Charlottesville crimes, as found via new reports.
SpotCrime.com

UVA grad Colin Drane had what he thought would be a solid-gold idea: A website where you could see all the crime in your neighborhood or on your street. What he didn’t foresee: How reluctant police are to give out that information.

In January, Drane launched SpotCrime.com and a companion site, UCrime.com, to map crime around universities. So far, he says he has sites in over 180 cities and at 200 universities.

“SpotCrime has the largest accessible crime database in the world,” says Drane. And by accessible, he means available to Joe Citizen.

Drane, an economics/philosophy major who graduated from the University of Virginia in 1992, now lives in Baltimore, which he says has the second-highest per capita crime rate of any city in the United States. “That’s kind of where my interest in tracking crime came,” he says. “I live in the city and want my family safe.”

He launched Spotcrime.com and UCrime.com here yesterday, shortly after Charlottesville police declined to provide him with the daily incident report it emails (more)

Comments(9)

Lyn Balfour considers an appeal after a judge denies her request to expunge her record.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

Raelyn Balfour, the mother whose infant son died when she left him in the car while she went to work at the Judge Advocate General’s School, was back in the same court today where she was acquitted by a jury of involuntary manslaughter in January to ask that her record be expunged.

Balfour’s criminal history with the Virginia State Police shows that she was charged with second-degree murder and criminal neglect in the March 30, 2007, death of nine-month-old Bryce, her attorney, Dana Slater, told the court, although she was ultimately prosecuted for— and acquitted of— involuntary manslaughter.

With jurors voting to acquit after just 90 minutes and at least two of them alleging afterward that tax dollars were wasted putting Balfour on trial, her attorney alleged (more)

Comments(6)

The proposed McIntire Park master plan situates the Piedmont Virginia YMCA in the park’s swale currently housing the Lion Club’s picnic shelters.
DEPARTMENT OF PARKS AND RECREATION

In the run-up to this week’s impending confrontation between ousted softball players and government officials at the County Board of Supervisors, information revealed at a meeting last week suggests a chance for McIntire Park to avoid the expected softball exile that’s put players into a recent uproar. It all depends on the footprint of the Y.

“The YMCA is not building at the size they anticipated because they are not partnering with UVA,” says Charlottesville Parks & Recreation Director Mike Svetz. “The [Park's] master plan adopted was based on the footprint of the YMCA, which drives everything else, including site improvements.”

The Y has already received a $1/year, 40-year-lease on a 5.2-acre site and financial commitments for more than $3 million from local governments, but it would need to spend $1.5 million on site improvements, Svetz says, “beyond building the building.”

“It’s in their financial interest to save the existing road and parking lot,” Svetz says. “Then we have to do an update of the master plan.”

While Y talk dominated the two-hour conversation, Svetz tried to tout the planned lighting of Darden Towe’s three softball fields in addition to the already-budgeted $150,000 City plan to light the girl’s softball field at Charlottesville High School and news that the City would renews and augment its agreement for (more)

Comments(4)

Obama campaign volunteer Adrienne Ghaly (left) registered voters outside the Lucky 7 on Market Street this morning. Fortunately, Michelle McSherrey was already registered. “I’m voting on November 4,” she says.
PHOTO BY COURTENEY STUART

Today at 5pm is the deadline for voter registration in Virginia, and the Obama campaign has volunteers positioned at convenience and grocery stores throughout town.

The effort has paid off, says volunteer Adrienne Ghaly, who in the last two days has assisted 17 voters– some new who were unregistered; some who simply needed to update their addresses. This morning, she was camped in front of the Lucky 7 convenience store on Market Street, but, she says, not all stores have been welcoming.

Management at Reid Super Save Market on Preston Avenue has asked several volunteers to leave the property, says Ghaly, who says the Reid’s manager kicked her off the property yesterday.

Reid Super Save Market is the closest grocery store to several primarily African American neighborhoods, including 10th and Page and Starr Hill.

“I am shocked,” Ghaly says, “that he would take the community’s money and not allow people to enfranchise that community to vote.”

But Reid’s manager Charlie Wood says that’s not the case– he doesn’t mind voter registration as long as its nonpartisan.

“They’re wearing a campaign button,” he says of the Obama volunteers. Wood says (more)

Comments(3)

Smoke detectors are not all created equal. A detector test conducted by the Hook with assistance from local fire officials revealed in June that ionization models may not activate until it’s too late to escape.
FILE PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

Last week, the Albemarle County Fire Department announced a smoke detector promotion in which anyone ordering pizza from Domino’s Pizza on Seminole Trail on Monday, October 7 between 4 and 7pm will receive a free pizza if a firefighter riding along with the delivery driver determines all smoke detectors in a customer’s residence are functioning. If any of the detectors aren’t working, the customer pays for the pie but gets a free detector.

There was just one problem with the creative promotion: the department made no mention of the type of detector that should to be present in order to receive the free pie.

Not anymore!

At the Hook’s request, says Albemarle Fire Inspector Joseph Gould, the department will now not only check if the detectors are functioning but will also identify the type of detector. Homes equipped with battery operated ionization detectors, even if they function, will be offered the combination detectors that are supplied through the county’s free detector program. Residents of homes with hardwired ionization models will be educated on the need to replace their detectors.

As the Hook has reported on extensively, ionization detectors– the type found in at least 90 percent (more)

Comments(3)

Logan Blanco was struck in a crosswalk by a turning vehicle in the pre-dawn hours of September 12.
PHOTO BY COURTENEY STUART

A pedestrian was struck by a car on the south side of the Belmont Bridge just before noon today, and on September 12, a pedestrian was struck at Ninth and Jefferson on the north side of the bridge.

This morning’s accident occurred at the corner of Graves and Avon streets near Spudnuts donut shop. According to city spokesperson Ric Barrick, the pedestrian, whose identity has not been released, “stepped off the curb into the street— not into a crosswalk— and the driver was not able to react in time.”

According to Barrick, the first officer on the scene interviewed the driver, the pedestrian, and witnesses, before deciding a ticket for the driver was not warranted. And unlike an incident in November 2007 in which a wheelchair-bound pedestrian was ticketed after being struck in a crosswalk, this time police decided not to pursue charges against the injured pedestrian, who was transported to UVA hospital. Barrick says there were no serious injuries.

In an incident on Friday, September 12, a woman out walking her dog was struck just after 6am as she crossed Ninth Street heading west on Jefferson Street. Driver James E. Shifflett was turning left onto Ninth Street from Jefferson St. and struck 59-year-old Logan Blanco. Both are residents of the Little High Street Neighborhood.

“It seemed to lift me up a little; I felt very rag doll-ish,” (more)

Comments(19)

Bob Fenwick of Save McIntire meets with Supervisor Ken Boyd last week— but will he be heard at the City’s softball organizational meeting?
FILE PHOTO BY STEPHANIE GARCIA

Following the example of Albemarle County supervisor Ken Boyd and his community conversation at the Elk Lodge September 11, the City’s Department of Parks and Recreation is hosting a “softball team organizational meeting” at the end of the month to gauge the current pulse of softball players, many of whom have expressed anger at the move their league may soon be forced to take.

“It will give an opportunity for the teams to ask questions and give comments— similar to Mr. Boyd’s conversation,” Director of Parks and Recreation Mike Svetz says.

But will this “organizational meeting” stray from the issue of lighting Darden Towe’s three softball fields to the softball community’s growing anxiety about the future of McIntire Park? As Boyd discovered in his conversation, the softballers and Towe neighbors are united under the mutual purpose of questioning the city’s decision to convert McIntire’s softball complex into a rectangular, multi-use field and additional parking for a planned YMCA. According to Bob Fenwick of the Save McIntire campaign, the city should expect a vocal crowd.

“I expect the city will not want to hear from me,” Fenwick chuckles. “But (more)

Comments(7)

Kendra Hamilton and Mecca Burns, at the Jefferson Madison Regional Library, which was a federal court on the second floor in 1958 when African American parents sued to enroll their children in white schools, plan to remember how massive resistance played out in Charlottesville.
PHOTO BY WILL WALKER

Fifty years ago, the governor of Virginia ordered two schools in Charlottesville shut rather than admit black children. And without the efforts of two private citizens, that date– September 19– would slip by as just another day in a “world-class city.”

Former city councilor Kendra Hamilton and social theater director Mecca Burns got together about a month ago “to complain that no one was doing anything,” says Hamilton.

“I’ve been trying to get people interested in doing a commemoration all spring,” she says. “I think something needs to be done to mark this anniversary.”

The anniversary is this: Even four years after the 1954 landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, which threw out so-called “separate but equal” rulings that kept white and black students segregated, Charlottesville’s School Board resolutely had fought (more)

Comments(3)