No more apartments at Brick Row

Word is that the developers (Winston Cap?) are going to ask COR to let them skew the existing 300 condos / 500 "luxury apartments" agreement toward more apartments units at a lower price point.

DART Rail + cheap apartments = bad news. Listen to a scanner and see how often RPD is dispatched to the rail station. There is already graffiti on the upper deck, and broken glass panels. DART PD is MIA. Maybe the new radio tower will encourage them to show up in Richardson from time to time?

Anecdotal, but interesting: my last two experiences on that DART rail platform have been unpleasant. This Tuesday I rode the DART down to the VA hospital for a dr's appointment. While I was buying a ticket at the Spring Valley station ticket kiosk I was approached ("Hey, dawg...") with an offer to participate in an activity specifically prohibited on the ticket. I will note that getting approached with a "Hey, dawg" when you have your wallet in your hand bumps up the threat level from yellow to orange pretty fast. My right hand settled down to the Spyderco Endura clipped to my pocket.

The time before that I called 911 when it appeared my wife and I were in physical danger. Yay, DART.

Got a little sidetracked there. What was I saying? Oh yeah, NO to more apartments in Brick Row.

Seriously, get a carry license

At the Spring Valley DART station today, taking the train to the fair.

Wife and I were walking up the stairs when a aggressive/freaky/huge looking dude stops dead in the middle of the stairway facing us and stares at us. We had to rearrange to go around him. I said "good morning" as we passed. He didn't answer and I didn't hear him move behind us. My heartrate was a little elevated because this dude did not seem right. He had that "I am a sociopath and would just as soon kill you" vibe.

A few minutes later we were up on the platform. He walked upstairs again and came right over to us. Oh boy. Here we go.

Him: Hey man, do you have $2?
Me: No, I don't.
Him: I didn't mean to be rude when you talked to me down there.
Me: No problem. It's all right.
Him: [suddenly agitated] Why did you talk to me?
Me: [boggling, WTF?] What?
Him: [more agitated, seemingly unhinged] Why did you talk to me, with all these other people here? Why the hell you wanna...
Me: I said "good morning". [At this point I pulled my elbow in a bit so I could be sure of the positioning of the subcompact 9mm in the holster on my hip.]
Him: [he continues ranting]
Me: "We're done here", and I shepherded the wife away.

Moved to the north end of the platform and he followed within a minute or so.
We moved to the south end and he followed after a bit. Crap. This isn't a coincidence.
Moved to the north end again and placed a call to RPD.

I identified him in pieces, as he kept getting close enough to hear and we had to relocate several times: Black male, 30+ yrs old, 6' 1" or 6' 2" (he was taller than me), 200#, black knit cap, dark sunglasses, long desert-style camo parka shell, brown pants.

Within a couple of minutes two officers (244 and 264) showed up and walked the platform. They walked south-to-north like they were scoping then went downstairs. I couldn't see where they were, if they had left, or what. My guess at that time was that they had ID'ed the guy from my description (he was obvious) and was waiting for the train to clear the crowd before moving in. At this point I was still on the phone with dispatch and we agreed to drop the call since two LEOs were on scene.

After the cops had been (downstairs? gone?) for about two minutes the fellow got agitated again and started asking a group of commuters "why the cops here? What they looking for? Those was Richardson po-lice, not DART po-lice."*, etc. We moved away again and so did not hear the rest.

Interesting that he was so clued in to the difference between the affilliation of the officers, and that he saw both of them although they were moving seperately in different areas and in a low-key fashion through the crowd. I knew they were on-scene somewhere and still barely spotted them until they were quite near. I suspect his questions indicated he understood the LEOs were not there on a random patrol, and he wanted to know who called the police. Frak.

Train came shortly thereafter, wife and I boarded, and our pet psycho stayed on the platform.


I came home and listened to the scanner traffic. Call came in at 9:28am, and my description was reduced to "BM, 6 foot, camo, panhandling and behaving strangely". Both cars were on-scene by 9:33am, then nothing more until one of the officers announced he was clear at 10:23am. Normally if they had stopped someone they would have run a background check on the NCIC channel, but that was not on the recording. I bet a dollar that psycho had an active warrant somewhere. I suspect no contact was made.
Lesson learned: next time I will request officer contact so I can ensure contact gets made with the suspect. I did not request contact w/me as we were waiting on a train and didn't know when it would arrive.

I guarantee you that an encounter like this with a potentially dangerous pursuer is much different when you are armed. Instead of being in trapped animal mode, you are aware of the options in the scenario. There is no huge power disparity, there is just a human acting strangely and aggressively which you have to deal with safely.
Here's another pointer to a decent unofficial overview of how to get started with your concealed carry license.


* I was conflicted about whether or not to transcribe this outburst into standard English. Tried it both ways and it seemed more artificial to put words in his mouth. So those are direct quotes. If you have a problem with this word choice or syntax, feel free to take it up with him.

Always a bridesmaid

Got a summons for Dallas County jury duty. Didn't get picked; I never get picked. This time I didn't even get sent into the pool of possibles for picking over by the laywers. :-(

Some random notes from the experience:

• This one was at the George Allen building bear Union Station, not the Frank Crowley in the "immanent threat of danger" part of town.
• Since it was about a block from Union Station this made a DART rail ride down there a no-brainer. The summons even included a pass for a free DART ride.
  
• The ride and walk were relatively painless. Total unwanted-confrontation count: 4. Two babbling, arm-waving lunatics on the train there, one (rather pleasant) street person begging on the walk back, and a boundary-challenged fellow on the way back who insisted on "reading" me his newspaper and making random, aggressively ignorant commentary on them.
  
• There is an open wifi feed in the Jury Pool room, but it is a proxy and you have to pay for access. $5.95 for the day, IIRC. Didn't pay it. There was a belo-guest open AP in the nearby Belo building, but the signal was so weak I couldn't get a lease. I read a book instead.
• If you come in the court building entryway closest to Union Square there is no indication where the jury room is. And even when you find it there is nothing on/near the door to tell you where it is. The court wrangler kept referring to the "bailiff's office" but did not say where it was. I figured out where it was, and there was no signage indicating it was the bailiff's office. There were lines with people standing in them with no indication what the line was for or who was running it. I am not claiming the court building should hold peoples' hands; I am saying they should at least give us enough info to figure it out for ourselves. Man, that was frustrating.
• Those were some of the saddest vending machines I have ever seen.
• There is vandalism, gang-looking scratches on the glass/plastic surfaces of our DART rail station.