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Tag: crime

  • A Dog That Barks

    A Dog That Barks

    White dog… that’s moonshine, hootch, likker. Who hasn’t dreamed of distilling up a little batch in their basement (What? Is it just me?). It’s also generally illegal. Max Watman, I nice guy I met once (what’s how I learned about his book) has written a gem, Chasing the White Dog: An Amateur Outlaw’s Adventures in Moonshine.I’m enjoying more than any other book I’ve read in a while. Well written, informative, and with a very lively and personal style. I’m about 55 pages from the end, but I wanted to post his guide to “How to Be a Criminal,” scattered throughout the book, based on people who failed (interestingly and tellingly, the fourth commandment of crack, never get high on your own supply, does not make the list):

    Item 1: Do not, while on probation or having recently come to the attention of the law, engage in large-scale felonies with strangers.

    Item 2: Surprisingly, drugs and crime don’t mix. Stoners will forget what they have to remember, crackheads are unreliable, meth heads are crazy. Even drunks–they’ll either get pulled over for driving drunk or they’ll get in a fight.

    Item 3: Do not write down the keys to the code. If you can’t count to ten, think of another code.

    Item 4: Read up on the law you are breaking.

    Item 5: It’s important to understand that criminal justice attends no only to the crime committed but to every ancillary activity involved in the perpetration, and especially perpetuation and concealment, of illegal activity, and that those acts, because they suggest intent, because they are part of a scheme, often carry heavier sentences than what we would normally think of as the illegal act. If you view it in a forgiving light, the law could be seen to forgive reckless impulse (“I was lonely and drink and I picked up this hooker”) and punish a pattern of concealment and manipulation (“I set up this bank account so that I could withdraw cash without my wife noticing and pay for hookers”).

    Item 6: Do not hire as underlings people whose next strike will be their third.

    Item 7: Buy equipment at tiny mom-and-op hardware stores with no computer systems and no video.

    You can buy the book here.

  • “So, I can’t call you no more?”

    Says the rapist to his victim. It led to his arrest.

    Timothy West, who broke into a stranger’s house and raped a woman at knifepoint, wanted to continue this beautiful relationship. The 21-year-old victim wanted to get him confessing on tape.

    Victim: “What do you mean, I’m mad at you? Of course, you know, I don’t know you like that, and just over here, raping me and everything with a knife in your hand. Damn! What you gotta say about that?”

    Timothy West: “Sorry. I apologize.”
    …
    Victim: “You just broke into my house, yo. I’ve never seen you before …. You try to rob me, then you rape me,”

    Timothy West: “I know, man, that s**t is crazy. I apologize, though.”

    Victim: “But do you understand what you did to me? Like, has it hit you what you’ve done to me? Like, how do you expect me to be cool with you, and just expect a simple apology. I’ve never seen you before, and you just walk up to my house with a pocket knife, and then you didn’t find anything from me, no money, so you raped me! And then you expect me to be cool with that the next day? I mean, what’s up with that?”

    West: “So, I can’t call you no more?”

    Victim: “Wow, I don’t even know what to tell you.”

    This happened in March, 2009. Why does justice take so long?

    There’s a bit more here and at the above link.

    [Update: West was acquitted]

  • Man convicted 59th time

    I guess this timewas the charm.

  • A little excitment on 324 Post

    Justin Fenton and Peter Hermann report:

    So many police officers are at Hopkins at this hour that the department had to call in officers from other districts and detective units to help answer other 911 calls in the Eastern District. One plainclothes officer reported being out in his personal car, and he warned his dispatcher he was patrolling “with no lights, no sirens, no nothing.”

    Needless to say, usually shootings in the Eastern don’t get such a massive response.

    Update:I just heard on the radio that the gunman was shot and killed (apparently self-inflicted). Hopefully Baker Shift will get home on time!

  • War on Prostitution

    Really?

    Does anybody really think the problem is Craigslist?

    Don’t we have better things to do?

  • Not a good way to go

    Not a good way to go

    Just doing your job. Delivering bread in the hood. Driving in your bakery truck. Minding your own business.

    Next thing you know. You’re dead. Shot. Just like the bad old days.

    Seems like some idiots were playing with guns on the roof of the Marlboro Projects. Probably just shooting for kicks. Who would think that one of these idiots would have good aim? That a bullet fired from a gun might hit and kill someone?

    Ecuadorian immigrant Jorge Martinez lived not far from me, in Elmhurst. By all newspaper accounts he seems like a good man. Here’s a picture of him and his son from the Post.

    In the same article a woman is quoted as saying:

    A couple of months ago, a bullet hit my window…. When I hear shots I tell my kids to get away from the window. I feel bad for the guy, but this is what goes on here.

  • Connecticut Killer’s 911 Call

    The New York Times has a link to Omar Thornton’s call.

    [Update: And the police officer who answered the call gets kudos.]

  • Cost of Crime

    The UK’s Daily Mailreports how two very criminal families, over the course of four decades, have cost taxpayers £37 million ($59 million).

    The families were members of two notorious gangs in Birmingham, the Burger Bar Boys and the Johnson Crew.

    The total cost to the public of these two gangs – as opposed to only the two families themselves – is thought to be nearly £190 million.

    The £37 million includes the cost of police investigations, lawyers, trials and prison for murders, attempted murders and serious injuries inflicted by three generations from the pair of gangster families.

    But it does not count the cost of medical care of victims, of undetected crimes by the same families, of their more minor crimes, or the cost in money or harm to their victims.
    …
    Nor does it take into account the state benefits claimed by the families, the education and extra teaching required by their children, their own burden on the NHS, or of providing them with council houses.

  • Deli workers fight off armed robbers

    Bodega workers take a gun out of robber’s hands. Beyond that nothing too eventful… except it’s less than a mile from my home (though it is, you know, over there, on the other side of 21st St, near the projects… what I half-jokingly call Astoria’s ghetto).

  • A felony just ain’t what it used to be!

    Lost in all the talk about the NYPD juking the stats is the simple fact that each and every year, the value of felony theft (“grand larceny” in NY State) goes down with inflation.

    New York State defines felony grand larceny (§155.30) as over $1,000. And this is where it’s been for the past 25 years.

    This makes the 64% reduction in grand larceny over the past 20 years all the more impressive since inflation alone has stripped almost 40% of a felony’s value.

    By lowering the value of a felony, we’re cheapening its meaning and labeling more and more people as felons. And is harmful and costly for all of us.

    $1,000 today is closer to the $275 a felony larceny was raised fromin 1986 (and where it was from 1965 to 1986). To keep the value of a felony consistent, it’s time to raise the dollar amount to $1,600 – $1,900. But since this figures stick with us for 20 or 30 years, why not jack it up to an even two-grand?

    Last time we did this, serious felony crime in New York City decreased 11% overnight. And this despite rising crime!

    Here’s to a $2,000 felony! Let the movement start here.

    [Thanks to a police officer for raising this question and to a John Jay librarian who dug up this hard-to-find information on a moment’s notice! Ain’t librarians grand?!]

    p.s. While we’re at it, maybe it’s time to adjust that “$20” figure in the 9th Amendment, too.