Crime

A riveting new podcast about the Bernhard Goetz episode in 1980s New York nonetheless skews the tale—and the city’s history.

A few minutes into Vigilante, journalist Leon Neyfakh’s riveting and heart-wrenching new podcast, we hear from Garth Reed, a gravel-voiced New Yorker who had immigrated from Jamaica in the late twentieth century. He recalls traveling south through Manhattan on a dirty, graffiti-covered 2 train. It was a Saturday afternoon, just a few days before Christmas, in 1984. The train was not especially crowded, but most of its passengers had apparently eased away from four rambunctious black teenagers taking up a lot of space toward one end of the car. They were “hanging onto the handrails, swinging around, walking around the train,” Reed recalls.

“Britain is the best country to be black in” Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch confidently informed the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester this Tuesday. Is she right? Perhaps, and then again perhaps not, particularly if you’re a black adolescent living in London. I can certainly think of a number of black teenagers, senselessly slain within the last week, whose families might disagree with her.

There’s a reason shoplifting is rife

My small Shires market town reported a handful of crimes a year when we moved here a decade ago. Over the past year or so, every garage on my street has been burgled. Only last week an escaping shoplifter shoved my daughter to the ground while fleeing the local Londis. Police don’t even attend when you report incidents. The area has not seen a decline in prosperity — only in civic orderliness. And it’s a vicious cycle that burns out local civic participation. I know one town councillor who joined full of enthusiasm, only to resign a year later when officials suggested that, as there was no prospect of any police response to rising drug-taking and antisocial behaviour in the local park, maybe he and another councillor should themselves form a citizen patrol.

The closure of nine Target stores in coastal cities reflects poorly on Democrats

The discount department chain Target recently announced that it will be closing nine stores across the United States in cities such as San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. The stated reason is rampant organised retail theft, which has created more shrinkage (loss of inventory from other than sales) than can be dealt with, and an unsafe shopping environment driving prospective customers away. A precedence has already been set for this. Macys and Best Buy have closed a few of their stores citing similar reasons.

Many Democrats are claiming that the recent indictment of Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) proves that the current Justice Department provides equal justice to Democrats and Republicans. Although it is necessary to wait for the evidence to emerge before judgment is passed on this most recent indictment, what appears so far may be closer to equal injustice.

When Toronto police raided the workshop of renowned gunsmith Rodger Kotanko in November 2021 and shot him to death, questions swirled.

But while some details have since emerged, a few questions have remained: who was the lone customer inside the workshop during the raid that day in rural southern Ontario? And, what does that witness say happened?

A recently filed $2.6 million lawsuit sheds some light on that mystery.

It’s hard to imagine how a sombre journey to honour 11 fallen police officers could become even more melancholy.

But that was the reality of the 2023 Run to Remember relay from Toronto to Ottawa.

Denise George, the 64-year-old former attorney-general of the US Virgin Islands, is sitting in a hotel room on the main island of St Thomas, looking out at a view of green hills and Caribbean sea. While the photographer takes her picture, she sways to music coming from the swimming pool below. Amid this idyllic scene it is hard to believe that this is the woman who, for the best part of the past four years, has been entrenched in a legal battle with the estate of the financier, paedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

It was an awful story: Two teenagers out joyriding deliberately slammed into Andreas Probst while he was riding a bicycle, killing him. That already spoke to a broken youth culture. However, as the story has unfolded, we’ve seen the racial politics that lie behind Probst’s horrible death in the media coverage, the criminal justice system’s racial lies, and the story of the teens’ lives.

Rather than glorifying and excusing lawbreaking, Americans could learn something from Asian cultures’ attitude toward such behavior.

American social media is normalizing crime, especially low-level offenses such as shoplifting. Millions, for example, have viewed posts of digital content creator “Boonk Gang” stealing shoes, not paying for haircuts, and even abducting live lobsters on platforms like Vine, Instagram, and Facebook. The creator’s arrest for robbing a Dunkin’ Donuts in 2017 only inflated his popularity, fueling a semi-successful rap career. Meantime, American youth absorb the message that not only is it okay and maybe even funny to steal—it might also boost your career. This is an incredibly destructive message. 

COQUITLAM, B.C. – At least two RCMP officers have been injured in what is being described as a critical incident in the Metro Vancouver city of Coquitlam.

Carley Hodges said Friday near the scene that she saw one officer being taken out of a building on a stretcher while getting chest compressions.

BREAKING: Two police officers have been injured after a shooting in Coquitlam’s city centre neighborhood. https://t.co/Ciqi1dHRNj pic.twitter.com/xVtJGK6mNN

— Alanna Kelly (@AlannaKellyNews) September 22, 2023

Update: Mountie killed, another hurt in Coquitlam City Centre shooting

h/t PMS

The teen driver who allegedly mowed down a retired police chief in a fatal hit-and-run told Las Vegas police he would be back on the streets in under a month, according to a report.

Jesus Ayala is accused of driving a stolen Hyundai Elantra on Aug. 14 along with Jzamir Keys, 16, and deliberately crashing into and killing Andreas “Andy” Probst, 64, who had been riding his bike, a disturbing video showed.

This is the sort of crime that makes you think convicted monsters being torn apart by wild dogs on live TV may not be so bad after all.

The parents of disgraced cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried have been accused of siphoning off millions of dollars in “misappropriated funds” from FTX.

Claims against Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried have been made in a lawsuit by administrators of FTX, as the crypto company seeks to claw back cash that they allegedly received prior to its collapse.

FTX has alleged the pair “exploited their access and influence” at the business to “enrich themselves”, as they benefitted from perks such as luxury hotel stays and the use of private jets.