a course of conduct that risks undermining these objectives,” the court wrote.

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