Crime

Thanksgiving, on the fourth Thursday in November, marks the start of America’s holiday season: a time to celebrate the harvest and show gratitude for the good things in life.

On a sunny day in Manhattan this week, the streets were buzzing, the shops festooned with Christmas decorations, and restaurants and bars were doing a brisk trade as New York rebounded from lockdown restrictions.

But a few miles away at Brooklyn’s grim Metropolitan Detention Centre, there were no lavish turkey dinners — and little to feel grateful about — for the fallen British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, 59, as she waited for her ‘Trial of the Decade’ to start on Monday.

Roaming packs of thieves ransacked another luxury retailer in Los Angeles on Black Friday before descending on Home Depot despite California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s vow to crack down on the string of organized ‘smash and grabs’ plaguing the state.

The Bottega Veneta store in LA’s trendy Beverly Grove shopping district saw a large group enter the store at 5:21 p.m. and snatch pricey merchandise before one robber pepper-sprayed someone in the face, the LA Police Department reported.

At the Home Deport, in Lakewood, eight people made their way into the home improvement chain at 7:55 p.m. and stole sledgehammers, wrenches and hammers, threatened customers and then fled in 10 getaway cars.

Home Deport? Returns only?

Thieves rushed into a southern California Nordstrom store the night before Thanksgiving and ran off with pricey goods in the latest of a string of organized retail thefts in the state.

The robberies have been marked by swift attacks by large groups of people, often as the shops are open.

In the latest incident five people, one wearing an orange wig, entered the open store shortly before 7pm on Wednesday at the Westfield Topanga Mall in the Canoga Park area of Los Angeles, took seven or eight expensive purses and fled in a car, police said.

In August 2012, a 19-year-old student from Guangdong arrived from the Dominican Republic to Montreal with $23,800 in euros and U.S. dollars stuffed into his backpack. Four months later, Zhang Guanqun purchased an 8,500-square-foot mansion in Coquitlam, B.C., for $2.1 million.

It was only one of Zhang’s many multimillion-dollar transactions while attending Coquitlam College. From about 2012 to 2015, Zhang would funnel at least $33.75 million in electronic funds and cash through Canadian and Hong Kong bank accounts.

An Oklahoma state senator has introduced legislation that would force the state to compensate defendants accused of murder but later found not guilty due to justifiable homicide, and named it ‘Kyle’s law’ after Kyle Rittenhouse.

Introduced on Tuesday by State Senator Nathan Dahm, a Republican who is running for the US Senate, ‘Kyle’s Law’ would force Oklahoma to cover the legal fees and damages incurred by anyone accused of murder but found to have been acting in self-defense, if the defendant could prove they were the victim of “malicious prosecution.”

Best Buy CEO Corie Barry said Tuesday that theft is a growing problem in the company’s stores, and the aggressive behavior displayed by shoplifters is “traumatizing” staff members, which has led to retention issues in the otherwise tight labor market.

Barry told Wall Street analysts on a conference call to discuss earnings that criminals often carry in weapons like guns or crowbars and threaten employees and customers. Consumer electronics have reported an increase in organized crime, according to the CEO.

But… you’re encouraging it.

Is Best Buy offering counseling services for people traumatized by the attack in #Waukesha? https://t.co/9xrBWrDPdi

— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) November 24, 2021

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — Two armed suspects picked the wrong deliveryman to rob Saturday in Philadelphia’s Mayfair section.

Police say the victim was leaving his home after dropping off a delivery to his family after midnight on the 3200 block of Longshore Avenue.

That’s when three suspects attempted to rob him, officials say.

Police say the armed men approached the victim and demanded money.

The victim then reportedly told the suspects the money was in his car.

h/t MW

A looting spree in the San Francisco Bay Area continued for a second straight night on Saturday — this time, reaching the suburbs.

A “mass looting” took place at about 9:00 p.m. Saturday evening at the Nordstrom store in Walnut Creek, California, an affluent suburb east of Oakland.

LOOTING AT NORDSTROM, WALNUT CREEK CA
pic.twitter.com/K8tky7hpgX

— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) November 21, 2021

She should not be punished for Epstein’s crimes

In a world where history is dominated — and often written — by men, feminism has long cautioned us to look to the shadows to see the real heroes, lurking there unseen. Out of the spotlight, shunted to the sidelines, trapped beneath the glass ceiling, forever playing a supporting role to a man who takes all the credit for doing half (or less!) of the work. Think of all the women there would be monuments to, if only the men had given them their due.

The disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, a mystery that has gripped the American imagination for half a century on its ascent to national folklore, is the subject of a new F.B.I. investigation centered on the site of a former landfill in Jersey City. A worker, on his deathbed, said he buried the body underground in a steel drum.

F.B.I. agents armed with a search warrant arrived in Jersey City at a plot of dirt and gravel the size of a Little League diamond below the Pulaski Skyway on Oct. 25 and 26 to conduct a “site survey,” according to the Detroit field office, which has led the investigation into Mr. Hoffa’s disappearance in 1975. The steel drum is said to be buried about 15 feet below ground, in the shadow of countless millions of drivers who have passed it by.

Seriously?

‘When you enter the shop of a gunsmith, what the heck do you expect to see?’ asks Kotanko family lawyer

Jeffrey Kotanko says he was planning to visit his 70-year-old brother Rodger on Nov. 3 and go fishing with him later that day.

The two brothers met almost every day for the past 14 years. They lived minutes away from one another in Norfolk County, deep in southern Ontario near Lake Erie.

But that Wednesday, they didn’t go fishing.

Possible “No Knock” warrant? On a gunsmith?

The Ontario government announced Tuesday it will invest $75.1 million over the next three years to combat gun violence and crime across the province at a campaign-style announcement in Toronto.

The move, which comes not long after calls to defund the police made headlines, was included in the recent fall economic statement.

“Gun and gang violence will not be allowed to thrive in Ontario,” Premier Doug Ford said at a news conference Tuesday, ahead of the June election. “There can be no mercy when it comes down to cracking down on these crimes.”

This will work as well as all the other millions thrown at “Gangs and Guns” I’m betting.

Ghislaine Maxwell has spoken for the first time about her ‘living hell’ behind bars – claiming that she has been assaulted and abused by prison guards, purposely deprived of sleep and given rotting food to eat.

In a world exclusive, Ms Maxwell, who had her £21 million bail application denied for the fourth time last week, also claims negative media coverage while she has been in custody and the deliberate withholding of evidence have made it ‘impossible’ for her to receive a fair trial.

Speaking from her 10ft by 12ft prison cell inside New York’s notorious Metropolitan Detention Center, where she has spent the past 16 months in solitary confinement, Ms Maxwell said: ‘I have been assaulted and abused for almost a year and a half.