Incident in Roslindale

From page 106 of the Massachusetts Drivers manual:

"State law requires you to use a crosswalk when one is available. If an intersection has a traffic signal, press the button and wait for the WALK signal. Intersections with no push buttons automatically give WALK signals. Be patient!"

I certainly saw a sidewalk in that video, did you not?

From pate 106 again:
"You must use a sidewalk when one is available. When no sidewalk is available, you should walk on the shoulder facing traffic."

The individual in the video was walking with traffic, not facing it. Although, once again, there was a sidewalk available.

http://www.massrmv.com/rmv/dmanual/

One last note, don't ever call a woman traffic.

If I were to just park my car, blocking the roadway, I would be breaking the law. My guess is that if a cop came along and was wondering, say, why traffic suddenly could not get from Forest Hills to the Square, saw that I had angle parked so that no cars could get by at all, and after telling me to move, I refused, I would probably be in the squad car soon enough. On the other hand, I could just be trying to make a left turn but can't due to the volume going in the other direction. In both instances, a car is blocking the street, but the circumstances would lead to different responses.

If you need a walking comparison, it is the difference between the line that forms along Commonwealth Avenue when people are waiting to get into the Paradise for a show and antiabortion protestors attempting to block access to Planned Parenthood up the street. Yes, both are people massing on the sidewalk, but the purpose of the latter is a lot different than the purpose of the former.

Cars have more rights than humans in this country unfortunately. They can block traffic, kill cyclists, park on sidewalks etc and won't even get a ticket.

I wonder if that's really protected free speech.

People in the next cubicle/office/desk over don't want to explain to the client on the phone why there's a sudden tirade of expletives in the background. Even if you're allowed to occasionally stop and watch a video, the content is important to consider.

NSFW can mean someone dies in the video or gets nude. Those aren't exactly "hey, you all have gotta see this!" videos to be sharing with the whole office either, because you may not know everyone's level of sensitivity to such issues. People walking by or coming up to your desk may not want to see that if they get a glimpse of your screen. And all of that could make it back to your boss ("Did you know John watches porn on his computer at work?" "No, honest, it was just a news video of some crazy lady getting naked in the street.").

Lunch break? Some people get an hour for lunch, and don't take that long to consume food. I would imagine in many places, especially if you were using a personal device, you could watch videos during that time without breaking any company policies.

And then there are people who have jobs that involve sitting around waiting for things and occasionally not having something else productive to do for work, doing something that makes you focus on something is probably more beneficial to your productivity than staring at a wall.

I really miss that place, Domino's was not remotely an upgrade. Yeah, maybe the pizza is, but BBQ Town had great wraps and, well, BBQ. That's a niche that has not been re-filled in Roslindale food offerings.

My Dad's direction to me: "you ever get stopped by the cops, it's 'yes, sir' or 'no, sir', you got that"? (This from a guy who once had hair down to his ass, and took more than a couple of beatings (not around here) from cops in the very late 60s and 70s).

So yeah, if my Dad had heard that I had been mouthing off to a cop (very little chance - I was not a hell-raiser), I definitely would have been more worried about what I was in for at home than what I might have been in for at the precinct.

I didn't watch the video. I'm reacting to your comment by saying that yes, kids like that end up dead or in jail unless mom or dad gives them the talk.

Last paragraph could be summed up as "according to the literature, there is a growing trend of ex-service men and women joining police forces. Sometimes these men and women treat the general public as they were trained to treat enemy combatants in a combat zone." This is not a criticism of the men and women of the armed forces. It is a criticism of the training they receive when they transition to state side police work.

P.S. - Nowhere did I lump BPD in with other police departments. From what I have seen, BPD does a great job deploying proper force and should be a model for other police departments.