The Times they aren't a changing

Shots misfired

A mistake is not just a mistake when a gun is involved.  That's why most police officers try to err on the side of not firing their weapons.

But as long as there have been armed police officers, there have been questionable shootings.

In the heat of the moment in a dark alley, a harmless household object can appear to an officer to be a deadly weapon. In this week's tragic version of the story, police fired 20 shots at a man armed only with a hairbrush.

A TROUBLED MAN AND 20 POLICE BULLETS IN BROOKLYN

November 14, 2007

By AL BAKER

A troubled 18-year-old man. A furious family argument inside a first-floor Brooklyn apartment. A 911 call. Then, in the darkness, 20 bullets fired by five police officers. The 18-year-old is fatally wounded. The police say he was holding a hairbrush.

These incidents don't happen very often, but since the 1990s they seem to occur with greater frequency.

Ten years ago it was a candy bar in the role of the hairbrush.

AGENT MISTAKES CANDY BAR FOR GUN AND SHOOTS YOUTH

November 8, 1997

By DAVID  KOCIENIEWSKI

A 17-year-old high school student was shot and wounded on Thursday by an undercover Federal agent who mistook a foil-wrapped candy bar that the youth was holding for a handgun, officials said yesterday.

The student, Andre Burgess, said he was walking down 138th Street in Laurelton, Queens, about 7 P.M. on Thursday when he passed a car full of undercover law enforcement agents who were searching for a fugitive drug dealer.

According to law-enforcement officials, a Federal agent inside the car saw the silver wrapper of the Three Musketeers bar that Mr. Burgess was carrying and mistook it for the glint of a pistol.

Fining the coop

Councilman Simcha Felder fancies himself the pigeon Pied Piper. He proposes to lead New York's rats with wings out of town by fining the hands that feed them.

From an AP story in today's Times.

Noting that pigeons produce an average of 25 pounds of droppings each year, Councilman Simcha Felder, a Brooklyn Democrat, proposed that the city impose a $1,000 fine for feeding pigeons. “We have pigeons doing whatever they do all over the city without anyone trying to stop it,” he said.

While pigeons were beloved residents of the city for more than a century, as their population exploded, New Yorkers began to call for their extermination. Unfortunately, the law has proven incapable of curbing the feeding of pigeons and the streets are now paved with droppings.

Take this case from 1936, in which a woman who was feeding Midtown pigeons 100 pounds of cracked corn a day had the book thrown at her to no avail:

PIGEON BREAD LINE STOPPED BY COURT
Woman freed after agreeing to give up feeding 46t St. flock 3 times a day

June 27, 1936

A complaint of disorderly conduct against Cleo Long of 25 West Forty-sixth Street was dismissed in West Side Court yesterday after she had signed a promise on the back of the summons promising to discontinue the bread line for pigeons she has been conducting three times a day in Forty-sixth Street between Fifth and 6th Avenues.

The drowsy megaphone

Cats scratched out 18 years on Broadway, but the longest running show on the Great White Way may actually be the labor-management follies.

Much like a play which is more or less the same from night to night, over the decades the issues theatrical unions and management have locked bullhorns over are now so familiar that much of the audience is able to sing along.

Take the current stagehand strike, which this week has left countless tourists searching for other ways to spend $400 for a night's entertainment.

According to Campbell Robertson's front page story Sunday on the strike,

The dispute has largely been over the rules in the contract that govern how many stagehands must be called for work, how long they work, and what kind of tasks they can perform.

Compare that to the same union's demand 81 years earlier,

in the new demands the union requires that nine men be employed for a production with one set of scenery, such as "Craig's Wife," where three men are now used.

Although the 1926 strike was averted, the similarities are (pun intended) striking:

STAGEHAND STRIKE LOOMS OVER WAGES

August 19th, 1926

A strike of the stagehands in New York's legitimate theatres loomed as a possibility yesterday when it became known that the Theatrical Protective Union, Local No. 1, had made demands for wage increases for stage carpenters, electricians, property men and flymen which according to the theatre owners and managers, would mean an additional yearly expense of $20,000 to $25,000 for each house.

The increeases asked by the stagehands average about 40 per cent in all departments, although in some instances they run much higher. Under the proposed scale stage carpenters who are now paid $65 a week would receive $85 for a six-day week, with similar increases all along the line.