A fight broke out in the parking garage at Universal Studios on Saturday night, and the Orlando police evacuated the parking garage “out of an abundance of caution” due to “a fight between several juveniles.”
Our officers responded to the parking garage at the 6000 block of Universal Blvd. regarding a fight between several juveniles. Out of an abundance of caution, the premises are being evacuated as our officers ensure everyone is safe.
We all know that the police don’t evacuate major tourist attractions because of simple fist fights, and we also know that “juveniles” is a code word used by the local press for black teenage gang members. To understand what a HUGE thing this is, you have to understand how Universal Studios is set up:
You can see the two parking garages. There are elevated walkways that run from the garages to a rotunda, also elevated. (I marked the rotunda with a 5 pointed star). In the rotunda, there is a security station where they inspect bags and run everyone through a magnetometer.
That parking garage is the ONLY parking garage for the three main USO attractions: Universal Studios Orlando, Islands of Adventure, and Orlando City Walk. So the police evacuating the parking area means closing all three. Since it happened at midnight, the only thing open would have been City Walk, which is a Universal owned attraction of restaurants, bars, stores, mini golf, and other associated businesses.
The area where Universal is located is a bad neighborhood to start with. Once when I was leaving the park, I missed a robbery of a nearby store by seconds.
The police claim that there were no weapons found or shots fired.
UPDATE: The scene at the 6000 block of Universal Blvd is now clear.
No shots were fired. No injuries were reported. And No weapons were found.
Thank you for your patience as our officers worked to ensure everyone remained safe and conducted the investigation.
So with all of that being said, I can’t see the OPD evacuating a major tourist attraction to the point where people fled and left personal belongings behind, to include vehicles.
The news is calling it a “shooting scare” and blaming guns, even though there is no evidence that any guns were involved. Note that the parking garage was evacuated, which means that the “fight” occurred in the area outside of the security inspection station.
Me? I don’t see there being an evacuation of a major theme park unless someone in the OPD overreacted, or unless there really WERE shots fired.
This is the weakness in having a gun free zone with security inspections: you have an area where victims are guaranteed to be disarmed, and are easy pickings.
Many times we hear about public employees like teachers and cops being suspended with pay. Many people think that this is some sort of slap on the wrist that is simply a paid vacation, and the public employee will face no further discipline. That is simply not the case.
That paid suspension is actually a part of the employee’s constitutional rights. The case was Cleveland Board of Education v. Loudermill, a 1985 case that was decided by the US Supreme Court. The underlying question for the case was:
“Can the government remove a civil servant’s property rights to employment before providing an opportunity for that employee to respond to the charges offered for his termination?”
The court said that the Constitution prevents the government from depriving anyone of their property without also providing that employee a chance to defend themselves. Calling witnesses, having counsel, a hearing, and all of the other due process rights that any other person would have before the government can take something from them.
So back to our cops and teachers. A cop or teacher is being considered for termination or unpaid suspension. In order to do that, the administrative authority who will take that action must hold a hearing where the employer (the government) will present its reasons for terminating or suspending the employee. The employee then has an opportunity to bring their own witnesses, present their case, and respond to the allegations. Only then can the employee be terminated or suspended.
Until that hearing has been held, an employee cannot be deprived of anything. That includes their job and their pay. So this leaves the employing agency in a quandary: Do you leave the disgraced employee in his or her job? Many employers choose not to, and will suspend the employee with pay, pending further proceedings.
After the punishment has been imposed, the employee has the right to appeal that decision in front of a court. If the appeal is successful, then the employee will likely be reinstated with back pay. This appeals process can sometimes take years.
Let’s say that it’s your birthday, so you mix some flour, eggs, oil, butter, milk, and other ingredients in a bowl. You pour that mixture into a pan, place it into the oven, and prepare to wait for your birthday cake.
Now I come along, pull that pan out of the oven and toss it out of the window. You say to me, “Hey, you just ruined my birthday cake.”
I reply, “No I didn’t. It wasn’t a cake yet.”
You say, “It would have been in about an hour.”
At what point does a cake exist? When I mix the eggs into the batter? When it’s done baking?
Pence is running against Trump in Arizona. I don’t care who Pence is running against. He is an establishment Republican who cares more about power than he does the country. I won’t give him my vote for dogcatcher.
A person who gets elected to the House of Representatives receives a salary of $155,000 per year. Prior to being elected, they lived with their mother while working as a bartender and were fighting the foreclosure of their home. 29 months after assuming office, they have a net worth of $29 million. This person now owns 6 homes, 5 Cars, 2 Luxury Yachts, has cash reserves of over $3 Million and a stock portfolio that is valued at $15 million.
I am of course talking about AOC. The question I think we should all be asking is- how do you increase your net worth by over $1 million a month when your salary is only $13,000 a month?
She is a self described socialist, yet drives 5 cars with a combined value of half a million dollars: a Mercedes-Benz GLA, an Audi Q2, a BMW X7 ($100,000), a Mercedes-Benz EqC (valued at $140,000), and a BMW X8 ($200,000).
Much is being made of how the unemployment rate has dropped to only 3.6 percent under Biden’s watch. That number isn’t an indication of a healthy job market. In fact, it’s misleading bullshit.
To understand why, you have to understand what unemployment is measuring. The unemployment rate only measures the number of people who are out of work despite their best efforts to find gainful employment. The labor department assumes that anyone who has been out of work for longer than 6 months isn’t looking for work, so excludes them from the calculation.
To get a more accurate measure of how the labor market is doing, look at the labor force participation rate, as published by the Fed. That is a measurement of the percentage of those who are not in the military or in prison and who are actually employed or actively looking for work.
For June of 2022, that number stands at 62.2. Granted, it was lower during the pandemic lockdowns (April 2020 to November 2021), but that was because the government was actively prohibiting people from working. Even then, the participation rate never fell below 60 percent.
Other than that time period, the last time you can find a participation rate of 62.2 or less was May of 1977. Before that, the labor force participation rate was lower (in the 50’s and 60’s), but there is a HUGE reason for that: women were part of the labor force, but most of them were stay at home housewives and were not participating because they were not working or looking for work.
What this means is that this President has a lower labor force participation rate of any US President since we began measuring it.
Officer Ruben Ruiz, whose wife was one of the teachers killed at Uvalde is seen in the video holding his phone. We are supposed to feel sorry for him because his wife is dead.
I would, except even after his wife died, he still lied to make his own cowardly ass look like a victim. He claims that he attempted to enter the classroom to save his wife, but had his gun taken away and was physically held down and escorted from the scene. Does this look like someone who had his gun taken away?
So maybe they took his gun later, but does that matter? This was in the early stages of the shooting. His wife was probably still alive at this point.
