0 for 2

Commentary watched Northside neighborhood activists express their disgust yesterday at the latest on the murder of Josue Flores last year. HPD is 0 for 2 on arrests on this case. Here is from the Chron:

The Harris County District Attorney’s Office dropped the murder charge against a homeless man accused in the brutal stabbing death last year of 11-year-old Josue Flores – the second suspect freed in a case that shook the north Houston community.

First Assistant District Attorney Tom Berg announced Tuesday that DNA evidence and blood analysis were inconclusive for Andre Timothy Jackson, 29, who was arrested June 3, 2016, in the death of the Marshall Middle School student.

But Jackson, a Marine veteran, remains a suspect, Berg said.

“We have received DNA analysis which makes it impossible for us to go forward at this time with a case that we think we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt,” Berg said. “The results of the DNA and blood analysis are at best inconclusive, and in some respects, exclude him as a suspect.”

And this:

Jackson’s attorney, Jerome Godinich, who attended the Tuesday press conference, said he is sure that Jackson is innocent.

“Since about November of last year, my office and myself were convinced that Mr. Jackson could not have committed this offense,” Godinich said. “We were waiting for those results from the DNA, and frankly, I was not surprised.”

He said staffers in his office had gone through surveillance videos and witness statements to reach their conclusions.

And finally this:

Soon after the announcement, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo tweeted out a statement saying he had spoken with Flores’ family and that the department was treating the case as an “ongoing murder investigation.” He pledged to “devote whatever resources needed” to close the case.

“Our homicide detectives believed then and continue to believe that Mr. Jackson is the suspect in the case.”

That kind of has a very hollow ring to it if you ask me.   0 for 2, fella!

Here is the entire read: http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Josue-Flores-case-Murder-charge-dropped-against-11297298.php?ipid=hpctp.

Ever since they banned glass from our green bins, Commentary has lost a bit of confidence in H-Town’s Solid Waste Department.   They also don’t run a very efficient recycling drop-off location down the street either.   It doesn’t surprise me that the latest deal on the recycling contract has problems. See here from the Chron:

Houston City Council members blasted a proposed 20-year recycling deal Tuesday, questioning the $48 million price tag, the process by which the winning bidder was chosen and Turner administration officials’ reluctance to share information about the deal.

The proposal on the council’s Wednesday agenda would have Houston send all 65,000 tons of bottles, cans and boxes its citizens recycle annually to a new processing facility to be built in northeast Houston by Spanish firm FCC Environmental.

In the city’s request for recycling proposals, documents repeatedly envisioned the contract term as running 10 years, with up to two five-year extensions. FCC, however, was the sole vendor allowed to submit a proposal using a 15-year initial term, with one five-year option; competing vendors said they would have submitted 15-year bids if they had known their proposals would not be rejected.

Some council members also questioned why FCC’s prices had been evaluated favorably when its per-ton fee for processing the city’s recyclables was the second-highest figure among the four responsive bidders. Those concerns were heightened when one of the losing bidders, Dean Gorby of Independent Texas Recyclers, said he had proposed a $63-per-ton fee and had no idea why the city had represented his bid as $76 per ton to the council.

“It just doesn’t smell right,” Councilman Dave Martin told administration officials at a Tuesday committee hearing. “If I were you, I’d go back to square one.”

Here is the entire article: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/politics/houston/article/Council-members-push-back-against-recycling-11297934.php.

I wonder how the item will fare at today’s City Council meeting?

Carlos Correa was having a MVP type of season and now he is out for 6 to 8 weeks for thumb ligament surgery.   This is the headline in the sports section of today’s Chron hard copy: Simply thumb-struck. Cute, maybe, but not appropriate if you ask Commentary.

We won yesterday and are back to 16 ½ up with 68 games to go.

No MLB question today.