How can an airline nearly kill you without crashing?

From the Daily Business Review's John Pacenti:

"First, Allan Campbell’s Air Jamaica flight from Kingston to Fort Lauderdale was delayed. Hours passed. Once given the go-ahead to board, he says, he was recalled to the boarding gate and forced to reschedule to another departure the next day -- when his permanent resident alien card would expire. Air Jamaica charged him a $150 fee to change flights and refused to put him up in a hotel. Terminal repairs left him to spend the night outside, exposed to the elements. As Campbell put it in his complaint, the ordeal took its toll: he was hospitalized with a heart attack after falling ill during the delay, seeking medical help upon arrival, and collapsing at his home."

Allan Campbell v Air Jamaica No. 12-14860 by Random Pixels blog

Your lunch hour time waster

Two Golden Retriever pups catching Cheerios!
One successful, the other not so much!

It's official: Miami Herald bosses no longer give a sh*t [UPDATED 1x]

"We have transformed our business to become 24/7 information specialists, with the ability to deliver breaking news through a variety of digital platforms in addition to our print newspapers." -David Landsberg, the Miami Herald's former publisher, in a Nov. 2012 email to staffers.

"I can’t tell you exactly how you’ll be getting your news, but I know we’ll be delivering that news. We’ll be here." -Miami Herald Executive Editor Aminda "Mindy" Marqués Gonzalez, quoted in Ocean Drive Magazine.

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UPDATED below in red.

..........

Last April when asked about the Miami Herald's future, executive editor "Mindy" Marqués told Ocean Drive Magazine, "I can’t tell you exactly how you’ll be getting your news, but I know we’ll be delivering that news."

What she really meant to say was, "We'll be delivering that news as long as it happens between the hours of 9 and 5...excluding weekends and holidays, of course."

In Nov. 2012, then publisher David Landsberg emailed staffers with the news that the Herald was going to start charging readers to access the paper's website, writing, "We have transformed our business to become 24/7 information specialists..."

Under the reign of executive editor "Mindy" Marqués, covering the news on a "24/7" basis apparently means that newsroom managers leave the building well before midnight, crossing their fingers as they turn off the lights and walk to their cars - and praying to God, or the ghosts of John S. and James L. Knight - that nothing major will occur overnight. But if something does happen, they'll just pretend it didn't, leaving it to the morning crew to play catch up.

The story that appears in this morning's Herald on the boating crash that occurred July 4 near the Dinner Key marina - and that so far has claimed four lives - mentions in the second paragraph that the mishap occurred at 10:45 p.m. Friday night.

But the Herald didn't inform its readers of the accident until shortly after 9 a.m. Saturday morning - more than 10 hours after it occurred - when an intern posted online, a story that she copied and pasted from a TV station's website.

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UPDATE: At some point late Saturday morning, someone in the newsroom finally decided this was a big story and maybe they should talk to some witnesses.

Why send a reporter to a news event when it's happening, 
when you can send a Tweet 13 hours later?

UPDATE: After seeing that Tweet, one staffer said, "I've now seen it all. Four [people] dead and we're tweeting for tips instead of reporting."

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And a close inspection of the story in this morning's paper reveals that despite the magnitude of the tragedy, almost no effort went into reporting any of the story's developments that unfolded past the Herald's ridiculously early print deadlines.

One Herald newsroom veteran tells me the "handling and time elements look like the piece was written at 2 p.m. yesterday for online and not refocused for print this morning."

For instance, the Herald's story names just one of the crash victims: Kelsie Karpiak.

But several local TV stations apparently had no trouble confirming the names of four of the victims by late Saturday afternoon.

Sadly, it appears the people now in charge at the Herald no longer have any kind of coherent or workable plan on how to accomplish the most basic and essential function of a newspaper: Covering the news on a 24/7 basis.

Either that, or they just don't give a shit.

At any other newspaper in this country, "Mindy" Marqués, her deputy, Rick Hirsch, would have been fired long ago for incompetence. But, unfortunately, the Herald isn't like any other newspaper.

Happy 4th of July

Ray Charles performs "America, The Beautiful," in a benefit for the Miami Lighthouse for the Blind at the James L. Knight Center, Nov. 14, 1998.

Dan Oates has assumed command of the Miami Beach Police Department...but he still has some unfinished business to deal with back in Colorado

Chief Dan Oates.

When Miami Beach's brand new police chief, Dan Oates arrived in town early last month, he brought some extra baggage with him.

As the veteran cop was finishing up his last few days as police chief in Aurora, CO in May, Denver attorney David Lane presented Oates with a going-away present: a 30-page federal lawsuit [embedded below] alleging that Oates, and his officers, violated the Fourth Amendment rights of 14 plaintiffs when they were detained at a roadblock in 2012 as police searched for an armed bank robber.

From the Denver Post:

Motorists who were detained at an Aurora intersection nearly two years ago while officers attempted to locate and apprehend an on-the-run bank robber have sued the city for violating their Fourth Amendment right against unlawful search and seizure.

The suit was filed Friday in federal district court on behalf of 14 plaintiffs, some of whom were approached at gunpoint by police at the intersection of Iliff Avenue and Buckley Road, handcuffed and made to wait for two hours while the scene was cleared.

"They had no probable cause to pat my clients down and then handcuff them when they found that they had no weapons," said David Lane, the attorney representing the group. "This was overreaching."

He said police should have used more precise location tracking technology to pinpoint the location of Christian Paetsch, the man eventually convicted and imprisoned in the robbery of a Wells Fargo branch June 2, 2012. Hidden in the stolen money was a GPS tracking device that brought officers to the busy intersection but was unable to provide vehicle-by-vehicle location information.

To surround 19 cars stopped at a light and detain 28 occupants in those vehicles in an attempt to find a robbery suspect violated the motorists' Fourth Amendment protections against unlawful search and seizure and excessive force, Lane said.

At the time, Oates defended the tactics used during the search that included ordering motorists out of their cars at gunpoint, and handcuffing both men and women.

Some of the people caught up in the search were detained for more than two hours. A few days later, according to the Aurora Sentinel, Oates apologized: “No question we inconvenienced citizens, and I feel badly about that," Oates said.

Click all images to enlarge.

A few days after the roadblock incident, Fox News political analyst and former judge, Andrew Napolitano, compared the tactics used by Oates and his officers to those of the SS in Nazi Germany:

The big picture here is that the police in this small Colorado town applied tactics that are forbidden by the U.S. Constitution, and which were perfected by the SS in Nazi Germany, in order to make their job easier. Nazi Germany had the lowest crime rate of any modern society; but it had no freedom. The cops and the SS regularly arrested groups until they found the person they wanted. We fought World War II in large measure to prevent such behavior by the government.
[...]
The behavior of the cops on Aurora, CO will cost the town a great deal of money; and it should provoke a federal criminal investigation of the police behavior. The Aurora police violated basic constitutionally-guaranteed rights, federal law, rights guaranteed by the Colorado Constitution, and state law.

Last week the Miami Herald's David Smiley reported that Oates plans "to review [MBPD’s] Taser policies and change the rules involving officers and dangerous drivers."

“I will be looking at all use-of-force policies,” [Oates] said.

There's no word on whether or not Oates plans any changes in the way Miami Beach officers look for bank robbers.

Aurora Search Lawsuit by Random Pixels blog

Your lunch hour time waster

Facts Pilots Don't Want You To Know.