Arrest that (wo)man!

On an unrelated note: I invite anyone to send me a photo of them dressed up, for Halloween, as an upside-down beer cup. I may post it on this blog, depending on its quality. Let's hope, as well, that you will then be ignored by the IVFP, as they promise. This upside-down beer cup myth is getting big. I just read about it on edhat.com of all places.

Okay, now onto my latest gripe: Women getting arrested because they are women. Yes Isla Vistans, look outside between midnight and 3 a.m., it's happening at an alarming rate. Women who are walking around after midnight are getting arrested, at least in part, because they are women. Is this the "official policy" of the IVFP?? They will deny it. However, various of their members have been heard to say, by several arrest subjects, that they are being arrested for their own safety. After all, a lot of sexual assault occurs in Isla Vista. Uh, okay, thanks for arresting me! How thoughtful! Is this just another form of sexual assault? Probably not; especially if the officers are not touching and grabbing the arrest subjects for purposes of sexual arousal. And we can assume that only a small percentage of our law enforcement friends are actually that warped and desperate. However, the non-arousing arrest amounts to discriminatory enforcement in violation of the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. This can be illustrated by a simple question: Are men getting arrested, or even contacted by the police, at similar levels of intoxication? In fact, don't men actually have to be drunk, or at least rowdy, to get arrested for public intoxication (647(f) PC))? The fact is, we, as a society, are less protective of our young men than our young women. BUT, is that a valid reason to criminalize the women and make them spend the night in jail, etc., when we let men get so drunk that they end up passed out and snoring in the street? Hey IVFP, listen up! Where is it in your training manual that says you can't, or shouldn't, simply offer the young lady a ride/walk home. Isn't that truly in her best interests?

The truth about upside-down beer cups

My first Sierra Mountain blog (delivered at approximately 8,000 feet) is to disabuse the Daily Nexus readership of the IV urban myth that walking with a drinking cup upside-down will prevent your arrest for open container, minor in possession and/or drunk in public. This myth is perpetuated by the Daily Nexus which states, among other things, that mouthing off to the Isla Vista Foot Patrol is a bad idea. Ya' think? Walking down an Isla Vista street with anything other than a nun's habit is enough to put you at high risk of being detained by a bored member of the Foot Patrol. Having an upside-down beer cup puts you in an even higher risk category. The moral of the story is: don't walk down the street in IV expecting that the cop who spots you in an 'I'm looking for my next beer' pose will not likely detain you for a sniff and an age and ID check at the very least. Oh, but I agree that mouthing off is a bad idea - and it's no urban myth.