Showing posts tagged Crime

Gun-death tally: Every American gun death since Newtown Sandy Hook shooting

Sunday January 27

  • 1305 Killed with guns since December14

Jamarcus Allen killed 1/23/2013

Akron - Police in Akron, Ohio are investigating the death of a 4-year-old boy who was shot while riding in a car with his father on Wednesday morning.
According to Akron Police Lt. Rick Edwards, a Summit County Sheriff’s deputy was flagged down by Allen, who was driving near the intersection of South Arlington Street and Davies Avenue just before 10 a.m. on Wednesday. Allen told the deputy that Jamarcus had been shot. There was a bullet hole in the roof of the car and officers recovered a handgun from the vehicle as well.
The slain child’s mother, 42-year-old Jamella Allen, was distraught upon learning that her son was dead. “I’m going crazy about what happened to my baby,” she told ABC 5. “I want to know what happened.”
…
This article also includes links about other children recently shot to death.
- Maximilian Walters, 5, was shot and killed by his father, a Las Vegas Metro Police lieutenant, in Boulder City, Nevada on Monday.
- Zephania Griego, 10; Jael Griego, 5; and Angelina Griego, 2, were shot dead by their brother, 15-year-old Nehemiah Griego in their Albuquerque, New Mexico home on Saturday.
- Trinity Ross, age 4, was accidentally shot in the head by her 6-year-old brother in Kansas City, Missouri on January 10. She was taken off life support and pronounced dead last week.
- Navaeh Benson, 6, of Cleveland, Ohio accidentally shot herself in the face last Saturday. Her father has been charged in connection with her death.
- William Paris, a 12-year-old Pleasant Valley, Alabama boy, was accidentally shot dead on January 8 by his cousin, also 12, who was showing off a shotgun he got for Christmas.
- Jonah Mendoza, age 6 months, was shot and killed in Ocala, Florida on January 4 by his mother, Melanie Reyes, who then turned the gun on herself.
- Aaliyah Boyer, 10, of Manheim, Pennsylvania, was struck in the head by a stray bullet fired during New Year’s Eve celebrations. She was taken off life support on January 3.
- Easton Brueger, 8, was accidentally shot dead by his father, who was cleaning his rifle at the family’s Bennettsville, South Carolina home on December 30.
- Sincere Tymere Smith, age 2, fatally shot himself with his father’s gun in their Conway, South Carolina home on Christmas Day. His father has been charged with involuntary manslaughter.
- Ryder Rozier, 3, of Guthrie, Oklahoma accidentally shot himself to death with a gun he found in the home of his uncle, a state policeman, on December 15. No charges have been filed.

Overfishing Has Led To 96 Percent Population Reduction in Pacific Bluefin Tuna

The latest stock assessment of Bluefin tuna in the Pacific released on Wednesday indicates that overfishing has pushed the stock of the giant fish down by a shocking 96.4 percent compared to unfished levels, flying in the face of the conventional wisdom about Bluefin tuna, which says that the Pacific population is much healthier than the Atlantic population.

The assessment, which was released by the International Scientific Committee for Tuna and Tuna-Like Species in the North Pacific Ocean (ISC), pins some of the blame for the precipitous decline on fishermen’s propensity for taking juvenile tuna out of the water before they’ve had a chance to reproduce. About 90 percent of the bluefin caught in the Pacific are juveniles, according to the ISC’s report.

mohandasgandhi:

Decapitated bodies found in Mexico

Police have found the dismembered and decapitated bodies of 18 people in two abandoned vehicles in western Mexico in what appears to be a new wave of revenge killings in an ongoing power struggle between drug gangs.

Police initially counted 12 bodies dumped in the car on a road between Mexico’s second city of Guadalajara and the lakeside city of Chapala.

An anonymous call alerted police to the abandoned vehicles, and the bodies were taken to forensic services in Guadalajara, a police official said.

Jalisco state attorney general Tomas Coronado Olmos called an urgent meeting with the state governor and said the killings appeared to have been carried out in revenge for 23 killings last Friday in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas.

An arrested woman said that the killings were “the repercussion for what happened in Tamaulipas,” Coronado Olmos said.

The woman said she belonged to a local gang called Milenio, linked to the Zetas drug gang.

Police found 23 bodies last Friday in the city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, on the US border, including nine hanging from a bridge and 14 others that had been decapitated.

Suspected drug gang violence has flared in some areas in the past week, with more than 60 deaths in massacres or fighting with security forces.

Authorities blame many of the deaths on clashes between the Zetas - a gang set up by ex-commandos that deserted Mexico’s military in the 1990s - and groups allied to the Sinaloa Federation of Mexico’s most wanted drug lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

The latest killings echoed a brutal episode last November when police found 26 bodies dumped inside three vehicles in Guadalajara. Based on messages left behind, authorities believe those killings were an attack by the Zetas on the Sinaloa gang.

(Continue reading…)

In news no one wants to hear….

(Reblogged from mohandasgandhi)

Today in WTF KANSAS? news: Topeka might legalize domestic violence.

motherjones:

But hey, it’s to save budget money, so yay tea party values!

(Reblogged from randomactsofchaos)

Top Tea Party organizer arrested for soliciting prostitute

abaldwin360:

wisconsingazette.com

Steve Stevlic, one of the top organizers of TeaCon 2011, describes himself as an ordinary family-values man. But, as Gawker reported today, he’s not ordinary in at least one sense: He was arrested last summer for soliciting a prostitute.

Last September, Stevlic mocked and condemned U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., via Twitter over revelations that the congressman had a two-year extra-marital affair. The tweets were sent out two months after Stevlic’s arrest.

Stevlic is one of the primary sponsors behind one of the largest-ever gatherings of tea partiers. About Some 600 supporters turned out today for the opening of the event in Schaumburg, Ill., a northwest suburb of Chicago. Some of the right-wing movement’s highest-profile representatives were on hand.

But after news of Stevlic’s year-old arrest grabbed attention, he apparently decided to steer clear of the proceedings, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Keynoters at TeaCon today included Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, conservative talk radio host Glenn Beck, and U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh, R-Ill., a party favorite and an afternoon highlight.

Walsh has image problems of his own. A Chicago judge ordered him last month to explain why he appears to be $100,000 behind in child-support payments to his ex-wife.

Laura Walsh has hauled her ex-husband to court on numerous occasions since 2002 to seek orders to make him pay his court-ordered child-support obligations. She says he started making half-payments years ago and then completely stopped sending any money.

Although Walsh claimed he was broke, last year he made a $35,000 contribution to his own congressional campaign.

Despite the evangelical-Christian bent of Tea Party supporters, including a growing anti-gay fervor, Walsh’s failure to support his kids has not dampened their enthusiasm for him.

[SOURECE]

Emphasis added - family values and morals my ass, motherfuckers.

(Reblogged from diadoumenos)

Ten dead, 50 injured in weekend violence

soupsoup:

WTF NYC???

—-

Shortly after 9 p.m. Sunday, a man holding a gun ran down the steps of an apartment building on Park Place in Crown Heights. A few shots rang out. Police patrolling the intersection also appeared to open fire. After dozens of shots, at least two people were left writhing on the ground outside a laundry.

Guns the final solution.

(Reblogged from soupsoup)
boston: The cost of a single gunshot - No one can put a price on a human life or a family’s suffering, but policy experts can calculate the price society pays. — “It has always been the simple things that we don’t consider with these costs,’’ says Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, who has focused on victim services and compensation during her 5-year tenure. “Take cleanup costs of crime scenes, where someone has been shot. Once that investigation ends and the police have left the scene and the emergency workers are gone, the residents are often left with a mess on their hands. Costs can run into the thousands - changing locks, replacing windows or doors, hazardous cleanup of blood and bodily fluids.’’ And those are just the smaller bills. … Rev. Eugene Rivers, executive director of the Ella J. Baker House in Dorchester, says he has seen at first hand the impact violence can have on a single home. “I’m certainly no medical expert, but I think I can argue that I’m something of a social scientist, and I can tell you that I’ve seen a terrible joke related to this issue come true,’’ says Rivers. “I know a man who survived a shooting only to die not too much later of a heart attack. He was not an old man. He was not an unhealthy man. And he was not experiencing complications from his injury, which had been healed for some time. He died, his family tells me - and they say his doctors told them - from the weight of the crippling stress that comes into your life when you survive something like this. I have seen entire families deal with this in ways ‘normal’ families can’t fathom.’’ View high resolution

boston:

The cost of a single gunshot

- No one can put a price on a human life or a family’s suffering, but policy experts can calculate the price society pays.

—

“It has always been the simple things that we don’t consider with these costs,’’ says Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, who has focused on victim services and compensation during her 5-year tenure. “Take cleanup costs of crime scenes, where someone has been shot. Once that investigation ends and the police have left the scene and the emergency workers are gone, the residents are often left with a mess on their hands. Costs can run into the thousands - changing locks, replacing windows or doors, hazardous cleanup of blood and bodily fluids.’’

And those are just the smaller bills.

…

Rev. Eugene Rivers, executive director of the Ella J. Baker House in Dorchester, says he has seen at first hand the impact violence can have on a single home.

“I’m certainly no medical expert, but I think I can argue that I’m something of a social scientist, and I can tell you that I’ve seen a terrible joke related to this issue come true,’’ says Rivers. “I know a man who survived a shooting only to die not too much later of a heart attack. He was not an old man. He was not an unhealthy man. And he was not experiencing complications from his injury, which had been healed for some time. He died, his family tells me - and they say his doctors told them - from the weight of the crippling stress that comes into your life when you survive something like this. I have seen entire families deal with this in ways ‘normal’ families can’t fathom.’’

(Reblogged from caraobrien)

Judge sentenced to 28 years after being paid to incarcerate young people with pot charges.

sarahlee310:

rvabeatnik:

Former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella was sentenced to 28 years in prison and ordered to pay about $1 million in restitution last week for his part in the so-called kids for cash scandal.

Ciavarella was found guilty in February of 12 of 39 racketeering and fraud charges for accepting millions of dollars in bribes from friends who owned detention centers to which he sent juveniles.

The case made national headlines when Ciavarella was confronted by Fonzo outside a courtroom after his conviction.

Fonzo’s 17-year-old son, Edward Kenzakowski, spent months in detention after Ciavarella sentenced him for possession of drug paraphernalia.

According to Fonzo, her son, who had no prior record, was never able to recover and eventually took his own life.

And this, my friends, is the trickle down from privatizing prisons. 

Ciavarella was found guilty in February of 12 of 39 racketeering and fraud charges for accepting millions of dollars in bribes from friends who owned detention centers to which he sent juveniles.

If the state is going to send people to prison, then the state must be responsible for running the prison and caring for the prisoners.  What state warden would be bribing a judge to send him more prisoners?  None that didn’t have some profit attached.

emphasis mine

(Source: americanindignants)

(Reblogged from sarahlee310)

Let’s Not Be Silly: The Marie Arraras 911 Call, and What It Means

abbyjean:

garlandgreyblog:

“On May 28, Arraras called Miami 911, telling the dispatcher to send the cops right away because her boyfriend had hit her and was trying to choke her. The police did eventually come to the house, arrested her boyfriend, and observed that she had a swollen lips and marks on her arms.

All this you can read in this story from the Sunday New York Daily News, like I did. What I find interesting is that in the online version, they left out the transcript of the call. Which makes for some…what’s that word we use? Interesting? Infuriating? Depressingly typical?

Yeah, that one.

Here, in living Minou Transcription, is the 911 call:

Operator: Miami Dade, where is your emergency?

Arraras: Please send the police to [redacted] right now. Somebody is about to kill me. Please.

Operator: What are they doing?

Arraras: Choking me. Please hurry.

Operator: They are choking you?

Arraras: Please.

Operator: Ma’am, you are on the phone; they are not choking you. What did they do?

Arraras: They just hit me and tried to choke me. Please.

Operator: Who did that to you?

Arraras: Somebody that lives with me.

Operator: Okay then, who is that somebody? Let’s not be silly. Ma’am, answer my question.

Arraras: I have three kids here.

Operator: And who is this someone that tried to kill you?

Arraras: It’s somebody that I’m dating, that lives here…please, could you send somebody right away?

Operator: Okay, ma’am. Hello. Instead of just saying hurry up, why don’t you answer the question?

Arraras: Listen to me, I have to go because he’s trying to get back in. Could you please…

Operator: So the person is outside?

Arraras: Outside, but not for long.

Operator: So, he lives there with you?

Arraras: Are you sending somebody right now?

Operator: I said, yes, if you would have listened instead of just talking. Okay.”

C. L. Minou reminds us how little Law Enforcement gives a shit about intimate partner violence, and women in general.

good god

Further crime drop in 2009: FBI « The Reality-Based Community

abbyjean:

Good news: crime is down again, by a substantial amount (7.5% for homicide). Aside from a blip up in 2006, the decline has now been going on for a decade and a half, and the overall decline is now greater than 50%.

Better news: the incarceration rate has finally stopped growing; this year it will probably decline. Less public hysteria about crime might support more intelligent – more effective and less pointlessly cruel – crime control policies.

Unfortunately hysteria seems to be on the upswing.

(Reblogged from abbyjean)
“
‘The state has denied him any chance to later demonstrate that he is fit to rejoin society based solely on a nonhomicide crime that he committed while he was a child in the eyes of the law. This the Eighth Amendment does not permit.
Justice Anthony Kennedy in the majority opinion in the case of Terrance Graham, who was implicated in armed robberies when he was 16 and 17. Graham, now 22, is in prison in Florida, which holds more than 70 percent of juvenile defendants locked up for life for crimes other than homicide. (nytimes) (via abbyjean)
(Reblogged from abbyjean)

abcsoupdot:

Collateral Murder

from Mefi:

Wikileaks posts a classified US military video (17:47) to YouTube. It depicts “the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff.” Supporting documents from military whistleblowers appear at the site they set up, Collateral Murder.

via funkaoshi

We need to get the hell out of there — like yesterday. I have to admit I couldn’t quite watch the whole thing its just looks so obviously wrong.

(Reblogged from abcsoupdot)