From Reuters:

Labels: crime, eschatology, punk, Sobriquet 56

John McFadden, a 42-year-old former police officer from Bearsden has been convicted of the sexual abuse of three young boys attending a martial arts club the man had established in the 1980s, including one boy who testified before the court. According to the BBC, McFadden "befriended the boy, invited him to stay overnight and told him that demons and spirits would kill him and drag him to hell unless he carried out sex acts." The victim, now 32, told the court that McFadden "dressed in a black cloak and used a crucifix with a skull and crossbones and an onyx ring, which he claimed gave him power, to terrify the youngster into keeping the abuse a secret."

Labels: cops behaving badly, crime, police, religion, Sobriquet 56

According to the Rocky Mountain Collegian, after having been accused of "improprieties ranging from falsifying police documents, to mandating the special treatment of student athletes, to teaching students illegal police tactics," Colorado State University Police Chief Dexter Yarbrough has finally been suspended. Despite claims by several of Yarbrough's fellow officers that "the President's Office had plenty of alarming evidence to take action long ago," the school administration "turned a blind eye" to the man's gross abuses of power and, "[d]espite a consistent flow of complaints of harassment, fraud and threatening behavior to the school's Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity (OEOD) and to former CSU President Larry Penley, Yarbrough was promoted last year to vice president of public safety in addition to being chief of police," a position "with a $156,000-a-year salary, easily making him the highest paid law enforcement officer in the state" of Colorado.

Labels: college sports, cops behaving badly, crime, education, higher education, Sobriquet 50

The Daily News reports that "[t]hree correction officers created a sadistic secret society on a Rikers Island cellblock, ordering prisoners to extort and beat other inmates" for fun and profit. Those men selected to carry out the group's bidding "were allowed to extort commissary money, clothing and phone privileges from other city jail inmates" while those inmates "who didn't cooperate were beaten" by fellow prisoners acting out the sadistic orders of Correction Officers Michael McKie, Khalid Nelson, and Denise Albright. Following the death of 18-year-old inmate Christopher Robinson, the trio's scheme quickly came to light, leading up to their indictment Wednesday. Calling the group "[l]azy, stupid and bored," a police source claims that, rather than do their jobs, McKie, Nelson, and Albright left an inmate in charge of the cellblock overnight on October 17, essentially giving inmates free reign to murder the young man.

Labels: cops behaving badly, crime, Daily News, prison, Sobriquet 50

From The Daily Mail:

Labels: Alzheimer's Disease, crime, Daily Mail, disease, health, Sobriquet 50

A few days ago, the Sun reported that the plague (though which variant -- bubonic or pneumonic -- was not specified) had broken out among al-Qaeda recruits training in Algeria, killing more than forty people in the organization's remote enclave in the country's Tisi Ouzou province. Although the tabloid's story seems to make light of the situation ("ANTI-TERROR bosses last night hailed their latest ally in the war on terror — the BLACK DEATH"), a related article in the more reputable Telegraph suggests that the cell may have actually been developing biological weapons when the plague broke out. Given the fact that "[i]t was reported last year that up to 100 potential terrorists had attempted to become postgraduate students in Britain in an attempt to use laboratories" to hone their skills, such possibilities are indeed quite frightening.

Labels: Africa, crime, death, disease, eschatology, health, medicine, plague, Sobriquet 50, the Sun, The Telegraph

An internet safety program presented by John F. Gay, III at a high school in Windsor, Colorado has outraged parents by singling out students' MySpace pages for criticism. According to the DenverChannel.com:

A police officer giving an Internet safety course sparked criticism for calling student MySpace pages "slutty" and telling one student a sexual predator in prison masturbated to her photo.

[ . . . ]

One female student was told by Gay that he shared her online personal info with an (sic) state inmate who said he gratified himself with her photo and would "tear her apart."

The student, who was singled out, left the assembly in tears. That's when Gay showed her telephone number that he got from the Internet and called her. He hoped to show how easy it is for anyone to track down someone posting personal information on MySpace or other social-networking sites.

[Full Story]

Labels: cops behaving badly, crime, education, free speech, internet, police, sex, Sobriquet 45, technology, websites

From Stuff.co.nz:
From Yahoo News:

Labels: crime, Jodie Foster, John Hinkley, Sobriquet 43, Stuff.co.nz, The Telegraph

From the New York Times's Jeffrey Gettleman:

Labels: Africa, crime, disease, illness, New York Times, Sobriquet 43

From the New York Examiner:

Labels: crime, law, New York Examiner, Sobriquet 43

From Reason's Hit and Run:
"About 10 a.m., students were called to the athletic stadium, where they learned that their classmates had not died. There, a group of seniors, police officers and firefighters staged a startlingly realistic alcohol-induced fatal car crash. The students who had purportedly died portrayed ghostly apparitions encircling the scene."

Labels: crime, death, education, health, Reason, Sobriquet 43

CNN's Stephanie Busari reports that "[h]umanitarian aid workers and United Nation peacekeepers are sexually abusing small children in several war-ravaged and food-poor countries." Charges of child pornography, rape, prostitution, sexual assault, and sex trafficking of children as young as six have been made against some of the world's most well-respected organizations.

Labels: CNN, crime, Sobriquet 42

From the Associated Press:

Labels: Associated Press, cops behaving badly, crime, law, Sobriquet 42

From CNN.com:

"Among those arrested were 75 students, some of them working toward criminal justice or homeland security degrees. One criminal justice major was charged with possession of guns and cocaine, authorities said."

"Authorities say they infiltrated seven campus fraternities and found that in some, most of the students were aware of drug dealing by fraternity brothers."

"One student allegedly dealing cocaine was a month short of obtaining a master's degree in Homeland Security and worked with campus police as a student community service officer."
[Full story]

Is it bad that I am wholly unsurprised by the idea of cops-to-be breaking laws and frat brothers selling drugs?

Labels: CNN, crime, death, education, higher education, law, Sobriquet 42

From the Courier-Post:

Labels: bestiality, crime, law, police, sex, Sobriquet 41

The Portland Mercury's Matt Davis reports that "[a] citizen who watched a cop illegally park, then walk into a Chinese restaurant to wait for his food, has issued the officer a series of citizen-initiated parking violations." Apparently, Chad Stensgaard

walked into the restaurant wearing his police uniform, but did not make any arrests or citations. Instead, he turned his attention to the basketball game on television, according to [Eric] Bryant. When Bryant asked Stensgaard about his vehicle, Stensgaard allegedly acknowledged being in a no-parking zone but asked Bryant, "If someone broke into your house, would you rather have the police be able to park in front of your house or have to park three blocks away and walk there?"

Bryant, an Oregonian lawyer, maintains that "[c]itizens should be concerned that he used his status as an officer of the law as justification for breaking the law" despite the police department's insistence that certain laws don't really pertain to officers of the law.

Labels: CNN, crime, law, police, Portland Mercury, Sobriquet 41

ERIE, PENNSYLVANIA (Sobriquet Magazine) - A 28-year-old woman was convicted Wednesday of aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, simple assault and child endangerment for having used her four-week-old son as a weapon in a fight with her boyfriend. According to reports, Chytoria Graham returned home on October 8 after a night of heavy alcohol consumption and began fighting with her boyfriend, DeAngelo Troop. During the course of the fight, Graham reportedly picked up the couple's infant son, Jarron, by his feet and swung him at Troop, using the boy's head as a bludgeon.

The boy has recovered from a fractured skull and currently lives with Graham's parents.

Labels: crime, Sobriquet 35