Free Republic

Santa Fe’s downtown business community says new panhandling controls aren’t working and is calling on city leaders to crack down on aggressive panhandling and vagrancy around the Plaza. In an April 22 letter to the mayor and City Council, the Santa Fe Gallery Association said there are an “overwhelming number of vagrants in the downtown Plaza area,” with “aggressive panhandling, public urination, threatening comments and cases of assault.” The situation “is instilling fear in local residents and tourists,” the gallery owners’ letter said. Elizabeth Pettus, of the Things Finer shop in La Fonda, wrote a similar letter on behalf of...

A recent survey by Mumbai’s civic authorities has found that urinating and spitting in public are the most common offences in the metropolis. Apparently, the BMC’s clean-up marshals raked in Rs 6 crore from such ‘dirty offenders’ in a single year! Now, that should not raise a stink among Mumbaikars who see and endure it everyday. But yet we need to ask: What is it in our genes that makes us unzip our pants and let loose at the sight of the nearest wall/gutter/lamp-post/dustbin---in fact everywhere but the darned loo? We are used to seeing tiny tots being urged by...

Five Democratic activists are on trial for slashing the tires of vans rented by the Republican Party to shuttle voters to the polls on the morning of Election Day in 2004. Michael Pratt, the son of then-acting Milwaukee Mayor Marvin Pratt; Sowande Omokunde, the son of Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.); and the three other defendants are charged with criminal damage to property — a felony that carries a maximum sentence of three and a half years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Republican campaigners had rented more than 100 vehicles for a get-out-the-vote campaign. The vehicles were parked in a...

Montgomery County officials, prompted by complaints from business owners and residents, is set to approve a bill that would make it illegal to answer nature's call in public. Montgomery County is the only area jurisdiction that does not have a law prohibiting public urination, but the council's Public Safety Committee yesterday unanimously recommended a bill to address the issue. Council President Tom Perez and County Executive Douglas M. Duncan sponsored Bill 1805 after a Wheaton public safety audit completed in November labeled public urination as a top health concern in the downtown area. Business owners and local officials said the...

People who live next to golf courses become accustomed to the occasional errant shot that sends a golf ball flying onto their property and perhaps through a window. But some of the neighbors who live along the LakeRidge Country Club's golf course can testify to a much worse annoyance. It seems a few of the golfers have been uncouth about their personal habits as they make their way around the course

Men videotaped vandalizing sign Summit elections official catches culprits tearing down Bush-Cheney poster By Marilyn Miller and Andale Gross Beacon Journal staff writers Two men who tore down a Bush-Cheney sign and urinated on it were caught on videotape by Summit County Republican officials early Friday morning. The videotape shows the men sneaking into the yard of a West Market Street home and bending the sign to the ground. The men struggled to rip the sign out of the ground by shaking it and pulling it but couldn't get it off the posts, so they knocked it down. Sounds heard...

Posted on Sat, Oct. 09, 2004 Two men who tore down a Bush-Cheney sign and urinated on it were caught on videotape by Summit County Republican officials early Friday morning. Watch the video

July 19, 2003 Sex Arrests on a Gay Beach Provoke a Hamptons Debate By COREY KILGANNON AST HAMPTON, N.Y., July 17 — At Two Mile Hollow Beach, the longtime center of gay life in the Hamptons, the language of the parking lot pickup scene is very specific. On any given summer weekend evening, there may be dozens of men parked alone in the lot here. When a driver arrives wanting to participate, he typically flashes his brake lights and parks. Then he may flip on his interior light and see who pulls up next to him. Otherwise, two cars may...

For decades, Two Mile Hollow Beach existed as East Hampton's tony gay beach, without serious complaint. Then came private detectives with video cameras, and nudity and sex acts in the dunes were private no more. The videos sparked a reaction that exploded in an angry hearing in an East End firehouse yesterday morning, with gays protesting the intrusion on their no-tan-line turf. As the mayor, police chief and other elected and appointed officials sat on the dais, 150 angry locals, most of them gay, blew off steam about the private eyes who have been playing Candid Camera in the underbrush....

Cops: She drove drunk, urinated By ALICE McQUILLAN and ALISON GENDARDAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS Talk about a lack of class. The principal of a troubled city school was arraigned yesterday after cops caught her driving drunk - and urinating in a Bronx street - when she was supposed to be at work, police said. Evelyn Peralta-Tessitore, 41, principal of Public School 192 in Harlem, was charged with driving while intoxicated and resisting arrest. Cops said they spotted Peralta-Tessitore squatting and urinating beside the open door of her 2003 Mercedes-Benz about 2:40 p.m. Tuesday. Her car was stopped ata red...