Locked Up Abroad

     On September 5, 2014, Stacey Addison, an American veterinarian from Oregon who had been traveling solo around the world since January 2013, traveled from Indonesia into Timor-Leste (also known as East Timor) and shared a cab from the border crossing at Batugade to the capital city of Dili. Along the way, another passenger asked to pick up a package at a DHL office…Police, acting on a tip from Indonesian authorities, were watching and found methamphetamine in the parcel.

     Addison and everyone in the cab were arrested. She was held in the Dili Detention Center for four nights then released after an initial hearing…The judge ordered that her passport be held by the authorities until the investigation was completed. Addison was released on September 9, 2014 but wasn't allowed to leave the country…The prosecutor told her that she was needed as a witness for an investigation that could take a year.

     After an October 29, 2014 court appearance, Addison was jailed again without explanation or warning, and spent five days in solitary confinement. It's unclear when she will be released….[In March 2015, after being locked up for six months, Stacey Addison was released from jail and returned home.]

"Woman Takes Wrong Cab, Winds Up in Prison," CNN, November 4, 2014 

Abusing Hugo Chavez's Corpse

     Shortly after Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, died of cancer, officials of that country made a startling announcement. The dead president's embalmed corpse would be on permanent display in a glass casket in the Museum of the Revolution not far from the Presidential Palace where Chavez ruled for fourteen years.

     While Americans Sean Penn and Jesse Jackson mourned the death of the dictator, my thoughts about Chavez's death concerned what they did to his corpse. In Venezuela, abuse of corpse is a crime. In the United States it is, and putting a dead person on permanent display would violate the law.

     I like living in a country where you're not allowed to abuse dead bodies. However, I imagine that Mr. Penn and Mr. Jackson both approved of the display. It would allow them to continue visiting the dictator. Roy Rogers, the singing cowboy, had his horse Trigger stuffed. That must have made Trigger's fans so happy. I found it disgusting. 

Thornton P. Knowles On Criminal Investigation

Criminal investigation is a thinking person's game. That's why so many criminal investigations are bungled.

Thornton P. Knowles

Nutty Professors: Crime and Craziness Inside the Academic Bubble

Publish or Perish

     In April 2011, Diederik A. Stapel, a professor of social psychology at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, published a study based on questionnaires and human experiments that showed, among other things, that advertising works by making "women feel worse about themselves," and that conservative politics creates hypocrisy. Stapel's findings attracted a lot of positive media attention which included articles in the New York and Los Angeles Times. As it turned out, Professor Stapel and his study were frauds. In September, following revelations that Stapel had invented data and lied in more than thirty experiments, Tilburg University fired him.

     Professor Stapel's response to his problem wouldn't surprise anyone familar with academia. He claimed that under pressure from the university to publish, he gave in to temptation and produced a bogus paper. He also blamed the lack of scholarly checks and balances that would have prevented him from being a fraud. "I want to emphasize," he said, "that the mistakes that I made were not born out of selfish needs." (No one admits to actual wrongdoing anymore, it's always "mistakes." But how does someone "mistakenly" commit fraud?)  Professor Stapel managed, in his case, to both publish and perish.

Suffering for his Art

     Michigan State University art professor Danny Guthrie was photographing himself with former and current students--male and female--who were typically forty years younger than him. His critics at the university asserted that these sexually suggestive photographs were "obcene" and "oppressive to women." An outraged student (we are now living in the Outrage Era), writing in the school newspaper, objected to the fact that Guthrie, in the photographs, appeared to be dominating his female subjects who were often sitting or reclining. According to this critic, the professor was "virile, powerful, and masculine" while the female subjects were "disempowered, silenced, and feminine."

     On the university's web site, Professor Guthrie responded to his critics' handwringing this way: "Certainly subject matter such as this is politically charged....My interest is to acknowledge these various traditions and debates, twisting and blurring the codes of classical aesthetics, contemporary rhetorically motivated art, and even erotica." The beauty of this response was that nobody had any idea what it meant. Professor Guthrie had more: "As one ages, it is with no small sense of remorse and regret, that one comes to experience the realm of desire, remorse, and carnality as existing more in the past than the future." (Forget art, this BS artist belonged in the English Department.)

     On November 29, 2011, Michigan State's interim president of university relations told USA Today that Guthrie's behavior and his photographs were not inappropriate. As a result, he was not reprimanded by the university. With that, the nation breathed a collective sigh of relief.

The Meth Professor

     On November 7, 2011, investigators from several law enforcement agencies searched the Somerville, Massachusets residence of Professor Irena Kristy and her 29-year-old son Grigory Genkin. Narcotics officers had surveilled the couple for almost a year. In the home, the searchers found a large amount of materials used in the manufacture of methamphetamine. Chareged with crimes related to the making and distribution of meth, Genkin turned himself in a few days after the search. On December 4,   2011, police took 74-year-old Professor Kristy into custody for allegedly helping her son operate a meth lab in their home.

     After emigrating to the United States from Russia in 1985, Kristy was hired as an adjunct professor of calculus at Suffolk University. (Adjunct faculty are appointed semester by semester.) Two years later, Kristy accepted a tenure-track professorship at Boston University while holding her position at Suffolk University. Reporters compared the Kristy case to the then popular TV series Breaking Bad starring Bryan Cranston. The show featured a former high school chemistry teacher named Mr. White who was a master meth cook in a high-tech, underground lab.

     The prosecutor's office, in February 2012, dropped the charges against the professor. Boston University, however, did not renew her teaching contract.

Puppy Love

     If you can't handle the stress of law school, how can you deal with the stress of the legal profession? Students at George Mason University Law School, in 2012, were given access to homeless puppy dogs as a means of coping with the stress of academic life.

     One of the George Mason University law students soothed by a puppy told a reporter that as a result of her dog therapy "I got to be human again." These law students, when they enter their dog-eat-dog profession, are in for a shock. It's going to take a lot of puppies.
 
Professor Solicits Prostitution

     In August 2007, Miami Police arrested Donald Marvin Jones for "soliciting to commit prostitution." Jones, a well-known, TV friendly constitutional law professor at the University of Miami, had allegedly offered an undercover cop $20 for oral sex. On September 26, 2011, the 63-year-old law professor was busted again for the same offense.

     The citizens of Miami could take comfort in knowing that as murderers, rapists, muggers, burglars, and drug dealers roamed the streets of their great city, high-paid cops were out there posing as prostitutes to bring down criminals like Professor Jones.

     The professor pleaded guilty and paid a fine.

Bad Santa

     There is nothing more goofy than a professor who has inflated a nonexistent problem into a real problem that can be solved with the professor's easy but ridiculous solution. Say hello to Nutty Professor George Giuliani, the Director of the Graduate School Program in Special Education at Hofstra University. Giuliani, a New York State licensed psychologist and author of books with engaging titles like: "Creating Confident Children in the Classroom: The Use of Positive Restructuring, and What Every Teacher Should Know About Students with Special Needs," appeared on the morning TV show "Fox and Friends" in December 2011 to discuss the evils inherent in the animated film classic, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

     Professor Giuliani told the TV audience that because of Rudolph's disability--his flashing red nose--the deer was bullied by Santa and his other reindeer. According to the professor: "Comet is saying to children, don't play with this reindeer again. And he [Comet] tells him [Rudolph] to go home and he bullies him and mocks him, and the other kids [what kids?] start mocking him. Can you imagine if your child's teacher said to the class, 'don't ever play with this child again'?" Professor Giuliani obviously didn't like Comet, but he was also tough on Santa as well: "Santa Claus is saying, 'you [Rudolph] cannot be on my team because you have a disability....' "

     Okay, so that's the problem. The solution? Keep "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" off TV! (Perhaps they could rate it for mature audiences.) That won't happen of course, and Professor Giuliani knew that. But hell, what's wrong with dreaming of a perfect world and a chance to appear on national television?     

Get-A-Way Skateboard

     A suspect wanted for stealing a BMW sedan led police on a chase in Van Nuys, California, bailed out on foot and attempted to get away on a skateboard before he was blocked by a Good Samaritan in a pickup truck. The suspect exited the 405 Freeway at Victory Boulevard at three-forty in the afternoon of December 1, 2014 and drove the stolen vehicle on the surface streets in Van Nuys at high speeds, at times reaching 90 mph.

     On eastbound Sherman Way, the suspect crashed into the back of another vehicle in stopped traffic. The suspect then jumped out of the BMW and ran into oncoming traffic with a skateboard under his arm. He ran north on Valjean Avenue, jumped on his skateboard and rode the sidewalk for less than half a block before running into traffic again. A pickup truck driver blocked him in traffic, then accelerated and turned right on Cantlay Street where he blocked the suspect at a gate. Police officers took the car thief into custody.

"Car Theft Suspect Jumps on Skateboard to Evade Cops," ABC News, December 1, 2014 

The Very Young Killer

     On February 5, 2015, Trina Whitehead, a mother of four, left her 2-month-old daughter Zuri overnight with a friend in Wickliffe, Ohio, a suburban community within the Cleveland metropolitan area. Trina had known the woman she left Zuri with for six years. The 39-year-old babysitter, the mother of an eleven-year-old girl, had watched her friend's children before when she needed a night off. (The babysitter and her daughter were not identified by the media.)

     At three the next morning, February 6, the babysitter fell asleep on her living room couch. Her daughter, who had also been on the sofa with the baby, took the infant to the second floor while her mother slept. She returned to the couch forty-five minutes later with the baby in her arms.

     The adult babysitter, awakened by her daughter, was shocked by the sight of Zuri. The infant's head was bleeding and terribly swollen.

     The eleven-year-old girl's mother dialed 911, and to the dispatcher, reported that the 2-month-old baby in her care had trouble breathing and wouldn't open her eyes.

     Paramedics and police officers arrived at the house a few minutes later. An ambulance crew rushed the severely injured infant to nearby Lake West Hospital. From that medical facility the baby was flown to the Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland where she died on the operating table.

     Police officers took the eleven-year-old girl to the Lake County Juvenile Detention Center for questioning.

     A forensic pathologist with the Cuyahoga County Coroner's Office in Cleveland determined the infant's cause of death to be "multiple blunt force trauma to the head and torso." The tiny victim had suffered "massive brain injuries, severe damage to the liver, and external bleeding." The coroner ruled the baby's death a homicide.

     On Monday February 9, 2015, Juvenile Court Judge Karen Lawson, at the eleven-year-old's detention hearing, formally charged the girl with murder. In Ohio, persons under the age of 14 cannot be charged as adults. As a result, this case proceeded through the juvenile criminal justice system. If convicted, the accused pre-teen could be held at a State Department of Youth Services Facility until she reached the age of 21.

     The young murder suspect, represented by a public defender at her detention hearing, sat quietly at the defense table with her head resting on her folded arms. According to a detective who had questioned her, the girl showed no remorse for what investigators believed she had done to the baby. (The authorities did not identify the murder weapon or exactly how the crime had been committed.)

     Every year around 20 children under the age of 12 intentionally kill someone. Criminologists believe that the number of pre-teen murder defendants has been on the rise. No one is quite sure why. 

The Ronnie Towns Murder Case

     Elrey "Bud" Runion posted a Craigslist ad in hopes of connecting with someone willing to sell him a 1966 Ford Mustang convertible. On Thursday afternoon January 22, 2015, the 69-year-old Vietnam veteran and AT&T retiree and his wife June, a 66-year-old former elementary school teacher, left their home in Marietta, Georgia en route to McRae, a Telfair County town 180 miles southeast of the Atlanta area. They were on their way to meet a man in McRae who said he had a 1966 Mustang for them to look at.

     The day after Mr. Runion and his wife left Marietta, family members reported them missing after they failed to show up to babysit their grandchildren.

     Investigators in Telfair County, Georgia determined that a 28-year-old man named Ronnie Adrian Towns had called Mr. Runion Thursday afternoon from a disposable cellphone. Deputies with the sheriff's office questioned Towns about the call and his relationship with the missing couple.

     Later, when the authorities realized that Towns had given them information that turned out to be false, a Telfair County prosecutor charged him with giving false statements to the police and criminal attempt to commit theft by deception. At that point, Mr. Towns' whereabouts were unknown.

     On Monday morning January 26, 2015, accompanied by his relatives, Towns surrendered to the local authorities. According to the sheriff, the suspect had no criminal record and came from a good family.

      In the meantime, the search for Mr. and Mrs. Runion, a law enforcement operation that involved helicopters and watercraft, centered around a shallow pond and wooded area not far from land owned by the suspect's parents. On Monday afternoon, searchers found the missing couples' 2003 GMC Envoy partially submerged in the pond. Their bodies were discovered nearby in the woods along Webb Cemetery Road not far from the property owned by the suspect's family.

     The sheriff of Telfair County, at a press conference, made it clear that investigators believed that Ronnie Adrian Towns had lured Mr. and Mrs. Runion to McRae on the pretext of selling them a 1966 Mustang. He did so with the intent to rob them. The sheriff withheld information regarding how the Runions had died pending the completion of their autopsies. When the forensic pathologist completed his work, a local prosecutor would make a decision regarding additional charges in the case.

     On Tuesday January 27, 2015, the Telfair County prosecutor charged Ronnie Towns with malice murder and armed robbery. The judge denied him bond. According to the forensic pathologist, the victims had been shot in the head.

     The murder suspect grew up in the southern Georgia farming community where his father raised pine trees and grew soybeans, corn, and peanuts. Ronnie Towns lived with his wife and young daughter and worked on construction jobs for a local homebuilder. He also helped his uncle install carpets. "He's a good kid and very smart," the uncle said to a reporter. "It just doesn't make any sense why this would ever go down. It's hard for his parents. They're not understanding."

     Mr. Runion had been known in the community for fixing up old bicycles he gave to poor children through a charity run out of the Mount Paran Church of God in Marietta. Over the years he and his wife had participated in other charities throughout the south.

     As of January 2019, with four attorneys representing him in the death penalty double murder case, Ronnie Towns has not been tried. 

The Burglar

The typical burglar is young, amateurish, and motivated by the desire to achieve immediate material gain. And most burglaries, even though they involve forced entry, require few tools, little planning, and almost no skill or dexterity.

Deputy Sheriff Killed in Murder-Suicide

     A Georgia sheriff's detective was one of the victims of a murder-suicide that took place Tuesday afternoon January 6, 2015…Deputies responded to the home of detective Sam Driskell in Hiram, Georgia at one-thirty in the afternoon when he failed to show up for court. When they entered the home they found Driskell, 52, his wife Muachin, 36, and their 12-year-old daughter Carolyn dead from gunshot wounds. Investigators believed Driskell's stepson, 21-year-old Felix Almonte, who was also found dead inside the home, was the gunman. The victims were shot during the night with a Glock .45, detective Driskell's service weapon…

     Detective Driskell was a 10-year veteran with the Paulding County Sheriff's Office. He had been the Director for the Sex Offender Registry….

"Georgia Detective Among Victims of Murder-Suicde," Fox News, January 7, 2015  

The Nigerian Child Bride Poison Case

     A child bride forced into marriage in Nigeria killed a groom and three of his friends with a poisoned meal on April 7, 2014. Fourteen-year-old Wasila Umaru was married a week earlier to 35-year-old Umaru Sani….Over the weekend, the groom invited a dozen friends to his Ungwar Yansoro village, about 60 miles from the northern city of Majia.

     The teenager told police she bought rat poison at a village market and used it to prepare a dish of rice. According to a police official, "The suspect confessed to committing the crime and said she did it because she was forced to mary a man she did not love….The groom and a friend died the same day, and two other victims died later in the hospital. Umaru is cooperating with police and likely will be charged with culpable homicide….

     Child marriage is common in Nigeria and especially in the mainly Muslim and impoverished north, where the numbers increase in times of drought because a bride price is paid and it means one less mouth to feed. Fifty percent of Nigerian girls living in rural areas are married before they turn 18, according to the U.N. children's agency. That's a lot of child brides in a country of some 170 million….

     Child brides often suffer difficult pregnancies--the leading cause of death worldwide for girls aged 15 to 19--and are much more likely to contract AIDS and be subjected to domestic violence, according to the International Center for Research on Women….

     No one in Nigeria has been prosecuted for marrying a child, including Sen. Sani Ahmed Yerima, infamous for divorcing a 17-year-old that he married when she was 15 so he could marry a 14-year-old Egyptian girl in 2010, when he was 49. He had to divorce one of his child brides because Islamic law allows a maximum of four wives at a time.

     Many child brides are divorced for that reason and because of incontinence and other medical problems caused by difficult pregnancies, according to local child rights advocates who say such girls are put out on the street.

"Child Bride Kills Groom and Three of His Friends by Poisoning Meal," Associated Press, April 10, 2014 

Thornton P. Knowles on Lobbyists

If politicians are America's waste product, then lobbyists who bribe them are rats who live and thrive in the sewer. Washington, D.C. is not a swamp to be drained, swamps are good. It's an open sewer in need of major plumbing.

Thornton P. Knowles

Thornton P. Knowles On The Politician's DNA Study

A new DNA study has revealed that genetically, people drawn into politics tend to possess large heads, undersized brains, tiny hearts, big mouths, and forked tongues. They also lack genes associated with shame, remorse, and embarrassment.

Thornton P. Knowles

Thornton P. Knowles On How to Spot a "Polidiopath"

     What do you get when you cross a sociopath with a superficial, dishonest, humorless, thin-skinned idiot? You get an idiot-politician, or, if I may coin a term, a "polidiopath." When I imagine such a person dozens of well-known politicians leap to mind. And I imagine, unless you are a "polidiopathophile," it's the same with you.

     I suspect that most polidiopaths are in high office because in politics, polidiopathy rises to the top. These are people who never admit they are wrong, go to extreme lengths to cover-up their mistakes, scandals and crimes, and when confronted with their blunders and follies, blame others. They are extremely sure of themselves as leaders, and almost always lead us in the wrong direction.

     Polidiopaths give themselves away by what they do in the name of public service. The following is a short list of behaviorial patterns that makes it easy to spot one. Polidiopaths:

1.  Make compaign promises they know, and we know, they won't keep.

2. Pass feel-good, window-dressing laws that do more harm than good.

3. Create terrible economic problems then take credit for useless or harmful corrective legislation.

4. Lie boldly and badly to cover-up their blunders, crimes, and embarrassing behavior.

5. Never admit, in the face of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, that they are wrong.

6. Blame others for the effects of their over-governance.

7. Do whatever it takes to destroy their political enemies.

8. Use insider information to make killings in the stock market.

9. Sell their votes to special interests.

10. Pander to voters' lowest instincts.

     Spotting polidiopaths in Washington and in our state capitals is as easy as spotting stars on a clear night. Getting them replaced by decent people is obviously not so easy. Low congressional approval ratings will not do the trick. In a republic, politicians reflect the citizens they represent. Before we get better leaders, we need to be better ourselves.

Thornton P. Knowles

The Assassination of Gianni Versace

     Andrew Cunanan stalked Gianni Versace [renowned fashion designer] before he killed him, often walking the same routes, sometimes following him.

     The morning of the shooting [July 15, 1997], Versace left his house to walk to the News Cafe on Ocean Drive [Miami Beach] where he had his favorite gourmet coffee and picked up several newspapers and magazines. When he arrived back at his home on 11th Street, Cunanan walked up behind him and fired two shots into the back of Versace's head, killing him instantly.

     The assassin then fled, and the case wasn't closed until Cunanan's dead body was found eight days later on a houseboat owned by a friend of Cunanan's who was in Germany at the time....

     One FBI theory is that Versace once turned town Cunanan for a modeling job. Cunanan was a bar-hopper, drug-user (possibly including steroids and rage-inducing testosterone), and he often sold himself to older, wealthy men. It is now known that Cunanan and Versace were never involved sexually, but it is known that the two men had met at least once.

Stephen J. Spignesi, In the Crosshairs, 2003

Strip Clubs And Their Lonely, Depressed Men

     On April 17, 2013, police in the southern California city of Rialto were called to the Spearmint Rhino Gentleman's Club regarding shots fired. When the officers arrived at the strip club, they found a 23-year-old exotic dancer named Jacqueline Marquez-Figueroa bleeding from a gunshot wound to her neck.

     Paramedics rushed the strip club dancer to the Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton where she underwent emergency surgery. The bullet had entered the back of her neck and was lodged in her jaw. (She is expected to survive the wound.)

     Police officers had found the wounded dancer, a resident of Moreno Valley, lying just outside a private lap dance room. On the other side of the door officers discovered Gerald Paxton Davis. The 46-year-old was dead from a self-inflicted gunshot.

     According to the police, the San Bernardino strip club regular had been paying Marquez-Figueroa, who worked under the name "Egypt," for lap dances since January 2013. Investigators believe he shot the dancer and them himself after she rejected his sexual advances.

     At the time of the shootings, there were ten employees and ten customers in the club.

     A week earlier, in the same establishment, a California correctional officer attempted suicide by cutting his wrists following a lap dance.

     These two cases suggest that among those drawn to gentlemen's clubs are lonely, depressed men who are losing touch with reality. 

Thornton P. Knowles On Undergoing Writing Surgery

Dr. Grammar tells me that to improve the health of my writing I need major surgery to have my split infinitives, adjectives, and dangling participles removed. Ouch.

Thornton P. Knowles

Heather Carpenter: The Felonious Party Pooper

     On December 1, 2018, 42-year-old Heather Carpenter had been teaching, as a substitute, less than two months at the Phillippi Shores Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida. The school principal's 6-year-old daughter, one of Carpenter's first grade students, was being thrown a birthday party that day at Urfer Park in Sarasota County. Heather Carpenter had announced the party to the other kids in her class. What the teacher didn't announce was the fact, due to a dispute she was having with the principal, she planned to sabotage the girl's party.

     At six-thirty on the morning of December 1, 2018, a man in Urfer Park saw a woman wearing blue rubber gloves and a blue surgical mask dumping human feces on several wooden tables and two grills. When the vandal realized she had been seen, she drove off in a gray mini-van.

     As a result of the contamination of seven park tables and two grills, the birthday party was canceled. It would cost the park $2,300 to replace the vandalized items.

     On December 7, 2018, deputies with the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office questioned Heather Carpenter at her home. The suspect said she had sabotaged her student's birthday party as revenge against the girl's father.

     On January 5, 2019, at Carpenter's  arraignment hearing, the prosecutor charged the teacher with felony criminal mischief. The magistrate set her bond at $2,500. The substitute teacher also lost her job at the Phillippi Shores Elementary School.

     Presumably there will be an investigation into this teacher's employment background and the extend to which it had been vetted prior to her hiring at the Phillippi school. From her actions in the park, it is not unreasonable to infer that this woman was mentally imbalanced. Whether or not this could have been revealed in a pre-employment investigation remains to be seen.

When No One Is Wrong

When facts no longer matter, everyone can be right and no one is ever wrong. This makes a dangerous, very dangerous world.

Dangerous Places

     In a perfect world, there would be no crime. That will never happen. (This is good news for cops, security practitioners, lawyers, parole agents, and prison guards.) In a better world, 90 percent of the criminal population would be in prison, victimizing each other instead of us. In the real world, however, only a tiny fraction of them are behind bars. Given that reality, it's helpful to know where at least most of the dangerous criminals are. (Crime can't be prevented, it can just be moved from one place to another.) If you can figure out where most of the dangerous people are likely to be, you can reduce the risk of becoming a victim by avoiding these places. This, of course, doesn't apply to people forced to live or work in high crime areas, and certain types of criminals such as pedophiles, who are everywhere. Elementary kids can't force their parents to home school them. But many of us can avoid places where we are more likely to be mugged, raped, assaulted, and murdered.

Dangerous Cities

     Every year, the FBI announces the five most dangerous cities in the United States. By dangerous, they mean municipalities with the highest per capita crime rates. (Even in these places, over the past ten years, rates of violent crime have declined.) 

     So, in terms of avoiding criminals, what does the most dangerous city list mean? Not much. Almost all cities and towns have relatively safe neighborhoods as well as high-crime districts. A person who lives in a good neighborhood in Chicago is probably safer than someone who lives in a bad section in say, Erie, Pennsylvania. Moreover, people who live and work in the safer parts of town increase their chances of victimization if they enter crime-hot sections of the city for drugs or prostitutes. Lifestyle, as much as place of residence, determines one's vulnerability to crime. And, there is always bad luck, being at the wrong place at the wrong time. People are mugged in broad daylight in Walmart parking lots.

     Perhaps the FBI should publish a list of five things (other than shopping) people do that turns them into victims of crime. This is my list of dangerous behaviors: aggressive driving, public intoxication, buying dope, picking up street walkers, and looking wealthy in the wrong places. And, for good measure, I'll add: cutting in line at McDonalds.

Indian Reservations

     According to figures released by the U.S. Department of Justice, the rates of crime on the nation's 310 Indian reservations are more than two and a half times higher than the national average. The rates of violent criminal offenses--murder, assault, rape, and robbery--are as high or higher than the corresponding crime rates in America's most dangerous cities. Women who live on reservations are ten times more likely to be murdered than their counterparts who live elsewhere. They are sexually assaulted at a rate four times the national average.

     Indian reservations are plagued by poverty, drug and alcohol abuse, broken families, and higher than average school drop-out rates, problems also found in America's inner cities. Under federal law, tribal courts have the authority to prosecute tribal members for crimes committed on Indian land, but cannot sentence defendants to more than three years in prison. As a result, tribes rely on federal authorities to investigate and prosecute serious offenses.

      Because Indian reservations are located in remote areas of the country, there are not enough FBI agents to handle the investigative caseloads. For this reason, only half, and in some cases less than half, of serious reservation crimes result in criminal prosecution. In 2010, only 35 percent of reported rapes led to federal prosecution. Regarding child sexual abuse, 39 percent of these cases find their way into federal court. By comparison, nationwide, 80 percent of federal drug related crimes are prosecuted. (Cops love drug cases, that's where all the law enforcement money is spent--gadgets, cool weapons, overtime, etc.--and drug users and sellers are easy to catch and prosecute. The other crimes require time and investigative know-how.)

     For women and children, an Indian reservation is a dangerous place.

           

Daughter Secretly Films Father's Sexual Abuse

     A lack of so-called hard evidence has been known to unravel even a strong sexual assault case, but that shouldn't be a problem for a 14-year-old French girl who thought to secretly film one of her allegedly abusive father's attacks with a bedroom webcam.

     Even after the victim  had initially come forward, spilling details of the relationship with her father to a counselor at school in Flornsac, a small town in the southern Herault region, police could not arrest him until she delivered video proof of her allegations. Now she's in a woman's shelter, and he's awaiting trial in Beziers Prison. Investigators are still trying to gauge the mother's complicity, though she appears to have been a victim as well.

     Given that there's little disputing the veracity or import of the webcam footage, the father's attorney, Mathieu Montfort, has instead tried to downplay the frequency of such attacks: "There was a period when he was unemployed and in the middle of a divorce," the lawyer was quoted as saying. "He [the defendant] insists that these acts did not stretch back further than three or four months. His daughter says longer. But everyone should be very careful in what they say." [Except defense attorneys, of course.]

     Attorney Montfort also noted that his client said he "took no pleasure" in abusing his daughter and was just "messing around." [Well then, no harm done. What a load of defense attorney crap.] If the alleged rapist's daughter hadn't been able to bank on his ignorance of web technology to outsmart him, odds are he'd still be "messing around" today.

Miles Klee, "14-Year-Old Girl Films Father's Sexual Abuse With Webcam," The Daily Dot, November 6, 2013 

Thornton P. Knowles On Truth Telling As a Lost Virtue

Unless under oath, lying is not a crime. But is it still a sin? You know, Thou Shall Not Lie. In a culture of materialism and self-love, the narcissistic right to personal happiness provides a moral justification, indeed a duty, to lie. Without respect for the truth, science can't flourish, business turns into crime, history is distorted, journalism is dead, and government can't be trusted. Without honesty there is no reality, and without reality there can be no justice. So-called political correctness is an insidious form of deception and reality denial. A society without a shared sense of reality is doomed. If Americans lose their respect for facts and the truth, they will end up being ruled by an elite class of humorless charlatans, fascists, who have no respect for them, the so-called American Dream, or democracy as we know it.

Thornton P. Knowles

Thornton P. Knowles On Americans Above The Law

One of the unfortunate hallmarks of American jurisprudence involves the longstanding fact that the law is applied unevenly to the disadvantage of citizens who are not members of the ruling elite.

Thornton P. Knowles

Gunplay at the Safe And Sound Senior Citizen Social Club

     In October 2011, officers with a state law enforcement agency in Indiana called the Excise Police, stormed a private club in downtown Gary. The officers forced their way into the Safe And Sound Senior Citizen Social Club where they seized a craps table, cases of beer, and a stash of liquor. (There must not be much crime in Gary, Indiana.)

     At the time of the raid, thirteen members, ages 50 to 87, were in the club. A local prosecutor, in fulfilling his duty to preserve the peace and dignity of the city, charged the club owner with serving alcohol without a license (oh my) and promoting professional gambling. (We certainly don't want the good folks of Indiana gambling. Oh wait, that would mean shutting down the state lottery.) The club owner pleaded guilty and paid a fine.

     At 11:30 on the night of February 12, 2014, the Safe And Sound Senior Citizen Social Club was raided again, this time by an armed robber. A 23-year-old Chicago man named Kendell Reed slipped into the private club through an exit door seconds after a patron left the building through the same doorway. Because the exit door locked behind him, and the front entrance was secure, Reed's accomplice was locked out of the building and missed out on the mayhem.

     Inside the club, Reed announced the robbery and ordered everyone at gunpoint to get down on the floor. For some reason, instead of collecting the loot, Reed opened fire on the patrons. He wounded four club members between the ages 43 and 76. As the robber reloaded his gun, one of the patrons, himself armed, returned fire. The club member's bullet entered but did not kill the robber. It did, however, bring an end to the gunfire.

     Responding officers with the Gary Police Department had to gain entry to the club by blasting the front door lock with a shotgun. Officers found Kendell Reed hiding and bleeding in the restroom.

     Reed and three of the people he shot were treated at Gary Methodist Hospital. The fourth man Reed shot had to be airlifted to Loyola University Medical Center. All of the people wounded that night are expected to survive their injuries. Following his medical treatment, the authorities put Mr. Reed behind bars.
   
     In May 2015, Kendell Reed pleaded guilty to aggravated battery. The judge sentenced him to 10 to 14 years in prison.

Youthful Prank Causes Death And Murder Charge

On January 2, 2019, a 14-year-old boy and two other juveniles in a GMC SUV were tossing eggs at passing motorists from their vehicle on a Houston, Texas street. A driver of one of the egged vehicles responded by flashing a handgun and chasing the SUV. The 14-year-old behind the wheel of the GMC sped through a red light and crashed into a Ford pickup, killing its driver, 45-year-old Silvia Zavala. The 14-year-old suffered a broken ankle. The authorities charged him with murder and booked him into a juvenile detention center. The pursuing motorist with the handgun did not stop at the scene of the fatal crash. Detectives identified this man and wanted him for questioning. This was a tragic case of unintended consequences. 

Car Theft

 Car theft accounts for one of the most significant and least-discussed crimes in America. While narcotics and hit men and gang shoot-outs monopolize the headlines of the nation's press, the car thief is quietly stealing your beautiful new car. Then he sells that car to a higher-up in the crime world, who in turn puts it into a professionally organized car face-lifter. When it comes out, it is a car of different color, perhaps with different accessories, and almost certainly with altered serial numbers. [Over the past decade, car theft, due to anti-theft technology, has been in significant decline.]

Thomas Plate, Crime Pays! 1975 

The McDonald's "Happy Meal" Case

     A McDonald's employee in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was arrested on January 29, 2014 after undercover police officers said they discovered her selling heroin in Happy Meal Boxes….Shantia Dennis, 26, was arrested after undercover law enforcement officials conducted a drug buy….

     Customers looking for heroin were instructed to go through the drive-through and say, "I'd like to order a toy." The customer would then be told to proceed to the first window, where they would be handed a Happy Meal Box containing heroin. [I imagine the drug buyer would pay someone else for the heroin at another location.]

     During the drug buy, the undercover officers recovered 10 stamp bags of heroin, as well as a small amount of marijuana….

Allie Malloy, "McDonald's Worker's Happy Meals Had a Bit Extra: Heroin," CNN, January 30, 2014