In Ramsey County, Minnesota (home of Saint Paul) you can be jailed for up to 90 days, and fined up to $1,000, if you are found in a park after hours. “Hours” in Ramsey County parks are from sun up to sun down, so the hours change daily and in pragmatic terms, are subjective.

I can see having a rule about when you can be in the park, and fixing it to sunlight makes sense, and I can even see a modest punishment for offenders. But three months in jail because you thought the sun was still up 15 minutes after sundown? Note to those reading this from the equator: The sun continues to brighten the northern sky long after official sundown, since the penumbra is quite wide in high latitudes.

That was in the Star Tribune, the region’s newspaper of record. In the same issue is an op-ed penned by a local retired cop who has a new job of screaming at clouds. There was a horrific and tragic shootout at a local bar the other day, in which over a dozen innocent bystanders were shot, one killed. It was a shootout among some bad hombres including one with an open warrant. Old Guy Cop made the argument that if only cops were allowed to make “low level stops” (aka pretextual stops) then this shooting could have been avoided. The argument goes like this: Cops were formerly allowed to pull people over for things like busted taillights. In so doing they would also end up finding felons with outstanding warrants, so they were thus kept of the streets. But now with all the “defund the police” talk this isn’t the case anymore, thus the shooting. Continue reading What ya gonna do when they come for you? →