Peoria Pundit

Links via the Peoria Journal Star:

• Here’s some discussion of traffic along West Main Street in the West Bluff. Hopefully, all these traffic studies will provide details that will replace all the anecdotal evidence that the street needs to be narrowed. I’m 45 years old and I can’t recall a time when West Main wasn’t congested. It’s certainly not as congested on Friday and Saturday nights as it was in my youth, when teens from four different counties converged to “cruise Main.” As someone who lives in the area, I don’t want to see traffic diverted onto the side streets, rather than onto Interstate 74. Frankly, I don’t buy into the contention that folks will naturally start using the interstate to avoid driving on West Main. There are instances in which it’s quicker, but easier? Interstate driving is different than driving on city streets, and I am one of those people who would rather spend 15 minutes on city roads than 7 or ten on an interstate.
• You know all these wonderful old houses that everyone wants to preserve? Well, their wonderful old lead pipes and wonderful old lead paint chips are poisoning Peoria’s children. Scientists are concluding that there is no safe level of lead. But don’t worry. Peoria’s powers-that-be for decades successfully ignored the disease-causing human feces the city was pumping into the Illinois River. No doubt everyone in a position to try to fix this problem will explain this away as a statistical fluke.
• The city has identified who is responsible for the shooting death of former Manual track star Teddy Jackson. Apparently, it was the building. The structure exerted a form of mind control on a yet-unidentified person, forcing him to obtain two handguns and fire them into a crowd. The wise and all-knowing Peoria City Hall bureaucracy, knowing full well the powers this evil structure possesses, denied it a dance hall license. But this evil building would not be denied, and it used it’s powers to find a loophole that allowed it to be rented out for events.

It’s become a habit to dismiss the lives of the victims of gun violence. So many of the victims seem to be on the wrong side of the law. The Journal Star has turned in its second-day story on the murder of Teddy Jackson, there’s no indication that the young man was a negative influence on his community. He was working as a security guard at this Christian club and was apparently trying to break up a fight.

From the Peoria Journal Star:

Teddy C. Jackson, 26, of 2020 W. Howett St., was shot in the head about 1:05 a.m. outside The Rock Christian Entertainment Complex, 815 S.W. Adams St., according to Peoria police. He was pronounced dead in the emergency room at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center at 1:30 a.m., said Peoria County Coroner Johnna Ingersoll.

We will no doubt be inundated with theories, rumors, accusations and denials. The young man was apparently a patron of a Christian dance club that night (Website here), and there will be those who will no doubt complain about that concept as well.

All I’m going to say is that offer my condolences to his family, friends and the Manual High School community.

Another strange crime in Peoria:

One man reportedly restrained the victim while the others beat him on his back and face. One of the attackers, whom the victim recognized as the son of the man who hired him to put siding on his house at 2412 W. Marquette St., also yelled at the victim about work on the house being late.

Five bucks says the historic preservation commission* is behind this.

*For the irony impaired, that was a joke.

If you are going to rob a driver from the seat of your bicycle, it’s probably not a good idea to place your bike anywhere near the business end of the car’s front bumper.

NOTE: Several points need to be made about the Web version of this article:

• The comments are filled with racist gibberish.
• The URL of this article indicates someone at the Journal Star thought all these incidents happened on the East Bluff. ALL of them happened West of North Knoxville. When I lived on the East Bluff as a kid, we called that the West Bluff. But West Bluffers don’t want to be identified with this neighborhood, so the Journal Star calls it Central Bluff, an invented term not used by native Peorians. But then, how many native Peorians work at the PJS?

Unless noted, all links are via the Journal Star:

• The 18-year-old who was found murdered behind Sterling School apparently had an “unconventional relationship” with the man prosecutors say killed her. No kidding. There was an eyewitness to the murder, they say. And she snitched. Apparently she never got the memo saying that Peorians never talk to police.
• Some details on the new school calender. Why in the Hell did Peorians have to go through all this for? It was a stupid idea to begin with, and D-150 compounded the problem by getting its back up over criticism. Well, at least the district is in the black.
• Oh, good heavens. A tourist attraction is gonna close two days a week. Will the bloodletting never end?
• A New York Times reporter is going to visit Peoria to tell us details of the Rwandan recovery effort and that we screwed up in Iran.
• Here is nice long article about how the City of Peoria is getting input from the public about the city’s budget. Not much in the story about what that input has been, though. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say they folks want more essential services and lower taxes.
• The Peoria Journal Star’s award-winning editorial page today opines on the practice of not paying attention while walking around. They are opposed.
• HOINews: Free public WiFi comes to Normal. I’m guessing, though, that within 10 years or so, new technology and competition will make municipal wi-fi unnecessary.
• WEEK: My condolences to the family, friends and comrades of Rockford native Private First Class David John Badie, who was killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan.

I thought I’d publish a post (longer than I intended, actually) catching up on issues raised in recent posts:

* Seth Ben-Ezra has been maintaining a Google map listing the locations of violent crime and murder in Peoria. Keep up the good work. It’s citizen journalism in action. Many will disagree with his numbers and his definition or murder.

* At Peoria.com, there’s some a feeling of victory, somewhat, over District 150 scaling back its early closure to just a handful of days every year. I attended Monday’s meeting, and they passed the new calender with board members Jim Stowell and Rachel Parker voting in opposition.

* I’ve been griping on Twitter about the effort to shame ABC news reporters into revealing the sources who told them that the 2001 Anthrax attacks bore signs of a link to Iraq. Of course, the feds are now saying that a civilian scientist made the Anthrax and was responsible for mailing it out to various locations, making him a murderer. The guy killed himself before he could be indicted. If the feds are right this time, then ABC’s sources were wrong or lying. Joining the chorus of those demanding a pound of flesh from ABC is Jay Rosen, author of the Pressthink blog. He says this:

It now appears that the attacks were of domestic origin and the anthrax came from within U.S. government facilities. This leads us to ask you: who were the “four well-placed and separate sources” who falsely told ABC News that tests conducted at Fort Detrick showed bentonite in the anthrax sent to Sen. Tom Daschle, causing ABC News to connect the attacks to Iraq in multiple reports over a five day period in October, 2001?

Dan Gillmor of the Guardian is even more breathless in his ctiticism.

To which I say: These guys are assuming that the most recent theory of the case — which will not go to court because of the suspect’s suicide — MUST be accurate. I would never assume that something is true just because a federal prosecutor said it was. There are others who have been accused but never charged or convicted by the feds. We would be handing out a lot of power over the press to prosecutors if the media starts outing confidential sources whenever  someone from the Department of Justice says something to contradict them.

* Slate’s Micky Kaus says the mainstream media is like Daily Kos in that it wants to ignore the Sen.-John-Edwards-cheated-on-his-cancer-patient-wife-and-fathered-a-baby scandal as long as possible.

* The conservative Illinois Review is following the role Illinois’s representatives are playing in the GOP’s energy policy protests on the floor. Ray LaHood (R-18th District) gets no mention at all.

* Twitter is taking over journalism, it seems. It’s becoming a tool for following breaking news and politics. And here’s some advice on how media organizations can use Twitter to their advantage.