Your Local news

[chloe]

We don't really have a section to share our local news, but I like to hear newsworthy stories from your state or town here are a couple from mine.

Utah concealed carry permits now restricted in Nevada
July 2nd, 2009 @ 7:22am
By Paul Nelson
NEVADA -- Big changes to gun laws in nearby Nevada may change how some Utahns travel through there.
Utah concealed carry permits now restricted in Nevada


Nevada is recognizing concealed carry permits from states like West Virginia and Ohio, but not Utah anymore.

Utah concealed carry instructor Steven Beckstead explained, "Utah does not require that you fire and qualify with the gun you're going to carry. Nevada now does."

He says Utahns can still have the gun in their car but not on their person in Nevada.

"Who knows when you're going to need it. It might be in the car, but most likely it's going to be out of the car," Beckstead said.

Other gun rights advocates say they're disappointed with this change and that many Utahns travel to or through Nevada on vacation.


http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=7018537

[chloe]

Utah bar crawl marks end of liquor restrictions

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Bartenders in Utah threw open their doors Wednesday as the state ditched a 40-year-old requirement that customers fill out an application, pay a fee and become a member of a private club before setting foot in a bar.

"It's 40 years of oppression come to an end," said Dave Morris, owner of the bar Piper Down in Salt Lake City. "There's this national perception that we don't have bars here, so hopefully this gets out there that we're open for business."

The new rules are an effort to boost the state's $7 billion-a-year tourism industry and make the state appear a little less quirky to outsiders.

In the posh ski resort town of Park City, Steve Liebroder, owner of Lindzee O'Michaels, said bar owners in town celebrated the switch at midnight.

"Tourists will actually know that you can get a drink here now. Maybe all of our business will quit going to Colorado," he said.

Meanwhile, many locals in the tourist town took the change in stride. The area has long been known for bending state rules to accomodate tourists and many locals never bought a club membership.

"I don't think it'll change too much. It's kind of open here," said Bruce Morrison, while downing a beer at No Name Saloon on Park City's historic Main Street. Morrison said he didn't remember the last time he paid for a membership in Park City.

In Salt Lake City, home to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it's always been different.

To celebrate, Morris organized a 16-bar pub crawl to celebrate the novelty of being allowed into a bar without having to pay first. One crawl is set for Wednesday, another with a different lineup of bars was scheduled for Friday.

About 35 miles north, in Ogden, bartender Rich Miros at Brewskis happily scraped off lettering on the door that said the bar was a private club. The bar gets plenty of tourists from a nearby downtown hotel and skiers coming back from a day at the slopes at nearby Snowbasin.

"It's a great opportunity," he said of the change to becoming a public bar. "It needed to be changed a long time ago."

Utah has long had a host of liquor laws that befuddled newcomers, but none was as maddening as the state's private club system, created primarily to shield Mormons from alcohol while allowing drinkers to imbibe heavily taxed booze.

About 60 percent of the state's population and more than 80 percent of state lawmakers belong to the LDS Church, which tells its members to abstain from alcohol.

The Church has always helped shape alcohol policy here, and the change to the law this year was no different. Only after consultation with church leaders and an agreement that DUI penalties would be stiffened, did lawmakers make progress on the changes.

As part of the agreement, Utah also became the only state in the country to require bars to scan the ID of anyone who appears to be 35 or younger to ensure their ID is valid. Bars store the information for a week so law enforcement can inspect it.

Anyone who has an ID that doesn't properly scan is required to fill out a form logging their presence at the bar.

Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control spokeswoman Sharon Mackay said compliance officers were scouring the state Wednesday to make sure the scanners were being used and reported no problems early in the day.

While technically private, anyone willing to pay a membership fee costing at least $12 a year could come into a bar. Each bar required a separate membership.

Temporary memberships lasting up to three weeks were available for no less than $4, but limited the number of guests members could bring to seven. No memberships were needed to go into a bar that only served beer.

Anything that normalizes liquor laws for out-of-state visitors is good for Utah, said Steve Lindburg, general manager of a downtown hotel and a member of the state tourism board.

"People didn't understand. People felt isolated or even turned away," he said. "Now, that kind of becomes moot."

Still, plenty of oddities remain among Utah's liquor laws. It is the only state that bans the sale of flavored malt beverages from grocery and convenience stores and is one of only a handful states where beer can contain no more than 3.2 percent alcohol by weight, or 4 percent by volume. Most beers contain 3.6 percent to 3.9 percent alcohol by weight. Bars and restaurants in Utah are allowed to serve full-strength beer if they buy it in bottles from the state liquor store.

"We should have real beer," said Kevin Frohmoder, who was sitting next to Morrison at No Name Saloon in Park City. "Why can't we all be one nation under God and do what everybody else does?"

Happy hours remain illegal here, and ordering a double is also a no-no. No alcoholic drink can contain more than 2.5 ounces of liquor and in new restaurants, all cocktails must be mixed out of the view of customers.

While many in the state view the changes as a step in the right direction, but not everyone's enamored of the new changes.

Just down the street from Brewskis at the Kokomo Club, which caters to locals, a handful of early-morning patrons sipped on pitchers of beers and played games of pool, while also expressing caution about what the changes might bring.

"It helped keep strange people out of here, and now that it's open to the public, there might be more fights," said Curtis Cain, a 46-year old local mechanic.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=7014910

[chloe]

By Jed Boalys new approach needed to fight elder abuse

SALT LAKE CITY -- A couple of saddening cases of elder abuse raise new concerns about how well we protect some of the most vulnerable people in our community: the elderly.

It's a crime that's tough to stomach, and the Salt Lake County Sheriff says it's on the rise.

"We need to start talking about the issues of the aged and look at them in a new light. We've seen some very tragic reminders of that recently," Sheriff Jim Winder said.

He's referring to two cases KSL News reported Wednesday: one woman was neglected to the point of death; another beaten by her own grandsons.

Elder abuse can be as common as child abuse, and yet the sheriff says we need to respond more aggressively. He says elder abuse is not just a law enforcement issue, it's a community issue.

Ninety-year-old Beatrice Barker lived in a West Valley City home with her granddaughter-in-law and caretaker Angie Barker. According to court papers, the grandmother died last month after significant weight loss, suffering from pneumonia and bed sores. The granddaughter faces a felony elder abuse charge.

In another case, prosecutors say Michael Hansen Jr. and Christopher Hansen beat up their grandmother, urinated on her and left her injured in a bathroom in her Salt Lake City home.

Winder says they used to see a half-dozen elder abuse cases a year; now it's more than a dozen a month.

"We're seeing a significant uptick in those cases," Winder said. "I think we as a community, especially law enforcement community, need to start looking at the issue a lot more holistically and aggressively."

Winder says law enforcement needs to combat elder abuse the same way it tackles child abuse. His Family Crimes Unit now holds monthly meetings to train more specifically for handling elder abuse.

Too often, he says, law enforcement will treat elder abuse as a family matter, especially when it comes to draining the finances of the elderly.

"The cases of elderly abuse are not being forwarded and fielded efficiently to law enforcement agencies," Winder said.

The sheriff also thinks the state needs to better fund Adult Protective Services, even though the suggestion comes at a time when even more cuts may be on the horizon.

"We need to prioritize and look out for the most vulnerable in our community during these tough economic times. Children and the elderly are those populations," Winder said.

As a society, we're now more attuned to child abuse. Winder says we also need to be alert to potential elder abuse in our neighborhoods.

"It isn't some civil dispute. It's not to be shuttled off to some social service organization," he said. "There are crimes being committed, and law enforcement should be made aware of it."

While the crime is growing, the sheriff fears it is also underreported.


http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=148&sid=7094038

It looks like Utahns are just as loopy & mad as folks in SC:eek: