Archive for the 'Crime News' Category

Trench on the Trayvon Martin shooting

Published on March 30, 2012 by Trench Reynolds in Color Blind and Crime News. 12 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman

Once again the internet is in total outrage over something and that would of course be the shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman. This time though there are two schools of outrage. One side says that George Zimmerman is a racist who was looking to a kill a black kid while the other says that Trayvon Martin was a thug and that Zimmerman was well within his right to defend himself. However even with two avenues of outrage both sides are wrong.

On the one side George Zimmerman was clearly in the wrong. He contacted police about a suspicious character in his community and the police instructed Zimmerman not to follow him and that they would be there soon. Zimmerman willingly chose to ignore that recommendation by police and took matters into his own hands. On most levels that makes Zimmerman a vigilante. While there had been a spate of burglaries in the community it wasn’t Zimmerman’s job to apprehend anybody. In the worst case scenario if Zimmerman stayed put some property may have been damaged or stolen. Now you can give me Martin’s alleged criminal behavior at school all you want but that’s immaterial. Zimmerman had no idea who Martin was or his supposed history.

On the other hand this had nothing to do with race. Last year I spent the better part of the year in my late mother’s development. I’ve seen how people in these communities act. No matter how affluent or not outsiders are always viewed as intruders no matter what color they are. Add the rash of robberies that I mentioned before and you could see why Zimmerman called the cops. Adding race into the mix doesn’t help anyone. For each false claim of racism a true hate crime may be doubted because of it.

Here’s how I think it went down. Zimmerman sees the 6’2″ Martin and calls police. Police tell Zimmerman to stay put, instead he pursues Martin in his SUV. Zimmerman gets out and Martin asks him why he’s following him. Words are exchanged and a scuffle ensues. Martin gets the best of the less than athletic Zimmerman. Zimmerman pulls his gun and shoots Martin. Now from what I understand about Florida’s self-defense law according to the law Zimmerman was within his right to protect himself. Agree or disagree with it, that’s the law. You can’t go back in time to change it. Morally though Zimmerman was definitely overstepping his role as neighborhood watch by pursuing Martin.

What will probably happen is the same thing that happened to Bernie Goetz. While Goetz was only charged with illegal possession of a firearm he lost a $43M civil suit to one of the men he shot. Zimmerman will rightly lose a wrongful death suit when it’s brought against him.

The further adventures of Author Z

Published on February 19, 2012 by Trench Reynolds in Crime News. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Maybe if I complain more about the other book my book will become better.

I originally posted about Authors X and Z here. Long story short both authors wrote books on the same crime that were released at roughly the same time. Book X went on to be a hit. Book Z did not. Then Author Z recently took to the web to bitch about how bad he thinks Book X is. Follow me so far? If not brush up on your algebra. Now Author Z’s whining is no longer contained to just the internet.

You see Author X is in talks to have Book X made into a movie. Author Z has recently been published in a major metropolitan newspaper saying that Movie X would be insensitive to the victims and their families. The thing is he could be right if the movie’s makers decided to skew some things to make it more ‘Hollywood’. You know what I mean, the type of movie that would say “based on Book X” but really has not much to do with the actual story.

Again this sounds like to me that Author Z is using the possibility of Movie X to promote his own book and that he’s not concerned at all about the victims or their families feelings. To me that’s more insensitive to any movie that could be possibly made.

My question is if Hollywood wanted to make Book Z into a movie would he then turn down the money saying it would be insensitive or would he step over the victims and their families on the way to the bank?

A tale of two true crime authors

Published on February 10, 2012 by Trench Reynolds in Crime News. 7 Comments Tags: , , , .

What an author may or may not look like

I am about to tell you a story about two crime authors. In the interest of fairness I will refer to them as Author X and Author Z.

There was a terrible crime many years ago that was very violent and claimed many lives. Both Author X and Author Z were reporters at that time. X was a freelancer who had been published in many national publications such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. Z was a local reporter who worked for a prestigious big city paper. Neither of them were slouches.

Many years after the crime both X and Z wrote books about the crime. We’ll call them Book X and Book Z respectively. Book X was a smash hit. It made the New York Times best seller list and was very received not only by the critics but also the public. Book X has almost become a de facto textbook about the crime in question. Book Z? Not so much. Now this isn’t a critique of Book Z as I haven’t read it. It may even be the better book for all I know but that’s not the purpose of this post.

Recently Book X has been nominated for a state educator’s award. Author Z has taken to the web to plead that the voters of the award to not vote for Book X. Author Z even goes as far to refer to Author X as merely a ‘blogger’ instead of referring to him rightfully as a journalist. Considering I saw Author Z’s piece on blog sites like Examiner.com and The Huffington Post I found that kind of ironic. Is this because Book Z is up for the same award? No, Book Z was not even nominated. I thought that this kind of behavior was odd for not only a professional author but a former journalist as well.

So I decided to more research on this supposed rivalry. As far as I can tell Author X has never said anything about Author Z or Book Z in public. Author Z on the other hand has been all over the web complaining about Book X. One of the more unusual places I saw Author Z defending his book and berating Book X was on a message board dedicated to the criminals and not the victims. This is one of those message boards where the troglodytes that inhabit it think the victims deserved what they got. This is where Author Z went to plead his case. Author Z went on to blame that lack of success of Book Z on everything from Book X had better marketing to blaming the public for being misled by Author X.

The bottom line is I found Author Z’s behavior to be beyond unprofessional but then again I’m just a lowly blogger who has no real publishing experience. Is this normal in the publishing world or is Author Z just experiencing a case of sour grapes?

Personally I think it’s the former and not the latter.

You see there are other crime blogs out there that vastly more successful than mine. With some of them I take issue on some of their ethics or lack thereof. But rather than worrying about what those blogs do I work on mine to make it the best blog it can be. Maybe Author Z can take a lesson from this ‘blogger’.

Is there a new suspect in the murder of Carina Saunders?

Published on January 22, 2012 by Trench Reynolds in Crime News. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , .

Carina Saunders

Saunders’ Suspect ID’s Possible Murder Orchestrator:

19-year-old Carina Saunders of Bethany, Oklahoma was brutally tortured, murdered and dismembered just so her killers could intimidate someone. She was chosen at random and her dismembered body was found in a duffel bag behind a grocery store.

Previously I had posted about how 33-year-old Jimmy Lee Massey was charged in Carina’s murder. Now, search warrants that have been made public state that Massey may have implicated another alleged killer and the mastermind, Alejandro Rojas.

Rojas and Massey allegedly tortured and murdered Carina in order to intimidate another woman into working for their drug and human trafficking ring.

Police are searching for Rojas’ cell phone which they believe contains information regarding Carina’s murder. They didn’t have to look too hard for Rojas though as he is already in jail on drug charges just like Massey.

This does not sound like a crime that would be committed by a local weed dealer or pimp. This sounds like the type of murder that would be made by a major crime cartel, especially since drug trafficking and human trafficking are involved.

Again, for those of you who think drugs and prostitution are victimless crimes I dare you to tell that to Carina Saunders’ family.

Why you should be outraged about the MegaUpload arrests

Published on January 20, 2012 by Trench Reynolds in Crime News. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Popular file-sharing website Megaupload shut down:

Normally when the internet as a whole is outraged about something I’m usually the first person to piss on the internet’s Cheerios. Now, being the grim spectre of truth that I am, I’m going to tell you why you should be outraged over the arrests of the MegaUpload officials.

For those of you not familiar with MegaUpload it was a site where you could share large files with someone. For example my brother and I are working on a project we hope to put on YouTube. He records the video and I edit it. Since he’s in New England and I’m in the South a site like MegaUpload could have helped us in getting the large video files to each other. Of course some of the users of MegaUpload used it to trade pirated materials such as copyrighted music and movies.

Yesterday the Department of Justice arranged to not only have MegaUpload.com shut down but they’ve had most of the company officials arrested. In their indictments they say that MegaUpload has cost copyright holders five hundred million dollars. That’s $500,000,000.

Here’s why you should be outraged. The company officials that have been arrested were arrested in New Zealand. Last time I checked New Zealand was not a U.S. possession. Not only that but the arrestees have been denied bail.

Let me break this down for you. This is obviously being fueled by the RIAA and the MPAA. I mean how else would the DOJ come up with such an arbitrary number as $500M? Apparently those groups are powerful enough to have their tentacles in the governments of two different countries.

If the crime was something along the lines of murder the international extradition would be tied up in red tape for years. For example take the case of Ira Einhorn. In the late 1970s he killed his girlfriend Holly Maddux. He fled to France before he could be arrested. He was finally arrested in France in 1997 but France wouldn’t extradite him to the U.S. until the death penalty was taken off the table. He was finally brought to the states in 2002 after the US acquiesced to France’s demand and he wasn’t even a French citizen.

Now New Zealand is more than happy to ship some of their citizens to America in the express lane over file sharing. This is a massive abuse of power. The manpower and money being used to bring these people to the US could be better used at home to capture murderers, rapists, child molesters and human traffickers. Instead the DOJ shows that it’s in the back pocket of entertainment lobbyists.

Here’s your true global conspiracy.

173 cops were killed in the line of duty last year and you don’t care

Published on January 2, 2012 by Trench Reynolds in Crime News. 17 Comments Tags: , .

Report: 173 law enforcement officers killed on duty in 2011:

In the last days of 2011 a statistic was released that said 173 local and federal police officers were killed in the line of duty as of 12/28/2011. That’s 173 men and women with friends, families and colleagues. That’s 173 people who were murdered while doing the thankless job of protecting our safety and well-being. And as the kids say, not a single fuck was given that day. But you pepper spray one spoiled white kid and it prompts a national week of outrage. And by now you should know those spoiled brats had it coming.

The police in our country are basically another branch of the military. They fight for domestically what those in our armed services fight for abroad. That being the protection and well-being of the citizens of the United States no matter what your conspiracy laden mind might have you believe. So why is no one protesting in the name of the violent deaths of these police officers?

It’s because most of you don’t give a shit. Most of you see police as some kind of nuisance. A lot of you think freedom means that you should be able to drive 120 mph through a school zone while drunk or that you should be able to share a bowl with your 7-year-old and that the cops are just there to harsh your buzz. But when someone breaks into your house, steals your cell phone or Burger King won’t serve you a Big Mac they’re the first people you call.

Much like the prevailing selfish attitude in America you only care about the police when they can do something for you and if 173 people die because of it so be it.

Woman was forced to watch torture and murder of Carina Saunders

Published on December 24, 2011 by Trench Reynolds in Crime News. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Carina Saunders

Man held in Carina Saunders case:

I originally posted about the brutal murder of Carina Saunders here. She was the 19-year-old girl from Bethany, Oklahoma whose decapitated and dismembered body was found in a duffel bag behind a grocery store in October. Originally investigators thought that she may have been killed by a couple of Juggalos. It turns out that it was something terrifyingly more sinister.

33-year-old Jimmy Lee Massey has been charged with Carina’s murder. He allegedly tortured and killed Carina to prove a point to someone else. Investigators say that Massey was involved with a drug and prostitution ring. They also say that Massey and 31-year-old Francisco Gomez grabbed a woman off the street, blindfolded her and made her watch the torture and death of Carina. The woman was told that if she didn’t cooperate with Massey’s prostitution ring that the same thing would happen to her.

And yet some people say that prostitution is a victimless crime. I would imagine that the friends and family of Carina Saunders would disagree.

Oklahoma does have the death penalty unfortunately the preferred method of execution is not a rusty wood chipper.

State Police being sent into Camden

Published on December 12, 2011 by Trench Reynolds in Crime News. 4 Comments Tags: , .

N.J. State Police dispatches troopers to Camden to help quell homicide spree:

Congratulations residents of the Garden State. Your tax dollars are now going to fund the State Police going into the cesspool that is Camden to assist their already overworked police department. While this is much needed it’s still using a water pistol to put out a forest fire.

This is a short-term fix to a long-term problem with no real solution in sight. The talks about starting a countywide police force is again just throwing more money from taxpayers outside of Camden into a hole that isn’t there problem.

Camden will never be a place that people want to go to unless drastic measures are taken and these band-aids that the city and state keep coming up with are not going to cut it.

Not only should the city declare a state of emergency if there was any city that was in need of martial law it would be Camden. Until you get the crime problem under control Camden will always be a city on the decline.

Virginia Tech police officer shot and killed

Published on December 9, 2011 by Trench Reynolds in Crime News. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Ross Truett Ashley

Virginia Tech: Ross Truett Ashley named as gunman:

I’m sure by now that most of you heard about the murder of a Virginia Tech police officer yesterday. For those of you who may not have heard Virginia Tech Police Officer Deriek Crouse was shot and killed in his police cruiser during a traffic stop. The gunman was not part of the traffic stop. Officer Crouse left behind a wife and five children.

What makes his death even more pointless was the gunman, 22-year-old Ross Truett Ashley. Ashley allegedly carjacked an SUV the day before and drove it to the Virginia Tech campus. For some reason he killed Officer Crouse by walking up to his police cruiser and opening fire on him. Investigators say that Ashley then changed some of his clothes and shortly after being seen by another officer Ashley took the cowards way out by killing himself.

It’s been said that Ashley did not know Officer Crouse so the only motive I could possibly think of is that Ashley was so paranoid because of the carjacking that he shot Officer Crouse to somehow evade arrest. Then rather than taking responsibility for his actions he killed himself.

Now because of a selfish petty criminal five children no longer have a father.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the friends and family of Officer Crouse.

City Councilman wants Camden to declare a state of emergency

Published on December 9, 2011 by Trench Reynolds in Crime News. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Camden on a good day

Camden officials seek N.J.’s help with surge in crime:

After a store owner and father of five was gunned down in his own store the City Council President of Camden, New Jersey has called on the mayor to declare a state of emergency in the city.

This past week 48-year-old Miguel Almonte was shot and killed during a botched robbery in the mom and pop store that he owned. Three others were wounded and at last check the gunmen were still at large.

This prompted City Council President Frank Moran to introduce a resolution that would urge Camden Mayor Dana L. Redd to declare a state of emergency in the city. That would mean that Mayor Redd could go to the state and request State Police and National Guard assistance.

New Jersey Governor Christie, whom I usually agree with, said that he would decline such a request if it came to him. He seems to place a large part of the blame on the Camden police union for not being willing to negotiate. That may or may not be true but I think what the larger problem is that more than half of the property in Camden is non-tax generating, meaning that the city does not collect taxes on more than half of the properties in the city. If the union was putting a stranglehold on the city it was mere drop in the bucket compared to the lack of taxes.

If it was up to me I wouldn’t hesitate sending in the National Guard to Camden. It’s only a matter of time before a crime is committed there that will result in a massive body count and then everyone will wonder how it could have happened.

If there is any chance of saving Camden the time to act is now before its cancer spreads into the surrounding communities.

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