BCR's Daily Fishwrap Report for August 24, 2009

• The City is picking up the full tab for burying electrical utilities underground as part of the West Village/Main St. streetscape effort, something Council initially wanted to do only if Duke Energy and Blue Devil Partners chipped in (which they haven't.) The support for the administration initiative, which the H-S' Ray Gronberg argues came about in part due to a "communication breakdown" during the Patrick Baker-Tom Bonfield transition, came in part because a $1 million federal grant and falling construction costs means the effort is likely cost-neutral for the City -- though officials were quick to note they don't want this to set a precedent for other areas of the city. (Landowners in both the Fayetteville St. corridor and DAP district have wanted City funding for underground utilities, too.) (H-S)
• The initial reaction by Durham Police Department officials is that the introduction of tasers into the police force has been very successful, the H-S reports. Although "force applications" (incidents of use of force against suspects) have risen by nearly two-thirds since the introduction of tasers in the Durham P.D., that comes largely due to initial misfires while officers were getting used to the technology, officials say. On the flip side, the number of arrests where force (including tasers) are used has dropped by one-third since 2006; additionally, almost 100 incidents of "voluntary compliance" have taken place in the first three months of 2009 where suspects decided to cooperate with police after a taser use was threatened, along with four cases where tasers were used in place of justified deadly force against suspects. (H-S #1, #2)
• City Council candidate Darius Little on Friday saw the dismissal of charges of cyberstalking and phone harassment in Orange County; the candidate, who's admitted to a past criminal history related to bad checks, had said the charges in this case were based on "an attempt to embarrass and carry out a personal vendetta" against him. Little faces three other primary challengers and incumbent Howard Clement in Ward 2. (H-S)
• Speaking of the election: the North Carolina Sheriff Police Alliance (NCSPA) endorsed all four incumbents for the fall race. (H-S)
• The Duke School has relocated its elementary school to its middle schol campus on Old Erwin Rd. at the edge of Duke Forest, with its namesake university (where Duke School was founded in '47 before being spun out in the 1980s) buying up its old Hull Ave. building lease to be transformed into a university daycare facility. 435 students will be on the single-campus facility for Wednesday's start of classes. (H-S)
• The Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People celebrated its 74th anniversary on Saturday night at a banquet featuring recorded remarks from Rep. Jim Clyburn of S.C. (H-S)
• A state audit of Durham Tech found some irregularities in its books for the 2007-08 school year, though all the findings involved bad or missing documentation or accounting; no allegations of misuse of funds exist. DTCC's new president Bill Ingram (who replaced Phail Wynn in the top slot in January 2008) began to reorganize the school's finance office almost upon arrival, bringing in former CFO Ed Moore to resolve the issues. (H-S)