As you’ve no doubt read by now, the Pinellas-Pasco State State Attorney’s Office has cleared St. Petersburg police officer Terrence Nemeth in the shooting of 17-year-old Gibbs High School student Javon Dawson after the young man allegedly pointed a gun at Officer Nemeth when police arrived to break up an out-of-control graduation party.

Officer Nemeth is still on leave. Dawson’s family is calling the decision a travesty of justice. The Uhurus are making veiled threats of “consequences.” Just yesterday, after protesters descended on his office, Gov. Charlie Crist asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to do its own review of the case. But, if everything reported so far is correct, there’s probably enough evidence here, including DNA and gun residue, to show Dawson did fire a gun at the party.

But there’s an interesting aspect of the case that could have larger consequences for St. Pete in the future.

Take a look at the St. Petersburg Times’ special report on the shooting, and you’ll find a copy of Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe’s memo to St. Pete Police Chief Chuck Harmon that outlines the results of the investigation. In that memo are the names of witnesses that came forward and talked to the state attorney’s office about the shooting.

If you recall the climate surrounding the shooting in June, police and investigators had an extremely difficult time finding witnesses for the case, despite the fact that some 250 kids were present at the graduation party where Dawson was shot. This spurred all types of commentary on the no-snitching code that’s prevalent in many black communities here in Tampa Bay and across the nation.

The Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney’s Office finally convinced some witnesses to talk, and now, their names are splashed on the Times website for all to see. That includes any Internet-savvy gang members that investigators say Dawson was affiliated with.

I’m not sure how I feel about that.

As a rule, I always err on the side of “the more information, the better.” Sometimes revealing names and confidential information on a subject might be uncomfortable, but that’s our job as journalists.

But if I look at this from another point of view, as someone who regularly goes into communities that are hostile to fact-finding folks like police investigators and journalists, I worry this could have a negative effect on future investigations. If witnesses know their names will end up in print (or on the Web), will they still come forward when the next shooting happens? I’m not faulting the Times — I can’t say for sure if I would or wouldn’t do the same thing — but I am surprised the state attorney’s office didn’t redact any names from the report. Just two weeks ago, I was stonewalled by the SPPD for just trying to get a police report of a 2-year-old art theft. Now, a state agency has released the names of witnesses and perhaps put them in danger.

Again, I’m not passing judgement, only curious on the conversations that did (or did not) go on about the ethics of publishing these kids names.

What do you think?

(Photo Credit: Beard Papa)

Earlier today, Crist appeared on CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer and probably did little to boost his chances in McCain’s veep-stakes. Right out of the gate, when Blitzer asked Crist if he’d been through the vetting process for vice president, the governor said he was unable to comment. Blitzer then said, “I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’”

After a brief, awkward pause, Crist responded, “You can take that anyway you want to.”

The balance of the interview consisted of Crist giving his support to McCain, calling him a “maverick” (where have we heard that before?) who opposed President Bush’s 2005 energy policy while Barack Obama voted for it. As he spoke, Crist looked and sounded like he was on autopilot.

When the topic of nuclear energy and Crist’s support for it came up, the guv smarmily pointed out that Blitzer’s mother is a Florida resident. It was a meaningless, patronizing reference (and one that Blitzer quickly moved past) in an otherwise Stepford Wives-like performance. Crist didn’t embarrass himself, but he also didn’t do anything to steal the limelight from Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty.

I don’t want to linger on the civil liberties questions raised by the Tampa International Airport’s purchase of four body imaging machines. It wouldn’t do much good anyway, TSA already purchased them.

But if you still believe TSA’s good intentions, let me point out three things that seemed to slip by St. Petersburg Times reporters.

First, a quote by our local Transportation Security Administration spokesman John Van Dyke:

“Our goal is to be proficient with them before the Super Bowl,” in Tampa in February, he said.

Mr. Van Dyke seems to imply that these will help keep Tampa and her tourists safe during the Super Bowl. But those scanners would only scan travelers leaving Tampa, not those coming in for the event.

Second, another TSA spokesman, Christopher White, tells the Times that they will protect passenger’s privacy:

Images are deleted after viewing, and officers can’t “save, store, print or transmit” them, said TSA spokesman Christopher White.

Then tell me — how did the Times get a photo for the front of their Metro section? This is not even going into the fact that nearly everyone has cell phone cameras these days.

Third, White claims the images are detailed, but do not show nudity:

He describes the images as robotic, like someone in a tight-fitting leotard. “You can see detail, but it’s not a naked picture,” White said.

So, do you mind telling me what those nipple-like dots are on the breasts of the woman pictured on the Times website?

According to the Times article, Schramm’s bad day started with an enormous penis statue he had installed in front of his Grand Central District gallery. Responding to a complaint, police told Schramm to remove the penis. He refused, citing “art.”

Fast-forward a few hours: gallery patrons are drinking beer and viewing various erotic paintings and sculptures when police descend upon the storefront. Schramm tries to prevent an officer from entering and he’s slammed to the ground and arrested. The police walk inside, demand identification from patrons and then discover a nude model hanging from the ceiling in some sort of harness.

That’s a violation of a city (and county) ordinance that prohibits the display of genitals while alcohol is served.

This incident raises a number of questions. First off, if everything in the article is true, Schramm did violate the ordinance. Yes, it’s a stupid ordinance (and why strip clubs in Pinellas suck), but it is the law. But what about the earlier attempt by police to remove the giant penis statue? Who gave St. Petersburg police officers the authority to determine obscenity laws? And was Schramm’s refusal to remove it the precursor to police raiding the gallery?

Schramm just can’t catch a break. Last year, bigoted vandals targeted Erotic Lounge spraypainting “no fag porn” on the gallery’s windows. That was a few months after Schramm caught a lot of heat for his first erotic art show.

With incidents like these, it’s no wonder the ‘burg has a hard time keeping edgy, genre-bending artists in town. Perhaps someone should remind city leaders and the police department that there’s more to art than some melting clocks.

UPDATE: Looks like Schramm is closing his business and that huge penis is for sale on eBay. Check out the details here.

That turned out to be an old journalism saw encouraging writers to get as much detail as possible.

During my tenure at the Times, I don’t remember if I ever got the dog’s name. As the pop music critic, I didn’t have many opportunities (maybe if I interviewed someone at their house and they had a pooch).

Apparently, getting the dog’s name is still part of the modus operandi at the newspaper. In today’s front-page story about a young man, James Kenneth McElroy, who attacked his family in Tampa, Thomas Kaplan writes:

Another neighbor, Bob Torres, 56, never got to meet [the family]. On Tuesday night, Torres and his son had been walking their German shepherd, Jason, when they passed the McElroy family’s small, olive-colored ranch house, its lawn in need of a mowing.

That reads kind of silly to me. I really don’t care what the dog’s name is. As an adage, “get the dog’s name” works, but as far as including it in the copy, not so much.

By this point, I’m sure you heard about it. Thirty-six teams built would-be flying machines and ran them off a 30-foot high pier into the notoriously dirty ass Hillsborough River. One or more person piloted the aircraft  and took the plunge. Teammates typically jumped in the brown water after their apparatus for shits and giggles. I stood in the sun, cooking, cringing and losing faith in humanity, myself included.

I kept thinking of that old parental saying about if everyone else jumped off a cliff, would you? In Tampa, apparently that’s the case. Organizers expected a crowd of 50,000 to witness people place themselves in a flimsy contraption and then be willingly hurled into a body of water deemed not fit for swimming. More than 100,000 suckers, myself included, attended.

One of those participants was my coworker, London, the woman pictured working on building an aircraft out of newspaper. Good gawd. Creative Loafing entered the competition as the Bread Winners. Countless hours went into building what they billed as the Flying Cuban Sandwich. “We are closing in on the big day,” reads a message from “The Captain” posted on the Bread Winners’ website July 14. “We still have some work to do in order to make everything originally envisioned a reality, but in another evening we should be all but done.

“The pilot [London] and I spent another night getting some finishing details knocked out after work with a couple of cold beers. We had a mock assembly of our flying Cuban and it was quite a site to behold.”

The damn thing didn’t even have wings. Well, kinda, but they were about as wide as oars. From where I was perched Saturday afternoon it looked like a giant coffin and had me seriously worried that London would not emerge from it, or if she did it would be with some kinda severe spinal or brain injury. Or with a limb missing.

“You know it’s not too late to back out,” I told her about 20 minutes before she took the fall.

“I can’t,” she said, more than a hint of fear in her voice.

Our entourage of friends and coworkers then wormed our way through the obnoxious, all ages crowd — who brings newborns to Flugtag? — and thanks to our group largely consisting of young women, were able to land last-minute, front row, waterfront seats behind a concession tent.

A bunch of David Hasselhoff-worshiping gym and sun freaks dressed as lifeguards dubbed Tampa Baywatch kicked things off around 1 p.m. They attached a glider to the top of their contraption and, with a person inside, it sailed 100 feet. Impressive, I thought. But then flying machine after flying machine dropped straight down into the diarrhea-colored waters.

I did some research. Flying 100 feet is not so impressive. The winner in Nashville last year traveled 155 feet. Even more disconcerting was learning that there were actual engineering students who entered contraptions that fell off the pier like bovines being pushed off a cliff.

“We built it a little too nose-heavy,” reads a quote in the this morning’s Times. It’s attributed to a Max Hirsh of DeLand’s Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. The University of Florida and Florida State also had their engineering students present, only to be bested by Team Baywatch. “His zealous teammates finished their skit and began to push the aircraft,” reads the explanation as to why the UF team tanked. “They forgot that [John] Bornberg needed a few seconds to remove bungee cords fastening the glider to the rest of the gear.” This says a lot about why NASA hasn’t accomplished anything substantial in my lifetime.

CL’s Flying Cuban Sandwich was the third contestant of the day and fell apart before it even hit the water. But that should be expected from an alt-weekly newspaper’s team. Especially one featuring a “world traveling bootlegger,” an “honorary Loafer based on her love of drinking and SOG cred,” and a woman “cool enough to party with Creed on their tour bus.”

It took what felt like about a half-hour in between each liftoff. We left when our booze supply ended, which occurred right when the concession stand we were practically sitting in ran out of beer. We didn’t miss much.  Baywatch won.

I have yet to speak to London since she braved life and limb for a cheap publicity stunt but did see her being pulled out of the dark waters and wave to us, so, y’know, she survived. But who knows about the whole brain damage thing. I’ll have to question her at the office Monday. And question my own sanity for attending such an event.

Cross-posted from TampaCalling.com.

Last week, Virgin Mobile and the National Network For Youth embarked on a web campaign to raise clothing donations for homeless youth. Yawn, right? So to ratchet up support for the benefit, they encouraged the young and altruistic to post strip tease videos on their website. The more views on their stripping posts, the more donations of new clothes they’d provide. The website name says it all: Strip2Clothe.com (go ahead, I’ll wait).

Their slogan is just as catchy: “Take off yours, we donate ours.”

Not surprisingly, a firestorm ensued, most notably by some of the charities under the NN4Y umbrella.

From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

“Strip2Clothe” has sparked outrage among NN4Y’s own members. Some groups say they were never consulted about the concept and are appalled by the idea of young people stripping as a means to get clothes for other young people. The organizations’ names have since been taken off the site.

“It was a shock to everybody,” said Trudee Able-Peterson, coordinator of outreach services at StreetWorks, a Twin Cities collaborative of outreach programs. “This is the message we send kids? That my granddaughter, who’s 17, should strip to provide clothes for other kids?”

Rebecca Lentz, a spokeswoman for Catholic Charities, called it “distasteful and inappropriate and exploitative. We never authorized this nor were we ever approached to be involved.”

At first glance, the concept seems a little edgy and innovative. But then you start thinking about all those homeless youth that are on the street because of sexual abuse. While full nudity is prohibited, there is no limit on ages. Hmmm … on second thought, maybe having young people strip on the web for all sorts of pedophiles is not such a good idea.

The Star-Tribune reports the folks at Virgin Mobile and NN4Y are re-evaluating the concept, too. But they haven’t ended the campaign.

So, what do you think? Were the folks at Virgin (oh!) thinking outside the box, or are they a bunch of pervs?

Fortunately, here at CL, I think we do pretty good. Our commenters tend to be fairly educated and enlightened folks, despite what their profile icons might tell you.

And, honestly, I don’t mind the online readers over at Tampabay.com either. Sure, you have a disproportionate amount of bitter white hairs, but overall, you can glean some interesting opinions from those comments.

But on TBO.com, the average commenter is a whole ‘nother animal. Consider the comments on yesterday’s story about my namesake, Alexander Pickett, who died after jumping off the Gulfport Pier:

Posted by ( Shadow59 ) on July 9, 2008 at 8:33 a.m.
If he jumped from the pier that doesn’t make him a swimmer, just makes him an idiot.

Posted by ( jdickerson ) on July 9, 2008 at 10:19 a.m.
swimmer or sinker?

Posted by ( Shadow59 ) on July 9, 2008 at 2:18 p.m.
rikasflash-
If you feel my comment was senseless, feel free to jump off the pier in the next storm and see what happens. Unless you think that would be too stupid.

Man, that’s cold.

And then today, in a story about some homeless dude to died on Tampa Street next to a van:

Posted by ( fugger ) on July 10, 2008 at 10:40 a.m.
why is this a story?

Posted by ( DarthRandall ) on July 10, 2008 at 11:21 a.m.
Another senseless Hobocide. How tragic.

Posted by ( Quagmire ) on July 10, 2008 at 11:11 a.m.
Was the homeless man found near an inoperable van down by the river?

Okay, I admit, that last one was pretty funny.

Is anyone with me on this? Examples?

According to the NICB, the 1995 Honda Civic (right) was the most stolen car of 2007, maintaining that distinction for the past four years. I drive a ’98 Civic and I’m lucky my car hasn’t been stolen (yet), despite it getting older, uglier and more dented by the day.

All this time I thought driving an ugly old car was a good preventative against it being stolen.

However, many thieves steal certain cars for their parts rather than their bling factor. Cars that have long-term reliability (like Hondas), as well as cars with several-year streaks without a major redesign, can be valuable because their components last a long time and can be interchangeable between model-years.

Other old cars on the list are the 1991 Honda Accord (No. 2), and the 1988 Toyota pickup truck (No. 9).

Having your car stolen sucks. This is a real-life issue to me for a few reasons, other than the aforementioned fact that I drive a Civic not much newer than number one on the list (and I drove a ’90 Accord that was stolen back in ’99 or so).

For one, I lived in South St. Pete for two years and there were many auto thefts and break-ins at my old condo building, including my girlfriend’s Jeep Liberty last summer. I got to experience the process — by proxy — watching her deal with it. It was a costly and aggravating process. She had to pay a $500 deductible for the experience, and as far as we know the police never caught the thieves.

She kept a close eye on her new Scion xD once she brought it home in February. We felt helpless knowing that a good thief could take it in minutes and there was little we could do about it.

I actually watched thieves steal a Chrysler 300C right in front of me two months ago while I was having a smoke on my patio. The thieves saw me, as well as a woman who was walking her dog not 20 feet away, watching them as they stole it. They were fast; by the time I realized I was watching a car get jacked, they were speeding off in it.

Then they brazenly came back about 20 minutes later to get another car while I was waiting for the police to show up. They drove right past me, and when I tried to get their license plate number they split. (The police officer told me the description of the truck they were driving was an exact match with one stolen the night before.)

The officer who took the police report on the stolen 300C told me the best thing to do to prevent a theft is to get the Club. It’s not foolproof, but most thieves will pass up a car with this device for one without it. Even alarms aren’t as effective because the pros know how to get around them (my girlfriend’s Jeep had one), although they must be effective to a point: Nothing is more irritating than a car alarm blaring on and on unattended for hours on end.

You can also install fuel pump kill switches that can immobilize the car if necessary. and if you’ve got the money you can get LoJack installed, which will track your vehicle and lead the police right to it. LoJack would be the way to go for the satisfaction factor — knowing the perps could be caught still in the car.

But the most obvious thing to do to protect yourself is to take the keys and lock your car. This seems like a no-brainer, but people forget. Leaving your keys in your car is an invitation to steal it.

Another factor, however, is where you live. Some areas have a higher rate of car thefts than others. You can check the crime rates in an area by clicking here, looking at this slide show, checking with these folks, or even calling local law enforcement officials.

I may have to invest in a Club now that I know thieves won’t necessarily pass a car up just because it doesn’t look that good anymore. This whole time I thought I was safe. It turns out I was just lucky.

(photo by Gh0stman)

I got a call this morning from the Creative Loafing HQ after our HR director received some calls about the fellow Pickett, who died last night after jumping off the Gulfport Pier. According to news reports, this man was relaxing with friends and family when he decided to jump into the Gulf. He quickly lost control of the situation and had trouble keeping his head above water. Bystanders and friends jumped in to save him, but he went under and never came back up. Authorities recovered his body about five hours later, 50 feet from where he jumped.

Sad story. My condolences go out to his family. Us Alexander Picketts are good, decent people.

Of course, this is the only other Alexander Pickett I’ve ever heard about. Search my name on Google and you pretty much come up with me. Search my full name, “Alexander Pickett,” and you’ll come up with references to an actor. I can’t find a MySpace page for the dude. No other info on him except for these news reports.

The whole situation is a little surreal, seeing my/his name and age. And living in the same county as me. I keep reading the news reports, my name popping out every time. I wonder if he read Creative Loafing and saw my/his name. I wonder if he hated that, or if he used it to get the ladies. I wonder if I would’ve ever met him and whether we’d be great drinking buddies, just because we share the name.

I was just on that pier a month ago. I remember thinking, “I wonder how deep this water is?” I’ve definitely done some dangerous stunts like smoking salvia and agreeing to be waterboarded. And those are just the ones you read about.

Reminder: Call grandma and save her from a Times-induced heart attack.

Just got another e-mail from someone wondering if I’m alive. It’s touching. Thanks everyone. Sorry, folks, but you can’t get rid of me that easily.

I’m going to keep looking into who this guy was (maybe there will be a photo released?). But in the meantime, tonight, I think I’ll celebrate. Just because I’m alive.