Tag Archives | Crime

Landmark CCTV Case in Australia: Government Seeks to Change Law to Resume Surveillance

By on May 9, 2013 in News 0

This sign is under surveillance
Image by lonely radio

Last week (2nd May), in the midst of Privacy Awareness Week [1], an Australian campaigner, Adam Bonner won a landmark decision against CCTV cameras in New South Wales [2]. The decision did not rule that the cameras in the town of Nowra should be switched off, but instead ordered the local council to stop breaching the Information Protection Principles of the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act. Remedies were suggested by the Privacy Commissioner but suffice to say Shoalhaven council has switched the cameras off whilst deciding its next move.

The decision of the Administrative Decisions Tribunal New South Wales ordered that:

1. The Council is to refrain from any conduct or action in contravention of an information protection principle or a privacy code of practice;

2. The Council is to render a written apology to the Applicant for the breaches, and advise him of the steps to be taken by the Council to remove the possibility of similar breaches in the future.

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Gun Crime Rates Are Actually Down in the United States

By on May 8, 2013 in News 0

firearmsCrimes in which the perpetrator used a firearm are actually on the decline, according to the Pew Center. That doesn’t mean that it’s still not a problem, of course. In any case, most Americans think that “gun crime” is actually higher than it has ever been.

LA Times:

Gun crime has plunged in the United States since its peak in the middle of the 1990s, including gun killings, assaults, robberies and other crimes, two new studies of government data show.

Yet few Americans are aware of the dramatic drop, and more than half believe gun crime has risen, according to a newly released survey by the Pew Research Center.

In less than two decades, the gun murder rate has been nearly cut in half. Other gun crimes fell even more sharply, paralleling a broader drop in violent crimes committed with or without guns. Violent crime dropped steeply during the 1990s and has fallen less dramatically since the turn of the millennium.

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Ricin Mailer Believed He Was Exposing Illegal Organ Harvesting Conspiracy

By on April 23, 2013 in News 0

ricin mailerMississippi man Kevin Curtis was arrested last week after mailing letters containing the deadly poison ricin to Barack Obama and Mississippi senator Roger Wicker. Buzzfeed reveals what may be the bizarre inspiration for the plot — it would seem that for years, the hospital janitor and Elvis impersonator has been attempting to wage war against a global organ-snatching conspiracy involving the highest levels of government:

[Curtis's] writings document “the actions of…a secret shadow government in which I feel have been put into place by higher powers to be in order to hide the truth behind the illegal organ harvesting market which I began investigating in 2000.”

Curtis  wrote on Facebook:

I’m on the hidden front lines of a secret war. A war that is making Billions of dollars for corrupt mafia related organizations and people. (bone, tissue, organ, body parts harvesting black market) when we lay our loved ones to rest….we hope and pray their bodies are not violated but I am here to tell you, as long as the bone, tissue & organ harvesting indu$try is NOT REGULATED….on any level(s) whether it be local, state, federal or national………..your loved ones body parts are NOT $AFE.

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Texas High Schoolers Uncover Teacher’s Involvement In Sex Cult Murder

By on April 18, 2013 in News 0

cult murderYour teachers’ lives may be more exciting than they seem. Via the Kansas City Star:

Tyler Deaton landed a job in February to teach pre-calculus at Lancaster High School near Dallas. But students Googled and found news stories from Kansas City with allegations that Deaton’s wife, Bethany, 27, was murdered as part of a coverup by a religious cult to hide a series of sexual assaults. The group’s supposed spiritual leader? Tyler Deaton.

Deaton has not been charged in his wife’s death. The person who has, Micah Moore, was part of Deaton’s religious group and lived with the couple at a house in Grandview. Other witnesses told authorities of a group who were making sex part of their religious experience and that men in the group sexually assaulted Bethany Deaton. Moore said Bethany Deaton was killed for fear she would talk, according to court documents.

When word spread through the halls of Lancaster last week, district officials suspended Deaton.

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Florida Man Kills Girlfriend As Astrology-Motivated ‘Sacrifice’

By on April 9, 2013 in News 0

The dark side of zodiac compatibility tests, via the South Florida Sun Sentinel:

A Lauderhill man told a bizarre tale of needing to find a victim who had a Taurus zodiac sign when he described the fatal Easter Sunday stabbing of his live-in girlfriend to police, authorities said Monday.

Darrius Johnson, 22, stabbed Monica Gooden, 20, multiple times early Sunday at their residence, according to his statements recorded in a Lauderhill police complaint affidavit.

Johnson told police the victim had control over his spirit and that the couple had fought over his wanting a relative to live with them, the affidavit states. Police said that Johnson also told them he “sacrificed” the victim for his and her betterment, and that he knew he had to sacrifice someone with a Taurus astrological sign, the report states.

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How A Man Was Sentenced To Life In Prison For Stealing A Pair Of Socks

By on April 3, 2013 in News 0

Via Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi on crime and punishment under California’s Three Strikes law:

Suddenly, a pair of socks caught his eye. He grabbed them and slipped them into a shopping bag. “No, they were ordinary white socks,” he says, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. “Didn’t even have any stripes.”

Wilkerson never made it out of the store. At the exit, he was, shall we say, over­enthusiastically apprehended by two security officers. Thanks to a brand-new, get-tough-on-crime state law, Wilkerson would soon be sentenced to life in prison for stealing a pair of plain white tube socks worth $2.50. Because Wilkerson had two prior convictions, both dating back to 1981, the shoplifting charge counted as a third strike against him. He was sentenced to 25 years to life, meaning that his first chance for a parole hearing would be in 25 years.

Wilkerson is unlucky, but he’s hardly alone.

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Mexican Town Defends Itself From Drug Violence By Throwing Out The Police

By on March 30, 2013 in News 0

The Christian Science Monitor on dreaming up alternative methods of community governance, via the successful case of an indigenous town plagued by criminal gangs from the outside:

The indigenous town of Cherán used to be like many places in Mexico, caving under the weight of drug-related crime and a police force that did little to stop it. But about two years ago, citizens here threw out the police, and took over their local government, running the town according to indigenous tradition. So far, they’ve had remarkable success.

The Purépecha indigenous people have lived in this area for centuries, relying on a mix of subsistence farming and selective timber harvesting. But eventually national political parties gained influence in the village, and five years ago, so did illegal loggers with ties to drug mafias. Eventually, the police intervened, but on behalf of the loggers. So the townspeople threw everyone out: loggers, police, and politicians, too.

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NYPD’s New Facial Recognition Unit Using Instagram And Facebook Photos To Identify Suspects

By on March 28, 2013 in News 0

Social networking sites are a great way to meet and connect with new people, such as cops. DNAinfo New York writes:

Police are searching for suspects’ photos on Instagram and Facebook, then running them through the NYPD’s new Facial Recognition Unit to put a face to a name, DNAinfo New York has learned.

Detectives are now breaking cases across the city thanks to the futuristic technology that marries mug shots of known criminals with pictures gleaned from social media, surveillance cameras and anywhere else cops can find images.

[An] official explained how the new technology worked after a recent street robbery where a woman reported her jewelry stolen by her gal pal’s boyfriend. She did not know his name, only that he was likely in photos on his girlfriend’s Facebook page. “We did not have his name, but we found a photo and the Facial Recognition Unit got a hit.”

The new investigative entity was formally launched late last year, with eight cops working in teams of four manning the operations.

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World’s Most Infamous Cat Burglar Of The Rich Dies At 82

By on March 27, 2013 in News 0

Telegraph a man who embodied crime as a philosophy and way of life:

Peter Scott, who has died aged 82, was a highly accomplished cat burglar, and took particular pains to select his victims from the ranks of aristocrats, film stars and even royalty.

By his own reckoning, Scott stole jewels, furs and artworks worth more than £30 million. He held none of his victims in great esteem (“upper-class prats chattering in monosyllables”). According to a list of 100 names he supplied, he targeted figures such as Soraya Khashoggi, Shirley MacLaine, the Shah of Iran, Judy Garland and even Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. He asserted that he had been “sent by God to take back some of the wealth that the outrageously rich had taken from the rest of us”.

By the mid-1990s, Scott had served 12 years in prison in the course of half a dozen separate stretches, and claimed to have retired from a life of crime.

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Virginia Rapper To Be Charged With Attempting To Sacrifice Friend To The Illuminati

By on March 18, 2013 in News, stories 41

Do anything for fame? The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports:

A Henrico County judge Thursday scheduled a two-day trial in June for an aspiring rap star who, according to a prosecutor, apparently believed that he had to sacrifice his friend to reach stardom.

“You are my sacrifice,” El-Amin [was] quoted as saying before he allegedly fired a shot toward his friend’s head inside a Henrico home that was to become a music studio. The trial will delve into the hip-hop music culture and the notion that a secret society called the Illuminati has control over the success of some performers.

It was the belief that a sacrifice had to occur in order to join the Illuminati that allegedly incited El-Amin. Investigators recovered more than a pound of marijuana from the Athens Avenue home, according to the search warrant, as well as literature dealing with the Illuminati and its alleged connection to the music industry.

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