enthalpy

Wednesday, December 29, 2004


Crimestoppers, making the streets of Harris County safer. Or: How damn near everyone in Texas can make $5,000 on New Year's Eve.
They contacted Crime Stoppers, prompting the organization, for the first time, to use its reward pool for information on New Year's gunfire, joining Houston police in an expanded effort to silence the tradition. Authorities hope the lure of cash will prompt more people to speak up when they see or hear celebratory gunfire.

Though Crime Stoppers usually reserves its reward pool for information on felony crimes, it decided to offer incentives for tips on celebratory gunfire — a Class A misdemeanor offense — because the activity is a serious threat to public safety. Rewards of up to $5,000 will be offered for information leading to an arrest and charges for random gunplay.
No doubt this is a problem, and I can't think of a worse way to ring in the new year than by getting shot by some moron from five blocks away that fired straight up into the air. But $5,000 for each snitch? I wonder if they considered how much a gun sounds like a firecracker when they offered this reward? Now the police are going to be investigating every single black-cat that goes off because some paranoid person thought it was a gun. Surely there's a better way to deal with this.



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