Bonehead Alert: Another LAPD Gang Summit with Clergy
Today the Los Angeles Police Department held yet another gang intervention summit with local clergy and community members. Blah, blah, BLAH. After spending about $100 million on gang prevention in the past decade with little to show for it, why does the LAPD and hundreds of other law enforcement agencies keep holding these summits?
The "at-risk" youth just need some positive direction, they say; the young people have no opportunties to improve their situation. That tired argument is one of the biggest cons in criminal justice. It's sexy to promise gang violence reduction and work towards peace, so politicians fund the programs with your tax dollars and bring money into their districts. Police agencies are stuck committing resources to these intervention programs and pretending they love it when they really want to, and should, spend every second enforcing laws in the street.
Gang summits are puppet shows. Gang members do not want jobs. They already have ones that pay more than yours and mine for a few hours of work. I recently completed my thesis on gang finances and you would be floored at the cheese gang members make from drug dealing and robbery for the benefit of their gang. You can find the stats all over criminal justice sites on the Web. This is not a scientific post, but rather a plea for sanity from local government and a personal rant. GrrrrrrRRRRrrr.
I am sure this latest summit will generate a slew of press releases in the coming months about bunches of gang arrest statistics and so on. Arrests are great, but arrests tied to saturation sweeps are rarely capable of disrupting gang operations. So a few members get some parole violations, or some others might be identified for robbery, the vast majority might get cited for probation violations. Big deal. If they're convicted, they'll be out in a few days or weeks, emerging from prison with stronger gang ties.
To jam a dent into criminal street gang operations, you have to cut the head off the snake. Identifying shot callers and collecting admissible evidence takes time and money, both of which are being sucked off by these lame gang summits and the intervention programs they spawn. Federal wire tapping orders are expensive, tedious but very, very effective in slamming gang members at the top of the pyramid with lengthy federal sentences.
The only way to reduce gang violence for the long haul is to critically damage their structure from the top down and the best way to do this is disrupting their financial operations. Without finances, gangs cannot buy guns to protect their territory or narcotics to generate income. It's clear as day to me. After you push away the "gang intervention" fog, maybe you'll see the light, too.
High Five High Court: Washington DC Gun Ban Law Overturned
The Supreme Court in a moment of clarity overturned Washington D.C.'s longstanding ban on gun ownership today based on Second Amendment right to bear arms violations. Victory! As a crime analyst, I am ecstatic about this decision to chuck the 32-year-old law and I'll tell you why.
Amidst the already pelting hailstorm of warnings and condemnations of society gone wild with gun slinging citizens around every corner, let me be a voice of reason. People do not realize that the bad guys will get their guns regardless of what the law says. Anyone, especially gang members, can buy a gun on the street in my jurisdiction and thousands across the United States for about $40 on the high-end. No questions asked and some extra ammunition thrown in to seal the deal.
Shocked? I was, too, when I entered the criminal justice field 18 years ago. But I assure you, this is reality. Criminals often exchange weapons for narcotic products to sell individually or for the benefit of their gangs. This is how the same guns are traded and circulated in a common area and why the same firearm is often tied to many different crimes through ballistic analysis.
Gangs commonly recruit kids aged 10 - 14 to run drug product from suppliers to dealers or dealers to buyers because the penalties are so soft for juvenile crime. The children are mostly delighted to earn about $1500 a week for maybe 10 hours work (stiff competition for McDonald's, huh?) These kids are very often armed with black market guns during transports. Strange contradiction, isn't it? A little boy on a mountain bike enjoying the summer day with his shirt packed with heroin and a .45 in his little waistband?
Such is the world we live in, unless you live in Singapore or another country that understands how to use punishment effectively. The first Second Ammendment case to be heard by the high court in 70 years has a happy ending for me. This gun ban reversal only evens up the playing field a little and believe me, we need all the leverage we can get. Residents in Washington D.C. can now obtain licenses to own guns legally. Rejoice Americans. I'm signing up for target practice.
Summer Fun for Crooks: Hot Weather is Burglary Season
Burglaries are up along with the temperature in here in Southern California this month. Each season has predictable crime trends and summer brings out the residential burglars. Home burglaries are one of the most efficient crimes for criminals because they can gain entry in seconds, quickly find valuables with trained eyes and exit through the front door like nothing's the matter. Read on and learn how to make a few changes in your home that just might encourage the burglars to leave your house alone.
When I look for residential burglary trends, I scan methods and points of entry (MOE, POE). Crooks are creatures of habit too, and when they find a system that works chances are they'll use it again and it becomes their calling card. The most common POE are first floor kitchen and bathroom windows that face allies, garages or private walkways. Make sure you remove all leveraging devices near these windows including paint buckets, step stools, chairs and ladders. If they can't reach the window, they can't climb through it. Most thiefs won't carry their own ladders around and most work alone because they don't want to share the loot, so there's no one to boost them up.
The most common MOE is pried windows. So many victims leave their windows open three or four inches secured by a twist lock. A juvenile or slim person can easily remove the screen and slip their entire forearm into that opening to unscrew the lock. Poof! Their through your window in about one minute. More people than I can believe also leave sliding glass doors in this manner or balcony doors unlocked. Burglars love that.
Video game systems are the most popular item stolen in my jurisdiction aside from cash. X-Box, WII, PlayStation can all be resold on the streets or to electronics stores that buy used systems for resale. Do not leave your system in plain view when you aren't home. Close the blinds of every window that the system is visible from. Thieves would rather see the target than take a chance.
Let's talk a bit about motive. The majority of house burglars are meth, marijuana or cocaine addicts who need to score cash for their next hit. They steal your stuff and pawn, fence or resell them on the black market. Since they must give personal information to pawn, burglars will often recruit other people to do it for them for a small price. That way the thief is not traceable to your stolen stuff. A smaller portion of burglars are gang members putting in work to finance their gang. They will liquidate your stuff the same way, but they'll use the money to buy guns and drugs for dealing instead.
These crooks are slick and many of them have perfected their crimes to a smooth operation. Most strike on weekdays during midmorning or early afternoon. You can help by being a good neighbor and looking for suspicious persons loitering in your area. I read many crime reports where neighbors saw the suspects removing flat screen TVs and assumed they were movers. Call the police anyway and let them sort it out. If you're wrong, no harm done. If you're right, you've just saved your neighbors a major headache and maybe picked some burglars off the street.
Lastly, use visible deterrents. Go ahead and put that goofy "Beware of Dog" sign on your gate or in your window whether you have a pet or not. Stick home security system signs in your lawn whether you have an alarm or not. The crooks don't know the difference and why take a chance when the house next door has no sign at all?
Enjoy the summer and try not to be paranoid, just be wise to the burglars tricks and respond accordingly! My tips are easy and inexpensive to implement. Isn't your home worth the trouble?
Next Time: What Should You Know About Home Invasion Robberies?
FBI Nails 400 Mortgage Fraudsters, Bear Stearns Indictments
The game’s over for 406 mortgage fraud defendants. The FBI’s Operation “Malicious Mortgage” ended yesterday after three months of investigating 144 mortgage fraud cases. It’s a sign of the times when the FBI creates special units to investigate mortgage fraud, which involves trickery to fund, purchase or insure mortgage loans.
Criminals who prey on people seeking the American dream and then leave them hanging by an unraveling thread while their own pockets swell are just bastards. Not only do they obliterate personal lives and families, their fraudulent crimes mess with our housing and credit markets and ultimately turned our economy upside down.
These crooks are sneaky smart and wear a cloak of professionalism. They're bankers, brokers, agents, your neighbor. Lending fraud involves conducting transactions based on lies about the borrower’s financial status, employment records or inflating property values. With the housing bubble bursting, foreclosure rescue scams have sky rocketed. The fraudsters contact struggling home owners and collect huge fees for fake foreclosure prevention services or convince them to sign over ownership with promises of bail outs that never happen. Both lending fraud and foreclosure scams feed into bankruptcy schemes that stay foreclosures.
Also breaking news is the federal indictment of two senior Bear Stearns Bank managers of hedge funds that tanked. Ralph Cioffi and Mathew Tannin are charged with conspiracy, securities fraud and wire fraud. Yay! The charges allege that the men marketed the funds backed by a pool of mortgages as low risk strategies. When they already knew the funds were at risk for collapse, they misrepresented the situation to prevent investor withdrawal. The funds did bomb and took investors for about $1.4 billion. Of course, indictments are no evidence of guilt and all are innocent until proven guilty, blah, blah, blah.
Morals of the story: 1) the Department of Justice is going after these yahoos, but investigations are very complex and lengthy; 2) always be weary of cold calls from "financial agencies" inquiring about your mortgage crisis. Do not sign any deed documents without seeking legal advice and don't pay fees up front for assistance with your debt. Work directly with your lender, instead. Beware of bastards. There are 406 less operating today, but no shortage of up and comers, I assure you.
Criminals who prey on people seeking the American dream and then leave them hanging by an unraveling thread while their own pockets swell are just bastards. Not only do they obliterate personal lives and families, their fraudulent crimes mess with our housing and credit markets and ultimately turned our economy upside down.
These crooks are sneaky smart and wear a cloak of professionalism. They're bankers, brokers, agents, your neighbor. Lending fraud involves conducting transactions based on lies about the borrower’s financial status, employment records or inflating property values. With the housing bubble bursting, foreclosure rescue scams have sky rocketed. The fraudsters contact struggling home owners and collect huge fees for fake foreclosure prevention services or convince them to sign over ownership with promises of bail outs that never happen. Both lending fraud and foreclosure scams feed into bankruptcy schemes that stay foreclosures.
Also breaking news is the federal indictment of two senior Bear Stearns Bank managers of hedge funds that tanked. Ralph Cioffi and Mathew Tannin are charged with conspiracy, securities fraud and wire fraud. Yay! The charges allege that the men marketed the funds backed by a pool of mortgages as low risk strategies. When they already knew the funds were at risk for collapse, they misrepresented the situation to prevent investor withdrawal. The funds did bomb and took investors for about $1.4 billion. Of course, indictments are no evidence of guilt and all are innocent until proven guilty, blah, blah, blah.Morals of the story: 1) the Department of Justice is going after these yahoos, but investigations are very complex and lengthy; 2) always be weary of cold calls from "financial agencies" inquiring about your mortgage crisis. Do not sign any deed documents without seeking legal advice and don't pay fees up front for assistance with your debt. Work directly with your lender, instead. Beware of bastards. There are 406 less operating today, but no shortage of up and comers, I assure you.
Crime Update: Sixth Foot Found in Canadian Waters
No sooner did I publish my post on the five detached human feet floating ashore near Vancouver when reports of a sixth foot broke. This makes the fifth right foot, proving at least five bodies are missing their feet. Authorities have not yet linked the lone left foot found Monday to any of the right ones.
Talk of victims from a float plane crash in the area over three years ago no longer seems the answer as only four male bodies remain lost. One of the found feet last month was rumored to be in a women's running shoe. Also, DNA testing revealed no matches to any of the crash victims' family members.
The sixth foot was in a man's size 10 black Adidas running shoe. Someone found this foot near Campbell river, a ways north of the other five feet. Some sources report this foot has been "sawed off" rather than separated naturally at the ankle bone, but these statements come from witnesses without expertise rather than police.
What's puzzling from my perspective is the asymmetry of the recovered feet and the absence of other body parts that naturally detach and float after lengthy submersion, like heads and hands. This would be an unusual serial killer calling card scenario. These murderers commonly pose bodies, make distinct mutilations and leave the whole corpse behind or place a certain object at crime scenes. To toss severed feet into the bay for discovery would be different, to say the least. Anything's certainly possible, but I continue to believe the deaths were accidental at this point.
We'll see what washes up tomorrow...
Analyzing the Feet Washing Ashore in Canada
Why are human feet washing ashore on the beaches near Vancouver? I've followed coverage of the detached feet that first appeared 11 months ago and total five with the first left foot found this week. This fifth foot presents the first opportunity to match a pair with DNA results. Authorities have not confirmed any links yet, other than all the feet wore socks and tennis shoes. Read further details of the Canadian feet investigation if you like. I'm discussing the evidence from a crime analyst's perspective.
Cases fall into three simple categories: foul play, natural causes and accidents. When bodies or their parts are discovered with unknown origins, it's standard to classify the case as criminal, like the British Columbian authorities did, until proven otherwise. Many blog entries and even a few hard news sources imply that the feet are evidence of murder or serial killings by someone with a foot fetish. I disagree.
People with fetishes keep their object of obsession precisely because of the fetish. A foot fetish murderer would not toss feet into the water and move on. Take Jerome Brudos, the shoe fetish slayer. He kept feet in his garage freezer and enjoyed trying high heels on them unbeknownst to his wife and children, until his fetish turned to breasts. He switched to amputating victims' breasts and making paperweights out of them. Talk about a cracked egg, huh?
Murder is still certainly a consideration. With five feet, we have potentially four or five victims. DNA can be extracted from bone since most soft tissue is compromised from the water and what lives in it. Authorities say the samples don't match any reported missing persons, and you can bet the database is national with cooperation from surrounding nations.
What's next after a DNA dead end? Detectives will closely examine the shoes - brand, wear and tear, size, sole, color, style and serial number. Just like any other industry, shoe manufacturers are very targeted in their product marketing and distribution. You'd be surprised how police can narrow down the source of the purchase just by these attributes. Wear patterns on the rubber soles will not be damaged by the water, giving detectives a good estimate of when the shoes were purchased allowing them to work backwards with shoe sellers, matching product to buyers, hoping the victims paid with credit or check. Police confirm two shoes were size 12 and one foot was in a men's Reebok . They no doubt determined if it was a running, walking or basketball shoe in a flash.
This is why I would be surprised if these individuals were murdered. Unless they are in a rush to dispose of bodies or want to leave calling cards, killers often strip victims of clothing and shoes or redress them in foreign clothing. Victims are often found nude for this reason, or because the crime has sexual overtones.
If someone had the time to weight bodies down to dispose of at sea, they'd also have a chance to remove as much evidence as possible, like shoes and clothing, especially a buoyant material like rubber. An accidental submersion makes more sense to me. Natural disasters as far back as the 2004 tsunami and as inconspicuous as boating accidents have been mentioned. Experts will study tide patterns and comb nautical agency logs for distressed or missing vessel reports.
Boats do sink without allowing for distress calls and people do go missing unnoticed. You'd be surprised how many individuals and families simply keep to themselves. How about missing employees or unpaid mortgages? Well, certain lifestyles can exclude these kinds of clues that something is wrong.
A few more theories are long shots, but investigators consider everything for elimination. "Go fast" boats are speed boats modified to transport narcotics across oceans. Coast Guard sharpshooters do fire from helicopters to knock out engines of boats smuggling cocaine. The Vancouver waterfront is of course not a major narcotics thoroughfare. Cultural research reveals the Islamic punishment for thievery of amputating hands and feet, but these feet reportedly do not show signs of forced removal.
I am drawn to the 2005 ferry crash in West Vancouver. Divers found no victims, but so many boats were plowed over that perhaps several lives were indeed lost. In any case, my eyeballs are pealed for developing information on this case. With the limited information I have, I believe the presumed deaths were accidental. What do you think?
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