MANCHESTER — A video showing a confrontation between a Manchester West High student and the school’s resource officer last week was not a setup, according to the student who filmed it.
But Mike Proulx, 17, says when he saw Detective Darren Murphy approach his friend Frank Harrington in the school cafeteria last Monday, he did think about the two men he and Harrington recently met who call themselves CopBlock and encourage civilians to videotape police officers.
So Proulx pulled out his iPod Touch and hit record.
What happened between Murphy and Harrington led to the student’s arrest and an internal investigation by the Manchester Police Department, expected to be completed early this week.
Adam Mueller and Pete Eyre, the founders of CopBlock.org, said they met Proulx and Harrington by happenstance a few weeks ago at a park on the city’s west side. They told the youths about their crusade to encourage people to film police officers on the job and gave them a DVD featuring videos of their activities in New Hampshire and other states. (more…)
Last night at a council meeting, Keene’s city council voted unanimously to continue prohibiting local bars from advertising their drink specials in a way that would be visible outside their business. Based on the comments of one city councilor, they don’t want anyone to think that Keene “condones” drinking. I would like to know how many of the city councilors are active consumers of alcohol.
Seems to me that the city really doesn’t want businesses to come to this area. They seem to do everything they can to restrict their freedom to offer goods and services to willing customers. Recently, they jacked up property tax valuations by 30-40% on many commercial properties in town. That will result in higher prices for customers in addition to businesses on the edge of profitability going under.
The city council has chosen death over living free. If they keep this up, Keene will end up like Berlin – a dying town.
UPDATE: Apparently people in Claremont were upset I called it a dying town. I’m glad to see there is life there. Does anyone deny that Berlin is dying?
“Use the system!”, they constantly implore. Well, I tried again. Last week I submitted a proposal to the city council, thinking that they had to assign everything that came in front of them to a committee for a public hearing. Turns out, they can “accept it as informational” and do nothing, and that’s what “the mayor” has decided to do with it. No public discussion will be had on my idea. They are not interested in hearing how violence and property crime can be drastically reduced, not to mention the amount of people in jail lowered. Nope! Just “accept it as informational”, ignore it, and move along with their usual “business”.
What a joke.
UPDATE: Another option, according to the clerk, is to get a councilor to schedule the item for discussion, so I will approach one and see what happens.
Radio Free Keene News is a five minute newscast which is available as 
