There’s no question that the Academy for Future Health seems like a rather nutty organization; if Google’s translation of its German-language philosophy is to be trusted, then the Academy apparently believes that the Vatican has ties to extraterrestrials, and that a bunch of elite financiers are hip to an approaching Doomsday. So when police in […]
Tags:Academy for Future Health·corruption·cults·Dominican Republic·Germany·law·police
Given the state’s reputation as a mecca for opioid absuers, you will probably not be surprised to learn that West Virginia leads the nation in drug-overdose deaths. Yet the problem evidently has less to do with the sheer number of narcotics consumed than with a dangerous (and nonsensical) quirk of law: The state doesn’t allow […]
When we hear about the ill-advised nature of high-speed police pursuits, it’s usually in relation to injuries suffered by pedestrians or occupants of uninvolved vehicles. But Brian Werner, a Nebraska man who was paralyzed in such a chase, was actually a passenger in a car being pursued. He sued the state for damages and was […]
After I microblogged this morning about overweight Indonesian cops, a treasured reader reminded me that Microkhan had covered this territory before. In July 2009, I wrote about the case of Chris Parent, a police officer in Bellevue, Nebraska, who was fired for being too large to perform his job properly. (See video above, which was […]
One thing my book research has taught me is that America used to have a serious problem with bombs. Every time I delve into the news archives from the early 1970s, I come away amazed at number of stories involving homemade explosive devices going off a nightclubs, bus depots, and Mafia social clubs. And I’m […]
There’s a terrific old episode of Cops—yes, Cops—in which the Miami police round up a bunch of streetwalkers in advance of Super Bowl XXIX. What’s so surprising about the operation is how up front the police are about their objective—namely, to present the game’s attendees with a prostitute-free version of the city. In the episode’s […]
Buried in this alarming account of crooked Brooklyn cops is a brief aside about how New York City is settling up with the scandal’s victims. Dozens, if not hundreds of men were falsely imprisoned after having drugs planted on them by police striving to hit their monthly arrest quotas. How much money do those men […]
An otherwise innocuous story about Fiji’s efforts to combat littering reveals this golden information nugget about law enforcement in Papua New Guinea: “We did some relative studies and found that in Papua New Guinea if you are found littering – you are asked by the authority to do push-ups. For us here we tell them […]
Tags:Fiji·law·Papua New Guinea·police·Stanford Prison Experiment
The hooded lady above was not a bandit, but rather a New York City detective who worked the 21 Jump Street beat in the early 1970s. Kathleen Conlon earned her gold shield after surviving a scary incident in the Bronx: While working on an undercover narcotics unit, she was dragged into an alley, assaulted, and […]
Tags:Congress·crime·drugs·Joseph Valachi·Kathleen Conlon·Mark McGwire·New York City·police·politics·War on Drugs
Those of you who follow Microkhan’s microblog know that the situation near headquarters was beyond hectic yesterday—not just because we had the kid on our hands, but also due to our physical proximity to a senseless tragedy. A police pursuit of two robbery suspects ended with a massive collision about 50 feet from our front […]
We have to duck out for a few hours, to work on a big Wired piece that’s simmering on our front burner. Back as soon as possible; in the interim, please enjoy the above “gotcha!” clip of Dalia Dippolito, who was recently busted for trying to get her husband offed. Like so many murder-for-hire amateurs, […]
Tags:crime·Dalia Dippolito·Florida·police·The Murder Project
Part of our goal with The Murder Project series is to assess how hitman prices have changed over time. Our assumption going in is that these prices shift according to the certainty (or lack thereof) of capture, and so more lawless epochs will be marked by lower murder-for-hire fees. A logical guess, perhaps, but does […]
Tags:crime·New York City·police·The Murder Project·U.S. history
We’ve seen our fair share of portly policemen over the years, so were were a bit surprised to learn of Chris Parent’s strange saga. The Nebraskan cop was fired two years ago for being way too fat—so fat, in fact, that he couldn’t kneel down and shoot during the department’s firearms test. A protracted legal […]
They sure start ’em young in Muscle Shoals. The full gallery is here. Is it just me, or do the University of Northern Alabama students look less enthused than advertised?
There’s little doubt that as Depression v2.0 inevitably worsens, civil unrest will become more commonplace. Even the august New York Times is letting aged stock pickers pop off about the need to stock up on canned food and shotgun ammo. So don’t be surprised if your neighborhood occasionally comes to resemble Bartertown. But in madness […]
