Sunday, September 10, 2006

A Des Moine(s)r's view of the QC

I've been off camping in the rain on the grounds of Skydive Chicago, so I don't have a whole lot to write about today. And no, I didn't skydive.

Mainly I want to point people to this post on AbsoluteDSM's forum's Iowa Cities & Development forum. Its been split off another discussion, because one of the DSM area regulars starts talking about his upcoming trip to the Quad Cities. Today he posted his reflections on this weekend's trip, and its interesting to see an outsider's point of view.

In other news, the shooting at the constantly low-quality hotel currently called the Howard Johnson.

Providing further evidence that I should never read the comments on QCTimes.com, one of these comments is either written by a moron or someone who didn't even read the story. They confused the time the call came in for a suspicious smell with the time the guy was shot, and imply that the cop shot the guy, left, and the police didn't arrive for 2 more hours, which is completely different than what happened. On an unfortunate note, this is the same officer that was involved in the incident at the fair that got the department sued. This really is a bad coincidence, because unfortunately some people will try and use it to go after a good cop.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Somehow I doubt that this is a good cop. If anything, this incident (in conjucntion with the one at the fair) indicates a potential pattern of excessive use of force. If this shooting victim was not armed, expect the city to pay a handsome judgment in any related lawsuit. If the guy didn't have at least some sort of blunt weapon, it's going to be difficult to justify the use of deadly force, especially if the resort to the sidearm was the officer's first recourse. Was a baton or pepper spray tried first? If not, this could get ugly for the city.

Anonymous said...

QCI: If you would not have brought up the coincidence, then maybe noone would be talking about it. Tell us how to make a bomb QCI.

Anonymous said...

Chief Bladel has got be be let go. I tell you that this town is turing into the wild west. He is in the common denominator along with the slumlords. Get rid of them both and the criminals will go too.

QuadCityImages said...

Until the story comes out about the "altercation" I don't think anyone can say what should have happened in that room.

Anonymous said...

You are giving too much weight to one simple blog post. Most who might read as intently as you will readily see the error or know to question such a post.

If you are so against the QC Times and it's blog; then remove the links from your blog.

Unknown said...

Interesting comments from the Des Moiner, but nothing terribly surprising. One reason I am optimistic is because I finally feel positive steps are being taken to address some of the problems he mentioned. For example: our older housing stock. Other cities wish they had the historic houses and neighborhoods we have. They can't be duplicated. This is a weakness right now, but it could be turned into a strength with a lot of time and effort. Call it naive or wishful thinking, but I believe it can be done.