What is domestic violence? According to Wikipedia:

Domestic violence (sometimes referred to as domestic abuse) occurs when a family member, partner or ex-partner attempts to physically or psychologically dominate another. Domestic violence often refers to violence between spouses, but can also include cohabitants and non-married intimate partners. The term “intimate partner violence” (IPV) is often used synonymously. Other terms include wife or husband beating, battering, “relationship violence”, “domestic abuse”, and “spousal abuse”. Family violence is a broader definition, often used to include child abuse, elder abuse, and other violent acts between family members.

The means used to measure domestic violence strongly influence the results found. For example, studies of reported domestic violence and extrapolations of those studies show women preponderantly as victims and men to be more violent, whereas the survey based Conflict Tactics Scale, tends to show men and women equally violent.

More information can be found about domestic violence can be found at Marital Talk.

domestic abuse, domestic violence

Get ready to pick up a paint brush or roller and rid our community of an eyesore the City of San Antonio is combating on multiple fronts. Individuals and groups are now being recruited to join City leaders and staff for the Fourth Annual Graffiti Wipeout Volunteer Day. Hundreds of people are expected to turn out for this year’s event on Saturday, September 29 from 9:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.

Volunteer Graffiti Wipeout crews will be dispersed throughout the city to restore the original appearance of some of our community’s assets. Using tools and paint provided by the City, they will paint over tagged drainage channels, bridge overpasses, buildings and privacy fences. At noon, volunteers will enjoy lunch at Camargo Park, 5738 Castroville Road (must have wrist band for admittance).

“Along with providing opportunities like this for residents and businesses to take back their community, the City is further strengthening its attack on this crime by increasing staffing levels to abate graffiti,” said David D. Garza, director of Housing and Neighborhood Services. “Yesterday, City Council approved seven new positions to specifically target graffiti. With this additional manpower and our recent stepped up patrols of hot spots, vandals face a greater risk of being caught and evidence of their crime will be removed quicker.”

City partners also are committing to a plan of attack on graffiti. As required by an ordinance approved this year by City Council, San Antonio Water System, AT&T, and BexarMet Water District have all created graffiti abatement plans to address the vandalism on their property and equipment. The Texas Department of Transportation has expressed cooperation and support for Graffiti Wipeout efforts. Other utilities and agencies are expected to submit abatement plans soon.

“Graffiti is a crime that is harmful to our community in so many ways. It’s going to take all of our cooperative efforts in government, the business arena and our communities to combat it,” said Garza.

To sign up for Graffiti Wipeout Volunteer Day, e-mail Lisa McKenzie at liza.mckenzie@sanantonio.gov or call 207-5430. Early signup is needed to help staff determine projects for the day. Volunteer work assignments will be provided one week prior to the event.

For more information about the Graffiti Wipeout program, visit www.sanantonio.gov/graffiti or call McKenzie.

Tafolla pleased commissioners when he told them Wednesday he had already reached a mutual agreement with Premier Management Enterprises, a Louisiana jail services company, to terminate its operation of the jail commissary. The contract with Premier sparked an ongoing public corruption investigation that forced the resignation of former Sheriff Ralph Lopez on Aug. 31.

To his advantage, Tafolla also had the backing of both deputy unions and a detailed plan to put more deputies on the street at no additional cost to taxpayers, reduce call response times and continue to shrink the bloated jail population.

Tafolla, nominated by Commissioner Paul Elizondo, was sworn in just minutes after the court voted, first in a 3-2 vote for Tafolla, then unanimously to appoint him as head of the Sheriff’s Office.

Commissioner Lyle Larson nominated Michael Quinn, who retired as major after 26 years with the Harris County Sheriff’s Department, and Commissioner Tommy Adkisson nominated Matthew “Nite” Marshall, a longtime former constable.

Current Jail Administrator Dennis McKnight also was a strong candidate, but his refusal to say for certain that he would not consider a run for sheriff next year “killed his opportunity,” Larson said.

County Judge Nelson Wolff told the court he saw Tafolla as a “middle relief pitcher, not a closer,” someone who could continue to run the Sheriff’s Office with little upheaval until a new sheriff is elected in November 2008.

“I’ve never aspired to run for anything,” Tafolla said. “Wait, let me make that clearer. I will not run for sheriff — this coming election or the following.”

Wolff asked commissioners to remember that the scandal that enveloped Lopez did not extend to the entire department.

Earlier, Tafolla took great pains to distance himself from John Reynolds, Lopez’s longtime campaign manager and friend, who is still under investigation on allegations of bribery, money laundering and campaign finance violations, partly in connection to the role he played as chairman of Lopez’s Benevolent Fund board, which oversaw the commissary contract.

“John Reynolds is not my friend,” Tafolla said near the end of his hourlong interview. “I’ve known him since 1993, but if I’ve spoken to him for more than five minutes in all that time, it’s probably too much. If he told me to walk across the hallway, I wouldn’t do it.”

As Lopez’s appointed chairman of the Fund’s board, Reynolds pushed the Premier contract through, despite stiff opposition from several other board members. He later accepted payments from Premier in the form of consulting fees and donations to bogus charity accounts he controlled, court documents allege.

Premier formalized its intentions to divest its San Antonio assets and turn the commissary back over to the Sheriff’s Office in letter penned Sept. 4, the same day Lopez pleaded no contest to charges related to his acceptance of a Premier-paid golfing excursion to Costa Rica, along with Reynolds.

Tafolla said the board would meet today to formally accept the early termination of Premier’s five-year contract.

Reynolds, who says he has committed no wrongdoing, resigned from the board last month. Premier has not been indicted nor named specifically as a target for prosecution, and its attorneys have said company officials believe the checks were for real charities.

For reasons that remain unclear, the disclosure that Premier had agreed to leave the jail commissary and had already hammered out sales of assets back to the county was never made formally to commissioners, who, just the day before interviews were scheduled with the interim sheriff finalists, made it clear that candidates would be asked what they would do about the contract with Premier.

“We’re going to want to sever that relationship,” Wolff had said.

Once Premier is gone, the Sheriff’s Office will run the commissary, Tafolla said, while he decides what to do about the Sheriff’s Benevolent Fund.

A 25-year veteran of the San Antonio Police Department, Tafolla, 72, has been the Sheriff’s Office chief deputy, running the day-to-day operations, since 1993. In his law enforcement career, Tafolla held positions in patrol, homicide, vice, traffic and organized crime.

A lifelong resident of Bexar County, Tafolla holds a bachelor’s degree from Texas State University and an associate degree in law enforcement from San Antonio College.

As sheriff, Tafolla will oversee 1,826 personnel and be responsible for a $99million budget, which includes law enforcement and detention. In addition to working closely with Commissioners Court, Tafolla will work with the district attorney’s office, the courts and the city of San Antonio.

“My goal is to restore confidence in the Sheriff’s Office and to make it the best law enforcement agency in the county,” he said.

Source

Kimmel left little doubt about his involvement in the torture and fatal stabbings of three people during a 1999 robbery in San Antonio when he pleaded guilty to the slayings as his capital murder trial was getting under way.

The plea left a Bexar County jury with only a decision whether Kimmel should spend life in prison or die for the deaths he perpetrated. Jurors chose death for Kimmel, now 32. Evidence showed two of the victims were injected with a syringe containing a bathroom cleaning fluid before they were stabbed with a Bowie knife by Kimmel and an accomplice.

Kimmel’s lethal injection, set for Thursday, would be the 25th this year in Texas, the nation’s most active capital punishment state. Two more inmates are set to die next week.

Texas Department of Criminal Justice execution schedule.

Source: MYSA.com News

The unusual pre-disaster designation, which applies to 32 counties in all that could be damaged or likely would receive evacuees, would allow federal aid to flow more quickly after landfall.

In San Antonio, the parking lots of the Alamodome became staging areas for buses awaiting mobilization to affected areas.

About 100 school buses were from Dallas County Schools, an intermediate educational agency that provides transportation and other support services to Dallas County’s 15 independent school districts.

The buses will be outfitted with brackets and plywood sheets, so each can carry hospital and nursing home patients on stretchers, said Ginny Melara, area director of Dallas County Schools, which provides transportation to 15 school districts and had 100 buses here.

The Governor’s Division of Emergency Management sent a crew of 220 people, including backup drivers and mechanics, a bigger fleet than it dispatched to East Texas in response to Hurricane Rita, Melara said.

One driver, Carolyn Alexander, said tears came to her eyes during the Rita evacuation when she picked up one woman stranded by the highway with a baby in her arms.

Drivers took people from nursing homes, shelters and the roadside, pets included, she said.

“I’m just happy that we’re here today before something happens,” Alexander said. “I believe that if something happened in Dallas, people would help us.”

The resort city of South Padre Island, on a half-mile-wide strip of barrier island at Texas’ southern tip, declared its own state of emergency Saturday.

South Padre Mayor Robert Pinkerton is fretting that even if the eye strikes well south of the border, as some computer models predict, a possible Category 3 or 4 storm surge of 12 to 14 feet could produce waves of 18 to 20 feet that would cover the island.

“No one here has seen such predicted wave activity,” Pinkerton said.

Nearby Brownsville called for voluntary evacuations, and a Texas Youth Commission facility in the area began moving its juvenile inmates and staff inland.

In Houston, some folks were paying attention to the oddly worded “Hurricane forming near gulf” electronic road signs that also urged drivers to top off their tanks. Stores saw increased sales of bottled water, batteries and plywood.

Shell Oil Co. has evacuated nearly 800 workers from the Gulf and expects to bring more ashore.

The Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service estimated Dean had prompted shut-ins of about 10,300 barrels of oil and 16 million cubic feet of natural gas per day, more than double the production reduction from Friday.

Both amounts are small fractions of total Gulf production.

Source: My San Antonio News

Texas, Bexar County, San Antonio, evacuation, preparedness, Hurricane Dean

At least seven people were killed Thursday as the remnants of Tropical Storm Erin swept inland, bringing torrential rains through much the state, closing major thoroughfares and stranding dozens in its floodwaters.

San Antonio officials are still searching this morning for a young woman who was swept away in high water just south of North Star Mall. Three other South Texans are still unaccounted for.

In Houston, two people died after the waterlogged roof of a storage unit outside a Houston grocery store collapsed, according to Houston fire and Harris County hospital officials. A truck driver drowned in Harris County when his 18-wheeler went into a flooded retention pond, according to county’s Office of Emergency Management.

A small tornado reportedly touched down in Kendall County Thursday evening, doing minor damage to a building near Cave Without a Name. Also in Kendall County, residents were evacuated from homes along the Cypress Creek in the Comfort area late Thursday.

Boerne Police Chief Gary Miller said the waterways there were receding after flirting with disastrous flooding. The city’s lake was six feet below the spillway on its dam, which has only been topped twice before, in 1997 and 2002.

The San Antonio River is rising at a pace that will have it hitting more than 53 feet at the City of Elmendorf later today. That would put it on an historic list of the top five river levels at that location. In 1998 it reached over 64 feet.

“I’ve been here 6 years and this is the highest I’ve ever seen it,” Cody Dailey, Elmendorf city administrator said Friday morning. “At this point we are not evacuating. There is one home with reported flood damage, but there is no reported injuries or widespread flooding to homes. It’s mostly field damage.”

A staffer at the Bandera County Emergency Management Center said damage assessments were underway along the Medina Lake shoreline, where about 50 homeowners evacuated along Lakeshore Drive South. No reports of water entering homes had been received as of early Friday.

The level of Medina Lake rose nearly four feet on Thursday, sending a river of water over the spillway, but officials said it was receding early Friday

That was welcome news in Castroville, where the rising Medina River had approached an RV park in the city’s regional park before it started to drop.

In Medina County, a feared repeat of the major flooding in D’Hanis last month didn’t materialize, the sheriff’s office said.

The Red Cross had set up shelters in Boerne and in Southwest San Antonio for flooding victims and stranded motorists. No one was staying in the one in Boerne but in Bexar County there were people staying at the shelter established on the south west side of the city at Christa McAuliffe Middle School.

Have I mentioned that I am sick of all the rain this summer???

San Antonio, rain, flooding

Lopez appeared under a subpoena sought by District Attorney Susan Reed’s office. Before his testimony, Lopez and his attorney Jason Davis declined to say whether Lopez is a target of the investigation or a witness.

The sheriff testified for about 45 minutes. After his testimony, Lopez said “I’ve done nothing wrong. It’s all a political witchhunt.” .

It’s believed to be the first time that Lopez has appeared before the grand jury. The exact scope of the investigation is unknown, but the grand jury has sought records related to Lopez’s campaign manager, John Reynolds.

Source: My SA News

San Antonio, Bexar County, Sheriff

Wordless Wednesday, Shamu, Sea World, San Antonio

Casa Rio
The first restaurant on The San Antonio Riverwalk. Featuring great Mexican Food and one of the best Riverwalk locations in San Antonio.
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Fig Tree
Simple elegance in La Villita, Fig Tree celebrates tradition in a gracious setting just steps away from the Riverwalk. Fig Tree evokes a congenial spirit for business, entertaining, and social occasions.
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Los Patios
Serving lunch daily, its famous tree covered patio make for a wonderful lunch venue. Serving San Antonians and visitors since 1968, the Gazebo menu features classics like Chicken Green Enchiladas, Crepes Gazebo & creative daily specials.
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restaurants, San Antonio

Real. Fun. Farm at the San Antonio Zoo
Event Description
The exhibit features a barnyard-like theme, music, an interactive “feed-the-goats” program, lots of seating, and several hand-washing stations. A Real. Fun. Farm attendant will provide educational information, while children and adults enjoy fun, hands-on contact with African pygmy goats.

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Miss Appropriations: Stolen Materials - Borrowed Time
Visual Arts - Galleries
San Pedro Springs Gallery

Local contemporary artist, Nemo. Nemo’s show consists of a series of small format pencil on velum drawings of the female form inspired by haute couture magazine ads.
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Here Be Dragons Exhibit
Cultural Centers - Museums, Entertainment - Activities, Cultural Centers - Art/Visual
UTSA’s Institute of Texan Cultures

Event Description
You might not think about dragons every day, but you can find them all over Texas! As a matter of fact, dragons have played a significant role in the traditions and beliefs of many cultures that are represented in the Lone Star State. This exhibit explores those beliefs and tells the stories of many Texas dragons, from the ones in family crests to the ones that hide under your bed! This exhibit has great activities for kids, including Lego building stations and a kid-friendly activity area! And it will be hard to miss Draco, a towering animatronic dragon with a sixteen foot wingspan!

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Menopause the Musical (ends Sunday, August 5th)

Event Description
Four women at a lingerie sale with nothing in common but a black lace bra and memory loss, hot flashes, night sweats, not enough sex, too much sex and more! This joyful musical parody set to 26 classic baby-boomer songs.

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San Antonio, events