Post and Podcast by Kasey Kagawa

Guitar Hero 3 debuts tomorrow, so I’m gonna make this a short intro section. Important/interesting launches from the Tokyo Auto Show get covered, I insult Subaru, Dodge, Toyota, the city of Detroit and Ron Dennis, Porsche’s plan to absorb Volkswagen in the Hive-Mind continues, and Ferrari teams up with another company that will not be named in the post to create the most smug-emitting device of all time.

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Post and Podcast by Kasey Kagawa

And here we go again, with a new podcast for this past week. Important events include a sneak peak at the Corvette ZR1 at Laguna Seca, the release of the official stats for the Nissan GT-R, stimulating diesel news, Pagani beating the production car lap record at the Nurburgring, Toyota’s ongoing reliability woes, and the most pointless limo conversion of all time. As always, send comments to dubspeedradio@gmail.com.

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Post and Podcast by Kasey Kagawa

Yes, it’s that time again, but a little earlier this week. I’ll be gone this weekend, so the three people I’ve told about it and the countless listeners out there will get your news goodness a little earlier this week. And by countless, I mean in the same way that you can’t count to zero. So enjoy our podcast mediocrity, and send comments to dubspeedradio A.T gmail.com.

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Post and Podcast by Kasey Kagawa

Not content with ruining your eyes with our awful words, we here at Dubspeed Driven have taken it upon ourselves to create a new feature with which we shall fill your minds with our poison: Dubspeed Radio. This weekly podcast will be focused on the automotive news that we usually let slide, like other news sites, but in handy audio format. Normally, we’ll have a cool widget on the website, but since Zerin’s off at Road Atlanta for the Petit Le Mans, I have a direct link to the MP3 file on the Dubspeed Driven server below. Look for a new edition of Dubspeed Radio every Saturday (we hope), and get your fill of quality automotive news straight from your only real friends, Dubspeed Driven.

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Post by Kasey Kagawa

The police in Los Angeles don’t really have the best reputation for fairness, courtesy and restraint, what with all the beatings and corruption scandals. The relationship between police and various communities would be best described as “bad,” something that idiotic “competitions” like Operation Any Booking won’t do much to improve.

Operation Any Booking was carried out by the LA Sheriff’s Department, and it was basically a competition between various officers to see who could arrest the most people in a single day. According to Lt. James Tatreau, who helped organize the events, “It’s just a friendly competition to have a little fun out here…It’s a morale booster.” Yes, the potential for abuse in that idea is so large that it was tazed three times for simply walking near a police officer, and you’re not the only ones to figure that out. Police watch groups, after their minds allowed them to process the fact that a police agency in Los Angeles would do something so monumentally stupid, issued statements with words like “highly problematic” and “inappropriate” in them. According to the LA Times, the number of overall arrests did not increase, but there was a large spike in the number of vehicle impounds on the day of the event. The Sheriff’s Department has issued a statement that such an operation would not happen again, which is somewhat like shutting the barn door after the horse has already bolted, pulled over a suspect, kneeled on his back with his arm in a lock and then punched him in the face a few times.

There’s a lesson to be learned here for both sides. Police, don’t have contests involving arrests, impounds, or tickets, it only affirms our suspicions that you’re a bunch of power-mad asshats who think that you can act with impunity because you’re the police. People, keep an eye on your police forces. Sure, if you’re not an idiot (or a criminal, the two terms are somewhat interchangeable), you don’t have much to worry about here, but on the other hand, I like my civil rights, and encouraging already somewhat trigger-happy cops by giving them some contest to win for most arrests, impounds, tickets, or whatever is just a little bit too close to living in a totalitarian police state for my tastes.

Report: LA deputies held arrest contests [Yahoo News via Jalopnik]