Thornton P. Knowles On The First A-Word

During my grade school years, the worst thing a kid could say in class was "ain't." I remember sitting next to a kid in fourth grade who, upon being accused of chewing gum, said, "I ain't got no gum in my mouth." Suddenly every kid in the room stopped breathing. Lying to a teacher was bad enough, but using the A-word to do it constituted a major offense. The teacher yanked the hapless offender out of his desk and frogmarched him straight to the principal's office for a paddling. I still don't chew gum and never utter the A-word.

Thornton P. Knowles

In Greece, You're Not a Criminal, Just Disabled

     In Greece, a welfare state in financial crises, the Labor Ministry issues government disability payments to, among others, pyromaniacs, compulsive gamblers, sadomasochists, and peeping Toms. That's right. Before being too critical of this form of governmental generosity, put yourself in the shoes of a pyromaniac. Who's going to hire a compulsive fire setter? (Surely you don't want fire-bugs lying on their job applications.) While sadomasochists can find satisfying jobs as bureaucrats, what do you do with the peeping Toms? (Those not afraid of heights could work as window washers, but how many jobs is that?) Lest you think the Greek government treats is pathological criminals harshly, the labor minister expanded the list of state-recognized disability categories to include: pedophiles, exhibitionists, and kleptomaniacs.

     At the risk of coming off a bit insensitive to compulsive firesetters, child molesters, and serial killers, why aren't these pathological criminals receiving the full benefits of the state while serving time in prison? How can one declare himself a pedophile and not be questioned, arrested, and put in jail?

      Perhaps you have to be a socialist to understand what's going on here. I'm also not an economist, but I do think I know why the country of Greece is in financial trouble.
    

Thornton P. Knowles On Mankind Outsmarting Itself

The smart boys gave us electricity, the radio, the combustion engine, television, nuclear fusion, the computer, and the Internet. In the end, it's the smart boys and their technology that will bring us all down: Mankind outsmarting itself.

Thornton P. Knowles

Thornton P. Knowles On Wrong House SWAT Raids

No one is entirely safe from the wrong house, pre-dawn raid by a SWAT team looking for drugs. In the drug war, a man's home is no longer his castle; it's simply a structure that can be forcefully entered by heavily armed cops operating on the word of some drug addled snitch. Over the years dozens of innocent citizens have been killed while trying to protect their homes from people they thought were criminal intruders. Moreover, countless dogs have been slaughtered in the never ending drug war. When the first SWAT teams were created in 1969, they were not intended for this. Now, because of the war on drugs, there are thousands of SWAT teams across the country engaged in a dangerous form of militaristic policing.

Thornton P. Knowles

The Future of Small Town Policing

     Throughout the country small town police departments struggle to exist. Over the last two decades more and more small towns, primarily for economic reasons, have shut down their police departments. These communities were forced to outsource their law enforcement services to county, regional or state police agencies. This is a shame because law enforcement is best administered on a local level. Small towns have their own enforcement priorities and are best served by officers who have intimate knowledge of their town.

     In July 2018, all four members of the Blandford, Massachusetts Police Department resigned in protest. According to Interim Police Chief Roberta Samacki, "We regret leaving the town without a town police force but have no choice given the situation we face."

     The situation these officers faced involved low pay--$15 per hour--old, expired and ill-fitting bullet proof vests, and the condition of the department's best patrol vehicle. The 2010 Ford Crown Victoria, purchased secondhand, had no air conditioning and a front driver's seat stuck in the reclining position.

     Due to budget concerns, officers of the town of 1,200 may have to permanently dissolve the police department. Following the officer's resignations, the Massachusetts State Police began responding to Blandford's 911 calls.

     Unfortunately, the fate of the Blandford Police Department reflects the sad future of small town law enforcement.

Pedophilia, The Perpetual Epidemic: What Can Be Done About It?

     In the United States and around the world, pedophiles have infiltrated and infected organized religion, public and private education, the sports world, the health care industry, charitable organizations, and even the institutions of criminal justice. They flourish in our families, neighborhoods, and places of employment. Wherever there are children there are pedophiles. This is a harsh, dangerous reality that cannot be wished away. It's time societies, on behalf of children, recognize it and take this enormous problem seriously.

     Over the decades, pedophiles around the globe have destroyed the lives of tens of millions of children under the noses of the people responsible for protecting them against ruthless, serial predators incapable of rehabilitation. Indeed, these sexual deviates, often disguised as respectable people, are routinely protected through victim pay-offs, institutional cover-ups, and law enforcement indifference and/or incompetence.

     On the rare occasion a pedophile is brought to justice, usually on the strength of a plea bargain, the judge often hands down a light sentence.

     Pedophiles will continue to destroy the lives of the innocent and vulnerable until a MeToo movement is launched on behalf of children.

     Those who protect and cover up for these dangerous human beings should be punished as severely as the offenders themselves. And that punishment should be life in prison without the possibility of parole. But the history of this crime wave, and the way societies have refused to deal with it, leaves no reason to be optimistic. The best we can expect is a phony war against pedophilia that is nothing more than feel-good window dressing.
   

Thornton P. Knowles On His Grandparents

As a kid I often visited my maternal grandparents in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. You could tell my grandfather, as a young man, had been a handsome devil. Because my grandmother was quite overweight and wore false teeth she must have purchased secondhand, you couldn't envision a younger version of the woman. Even though I didn't know anything about marriage, I didn't think they had a good one. He constantly referred to her as The Old Bat, and said he must have been born married because he had no recollection of being single. She frequently reminded everyone that he was a dimwit who had no memory at all. She often hid his pipe for fear he'd burn down the house. On many occasions he would pull me aside and warn me of the perils of marriage. "Don't do it," he would say, "a wife will wear you down then throw you away." My grandmother died first. She tumbled head-first down a flight of cellar stairs. I often wondered if someone had helped the old woman get down those steps so fast. I never married.

Thornton P. Knowles

The Female Arsonist

     Arson is mainly a man's crime, but women have gotten into the act. Men usually use arson to defraud insurance companies while women tend to set fires for pathological reasons.

Sadie Renee Johnson

     In July 2013, a wildfire broke out on the Warm Springs, Oregon Indian Reservation. Before being brought under control it scorched 51,000 acres and cost the federal government $8 million to extinguish. At least no one was injured.

     Two day after the start of the blaze, 23-year-old Sadie Renee Johnson wrote this on her Facebook page: "Like my fire?"

     Interrogated by detectives, Johnson confessed to intentionally setting the fire by throwing a firecracker from her car into roadside brush. She said she had no idea the fire would spread so fast, burn so much land, and threaten so many people. Asked why she committed arson, Johnson said she thought her firefighter friends were bored and needed work.

     On May 19, 2014, Johnson pleaded guilty to arson in federal court. Pursuant to the plea agreement the judge will sentence her in September to 18 months in prison. Under federal law the maximum penalty for this crime is five years behind bars and three years probation.

     To quote John Wayne, "Life is tough. It's even tougher when you're stupid."

Martha Dreher

     In early August 2014, Adam Williams came home to his empty house in Austin, Texas to find the dwelling filled with smoke. His father, Glenn Williams and Adam's two pre-teen sisters were out of town.

     Fire investigators determined that fires had been set in each of the girls' bedrooms. Due to lack of oxygen and highly combustable fuel, the fires had burned themselves out. Nevertheless, the 90-year-old  historic house, due to smoke damage, had to be gutted. So, who had committed this arson?

     Glenn Williams told detectives that a couple of months ago he had hired 57-year-old Martha Dreher to babysit his daughters. According to him, she had recently complained that the girls treated her with disrespect. As a result, she had threatened to quit.

     In reviewing surveillance camera footage, investigators saw Martha Dreher drive up to the Williams house. Twenty minutes later, when she drove off, flames could be seen in the bedroom windows.

     Based on this circumstantial evidence, a Travis County prosecutor charged Dreher with felony arson. At her arraignment, the suspect pleaded not guilty. Her attorney, Amber Bode, in speaking to reporters, said, "The thing that we are going to be pushing for--in addition to lie detection tests and everything else that we can do to prove her innocence--is evidence." (I cannot find a disposition of this case.)

Thornton P. Knowles On A New Religion

If I were to start a new religion I would call it Reversalality. Reversalists believe that bad people go to Heaven where they are rehabilitated for eternity. Good people, on the other hand, go to Hell where they are rewarded with an eternity of debauchery to make up for lives of self-denial. In the Reveralists' version of Hell you might see an Amish man, a martini in one hand and dice in the other, laughing it up with a prostitute at a Las Vegas crap table. Just a thought.

Thornton P. Knowles

Nyia Parker: The Mother From Hell

     Nyia Parker resided on the west side of Philadelphia with her 21-year-old son Daequan Norman. Daequan, a quadriplegic, suffered from cerebral palsy. The unemployed 41-year-old mother received Social Security benefits for Daequan and relied upon a network of relatives and friends to help care for her completely dependent son.

     At ten o'clock on Monday morning April 6, 2015, Parker pushed her son in his wheelchair into a wooded area off a walking trail along Cobbs Creek about a quarter mile from their home. She lifted him out of the chair, laid him on his back, placed a Bible on his chest, and covered him with a blanket.

     After depositing her helpless son amid the leaves, empty beer cans and other litter, Nyia Parker boarded a bus to Silver Spring, Maryland to spend a week with her boyfriend, a former Philadelphia resident. She didn't tell anyone that she had left her son lying alone and helpless in the woods.

     Twenty-four hours after leaving her son in the woods exposed to the weather, wild animals, and people who might harm him, Nyia Parker, under a Facebook photograph depicting her and the boyfriend having a good time, wrote: "I am so happy."

     At nine o'clock Friday night April 10, a man walking through the Cobbs Creek woods came upon Daequan Norman lying in the leaves near his wheelchair. He had been there for five days and four nights.

     An ambulance crew rushed the abandoned son to The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. As a result of his ordeal, Daequan suffered from dehydration, was malnourished, and had an eye infection. There was no telling what kind of permanent mental and emotional damage he had suffered.

     A few hours following the abandoned man's removal from the west Philadelphia woods, police in Silver Spring, Maryland took Nyia Parker into custody at her boyfriend's house. Due to some undisclosed ailment, the arresting officers took her to a nearby hospital for some kind of treatment.

     Back in Philadelphia, a local prosecutor charged Parker with half of the offenses in the Pennsylvania Crimes Code. Upon her extradition back to Philadelphia, she faced charges of aggravated assault, simple assault, reckless endangerment of a person, neglect of care of a dependent person, unlawful restraint, kidnapping, and false imprisonment. (Why wasn't she charged with attempted murder?)

     People under the influence of mental illness, alcohol, and drugs commit all kinds of strange, and inexplicable crimes. But how can one even begin to understand why this mother left her quadriplegic son in the woods for five days while she visited her boyfriend. And why the Facebook posting?

     Did she expect her disabled son to die alone in the woods? If Daequan had died, what would have been her story? Would she have blamed his death on kidnappers? If so, how would she have explained the fact she had left him alone in the first place? And why would anyone abduct her son?

     Was it possible that Nyia Parker actually expected to get away with this atrocious act of cruelty? If this case ever goes to trial, this woman is looking at 20 years in prison. (I have searched the Internet and have been unable to find a disposition for this case.)