APD and the arrest of a Jogger

    On Sunday, Feb. 23, 2014, dailytexanonline.com, published an article titled "APD Police chief's comments on arrest of jogger are alarmingly aggressive" written by the Daily Texan Editorial Board, a group comprised of the Editor-in-chief and associated staff members. The Editorial Board gives their opinion on how they feel about APD's Police Chief non-complacent reaction to the incident and how he doesn't listen to the public opinion. They go into how the Police Chief would rather have the public angry at him and his officers than to have a "young person lose their life needlessly." From this statement the Editorial Board goes to back their statement of how aggressive the Police Chief statements are.

     The Daily Texan Editorial Board goes to say that the APD Police Chief has hurt the public's trust of the police by restating his comment of him saying "in other cities there’s cops who are actually committing sexual assaults on duty, so I thank God that this is what passes for a controversy in Austin, Texas." From this the Editorial board dissects the statement and tells their readers that it shows how the Police Chief had considered this incident something rather minor compared to other cities around the nation. Another quote that they use from the Police Chief, Art Acevedo, is him saying "quite frankly, she wasn’t charged with resisting, and she was lucky I wasn’t the arresting officer because I wouldn’t have been quite as generous." This further helps in their opinion that the Police Chief comments were so called alarmingly aggressive. The Daily Texan would rather have a police department that would foster public awareness of safety issues through a mechanism than "instilling fear in the people they’re supposed to assist."

In my opinion, I would have to disagree with the Daily Texan's claims that the public has lost trust in the Austin Police Department and that the Police Chief's comments were aggressive. I think that the Police Chief had responded in a logical way. Compared to many other cities in the nation, Austin, TX ranks second in the nation as one of the safest cities to live in according to one of our own local news channels. From that statistic, I think its safe to say that we, as Austinites, put a lot of trust in the Austin Police Department to keep Austin one of the best places to live in the United States.Though Police Chief Art Acevedo's comments could be considered a little harsh, the Daily Texas took it a little too negatively. If the Police Chief were to respond in a nice and comfortable way, he would only be lying to himself and to the public about the realities. I want to say that the targeted audience for this article was probably for people who hate the police or people who feel that the police abuse their authority. All I can say about this incident is that it made something minor into something big because of social media sites like facebook and youtube blow things out of proportions and cause people to greatly react. My last thought that leaves me before the end of this post is...Will I ever be in a situation like this that will make me agree with the Daily Texan? Only time will tell.

Obamacare Troubles for Central Texas Refugees

On Saturday, Feb. 8, 2014, KUT.org published an article titled Refugees in Texas Face Hurdles Signing Up for Obamacare Plans. The article explains how Central Texas Refugees are having trouble signing up for the Obamacare Plans. According to the article, many of the refugees do not speak English and are having difficulties going through the many English text web pages on the healthcare.gov website. The article continues to stress that all people, who are in the United States legally, must have health insurance by the end of March 2014 or otherwise pay a tax penalty by next year, 2015.

I believe that this article is worth a read because it affects not only refugees in Central Texas, but also all people in the United States. It shows that the system is somewhat flawed and forgot to consider other factors like refugees coming from countries like Nepal. I think that these refugees should be given more time to be able to understand what they are signing up for, since the English language was not their first language. It’s unfair for them to be penalized with a tax penalty so soon when they just arrived in the United States. One whole month, starting from February and ending in March, is not a lot of time for people to adjust to a whole new culture of life. Hopefully our country's lawmakers will realized this mistake and come up with a suitable solution that will not be too overbearing on these newly relocated people. So the question now is... What will the Texas Government do, to help alleviate these difficulties? Only time will tell...