Via Code Orange:

Papers Please: Arrested At Circuit City
Written By: Michael Amor Righi, September 1st, 2007

Today was an eventful day. I drove to Cleveland, reunited with my father’s side of the family and got arrested. More on that arrested part to come.

For the labor day weekend my father decided to host a small family reunion. My sister flew in from California and I drove in from Pittsburgh to visit my father, his wife and my little brother and sister. Shortly after arriving we packed the whole family into my father’s Buick and headed off to the grocery store to buy some ingredients to make monkeybread. (It’s my little sister’s birthday today and that was her cute/bizare birthday request.)

Next to the grocery store was a Circuit City. (The Brooklyn, Ohio Circuit City to be exact.) Having forgotten that it was my sister’s birthday I decided to run in and buy her a last minute gift. I settled on Disney’s “Cars” game for the Nintendo Wii. I also needed to purchase a Power Squid surge protector which I paid for separately with my business credit card. As I headed towards the exit doors I passed a gentleman whose name I would later learn is Santura. As I began to walk towards the doors Santura said, “Sir, I need to examine your receipt.” I responded by continuing to walk past him while saying, “No thank you.”

As I walked through the double doors I heard Santura yelling for his manager behind me. My father and the family had the Buick pulled up waiting for me outside the doors to Circuit City. I opened the door and got into the back seat while Santura and his manager, whose name I have since learned is Joe Atha, came running up to the vehicle. I closed the door and as my father was just about to pull away the manager, Joe, yelled for us to stop. Of course I knew what this was about, but I played dumb and pretended that I didn’t know what the problem was. I wanted to give Joe the chance to explain what all the fuss was for.

[…]

Of course Joe wasn’t able to name the law that gives him, a U.S. citizen and Circuit City employee the right to examine anything that I, a U.S. citizen and Circuit City customer am carrying out of the store. I’ve dealt with these scare tactics at other stores in the past including other Circuit Cities, Best Buys and Guitar Centers. I’ve always taken the stance that retail stores shouldn’t treat their loyal customers as criminals and that customers shouldn’t so willingly give up their rights along with their money. Theft sucks and I wish that shoplifters were treated more harshly than they are, but the fact is that I am not a shiplifter and shouldn’t have to forfeit my civil rights when leaving a store.

[…]

Joe didn’t budge. At this point I pushed my way past Joe and walked onto the sidewalk next to the building. I pulled out my phone and dialed 911.

Two minutes later Brooklyn, Ohio police officer Ernie Arroyo arrived on the scene. As I began to explain the story leading up to Joe Atha preventing my egress from the parking lot, officer Arroyo began to question why I refused to show my receipt in the first place. I explained that I lawfully purchased the contents in the bag and didn’t feel that it was necessary for me to let a Circuit City employee inspect the bag as I left. Officer Arroyo disagreed. He claimed that stores have the right to inspect all receipts and all bags upon leaving their store.

At this point Officer Arroyo asked to see my receipt and driver’s license. I handed over the receipt, and stated that my name is Michael Righi. Again, Officer Arroyo asked to see my driver’s license. The conversation went something like this:

Me: “I’m required by law to state that my name is Michael Righi, but I do not have to provide you with my driver’s license since I am not operating a vehicle.”

[…]

At this point I was placed in handcuffs, patted down, had my wallet removed from my back pocket and was placed in the back of Officer Arroyo’s police car. My three siblings sat in the back of the Buick crying their eyes out, which is the only part of today that I regret. I wish my little brother and sisters didn’t have to watch this, but I knew exactly what I was doing and was very careful with my words. Other than putting my family through a little scare I don’t regret anything that happened today.

Officer Arroyo ran my father’s license plate, my driver’s license and inspected my two receipts along with the contents of my bag. He also handed over my Circuit City bag to Joe Atha and allowed him to ensure that in fact I stole nothing from the store.

While being driven down to the station in the back of the police car I struck up a conversation with Officer Arroyo. I asked him if he was surprised that my receipts matched the contents in the bag and in a surprise moment of honesty he admitted that he was. I then asked Officer Arroyo what charges were going to be brought against me. He explained that I had been arrested for failure to produce my driver’s license. I asked him what would happen if I never learned to drive and didn’t have a driver’s license. After all, at the time that he arrested me I was standing on a sidewalk outside a Circuit City. I wasn’t driving a car, and even when I was seated in the Buick I was a back seat passenger. The officer never gave me a satisfactory answer to this question, but promised to explain the law to me after I was booked.

[…]

ORD:525.07: Obstructing Official Business (M-2)

(a) No person, without privilege to do so and with purpose to prevent, obstruct or delay the performance by a public official of any authorized act within the public official’s offical capacity shall do any act that hampers or impedes a public official in the performance of the public official’s lawful duties.

Not being able to find the law in the books that states that a citizen must provide a driver’s license while walking through a parking lot, Officer Arroyo had to settle for “obstructing official business.” Keep in mind that the official business that I was supposedly obstructing was business that I initiated by calling the police. I called for help and I got arrested.

[…]

[Emphasis Added]I can reluctantly understand having to show a permit to fish, a permit to drive and a permit to carry a weapon. Having to show a permit to exist is a scary idea which I got a strong taste of today.

Read more…

Doesn’t this reek of behavior you’d expect from a communist government? Demanding papers, presumption of guilt, lack of common sense in approaching a situation, punishing the victim. This is what we’re evolving to in the post 9/11 world to feel safe?

I say, good for you Michael Righi – the next time I visit Fry’s Electronics (who also maintain a policy of show your receipt to exit,) I will refuse to show my receipt as a matter of principal. If anything interesting happens as a result, I’ll share it. Enough is enough.

This type of behavior from law enforcement appears to be the norm post 9/11 rather than the exception. There is now a presumption of guilt rather than innocence and instead of protecting citizens, it would appear, that the law enforcement activities are geared to protect business and property. On the heels of the University of Florida student arrest at the Kerry speech, the corruption levels in Congress, and the obvious disregard of law by the Executive Branch, you have to wonder where all of this is heading.

In the general population of the US as of 2005, ~7 million of our ~300 million citizens, or ~0.0076% of the population is somehow involved in the prison/parole system. See this entry on the so-called “war on drugs” for hard data around the US prison population.

Now consider the US Senate and Congress, consisting of 535 members. Admittedly, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington doesn’t claim that the entire list of 22 members is in the prison system yet, but, there are serious allegations that probably would, with regular citizens, end with that outcome. That means that 4% of the population of our Representatives, or 5.4 times the rate of the US population in general, are corrupt according to this report.

In a population of any size there will be a variety of traits represented. But, in the government branch that represents the people, who were voted into office, I would expect that there is a closer correlation to the population at large. This list merely represents the members who have been caught. One has to wonder what the real rate of criminal and unethical activity is as the data may support a broader culture of corruption.

It’s no wonder that this Congress won’t hold members of a criminal Executive Branch accountable, they’re too busy with their own shenanigans. The 2006 elections were a good start, but more change is necessary to clean this mess up.

The video quality is awful, but the message comes through. And it is chilling. If you watch one video on the Internet this year, this should be the one. CNN is now reporting on this incident, read the comments on that page, we’re in big trouble.

A better quality video of the same incident is available from a local news station.

I don’t know which point is most disturbing about this incident:

• That a young man was arrested and tasered for asking pejorative questions of a powerful politician in public
• That John Kerry didn’t step in on behalf of this young man, in fact, he continued the event while the man was being tasered in the back of the room
• That other students didn’t intercede on this young man’s behalf
• That he was being arrested for “inciting a riot” and accosted for identification

John Kerry, SHAME ON YOU! We clearly have to get professional politicians out of the way, they do not understand the concept of free speech when its looking them right in the face. You may be a war hero, but you were nothing close to being a hero on this day. UF Police, SHAME ON YOU! You escalated a situation that didn’t need to be escalated. Get some remedial training, start by reading the Constitution of the United States. UF Students, SHAME ON YOU! That could have been YOU! And might be YOU at some point in the future. Suggest you read the Constitution and start exercising your rights.

This is a sad, sad example of how free speech is dying in this country. No wonder people are afraid to speak out…they can be arrested and tasered under bogus charges. This young man was asking questions that needed to be asked and refused to take no for an answer. This is why we have the Constitution, to protect his (and your) ability to speak out in public without fear of arrest and/or torture.

Our democracy is dying…you can watch it on video.

If you’re a blogger and you want to drive traffic to your site, you ought to check out Blogrush. It has overtones of multi-level marketing (not good) but uses these along with the viral nature of the internet to your advantage, potentially. I will say the jury is still out on this one as I can’t yet see the impact, but I can definitely see the potential.

If you look at the left bar on this page, scroll down to the Tools section, you’ll see a box that looks like the image below.

If there is one thing every blog author wants, it’s an audience. There are all sorts of ways to generate traffic to come to your blog and they all require money and work. This one requires a little work (and we’ll see how much money in due course) to embed the widget code in your blog in the right spot. The basic premise is this: each time the widget is served on your blog, you will earn a “syndication credit.” As time passes, you will amass syndication credits that are then used as a bank to supply a link to your blog in other blogs related to yours as the widget is served on those sites.

Here’s where it gets interesting. If you notice the little tab on the widget that says Blogrush, each time someone clicks that, signs up for Blogrush, and embeds the widget, you get syndication credits for their blog traffic in addition to your own. This credit accumulates through 10 levels of referrals from your widget. It’s this multi-level marketing component coupled with the network effect that gives this Blogrush approach great potential for success, and, great potential for abuse by the “get rich quick” crowd.

So far, here’s what I like:

• Fast, easy sign-up – minimal personal information required
• Clean design to the widget, easily embedded in sidebar.php
• No observed degradation in page serving performance
• During sign-up, a warning that this is for “real” blogs, not just Adsense delivery vehicles
• The potential of how this could work in practice

Turn about is fair play, here are my concerns:

• No validation that my blog is “real” – low signal to noise ratio as the MLM crowd rushes to get in on this.
• Dashboard, Statistics, and FAQ aren’t available yet (it is Beta, they have been live for less than a week – they get some time to address these.)
• Association with “single” category, like Sports, Technology, or Pets – if you have diverse content like I do, it’s tough to find a good category.
• Potential for abuse, I don’t want to advertise for questionable content in this widget. While there are keyword and URL filters, it’s unclear how well these work as yet.
• Future model changes, as the company grows and matures, it’s sure to want to monetize. In the case this really works, I hope it’s a palatable monetization strategy.

Well, that’s what I know about this tool right now. If you click the links in this article, you’ll be associated with my Blogrush account. If you don’t wish to do that, simply open a new browser tab or window and type in https://www.blogrush.com/. Your mileage may vary. As I learn more about how this works in practice, I’ll write more.

Originally posted at Montara Energy Ventures.

The Geothermal Resources Council (GRC) will hold its annual meeting at John Ascauga’s Nugget October 1-3. There are multiple field trips and pre-meeting sessions offered in the days leading up to the meeting as well. The draft agenda is beefy and it’s clear that this is the event you want to attend if you’re the least bit interested in geothermal systems, both from an electricity production and direct use perspective.

Sign up at the GRC website if you’re interested in attending.