# Inspector Shot



## fatboy (Mar 24, 2017)

One of our own, gunned down.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/...-employee-killed-milwaukee-shooting/99507734/


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## cda (Mar 24, 2017)

Sad

Wonder if it was a marked vehicle


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## fatboy (Mar 24, 2017)

cda said:


> Sad
> 
> Wonder if it was a marked vehicle



Didn't see where it said. But the question about a possible carjack makes you wonder.


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## fatboy (Mar 24, 2017)

"This was a typical DNS housing inspection call. He was here in his own vehicle doing his job which DNS does every single day all across the city," Flynn said.

http://www.wisn.com/article/2300-cherry-homicide-shooting/9169606


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## cda (Mar 24, 2017)

Unmarked

http://www.wisn.com/article/sources-5-people-questioned-in-shooting-death-of-city-worker/9175721


Thought he may have been shot because he was in a marked government car,  as in how some police have been shot


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## cda (Mar 24, 2017)

Big office


http://city.milwaukee.gov/CityLegacySite/PhoneDirectory2386/PhoneSectionSort.htm#.WNWTjDQ8KnM


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## ICE (Mar 25, 2017)

It is strange to think that gunfire is background noise in that neighborhood and he went there anyway.  I told a friend about this and he said that we have areas where we require a police escort, places where we do not go even with a police escort.  We won't issue a permit for anything in those areas.  They do whatever.


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## conarb (Mar 25, 2017)

Tiger said:
			
		

> We won't issue a permit for anything in those areas. They do whatever.



That Ghost Ship was in an area like that, now the city is being attacked for not enforcing the codes there, I don't think that in the coming legal actions the city will try to defend on the basis that it's too dangerous to send inspectors in.  There was a fire house within the block, those guys pull their equipment in and lock the doors, probably turn the TVs on so they can't hear the gunfire. 

Tiger and here I just suggested yesterday that you be one of our inspectors to volunteer to go to Oakland and help them decide which codes to enforce and which to ignore, you need to recruit tougher inspectors.


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## ICE (Mar 25, 2017)

When I hired in I was given a form with a list of cities and areas.  I was told to check off the ones where I refuse to enter.  The only two that I recognized was Watts for the riots and South Central for Reginald Denny.  Poor Reginald....he could have idled right on through that riot but he sat there and let them cave his head in.  So the HR person said with surprise, "You'll go everywhere else"?  I said, "Well at least once".


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## conarb (Mar 25, 2017)

ICE said:


> When I hired in I was given a form with a list of cities and areas.  I was told to check off the ones where I refuse to enter.  The only two that I recognized was Watts for the riots and South Central for Reginald Denny.  Poor Reginald....he could have idled right on through that riot but he sat there and let them cave his head in.  So the HR person said with surprise, "You'll go everywhere else"?  I said, "Well at least once".


Who's going to enforce the Tiger code in Watts and south Central? Who knows, maybe Watts has handicapped spaces that the paint's faded on.


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## cda (Mar 25, 2017)

Like the police??

Two to a car

With police escort


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## JCraver (Mar 27, 2017)

Sad deal.  Prayers to the family.


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## cda (Dec 3, 2018)

So this may be an interesting court ruling:::


https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2018/12/02/two-years-later-ghost-ship-fire-stirs-haunting-memories/


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## cda (Dec 3, 2018)

OAKLAND — There was Cherushii with her pink, turquoise and blond hair. Barrett with his fearless sense of adventure.

Sweethearts Alex Vega and Michela Gregory, who died in each others’ arms. But also Cash, Amanda and Ara. Griffin, Joey and Draven.

Thirty-six people who lost their lives trying to escape a warehouse-turned-tomb.

Several dozen friends and family members returned Sunday to the corner of 31st Avenue and International Boulevard, where a four-alarm fire ripped through a warehouse in the city’s Fruitvale neighborhood during a dance party, catching party-goers by surprise and trapping dozens inside.
Sunday marked the two-year anniversary of the blaze, the deadliest building fire in Oakland’s history.

But, for Lori Ford, this year’s anniversary was even more devastating than the first. Not a day has gone by that Ford hasn’t thought of her sister, Michele Sylvan, 37, and Sylvan’s creative spirit, her ecstatic dance moves, her silkscreen paintings or her DIY dressmaking.

“Now that more time has gone by, it’s sinking in that her life is gone,” Ford said. “And, I haven’t seen in her in a while.”

She paused, tears rolling out from beneath sunglasses, “That makes me really sad. I miss her.”

Jordan Scott, of Oakland, hasn’t managed to shake the eeriness of losing his friend, Barrett Clark.

“It’s a strange void,” he said. “It wasn’t anything anyone was expecting.”

Not expecting, but not entirely surprising. People involved in Oakland’s arts scene knew it wasn’t a great place to host events, Scott said, that the labyrinth of wooden furniture and a staircase made of pallets wasn’t the best design.

“Everybody knew it was an accident waiting to happen,” he said. “This was often the last option.”

For years before the fire, rising property values had been attracting investors eager to convert warehouses into luxury lofts or marijuana grow houses. And the dwindling number of safe spaces left for artists to use as affordable live/work studios led people to take more risks, said David Bernbaum, whose brother, Jonathan Bernbaum, was killed in the fire
Then, just days after the fire, dozens of people living in converted warehouses began receiving eviction notices. That didn’t help, either, Bernbaum said.

“Is an empty warehouse any safer?” he said. “If you clear-cut a forest so it doesn’t burn, is that any better?”

In the weeks and months after the fire, the question of who to blame ignited and grew. How could an artists’ collective with upwards of 20 people living there thrive for years without city inspections, despite repeated visits there by police and firefighters?

A criminal case has focused on two defendants: Derick Almena, the eccentric leader of an artists’ collective and master leaseholder of the Ghost Ship warehouse that was decorated in an elaborate labyrinth of wooden furniture; and Max Harris, who helped organize the electronic dance party the night of the fateful fire and who allegedly blocked one of the exits that could have helped the partygoers escape.

A judge recently threw out a plea deal for Almena to serve nine years and Harris six after pleading no contest to 36 counts of involuntary manslaughter after two days of gut-wrenching testimony from family members. A trial is expected in the spring.

But, a civil case casts a much wider net when it comes to laying blame. In addition to Almena and Harris, the city of Oakland, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., and the building’s landlord are all named in the suit, which was filed on behalf of 80 plaintiffs and alleges officials were aware of the electrical dangers at the warehouse but failed to keep the building safe.

Between mid-2014 and the deadly fire, police visited the warehouse and adjacent properties nearly three dozen times, responding to thefts, reports of child abuse, a stabbing, gun threats, drug sales, illegal housing and more. Despite the earlier warnings, no record of an inspection for the building was ever found.

Alameda Superior Court Judge Brad Seligman ruled in May the city had a “mandatory duty” to ensure safety inside Ghost Ship — leaving the city liable for the 36 deaths. The state Supreme Court recently upheld the decision when it declined to take the case.

The building’s landlords, Chor Ng and her children, property managers Kai and Eva Ng, have been mum since the fire, but spoke for the first time recently via court filings on the deadly blaze. They blamed a contractor who lied about having a valid license and performed shoddy electrical work — a likely cause of the blaze — while Almena broke his lease by renting out living spaces inside the commercial warehouse.

But no amount of finger-pointing will bring back the dead, said Szonic Allure, who lost two friends in the fire.

“There’s no one finger to point,” he said. “It was a combination of unfortunate events.”

If anything, the fire has made people in Oakland’s artistic community more resolved to continue gathering in ways that reaffirm values of non-commercial exchanges, independent thinking and open self-expression, Scott said.



Though that doesn’t mean nothing has changed, said Nikole Lent, a member of the Underground collective, which helped host Sunday’s memorial. She had worked events at the Ghost Ship warehouse and lost four friends in the fire, she said. Sunday marked the first day she had returned there since the blaze.



Before the fire, Lent might have pushed aside concerns that a space was unsafe.

“Not anymore,” she said. “Now, if we feel like a venue is unsafe, we’re like, ‘It’s not going to happen.’ We need to be accountable to each other.”


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