Stupid people of the week
1970 Hurst Olds
City manager made decision to pay police chief $175,000 to retire, Amarillo mayor says
Taxpayers are upset about the city’s decision to pay former Amarillo Police Chief Martin Birkenfeld $175,000 to retire after supporting a convicted child predator.
The controversy began after ABC 7 News broke the story Wednesday.
Residents expressed their frustration on our Facebook page.
“You paid him my tax money. Unreal,” said Andrew Trevino.
Becky Breckenridge questioned, “Accountability???”
ABC 7 News contacted Mayor Cole Stanley about the controversial payout.
“The chief of police works directly underneath our city manager and deputy manager,” said Stanley. “Councils’ role in this was to support the decision fully that was made by staff in separating with Chief Birkenfeld.”
Since Stanley pointed the finger at the city manager, we reached out to Grayson Path for comment on Thursday and Friday. But a city spokesperson resent the statement the city released on Feb. 21 which indicates part of the reason was to avoid a potential lawsuit from Birkenfeld.
“After careful consideration and discussions, this decision was made with the intent to provide finality, avoid potential civil service proceedings, and move the department and community forward as quickly as possible.”
The city said the issue is a personnel matter and declined additional comment.
Birkenfeld was suspended on Feb. 17 for writing a letter in support of former Perryton football coach Cole Underwood. The letter was read in federal court before Underwood was sentenced to 30 years in prison for having an illicit relationship with a student.
Source; ABC 7 Amarillo
Police: Florida Substitute Teacher Urged Children to Beat Up Classmate
A substitute teacher in Jacksonville, Florida, is accused of encouraging students to violently gang up on a classmate.
The suspect, identified as Geanene White, who allegedly urged students to beat up another child, is also accused of assaulting the victim in the case, First Coast News reported Wednesday.
An image shows the suspect:
The incident happened on February 12 at the YMCA Tiger Academy on Bagley Road which serves pre-k through fifth grade students.
Law enforcement records said an officer responded to the school about an alleged child abuse incident and learned that White was accused of inciting the students to target their classmate, the First Coast News article continued:
The report said White had initially asked the student to join a small group, but when he refused, she became frustrated and asked the class, “Who in here can beat him up?”That’s when JSO said four students raised their hands, and White called on them to fight the victim while she watched, then the students hit the victim multiple times on his head and body.
Following the beating, White allegedly pushed the child who hit his head on a desk. The substitute teacher called in two teachers for help and police said she told them the children needed “behavior intervention.”
However, White allegedly did not report the fight to them or say anything about the victim being hurt when he hit his head on the desk.
The victim reportedly suffered a small laceration behind his ear and some bruises. “One student told police that he would not have fought the victim ‘but the teacher told him to do it,’” the First Coast News article said.
The suspect is said to have denied being involved in the fight, claiming she merely tried to help the victim up off the ground after the others allegedly targeted him, Action News Jax reported Wednesday.
In a statement, First Coast YMCA said:
The First Coast YMCA was made aware of an incident at Tiger Academy involving a student and a substitute teacher who had been properly vetted by both the First Coast YMCA and Duval County Public Schools. The safety and well-being of our scholars and staff have been and will always be our top priority, and as such, we investigated the matter immediately according to protocol. Upon completion of the internal investigation, we terminated the substitute teacher’s employment. We immediately reported the incident to the Department of Children and Families, who are conducting an ongoing investigation in collaboration with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. All further inquiries about the incident should be directed to them.
After she was arrested, White was charged with child abuse and four counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Source; Breitbart
Memphis man in bed with lady friend shot in leg — and claims dog pulled trigger
Right….
This dirty dog was one man’s best fiend.
A Memphis man was shot in the leg while canoodling in bed with a lady friend — and he claims his pet pooch is the one who pulled the trigger.
The unidentified man was lying in bed with a female friend “relaxing/talking” around 4 a.m. Monday, an incident report from the Memphis Police Department said.
That was when his dog supposedly jumped up to join them — and things got hairy when Oreo, a 1-year-old pit bull, stepped on a gun, WREG reported and identified the man as Jerald Kirkwood.
“The victim’s dog jumped on the bed and got his paw stuck in the trigger guard,” the police report said.
Oreo’s paw “ended up hitting the trigger,” discharging the weapon and shooting Kirkwood in the leg.
He was left with a graze wound on the left thigh and was treated at the scene by responding paramedics.
But before they arrived, the man’s gal pal lit out and took the gun with her.
“When officers asked the victim where the weapon was, he advised that the female friend took it when she left,” the report read.
One shell casing was recovered at the scene.
Police filed the incident as an “accidental injury.”
Source; NY Post
Excavator on Trailer Decimates Highway Overpass at Interstate Speeds
I am short. I never have to think or worry about hitting my head on anything. Not even the underside of airplane overhead bins (feel free to hate me if you didn’t already). In Lordsburg, New Mexico, a transporter must’ve spaced out on their taller-than-average vehicle height because they failed to clear an overpass, leaving the bridge’s now-crumpled underbelly exposed in construction morbidity.
The Hidalgo County Fire Rescue District 1 reported that Exit 24 on Interstate 10 westbound was critically damaged due to a commercial vehicle hauling an excavator on a trailer. Not only did it not meet the height clearance, but the load was oversized. Fire officials say there were no fatalities but they must mean of the human kind. Both the excavator and the bridge are dead at the scene.
The damage to the excavator is apparent. Colliding into the overpass at highway speeds (75 mph in this area), the mangled vehicle is a total loss. The bridge doesn’t look great, either. The structure is bowing, for goodness sake. But is it repairable? In addition to not being tall enough for most rides, I also do not have an engineering degree. So, I called someone who does.
According to my contact, a principal engineer licensed in California and Nevada, the I-10 overpass is a post-tension bridge. In official engineering speak, the bridge would be deemed “catastrophically damaged; unrepairable.”
Those dangling cables seen in the images are high-strength steel “tendons” laid out before the concrete is poured. When the concrete is cured, the cables are tensioned (pulled), and then anchored. This creates an internal compressive stress that counters the external stress (e.g., the repetitive load of moving vehicles). Because the cables here are ripped apart, there’s little tension and structural support. The girders, which are responsible for most of the bridge’s stress support, are also beyond saving.
“I’m surprised it’s still standing, to be honest,” he said. When I asked if retrofitting was possible, he quickly shut down that idea. “I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t touch that with a 10-foot pole.”
When the interstate highway system was constructed, the minimum vertical height clearance was 14 feet, per the U.S. Department of Transportation. However, in later years, the U.S. Department of Defense recommended a 17-foot clearance to accommodate larger military equipment that couldn’t be transported via rail, such as the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile. The compromise was 16 feet, but clearances can be higher. The New Mexico overpass is cleared for vehicles up to 16 feet and 9 inches. So, this wasn’t a case of low bridge-high truck.
There aren’t enough poop emoji to describe how deep in it the driver is. The transport company shouldn’t be absolved of the bridge destruction, either. Although the overpass didn’t collapse and potentially injure others traveling along the interstate, the structure will have to be demolished and rebuilt. The construction will take more than a year (think plural), with costs in the millions.
Source; The Drive
Category: "Teh Stoopid", Crime, Police, Stupid Criminals, WTF?
ARRRGH! ‘Eg’ is for example; ‘i.e.’ means ‘ in other words.’
Yeah, concrete beam smashed; saw the video.
Some non operator, or careless operator, paid no attention when folding the excavator boom after loading. Even if 14′ minimum clearance, that load should have cleared easily.
As far as the oversize load goes, it was most likely over width. If the load sticks out past width of trailer, wide load banners are required. If over height, there should have been a pole vehicle leading with pole set to height of load. Any contact with anything stops the transport. If it was oversize enough to require all that, I hope he was on the route approved by the state DOT permit office.
technically since there are other external stresses and vehicle weight acting on the bridge is just one of them, either would be accurate and grammatically correct, wouldn’t it?
I remember back in the day (90s?) one of our young 88mikes took his PLS at highway speed and blasted his conex loaded with 155 rounds into a bridge. 155 rounds laying up and down the road. It was epic. The reason the driver and the AD were still alive is because the conex wasn’t properly locked on the PLS. I guess there is a God for stupid. None of the civilian authorities wanted to walk up on the scene till they saw the Army guys kicking them off the road. Another day another adventure!
Yuma 1985. ADOT pretty much demanded our convoys go over the scales at the scale house. We were doing a live shoot at Bakers Peak and had the control vans in our convoy on trailers. Well they were to high and hit the awning covering the scales, our convoy commander was a Gunny with 3 P-hearts and a whole lot of not giving a shits. The awning was leaning and this ADOT captain was trying to ream out Gunny telling him how much trouble he was in and raising his voice etc. Gunny got right up in his face, told him to fuck himself and said “mount up we are the fuck out of here”. Gunny got promoted to Top and we never went through the scales again.
As to the Lordsburg New Mexico situation, upon reflection, it wasn’t such a great idea to hire All Points Logistics to move your construction equipment.
Every once in a long while, FAFO intersects with “irresistible force / immovable object”.
A dog stepping on the trigger killed the son of a pheasant hunter in my base rod and gun club. The father put down his shotgun which had a round chambered, while he and his son climbed over a fence. The hunting dog stepped on the trigger guard in the process. The dog’s paw depressed the trigger firing the shotgun into the 14-year-old’s head. Unfortunately, the butt of the shotgun was positioned in a depression next to the fence that angled the barrel up and pointed at where the son’s head was positioned after he climbed over the fence and bent over to retrieve his shotgun.
Everyone in my club learned a sad lesson on gun handling from that incident. Thereafter, I always made sure my shotgun was broken open or unloaded when crossing a fence or put down for any reason.
In the turkey blind, fighting the sleep demon or stuffing spaghettiOs in my face, I’ll depress the action lock on the Maverick 88 and open the action about a quarter inch.
If I want to pick up and move the one in the pipe gets ejected.
Shotguns aren’t drop safe and early April makes for bad traction on froze up feets.
AS TO thet-thar bridge, some ex-Driver is likely having had his CDL revoked, and it doesn’t look good for whoever loaded that excavator-turned-scrap-metal either as well as whoever signed off on supervising that loading! Some outfit, if it isn’t already declaring bankruptcy over the result of that, is looking at going out of business after their Insurance Company says “Oh, fuck no!” to further coverage of them!
No matter who loaded it, it ultimatly becomes the drivers responsibility to make sure its properly loaded and secured.
Pedo-supporting ex-Chief Birkenfeld could go to work as a supervisor for Thomas “Turd” Bolling, president and CEO of Ambassador Worldwide Protection Agency.