Criminal Justice Quote: Knockout Game a Non Story for The New York Times

     The New York Times has discovered that the media panic over the "knockout game"--in which primarily black youths engage in random, violent, racist attacks against mostly white victims--is just a product of "fear sown by reports" that "may have racial roots."

     In " 'Knockout Game' a Spreading Menace or a Myth," a...story from Saturday's paper [November 24, 2013], reporter Cara Buckley, with the help of two other credited journalists, reports that "police officials in several cities where such attacks have been reported said that the 'game' amounted to little more than an urban myth, and that the attacks in question might be nothing more than the sort of random assaults that have always occurred"… However, the paper's record on other seeming trends is an unbroken tissue of credulous reporting about alarming phenomena that did not stand up to close scrutiny…[Racially motivated church burnings, crack babies, killer bees, global warming, etc.]

     According to a journalistic rule of thumb, three examples of any phenomenon are enough to constitute a trend. "If there ever was an urban myth, this was it," a Jersey City [New Jersey] police spokesperson told the Times' Buckley when asked about the knockout game.

Tim Cavanaugh, The Daily Caller, November 25, 2013

Michael Joseph's Deadly Daughter

     In America, teenage girls have become cold-blooded killers. Over the past decade girls between the ages 13 and 17 have murdered or attempted to murder girlfriends, boyfriends, and parents. Pretty in pink has turned into ugly in red.

     In 2012, 51-year-old Michael Joseph resided with his 12-year-old daughter Jasmine in an apartment in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York. That year, Jasmine started running away from home and associating with neighborhood street thugs who turned her into a child prostitute.

     Just after midnight on October 28, 2013, as Mr. Joseph slept, Jasmine let two members of the Crips gang into the apartment for the purpose of murdering her father. In the kitchen, she handed Ricardo Leveillez, her on-and-off boyfriend, a knife. She also armed Leveillez's friend, a gangbanger known as "Murder," with a blade from the kitchen drawer.

     Mr. Joseph awoke that night to find two young men stabbing him with his own kitchen knives. One of the attackers yelled, "Kill that motherf---er!" After being stabbed in the face, chest, arms, legs, and back, Mr. Joseph managed to escape by running into another room and locking the door.

     Shortly after the assault, a surveillance camera caught Leveillez and "Murder" walking out of the apartment building. Before leaving, the two gang members stole the victim's wallet. They also drove off in Mr. Joseph's 2012 Hyundai Sonata, a car they later wrecked. Later that day the hoodlums were recorded on another surveillance camera using the victim's debit card.

     When police officers searched the wrecked and abandoned stolen Hyundai they discovered one of the bloody knives.

     On November 11, 2013, New York City detectives arrested Jasmine Josephs on 34 criminal charges that included attempted murder. The 14-year-old claimed that her father had raped her. (Mr. Joseph denied the allegation and detectives believed him.)

     Four days following Jasmine's arrest, a Brooklyn judge released the girl to the custody of her mother, a resident of a Manhattan homeless shelter for people with AIDS. The judge also issued a restraining order prohibiting the accused attempted murderer from any contact with her father.

     Detectives arrested Ricardo Leveillez a few days later on the charge of attempted murder. The Crips gangster told investigators that Jasmine, who had been thinking about having her father killed for some time, had motivated them by alleging that he had raped her.

     Leveillez was booked into Rikers Island on $250,000 bail. His accomplice, the gangster known as "Murder," was still at large. 

Subway Train Station Pushers: Death on the Tracks

     Beneath the streets of New York City where barbaric young men are sucker-punching strangers to the pavement in a game called "knockout," mental cases and drunks are pushing people off subway station platforms onto the tracks below. If these case reflect an emerging trend in random, violent assault and murder, New York residents and visitors to the city are becoming less safe.

     In December 2012, Erika Menendez shoved Sunando Sen into the path of an oncoming subway train. The 31-year-old mental case pushed the Bangladeshi immigrant onto the tracks at the elevated 40th Street-Lowery stop in Queens.

     When taken into custody, Menendez told her interrogators that "I pushed a Muslim…because I hate Hindus and Muslims. Ever since 2001 when they put down the Twin Towers I've been beating them up."

     Menendez, charged with second-degree murder, is being held without bail.

     At a subway station beneath Manhattan, Naeem Davis, a homeless man with a history of mental illness, pushed 58-year-old Ki Suck Han onto the tracks in front of a passing train. This murder also took place in December 2012. Just before his sudden death, the small business owner from Queens and Davis were seen arguing with each other. Davis has been charged with the second-degree murder of a total stranger.

     On Friday afternoon, November 22, 2013, as 72-year-old Sho Kuan Lin and his wife Yumie Li stood on the train platform at the 145th Street station in Harlem, a 57-year-old drunk named Rudralall Baldeo walked up behind Sho Kuan Lin and pushed him onto the tracks.

     Several subway station bystanders lifted the victim to safety before a train rolled into the station. Paramedics rushed the Chinese native to St. Luke's Hospital where he underwent emergency surgery for a fractured skull.

     A New York City prosecutor has charged Baldeo with attempted murder and felony assault. A magistrate has denied him bail. 

The Iranian Rock Band Murder-Suicide Case

     In 2012, five members of a rock band from Iran called Yellow Dogs were granted asylum in the United States. The group had achieved notoriety in 2009 following the airing of a documentary about the underworld music scene in Tehran called "No One Knows About Persian Cats." The production won an award at the Cannes Film Festival.

     In Iran, the "post punk/dance band" rehearsed in a homemade soundproof studio and performed in underground concert venues. The Yellow Dogs, by performing in Iran, risked arrest and imprisonment. Music in that country is not tolerated by the state.

     In America, the band played at New York venues such as Webster Hall and the Brooklyn Bowl and as far away from the group's East Williamsburg, Brooklyn townhouse as Austin, Texas.

     In 2012, 28-year-old guitarist Ali Akbar Mahammad Rafie left the band following a dispute over a relatively small amount of money. Following his departure, Rafie joined a group called Free Keys.

     Just after midnight on Monday, November 1, 2013, the former Yellow Dogs guitarist, armed with an assault rifle concealed in a guitar case, made his way to the roof of a townhouse adjoining the three-story dwelling occupied at that time by two members of the band and several other tenants. From a third floor terrace, Rafie fired a shot through a window that killed a 35-year-old musician who was not a member of the Yellow Dogs band.

     Once inside the townhouse, Rafie entered a third floor bedroom where he shot and killed Arash Farazmand. Rafie shot the 28-year-old Yellow Dogs guitarist in the head. On the second floor, Rafie murdered the guitarist's brother Soroush. At the time of his death, the 27-year-old drummer was on his bed working on his laptop computer.

     Rafie, before returning to the roof, shot a fourth tenant, a 22-year-old artist names Sasan Sadeghpourosko. This victim, shot in the arm, was treated and released from a local hospital.

     Back on the roof, the mass murderer took his own life by shooting himself in the head. (The third and fourth members of the Yellow Dogs band were not home when Rafie went on his shooting rampage.)

     Residents of the industrial neighborhood consisting of warehouses and a few dwellings mostly inhabited by young musicians and artists were stunned by the murders of the Yellow Dog band members and the other musician. The two murdered Yellow Dog musicians came to America to be free. Instead, thanks to a fellow Iranian, they were dead. 

The Knockout Game

     There's an emerging urban street crime that is quite alarming. It's called the knockout game. A black youth, in broad daylight, sneaks up behind a random white pedestrian and tries to knock him or her unconscious with a single sucker punch. Some of the victims hit the pavement and die.

     These assaults are not motivated by money, sex, drugs, or revenge. Moreover, the black youths who perpetrate these unprovoked attacks are not crazy. The street gangsters who commit these blindside assaults do it for the thrill and fun of seeing strangers they've rendered unconscious hit the ground with a thud. These are recreational crimes that reflect a breakdown of civilized life.

     In Brooklyn, New York knockout practitioners, in a series of assaults, have targeted Jews. On November 10, 2013, in a "Get the Jew" attack, a knockout artist killed a 78-year-old woman.

     There have been knockout crimes in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, St. Louis, Missouri, Hoboken, New Jersey, and Washington, D. C.

     According to Bo Dietl, a former New York City police detective, the news media has ignored the knockout trend because it involves black-on-white crime. Appearing on the Fox TV show "Hannity," Dietl said, "The liberal news media doesn't want to say exactly what [the knockout game] is. It's a group of black youths attacking whites. It's called polar bear hunting….That's racism."

     A white woman recently sucker-punched to the ground in the Columbia Heights section of Washington, D. C. by black teenagers playing the knockout game appeared on the Greta Van Susteren show on Fox TV. Regarding her victimization at the hands of a young gangster, she said: "I've moved past it and I really have no bad feelings about what happened. And I just see it as another reason why we [society] need to better support our youth with activities and youth programs….It's great to see teenagers do incredible things when they're supported and empowered."

     Good heavens. This woman views her vicious attackers, criminals who could have killed her, as victims of a society that has neglected them. In other words, it's our fault. No bad feelings? Really? What world does this woman live in?

      

Writing Quote: E-Books Taking Over in Britain

     Ninety-eight British publishers closed their doors in the year ending August 2013. The cause? E-books and online discounts.

     Closures were up 42 percent over the previous year, according to the Guardian. The companies that folded included the 26-year-old healthcare publisher Panos London, and Evans Brothers, which published popular children's book author Enid Blyton for 30 years.

     During 2012, e-book sales in Britain rose by 134 percent to more than $346 million. While print sales still dominated the bottom line in Britain with more than $4.6 billion in sales, that total was a one percent drop from the year before. The trend is toward e-books, and that trend has not been good for publishers….

     "The rise of Amazon and other discount sellers with massive buying power means the pressure on publishers' margins is now immense," Anthony Cork of [publisher] Wilkins Kennedy told the Guardian. "While publishers might be able to sustain relatively small margins on a bestseller, it is much harder for niche publishers."

Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times, November 5, 2013

Criminal Justice Quote: Afghanistan Poppy Farming and Opium Production

     Afghanistan produced record levels of opium in 2013--despite nearly $7 billion spent by the U. S. to combat the problem, according to a sobering United Nations report out Wednesday [November 13, 2013]. Propelled by strong demand and an insurgency that has become more hands-on in the trade, cultivation of opium poppies, which are processed into heroin, rose 36 percent, amounting to 209,000 hectares [a hectare of land is about two and a half acres].

     Afghanistan remains the world's largest opium producer--last year accounting for 75 percent of the world's heroin supply. This is despite more than a decade's worth of international efforts to persuade poppy farmers to switch to other crops such as wheat….

     At $160 to $200 for one kilogram of dry opium, compared to 41 cents for one kilogram of wheat, farmers are making a strictly economic decision when they decide to get into the opium trade…

Aarne Heikkila, producer, NBC News

  

Criminal Justice Quote: Who Wouldn't Want to be a Wiseguy?

As a wiseguy you can lie, you can cheat, you can steal, you can kill people--legitimately. You can do any goddamned thing you want, and nobody can say anything about it. Who wouldn't want to be a wiseguy?

Benjamin "Lefty Guns" Ruggiero [played by Al Pacino in "Donnie Brasco."] In Jerry Capeci, Wiseguys Say the Darndest Things, 2004

Lindbergh Kidnapping Case Speech

     At one o'clock on Saturday, November 9, Jim Fisher, the author of this blog and two books on the historic Lindbergh case, will speak in Allentown, Pennsylvania at the Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum on Walnut Street.

     While many crime buffs strongly believe that Bruno Richard Hauptmann, the man executed for the 1932 Lindbergh murder was innocent, Fisher will make the case for his guilt. It is Fisher's belief that Hauptmann, acting alone, killed the baby in cold blood for the $50,000 ransom. All of the evidence presented by the prosecution at Hauptmann's 1935 trial in Flemington, New Jersey was physical and therefore circumstantial.

     On Saturday, Fisher will debunk the books that argue for Hauptmann's innocence, including the works that accuse Charles Lindbergh of accidentally killing his 20-month-old son then fabricating the kidnap story to cover up his role in the child's death. The exoneration books also accuse FBI agents, New Jersey State investigators, and New York City detectives of evidence tampering and perjury. Moreover, these authors allege a conspiracy of lies among the prosecution's eight handwriting experts who identified Hauptmann as the writer of the 16 ransom documents. These authors also attack the scientist who connected Hauptmann to the homemade, wooden ladder used to snatch the baby from his second-story nursery. There are also Lindbergh case enthusiasts who claim that the body found in the shallow grave two miles from the Hopewell, New Jersey Lindbergh estate was not Baby Lindbergh.

     After-speech questions and comments will be welcomed. Admission: $6 adults and $3 children. 

Criminal Justice Quote: Scams to Watch Out For

     [Watch out for] reverse mortgage and precious metals scams. Home-equity and reverse-mortage swindles are attractive now because a lot of seniors have paid off their homes, and that's like an untapped bank account. If your home is worth $300,000, and you've paid off your mortgage, you have $300,000 in the bank waiting for  me to steal it. A lot of TV and direct mail advertising tells you how to get money out of your house while you are still living in it. Some of these ads are legitimate, many are not….

     As for gold and silver scams, coins can be sold at a 300 to 500 percent markup. So the victims would pay $25,000 for a bunch of coins, which they would receive, but years later, they would take them to a coin shop and learn they were worth only a few thousand dollars. This is a great hustle, because the coin industry is largely unregulated. Plus, because the victims receive the coins, they don't realize until years later that they have been taken. With the bad economy, these scams are huge now….

     Victims don't look for why the offer is a scam; they look for why the offer will make them money. 

"Confessions of a Con Man," As told to Doug Shadel, Reader's Digest, November 2013 

     

Responding to Rejection

     I've often suspected that part of the reason why editors take so long to decline on projects, apart from never having enough time to consider them, is linked to how uncomfortable we are rejecting and disappointing people, whether it's the agent who has submitted the work or the unknown soldier who wrote it. Plus, we've all seen enough books that have been notoriously and strenuously rejected throughout the industry that nevertheless go on to bestsellerdom or critical acclaim.

     Just as you shouldn't take a polite letter for an encouraging one, don't let a harsh letter do more damage than necessary….It's hard not to focus too deeply on a rejection letter, or any correspondence from an editor, because it's often the only feedback you have, but I beg you not to spend more time with rejection letters than the time it takes to read and file them away.

Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees, 2000