🥇 Library Champion Newsletter #76 | 👪 Family Saturday Events This Fall @ The Library!
Library Champion,
👋 Welcome to our new subscribers! I am SO GLAD to have you aboard!
👪 Family Saturday Events This Fall @ The Library!
Are you busy or working during the week and want something to do on the weekend with your little ones? Join us this fall for some fun!
📚Storytimes are back! Register today!
ABC stands for Alphabet, Books, and Crafts at this weekly storytime! Register today!
We will focus on one letter per week at our preschool storytime on Mondays beginning August 29. Storytime will include books, rhymes, flannel board activities, music, and movement. We will also have a craft available at the end of storytime.
Our Toddler storytime and playgroup on Fridays will be a modified version of this theme with books, songs, rhymes, and a playtime/social time afterward!
We try to run on a six week schedule with a 3-4 week break between sessions.
Session 1 (Letters A-F): August 29-Oct 7
Session 2 (Letters G-L): Nov 7-Dec 16
Session 3 (Letters M-R): Jan 16-Feb 24
Session 4 (Letters S-Z): Mar 20-Apr 28
Preschool (ages 3-6): Mondays at 10 am
Toddlers (ages 18 mo-2 yrs): Fridays at 10 am
Who: Children ages 18 mo-2 yr (toddlers) or ages 3-6 (preschool) with a caregiver
What: ABC Storytime
When: Mondays or Fridays at 10:00 am (see more info above)
Where: Juniata County Library | 498 Jefferson St, Mifflintown PA
Questons: Jocinda at 717-436-6378 or jrhinier@juniatalibrary.org - https://www.juniatalibrary.org/youth/childrens
From my personal bookshelf...
We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops, and Corruption by Justin Fenton
(True crime, law enforcement, political science)
This week I want to highlight a book I recently read that was given to me as a gift. Note: the library doesn’t carry this book.
Fenton's book focuses on the Baltimore Police Department's Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), which broke into homes without warrants, searched Black people without probable cause, stole guns and money, and even sold the confiscated drugs.
The GTTF was led by a sergeant who devolved from model Marine to utterly corrupt cop. He partnered with a cocaine dealer to identify other dealers, seize their wares, and sell them; reportedly, that sergeant had squirreled away at least half a million dollars, having done things like broken into a dealer’s car and “stolen between $12,000 and $19,000.”
Before getting greedy, a core group of officers—most now serving prison terms thanks to an FBI investigation that Fenton tracks almost in real time—preferred to skim money off the top during seizures. Meanwhile, the GTTF was lauded for its results, which were murky at best.
Some of the things the officers in the GTTF would do left me speechless. They would keep in the trunk of their police vehicles a cache of BB guns; in case they made a questionable traffic stop or were in a bind legally with a search, they would plant a BB gun on the scene. They committed outright fraud with their time cards, with one of the officers earning paid overtime while on vacation at an island resort.
One extreme instance has troubled me since reading this book. The GTTF robbed a low-level drug dealer of his drug money, only the dealer was due to re-pay his superior with that same money. He was found 2 days later shot dead on his front lawn while his girlfriend and daughter were getting into their car.
Fenton’s fast-paced narrative, perfect for fans of The Wire, delivers a satisfying resolution, though it remains to be seen whether the department will truly clean up under new management, for which readers must stay tuned. HBO recently turned this book into a limited TV series.
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--Vince Giordano
Librarian and Director of the Juniata County Library.
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