JFK Assassination: Most Americans Believe in a Conspiracy

     [In an Associated Press poll] conducted in mid-April 2013, 59 percent of Americans think multiple people were involved in a conspiracy to kill President John F. Kennedy, while 24 percent think Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, and 16 percent are unsure. A 2003 Gallup poll found that 75 percent of Americans felt there was a conspiracy.

     As the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's death approaches, the number of Americans who believe Oswald acted alone is at its highest since the period three years after the November 22, 1963 assassination when 36 percent said one man was responsible.

Associated Press, November 2013 

Criminal Justice Quote: The Hidden Locker Room Videos Case

     A man and a woman face more than 250 felonies for allegedly putting cameras in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin locker rooms. Melissa Wenckebach, 28, and Karl Landt, 36, were charged in the spring of 2014 with 37 counts of conspiring to capture an image of nudity without consent, and 214 counts were added against each of them Thursday October 9, 2014.

     The investigation began in April 2014 after Wenckebach was allegedly discovered with a camera in a Pleasant Prairie recreational facility locker room. She confessed to police that she had been recording people changing at Landt's request…She told police they had been in a relationship. They both worked at Uline corporate headquarters in Pleasant Prairie. Later, Wenckebach told investigators she had also placed cameras in locker rooms at work. Wenckebach placed cameras at the recreational facility 40 to 50 times over a four month period and at Uline for more than two years.

     Police seized computers and digital storage devices found at Landt's Waukegan, Illinois home, recovering dozens of videos. The 214 new charges stem from those videos. Both suspects remain out of custody on bond…

"Pair Face 250 Felonies Over Locker Room Cameras," Associated Press, October 11, 2014 

Criminal Justice Quote: Unlawful Shooting at the Moon

     An Arizona man arrested for unlawfully discharging a firearm told authorities he was trying to shoot the moon. On June 6, 2014, Prescott Valley police responded to the home after a woman reported that her boyfriend had fired several shots from a handgun and still was armed.

     The woman and her teenage son told police that 39-year-old Cameron Read was talking about seeing the Halley's Comet and fired a round out of the window. They heard several more shots before fleeing.

     Police say Read has been booked into the Yavapai County Jail on suspicion of felony counts of unlawful discharge of a firearm, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, endangerment, and misdemeanor criminal damage. [Obviously not to the moon.]

"Arizona Man Arrested For Shooting at Moon," Associated Press, June 11, 2014 

Criminal Justice Quote: Mayor Caught Dumping Dog Dirt in Neighbor's Yard

     The mayor of San Marino, California was caught on surveillance camera tossing a small bag of dog poop into a neighbor's front yard, and the homeowner is refusing to accept his apology. Resident Philip Lao said he discovered the small bag outside his home Saturday evening June 7, 2014 before going on a walk with his wife. After returning, he viewed footage from his home surveillance cameras to find out who dumped the bag in his yard. To his surprise, Lao recognized the culprit as Dennis Kneier, mayor of the wealthy San Gabriel Valley community.

     "We have not been able to sleep at night for a while because of this," Lao said. Kneier appears in the surveillance video holding a briefcase in his left hand and a small bag in his right as he walks in the 1400 block of Charlton Road. A woman, who was later identified as Kneier's wife, was walking a few steps ahead of  him and appears to say something to him, then points toward Lao's walkway moments before he tosses the bag.

     Lao called police about the incident and officers took a report, indicating the bag "appeared to have been intentionally placed in the walkway entrance," the San Marino Police Department said in a statement. Although police said Lao does not want to press charges, detectives are still investigating the incident.

     Lao claims the major has not been happy with him since he placed a "No poop zone" sign outside his home and has been vocal about his opposition to a proposed dog park at Lacy Park. But Kneier says he has no opinion about the dog park because it's not up for City Council review. As for the sign, Kneier said it has been a sore subject for many neighborhood residents, who have pleaded with him to convince Lao to remove it. "I personally don't like the sign, but I can't tell him to take it down," the mayor said.

     Kneier has not talked to Lao, but sent him a letter of apology [in which he claimed the dog dirt incident was accidental.]…But Lao says he's not accepting Kneier's apology because he believes the mayor is not being truthful. "He's compounding the situation by lying about how this occurred," Lao said. [Of course the mayor lied. He's a politician.]…

Veronica Rocha, "San Marino Mayor Caught Tossing Bag of Dog Poo in Neighbor's Yard," Los Angeles Times, June 10, 2014  

Criminal Justice Quote: Teen Violence

     At least fifteen million children in the United States are exposed to domestic violence each year….Imagine the confusion and fear in the mind of a young child who routinely watches his or her mother being battered by the other parent or another intimate partner. Imagine the long-standing confusion about what intimate relationships mean.

     Beyond the confines of the home, imagine the world through the eyes of a young child who grows up familiar with the sound of gunshots and where the funerals of young people killed in disputes and by stray bullets are common….In one community in Rochester, New York, the homicide rate for young black men fifteen to nineteen is sixty-five times the national homicide rate, while the rest of Rochester has a more typical homicide profile.

     According to a growing body of research…exposure to violence has a direct link to behavioral and emotional problems such as PTSD [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder], aggression, phobias, stress-related symptoms, insomnia, low self-esteem, and depression. We believe PTSD is closely linked to truancy and school dropouts. School performance usually drops precipitously when children are exposed to violence. These children are often unable to concentrate; they develop learning disabilities; they have poor problem-solving skills; they have low self-esteem; and they have difficulty forming attachments to others.

Kamala D. Harris, Smart on Crime, 2009

Criminal Justice Quote: Most Violent Criminals Aren't Deterred by Punishment

Most of the rapes and murders, and other crimes of high emotion or specific motivation…are perpetrated by people who fit one or more of the following profiles: They are emotionally out of control; they are convinced that they are so justified in the act they are committing that it is not even a crime; and/or they believe that they won't be caught…. Put more simply, they are so angry, delusional, arrogant, or lacking in moral conscience that they don't care about the punishment. They don't connect the dots between behavior and consequence until after the act is committed.

Kamala D. Harris, Smart on Crime, 2009

Criminal Justice Quote: Driving While Stupid

     State police in Louisiana say a 31-year-old Gonzales man is accused of driving to Troop A headquarters while drunk to file an accident report. Online booking records indicate that Patrick Ruffner remains in the East Baton Rouge Parish jail Monday, May 12, 2014, his bond set at $1,000….

     Trooper Jared Sandler says Ruffner called state police Saturday, May 10, 2014 to report that he had been in a hit-and-run accident on Interstate 10 in Baton Rouge. He was told to come to Troop A to fill out a crash report. When Ruffner got out of his SUV, a trooper smelled alcohol and gave him a field sobriety test and a breath test. Ruffner was booked with driving on a suspended license and with first-offense DWI.

"Man Allegedly Drove to Police Station While Drunk to File Accident Report," Associated Press, May 12, 2014 

Criminal Justice Quote: Do Guns Save Lives?

     There are conflicting estimates of the number of individuals who successfully use guns to defend themselves and others. Neither police departments nor the federal government keep such statistics. Gary Kleck, a criminologist at Florida State University, has done extensive research into all forms of gun violence. In his widely acclaimed 1991 book, Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, Kleck estimates that there are between 400,000 and 500,000 uses of firearms each year for defensive purposes. In recent years, his research has indicated that there may be up to 2.5 million instances of self-defense with firearms annually.

     The vast majority of these confrontations do not end in violence--usually a potential victim merely shows a gun and an aggressor retreats….

Robert A. Waters, The Best Defense, 1998

Criminal Justice Quote: Guns in America

     American culture is a gun culture--not merely in the sense that 75 to 86 million people own a total of about 200 to 240 million guns, but in the broader sense that guns pervade our debates on crime and are constantly present in movies and the news. How many times have we read about shootings, or how many times have we heard about tragic accidental gun deaths--bad guys shooting innocent victims, bad guys shooting each other in drug wars, shots fired in self-defense, police shootings of criminals, let alone shooting in wars? We are inundated by images through the television and the press. Our kids are fascinated by computer war games and toy guns.

     So we're obsessed with guns. But the big question is: What do we really know? How many times have most of us actually used a gun or seen a gun being used? How many of us have ever seen somebody in real life threatening somebody else with a gun, witnessed a shooting, or seen people defend themselves by displaying or firing guns?

     The truth is that most of us have very little firsthand experience with using guns as weapons. Even the vast majority of police officers have never exchanged shots with a suspect. Most of use receive our images of guns and their use through television, film, and newspapers.

John R. Lott, More Guns, Less Crime, Second Edition, 2000

Criminal Justice Quote: Male Arrest Rates in U.S.

A study [published in the Journal of Crime and Delinquency on January 5, 2014] found that nearly half of black males and almost 40 percent of white males are arrested by the time they are 23-years-old. The analysis of national data from 1997 to 2008 of teenagers and young adults' arrest histories excludes traffic violations.

Caroline May, The Daily Caller, January 6, 2014 

Criminal Justice Quote: Knockout Game Arrest

The New York City Police Department's Hate Crimes Task Force arrested a Brooklyn man on January 3, 2014 for at least seven "knockout" assaults. Barry Baldwin, 35, punched out the victims between November 9 and Christmas Eve in [Brooklyn neighborhoods] Canarsie and Midwood. The victims were white women and most were Jewish….On November 9 Baldwin allegedly socked a 78-year-old Midwood woman while she pushed her great-grandaughter's stroller….Nearly a month later the suspect punched a 20-year-old in the head….Baldwin's next target was a 33-year-old mother walking with her 7-year-old daughter in Midwood. The victim fell into the child before crashing to the ground. She suffered cuts and bruises to her hands and knees….

New York Post, January 4, 2014 

Criminal Justice Quote: So Much For Brotherly Love

An Iowa man was arrested after he pulled a knife on his brother during a fight over peanut butter jelly sandwiches. Jerome Davis was arrested on January 3, 2014 after the confrontation with his brother in their Des Moines home. Both men are in their 50s. Davis was angry because his brother was eating too many sandwiches. Davis made three sandwiches and ate them in their living room then made another an hour later. The brothers began to argue about laziness and overeating. Davis allegedly pulled out a folding knife and held it against his brother's face. He has been charged with domestic abuse with a weapon.

Associated Press, January 4, 2014 

A Harvard Sociologist on The Knockout Game

[Regarding the "Knockout Game"] this pattern of violence is sick and barbaric, and, for its victims, both senseless and tragic. Social scientists, and especially sociologists, have abandoned or underplayed the fundamental concepts of norms and values. [Good and evil if you will. Academics generally believe that crime is  mostly caused by poverty and social environment, particularly among minorities.]

Orlando Patterson as quoted in John Bennett's article published in The Daily Caller, December 18, 2013

Criminal Justice Quote: The Knockout Game: A Cultural Cycle of Violence

     When violence is culture; then it's a cultural problem. Throw together large amounts of fatherless teenagers with no real goal in life except, briefly to become NBA stars or rappers boasting about selling rock, and the knockout game is inevitable.

     Some of the knockouters will drift back and forth out of prison, heading back to the old neighborhood to hang out with the old gang, catch a meal and a nap at their mother's house, before urging their friends to go out looking for trouble….

     Catch them two decades down the road and they'll talk about how they almost wound up going down a bad path before they turned their lives around and they'll have stories of their friends who went from mugging to dealing to shooting. But often these same men, now amiable and wise, shaking their heads at their past selves, will have left behind a trail of fatherless kids who are repeating the process all over again.

David Greenfield, "Civilization and the Knockout Game," Frontpagemag.com, December 4, 2013

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

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: Identify Theft

     In recent years identity theft has become the very monster I feared it would become. It's a crime so versatile that the list of potential targets is endless. Who's at risk? Anyone who has a credit card or a bank account, or who pays a bill. Anyone who has a mortgage, a car loan, or a debit card. Anyone who has a driver's license, a Social Security number, or a job. Anyone who has phone services or health insurance. Anyone who goes on the Internet. Even somebody who's always watching his back, like me. People of all ages, all incomes, and both sexes.

Frank W. Abagnale [of Catch Me If You Can fame], Stealing Your Life, 2009

Criminal Justice Quote: Stalking Victims

 Who are the victims of stalkers? A statistically small--but prominently visible--number are celebrities: Hollywood actors and actresses and highly visible athletes. Performing on television, in concerts, or in sports arenas, these figures are familiar to countless people worldwide....

     While the stalking of celebrities often draws the most media attention, however, the vast majority of stalking takes place between ordinary people--often ordinary people who have known each other intimately....

     A broad arena of remaining cases exists in which victims are either casual acquaintances or random targets. These cases include the stalking of co-workers and most often tragically, the stalking of children.

Melita Schaum and Karen Parrish, Stalked, 1995

Criminal Justice Quote: Identity Thieves and The Accessibility of Personal Information

I regularly teach [identity theft to] agents at the FBI Academy, and one little demonstration I do is ask one of my students for his address. Nothing more, not even his name. By the following morning I'm able to hand over to him twenty-two pieces of so-called "private" information about him, including his Social Security number, birth date, salary, current bank and account numbers, mother's maiden name, children's names, spouse's name and Social Security Number, and neighbors. I can even reveal who lives with him in his house but isn't related to him. And I don't even have to do something as dramatic as hack into his bank database. All this information is readily available from publicly accessible sources on the Internet, and you or Joe Criminal can get it as easily as I did. Imagine how much I could have found out about the guy if I had decided to break the law!

Frank W. Abagnale [of Catch Me If You Can fame], Stealing Your Life, 2009

Criminal Justice Quote: Crime in Black Communities

     Experiencing a violent crime rate of 2,137 per 100,000 of the population, Detroit is the nation's most dangerous city. Rounding out Forbes Magazine's 2012 list of the 10 most dangerous cities are St. Louis, Oakland, Memphis, Birmingham, Atlanta, Baltimore, Stockton, Cleveland, and Buffalo....In most of these cities, blacks have been mayors, chiefs of police, school superintendents and principals and have dominated city councils....

     Law-abiding poor black people suffer the nation's highest rates of criminal victimization from assaults and homicides. More than 50 percent of homicide victims are black.

     In addition to victimization, the level of lawlessness in many black communities has the full effect of a law banning economic growth. That's because the thugs are equal-opportunity thugs who will rip off a black-owned business just as they'd rip off a white-owned business....

Walter Williams, columnist, 2013