It’s another Saturday morning, and that means a new Red Phone.
This week the Crimson Crusader takes a hit for wrong rain reporting
and investigates gunshots near Llagas Creek Drive. Want to file a
complaint with the Red Phone, call 779-4106 ext. 206 or e-mail
re******@*************es.com
It’s another Saturday morning, and that means a new Red Phone. This week the Crimson Crusader takes a hit for wrong rain reporting and investigates gunshots near Llagas Creek Drive. Want to file a complaint with the Red Phone, call 779-4106 ext. 206 or e-mail re******@*************es.com
Rain Totals All Wet
“I have been a subscriber to your paper for the past 10 or 12 years. It seems like you guys are always wrong on the amount of rain we get. The paper today says we had 1.9 inches of rain over the weekend. I have a rain gauge in my backyard. We do live in the west side. We had 2 and 1/2 inches of rain on Sunday and Monday and about three inches on Saturday. It’s always wrong, and a lot of people have noticed that. I don’t see how we can be so much lower than everyone else. I wish you would get your reporting right or print where you get your totals from.”
Red Phone
The rainfall totals for last issue came from accuweather.com which apparently had some issues as the calendar switched to the new year. A correction is printed on this page. However, Red Phone is happy to report the Times has been contacted by a local resident who reports rainfall totals to the National Weather Service and is gracious enough to provide accurate weather data to our readers each issue.
Going After Gunshots
“We live in the Llagas Creek area near the intersection of Llagas Creek Drive and Llagas. There is someone who it seems like almost every weekend and in the late afternoon is shooting off guns. We have called the police, and other people in the neighborhood have called the police. They do come out, but we can’t seem to find where the shooting is coming from. It is very loud, and there is children and family pets in the area. I’m sure this is not legal. The police said that if it was out of the city limits it was OK, but it seems to be much, much closer. It is certainly not coming from the gun club down the street on Hale. Our dog gets extremely excited and has actually broken the fence. Our neighbor’s dog barks constantly. It is very disruptive to all.”
Red Phone
Unfortunately caller, although you may live within the city limits, you have a vast stretch of unincorporated land just south of Llagas Road. However most of the area surrounding you north of Llagas Road is city land.
Section 9.04.010 of the city’s municipal code states that “No person shall discharge in the city, outside of a licensed shooting range, any instrument or device of any kind, character or description which discharges, propels or hurls bullets, missiles of any kind.…” blah, blah, blah, “…without first having applied for and obtained a written permit therefore from the chief of police.”
But that doesn’t affect the unincorporated areas. Santa Clara County Municipal Code Sec. B13-11 states that the discharge of firearms in unincorporated territory entirely surrounded by a city prohibited. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case here either.
Because the Morgan Hill Police Department’s jurisdiction only applies to the areas within the city limits, you may have better luck by calling the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office, which handles the unincorporated areas.
But that won’t stop the police from forwarding the call, according to Morgan Hill Police Chief Bruce Cummings.
“We’re not going to stop at the end of the street or not try to help them because of a technicality,” Cummings said. “Each situation has to be looked at differently. We’re concerned about the safety of everyone. The thing with gunshots is they may be coming form a long ways away and sometimes it is difficult to pinpoint where. We do find and cite people, and their guns are taken away.”
