Late to the Party: Category Politics

Rochester unveils latest crime-fighting campaign

chris.a.williams@gmail.com (Chris) — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 17:52:00 +0000

Rochester has been fighting a recent crime wave with 47 homicides to date, and recent homicides of teenagers. The mayor has promised to unveil a new list of proposals to curb crime, and notable local figures such as the current chief of police and mayoral candidates have begun urging families to take responsibility for their teenagers. Today, the city has unveiled its latest tactic in fighting crime: The Jesus tree.

PervWatch.org launched

chris.a.williams@gmail.com (Chris) — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 12:59:57 +0000

I probably should have made this anouncement a month ago, but I'd been waiting until I had some automatic updating of the site set up.

I've launched my first personal Ruby on Rails project, PervWatch.org. The site is a Google Maps mashup with sex offender registry data - currently it holds data for New York and California. My timing of anouncing it is a bit off since a competing site has garnered significant media attention. Another lesson learned - anounce and market your site wildly as soon as it is up, so long as it has some basic functionality worth using.

I had initially created the site back in May when chicagocrime.org launched. I was impressed and wanted to map crime data for my hometown of Rochester, NY. Unfortunately my city and county don't publicly provide crime report data. So, looking for other data to map, I remebered some local TV coverage of sex offenders living near daycares and schools. It seemed a good fit, so I quickly whipped up a site to map the offenders.

The site offers a significant improvement on user interface and plain old usability for the data. In NY state, you can search by offender's name, county, or zipcode. The results page simply lists names that are linked to offender's detailed page. Each details page has a link to view the offender's location on a static map. Obviously it can be difficult to get a quick idea of where the offenders live and just how close or far away from you they are. PervWatch.org allows you to drill down to county or zipcode and see all the offenders on a map right away. You can instantly tell where all of the offenders are located. Additionally, you can search by address and the site will do a ~2 mile radius search, displaying all offenders within that range of the input address; the site offers RSS and Atom feeds for each county or zipcode so you can see when a new offender moves in or offender data is updated; and I plan to begin including other states quickly as I move forward - such as adding California yesterday. Please take a look and let me know what you think: good, bad, indifferent, suggestions, etc.

Local Church Vandalism

cwilliams — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 17:52:00 +0000

In our local news there was a report of vandalism to a church on June 29th in Rochester, NY. The update to the story in today’s paper reminded me of the topic.

The story involves four teenagers in the town of Chili who broke into St. Piux X Church. It’s been in the paper and also discussed on at least one of the local radio shows a number of times.The teenagers broke into the church, rode their bokes around inside, smoked some cigarettes, broke into the sacristy, drank some of the wine and urinated in the holy water.

There’s been a debate over charges that the teens should face. Some argue that they’re just teenagers and that community service would do. Others have argued for jail time, and even being sentenced with a hate crime. My opinion falls somewhere in the middle, but first let me explain my background.

I’m a Roman Catholic (and St. Pius X is a Roman Catholic Church). I practice more like a lazy Protestant. However, St. Pius X is my parish. That church is where I was baptized, received first communion and eucharist, gave my first penance, and was confirmed. I attended the St. Pius X School from Kindergarten to 5th grade. I still actively bank with their credit union.

While I am not actively attending the parish now (I’m a “big holiday” Catholic, and my church is in the city now that I’ve moved), and I do not practice as I should – the acts the boys committed are still quite offensive to me. Everyone knows that teenagers get into trouble – but these boys went beyond joyriding, smoking and horsing around. They desecrated the holy water and sacristy. I’d argue for a large amount of community service – service that is headed and run by St. Pius X Chruch or the Rochester Catholic Diocease. In addition, I’d argue that the boys should each formally apologize, in person, not only to the priests but the parish as well before one of the Sunday masses.

The point about the story that upsetts me most is that the boys have not tried to make amends or formally apologize. In fact, the priest has not spoken with any of the youths – but only one parent. The expectation is that the priest and parish may receive a written apology.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this is a hate crime, nor would I argue for jail – this is just stupid teenagers getting into trouble. But the nature of the trouble is disturbing, and the lack of apology more so. You can’t always fault the parents for trouble that their kids get into, such as the original act, since teenagers will misbehave if they want to – no matter their upbringing. But I do fault them for not prodding the children into openly and actively showing contrition for their acts.