Crime

Wed - September 9, 2009

They still want to kill you

Those who chafe at the limits on carrying liquids on airplanes may wish to watch this BBC video showing what a mixed-on-the-airplane liquid-explosive soda-pop-bottle bomb, of the sort the terrorists planned to use to blow up airplanes back in 2006, can do to an airplane. You would not want to be on an airplane that had such a bomb go off on the ground, to say nothing of at altitude.

Three of that set of eight terrorists, British followers of Islam, just got convicted on a second set of charges, in case you haven't been following the case. They hoped to blow up seven airplanes in one day, and kill maybe 10,000 people, found the court.

Posted at 03:18 PM

Thu - June 11, 2009

The tax of crime, which we all pay

Here is a long article in City Journal from several years ago detailing how the Mafia got a stranglehold on New York City, and how the stranglehold was broken.

Short story: Unions hired mobsters to use violence to intimidate businesses that wouldn't give the unions what they wanted. Businesses caved in and gave the unions what they wanted. Eventually the mobsters controlled the unions. Control of the unions, and continued use of violence, and threats of strikes, allowed them to control most of the business that went on in New York City. Democratic Party politicians, both local and national, dependent on the unions for votes and money and muscle, looked the other way, and pretended the system was good for New York City.

How was this stranglehold broken? Read the article -- you may be surprised, as I was, to find that William Ruckelshaus played a key role in it.

Posted at 08:57 PM

Wed - April 22, 2009

The slob-to-non-slob ratio continues to rise.

In case you missed it, last month on a Continental flight from Los Angeles to Honolulu, a man stood up mid-flight and urinated on the woman sitting in the seat in front of him.

He pled guilty to assault charges in Federal court and got three weeks in jail. (Yes, commit a crime on an airplane in interstate commerce, and it's a federal crime.)

I have never had a fellow passenger urinate on me, not on any form of transport, but with the slobby people one encounters in one's travels, I assume it is only a matter of time. I did once have the obese woman sitting next to me change her baby's diaper on the tray table in front of her. That may have been the low point in my traveling experience. She didn't get any on me, as far as I know.

A nice thing about long-distance travel on the train is, if you want to, you can arrange it so you don't have to deal with any of your fellow travelers at all.

Posted at 07:30 PM

Sun - March 8, 2009

Crime does not pay, but blogging about it might

If you live in Seattle, or care about Seattle, you might want to read, and subscribe to the RSS feed of, the Seattle Police Department's SPDBlotter crime blog.

By reading it, you can keep track of all the shootings around where you live, like this one and this one and this one around me in recent days. (I heard that first one, and was interested to read what had happened.)

Posted at 12:12 PM

Mon - March 2, 2009

Piece of the Lord be with you

You may have heard about this: The other day a woman was walking along the street in Gary, Indiana, and a bum woman came up to her and asked her for money, and she said she didn't have any, and the bum beat her with a one-foot stone crucifix.

The victim suffered a deep cut in her forehead. She was treated at a hospital in the suburbs, because there are no longer any hospitals in Gary.

Nothing but the dead and dying back in my little town.

Posted at 03:50 PM

Sat - November 22, 2008

The defendant was quoted as saying, "It's finger-lickin' good!"

I know, they have bleach and other sterilizing chemicals, but I would not want to stay in that motel room. I would see imaginary feathers in every corner.

And, never mind asking who would do a thing like that, who would do a thing like that in a motel room?

Posted at 07:18 PM

Thu - August 14, 2008

"Do you smell almonds?"

You may have heard about the Somali-born Canadian man who was found dead in a Denver hotel room. Also found in his room was a pound of sodium cyanide.

An expert consulted by The Denver Post said a pound of sodium cyanide could kill several hundred people.

I assume 29-year-old Mr Saleman Abdirahman Dirie, of Ottawa, was in town for the convention the week after next. It appears he may have been a one-off nutter, instead of a member of some larger plot, but the investigation continues.

And yet, people get upset about security measures in public spaces, including the upcoming political conventions. "Why don't they let us get close to the hall?" they ask. Because of the Mr Diries of the world, and the more sinister and more skillful evildoers like him.

Posted at 09:55 AM

Tue - August 12, 2008

See who did what to whom

Speaking of crime -- weren't we? -- here are a couple of online crime research resources for you.

First, there is CriminalSearches.com, a national criminal records database. You can look up criminal records for anyone in any state. You can check up on your boyfriend or girlfriend, or fiancé or fiancée, or husband or wife. You can check up on a prospective employee or employer. You can see if that neighbor of yours is a sex offender, as you have long suspected. You can check up on your parents, not that it'll do you a lot of good at this late date.

And then there is this little nugget: Northwestern University's "Homicide in Chicago 1870-1930" web site. As the name implies, they have all the records of every occurrence of that crime in that city during that time period, available for your perusal. I could read it for hours. (In fact, I think I did.)

Posted at 08:44 PM

Wed - July 23, 2008

Happy motoring

It is not against the law in Washington to drive barefoot, or wearing flipflops. So says the State Patrol.

I hope this settles the matter.

Between the two, I would say driving barefoot is safer than driving wearing flipflops. Flipflops can slip off your foot, and wedge under the accelerator, or your foot can slip around in them; a bare foot stays put on the pedal.

I have driven barefoot. I have not driven wearing flipflops.

Bring shoes, in case you have to get out on the shoulder and change a tire. Lots of broken glass on the shoulder.

Posted at 09:06 AM

Fri - July 18, 2008

The big news of the summer of 2001

The Washington Post is running a multi-part article entitled, "Who Killed Chandra Levy?"

So far, we are up to part 6, and it is obvious who did it. And no, it's not (now-former) Congressman Gary Condit. And, boy, was that case bungled by the cops.

Posted at 02:53 PM

Tue - July 15, 2008

Call me "Snoopy von Snoopington"

I just discovered that there is a web page that lets you search the records of all of the courts of Washington. You can type in the name of someone you know and see that person's entire court history.

Okay, not all cases let you see the details of the case. But many do. And even for the ones that don't, you can at least see that that person was a plaintiff or defendant, or petitioner or respondent, and in what court, and the date.

I now know that some old acquaintances that I haven't seen for a while are divorced, and when that happened, and who divorced whom. I know that a woman of my acquaintance had a very bad year in 2006 (although I don't know the details for her, just that she was a defendant a lot). A person I thought was always single got divorced several years before I met him. Some folks I know stiffed a contractor and had to be sued to pay up. A person I knew was a minor crook actually was a much bigger crook than I thought.

This is juicy stuff. I promise to use it only for good.

(I have a very common name. That isn't me in there, I swear. I have only been to court as a prospective juror, honest.)

Posted at 11:47 AM

Mon - June 30, 2008

It's all around you

Here are a couple of tools to help you keep track of crime in Seattle: SpotCrime's Seattle page, and the P-I's Seattle 911 blog.

SpotCrime maps serious crimes, showing different icons for shooting, arson, et cetera. It seems to not be up-to-date, as it does not show the 40-person stab-ful fracas in the parking garage last Saturday.

The P-I's 911 blog is just little stories, by real reporters, about crime and other 911-worthy events. This is what newspapers used to be, before Woodward and Bernstein: Just tell me what happened, don't analyze or inject yourself in the story. I like it.

Posted at 06:05 PM

Fri - June 13, 2008

Protect and serve

Crosscut features a very interesting two-part history of the decades when Seattle's cops, almost all of them, ran a highly-lucrative shakedown racket of the proprietors of bars and gambling shops, and of the racket's destruction by a group of young reforming Republicans and a few honest cops.

Tony Gustin was the honest assistant chief of police who led a semi-secret group of the few honest cops, mostly young officers who had not yet been brought into the criminal enterprise, that gathered evidence and turned it over to the Feds, since the incumbent city and county officials would do nothing. Chris Bayley was the young reforming Republican who then challenged in the primary, and beat, the incumbent Republican County Prosecutor, and then narrowly won the general election. Bayley then led a group of new young reforming prosecuting attorneys, and broke what had been the not-so-secret shame of the city. The prosecutions didn't work out so well, conviction-wise, but the criminal pyramid was broken, and that's the main thing.

Give it a read.

Posted at 02:56 PM

Thu - May 15, 2008

Darkness

Yes, I am acquainted with him, not so well that I would call us friends, but friendly acquaintances. I sat next to him once at a fundraising luncheon. I gave some money to his 2006 campaign for the state legislature.

I am not wishing to in any way trivialize the matter, but when I heard the news, I thought of this quote from "Miller's Crossing":

"Nobody knows anybody. Not that well."

Posted at 05:14 PM

Mon - January 28, 2008

Salsa para el ganso macho

Legislators and other officials in the Mexican state of Sonora are complaining because there is a flood of illegal immigrants repatriating from the USA, and it is overtaxing government services there.

Oh, the irony.

There is a new law in Arizona, across the border from Sonora, that suspends for ten days the business license of any business that knowingly employs illegal aliens, and suspends permanently the business license of any business caught twice. Suddenly, there is not so much work for illegals in Arizona, and they are going home. Funny how that works.

I have always said that the way to solve the illegal immigration problem is not to fight the supply, with fences and whatnot, but to fight the demand, with prison time for employers who employ them. Okay, I have also said that illegals should be imprisoned for a year or so before deportation, but employers should go to prison, too. News video of Mr Tyson Chicken and Mr Hormel and Mr Local Contractor in orange jumpsuits being led away to Terre Haute for a couple of years would do a lot to dry up the demand by employers for illegal aliens.

The current system, in which under Federal law the worst punishment an employer of illegal aliens faces is a small fine, does not deter employers. They can calculate the chances of being caught, and the cost of the fine, and build that into their business plan. Prison time for the CEO would be a factor that a business would not build into its business plan.

But the permanent closing of the business, which is something the state governments can do, is a good idea. I am glad Arizona has stepped up. I hope every state does this.

Posted at 01:05 PM

Another deadly shooting, almost in my neighborhood

"Happy New Year -- now die"

Another shooting in my neighborhood, with a twist

Lucky in physics, unlucky in love

Loose lips

Not a lead-pipe cinch, but interesting

Three-ring Council

Bring out excuse Number One

More shooting around here

Pipe down or pay up

I'll bet they keep kosher from now on