Warning to Single and Dating People

Just recently, while in the process of writing a book, I have learned what all is a matter of public knowledge and some of the things that is public knowledge can be very helpful in making dating a lot safer.  There is some very helpful information that is available for the asking.  Information that could help prevent you from making some of the mistakes that I have.  I want to discuss those mistakes, and then I want to discuss how easily they could have been avoided without ever doing a background check (which can cost a lot of money), but just by doing a little research that requires just a minimum fraction of your time. 

A few years ago, I dated and subsequently lived with a guy by the name of John Courson.  His mother was in my Sunday school class and she told the class about her son that was in prison for 2 years and that he needed pen pals.  When I asked what he was in prison for, she said that it was a big misunderstanding.  Well, I believed her whole line without ever questioning another soul or without ever just trying to do some research of my own.  Had I done just a little research on my computer, in the comfort of my own home, without ever leaving the comfort of my desk, I would have found out he had been arrested:

·         5 times for driving without a license

o    Which would have come in handy when I was letting him drive my car

·         2 times for DUI

o   Which would have made me extremely cautious, since he is known to drive without a license and now I know that he will drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol?

·         4 times for pawning stolen items

o   Which would have given me a heads up that he would eventually steal from me if given the chance … and he did?

·         4 times for giving false information

o   Which means he will tell you those bold lies if it meant he would get anywhere with you.

·         Once for Theft

·         2 times for Check Fraud

o   Which would have given me another heads up that he will encourage me to write bad checks and surely have a false excuse about how the money will be in there when the check gets ready to clear.

o   By the way, I was later arrested because I believed such lies for 2 counts of check fraud.

·         One count of Non-payment of child support

o   Let me just tell you, if the man isn’t going to pay his child support, you can already guess where you are on his little totem pole of priorities.

·         And finally, he has been arrested 14 times for probation violation.

o   This one really says a lot about a person

§  He has no regard for law enforcement or authority figure

·         Which your next question should be how far back does this go

§  He doesn’t play by the rules

§  He is exempt from society’s guidelines

These arrests tell you a lot about someone.  First of all, all these arrests happened at different times and I can assure you it is very clear that none of them were a misunderstanding.  The law knew full well what they were doing in those cases as well as all the others that they are faced with on a daily basis.   This is the type of person that is out there preying on single working women.  He wants someone that will support him because he sure isn’t going to work for anything he has.  Why should he work when all he has to do is steal it from someone else who worked for it. 

Another man out there preying on single working women is another guy I dated and very shortly thereafter started living with, James Sheffield.  When I met him, he told me that he had been previously married one time and that he had a child by that marriage.  Again, if I had just done a little typing on my trusty computer keyboard, I would have found out:

·         He had been married and divorced 3 times

o   What would be the harm in telling me that he was married and divorced 3 times?  He told me about the one time, did he only tell me about that one because he had a son by that one?

·         He had been arrested 3 times for family violence

o   Why would I want to be with someone that is known to be abusive in the past?

·         He had was under a permanent restraining order from these woman and from the one child.

o   So the abuse was so severe that a judge granted these women a permanent restraining order.  That isn’t an easy thing to get on someone.  He have to prove that they are abusive and possibly likely to return to do it again.

·         And again, arrested once for not paying child support. 

o   If he doesn’t respect his own child enough to send the child support, how much do you think he is going to allow you to spend on your child(ren)?

All this is information that had I took the time to look it up, could have saved me a lot of heartache, lot of money, and in the last case, my possessions.  The one that was abusive in the past, turned out to be abusive with me and took me for about $7,000 out of a savings account that I had.  The one with all the arrests, he was arrested several more times while we were together.  He introduced me to Cocaine and because of that, I started a spiral downward that wouldn’t end for 14 months.  In the end, where I had no criminal record before meeting him, I now have a felony record; where I was able to provide a 3 bedroom house for me and my boys to live, I lost all of that and the furniture in it; as for money, I could not begin to tell you what I lost in monetary value with him.  No, I do not blame him for my addiction that was my doing.  I didn’t have to partake of what he was offering.  That is my whole point, with just a little research, I could have avoided these men and you can too with just a few clicks of the computer.  All you need to is get some very basic answers from them:  their name; what city did they go to school in; where did they grow up; and just for kicks, ask them if there is anything in their background.  You may find that he/ she gives false information also.  If you want to know how to do this kind of research, send me a message, I will be more than happy to show you the sites that you can utilize to find this information.

Prayer ... Technology ... Mental Illness?

I saw this picture of Honey Boo Boo and Shirley Temple on Facebook the other day and it got me to thinking about the same thing that every year a new story will bring my thought to … what has happened to our young people.  Our young people is the next generation to rule this country and at the moment I have some serious concerns about whether or not they are up for the task. 

June 25, 1962  Prayer was removed from the public school systems.  I have heard some say that this is what has caused the fall of our youth today.  I have heard it said that if prayer wasn’t removed from the schools, we wouldn’t have mass murders or killings that we have today. 

I don’t think so.  On September 15, 1960, a guy by the name of Paul Harold Orgeron, 49 years old, went to  Poe Elementary School to enroll his son in the 2^nd grade.  When the school officials told him he could not do that due to not having the proper documentation to do so, he bombed the school killing himself, his son, and 6 others.  So, if the theory of having prayer in school diverts such tragedies as Columbine and the Bat Man Movie Theater, I’m here to say it doesn’t. 

In the 1970’s computers became affordable for the home, but most people like me didn’t get one until the 1990’s.  I have heard that computers is where we went wrong. 

           

I don’t think so.  Facebook wasn’t discovered until February 2004 and in my opinion, this has been a major contributor to some of the crimes that we are seeing today.  Yes, I have a Facebook and would probably have withdrawals if it was removed from my access … but in my opinion, Facebook brought a whole new game to the crimes that were already being perpetrated.  When you got bullied at school, it was only those one or two students doing it … today, when a child is bullied at school, the bullying is posted on Facebook and all the bullies friends pitch in and then even the ones that the victim thought were their friends pitches in to keep from being bullied themselves.  When the teens of today want to commit a crime, they can’t do it without posting their crime on Facebook for all to see.  Thank God, because that is how most of them are caught; but still, has technology really helped us or not?

President Obama has been termed the first "high tech" President due to his being able to keep his Blackberry and internet service for personal use.  This was a serious concern for the President.  This is the type of society that we have fallen to lately.  Even the President wasn’t able to go a 4 year term without being able to use his Blackberry and Internet.  Today, in law enforcement, they have a new charge that they can place on suspects, it is code:  16-13-32.3(A) Use of Communications to Facilitate a Crime and this charge is a felony.  Put in simple words, this is the use of a cell phone to tell your drug dealer you’re on your way and how much you want.  Technology has made crime so easy and thankfully, this is one area that the police officers have just as much advantage to catch the perpetrators.  So, when it comes to technology, I wouldn’t even say that it is the cause of the crime, I would just say that it makes the crimes worse in a lot of ways.

I think what it all comes down to is this.  No matter what age we live in, we are going to have to live among the mentally ill.  The guy that bombed the Poe Elementary School in 1960 was already a con, I’m not really sure what all his crimes were, but just the fact that he was a con tells you he wasn’t all there in the head to begin with.  The boys who shot up Columbine High School, even their mothers spoke of their depression signals leading up to the shooting.  Of course we have the Bat Man Movie Shooters parents speaking out now saying that he is sick … well, honestly that is no surprise.  I’m not even a doctor and I could have gave them that same assessment.  My question to those parents would be what did you do to find him help?  I know we don’t have a lot of help out there for the mentally ill, but I do believe, that if you keep knocking on the doors, eventually someone is going to open it and want to take a look just out of pure curiosity of the illness.  Prayer was not the answer and technology was not the problem; our problem is that for one reason or the other, we seem to have more mentally ill people today than we have in years past.  Or, in years past we were better capable of helping these people.  It is this area that we need to do more research and work in to find out what is going on and what needs to be done to stop it.

Racism

The nation is in a big turmoil over the issue of racism lately due to the case in Missouri where a white officer shot a black male that was a suspect in robbery (unknown to the officer at the time), but when approached by this officer in his cruiser, started tussling with the officer inside his car trying to get the officer's gun.  I don't know why we have to go back to a day and age that we have worked so hard to overcome.  I have to wonder who is sitting on the sidelines and waiting for the next big story to break that involves two different races.  Why does the race issue have to be brought up at all?  The other day here in Atlanta, Georgia we had a case where 2 officers were shot by 2 suspects that were attempting to flee a home invasion.  The officers were African-american as pictured below and the suspects were also African-american.  Why is that not brought up by the NAACP?

Is it really the fact that all were a African-american that is the reason that it isn't an issue?  Are you kidding?

What about the case in Cleveland where a 12 year old boy was shot by an officer after waving a what looked like a real gun around in a play park, but the gun turned out to be a toy gun with the orange tip gone.  Yes, it was an African-american boy and yes, it was a white officer; but you look at the guns below and tell me if you can tell the difference and how long are you going to take to decide the difference?


If you take more than a couple seconds to decide which one of these you are dealing with, you may be the one in the hospital hoping to live.  It will be your family that will be yelling foul and wondering why nothing more can be done to the culprits.

We need to protect our officers at all cost because without law and order, we will really be going back to a day and age that we don't want.  I assure you, racism is nothing compared to the day and age you are trying to take us back to.  You will only wish you can call racism if we go back the day when there was no law and order and when if someone thought you had done something wrong, you got hung or shot for it ...  no trial, no jury, no attorneys ... just vigilante justice.  Do we really want to go back to that time period?

Yes, it is very sad when we lose loved ones to officers that over react, but honestly, if they treated every case with caution, they will get killed.  There won't be anyone protesting that they were killed by a suspect that was out to hurt them and even if there was, there won't be any amount of protests that will bring these officers back to us.  We all make mistakes and it is sad when mistakes lead to the loss of lives, but if we go back to day and age when we just shot and killed the one we thought had wronged us, we will all suffer for it.  Please, while you sit on that side line ready to stand up and protest when the next big story hits the wire, at the same time, be ready to look at the situation from an objective point of view and give an honest assessment of the situation and think what you would have done in the same situation.

Supreme Court Ruling Taking Away First Amendment Right

A couple weeks ago, the Supreme Court was listening to a case that the ruling could affect how we post things on the social media sites out there. It started over a man in 2010 that posted comments on Facebook about wanting to kill his estrange wife, he was convicted of making threats to harm another and served 4 years in prison. The Supreme Court is to rule on what exactly constitutes a threat and what isn't. In my view point, it is slowly but for surely taking away, or at least diminishing our 1st amendment right to freedom of speech.


I personally have reported things that I have seen on Facebook; honestly, I don't think it is my job to sit here and read something on Facebook and determine if the threat or act is real or not. I think my only duty is to report to the officials and let them do the investigating. If there is nothing to it, then there is nothing to it and life moves on. But if there is something to the allegations, then I think I have done my civic duty. I have no regrets regardless of the laws findings.


However, with that being said, I have to seriously wonder about some people and the subjects they tend to use to write songs about and I am almost sure Facebook posts about. Just listen to the song and read the lyrics as she sings. I haven't listened to their other songs on YouTube, but trust me when I say there are plenty more. She isn't exactly making a threat at a certain person, but there are signs there that she needs some really good counseling ... or something.   Song About Serial Killers