Clear channel files suit against Dwyer and Michaels -QCTimes
I must say I kind of saw this one coming. It seems like they are pushing the envelope and violating the spirit of the agreement, if not the letter. That said, even if they move their studio to Cedar Rapids and quit the QCTimes blog, etc, they will still have the streaming audio on the internet. Its not like people in the Quad Cities are going to forget about them in 5 or 6 months. I love these guys, but it did kind of seem like they were asking for it.
Resale outlets wary of city plan -QCTimes
This one is being somewhat blown out of proportion by the Times, and definitely proves that I should stop reading the comments there once and for all. I may disagree with some of you folks that comment here, but the worst of you are a lot better than the worst of the QCTimes.comments. The Davenport police already have a pawn registry, because these locations are such obvious fences. However, as it stands now I believe it only applies to actual pawn shops, so places like CD Warehouse, that used music supply store in the Village Shopping Center, and "resale shops" are the new places to unload stolen stuff.
I think $1.50 per transaction is outrageous, but the general idea of these places letting the city know who is selling them what is already in use. Even serial numbers get entered into the system, so if a burglary victim knows the number off of their item, the detectives can simply type it into their pawn search program and see if its been sold. Its a pretty cool system, but the negative people that comment on the QCT are against this anti-crime tool at the same time that they complain about crime. Stuff like that really makes me think that an article titled "City strikes gold while digging new PD foundation, eliminates taxes for next 20 years" would get 48 negative comments.
15 comments:
Pawn shops serve a purspose. They are credit for poor people - good or bad - they serve a purpose.
If they're serving their legitimate purpose, why would it be a problem to know who is pawning the stuff?
The studio location argument is weak in the age of syndicated radio. It is also funny how Q106 is suddenly available to listen on the net.
Clear Channel is just itching to battle somebody since they could only fire that country boy pedophile and not lynch him publicly.
Leave the 'best of the worst' perspective alone. That belongs to Dan Lubell and his 15 minutes, uh 5 minutes, of fame.
I'm curious to hear why you feel the newspaper article blew the issue out of proportion.
Most of the business owners have no problem at all running id checks, taking down serial numbers and reporting that information to the department. They do, however, feel that fingerprinting and photographing their customers and then having to pay to submit the information may be bad for business.
I think the proposed handling of pawned items is one great idea. I had a few items stolen from my house by my brother. He pawned them to buy meth, he has a habit of pawning everything to get a fix. I found my fathers neckless at the pawn shop but found out the only way to get it back was to produce the pawn ticket. Shop owner wouldn't tell me who pawned it and would not let me handle it. If this new regulation was in place at time at least I could have called the police and proved my brother was the thief.
Who is Dan Lubell? He certainly gets a lot of attention on this blog. Fill me in on why I should or should not care who he is.
During the FCC days of duopoly a company could only own two stations per market. CR was considered a seperate market. So based on Federal Rules the dorks will win out on this. The blog might be a problem.
Clear Channel (or whoever owned Q106 at the time) stole D&M away from 97X in the first place in the mid-90s. Knowing that the duo would jump ship for higher pay, they probably put a very carefully worded non-compete clause in the contract.
That said, most states (presumably including Iowa) require that non-compete clauses be "reasonable" in duration, geography and scope. Courts will typically toss out unreasonable non-compete clauses altogether.
So it'll be interesting to see just how reasonable--and how prescient--CC's lawyers were when they drafted the non-compete. Depending on exactly how the contract was worded, it may or may not prohibit broadcasting from a particular location (not just to a particular location), and it may or may not prohibit promoting other radio stations through means other than broadcasting.
It was very interesting at the Committee Meetings watching Keith Meyer attempt to get crime statistics out of Bladel and two of his senior detectives about home and car break-ins. It is common sense that people in the police department drawing those huge salaries would have at least a rough idea what those numbers are, especially when they were requested to be at that meeting to answer questions concerning this new law. Watching this meeting makes people wonder if they really knew the answers, but Bladel ordered them ahead of time not to make public those break-in numbers.
12:30 - you should know who Dan Lubell is - you are him. We are all on to you buddy, give it up. You are through.
2:21 p.m.
Bladel's difficulty in answering the question was more a result of assumptions contained within the question itself. The police department doesn't keep the specific information that Keith was inquiring into (how many individual pieces of stolen personal property has the PD recovered from pawn shops? Who cares how many individual pieces of property they've recovered? Do we count each piece of silverware as one piece or is that a set?) That's why they answered repeatedly that they recovered property from pawn shops that was taken during the commission of 130 different acts of burglary. It's a more meaningful statistic and easier to track; which means that the officers may spend more time actually investigating crimes.
A one dollar fee is not near enough to cover the costs of investigating these break ins that the merchandise ends up at these pawn shops. It should be more of a fee like $10 to cover the police department salaries. It's bad enough that we subsidize the landlords who ruin our neighborhoods, and now the pawn brokers want us to subsidize them too? This has to stop someplace.
Pawn shops, rent to ownplaces, liquor marts in urban areas - all bad for us. All needing to be regulated. I say just limit the ordinance to pawn shops. Just pawn shops, not cd resale or music stores. Because a real musician who cares about his stuff will know it when he sees it. Music go round is a good example. Good place and responisble. Pawn shops are questionable.
Keith Meyer tried to question the detectives about the auto smashNgrab crimes. If alot of people are getting cd's stolen this way, then they also need to be regulated. Because the PD didn't answer Keith's question, it's hard to determine how much of a problem cd theft, and car break ins are.
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