She must have “hated Mexicans,” too.
Two men were sitting on their stoop when, Peter Hermann writes:
When a young girl armed with a silver handgun approached and announced a robbery. “Because of the age of the suspect the victims began to laugh at which time the suspect fired one shot grazing the victim Wilmer Bonilla’s head and striking Jose Coreas in the center of his forehead.”
This is the officer (not “man” or “dude”) who got pissed at a young white skateboarder.
Peter Hermann reports:
Last month, a three-member police panel called a trial board held a hearing and found Rivieri, a 19-year veteran, guilty of failing to issue the youth a citizen contact receipt and failing to file a report, but not guilty of using excessive and unnecessary force and uttering a discourtesy.
The panel recommended that Bealefeld suspend Rivieri for several days. But Bealefeld has the discretion to up the penalty, and he opted to fire the officer whose actions were displayed on video and seen around the world.
Three years after it happens the guy gets fired? Is there more I don’t know? Seems way too harsh to me.
I wrote about the incident here.
We don’t know what happened before the video starts. … Did the cop already tell the kids three times to stop skateboarding in the Inner Harbor? Did the kid flip off the cop right before the video starts? I think there are lots of possible situations that could justify the cop’s behavior.
…
Now let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the video shows the whole story. If that’s the case, then the officer handled the situation horribly. If your goal is to get three kids to stop skateboarding, there are much better ways to do it.
…
Still, sometimes a person does need a lesson. Sometimes an arrest isn’t appropriate. Or legal. So as good police, you’ve got to put on an act: yell, threaten, cajole, lecture. All these are part of the job. But it’s important to have an objective when you deal with a situation. Then you have to figure out the best method to achieve your goals. Yelling for the sake of yelling isn’t good policing.
I heard a lot of cops talk like this when I was on the street. Sometimes it wasn’t needed, but sometimes it was. If you fired every cop who ever talked like this, you’d have about six cops left in the Eastern, and I wouldn’t be one of them. Sometimes this language and attitude is needed. Probably not in this case… but who am I to say?
Rivieri gets to keep his pension, right?
The terrorists, Christian Michael Enright, said, “Assalamu alaikum — consider this a checkpoint!” and slashed Muslim American Ahmed Sharif across the neck, and then on the face from his nose to his upper lip. Sharif said:
“I feel very sad. … I have been here more than 25 years. I have been driving a taxi more than 15 years. All my four kids were born here. I never feel this hopeless and insecure before.”
Now I don’t want anything thinking that all Christians are terrorists and banning churches. I mean, there are Christians who believe in peace, too. There must be. But where are the priests? Why aren’t they denouncing this barbaric and cowardly attack?
The Timesalso has an interesting little piece on the Arab neighborhood, Little Syria, that used to be withing “hallowed ground distance” of the World Trade Center site before there was a World Trade Center. Next to was Little Athens.
In the 1940s, the “Arab-American community was almost entirely displaced by construction of entrance ramps to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel.”
Incredible car crash caught on police dash-cam.
But I’m really posting this because it’s the same car I had in Baltimore.
Like the Bandit. But my car was white. And I was more Smokey than the Bandit. It was the last of Detroit’s metal cars. And I never crashed it.
The BBC has an interesting piece about the bus siege by a rogue cop in which eight tourists were killed. The good news I think we would do better here.
In related news, have you heard that the Chicago Cubs are going to move to the Philippines? They’re changing their name are will now be called the Manila Folders (sorry, I heard that one when I was about 7).
I’m pro-Muslim. I sound funny just saying that. I’m not too keen on religion or zealots in general. But why would I be anti-Muslim any more than anti-Jew or anti-Christian? I have good friends who are Muslims. I have students who are Muslims. I have neighbors who are Muslim. I’ve traveled to Muslim countries. Muslims all nice people. Well, not all of them, but you know what I mean. People are not bad because of their religion. It simply doesn’t make sense to hate people because of their religion. I’m not going to debate that issue.
But…
Am I an Islamophobe? [cue scary music]
Timemagazine has an article about Islamophobia [reprise scary music]. One of the questions Timeasks is “Islam is more likely than other faiths to encourage violence against nonbelievers.”That’s supposed to show Islamophobia. Forty-six percent of people responded in the affirmative.
But…
I would respond in the affirmative. I mean, I haven’t done a study and certainly not historically (the Christians have a pretty bad track record from, say 1000 AD to well into the 20th century!). But today, if you were to look at people killed in acts of religious-inspired violence, most of those doing the killing believe they’re acting in the name of Islam (Most of the victims are Muslim too, I would add).
What if parts of Islam aremore likely to encourage violence against others? And I’m not saying that most Muslims agree with these zealots.
It’s like asking if you believe that African-Americans are more likely than whites to commit acts of violence in America. Well… if you say yes are you a racist? It’s un-P.C. to talk about it, but blacks aremore likely than whites to commit violent crime in America. And yes, the academic in me wants to mention class, poverty, education, and other factors that explain much more than race, but yes, there is a crude-correlation between race and violent crime. We can be liberal and tolerant and not deny reality, right? To know that doesn’t make me racist, I hope.
So why would thinking that Islam is more likely than other faiths to encourage violence be a sign of Islamophobia? What if it’s true?
Shouldn’t we be working harder to end violence rather than pretend it doesn’t exist?
Seems to be the latest sport in East Baltimore. Martin Reyes, who wasn’t Mexican, is the fifth Hispanic shooting or homicide victim in the area in less than two month. All the victims are Honduran. And moved into a neighborhood that desperatelyneeds an influx of hard-working non-criminals.
The killer (is there where I’m supposed to add, “alleged”?), African-American paroled drug dealer and schizophrenic Jermaine Holley, told police he “hated Mexicans.” No doubt this guy also addresses the Korean corner-store owner–just about only person willing to run a business in the area–as “Chinaman.”
Reminds of the joke where the Goy is put on the freight train to the concentration camp in Nazi Germany (stop me if I’ve told this before…). The guy next to him says, “What a tragedy.” And the Goy turns to him and says, “No. For youit’s a tragedy. For me it’s a mistake!”
The Latino victims here, known at least in the New York area as “walking ATMs” because they get paid in cash and don’t call the police, are often illegal immigrants. And them moving to Baltimore is the best thing to happen to that city since the crab cake.
The 200 Block of North Kenwood? It seems like a well-kept up block. And one of the rare brick streets left. Homes sell for roughly $125,000, according to Zillow. But I wouldn’t live there or on any block on the East Side that start with N for north. On Kenwood, the boarded up buildings start on the 300 Block and on the 500 Block homes sell (and plenty are for sale) for $60-70,000.
Why do immigrants move near the ghetto? It’s not because they like getting robbed and killed. It’s because it’s cheap. And desperate landlords (who keep leaving because of crime but can’t sell their homes) don’t ask too many questions. And seeing how the Eastern District has lost probably close to 75 percent of it’s population, there’s lots of room. Who else in moving tohere?
Yes, I too was more surprised that a bunch of priceless paintings are housed in a Cairo museum that the fact that a Van Gogh was stolen.
But get this: they didn’t steal the real one!
According to an Egyptian source of mine, the real one was stolen a decade ago when corrupt American-supported dictator/pharaoh Hosni Mubarak’s mysterious “business tycoon” son, Alaa Mubarak, sold the painting in Kuwait (not related to its first theft, but to an exhibition in Kuwait in the 1990s) and replaced it with a good fake.
And this “theft” is simply a way to cover for the real theft years ago. Clever.
Did I mention my friend was no idea? But if it’s true, it means that the fake that was taken from the museum will not be recovered, since the the people who ordered the theft, who have the original (or work for those who do), would simply destroy it.
Boom Chicago over in Amsterdam (my brother’s theater) made a funny video about changes in Amsterdam and the drug scene.
The guy in the video, Greg Shapiro, and I arrived in Amsterdam same year same time. He’s very funny. I poured his beers.
The other videos are pretty good, too. Check out Tiger Woods’ Apology Outtakes.
Now I wasn’t there, but as I understand it…
A pothead and occasional seller in Las Vegas, let’s call him “Vegas Cole,” is sitting with his pregnant fiance on a Friday night watching TV. Police bust down the door and shoot and kill him.
Just another day in the drug war, right? Police did find a small amount a weed, a digital scale, and $702 in cash. So what’s the problem?
Vegas Cole was unarmed, no guns were found, and his fiance says the money was rent money. Rent money? Yeah, right. I’ve heard that one before. But you know what I never saw from a drug dealer? A receipt. The fiance actually had a receipt for half the money. From a pawn shop. She pawned her jewelry a few days earlier for $305. Oh. I guess they had money troubles.
The Las Vegas Journal Review says:
[Vegas] Cole, 21, was unarmed when he was killed by a single rifle round fired by Detective Bryan Yant, who a week before the raid swore under oath that Cole had a “lengthy criminal history of narcotics sales, trafficking and possession charges” in Houston and Los Angeles.
But [Vegas] Cole’s record in his native California was limited to a conviction for misdemeanor unlawful taking of a vehicle. He probably never even visited Houston.
Investigators might have confused him with another Trevon Cole [let’s call him, Texas Trevon]– one with a different middle name who is seven years older, at least three inches shorter and 100 pounds lighter, records show. That [Texas] Trevon Cole has several marijuana-related arrests in Houston, all misdemeanors
So Yant wasn’t too good at dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s. It’s an understandably mistake, right? Just seven years, three inches, 100 pounds, and a different middle name? Seriously, how can a professional police officer confuse these guys. What in the world do these two black men have in common? …Oh.
So Yant is investigating Vegas Cole because he thinks he’s Texas Trevon, who is supposedly is a big-time dealer, but actually isn’t. It gets better (Or I guess you could say worse… if you’re some party pooper who care about dead people). According to the affidavit:
Undercover detectives had bought … a total of 1.8 ounces for $840
$465 an ounce for Nevada ditch weed?! Are you f*cking kidding me? The officers were offering perhaps a ten-times markup to buy grass that is barely criminal to possess in Nevada? 1.8 ounces weighs less than 1/4 cup of sugar.
Also, says Phil Smith of Drug War Chronicle, according to the warrant:
when police wanted to make a big score — $400 worth — … they had to reschedule because Cole didn’t have that much on hand.
This borders on entrapment. You offer me $400 an ounce for any old shit and I just might make a few calls and go into business. And I got a job. Vegas Cole’s pregnant fiance was hawking her jewelry to make ends meet!
Well, Cole is still a criminal, right? Nobody forced this man to accept the offer of easy money law enforcement dangled in front of him. And who knows, maybe neighbors were complaining. And policing is dangerous work. It’s not like Yant, who wrote the warrant and pulled the trigger, has a record of being trigger happy or anything. Oh, wait. This is the third police-involved shootings for Yant. Two of them fatal. There is good news. At least for Yant. Of the past 200 fatal police-involved shootings in Vegas–a rate of killing about 50% higher than the NYPD–only one has been found to be criminally bad.