Detroit Squatters Lose A Round

Because many of my older relatives, friends, and people I know in Detroit grew up in racially defined horrible poverty and segregation with plenty of experiences with evictions and racist insults they tend to be, well shall we say, less than sympathetic to incidents where someone is ripping off a landlord. Because Detroit is relatively impoverished with spotty enforcement of criminal and civil codes around housing, health, and waste management many landlords in Detroit have indeed taken the opportunity to screw over tenants and the taxing authorities as often as they can and as hard as they can. 

If you want people to internalize such values as respect for other people's property and paying their bills on time then you need to make sure that they have an opportunity to succeed by doing things the right way. If they are shut out of all opportunity they might not have much respect for your property. It's just human nature.

The answer is not to pick one side or another and blindly cheer them on but to create and follow law that is fair both in its execution and its definition. The landlord must be forced to maintain the property and submit to routine unbiased inspections to make sure the property is up to code. The tenant must pay their rent on time and in full. The tenant must have a financial incentive not to wreck or damage the property during the rental period. Pretty simple stuff right? The tenant and landlord have entered into a contract. The state needs to enforce that contract. Both sides should give each other incentives to treat each other well. Win-win for everyone. 

Book Reviews: The Detroit True Crime Chronicles

The Detroit True Crime Chronicles
edited by Scott Burnstein

Jimmy Hoffa. Demetrius Holloway. Young Boys Incorporated (YBI). The A-Team. Pony Down. Best Friends. The Devil's Diciples(sic). Black Jack Tocco. The Chambers Brothers. Tony Jack Giacalone. Maserati Rick. White Boy Rick. Chester Campbell. Billy Jack Giacalone. The Purple Gang. Taco Bowman. Louis Akrawi. Papa John Priziola. Bernie "The Hammer" Marchesani. Rocking Reggie Brown. Eddie Jackson. Big Ed Hanserd. Joe Zerelli.  

Many of those names will be familiar to those who are interested in organized crime or to those who grew up in Detroit proper or more generally Southeast Michigan. The same way that some people remember where they were when John Lennon or JFK was shot I remember where I was when I heard that Demetrius Holloway had been murdered at a popular downtown clothing store. People may not realize that Detroit area mafiosi and gangsters were the inspiration behind such films and music such as Absence of Malice, New Jack City, and The Ten Crack Commandments. 

I grew up close to ground zero for the infamous drug gang YBI. Some people in my neighborhood worked for folks in that group. I recall some of the activities mentioned in this book. The funny thing was is that looking back as bad as things were back then I don't remember at the time thinking that I lived in an extraordinarily violent city. It's a cliche but with some notable and fortunately rare exceptions most of the violence was contained among people who were already in that life. Of course my experience was shaped by having extremely strict parents who pretty much saw to it that I went to school and came home without going almost anywhere else. Perhaps other Detroiters would have different memories of those days.

Detroit Church Beset By Break-ins

In the movie Leaves of Grass a gentle religious character explains her belief that the world is broken, but that it's up to us to fix it. In his works The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion the devout Catholic J.R.R.Tolkien imagined that the force of evil had permanently marred the material world as far back as creation. 

In his Perelandra trilogy Tolkien's friend C.S. Lewis similarly posited an evil force that dominated the planet, had perverted humanity, and if left unchallenged would ultimately destroy human kind. Theodicy is a question that has never been resolved as far as I can tell. Not only can we not agree on why evil exists, but we can't really agree on what to do about it.The Bible has contradictory advice. God told us that accounts would be and should be settled.

And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.

And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

Jesus told us to resist not evil, turn the other cheek and don't attempt to get our stolen goods back.

But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. 

But Jesus never lived in Detroit...

Another Black Man Dead: Florida's Stand Your Ground Law

I don't have a problem with people using deadly violence to defend themselves anywhere from the threat or reality of deadly violence. Whether you are in your home, car, or walking the street I don't think that you must let someone initiate and continue felony violence on you and wait and see what their intentions are. I have little sympathy for the carjacker who gets shot in the face by his would be victim, for the rapist who gets stabbed in the yarbles by a woman armed with a knife, for the burglar who gets ripped to pieces by the homeowner's trained Rottweilers, for the mugger who makes the mistake of trying to assault an unassuming kung fu expert..Those criminals knew the risks of their trade; they paid the price. So it goes.

But "Stand your ground laws" ,at least in the case of Florida, seem to be something different. Self-defense should be about using defense proportionate to the attack AND making sure that there is an attack. If someone steps on my shoe, depending on both our moods that day, I may just keep moving and say nothing. I may say something. The offender and I both may end up yelling obscenities at each other or worse. Stuff happens. But whatever happens most people would agree that even if the person deliberately stepped on my shoe I would be (no pun intended) jumping the gun to pull out my firearm and shoot him dead. 

Even if I thought that this person might be a later threat at the time that I used deadly force against him he was no threat. So self-defense doesn't apply. Also I shouldn't be able to go around deliberately stepping on people's shoes and shooting the first person who responds physically, claiming I was standing my ground. In practice however, Florida's stand your ground law gives the benefit of the doubt to the shooter, regardless of the circumstances, especially if the shooter is white and the decedent is black.

LARGO — Prominent civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump stood in front of the Pinellas County Justice Center on Thursday and demanded justice for the family of Markeis McGlockton.
Flanked by the slain man’s parents and girlfriend, Crump told reporters that McGlockton’s shooting death last week was "cold-blooded murder ... by the self-appointed, wannabe cop Michael Drejka."

Modern Day Loansharking and Obama Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner

Mister Banker Mister please, how much does money mean
Won't you reconsider Mister Won't you do this thing for me
Mr. Banker 
-Lynyrd Skynyrd
I've written before that if you were a criminally minded sort in today's environment you'd be a fool to join the Mafia or other illicit organizations. These days, the benefit is no longer worth the cost. Working outside the law you have to worry about informants, violent paranoid co-workers, electronic surveillance up the wazoo, and long prison terms. That's no good. If you have wicked urges be smart and work inside the law. For example, if you want to assault or kill people, become a cop. You will be virtually untouchable.

If you want to help people gamble away their cash so that you can make a profit, open a liquor store and run the state sponsored lottery. People will give you money for nothing and thank you for the opportunity. And if you want to loan money at extortionate rates, changing or reinterpreting contract terms to your benefit while emptying your client's sucker's pockets, then do what former Obama Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner did and open up/run a finance company that markets predatory loans to impoverished and/or desperate people.

The check arrived out of the blue, issued in his name for $1,200, a mailing from a consumer finance company. Stephen Huggins eyed it carefully. A loan, it said. Smaller type said the interest rate would be 33 percent.

Way too high, Huggins thought. He put it aside.

A week later, though, his 2005 Chevy pickup was in the shop, and he didn’t have enough to pay for the repairs. He needed the truck to get to work, to get the kids to school. So Huggins, a 56-year-old heavy equipment operator in Nashville, fished the check out that day in April 2017 and cashed it.

Woman Bites Off Ear At Chinese Restaurant

Over the years I've had people occasionally get my food orders wrong. Usually it's a no harm-no foul sort of deal. Of course sometimes you run into unreasonable aggressive insulting people who will not take responsibility for mistakes and/or who will not refund your money or make your order correctly. And on the flipside, although we say that the customer is always right, customers exist who go out of their way to cheat, insult, harass and even assault the people who make their food. People of all types can have quick tempers and resort to violence for no good reason. I don't know the truth of what took place at the China 1 restaurant at Mt. Clemens. I do know that language barriers combined with poor service mixed with impatient, angry or demanding customers can cause tempers to flare. The question that must be answered is who threw the first punch. Or more precisely, who bit whom first?

MT. CLEMENS, Mich. (WXYZ) - A woman was arrested for allegedly biting off part of a man's ear during a fight with the man at a Macomb County Chinese restaurant on Thursday night. According to deputies, they were called to China 1 Restaurant in Mt. Clemens around 9:40 p.m. When they arrived, they found a man with his ear partially bitten off and a woman with a large bump on her forehead. 

Deputies say 24-year-old Jade Anderson walked into the restaurant complaining about her order. She was complaining to the owners, who are also the victims in the assault. Due to a language barrier, the victim's son translated what Anderson was saying to his parents. That's when Anderson allegedly pushed the son and threw her food onto the floor. She then started assaulting the female victim, and the male victim stepped in to protect his wife.

Carjacker Learns That You Don't Mess With Texas

Unfortunately the world is full of people, who as the character Blade opined, are always trying to iceskate uphill. There is not really a way to reason with such people. They don't understand reason and/or don't respect it. All you can do with such folks is attempt to avoid them. And if you can't avoid them then you must use force to stop them from hurting you or yours. 

This is ugly. But this is life. There is a saying that you don't mess with Texas. A would be carjacker named Rickey Wright found this out the hard way, when a mother, unable to convince Mr. Wright not to steal her SUV with her children inside, used a more persuasive argument that ended the confrontation.

DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – A suspected carjacker is in the hospital after a North Texas woman shot him as he tried to take off in her SUV with her two children in the backseat.
The incident happened just after 10:00 p.m. Wednesday, when Dallas police say the woman stopped for gasoline at a Shell station on Camp Wisdom Road.

The mother, who does not want to be identified, left her children in the SUV while she ran inside the convenience store. Before she returned a man jumped into her vehicle and tried to drive away, but the woman saw what was happening and jumped in the back seat.

Kelly Cochran: Serial Killer

Have you ever eaten something you shouldn't have and suffered for it later? Well you probably have. Have you ever been around someone and had an epiphany that for whatever reason it wasn't good or even safe for you to be around this person? 

Some of us have likely had that experience as well. But unless you happen to be a friend or acquaintance of Kelly Cochran, you may not have been unfortunate enough to combine both of those experiences into one unsettling encounter. 

DETROIT — If you've ever seen the end of the movie "Fried Green Tomatoes," then you have an idea of what may have happened to a Michigan man in 2014. In a new television documentary, authorities allege that a serial killer and her husband chopped up and killed her former lover and then served his remains at a neighborhood barbecue in 2014, WJBK-TV, in Detroit, reported this week. 

Kelly Cochran later injected her husband with a lethal dose of heroin in February 2016 in Indiana. The docuseries on the Investigation Discovery channel called "Dead North" takes the viewer on a journey that might just leave a bad taste in their mouth. Cochran, 36, admitted in court that she and her husband lured her lover, Chris Regan, inside their home, shot and dismembered him in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Cochran said she and her husband made a pact that they would get rid of anyone "involved in their extramarital affairs."

Mother of Mercy is this the end of Harvey Weinstein?

Over the last year, year and half or so we have seen many (mostly) women and men make accusations of rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment and  generally inappropriate behavior against (mostly) men in primarily the media, arts and entertainment industries. With the possible exception of Bill Cosby, no man was more closely associated with such alleged bad behavior than Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. 

Weinstein allegedly harassed, assaulted, or raped dozens of actual or would be Hollywood starlets. Weinstein had enough power and friends in the industry and out of it that he could allegedly harm the careers of women who didn't want to play ball with him. Weinstein allegedly hired Israeli private intelligence firms made up of former or current IDF and Mossad personnel to dig up dirt on accusers, handle hostile media and generally raise the cost incurred (legal or otherwise) to anyone inclined to mumble a bad word about his extra-curricular activities. Well nothing lasts forever. Weinstein was just formally arrested by the NYPD. 

Harvey Weinstein turned himself in to New York City detectives and was arrested on Friday on charges that he raped one woman and forced another to perform oral sex, a watershed in a months long sex crimes investigation and in the #MeToo movement. Around 7:30 a.m., Mr. Weinstein walked into a police station house in Lower Manhattan, flanked by several sex crimes detectives. Toting three large books under his right arm, he looked up without saying a word as a crush of reporters and onlookers yelled, “Harvey!” 

Bat Attack In Florida Road Rage Incident

What happens when we drive that makes some of us take personal offense to every little thing? Why is that rather than continue on their daily schedule after a mistake or affront by another driver, some drivers will decide that they need to hurl insults at or engage in fisticuffs with the object of their ire? Why is it, to paraphrase Mario Puzo's Don Corleone , some (wo)men feel a need to attack and fight people whose capacities they do not know? I don't know the answer to these questions. But I do know that people who behave like that, who run around telling the world, kill me if you can, sometimes run into people who will happily take them up on their offer. Florida is a stand your ground state. If the attacked woman had pulled out her licensed weapon and defended herself I would have voted to acquit were I on the jury. In any event, this is an example of why leaving your car is never a good idea.
Mikaela Barboza was headed down 441 on her way to a meeting when she cut another driver off. That, Barboza said, is was what spurred the driver and her sister to follow the 26-year-old to a parking lot and beat her with baseball bats.The attack — caught on camera by Barboza and a bystander — left her with a broken nose, seven staples in the back of her head and seven stitches in the front.

“My nose is the worst of it,” she said Sunday, days after the Thursday afternoon beating. “I can’t even breathe out of it.” When she cut the driver off on the road, Barboza said the woman started yelling at her, along with another driver who said “you cut off my sister. That’s disrespectful.”

Worried for her safety, Barboza pulled into a nearby parking lot, but the women followed. She said they blocked her in — one car behind her and one car in front. Barboza, of Plantation, called the police, then stepped out of her car holding her cell phone to record video. “I don’t got time for this. I got a kid, bruh,” Barboza said as the camera swings up to reveal a woman in a floral dress opening her trunk.

Red Wedding Pakistan Style

You tried so hard to kill me, woman it just was not my time.
You put poison in my coffee, instead of milk or cream.
You put poison in my coffee, instead of milk or cream.
You bout the evilest woman, that I ever seen.
You mixed my drink with a can of Red Devil lye.
You mixed my drink with a can of Red Devil lye.
Then you sat down, watching me, hopin that I might die

Howling Wolf "Commit A Crime"

I don't believe in arranged weddings though I work with some people who do. I don't believe in marrying your relatives either although again I have worked with people who surely must have been the result of such couplings. If I were unfortunate enough to be raised in a culture where both of those things were normal I guess I would have to run away to the big city or stand my ground and refuse to marry my cousin/aunt/half-sister. What I probably wouldn't do is agree to the marriage long enough to calm the suspicions of my family/in-laws so that I could plot a massacre that would make Walder Frey quail at my ruthlessness. Pakistani citizen Aasia Bibi does not share my qualms. The 21 year old woman already had a man, one Shahid Lasari. Apparently they were happily doing their thing together (though given the importance placed on female virginity at marriage in some circles it's unclear as what exactly the unmarried couple was doing) What is clear is that Bibi's family had marriage plans for her and wasn't going to take no for an answer any longer. And those plans definitely didn't include Lasari. Well Bibi wasn't going to sit still for that kind of stuff, thank you very much. She took matters into her own hands.

A 21-year-old Pakistani woman, unhappy in her new arranged marriage, is charged with murder after poisoning her husband's milk that some two dozen members of his extended family later drank, resulting in 17 deaths, according to police. The alleged incident took place in a rural village near the city of Multan in the eastern Punjab Province. 

Las Vegas Shooting and the 2nd Amendment

I don't have much to write about the recent atrocity in Las Vegas where a wealthy semi-retired real estate investor and gambler shot hundreds of people at a country music festival. Stephen Paddock murdered 58 people and wounded over 400. Likely many of the survivors will have lifelong issues. It's a horror. No one yet knows his motive. From the information released to the public, it appears that Paddock used bump stocks to increase the rate of fire of his weapons. Bump stocks are legal devices which redirect the gun's recoil to make a semi-automatic weapon behave somewhat similarly to an automatic weapon. Automatic weapons made after 1986 are of course banned for civilian usage. Those made prior to that time are legal but only with strict government oversight.

In the wake of the atrocity many people who were generally already pro-gun control were greatly outraged. They called for more gun control: bans on bump stocks, bans on semi-automatic rifles, increased fees, taxes and insurance on gun owners, limits on the number of weapons or ammunition any one man could purchase, warrantless searches of gun owners' homes, medical sign off to own a gun, lawsuits against the NRA or gun manufacturers, profiling of white men, registering of all guns nationwide, confiscation of all guns except for police or military use, and the repeal of the 2nd Amendment.

Worst Hack in History: Time to Get Rid of Equifax??

You probably heard that Equifax suffered the worst hack in its history. Hackers viewed or stole the private personally identifiable information of approximately 143 million adult Americans. I am talking about your name, your maiden name if applicable, your address, your date of birth, city and state of birth, your income, your previous addresses, and of course your social security number. Equifax not only failed to secure this critical information but also some Equifax big shots allegedly sold Equifax stock after they discovered the hack but before the news became public. And Equifax took its sweet time before informing the public. A few people have since lost their jobs but other than that Equifax or its principals haven't suffered any legal criminal or civil penalties. It's unclear as to exactly how much Equifax or its two other primary competitors, Experian and TransUnion CAN be regulated or fined. They theoretically fall under the bailiwick of the FTC and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau but neither of those organizations have the power to impose harsh penalties. And the current Administration is not exactly known for its belief in keeping a short leash on corporate behavior.

In the online age some have become blase about sharing personal information but this incident could change that. Individual consumers never handed over their information to credit bureaus. It was their employers, insurance companies, banks and/or creditors who did that. This data could be a jackpot for criminals around the world. There is literally no end of mischief someone can get up to if they have all of your personal information. 

Don't Mess With North Carolina Women

I haven't been to Asheville, North Carolina, or spoken to maternal relatives in a while. I wonder what they would think of this story. I will check over the weekend. I think that although the woman's actions may have been a little over the top I would also bet that the thief will think twice before doing something like that again. If I were in charge of justice in this case I would probably just put the woman on a very short probation period. I would want to make sure that she understands when she can use that kind of force and when she can't. I think the thief already understands that if he wants to mess with his fellow mountain folk then he has to accept the risks of things like what took place. That had to hurt.  A pregnant woman was arrested in North Carolina on Wednesday after she reportedly mowed down an alleged thief with her SUV in a Wal-Mart parking lot, police said. After an investigation, police said that Christine Braswell, 26, of Canton, was returning to her parked car outside a Wal-Mart in Asheville on Wednesday afternoon when she saw a man enter her unattended, unsecured vehicle and rummage through her purse. 

When she confronted the man, he dropped the purse and ran across the parking lot in an attempt to flee, according to the Asheville Police Department. 

Brooke Lajiness Pleads Guilty to Sex Offenses

Is it just me or does it seem as if there are more and more women getting busted for molesting or raping young boys? Perhaps I had a slightly sheltered childhood all those years ago when dinosaurs roamed the Earth but I don't seem to remember so many cases where adult women were seeking sex with underage males. The most recent one took place in SE Michigan. The age of consent in Michigan is 16, which is probably too young but even that tender age was just too old for a 38-year-old married woman of Lima Township, Michigan named Brooke Lajiness. Perhaps, as some have said, this crime is about power more than it is about the sex. Either way although people have pretty routinely made jokes or songs about doing stuff with someone who is 16 or 17, there's nothing to joke about when it comes to 15,14 or 11. That kind of thing is pretty despicable no matter which state or subculture you come from. 

ANN ARBOR, MI - A 38-year-old Lima Township mother has pleaded guilty to having sex with a 14-year-old boy and a 15-year-old boy. Brooke L. Lajiness admitted on Monday, June 26 during a pretrial in front of Washtenaw County Trial Court Judge David S. Swartz to having intercourse and oral sex with the minors.

She pleaded guilty to third-degree criminal sexual conduct for oral sex with a 15-year-old, two counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct for intercourse with a 14-year-old, one count of accosting a child for immoral purposes and one count of furnishing obscenity to children for sending nude photographs of herself to a minor. Through a plea agreement, 10 other counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct with a person between 13 and 15 years old will be dismissed at sentencing, Assistant Washtenaw County Prosecuting Attorney John Vella said.

Chaldeans Blame Trump for Deportations

As you probably know if you've read any prior posts here I don't have a tremendous amount of sympathy for resident adult non-citizens who break the law in any serious way and then receive a deportation order. I have even less sympathy for a group of people who voted for Trump and are shocked when he turns on them. It's what he is. It's what he does. Perhaps for the next election people might consider looking a little more deeply into a candidate's background and history or maybe even think about voting for something greater than their own narrow perceived self-interest. You can't or rather shouldn't identify as a "conservative" and then get p*****d off when someone enforces the law against you. If you can't do the time, don't do the crime. Stop resisting. Follow the rules and you'll have nothing to worry about. Obey the law. Isn't that what self-righteous conservatives tell blacks other people who complain about selective, harsh, or inflexible law enforcement? Well okay then. When he talked about immigrants who were breaking the law with impunity and causing havoc across the land President Trump apparently wasn't, despite what some Chaldean immigrants thought, only talking about Mexicans.

Standing in the living room of her brother's home in Sterling Heights, Lina Denha wipes away tears with a tissue as she recalls how federal agents arrested him early one Sunday morning this month. 
"To just come and grab him in front of his kids and family — that's not right," she said of the June 11 detention of Haydar Butris, 38, one of 114 Iraqi immigrants with criminal records arrested in Michigan.  "He's been here most of his life. He did a mistake. He paid for it. Now, he is a good father, has kids, a family. He works, pays taxes and everything. And you just come knock on the door, come out of nowhere and grab him? That's not right."

Denha's sadness turns to frustration as she expresses disappointment with President Donald Trump, whom she and some other Iraqi-American Christians in Michigan had supported. Denha's sense of betrayal is echoed across metro Detroit among some Iraqi-American Christians who voted for Trump because they hoped he would be sympathetic to their community abroad, where they are a religious minority, and in the U.S. "We voted for Trump," Denha said. "That's what we get from him? ... Obama is better than him, 100 times."

Michigan AG Attempts Justice For Flint

You may recall that the residents of Flint, Michigan suffered greatly because of the decision by the Republican installed Emergency Manager and crew to switch from Detroit supplied water to local water in order to save money. This proved to be not only a bad idea but also disastrous as neither the local infrastructure nor the local water was safe. As a result, residents of one of Michigan's most storied cities had to attempt to live in a stereotypical Third World manner with regards to water. The water was not safe to drink. It wasn't safe to use for bathing or showering. It wasn't safe for cooking. It wasn't safe to use for ice. It wasn't safe to use for washing your hands. It wasn't safe to use for anything at all.  Some people abandoned their homes. Others tried to make the best of a bad situation and reduced their exposure to the dirty water. Other people relied on bottled water for everything, a response that can get pretty expensive when you think about how much water you use every day

Elevated lead levels were discovered in children. The state leadership attempted to ignore the issue and/or insist that there was not a problem long after evidence showed that there was. Despite the fact that Steve Harvey thought that this issue was far enough in the past to joke about, it's not completely solved. It's not a joking matter. One person who doesn't see the humor involved is Michigan Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette. AG Schuette has charged five state and local officials involved in the Flint debacle with involuntary manslaughter. Some of these people are still being praised by Governor Snyder for their role in the cleanup.

FLINT, MI - Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette has charged five water officials -- including a member of Gov. Rick Snyder's cabinet and a former emergency manager -- with manslaughter related to their alleged failure to act in during the Flint Water Crisis.

Elderly Woman Body Slammed At Pool Party

You must be able to get along with other people. You don't have to like them but you must live with them. Our actions continually impact other people. When you are neighbors with someone you recognize this. You and your neighbor can't solve every dispute by shouting and fisticuffs. When you are neighbors with someone there's a good chance that neither of you is going anywhere anytime soon. You and your neighbor may need each other's help someday, whether it's something as prosaic as your neighbor plowing your driveway during the Winter Deathstorm of 2017 or you being willing to let the police know the license plate of the van that was parked outside your neighbor's house while it was burglarized. 

So when your neighbor asks you to turn your music down you might be annoyed. But if you are normal you'd remember the time that your neighbor helped you to change a flat. You'd probably turn down the music. Even if you didn't know your neighbor from Adam, you might consider granting their request because, as mentioned, reciprocity often works. You and your neighbor will be in a position to help and hurt each other for a while. 

But people who aren't neighbors and who aren't normal may not recognize the benefits of relationship reciprocity, as 68 year old North Lauderdale, Florida resident Nancy James discovered when she asked a group of teens to turn down their music at a pool party. The teens, many of whom did not live in the complex, didn't appreciate her request.

Street Harassment in Detroit and Confederate Thuggery in Georgia

There has been a lot of ink written about street harassment, which is usually defined as looking at a woman in a way she doesn't like or saying something to her that she doesn't appreciate. For what it's worth I think that for some this is a real problem though I don't think it warrants the heavy hand of state intervention. There are just some people who don't know how to act because they weren't raised right at home. Absent them putting hands on someone or making actual threats to harm a person I think that the police should have more important things to do than arrest men who use bad or insulting pickup lines. Free speech and all that, yada, yada, yada. Well recently in the city of Detroit a woman apparently felt she was street harassed because someone remarked on the size of her posterior. This lady evidently took offense. But rather than engage in a short frank discussion of why she didn't appreciate the remarks or simply remove herself from the area where such untoward language was in use, this lady and/or her friend allegedly decided to take the law into their own hands. And in her world the penalty for such disrespect for her gluteus maximus was death. The only issue, well beside the whole "I'm going to kill you because I don't like what you said to me" thingie was that the shooters apparently killed a child (teenager) who didn't make the comment in the first place. Reginald Rose-Robinson just happened to have the bad luck to be in the general area. He may or may not have laughed. And now he's dead. Michigan doesn't have a death penalty. And even in states that still have the death penalty I don't think you can receive the death penalty for laughing at a bad joke or ugly comment that someone else makes. 

Detroit police are looking for a female suspect who shot a teenager to death Friday night on Detroit's west side. The woman thought the 17-year-old made a comment about her backside inside a party store. A car she was in pulled up to Robinson and his friends outside and fatally shot him in the head at 6:30 p.m. across from the Zoom gas station at Plymouth and Meyers. Two women walked into the store when a man they didn't know, made his remark. Somebody said 'Damn, she has a big booty' and we all started laughing," said Christopher, a friend of Robinson's. "That person (left), she looked and I guess she thought it was us."

The two women drove up to the boys in a dark sedan a block away and opened fire.

Rutgers Incident: Keep Your Hands to Yourself!!!

I don't understand why it is so difficult for some people to understand that if you go around hitting people you will eventually run into someone who will hit you back. Fighting should be your last resort. It should only be done in self-defense. Although I can appreciate that certain insults can make a man or in this case a woman feel that honor requires them to lay hands on someone I would remind people that when you get into a fight with someone--especially when you start it--you're essentially signing up for whatever comes next. I think it's an utter obscenity for men and women to fight-whether it be in a domestic violence context or in a street brawl as in this case. There used to be an understanding in society that gentlemen did not hurl sexual assaults at ladies and that ladies did not attempt to fight gentlemen. Unfortunately many of those conventions have been lost with our insistence on equality as the highest and only good. Equality is necessary but it is not the whole of human experience. But in a country that insists upon placing women in combat is there any reason to be upset at this situation? I think there probably is though as a society we no longer have the vocabulary to explain why. So all I can say is morals aside, from a strictly pragmatic POV, this is why it is a very bad idea for most women to start a fight against most men. The difference in strength, speed and endurance is too great. And the law apparently doesn't protect people who start fights, regardless of their gender, even if they do wind up with a cracked skull.
No charges will be filed against the man caught slugging Emily Rand in the face with a right hook so hard that she was knocked unconscious when her head hit the sidewalk. “We’ve finished our investigation and interviewed the individual you see in the video, as well as a lot of other people. At this time there’s not going to be any arrests or any charges,” New Brunswick Police Capt. J.T. Miller told New Jersey 101.5 of the incident that took place around 1 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 29. “It’s a mutually exclusive fight between the individuals.”

The incident was captured on video, which was posted online.

Miller said that the 19-year-old Middlesex County College student from South Amboy struck the man first and “there is evidence that she was aggressive towards other people before the video starts.”
Other people involved with the video do not want to pursue charges against Rand, according to Miller, who did not disclose the identity of the man. Rand has been at Robert Wood Johnson University Medical Center and was in a coma following skull surgery to relieve pressure in her swollen brain. Her aunt, Debbie O’Connor, said Rand has started to breathe on her own this week and will soon begin physical therapy.

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