http://blog.chron.com/houstonpolitics/2012/08/sobering-center-construction-starts/ Sobering center construction starts Crews have begun work on a two-story, 19,000-square-foot warehouse at Star of Hope Mission downtown that is scheduled to open later this year as the city’s first sobering center. In May, Council signed off on $4.3 million to build what will be known as the Houston Center for Sobriety. The idea is that police can take some of the 19,000 people they arrest for public intoxication each year to the sobering center instead of going through the time-intensive and expensive proposition of booking them into jail. “This building will be the culmination of a great public/private partnership that will not only help reduce the city’s financial burden for handling public intoxication cases, it will also ease overcrowding in our city jail and make our streets safer,” Mayor Annise Parker said in a press release. The city’s annual cost to lease, maintain and staff the new center is estimated to be $1.5 million, compared with the $4 million to $6 million currently being spent to process public intoxication cases at the city jail. The city’s Police, Fire and Health & Human Services departments will provide services at the site, which will be the home of the police’s mental health unit. Parker pledged in her inaugural address in January to make progress on homelessness in the city, and many of the police’s most frequent intoxication arrestees are homeless. The sobering center has the potential to be a signature achievement of her tenure. But today’s press release comes amidst a continuing uprising against the ordinance she passed through Council in April that requires City Hall permission for any charitable feedings of more than five people on city property. Petition organizers submitted this week what they say are 34,000 signatures calling for a November ballot measure to repeal the City Hall permission requirement. The city attorney said the signatures were submitted too late, because it will take weeks to verify them, far beyond the city’s Aug. 20 deadline for placing propositions on the presidential election ballot.
Idiot. Dallas Has The Most Drunk-Driving Deaths In The United States http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/11/prweb8984656.htm On another note, anyone think this might let cops be even more aggressive in arresting people?
