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Showing posts from December, 2019

Councilman wants to stop victims of crime from having to pay to get their vehicles back

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Local crime victims say they're being ripped off twice, once by the crooks who steal their cars and a second time by the city of Nashville. Owners of cars stolen and used in crimes in Nashville are forced to pay a fee to get their car back from the Metro Police impound lot. Cars stolen and used in crimes are housed there to either give the victim time to recover their car or it’s held as evidence for some criminal cases. Owners have about three days to pick it up the car before daily storage fees begin to add up. The starting cost for most vehicles to be claimed is $200. Victims say it’s not fair to pay for a crime someone committed against them and Councilman Freddie O’Connell agrees. He says the city shouldn’t profit off of someone being a victim. “It’s the weirdest feeling to pay the city because I didn’t do anything. I’m literally sitting here minding my business and now all of a sudden, I have to pay a couple hundred dollars just to get my vehicle back,” said O’Conn

Nashville Moves Toward Decriminalizing Homelessness

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Living on the streets brings extra interactions with law enforcement, but Tennessee’s capital is taking steps to reimagine justice. Paul Arndt sells magazines in a camp chair in his typical spot. He was arrested for obstruction of passageway in the following weeks. Paul Arndt knows all about people experiencing homelessness having encounters with the police. He used to live in the recently closed encampment under the Jefferson Street Bridge, a place where many nonprofits frequent, giving aid to the homeless living there.  Every so often, police will force these encampments to clear out, citing trespassing laws. But his first real issue with getting a citation happened when he was selling The Contributor, the biweekly street newspaper published in Nashville, in front of the popular downtown tourist spot Puckett’s Grocery & Restaurant. Arndt is 65 years old and legally blind. Unable to stand for long periods of time, he had brought a camp chair to sit on while he wor

Female criminals are drugging men in downtown Nashville says police

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A Boston resident is now the fifth man to confirm to that he was drugged in downtown Nashville this year. During NFL draft, men say they were drugged in downtown bar. John Walsh Jr. filed a police report claiming on Nov. 19 he, his son and nephew were having drinks at The Diner on Third Avenue South. After his son and nephew decided to go to a hookah bar, Walsh said he struck up a conversation with an unknown woman and had his third drink of the night. The next morning, he awoke in the Metro jail. “The most devastating thing that's happened in my life,” Walsh said. Walsh said he remembers nothing between that last drink at The Diner and waking up in the jail that morning. “Around 1:00 in the morning, I have no memory from there,” Walsh said. He would later learn that he was found asleep in a chair in a hotel miles away from where he was staying. When police arrived, they described him as smelling of alcohol and could not form coherent sentences and took him to