October 5, 2010

Text and Violence

From the NYT:
A former parolee with a long history as a petty criminal was convicted of capital crimes on Tuesday for his part in a nighttime home invasion in Cheshire, Conn., three years ago that left a woman and her two daughters dead. The jury deliberated less than one full day. 

The defendant, Steven J. Hayes, who, the testimony showed, described his eager anticipation of the crime with an “LOL” — laughing out loud — text message hours before taking part in murder, rape, kidnapping and assault at the home of the Petit family, was convicted of 16 of 17 crimes in all; he was acquitted of arson.

A few years ago in VDARE, I explained some of the reasons why it was much harder now to get away with crimes than in, say, 1965, when people still left their car keys in the ignition switches of their unlocked parked cars. Back then, "You could pursue a lucrative career in auto theft just by climbing into random cars and driving them away." 

Since I wrote that, the spread of communications via text rather than speech means that conversations get archived permanently. If you have a street gang, you can threaten to kill a potential witness who might have heard you mention your crime, but you can't threaten to kill a Verizon server farm.

Granted, most potential criminals are pretty dim, but the lesson has to be slowly sinking in by now from all the police procedural shows on TV that the cops have all sorts of ways to follow up electronic trails on your actions. Sure, you could make like Ben Affleck's bankrobber gang in "The Town" and have a long checklist of track-covering steps like microwaving the video camera data storage box  and pouring bleach all over the crime scene to wipe out DNA evidence, but, that's starting to seem like real work. If you and you're pals are that foresightful and competent under pressure, you could get real jobs, like being a NASCAR pit crew or working on the crew filming a bankrobber movie or whatever, and not have to go to prison all the time.

Think of it this way: Imagine a 13-year-old who looks up to his 20-year-old gangbanger cousin, who is sharp enough to have stayed out of jail so far. The cousin tells the kid that if he wants to be a real gangsta and do real crimes, he can't be playing around posting pictures of himself and his homies flashing gang signs on MySpace, he can't text to his friends the address of the place where they're going to buy some drugs, he can't put the address of the guy he buys drugs from into his PDA, he can't be sending Twitter messages about where he's going, he can't even own a normal cell phone with a permanent phone number for girls to call him on because the cops can track what cell he was in and disprove his alibis.

In other words, to be an old school original gangsta, he's got to give up a lot of the methods by which kids these days socialize. And what's the fun of that?

53 comments:

  1. Steve has probably already seen this in the news, but I'd like to be the first to re-post it, here.

    "A San Diego police officer and his wife have warrants out for their arrest after they were accused of vandalizing their million-dollar Temecula home.

    The warrants for felony vandalism were issued for Robert and Monique Acosta after they allegedly trashed their home because they were facing foreclosure.

    Neighbors said the couple told them that their credit union refused to modify their mortgage and gave them until July to move out. Residents said the Acosta's former home was the nicest on the block -- neighbors called it the Castle.

    Neighbor, Keith Peet, helped the couple move but said he had to break off the friendship.

    "He started damaging the house," Peet said. "Pouring concrete down the drain and just damaging the whole house like it is now."

    The couple is also accused of smashing decorative stones and destroying the landscaping. In addition, the Acostas allegedly stole trees, fixtures, air conditioning units and cabinets.

    Almost $200,000 worth of damage was done, according to the Riverside District Attorney's office. Officials said that some of the property was recovered."

    So, Hispanic gets totally underwater after buying an absurdly expensive home, then trashes it (with his presumably Hispanic wife) when a credit union won't restructure the loan i.e. give him essentially free occupancy or a heavily discounted mortgage payment that will cause the amount owed to increase rather than amortize. This is Vdare territory on so many levels. The vandal, who is employed as a cop although he shouldn't be (see his community rating on http://ratemycop.com/index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=20969), is a protected minority with poor self control and morals who is imprudently granted a loan he can't repay. And instead of behaving honorably by accepting responsibility for his poor economic judgment, his overweening sense of entitlement compels him to destroy and burglarize something that he does not own.

    As Beavis would probably say after hearing about this,"Heh, heh. Cool. Mexicans rule!"

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  2. Husband and wife home wrecking crew.

    http://media.trb.com/media/photo/2010-10/56507581.jpg

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  3. forget text. Let's talk prose. What's your opinion of Joe Sobran's.

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  4. If it is harder to get away with crimes like those of Steven Hayes now than it was then, why is there so much more of this sort of crime today than it was fifty years ago?

    Might it have something to do with the fact that people actually went to the electric chair or gallows back then? This Mr. Hayes may have been convicted of 'capital crimes,' but chances, given that he's in Connecticut, are that he'll never be executed. It'd be really surprising if he were executed in less than the dozen or so years it seems to take in places like Texas or Florida that are moderately intent on carrying out the death penalty.

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  5. What's your opinion of Joe Sobran's.

    Yeah, I was kinda hoping that iSteve [and/or VDARE and/or Taki] would be getting a piece on Sobran.

    But maybe that's too hot a topic even for Steve Sailer to broach...

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  6. Hayes and his accomplice might well have been stopped before murdering the victims if the local police hadn't done their best Keystone Kops routine. Cheshire is a relatively upscale community with little crime. The cops just aren't used to dealing with anything more serious than a loud party or an unleased dog.

    Peter

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  7. PDA? Geeez, I had a PDA, but that was 10 years ago.

    Maybe you *should* get a TV to get in touch of year 2010, Steve.

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  8. Steve Sailer wrote (In his last article):

    "Something I try to do is to mentally put myself in other people's shoes, to think about what are the specific economic and emotional incentives facing other people."


    If I were a 18-year-old today, and had grown up watching "Cops", "America's Most Wanted",
    forensic-oriented-Detective-series like "Cold Case" and "CSI Miami", and prison-oriented dramas like "Oz", and A&E penal-documenturies on life "on the inside" replete with descriptions of prison gangs.....................................I dont think Id conciously commit a felony either. The cops have gotten too good at what they do, they will chase you forever, and forensic evidence nails down your guilt in a undeniable fashion. Prison is portrayed as the very definition of cruel and unusual punishment (especially for whites, as they are outnumbered badly in there).

    The cameras that are everywhere in society now just make getting away with a crime seem that much harder. The risk-benefit ration is too stilted toward the former.

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  9. This case has gotten a lot of publicity nationwide relative to similar ones perpetrated by blacks. It has the requisite elements of gore, sadism and white perpetrators to make it suitable for a national audience. Good way for the media to send the message that crime happens everywhere and that all groups are just as liable to do bad things as any other.

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  10. Steve,

    I wish you would do more posts about violence: who commits it and why. I can't remember when I started reading you, but I clearly remember what I was looking for when I stumbled across your blog those years ago.

    When I was 19-20, I started what was to be a career in criminal investigations/profiling (it had been a passion of mine since my late teens) when I quit school to get married and become a homemaker. I enjoyed those books in my leisure time, but got more dissatisfied as what I read increasingly did not match my real world experience. I vividly remember putting my last book down and muttering that it was garbage. I went on the internet with questions and soon after discovered you.

    I find it ironic because while your site is the best, it isn't really what you do and many young people who follow you are woefully ignorant. Great on understanding the behavior of the masses, not so good on the interpersonal. The liberal will keep being shocked when a black person commits a crime; his (young) counterpart in the Steveosphere has a hard time letting go of his Freudian "there she blows!" explanation for why a man murders, especially when he murders a woman. He is shocked each time a murderer turns out to be someone who seemed normal with an active dating or married life.

    I guess I'm saying your help is badly needed to set these guys straight :)

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  11. Crime rates rose from at least 1900 to 1933, then fell through 1958, rose from then until 1991 or '92, and have fallen since.

    They go according to their own cycle, and technological change has little or nothing to do with it.

    Cell phones only became widespread in the late '90s or 2000s, nearly a decade after crime started plummeting. And they did not accelerate the crime decline, since the steepest drop was in the first 5 or so years, and has been much slower during the 2000s even while cell phones became mainstream.

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  12. @ironrails

    If I had a dog I'd damn well own him, pal. Just because he'd be "unleased," would that make me a criminal? What has this world come to?!

    I'm kidding.

    On crime's becoming work: when I was living in England, I ran across a piece in the Guardian about crooks in London who were uprooting street signs and selling them for scrap. Well, where's the fun in *that*? It's even worse than most full-time jobs, and with time in stir looming at the end.

    A philosopher friend and I came up with the perfect crime for these guys: stealing the punts that ply the waters of Oxford, disassembling them, and remaking them into pallets for resale. That's how dumb these guys seemed to us anyway.

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  13. "In other words, to be an old school original gangsta, he's got to give up a lot of the methods by which kids these days socialize. And what's the fun of that?"

    With the age of eligibility for social security likely to rise, is a senior citizen crime wave imminent?

    Hell, if you think all blacks and Asians look alike, try finding eyewitnesses who can tell one wizened oldster from another.

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  14. Perhaps you have a point Steve, but on the other hand, as some have pointed out on your site, the country's attitude towards criminal laws and their enforcement could become more lax as the nation's population of criminally inclined increases. See this article for example - that fact that it has not made national news supports the latter possibility:

    http://www.news-gazette.com/news/courts-police-and-fire/2010-09-28/former-tv-weatherman-victim-unprovoked-attack.html

    "CHAMPAIGN—But for his great sense of humor, Mike Sola might be curled up in the fetal position crying right now.

    The 50-year-old former weatherman for WILL-TV and, before that, WCIA-TV, is among the latest in a growing list of white men in town being slugged for sport by young black men. (Earlier reports indicated a slang term of “polar bear hunting” for these attacks, but police officials say that term is not evident in the recent attacks.) The attacks seem to have been concentrated on campus during August but lately have been spreading across Champaign and have even included young white boys in city parks."

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  15. Sunday night I was out on the town with friends. This girl in New Orleans that my buddy, J., has been seeing called him on his cell, and they talked for a couple of minutes. After J. got off the phone, he shook his head disgustedly, saying that she had been on her way home from work when a car sped past her and slammed into a utility pole. A moment later the front and rear doors opened and several black guys took off running into the night. As this was taking place, a police cruiser went by, never bothering to stop, the oblivious black cop behind the wheel too busy texting to notice his surroundings.

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  16. Steve, the experience of Britain invalidates your thesis, as does the proliferation of easy, internet crime.

    Consider Britain, where cameras are EVERYWHERE, and everyone is in a database. Yet, by focusing only on Middle Class crime to avoid the un-PC demands of focusing on young Muslim Pakistanis and Black folks from the Caribbean and Africa, the penalty for even serious crimes like murder is fairly slight. There is not much real risk a criminal runs, even if detected, because a whole class of people is "exempt" from the surveillance and even arrest. Knowing someone who looks like an image on camera did a crime is one thing, actually arresting them, bringing them to trial, and sending them to a very unpleasant prison for a VERY long time is something else.

    In the US, of course, an old-school Gangsta lives large. Just by being a Gangsta, he does not have to work, has all the drugs and guns he wants, and has women coming out of his EARS. His main risk is being shot by a rival, not anything the cops do. If he's wanted, he can go to Mexico, lay low with relatives, and come back under a different name. This is very common. Being Mexican, he is legally exempt from all the surveillance, laws, and such that hit Whites and to an extent, Asians, but NOT Blacks or Hispanics.

    Incentives, incentives, incentives!

    The primary reason guys become Gangstas is girls anyway. As far as bragging, it can be done, merely in code. If you are clued in, you know. While it is completely deniable, and not something that holds up in court.

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  17. What's your opinion of Joe Sobran's.

    Yeah, I was kinda hoping that iSteve [and/or VDARE and/or Taki] would be getting a piece on Sobran.


    What's the use of discussing Joe, Steve or Kevin?

    Read them attentively instead.

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  18. Too bad they - or their parents - didn't read your blog.

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  19. My goodness, a Man Bites Dog story.

    Would be interesting to see his IQ. He must have been a CEO or something the way CSI and Law and Order tell it.

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  20. Obligatory relevant "The Wire" from HBO mention.

    If you have not seen it, steal it, buy it, inhale it, snort it, experience it.

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  21. well, you have to realize the US is close to a police state now. the difference between when i was a kid 30 years ago and now is tremendous, and to my parents and other people who are over 60 the difference has to be night and day.

    i move every couple years, and the police presence in some cities is ubiquitous. it's really overbearing in some cases. when i was a kid i could easily go a few days without seeing a police cruiser. now, i see several units every day.

    in 2010, multiple states are having court battles over the speeding cameras they want to set up everywhere, on every highway. and the DUI system is draconian. in some counties, if you get one DUI, you'll be so, so sorry with all the fines, classes, and higher insurance you have to pay for years and years just for being 0.09 in a 0.08 jurisdiction.

    police technology has improved signficantly from the revolver and nightstick era, to our current glock and taser era. but the increase in police presence, and practice of just locking up all the criminals and keeping them in prison forever, is an equal factor in the declining violent crime rate.

    in no way do i think the violent crime rate is just naturally declining. remove some of this police presence, and i think the violent crime rate would explode. highly policed cities, combined with massive welfare and handouts, combine to keep the urban poor less violent than they really would be if the US government greatly cutback on all the free handouts, and there were 50% less police in the town.

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  22. now, my previous post just covers the matter of random violent crime. with muslim immigration, the police factor has to skyrocket, and everybody has to be monitored. that is the situation in the UK, which truly is a police state now. the US is not there yet, but as more muslims come, it will get there. the FBI will be in everybody's business. and of course, "terrorism" will be their excuse to come down hard on euro americans. we can already see they are using this excuse to go after euro americans they simply don't like or who don't go along with washington's agenda.

    i notice some people are pointing to declining violent crime rates and suggesting that the mexican invasion does not, in fact, increase crime. i think that's not true at all. the mexican invasion is happening at the same time as significantly escalated police presence everywhere. again, take the police back to 1980 levels and see how the mexicans behave. the US prison system is overflowing will millions of mexicans which it has essentially decided to just lock up for years and years. where were all these millions and milllions of violent mexican criminals in US prisons in 1980? i know with absolutely certaintly there were literally almost zero in pennsylvania in 1980. the violent crime rate is not falling by itself. it is kept down by incarcerating like 15% of all mexicans in the US.

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  23. "See this article for example - that fact that it has not made national news supports the latter possibility"

    Nah, this has been going on below the radar since I used to live in Shampoo-Banana back in the late 80's. Almost all the murders, armed robberies, and other ultra-violent crime, including coed sexual assaults, were committed by blacks. White trailer trash in North Urbana were just doing mickey mouse stuff like driving drunk, shop lifting, and hunting out of season.

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  24. "i move every couple years, and the police presence in some cities is ubiquitous. it's really overbearing in some cases. when i was a kid i could easily go a few days without seeing a police cruiser. now, i see several units every day."

    And more crime by protected minorities means more police jobs for protected minorities. Check out these darlings on the Phila. police force. How do you suppose they scored on the police sergeant exam?

    http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/breaking/Two-Cops-Accused-of-Robbing-an-Undercover-Officer.html?dr

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  25. OT, Steve can you believe this?

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  26. "As this was taking place, a police cruiser went by, never bothering to stop, the oblivious black cop behind the wheel too busy texting to notice his surroundings."

    And your "friend's friend" had the vision to see an action, in a speeding car, presumably with it's cabin light off, and the "phone" held beneath the car door, (and therefore her sight level), from her driver's seat, at night, having just watched a massive accident, well enough to infer that the "black" cop was texting.

    Alright, good night now.

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  27. OT, but another one for your collection.
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1317876/Mixed-race-sisters-amazed-white-child-brown-one.html

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  28. If it is harder to get away with crimes like those of Steven Hayes now than it was then, why is there so much more of this sort of crime today than it was fifty years ago?

    At the risk of stating what should be obvious, the simplest explanation is that the population has increased from 180 million to >310 million since 1960. A 70% increase in total population should mean that there are roughly 70% more Steven Hayeses than there were five decades ago.

    This is why the argument that crime is 'down' relative to past eras is pretty meaningless. If your community's population density increases by, say, 50% over a period of time, while experiencing a reduction in crime of 25% over that same period, your hometown is still LESS safe than it was before.

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  29. I dont think Id conciously commit a felony either... The cameras that are everywhere in society now just make getting away with a crime seem that much harder.

    Yeah, in addition to all your other problems, you'd need to plan an escape route which didn't cross paths with any convenience store security cameras.

    Or else you'd have to use a stolen car for your getaway - which means that you'd need to commit a second felony before you could commit your first felony.

    Plus you'd need an untraceable gun, which probably means a third felony to get your hands on it.

    Lots and lots of sweat equity and forethought needed these days...

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  30. What's the use of discussing Joe, Steve or Kevin? Read them attentively instead.

    I practically memorized Sobran's pieces on the authorship question.

    Heck, just the other day, upon reading of his passing, I went to wordsmith.org, and came up with "Dame Lucifer" as an anagram for "Emaricdulfe".

    The larger point, though, is that when a fellow dies, it's customary for his colleagues [or his former colleagues] to offer up a few choice words in memory of him [or of his career].

    Like Sobran, both Steve and Ann Coulter were too hot-blooded to keep their NR gigs, so they seem like natural candidates to have some insight into the Sobran dilemma.

    [The Derb, on the other hand, seems to be perfectly happy in his role as house lapdog of the establishmentarian Papists.

    Although, in fairness to the guy, he went a long way towards rehabilitating his reputation with those skeet-shooting videos.]

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  31. Fellow Traveller in Berkeley10/6/10, 9:05 AM

    @ Bantam - a brother of President Karzai has run a restaurant in San Francisco for years. It is called Helmand and the Afghan food they serve is actually quite good.

    Your Bay Area Factoid of the Day

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  32. Sorry Steve,

    You've missed the boat on this one. Criminals do not avoid crime because it might keep them away from facebook. Unless they are dumb enough to post that they committed a crime (and sometimes not even then}.

    It is just one more example of the truism that most crimes are solved by a snitch. Criminals live in a different world and like most people talk about their jobs and hobbies, criminals often talk about theirs to their friends and coworkers. They know who they can generally talk with and who will rat them out or just open their stupid mouth at the wrong time.

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  33. Steve Sailer said..."Granted, most potential criminals are pretty dim, but the lesson has to be slowly sinking in by now from all the police procedural shows on TV that the cops have all sorts of ways to follow up electronic trails on your actions."

    Yes, but the lesson is also slowly sinking in that there's a BIG difference between getting caught by the cops and actually having to do time for the crime. How often do we read about people who commit crimes while out on bail? Or people with multiple charges who cut a deal with the DA? Or people who serve only a fraction of their sentence and then commit more crimes?

    It seems punishment does not follow capture as routinely as it once did nor is the severity of punishment as great. Therefore, crime may not pay well but it's not the losing proposition for the criminal that it once was. Further, there is status among criminals in being arrested, even in doing some time in jail. In my old neighborhood in autumn, I'd overhear homeless guys discuss what petty crimes they could commit so they could stay in a nice warm jail over the winter months. If your idea of planning for the future is going for a short stretch in jail, that says something about you and even more about jail. They actually had more leeway to misbehave in jail than they would in a homeless shelter; thus, the appeal of a short sentence.

    When I say crmininals are not bright, I don't at all mean they lack animal cunning. In my old neighborhood, I was continually amazed by how intelligent petty criminals were in figuring out how to game the system in order to avoid honest work and acceptance of any responsibility. They aren't dishonest and violent because they're too dumb to see how destructive that is. They just don't think the rules should apply to them and they are determined to get over on others any way they can. No, they aren't bright enough to discuss Henry James intelligently but then again, neither are plenty of honest, hard-working people.

    Lack of intelligence doesn't lead to a life of crime as surely as lack of conscience does.

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  34. Violent criminals really ARE dim, Steve. One of them imprisoned & raped a Columbia U student for some hours. He tried to destroy the DNA evidence by dousing the woman's face and body with bleach.

    It didn't work, but it made things way worse for the victim.

    So, I'm not sure what this proves.

    On the other hand, I do think the advent of the cell phone has cut down on certain kinds of crime. Even a dimwit knows what a phone can do.

    Phone - cop - get caught - bother someone else.

    That's about the level of thought these coconuts are capable of.

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  35. This Petit woman tried to alert the police by telling a bank teller about the hostage situation. What she should have said to the bank teller was "This is a hold-up, I've got a gun!" You gotta think on your feet.

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  36. I sincerely hope they fry these two bums. But I don't think they will because if they fry two white degenerates they'll have to fry so many more numerous blacks.

    So, they'll escape the fate they so richly deserve because to give them true justice would pave the way for un-PC justice in the future.

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  37. "Anonymous said...
    This case has gotten a lot of publicity nationwide relative to similar ones perpetrated by blacks. It has the requisite elements of gore, sadism and white perpetrators to make it suitable for a national audience. Good way for the media to send the message that crime happens everywhere and that all groups are just as liable to do bad things as any other."

    Yes, it seems an unusual story for such heavy NYT coverage. I've noticed that NPR has been reporting on it too. As far as I know, NPR never even mentioned the Knoxville murders, or the Carr Brother's rampage in Wichita. For the NYT and NPR, home-invasion rape-murders are only newsworthy when whites are the perpetrators.

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  38. Compare how the national media coverage of this brutal crime and trial is in overdrive to the near national media blackout was placed on the coverage of the even more viscous crime perpetrated in Knoxville, TN on white college kids, Channon Christian & Christopher Newsom by a gang of blacks that were convicted of raping, torturing, and eventually murdering them over several days. I live in the same state and didn't hear about it until a guest discussed it on the Michael Savage radio show (while in another state) because Memphis media wouldn't touch it. It's only news when it fits the "Law and Order" model of white criminality.

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  39. Simon in London10/6/10, 11:23 AM

    Dahlia:
    "many young people who follow you are woefully ignorant. Great on understanding the behavior of the masses, not so good on the interpersonal. The liberal will keep being shocked when a black person commits a crime; his (young) counterpart in the Steveosphere has a hard time letting go of his Freudian "there she blows!" explanation for why a man murders, especially when he murders a woman. "

    You're talking about Whiskey, right? >:)

    I too find isteve very useful for helping me think about how the world works. And I'm in my late '30s.

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  40. On Sobran, I think it's funny that his fans won't even admit he's a total anti-semite and that's why they like him. If you hate Jews, why not just say so? It's like even the Jew-haters give a grudging acknowledgement to liberalism in denying they're anti-semitic. Same deal with most racists.

    Sobran did some good writing before he went off the rails.

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  41. Another inmate on death row in Connecticut clearly illustrates the innate stupidity of most criminals. Ricky Cobb kidnapped a woman from a shopping center parking lot, took her to a secluded location, and then raped and murdered her. Cobb buried the body where he knew it was unlikely to be found.

    The woman's abandoned car was found in the parking lot, with signs of a struggle, and she became the subject of a manhunt. Posters displaying her picture and name were distributed all over the area. Cobb was arrested a few days later trying to use one of the woman's credit cards ... in a store whose front door and cash registers were emblazoned with the woman's missing-person posters.

    Peter

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  42. I believe cell phones and text messaging make it harder to get away with big time felonies, but it also enables quotidian Hispanic thieves to do volume stealing.

    If you have a significant illegal Hispanic population in your medium size bedroom community, you will notice Latinas out with strollers on the phone pretty much all the time. Ever wonder who they are talking to? It could just be their mother-in-law but what I observe is that any time a patrol car drives by, some Latina starts dialing furiously.

    In my town, Mexican illegals steal in groups, with males hopping out of pickups, checking garage doors and peering over fences. The girlfriends meanwhile are spread out across the town doing surveillance: after all, in a bedroom town of 30,000 people probably only three or four patrol cars are out at any given time. During lunch hour, maybe one. All the crooks need to do is to check the police station parking lot to figure out how many cars are out. In my town the police station is located next to a shabby garden apartment filled with very observant Mexicans.

    If a posse of girlfriend's have a fix on where the patrol cars are, the crooks now know which neighborhoods (usually during work hours) are vulnerable to a quick break-in. Bicycles, wide screen TVs, luxury cars parked in a driveway, gold jewelery stashed in bedrooms, all this stuff can be boosted in under ten minutes and driven off.

    And a lot of coordination for this thievery happens right in front of the local Home Depot.

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  43. On Sobran, I think it's funny that his fans won't even admit he's a total anti-semite and that's why they like him.

    I stumbled upon Sobran because of the authorship question.

    Then I enjoyed reading his anti-Lincoln-ism [i.e. his anti-anti-constitutionalism].

    If he despised the likes of Lloyd Blankfein and Newton Minow and Peter Geithner and Penny Pritzker, then that's just icing on the cake.

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  44. The 50-year-old former weatherman for WILL-TV and, before that, WCIA-TV, is among the latest in a growing list of white men in town being slugged for sport by young black men.

    Well at last its not a hate crime. I think we can all take some comfort from that.

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  45. And your "friend's friend" had the vision to see an action, in a speeding car, presumably with it's cabin light off, and the "phone" held beneath the car door, (and therefore her sight level), from her driver's seat, at night, having just watched a massive accident, well enough to infer that the "black" cop was texting.

    1) Hmm. I don’t recall anything in my post about how fast the police car was going. Instead, you changed “went” to “speeding,” a word with connotations entirely lacking in my post.

    2) Yes, it’s quite impossible to tell if somebody’s texting and driving as long as long as he holds the phone in his lap. That’s why I definitely think that you should try it the next time a police cruiser is nearby.

    3) As for how she could see what was happening at night, well, perhaps you’ve heard of this marvelous thing in American urban areas called “electric illumination,” often referred to in Ghana as “white man’s magic lightning.”

    I always get a kick out of it when a guy who thinks that cars can run on water decides to play at being a hard-nosed skeptic.

    PS. Nice use of scare quotes, Twoof, although I see that you’re still doing battle with that pesky apostrophe. We can only hope that someday a Nice White Lady will help you to close the Punctuation Gap.

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  46. Well Bob, it's a good thing your grammar is so accurate; it almost makes up for the mediocrity of your content.

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  47. From your VDARE article you linked to:

    "The public's biggest defensive move, of course: moving to the suburbs, far away from the bad guys. In contrast to Britain's more enterprising urban criminals, who routinely drive 50 or 100 miles out into the countryside to commit home invasions, American hoods don't like to leave the 'hood. Homeboys aren't comfortable away from home—fortunately."

    Missing a key point here: Americans are armed, Britons are not. British criminals aren't "more enterprising" nor are American "homeboys" simply uncomforable outside of their "hoods".

    It is quite simple. Suburban and rural Britons are disarmed (both mentally and physically) and those few who do have guns are afraid to use them because the courts defend the criminals, not the homeowner defending his life and property.

    Whereas in the USA, homeowners are heavily armed, and the law vigorously upholds their right to defend life and property with deadly force. Ergo, few "homeboys" are foolish enough to try driving out to the "sticks" to home invade some redneck's house and risk being shot, and if they survive, going to jail. It's not a risk worth driving out of one's way for, when there are far easier pickings inside one's own "hood".

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  48. Sure, and we all know that people in "the hood" are almost universally unarmed.

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  49. Fellow Traveller,
    Thanks for your tip; when I went to San Francisco, I enjoyed having lunch at Houlihans in Sausalito.
    Yes it was that long ago.

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  50. FTB-the Karzais have a Helmand in Cambridge, MA too.

    Funny, I guess they only locate among the Socialists!

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  51. "After the hit, investigators found members of the Mermaid Ave. crew Tweeting about the slayings.

    "The toaster is hot," read one posting, which investigators say is street slang indicating the hit had been carried out."



    Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2010/10/06/2010-10-06_dim_bulb_busted_taillight_nets_slay_susp.html?obref=obinsite#ixzz11qrPNkt5

    http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2010/10/06/2010-10-06_dim_bulb_busted_taillight_nets_slay_susp.html?obref=obinsite

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  52. Read Gunnar Heinsohn, (or even Steve Sailer on Freakonomics' abortion- crime nexus - you'll see birthrate is the most relevant factor )

    If the critical mass of young men as a proportion of the society was exceeded crime would get out of control. Because the young are dwidling it isn't, so it doesn't. It's really that simple.

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  53. Sorry, I didn't read the post properly before commenting.

    About staying out of prison. Yes that's true about being tracked and recorded and caught. But, a career criminal who has never done serious time, (let alone never done any time) is going to be seriously distrusted to the extent he is going to have to operate alone. No fence, no drug dealer is going to accept that he was just too clever to get caught; they'll be certain he's a police imformer. So, the best strategy for a young person embarking on a life of crime is to get a medium sentence and do about 3 years early on.

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