Virtual Flashing, Real Conviction

A German man has been convicted on pornography charges after sending a photograph of his penis to a woman. The man is suspected of doing the same thing to other women - women he did not know, apparently.

BERLIN (Reuters) - A 21-year-old German man has been convicted of sending a photograph of his penis to an unknown woman via mobile phone, authorities said on Wednesday.

"We all had a bit of a laugh when we saw the thing," said Christian Kropp, presiding judge at the court in the eastern town of Sondershausen.

The woman reported the sender to police after receiving the photo attachment of the man's genitals, the court said. Officers found evidence he may have sent similar images to other women.

The man did not explain his motive but expressed remorse for the photo, Kropp said. He was fined 150 euros (112 pounds) for distributing pornographic material.

I suppose this sort of thing is inevitable with all the advances in cell phone technology. So now, instead of having to watch out for a guy in a trench coat, you have to worry about answering your phone. It's a marriage of the worst in flashing with the obscene phone call.

We could do without some "progress". 

Taking A Plug Out Of Crime

Swedish police have announced the details of an attempted bank heist that occurred last August. An alert bank employee noticed that his computer had begun a large transaction - apparently all by itself. On further investigation, the employee discovered a device hidden under his desk and connected to his computer. So he took quick action and pulled the plug, stopping the transaction.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - A gang of Swedish criminals was seconds away from completing a digital bank heist when an alert employee literally pulled the plug on their brazen scam, investigators said Wednesday.
 
The would be bank robbers had placed "advanced technical equipment" under the employee's desk that allowed them to take control of his computer remotely, prosecutor Thomas Balter Nordenman said in a statement.

The employee discovered the device shortly after he realized his computer had started an operation to transfer "millions" from the bank into another account, Nordenman said.

"By pulling out the cable to the device, the employee managed to stop the intended transfer at the last second," he said.

Authorities kept news of the attempted crime secret until they had the suspected thieves in custody. Seven people have been arrested. There is no word whether dwarfs were involved, however.

Mini-Me, Maxi-Theft

We swear we are not making this up. We have a link and everything. Swedish police are warning that dwarfs are rampaging through the luggage compartments of long-distance passenger buses then zipping themselves back into a suitcase with their loot.

Honest. Here's the link.

Criminal gangs are using dwarves in a ruse to steal from the luggage holds of long-distance coaches, by hiding them inside suitcases, according to police.

The bizarre crime is on the rise in Sweden and officers say thieves have got away with thousands of pounds in cash, jewellery and other valuables in recent months.

Gangs are said to sneak the dwarves into the luggage hold, hidden inside baggage.

Then, once the journey has begun, the stowaways are free to rifle through the bags of other passengers without fear of being apprehended.

Before the coach arrives at its destination the dwarves take their loot back into their suitcase, zip themselves inside and wait to be collected by their partners in crime.

Swebus, which takes thousands of British tourists on holiday across Sweden, is among the coach firms targeted.

Imagine the surprise if the diminutive thief gets in the wrong bag and an unsuspecting person opens it. Even worse, wait until the gnomes and the brownies get in on the act. It'll be a miniature crime wave.

Too Cold To Walk

A group of four teenagers from Winnipeg, Canada had been ordered to attend a program meant to keep them from stealing cars. The program calls the offenders in to report at odd intervals to ensure they are not committing new crimes. The four got called in when the outside temperature happened to be minus 40° C (which converts to -40° F) and they apparently thought it was too cold to walk.

So they stole a car to get to their appointment.

The four suspects, aged 16 and 17, were attending the counselling program in the Canadian prairie city as part of a court order relating to previous auto thefts, said Detective Sergeant Kevin Kavitch of the city's stolen-autos unit.

A local newspaper suggested the teens had stolen the car because it was "too cold to walk" to their court ordered training program, although Kavitch described it as a crime of opportunity. Winnipeg daytime temperatures dipped to -40 degrees Celsius last week, with wind chill.

Kavitch said three of the four suspects are level four offenders, the highest designation for chronic auto thieves in the city.

Well, that certainly is an effective diversion program, isn't it? Or should they reclassify it as a job training program?

Mailer Of Cow Head Sentenced

A man from Lower Pottsgrove, Pennsylvania, has been sentenced to probation and community service for mailing a severed cow head to the man who had been carrying on an affair with the mailer's wife.

Authorities in Lower Pottsgrove, northwest of Philadelphia, arrested Fife and charged him with stalking, terroristic threats, disorderly conduct and harassment after he allegedly sent threatening messages and pictures to the victim between May and September 2006.

The victim received a package containing a cow's head with a puncture wound in its skull on June 1, 2006.

Police said Fife, 31, got the cow's head from a butcher's shop, claiming he wanted the dried skull for decoration. Instead, he mailed the head frozen, so as not to alert parcel carriers to the contents, police said. The box became bloody after sitting on the victim's doorstep on a warm day.

Police were able to trace the package and threatening e-mails to Fife, court documents indicate.

"My client did step over the line here, but one can certainly understand his frustration, given that the victim was carrying on an affair with my client's wife," Hilles said.

Well, of course this is a serious violation of the law. One simply cannot ship frozen, bloody cow heads about like that. Corleone's Law states that the proper contents of the package is a horse's head.

(And yes, that was a joke, people.)

Armed Citizen Stops Armed Robbery

A legally armed citizen stopped an armed robbery at a food store in Indianapolis, Indiana, disarming the would-be holdup man and holding him at gunpoint until police arrived.

Charlie Merrell, 51, was standing in a checkout lane at Bucks IGA Supermarket on Indianapolis' south side when a masked man jumped over a nearby counter and held a gun on a store employee, according to a police report made public Wednesday.

While the suspect demanded cash from workers, Merrell pulled his own handgun, pointed it at the robber and ordered him to put down his weapon, the report said. After a moment the suspect placed his gun and the cash on the counter, removed his mask and lay on the floor. Merrell held him at gunpoint Monday until police arrived and arrested the suspect.

19-year old Dwain Smith is being held on charges including robbery, criminal confinement, pointing a firearm, battery and carrying a handgun without a license. His gun was not loaded. Charlie Merrell's was. And he used it, but didn't even have to pull the trigger.

Kudos to Charlie Merrell for knowing exactly how to handle the situation.

D.B. Cooper - Back In The News

NortonPete sent me a link about this from the San Francisco Chronicle and today it showed up in the New York Times as well. It seems the FBI has reopened the investigation into the 1971 hijacking by someone calling himself DB Cooper, or sometimes Dan Cooper. The only unsolved aircraft hijacking in American history is getting a fresh look by an agent who was all of four years old when it happened.

CHICAGO — It is considered one of the great unsolved mysteries of American crime: how a seemingly quiet man in his mid-40s hijacked an airliner somewhere between Seattle and Reno in November 1971, then parachuted in his loafers and trench coat, making off with $200,000 in cash.

Who was he? Did he survive? After all these years, federal authorities say they still do not know, and the case lingers and vexes and fascinates as the only unsolved airplane hijacking in United States history. “It’s a mystery, frankly,” agency officials said in a December news release issued periodically to update old cases.

But now, with the advantage of technologies that were not available decades ago and with newfound attention from an agent on the West Coast, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has announced that the cold case is officially hot again — and the search is on for the parachuter who called himself Dan, and sometimes, D. B. Cooper.

And, for the first time, the F.B.I. is providing pictures and information on the Cooper case to the public on its Web site, fbi.gov. The agency hopes that pictures like the one of Mr. Cooper’s black tie, which he removed before jumping, will prompt a memory, or that someone will offer fresh insight into what happened to all that cash, some of which was scattered in the wilderness and found by a young boy in 1980. (Already, a DNA sample taken from the tie has ruled out several men who claimed to be the parachuting hijacker.)

Here is the FBI news release on the reopened case. Basically, Agent Larry Carr is treating the case exactly the same way the FBI treats bank robberies. They release everything they have to the public and wait for someone to step forward with the information needed to break the case. If DB Cooper were still alive today he would be 85 years old. The crime can't be prosecuted now, too many years have passed. For the FBI and Agent Carr, it is more about just being able to finally close the books on one of the most enduring crime mysteries in American history.

Monsters At Christmas

Regardless of the outcome of the legal proceedings against these two, there has to be a special place in Hell already all made up for them when they arrive. On Christmas Eve, a family daughter and her boyfriend gunned down three generations of the woman's family, including children aged 3 and 6 years.

Twice wounded, her husband and his parents already gunned down, Erica Anderson huddled with her children and pleaded with Joseph McEnroe to spare their lives.

"You don't have to do this."

But her pleas prompted no mercy. McEnroe apologized before telling his victims, "Yes, we do."

Then he fired the last blasts in a Christmas Eve shooting spree that killed three generations of a family in a rural Carnation home.

He shot Anderson a final time, then turned a .357 revolver on 6-year-old Olivia and 3-year-old Nathan.

The final, frantic moments of the lives of six people were outlined Friday in murder charges filed against McEnroe, 29, a Target clerk, and his unemployed girlfriend, Michele Anderson, also 29.

The defendants are in the King County Jail with bail denied, accused of killing Michele's parents, her brother, his wife and their two children.

Each faces six counts of aggravated first-degree murder — the only crime punishable by death in Washington. King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg has 30 days from the couple's scheduled Jan. 9 arraignment to decide whether to pursue capital punishment. The only other sentencing option under the law for the crimes upon conviction is life imprisonment without release.

"Given the magnitude of this crime, I pledge to give this case serious consideration for the state's ultimate penalty," Satterberg said.

Monsters exist, they just aren't the kind fiction writers like Stephen King come up with routinely. Cases like this are why there should be a death penalty. The reasons the daughter wanted her family dead are so trivial as to defy belief. The family was "stepping on" the daughter. So we have self-esteem issues leading to the brutal murder of an entire family. Including little kids.

There really are monsters.

Crime (Fighting) Doesn’t Pay

A now-former employee of a Whole Foods supermarket in Ann Arbor, Michigan has discovered that crime fighting does not pay. Hence his employment status. Said former employee stopped a shoplifter in the store by tackling him - and was promptly fired by management.

John Schultz said he lost his job as a fishmonger at a Whole Foods Market in Ann Arbor after he knocked a suspected shoplifter to the ground and detained him.

Schultz was fired on Monday. "Our policy is clear and listed in the employee booklet," said Kate Klotz, a Whole Foods spokeswoman.

"The fact that the employee in question touched the suspect is grounds for termination."

Schultz said he was acting as a private citizen and not as a Whole Foods employee. "The fact that I worked at the store at (the time of the robbery) is coincidental," he told The Ann Arbor News.

Well, Whole Foods certainly has sent a strong message, hasn't it? Employees have been told to let thieves alone and the thieves have been told it is open season at the store. Absolutely brilliant. Let's see what Whole Foods' shrinkage figures jump to in the next few months.

Kerry Christmas!

Senator John Kerry today proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was and is completely unfit for higher office - or even for the office he currently holds. He has threatened to bring the full power and might down up the National Football League - unless they nationally televise the final New England Patriots game of the regular season.

With the New England Patriots now one win away from finishing the regular season undefeated, Sen. John Kerry is stepping up his campaign to get the final game broadcast on national television.

The contest Saturday with the New York Giants is to air locally in Boston and New York. But outside those markets it is scheduled to appear only on the NFL Network, a cable channel that reaches just 35 million households nationwide while the league and cable operators dicker over pricing and distribution.

Kerry asked football Commissioner Roger Goodell today to move the game to NBC – and threatened Senate hearings if he does not.

“Under the unfortunate circumstance that this matter remains unresolved, leaving 60 percent of households across the country – including thousands in Massachusetts – without access to Saturday’s game, I will ask the Senate Commerce Committee to hold hearings on how the emergence of premium sports channels are impacting the consumer,” he wrote to Goodell today in a letter released by his office.

The Massachusetts Democrat added that he would “consider what legislative measures may be necessary to ensure that consumers are more than bystanders in this process.”

Kerry, who had offered earlier to convene a meeting between the league and cable operators, is only one of several lawmakers attempting to intervene. Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, have threatened to reconsider the league’s federal antitrust exemption if the sides do not come to an agreement.

Every, single one of these Senators is guilty of attempted extortion and are abusing their offices. Period. Try acting like elected officials and not like low-level mob enforcers, Senators.

Scottsdale, Arizona: No More

In response to the murder of a Phoenix police officer in September of this year, police in Scottsdale, Arizona have begun asking every, single suspect they arrest for proof of citizenship. If none is produced, Federal immigration authorities are notified. Why are they doing this? Because the cop-killer was an illegal immigrant who had twice been deported and had been arrested by Scottsdale police only 16 months before the murder. Had they taken the killer off the streets of this country then, officer Nick Erfle might not have died at the hands of Erik Jovani Martinez.

Scottsdale police had arrested Martinez on a misdemeanor charge 16 months earlier but they released him then because they didn't know he was an illegal immigrant who had been twice deported.

Erfle's killing "caused us to look at what were asking suspects," Scottsdale police Sgt. Mark Clark said. "If we arrest someone and then find that we called ICE (Customs and Immigration Enforcement) and they put a hold on them, then we know they have been deported and are back again."

Martinez was later killed by police after he stole a car and took a hostage, authorities said.

Now police in the affluent suburb ask every suspect about their citizenship, have ICE agents pick up those who are in this country illegally, and keep a database of possible illegal immigrants in case they turn up again.

Scottsdale Mayor Mary Manross supports the policy change and said that because every suspect is asked about citizenship, police are not engaged in racial profiling.

"I would not tolerate that," Manross said. "I think the chief has struck the right balance to do what we want to achieve."

ICE answers every call and helps get the lawbreakers out of the country. If police in the rest of the country did the same, how fast would the problem begin to go away? My guess is, not very long at all.

I Saw (Some Lady) Groping Santa Claus

Even the jolly, old elf himself isn't safe these days. A Santa at the Danbury Fair Mall (in Connecticut) was allegedly groped by a 33-year old woman. The woman was arrested and charged with sexual assault, so the authorities are taking this seriously.  

DANBURY, Conn. - Santa Claus says that a woman who sat on his lap was naughty, not nice. A Santa at the Danbury Fair mall said the woman groped him. "The security officer at the mall said Santa Claus has been sexually assaulted," police Detective Lt. Thomas Michael said of the weekend complaint.

Sandrama Lamy, 33, of Danbury, was charged with sexual assault and breach of peace. She was released on a promise to appear in court on Jan. 3.

Police quickly found and identified Lamy because the woman was described as being on crutches, said Capt. Bob Myles.

A call seeking comment from Lamy was answered by a recording Tuesday morning. A woman later called back and said: "It's a false report and I don't have any idea."

The Santa in question, a 65-year old man, was particularly upset about the incident because children were waiting in line. There is no word on how much they might have seen of the incident.

You know, this is the second instance of a Santa being assaulted this year that I know of. The first was the genius film student who thought it would be funny to smash a pie into Santa's face. What the hell is wrong with people?

Even They Can’t Cover Up The Fraud

How ragingly bad must the fraud be if even the United Nations can't hide it from an internal investigation? A UN group has determined that there is widespread, pervasive fraud in the UN's peacekeeping operations. The fraud they admit to runs into hundreds of millions of dollars (and heading north rapidly) and 10 UN procurement officials have been charged with offenses so far. And they are not even finished investigating yet.

UNITED NATIONS — A U.N. task force has uncovered a pervasive pattern of corruption and mismanagement involving hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts for fuel, food, construction and other materials and services used by U.N. peacekeeping operations, which are in the midst of their largest expansion in 15 years.

In recent weeks, 10 procurement officials have been charged with misconduct for allegedly soliciting bribes and rigging bids in Congo and Haiti. It has been the largest single crackdown on U.N. staff malfeasance in the field in more than a decade

The task force has issued a series of public and confidential reports charging that corruption has spread from U.N. headquarters — where three officials have been convicted in bribery schemes — to the far reaches of its growing peacekeeping efforts. The task force has also cast a spotlight on the United Nations' repeated failure to take action against officials long suspected of wrongdoing, allowing them to carry out criminal schemes in one U.N. mission after another.

"The task force identified multiple instances of fraud, corruption, waste and mismanagement at U.N. headquarters and peacekeeping missions, including ten significant instances of fraud and corruption with aggregate value in excess of $610 million," said one report by the task force, headed by a former federal prosecutor in Connecticut, Robert Appleton.

The new corruption cases highlight the limits of reforms imposed since the early 1990s, when a previous buildup of peacekeeping missions led to reports of rampant corruption in Cambodia, Somalia and the Balkans. In response, in 1994 the United Nations created the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), but it has a poor record of holding corrupt officials to account.

Yet people insist on trusting the United Nations with the global economy? There is a definition of insanity that applies here. Why in the world have we not shut this sickeningly corrupt organization down or withdrawn from it?

Why do people trust the IPCC at this point? If they can be this corrupt and inept over a relatively straightforward program, how can you trust them on an enormously complex subject like the global environment?

British Authorities Come To Their Senses

It wasted some £4,000 of taxpayer money, dragged a 12-year old boy through the British court system for months, terrorizing him and made Britain look totally insane to the rest of the world. But finally, the British authorities have dropped the charges against the boy for his offense. That "crime" was to throw a cocktail sausage at a man.

The case of a boy charged with assaulting a pensioner with a cocktail sausage in a 'Just William-style' prank is set to be dropped after spiralling in cost, it was revealed today.

The bill for prosecuting the 12-year-old, who allegedly threw the pork snack at elderly neighbour is thought to have reached £4,000.

But now after the case was taken to court and adjourned FIVE times Crown lawyers are expected to announce they are offering no evidence against the schoolboy.

His mother, who said a 'notice of discontinuation' has been issued, today launched a furious attack on prosecutors for making her son's life a 'living nightmare'.

She said: "It was absolutely ludicrous to bring him before the court for that. My boy is in bits.

“Every night before he had to go to court he couldn't sleep.

"He was thinking somebody was going to come and take him off to prison."

Well, yes, they sent Sherlock Holmes, in fact. Got to have those priorities all straight and all. For example, the same authorities spent all that time and money on the case of the killer cocktail weenie which distracted them from requiring a violent offender to wear a monitoring bracelet. So that yob was free to attend a drunken party where he murdered a 15-year old.

It's all about priorities.

Stopping The Spiral

Last year, a study was published that looked the the mutually beneficial spiral of death that media was enmeshed in with terrorists from all over the world. By publishing and publicizing the atrocities committed by terrorists, the media gets higher circulation, more readers or viewers, while the terrorists get the media coverage their acts are designed to generate. It is a sick, parasitic relationship. Dave Kopel, writing at The Rocky Mountain News points out that much the same thing occurs with the media coverage of killers and their killing sprees. The media coverage encourages copycat killers.

The way the media cover an event influences whether there will be repetitions. For example, if a fan runs onto the field during a baseball game, the broadcast cameras usually avoid showing pictures of the fan. The TV producers know that the fan on the field is seeking attention, and that, presumably, getting his picture on television will reward him. Moreover, broadcasting the man's antics would encourage copycats.

Killing time at a baseball game is a tiny misdeed, compared to killing people, but many media decisions have the effect of encouraging copycat murders.

Last April, The Denver Post published on its front page five "glamour shots" that the Virginia Tech murderer had taken of himself, and sent to NBC. On Wednesday, the Post ran a front-page picture of the young man who killed two at a youth missionary center in Arvada and two others at a church in Colorado Springs, along with very large-type excerpts from the killer's rantings. In the first sentence, the killer compared himself to the Virginia Tech killer.

The Post might has well have a run a sidebar: "Are you a hate-filled sociopath? Are you upset because you have an intense feeling of superiority to other people, even though you have accomplished little or nothing? Your hateful screeds will not meet our standards for publication as a letter to the editor. However, if you perpetrate a mass murder, we will put your picture on our front page, publish your writings there, too, and do our part to ensure that your name is remembered forever."

The above paragraph is not the formal policy of the Post and of much of the mainstream media, but it amounts to the de facto policy.

Kopel is right about this. The huge media frenzies surrounding events like this encourages some people to act out the same sick actions. Kopel's suggestions to fix or at least minimize the problem are common sense. Refuse page one publication of the killer's photo and any words he left behind. Refuse to run action photos of the killer - as the media did with a disgusting gusto in the Omaha mall shootings. Refuse to glorify the killer - call him a killer or a coward or a murderer. Will this and the other steps he outlines stop all copycats? Of course not. But it may stop some. Kopel even suggests running pictures of the dead killer in order to deglorify him. They used to do that in many areas of the United States, although I don't recall many pictures like that since the 1930s gangsters were displayed to the press. Maybe it has been done more recently, but it might make even a sociopath think twice. Death shots are not as fetching as glamor shots, after all. 

Kopel mentions Loren Coleman's investigations into the copycat effect. Maybe it is time for the media to pay attention to that research. If the media chooses to, it can break a lot of that parasitic, spiral of death relationship between themselves and the killers. Isn't it time they tried?