PLN 20

I just read "Soccer coach sentenced in sex assault" in The Denver Post about how a soccer coach, Delbert Wallace Stiewert, was accused of having sex with a teen-aged girl in Jefferson County. The 41-year-old Delbert pleaded guilty to sexual assault of a child and was sentenced to two years in jail and 10 years to life of intensive supervised probation for sex offenders. He was arrested last year when the former student told police he sexually assaulted her in 2005 and 2006, when she was 13 to 14 years old. According to prosecutors, Stiewert began coaching the girl privately while he was also working for the Colorado Rush soccer organization. At the time of his arrest last year, he was coaching for another youth soccer organization, Real Colorado. "Shortly after the coaching sessions began in 2005, Stiewert told the teen that he was suicidal," the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office said in a statement. "He told her that she was the only one who knew and asked her not to tell anyone. The teen became worried and feared that if he did kill himself it would be her fault." Later, Stiewert began to call the girl on her cell phone. "He told her that he loved her," according to prosecutors, and became controlling and jealous of her friends. He convinced the girl to have sex with him at his townhouse in Lakewood, and continued to use his threat of suicide to manipulate the girl into sex on multiple occasions.

This matters to me because I know Del. I am a youth soccer player in the Real Colorado soccer club and Del was the coach for the U-14 girls' team when I met him. I used to see him 3 days a week at training and I wonder now if he felt like he had gotten away with what he had done? It creeps me out that he could have done the same thing to one of the girls on the U14 team too. I know that if Real had known about this before hand, they never would have hired him in the first place.

I am going to connect this to my 2 police PLN's. This matters to society in general because these are people who are suppose to be helping us and teaching us good things. Instead, they are taking advantage of not only what and who is around them but they are taking advantage of their professional positions. They are throwing away their lives for something stupid and ridiculous. David Dolan and Del should be ashamed of themselves!

PLN 19

I just read "Trooper charged with DUI now in treatment" in The Denver Post by Carlos Illescas. The story is about how a State Trooper was pulled over for suspicion of drinking and driving on the job. I first wrote about this in PLN 17 when he actually got pulled over ans arrested in Castle Rock. The State Trooper was charged with driving drunk while on duty and his lawyer said today that his client is in a facility for mental health and substance abuse issues. Today, the attorney, Geoff Heim, made an appearance on behalf of David Dolan, 48, in Douglas County District Court. Dolan was not at the hearing and did not have to be. The judge told Heim his client had $1,000 bond. The other terms include that Dolan cannot drink alcohol or possess a gun while he is out of jail. When he was arrested, Dolan was in his Colorado State Patrol trooper uniform and was carrying a gun. His blood-alcohol content, according to a police report, was 0.194 percent — more than twice the legal limit. Dolan has been charged with driving under the influence and is now prohibited use of a firearm. In Colorado, it is illegal for anyone to have a firearm if they are under the influence. Dolan is on unpaid leave of absence as the state patrol conducts an internal investigation. His next court date is May 7.

Like I said in PLN 17, this matters to the State of Colorado because we do not need people who are suppose to be protecting us breaking the law while they are on duty. I am glad that he has been suspended from his job without pay. I hope that the investigation shows that he is not fit to be a member of the state patrol anymore. Anyone who has a job of protecting the public ie. police, firemen etc. should not be given any "wiggle room" whatsoever where drinking on duty is concerned. If you know what you are doing and are on duty you should lose your job! Enough said!

PLN 18

In our English Class at Arapahoe H.S., laptops are an every day tool that we use for many things like blogging, research, and typing. Instead of writing your thoughts out on a piece of paper, you can type it onto a computer, save it and come back to it later. Having laptops in my classroom is great because when you type you never get tired, you can do so many different things with laptops, and they do not take up that much space. On a laptop, if you do not know a word, you can look it up right then, or if you do not know how to spell a word you can also look that up while you are working. If you used paper though, you would have to find a dictionary and find what you are looking for, possibly erase multiple times etc. On laptops we can do different things on them that we could not do before. You can use Google Earth to find places, Blogger to show your thoughts, Wordle to finish a project in a cool way, Diigo to organize all of your work, and the internet to make researching easier. If I could not use a laptop next year, it would be hard because I rely on computers almost every time I do school work. I do not think that I have changed as a student because laptops are readily available thanks to projects like this one. Laptops are just a easier ans simpler tool to use in class. It is also nice because not all students have computers at home!

PLN 17

I just read "State trooper arrested on DUI charges in Douglas Co." in The Denver Post by Kieran Nicholson about how a State Patrol trooper, in uniform and driving a marked patrol car, was pulled over by sheriff's deputies and arrested on suspicion of drinking and driving. This happened at about 7 a.m. after the Douglas County Sheriff's Office received "multiple calls" reporting that a state patrol car was "driving erratically" on northbound I-25 near Castle Rock. A short time later the State Patrol called sheriff's dispatchers "asking for our assistance in locating the vehicle and checking on the welfare of the driver,". A Douglas County deputy spotted the vehicle on westbound C-470 at Santa Fe and was able to pull the vehicle over at about 7:05 a.m. at Platte Canyon and C-470. The trooper, David Dolan, 48, was handcuffed and taken to the Douglas County Jail where he was booked on suspicion of DUI and prohibited use of weapons.

Are you kidding me! This matters to the State of Colorado because we do not need people who are suppose to be protecting us breaking the law while they are on duty. It is bad enough that there are idiots out there who drink and drive without us having to worry about State Troopers doing the same stupid thing. I hope he losses his job! I wonder what the officers at our school have to say about this?

PLN 16

I just read "Chile's earthquake 'may cost insurers up to $7bn" in the BBC News about how an insurance company, Swiss Re, estimated that the global insurance industry will have to pay as much as $7 billion (4.7bn Euros) for the Chilean earthquake. This company is the world's second-largest reinsurer and said that the impact would between $4bn and $7bn. Swiss Re initially first estimated that the earthquake would cost up to $500m. Chile's government has said it will take the country up to four years to recover, but economists say Chile is well placed to do this. Another reinsurance company, Germany's Munich Re, has also said how much it estimates it will have to pay out as a result of the Chilean earthquake - $543m.

This matters to the world because it shows how much natural disasters like this actually costs. Many countries around the world will never get money back; at least Chile is getting some money back because they actually have insurance. It also shows how long it will take to rebuild their country. Four years to rebuild really isn't that bad considering Haiti may never get back to where they were because of the differences in what kind of countries they are. I was shocked to think that it will cost over $7 billion for them to rebuild. If that ever happened in this country it could cost way more than that because of the kinds of cities that we have built here.