Morning Roar: Boy With BB Gun Killed By Cop, Most Important Food Truck, Scalpers Selling Free Tickets for Profit
Welcome to The Morning Roar! We wish you safe travels and plenty of delicious food this Thanksgiving holiday.Boy With BB Gun Killed By CopIn an absolutely heartbreaking story out of Cleveland, Ohio, a twelve year-old boy was shot and killed by a police officer with the Cleveland Police Department. Cleveland Police say that officers responded to a radio assignment outside of a recreation center for a male with a gun.The twelve year-old boy, identified by the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office as Tamir E. Rice, was not holding an actual firearm. He had only had a BB gun in his possession when he was gunned down.Police claim they asked the boy to drop what he was holding, but the boy did not comply and then reached to his waistband. This is allegedly what prompted the officer to shoot. The officer fired one shot, hitting the boy in the stomach.WKYC reports:
A 12-year-old boy has died after police were forced to shoot him at a Cleveland rec center on Saturday.Sunday afternoon, the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office identified the boy as Tamir E Rice.The family has hired attorney Tim Kucharski, of Richardson & Kucharski, to represent the,Kucharski told WKYC "Apparently, listening to the 911 call… the caller halfway across the park recognized that this was a toy gun. I'm not sure how police weren't able to make that same decision.""We're going to conduct our own parallel investigation. I understand what police are putting out there, I cannot confirm or deny those facts. The family is absolutely is devastated. He was a wonderful young man. Our own investigation will begin as early as tomorrow."
The author of this WKYC article writes that the “police were forced to shoot him.” They must have a very different definition of the word force than the commonly accepted definition. What on earth could “force” a a grown man to kill a twelve-year-old boy holding a BB gun?Nothing “forces” an adult to kill a child holding a BB gun. This was a tragic choice made by the police officer. The only force involved in this tragedy was the bullet that was fired from the officer’s gun.This is not the first time police in Ohio have mistaken a BB gun for an actual firearm and killed an innocent civilian. In August, police in Beavercreek, OH shot and killed a twenty-two-year-old man inside a Walmart as he was holding a BB gun while contemplating a purchase in the store. In September, a grand jury decided not to file charges against the police officers responsible for the death.Unfortunately, instead of making these police officers pay for their crimes, lawmakers will divert the attention away from the trigger happy police officers and instead will attempt to regulate BB guns. Ohio State Rep. Alicia Reece has already announced plans to introduce legislation that would place restrictions on BB guns, air rifles, and airsoft guns. The legislation would require these guns to be brightly colored.Two innocent civilians are dead and the blood is on police officer’s hands. I don’t see how changing the color of toy guns provides justice to the families’ or does anything to hold these cops accountable for extinguishing two lives. This doesn’t solve the problem; rather, it distorts the truth by assigning blame to an inanimate object, rather than the humans who made the decision to pull the triggerThe Most Important Food Truck In AmericaBalance is important in life and after reading the tragic story above it makes sense to follow it up with something positive and uplifting.Surprisingly, this story can be found on the New York City food truck scene. A French Canadian-styled food truck that won 2014 Rookie of the Year Vendy Award - which recognizes street vendor excellence - is gaining notoriety and praise for something that has nothing to do with the food that they serve.Yahoo has the scoop:
But this is a vehicle with goals well beyond infusing as many foods as possible with New York State maple syrup: Snowday is run by Drive Change, an organization that employs previously incarcerated young people and prepares them for re-entry to mainstream society.Twenty-eight-year-old Jordyn Lexton, a former teacher at Rikers Island Correctional Facility, dreamt up the program. Rikers is a prison designed for adults, but it holds roughly 300 inmates between the ages of 16 and 17.By law, they must attend a state-run high school, which is where the kernel for Snowday was planted in Lexton’s mind. ”I was an English teacher there for three years, and witnessed firsthand the detrimental effects of the criminal justice system on youth,” she told us. Lexton added that New York is one of only two states in America that automatically charges 16-year-olds as adults in criminal court.
Kudos to you Jordyn Lexton. The government-run criminal justice system releases these previously incarcerated young men without the skills they need to survive, setting them up to fail. Thank you Mr. Lexton, for standing up for these young men and showing them how hard work and a good business model can generate income.Scalpers Selling Free Tickets for $125Nothing in life is free, other than air. And possibly water, but people pay a lot of money for water sometimes...Normally, if a product or service is advertised as being free it’s because money has been taken from someone else to pay for it (redistribution of wealth) or because a business is voluntarily giving a product that has value away for free. Just because a business gives away a product for free, does not mean a third-party cannot accept the free product and attempt to sell that product in order to make a profit.This is exactly what occurred for the upcoming NFL game between the Buffalo Bill and the New York Jets. The game was originally scheduled to be played in Buffalo, NY. But the record-breaking snowfall the past week and ensuing melt made the prospect of playing a game in Buffalo unrealistic. The NFL stepped in and moved the game to Detroit and announced that all of the tickets would be “given away” for free.All of the free tickets were scooped up, and apparently a large portion of them by scalpers looking to make a buck.From Fan Sided:
The NFL of course relocated the game due to the monster snowstorm in Upstate New York and in turn offered free tickets to the game.Handling such responsibilities were the Detroit Lions and their box office, though many hoping to get a ticket or two were sadly turned away. Why? Because those made available were already given out, some of which made their way into the hands of local scalpers who are taking the opportunity to make a buck.According to ESPN, one scalper was peddling his ticket to the game for $125 bucks...… I’m all for making a dollar but this seems to be a bit over the top. Granted nobody has to buy the ticket from him (nor should they) but you’d like to see the free tickets put to good use.Tickets to NFL games are not cheap so you’d hope that a parent would be able to take their child to a game they normally wouldn’t be able to afford, but with scalpers grabbing many of the tickets and attempting to pawn them off such doesn’t seem likely.
It’s amazing that the practice of reselling free tickets is making people upset. The profit margin on the tickets was forfeited by the NFL. Why is it immoral for a third-party to try to capture some of that margin by reselling the tickets? This is the same thing fans do all the time when they re-sell tickets for big time games at higher prices. The only difference is the ticket prices to those games don’t start at zero dollars.The tickets obviously have a value greater than zero dollars. The rules of supply and demand cannot be suspended, even by the mighty NFL.The Morning Roar every weekday Monday-Friday right here at Lions of Liberty!The Lions of Liberty are on Twitter, Facebook & Google+Receive access to ALL of our EXCLUSIVE bonus audio content – including “Conspiracy Corner”, “Degenerate Gamblers” and the “League of Liberty Podcast” by joining the Lions of Liberty Pride and supporting us on Patreon!
