Fatal stabbing suspect Cyan Brown, 16, was the aggressor in Christmas Eve New York subway fracas, police say. This happened in an area I go through a lot. The original reports said: poor girl “fondled” by group of bad men and stabbed one in self defense. The cop in me knew that wasn’t the whole…
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Marc Perrusquia in the Memphis Commercial Appeal has a good story about the extensive criminal activities of one very criminal family. Over seven decades, Porterfield and several members of his extended family have been a violent, drug-peddling, thieving scourge on Shelby County. They’ve been involved in at least 14 shootings, four murders and countless break-ins…
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“I don’t care about sob stories, bad background, poverty — none of that. As an adult, you know the difference between right and wrong. You have a choice and he made the wrong choice.” Well said. Too bad it’s from the daughter of an 82-year-old woman shot and killed.
So says Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weiss. The Sun-Times reports. The police chief asking a bunch of high-school students to snitch? That’ll go over well. The sad part, at least to me, is that if it weren’t for the video, this would have been just another death in the hood. Another dead black kid, little…
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Thinking about the street fight in Chicago makes me think Frank Zimring and Gordon Hawkins’ 1997 book, Crime is Not the Problem. They distinguish between crime and violence and argue convincingly that America’s problem is not crime but violence. Other nations have as much if not more crime, they say. They just don’t kill each…
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One 16-year-old high-school honors student student gets sucker-hit with a large piece of wood, then cold cocked, and finally stomped and beaten to death. All this caught on video in front of a large screaming (and sometimes cheering) crowd. Finally some nearby adults carry try and rescue him and carry him away, but it’s too…
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Colleen Long has the story in the Washington Post. Homicides are down. They’re on pace for 457 this year, which would be lower than the many-decade low of 497 in 2007. Very impressive. Thank you, NYPD! This is all the more impressive since, as Patrick McGeehan reports in the New York Times, unemployment hit 10.3%…
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A reader pointed out a good article in Chicago Magazine by John Conroy, “A Mugging on Lake Street.” It’s a bit heartbreaking to learn that John Conroy, whose name I recognize as a quality journalist, doesn’t have a regular gig. But at least he got this assignment. Too bad it all started with Conroy getting…
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Ta-Nehisi Coates has an interesting post about the death penalty and “innocent” people on death row. I assume it’s inspired by this storyin the New Yorker. I feel the need to highlight the case of Roger Keith Coleman, a man claimed innocence to the end, and whose case was murky enough that it garnered this…
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[He] was in the middle of a string of 17 robberies of city business in 22 days, police say. … [In 2005] Lomax was sentenced to 21 years in prison, but the conviction was overturned on appeal. When the case came back to court on June 22, Baltimore Circuit Judge John Addison Howard gave Lomax…
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