If the deaths of Sandra Brand in Texas and Samuel Dubose in Ohio have one thing in common, other than race, it is a police officer's instant decision to escalate a confrontation.
So there is more to the following than meets the eye.
The Roswell City Council approved on first reading Monday night a change that would remove the use of profane or obscene language from the list of offenses in the city's ordinances dealing with disorderly conduct.
Here’s the video from Channel 2 Action News:
Police were investigating a claim that Williams used a bogus gift card to buy movie tickets, a claim that police could not prove.
Police charged Williams with disorderly conduct under an ordinance that the City Council passed last year.
"We expected that the ordinance would be used pretty infrequently, but in fact, what we found was that over a dozen people in the city of Roswell had been arrested for simply using the wrong word in front of a police officer," attorney Gerry Weber said.
Weber said the ordinance is unconstitutional.
"The Supreme Court has held that unless you are disrupting an officer, unless you are threatening an officer, the mere use of a cuss word, while maybe not the best thing in the world, is constitutionally protected," Weber said.
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In Washington, the Georgia delegation's never-ending quest for federal money to deepen the Port of Savannah has in years past been of the "as much as we can get" variety. This year, with the project finally under way, the request for the administration's 2017 budget comes with a dollar figure attached -- $100 million.
All 16 members of the congressional delegation signed a letter to Jo-Ellen Darcy, who oversees the Army Corps of Engineers, saying the Corps has identified $100 million "as the level that would keep the project on the path to timely completion."
That's a big ask, after the feds in February dropped in $42 million over a two-year span. But the Georgia delegation argues that a project delay would be even more costly in the long run.
The federal share of the project is $440 million in all.
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A long-stalled Georgia program that uses government dollars to attract venture funding for homegrown startup firms is finally showing signs of life.
The Invest Georgia initiative, a favorite of Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and the Metro Atlanta Chamber, this week selected an investment consultant to manage the millions in state funds flowing through its coffers.
The program's board tapped LCG Associates for a one-year contract out of a pool of three finalists. Charles Thompson, an Invest Georgia board member, said the firm's "purposeful approach" helped it win the business.
The initiative was launched in 2013 by supporters who hoped that ponying up state dollars could attract enough venture capital to help transform Georgia into a tech hub.
But lawmakers didn't allocate money to fund the program the first year, and the $10 million it had in the bank in December came only after Gov. Nathan Deal shifted money from the higher education system for the program. Meanwhile, leaders for months delayed naming the members of the panel that would oversee how that money is spent.
Deal in May struck another blow to the program when he vetoed a controversial proposal that would have authorized the program to sell up to $55 million in insurance tax credits. But the hiring of the adviser means that the initial $10 million tranche can now be invested.
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The General Assembly is defending its decision to sue a public records activist who published a scan of Georgia's annotated code to his website.
State Rep. Johnnie Caldwell said the state has every right to protect its use of "value-added ancillary material" in the annotated version of the code, which contains caselaw and judicial opinions not affixed to the regular statutes. The lawsuit claims that Carl Malamud's nonprofit is waging a broader plot to force the government to spend taxpayer dollars to make those versions freely available.
Writes Caldwell, who chairs the commission charged with revising Georgia's code:
"The state's publisher, LexisNexis, receives no monetary payment from the State for producing the editorial content and in printing and distributing the O.C.G.A. Pursuant to the contract, the publisher recoups its investment through the exclusive right to sell the O.C.G.A., although the State has the authority to limit the prices that may be charged by the publisher for the printed version. In addition, the State receives royalties from the publisher for the online licenses and CD-ROM versions of the O.C.G.A. This particular contractual arrangement, in place for over 30 years, has achieved the original goal of the General Assembly to produce an official, reliable, updated, and affordable annotated Code, without expending taxpayer funds.
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