I was reading up on this. Basically the entire town of 15,000 is under martial law. It is really kind of fucked up, actually, but the fact that most people in the town approve the curfew lets you know how absolutely terrible it must be to live there. The mayor is pretty gung ho. He's basically like "yeah, you can sue us, but I was elected to do this, and that's what I'm doing." He is a bit of a despot himself.

None of them can sell their houses and move, because nobody wants to live there, so it's either be imprisoned by the gangs or imprisoned by the police. At least the latter won't mug you.

The police can stop you for questioning and searching if you're on public property. If they find anything they can arrest you. 30-something people have been arrested with felony charges since this started, but the ACLU is going to probably get all of these people off because of that whole "fourth amendment" deal.

The mayor is kind of a total asshole. He's a small town dictator and he's upped his salary to ,000 in a town who's average income is less than ,000 per household. His brother is the city attorney.

The police and city attorney say it is legal because it is a "Terry Stop", which allows a stop to frisk when there is probable cause that a crime is about to be committed, or that an officer's personal safety is in danger. Then again, the mayor also releases strays into the local national forest because he didn't want to work with volunteer organizations to fix up the animal control center.

Somehow I don't think that's what the court had in mind in their ruling in the Terry v. Ohio case regarding stops. Kind of disturbing.

I'm desperate enough to buy video games at half.

Have you ever had to actually use a pawnshop binro? How about a check cashing center? For most people it's a sadly necessary service.

Skrewdriver