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An inflated sculpture named “Is Land” was deployed at the Secret Garden Party music festival in Cambridgeshire, England. The £9,000 helium-filled sculpture is seven meters wide and looks like a chunk of land with grass and trees on top. The island drifted off after someone cut the ropes tethering the balloon on July 24th and is now nowhere to be found. Anyone who sees the island is asked to report it to the project’s website. Donations to the site will go toward getting a second sculpture ready for Burning Man. Link to story. Link to website. -via Fortean Times
If you think crime is bad in your neighborhood these days, ask yourself this: are people stealing bricks from houses on your street? If the answer is no, then your hood’s got nothing on St. Louis, Missouri, where things have gotten so bad people are literally stripping houses to the ground for a few extra bucks. There’s a video all about it at Laughing Squid.
Link Image via Bill Streeter.
I’d like to point out that while it’s obvious these are some seriously wussy robbers, this is also one tough little chihuahua.
Via BoingBoing
Kids selling lemonade on a street corner is a classic American icon, but according to Georgia State Police, it’s actually against the law. Cops recently busted two tweens for selling without a business permit and a food vendor’s license. According to the police chief, the city won’t be backing down soon:
“We were not aware of how the lemonade was made, who made the lemonade, of what the lemonade was made with, so we acted accordingly by city ordinance.”
Who knew lemonade could be so dangerous to the public health?
Link Via Consumerist Image Via ChocoladeHam [Flickr]
Screen Junkies gives us the greatest bank robbery ever to appear in the movies, which is a supercut, because it takes a lot of robberies to be the best! Some language NSFW. Link -via The Daily What
Wanna commit crime? There’s an app for that!
No, seriously. There are apps that display fake Drivers License, let you avoid DUI checkpoints, and more:
Want to fool merchants with a fake ID? Hack someone’s text messages? Or how about tracking where your co-workers are, without their knowing it?
There’s an app for that.
The explosion in smartphone and tablet applications that allow people to check the weather, follow their stocks and play Words With Friends has a dark side — apps that facilitate questionable if not outright illegal behavior.
Apple’s App Store, for example, offers Drivers License software that promises "unlimited access to realistic-looking licenses" for all 50 states. Though the phony licenses are advertised as entertainment, it’s not hard to imagine a minor using one to try to get into a bar or a crook trying to pass a bad check.
Think that crimes happen in the dark of the night? Trulia Insights compiled crime statistics from 25 big cities in the United States and discovered that while crime doesn’t pay, it seems to clock in from 9 to 5 (plus nightshift in some cities) like the rest of us working stiffs.
3AM: When the Devil’s Off Duty
According to the “Exorcism of Emily Rose,” 3AM is the devil’s hour, but backed by hundreds of thousands of data points over a bunch of cities, we disagree. Judging by the volume of crime at this hour, it looks pretty safe to us.Check it out – so if you made graphs illustrating when criminal activity goes up and down over a 24 hour period for a bunch of U.S. cities (which we did), and then overlaid them on top of each other (look at the pretty picture below if you’re not following), you’ll see a very distinct early morning dip in crime between 3AM and 7AM. Conclusion: it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be struck by a smooth criminal in the dead of the night ‘cause the devil appears to be crashed out during his allotted “hour.”
The headline makes it sound as if history is repeating itself, but this happened in Ocoee, Florida. A man was arrested for lighting fireworks at the fireworks tent in which he was working.
Guy Swindell Fowlkes, 33, of Orlando, was working at the tent at Colonial Drive and Maguire Road but had made arrangements to work at another tent location, according to an arrest affidavit filed in the case. When his girlfriend asked about keys to a storage unit, Fowlkes said he did not have the keys and began an argument with her.
Fowlkes struck his girlfriend, who is pregnant, in the left side of her face, according to the report. He then went into the tent and began to light up fireworks, directing some of them at other employees. He also lit the fuse of two firecrackers and placed them inside the gas tank of an employee’s car.
As police approached, they could see explosions in the distance. Fowlkes was charged with arson and battery. Link -via Arbroath
There’s a mystery afoot in the world of crimes that has got law enforcement officials scratching their collective heads in amazement: despite the Great Recession, crime rates continue to decline.
“Striking,” said Alfred Blumstein, a professor and a criminologist at the Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University, because it came “at a time when everyone anticipated it could be going up because of the recession.”
Nationally, murder fell 4.4 percent last year. Forcible rape — which excludes statutory rape and other sex offenses — fell 4.2 percent. Aggravated assault fell 3.6 percent. Property crimes — including burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft and arson — fell 2.8 percent, after a 4.6 percent drop the year before.
Richard Oppel Jr. of The New York Times explains: Link
In a related note, Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis predicted that the NFL lockout drags on, we’ll see more crimes:
“Watch how much crime picks up if you take away our game,” Lewis told ESPN’s Sal Paolantonio. Pressed to explain why, Lewis replied, “There’s nothing else to do Sal.”
My theory? Criminals are so hard up they can’t afford weapons
When I’m 91 years old I hope I have the stamina and good humor of New Zealand World War II veteran John Bray. Bray has been told by local officials to stop going out at night to patrol the streets.
Just like Batman, Mr Bray started out with a Robin-like partner, but decided to ditch him after he kept falling asleep on duty.
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According to police, Mark C. Sirben of Spring Hill, Florida, was so drunk that he went home, made himself a snack, and passed out on the couch. But it wasn’t his home. It wasn’t even in Spring Hill -the home was in Palm Harbor! The sleeping woman who actually lived there heard someone coughing in the middle of the night.
The woman went to investigate and found Sirben asleep on her couch. She woke up her husband, who went to the living room and confronted Sirben. Sirben argued with the husband, telling him that he lived there, before he passed out again.
“They had no idea who this guy was,” said Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Cecilia Barreda.
When a deputy arrived, Sirben was still asleep on the couch with a plate of food at his side. The couple said Sirben must have cooked something for himself before he fell asleep.
They found food in a frying pan they had not prepared. Sirben, who has a record of DUI convictions, was jailed for trespassing and criminal mischief. Link -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Florida Mugshots)
In movies and television the killer always gets caught in the end. We have come to expect that good will always triumph over evil no matter what. That’s why this list of fourteen serial killers who were never caught is important to remind us that sometimes the bad guy does get away. Most of the killers on the list you have heard of like Jack the Ripper and The Zodiac Killer. But then there is “Beer Man” named so because he left beer bottles beside the body of each of his victims. Talk about a crazy party. Link
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It seems everyone is familiar with the dangers of drug-resistant staph infections and well aware of just how scary they are. As it turns out, they are so terrifying that a woman recently robbed a convienance store using the staph infection on her arm as a weapon.
When a worker confronted her, prosecutors said Slusher showed her Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus-infected arm to the attendant, told him to stay away and then left the store.
She was later arrested and hopefully held in a cell away from the other prisoners.
Link Image via mtsofan [Flickr]
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader. The subject matter may be disturbing for some readers.
“Big Nose” George Parrot got his nickname for the fact that he had a very large proboscis, but his real claim to fame comes from something much stranger than a prodigious schnoz.
THE (NOT SO) GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY
In the late 1870s, a band of Wyoming outlaws called the Sim Jan gang decided to try their hand at robbing Union Pacific trains. Most banking was done by cash in the 19th century, and much of the cash moved by rail. This made trains very tempting targets for criminals looking for big scores.
Some gangs, the James-Younger and Hole-in-the-Wall gangs among them, became quite adept at train robbery. Sim Jan and his gang never did: When, for example, they tried to derail a train out of Medicine Bow, Wyoming, by loosening a length of rail, a railroad crew on a handcart came by and discovered the damage to the track. After repairing the track, the crew sped off to report the incident to the sheriff, all in plain sight of the gang, who were hiding in the bushes nearby. The next day the gang shot it out with the two lawmen sent to find them, Deputy Sheriff Robert Widdowfield and railroad detective Henry Vincent, killing them both. They were the first Wyoming lawmen killed in the line of duty.
FRONTIER JUSTICE
Frank Tole was the first member of the gang to pay for his crime; he was killed a few weeks later while trying to rob a stagecoach. Then came “Dutch” Charlie Buress, who was arrested for the murders and put on a train bound for Rawlins, Wyoming, where he would have gone on trial had he lived long enough to see a trial. He didn’t: when his train made a stop in the town of Carbon, which was deputy Widdowfield’s hometown, an angry mob pulled him from the train and hanged him from a telegraph pole.
"Big Nose" George Parrot
Next up for justice: “Big Nose” George Parrot. His turn might never have come at all, had he not gotten drunk in Montana two years after the killings and been overheard boasting of his in
volvement in the crimes. He, too, was arrested and put on a train bound for Rawlins; when the train pulled into Carbon, history seemed about to repeat itself, because once again a lynch mob was waiting. But Big Nose managed to talk the mob out of the hanging by admitting his guilt and promising to tell all if they let him live long enough to face trial. Had he known what fate awaited him, he probably would have preferred being lynched.
DOPE ON A ROPE
Big Nose George lived long enough to be sentenced to death by hanging, to be carried out in 3 and 1/2 month’s time. But he didn’t live long enough to see the sentence carried out, because when he nearly killed a guard trying to escape from jail, the lynch mob decided that a speedier, unofficial hanging would do just fine. On March 22nd, 1881, a crowd of about 200 people dragged Big Nose George from the jail and hanged him from the crossarm of a telegraph pole.
Twice.
The mob had to hang him twice because the first rope broke. After a sturdier rope was found, Big Nose George, still very much alive, was hanged again. By now, however, George had managed to untie his hands from behind his back without anyone noticing. Then, when he was strung up the second time, he swung himself -by the noose around his neck- over to the telegraph pole, wrapped his flailing arms around it, and held on for dear life.
more …
Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio and visiting lawman Steven Seagal went on a raid to a home in the West Valley area of Phoenix, where a man was suspected of cockfighting. The search warrant was executed as the SWAT team rolled into the neighborhood in armored vehicles led by a tank. They arrested Jesus Llovera during the raid Monday.
Llovera was alone in the house at the time of the arrest, and he was unarmed.
“I think taxpayers should be shocked,” said Robert Campus, Llovera’s attorney. Campus said he believes the operation costs tens of thousands of dollars.
Deputies had no probable cause to believe Llovera was armed or dangerous, according to Campus.
Campus said he believes the entire scene was basically a stage, to help actor Steven Seagal’s TV show, “Lawman.”
Seagal was riding in the tank.
The Sheriff’s Department has entered into a contract with Seagal and part of that contract gives Seagal carte blanche to go along with the sheriff as he arrests people.
Thousands of dollars in damages were made to the property and 115 birds were euthanized on the spot.
One neighbor was so frightened she called 911 to report the raid. Link -via reddit
I’ve found myself watching a lot of Law & Order reruns lately, mostly because you can find it most hours of the day on various TV channels. Now we have statistics that track the outcomes of the cases in each season. Not only that, but they are compared with what was actually going on in New York City at the time -the NYC murder rate and the politics of municipal law enforcement. Some of the changes in the show over time reflect the real world, and other changes were made for the TV audience. Read the analysis at, appropriately enough, Overthinking It. Link -via Metafilter
A good set of dentures came in handy for 92-year-old Lester Matteson. The Washington state man endured was tied up by two men who came to his door claiming car trouble.
The men taped Lester’s legs to his kitchen chair.
But after the thieves snatched his money and his truck, Lester chewed through the tape with his false teeth!
“It took me about two hours,” Lester said with a grin. “Boy, it was sticky!”
Lester was then able to call the police.
The robbers got away with about $400 cash and Matteson’s Ford Ranger. Link -via Arbroath
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In order to make Jillian Sherlock and Nikhil Pereira’s wedding day as perfect as possible, the five bridesmaids kept quiet about the carjacking incident until after the ceremony was complete. A man who had broken into a house near the church in Boston was looking for a getaway, and the limousine carrying the bridesmaids looked like a possibility.
“He started fighting with the driver, and the girls got out and ran,” said Karl Kammann, a Buckingham Bus driver who had just dropped off 48 guests at the church. “It was chaos. Right out from under the wedding party! What a way to get married.”
Headed in the opposite direction on Columbia Road was Gerald Whelan, who was sitting in traffic when he spotted the man get into the limo.
“I saw the driver’s side open, and the driver struggling, half in and half out,” said Whelan, 61. “He started yelling, ‘Help me! Somebody help me!’ ”
The driver managed to get out, unharmed, and the limo disappeared down Columbia Road, only to be abandoned shortly afterward on West Fifth Street in South Boston as police searched for the wedding bandit.
The ceremony went on as scheduled while police cordoned off the area as a crime scene. Another limousine was summoned to carry the wedding party. Link -via Arbroath
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The Zodiac Killer claimed to have murdered 37 people. The killings, which paralyzed Californians with fear for years, began in 1968, and soon after mysterious letters were sent to news outlets, many featuring cryptograms.
From this point on, the killer started communicating via letters and greetings cards. Each of these messages was concluded with the crossed-circle design pictured above. Later it became known as the Zodiac signature. These letters as well as some coded messages were sent by the killer to different, well-known newspapers, including the San Francisco Examiner and the Vallejo Times Herald.
Many of these notes still haven’t been decoded, and the murders have yet to be solved. See the coded messages at Environmental Graffiti. Link
Police responded to a report of a man trying to break into a house in Bloomington, Illinois last weekend. It was determined that 21-year-old Christopher Kunder was trying to get into his own house to surprise his mother who didn’t know he was on leave from military service in Afghanistan. The problem was that his mother was not home.
“Hey!” said Christopher, “could you call my mom, tell her there’s an emergency and she needs to come home immediately?”
Officer Martin said, no, he couldn’t do that.
He is a police officer, after all.
Instead, he asked for Christopher’s mom’s phone number and called with nothing but the truth.
“Mrs. Martha Sternickle?”
“Uh, huh.”
“This is Officer Martin of Bloomington Police. We’ve had a report of somebody trying to enter your home. It was unsuccessful but you might want to come home to make sure there’s no problem.”
When Sternickle arrived, Officer Martin led her to the police car to identify the “suspect” in the back seat. A joyful reunion followed. Link
(Image credit: Officer Fred Martin/Bloomington Police)
Last night, author Jami Attenberg returned to the place where she locked her bike and found it gone.
I didn’t cry but I jutted my lower lip out the entire way home. It was a genuine sad face. I tried to stop the sad face but I could not. I really love my yellow bike, and it is summer and riding your bike is the best, and also it is my main form of transportation around town. I didn’t know how I was going to be able to afford a new one, and seriously, I was super bummed. It is a material object, yes, and it can be replaced, but it’s MY BIKE AND I LOVE IT.
I sad-faced myself to sleep.
This morning I woke up around 9 AM and checked Craigslist to see if there were any reasonably priced bikes on there and lo and behold, there was a picture of my bike for sale for $75. They even had a picture of the scratches.
The story gets exciting from that point. Her friend did some detective work, and the police set up a sting operation. Then she had to meet the guy who had her bike. It sounds like a television show that wraps up in an hour, and it all happened just today. Link -via Buzzfeed
When you rob a fast food outlet, you expect to come away with a lot of cash. One thief in Atlanta was sorely disappointed with his take, so he called the Wendy’s he robbed to complain.
“Next time there better be more than $586,” he said during one call. He made “a similar threat” in the second call, police said.
About 11:15 p.m., a man wearing a ski mask and holding a gun walked up to the drive-through window at the Wendy’s at 1940 Piedmont Road, police said. He told an employee to put the cash drawer on the counter.
Police are hoping to get clues as to the thief’s identity by studying the security cameras. Link -via Gawker
(Image credit: Flickr user TheTruthAbout…)
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Do ugly people commit more crime? Yes, statistically speaking anyhow.
Before you chalk this one up as the discredited pseudoscience of physiognomy rearing its ugly head, consider the argument behind a paper by Georgia State University economist (and dashingly handsome guy) Erdal Tekin:
Ugly people are more likely to break the law. This is the statistically based conclusion in a paper published in The Review of Economics and Statistics entitled Ugly Criminals [...]
This takes us to the modern Ugly Criminals study, which is subtler than it might seem. It is based on an anonymous questionnaire combined with equally anonymous ratings of the subject’s attractiveness. It shows a small but significant correlation between attractiveness, or the lack of it, and criminality. The most unattractive segment are 1.5 per cent more likely to have committed robbery, 2.2 per cent more likely to have committed assault, and 3 per cent more likely to have sold drugs. Or to have been caught doing so, at any rate.
The authors note previous work showing how more attractive people are more successful in their careers and earn more. This puts less attractive people at a disadvantage in the world of work and nudges them towards criminal alternatives. In addition, less attract ive people suffer socially, make fewer friends and build less of what the authors call “human capital”. They are therefore not as sympathetic to others and have less of an investment in society. This effect is far more pronounced in females, suggesting that they are judged on their appearance to a much greater degree.
Links: Article at Fortean Times | The paper Ugly Criminals by H. Naci Mocan and Erdal Tekin [PDF]
The Valencia Club in Penryn, California had been closed for a year when 29-year-old Travis Kevie helped himself to the business. He broke in and posted a sign that the bar was open. Kevie sold drinks for four days until a newspaper article mentioned that Valencia had re-opened, which interested county detective Jim Hudson.
Not only had Detective Hudson had previous run-ins with Kevie, he knew the Valencia Club’s liquor license had been surrendered.
When Detective Hudson went to the bar to investigate, he found it open for business and customers at the bar. Kevie quickly went from behind the bar to behind bars.
Kevie is being held on charges of selling liquor without a license and, of course, burglary. Link -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Ben Furtado/Auburn Journal)
People can pick up skills in the strangest places. Georgia Durante learned evasive driving techniques when she was married to a mobster and drove a getaway car.
Years of evading the police had taught Georgia how to drive like an action hero, so she formed Performance Two, a stunt and precision driving company and wrote a book about her life as a model and mafia wife. Her company has done stunts for over 100 movies and commercials, and she’s personally doubled for both Cindy Crawford and Priscilla Presley.
Durante is just one of 6 People Who Turned a Life of Crime Into Legitimate Careers that you can read about at Cracked. Link
Don’t even think about shoplifting in a comic book store when Spider-Man, The Flash, and some Jedi Knights are present. The super heroes, dressed for International Free Comics Day, detained a man who tried to make off with $160 book at Comic Centre in Adelaide, Australia. Store owner Michael Baulderstone, who was attired as Spider-Man, explains what happened.
“We had about 40 people dressed up as their favourite superheroes to celebrate International Free Comic Day, so he didn’t have much of a choice but to hand the X-Men Omnibus back after a little bit of a scuffle,” he said.
“I’ve had a look at the security footage and it shows Spider-Man running down the corridor of the shop, grabbing this guy, hauling him off.
“Everyone in the store thought it was a play, that it was street theatre of some sort. It wasn’t until I said `Call the police’ that people started to realise.”
Comic Centre and another bookstore encouraged patrons to dress as characters for the event.
“One of the funniest things about the incident was that I called for people to stand near the door and it just so happened we had people dressed as Jedi knights there blocking the exit, the Flash was there at some point too,” Mr Baulderstone said.
Link -via Geeks Are Sexy
Well they would have the element of surprise. It’s like those kids who tried to hold up a police station. Who would expect that criminals would try to break into a prison?
It would make a good gag for a comedy if it weren’t actually true – thieves have broken into a Dutch prison to steal the inmates’ televisions.
Twice in the last six weeks, burglars broke into a minimum-security prison and stole TVs from cells while prisoners were away for the weekend, a spokesman for the justice ministry said on Wednesday.
Link | Image: FBI
Robby Rose of Garland, Texas, was caught padding his catch in a fishing tournament when a one-pound lead weight was found in the small fish he caught. Since the prize in the tournament was a bass boat, he was charged with attempted felony theft.
“We took this case very seriously,” said Rockwall County Criminal District Attorney Kenda Culpepper. “As far as we were concerned, the case was about a $55,000 bass boat, not a ten-pound fish.”
Rose pleaded guilty yesterday to the charge, and received five years probation and 15 days in jail. Even worse — he has to give up his fishing license while on probation.
“Cheating is cheating,” said lead prosecutor Alex Imgrund, “and neither the fishing community, nor this office, will tolerate it.”
The fish pictured is not the fish from the story. Link -via Digg
(image credit: Tim-N-Crystal-Connectic ut Outdoors)
Burkina Faso native Assami Semde was delivering two pizzas in the Harlem area of New York City when he was accosted by two hooded teenagers. One drew a gun and demanded the pizzas. Semde put the pizzas down and punched the gunman, who ran off. Then he grabbed and held the other man until police arrived. Then he finished delivering the pizzas, still hot, before he went to file a police report.
Semde’s boss, Frank Grecco — a retired NYPD detective with 22 years on the force — called the teen “very courageous” but added, “I told him, ‘Next time, leave the pizza!’
“He now realizes that he may have done something a little bit crazy,” said Grecco, who owns the East Harlem Famous Famiglia.
Semde agreed.
“It’s crazy. I think it’s better not to fight,” he said.
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