July 24, 2010

There were 4 posts published on July 24, 2010 (this is page 1 of 1).

This tough cop knows how to reach tough kids

After I wondered where the good guys are who might have steered Reggie Gemeille to the right path, I read about James Johnson. Thank goodness there are men out there like him:

Retired police officer James Johnson spent 20 years dealing with gangs in New York City and is now sharing his wisdom with Raleigh children at the J.T. Locke Resource Center’s summer camp.

Johnson uses the same speeches he gave to members of New York’s Crips and Bloods gangs, urging youths ages 9 to 17 to cultivate their talents to better society and to value themselves over fitting in.

The talks have proven successful; Johnson says the youth program he participated in helped reduce gang violence 62 percent in New York City.

“Every child is reachable,” Johnson said. “Children’s strength is in their motivation for life.”

via This tough cop knows how to reach tough kids – Local/State – NewsObserver.com.

N.C. Wanted interview

N.C. Wanted

Thursday, I was interviewed by the WRAL show, N.C. Wanted. I’d gotten the referral from the Raleigh Police Department when N.C. Wanted called them seeking to speak with people involved with community watches. I told the producer that I’d be at a morning meeting with neighborhood stakeholders and they were welcome to tag along. They thought it was a great idea.

I arrived at the meeting and met the N.C. Wanted crew: Bill, Bridget, and Jay. They miked me and our Community Officer, James Kryskowiak, and filmed most of the meeting. Then I excused myself and went with them to areas around the East CAC to talk about the successes we’ve had in cleaning up the crime problems. I took them to the area where I witnessed a suspect leaving a breaking and entering, showed them the local shopping center that is far safer than it was just a year ago, and talked about the troubled apartment complex that has really cleaned up its act. Bill apparently is a retired police officer and could attest that the neighborhood was markedly different when he was on duty.

Unlike the other interviews that I’ve done that covered breaking news, this interview isn’t time-sensitive. Thus, there’s no telling when it will actually air. I hope I don’t seem like too much of an idiot when it airs!

Shirley Sherrod, Thrown to the Wolves

Bob Herbert of the New York Times sums up the Shirley Sherrod episode. The Obama Administration is far too focused on perception and playing it safe. Where’s the bold leadership, Mr. Obama?

Why didn’t President Obama or Vice President Joe Biden or Rahm call me Rahmbo Emanuel, or somebody somewhere in the upper echelon say, “Hey, what the heck are you doing? You can’t fire a person without hearing her side of the story. This is not the Kremlin. Are you nuts?”

via Op-Ed Columnist – Shirley Sherrod, Thrown to the Wolves – NYTimes.com.

TestDisk for undeleting files

My son Travis accidentally deleted a digital movie he took with his camera. He was so disappointed, so I took up the task of trying to undelete the file. If his camera’s SD card was formatted with Linux’s ext3 filesystem his file would be impossible to retrieve.

Fortunately, all digital camera cards are formatted with the tried-and-true MS-DOS vfat filesystem, which makes undeleting files trivial. I even found a Linux tool called TestDisk that can easily retrieve deleted files. In seconds, I had fetched Travis’s deleted file.

If you are a Linux-head like me and need to bring a file back from the dead, try TestDisk!