The text messages sharply criticize Democratic political candidates in Virginia. The party says the texts are unsolicited and likely illegal.
“The DPVA has reason to believe that these text messages are illegal and we are doing everything we can to determine where they are coming from,” the party said in an email. “Virginia Republicans… [have] resorted to the usual underhanded tricks trying to scare, intimidate or confuse voters.”
Parents say the team’s field — located in the public Quincy Park, near Arlington Central Library — is not regulation size, is in poor condition and is frequently befouled by dogs and homeless persons. Parents are demanding better facilities — at least in line with the baseball team’s field, also located in Quincy Park — or else they may file a formal discrimination complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
While the W-L boys baseball team utilizes a regulation-size field, parents say, the softball team must make use of a field designed for and used by adult men’s slow pitch softball games.
Update at 12:05 p.m. — The county has informed us that the previous numbers we were given were wrong. The article now reflects the updated numbers.
Last week’s snow and ice storm has resulted in a total of 679 complaints to Arlington County through its new Report a Snow Issue form, according to the county’s Department of Environmental Services.
For several weeks, the newbies are subjected to a barrage of visits from police officers, who themselves are responding to complaints from local businesses. Most of the complaints are made when the trucks are in Rosslyn or Crystal City. In almost every case, an officer responds, checks the truck’s license and leaves after verifying the truck is licensed and not illegally parked.
We started paying attention to this trend in October, when the BBQ Bandidos truck was the target of police visits (see photo, left). In December, we felt compelled to write about the Bada Bing truck’s travails as it was inspected at least eight times.
It’s not so much that the Comcast customer service agents themselves are that bad, it’s just that the customer service system in which they operate seems to be designed with the sole purpose of minimizing cost at the expense of producing meaningful solutions to customers’ problems and complaints.
Comcast has a partial monopoly in Arlington. Sure, Verizon FiOS and satellite TV are available to single family homes and certain apartment buildings and condos. But for many apartment and condo-dwellers, Comcast is the only game in town. The only option for those folks in the event of an unresolved grievance is to either grin and bear it, cancel service and forgo cable and/or internet altogether, or complain to the county’s cable administration office and hope for the best.
Earlier this week we reported that some residents were upset with loophole in Arlington’s parking code that allows commercial trucks to park for extended periods of time in front of schools, libraries and other county properties.
But trucks aren’t the only hulking masses taking up space on the side of local roads. Here’s what one peeved resident wrote us this morning:
Which Rosslyn and Crystal City businesses have been calling the police on the new Bada Bing sandwich truck? Cops have shown up at the truck at least eight times since it launched just over a month ago, we hear.
Officers show up, dutifully check out the truck’s license and examine whether it’s parked legally, and inevitably leave without finding a violation.
Today’s complaint of the day isn’t so much a complaint so much as an amusing call to police.
Apparently, a neighbor called police after hearing noises coming from an apartment. The apartment in question belongs to a woman who’s diabetic, and the neighbor thought she might be having some sort of diabetic emergency. The caller said it sounded like the woman was yelling “yes, yes, yes.”
Dancing in the street sounds like a fun, whimsical way to work off some extra energy on a beautiful, non-stormy summer evening. But it can also be a traffic hazard! Just ask the citizen who alerted police to the two juvenile males breakdancing in the middle of the 1900 block of North George Mason Drive, near Virginia Hospital Center.
Martha and the Vandellas would approve of letting loose in the public right-of-way, but Johnny Law dutifully responded to the area to tell the b-boy punks to move on.
Police received another call about the truck last night at 6:00. We checked it out and found not a single vehicle parked near it. We noted that the four hour zone parking restriction has already ended, so at that time the truck was actually legally parked.
Also of interest: There were no parking tickets visible on the truck’s windshield.
If you spend enough time listening to Arlington’s police frequencies, you’ll notice that people love calling in to complain about things. Since complaining is so popular, we’re launching a periodic feature called the “complaint of the day,” to highlight the most humorous, outrageous or otherwise unseemly complaints received by police.
When it comes to citizen gripes in Arlington, noise complaints and “aggressive driver” complaints are common, but far and away the most frequent complaint is the parking complaint.
