Glass Bleg

I have to get my windshield replaced, and it's unlikely my insurance will cover it (long story). Any suggestions on who's good/reliable/reasonably priced?

Please Make Sure Your Trash Is Pre-Approved

I couldn't help but laugh at the following line from this article in the Enquirer:

Monzel wants a $100 fine for anyone caught by police putting inappropriate garbage in the cans.

I'm glad the Republican Party is working so hard to protect us from the evils of "big government." But wait: there's more:

He also wants a quarterly report from public services to council's neighborhoods committee, including the number of all can calls and how quickly the complaints were resolved.

Really? A big, new government program to keep the citizenry safe from "inappropriate garbage"? And a bureaucracy devoted to tracking complaints about trash cans?

It's heartening to see the GOP stepping forward to take on such a critical issue. In the post-9/11 world, we must be safe from inappropriate garbage!

How Loud Is Too Loud?

An interesting article in Sunday's NY Times explains that because of a new European Union worker protection law governing the amount of noise to which workers can lawfully be exposed without hearing protection, European orchestras have had to alter the way they rehearse and perform.


Our own Cincinnati Symphony is just returning from a twelve-concert European tour. I wonder if the law impacted their performances and rehearsals (or if the Europeans aren't all that concerned with the hearing loss of an American-based group of musicians).

I also wonder how Paavo managed to schedule 12 concerts without a single performance of anything by Mahler....

Northside Tavern Expanding

CinWeekly's Soundcheck is reporting that that Northside Tavern is expanding with the addition a new room, doubling the size of the bar. I can't picture where it is and what the new room will look like, but the story indicates the improvements should be complete by late May or early June, so I won't have to wait long to find out. Will there be a second bar as well? Most important to the expansion is that you should be able to see the band playing. Let's also hope they get a new sound system. I love the Tavern, but for rock bands, the sound usually sucks.

Sunday Morning In Downtown

Since moving to OTR last year I've been trying to go for walks weekend mornings when the weather is passable. Sunday's end up being the best bet. I brought along my camera today, so here a few shots.

The Banks and Section 8

Last Tuesday, the Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority voted to ask the county and city to set aside as much as ten percent of the housing to be built at the Banks for tenants with Section 8 vouchers (Enquirer coverage here). This looks like a political move by conservative West Siders to attempt to reduce subsidized housing on the West Side by moving it to the Banks. If we set that aside, though, I think there's two interesting questions that are raised:

First, is there a good argument for the inclusion of subsidized housing in Banks project? This is a public works project of enormous magnitude; isn't there a case to be made that everyone, including the region's poorest residents, should be able to be part of it? Or does the presence of subsidized housing depress a given housing market enough that financing for the Banks would disappear if developers were forced to include units that would include Section 8 tenants?

Second, Pete Witte is quoted as saying that the Banks "will become the 53rd neighborhood of the City of Cincinnati." Is this really true? Fifteen years from now, will we be discussing Downtown and The Banks as two separate neighborhoods, or will the Banks be considered part of "downtown"? (And will there be a streetcar to take me there?)

On The Docket: To Purge, Or Not To Purge

Recently, Judge Nadine Allen and former City Councilmember Charles Winburn have jointly proposed that misdemeanor warrants that are more than seven years-old be "purged," or deleted, from the Hamilton County court system. The Enquirer has posted the text of their proposal here. The basic idea is that warrants for misdemeanor offenses--except for domestic violence, TPO violation, menacing by stalking, assault, assault on police officers, sex offenses, OVI/DUI, aggravated menacing, and child endangering--that are seven years old or older would be purged and the cases dismissed. (I suspect that by "assault on police officers," Judge Allen and Mr. Winburn are referring to a first-degree misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest, which has as an element physical harm to the arresting officer.)

First, Judge Allen and Mr. Winburn are to be commended for the proposal. Their effort represents bipartisanship that we don't often experience here in Hamilton County. It's also a serious effort to address a problem the existence of which everyone involved in the criminal justice system recognizes, but for which, so far, no one has been willing to offer solutions. While the proposal may overestimate the amount of money that would be saved by the purge, the cases do extend the courts' dockets and force prosecutors to spend time that could better be spent on more serious (i.e. violent) offenses that are more likely to end in successful prosecutions. It also forces the Public Defender's Office to spend time on cases that likely aren't going anywhere, instead of cases that are much more likely to go to trial. So everyone loses when these ancient cases suddenly pop back up into the system.

That being said, there are actually two different types of outstanding warrants, and we might need to discuss each type separately. Broadly speaking, you could separate the warrants into two categories: those in which the defendant has been served and made aware of the charge, and those in which which he has not. For me, the second category is easy. If the police haven't bothered to serve a warrant within seven years of the time a charge was filed, the case should be dismissed. (And in fact, assuming the defendant hasn't been avoiding service, a defendant served seven years after a complaint was filed could probably successfully move to have the complaint dismissed on constitutional speedy trial grounds.)

Here's an example. A few years ago, I represented an individual who, in September of a particular year, got into a fight with his then-girlfriend's roommate over the phone. Unbeknownst to him, she went to the police and filed a telephone harassment charge. The police made no attempt to serve the warrant (not surprising--it's not exactly the crime of the decade!). In June of the following year, my client's apartment was robbed. He called the police. When they came over, they ran a standard check for warrants, and he was arrested on the outstanding warrant, now nine months old. The charge was, thankfully, dismissed. It would've been difficult to prepare a defense nine months after an offense allegedly occurred; think about trying to do it seven years later.

The other category of defendants, though, may be a tougher case. These individuals are people who were served with a warrant, who then may or may not have made an initial court appearance, and then disappeared. The warrant is actually a "capias warrant," issued by a judge at the time of the missed court appearance. Obviously, if a capias is outstanding for seven years or more, the person has lived pretty clean (since any contact with law enforcement would mean an arrest on the outstanding warrant). But some will still question whether such people should be "rewarded" for avoiding prosecution. On the other hand, I suspect that the vast majority of the warrants to be purged will be for traffic-related misdemeanors--driving without a license and driving under a suspended license.

This is the perfect time for the proposal to be tendered. Many of the municipal court judges just won fresh six-year terms in 2007, and HamCo Prosecutor Joe Deters is running unopposed, so no one faces immediate political pressure to look "tough on crime." (The City of Cincinnati prosecuting attorney is not an elected official, but instead serves at the pleasure of the City Solicitor, who is appointed by the City Manager.) It'll be interesting to see what the judges do with this at their "Joint Session" later this week (I've always envisioned the "joint session" to be a gathering at which the judges get together with some weed and rolling papers, but I'm told that's not what actually happens, despite the meeting's moniker). Hopefully, the judges will agree at least to study the proposal, getting formal input from the Clerk and the County and City prosecutors about its ramifications.