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ReClaim Is Family-Owned/Operated Junk Removal Company, Lives By Honest, Affordable Service Motto

2 years 7 months ago
WOOD RIVER - ReClaim Inc. is a local, family-owned, and operated junk removal company that has a great motto - to provide honest, affordable, and hassle-free service every time. “We’ll haul anything from single items, garage or attic clutter, construction and yard debris, hoarding clean-ups, you name it, we likely haul it,” said the owners of ReClaim Inc. David and Sherri Henson opened ReClaim’s doors in 2020 after recognizing the need for all-inclusive junk removal services. “After losing family members who lived in North Carolina, we experienced the daunting task of organizing affairs, cleaning out properties, ordering dumpsters to discard items, and figuring out where to donate others – all while grieving. We realized the need for all-inclusive, compassionate property cleanouts to lift that burden off the families who were already going through enough.” Adrianna Lock and Abram Henson are the sibling duo that runs the day-to-day operations.

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Florissant Otter Gentrifies Pond, Deserves Personal Space

2 years 7 months ago
The City of Florissant announced Wednesday that an otter has taken up residence in St. Ferdinand Pond, a development that historically would be extraordinarily rare in Missouri thanks to their nearly complete eradication due to hunting. That changed in the early 1980s, and over the ensuing decade nearly 900 North American river otters were released into Missouri streams and rivers, according to a 2000 report by Missouri Department of Conservation.…
Danny Wicentowski

'Predator' Gets 60 Years For Twice Raping 6-Year-Old Alton Girl

2 years 7 months ago
ALTON - A judge Wednesday sentenced sexual predator Keith L. Hare, 52, to 60 years in prison after a prosecutor argued Hare’s bad conduct began years ago and progressed to Nov. 16, 2019, when he contacted an Alton woman via the Internet and set up a “threesome.” Assistant State’s Attorney Jake Harlow argued that a tape of the victim shortly after the crimes shows the damage Hare, a former police officer, had done. “You can clearly see she was shell-shocked. How can we expect a 6-year-old girl to recover after being sexually assaulted two times,” Harlow said in a sentencing hearing. “When she testified, she clearly remained traumatized. We can only hope and pray the trauma will make her resilient,” the prosecutor added. Harlow noted that Hare used his position as an East St. Louis police officer to get access to victims. He was charged in 2017 in St. Clair County, with felony predatory sexual assault of a child but was allowed to plead

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Illinois dropping mask mandate this month, but not in schools

2 years 7 months ago
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced the state will lift its indoor mask mandate for most locations beginning Monday, Feb. 28. However, the change does not include schools. The governor made the announcement Wednesday after reports started circulating about the plan Tuesday evening. Starting Feb. 28, establishments no longer have to require masks indoors. However, Gov. Pritzker emphasized businesses and communities can continue to have their own mandates and mitigations, and the public should…
Sam Clancy & Dori Olmos, KSDK

Pritzker Ends Mask Mandate, Modifies Another

2 years 7 months ago
(The Center Square) – Gov. J.B. Pritzker is ending one of his COVID-19 mask mandates and modifying another. “The intention is to lift the mask mandate in indoor locations by Feb. 28," Pritzker revealed at an unrelated news conference Wednesday morning in Champaign. "Of course, we still have the sensitive locations of K-12 schools, where we have lots of people who are joined together in smaller spaces, thousands of people interacting in one location at a time. And so that’s something that will come weeks hence." Pritzker is expected to expand on his modified mask mandate during a news conference in Chicago Wednesday afternoon. House Minority Leader Jim Durkin, R-Western Springs, criticized the governor’s go-it-alone dictates that supermajority Democrats have left untouched. He said he has not been briefed by the governor on the plan. “This is the typical approach of the governor over the past two years,” Durkin said during an unrelated news conferenc

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Emails Show The LAPD Cut Ties With The Citizen App After Its Started A Vigilante Manhunt Targeting An Innocent Person

2 years 7 months ago

It didn't take long for Citizen -- the app that once wanted to be a cop -- to wear out its law enforcement welcome. The crime reporting app has made several missteps since its inception, beginning with its original branding as "Vigilante."

Having been booted from app stores for encouraging (unsurprisingly) vigilantism, the company rebranded as "Citizen," hooking um… citizens up with live feeds of crime reports from city residents as well as transcriptions of police scanner output. It also paid citizens to show up uninvited at crime scenes to report on developing situations.

But it never forgot its vigilante origins. When wildfires swept across Southern California last year, Citizen's principals decided it was time to put the "crime" back in "crime reporting app." The problem went all the way to the top, with Citizen CEO Andrew Frame dropping into Slack conversations and live streams, imploring employees and app users to "FIND THIS FUCK."

The problem was Citizen had identified the wrong "FUCK." The person the app claimed was responsible for the wildfire wasn't actually the culprit. Law enforcement later tracked down a better suspect, one who had actually generated some evidence implicating them.

After calling an innocent person a "FUCK" and a "devil" in need of finding, Citizen was forced to walk back its vigilantism and rehabilitate its image. Unfortunately for Citizen, this act managed to burn bridges with local law enforcement just as competently as the wildfire it had used to start a vastly ill-conceived manhunt.

As Joseph Cox reports for Motherboard, this act ignited the last straw that acted as a bridge between Citizen and one of the nation's largest law enforcement agencies, the Los Angeles Police Department. Internal communications obtained by Vice show the LAPD decided to cut ties with the app after the company decided its internal Slack channel was capable of taking the law into its own hands.

On May 21, several days after the misguided manhunt, Sergeant II Hector Guzman, a member of the LAPD Public Communications Group, emailed colleagues with a link to some of the coverage around the incident.

“I know the meeting with West LA regarding Citizen was rescheduled (TBD), but here’s a recent article you might want to look at in advance of the meeting, which again highlights some of the serious concerns with Citizen, and the user actions they promote and condone,” Guzman wrote. Motherboard obtained the LAPD emails through a public records request.

Lieutenant Raul Jovel from the LAPD’s Media Relations Division replied “given what is going on with this App, we will not be working with them from our shop.”

Guzman then replied “Copy. I concur.”

Whatever lucrative possibilities Citizen might have envisioned after making early inroads towards law enforcement acceptance were apparently burnt to a crisp by this misapprehension that nearly led to a calamitous misapprehension. Rather than entertain Citizen's mastubatorial fantasies about being the thin app line between good and evil, the LAPD (wisely) chose to kick the upstart to the curb.

The stiff arm continues to this day. The LAPD cut ties and has continued to swipe left on Citizen's extremely online advances. The same Sgt. Guzman referenced in earlier emails has ensured the LAPD operates independently of Citizen. When Citizen asked the LAPD if it would be ok to eavesdrop on radio chatter to send out push notifications to users about possible criminal activity, Guzman made it clear this would probably be a bad idea.

“It’s come up before. Always turned down for several reasons,” Guzman wrote in another email.

And now Citizen goes it alone in Los Angeles. In response to Motherboard's reporting, Citizen offered up word salad about good intentions and adjusting to "real world operational experiences." I guess that's good, in a certain sense. From the statement, it appears Citizen is willing to learn from its mistakes. The problem is its mistakes have been horrific rather than simply inconvenient, and it appears to be somewhat slow on the uptake, which only aggravates problems that may be caused by over-excited execs thinking a few minutes of police scanner copy should result in citizen arrests.

Tim Cushing