Category: Crime

Chief Tango sends a link to an article from Orlando about Jose Quinones who was apparently bored and decided to steal a HMMV;

Quinones, deputies say, climbed a 7-foot fence topped with barbed wire surrounding the new Army Reserve Training Center in Sanford and jumped into several military transports.

After rummaging through a few of them, he found one with an anti-theft device on the steering wheel that was loose enough for him to turn the wheel a bit.

Soon, he was charging the tan military vehicle through the barbed-wire fence, driving past an unmanned security gate and motoring across Central Florida.

You can hear a local radio report on the whole thing which autostarts;
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Jilly and Andy send us links to an Associated Press story about convicted rapist/murderer Steven Dale Green, a former soldier who was convicted in 2009 of murdering an Iraqi family and the rape and murder of 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi in 2006. Three others were prosecuted as accomplices, but tried in the military court system. They are eligible for parole next year. Green, however completed his life sentence yesterday when prison officials found him “unresponsive” in his cell. His death is being investigated as a suicide;

In multiple interviews from prison with The Associated Press, Green frequently expressed regret at taking part in the attack and frustration that he was tried and convicted in the civilian system, which does not afford inmates parole, while the others involved went through the military justice system and have a chance to be released from prison.

“I was made to pay for all the war crimes. I’m the only one here in federal prison,” Green said in an October 2013 interview. “I think they plan to throw away the key in my situation.”

I’d like to thank Mr. Green for saving the tax payers untold thousands of dollars to keep him alive. He should have been sentenced to death for his particularly gruesome crime, at least he had the decency to commit justice for the rest of us, if it turns out that he did indeed commit suicide. If it turns out that he had some help, I also send my heartfelt thanks to his assistant.

UPDATE: According to Stars & Stripes, the Medical Examiner has declared that Green died from hanging. I suppose the rope around his neck was their big clue.

Chris sends us a link to an article about Army Reserve Specialist Jackie Gatti who had just returned from Afghanistan and went to dinner with her parents. I guess she had all of the awards she earned during her combat tour in her little rucksack which they left in the pickup truck while they ate;

When they got back into the family pick-up truck, Gatti realized her military backpack had been stolen out of the back of the truck.

“I kinda stared at the back of the truck for a minute and I said you have to be kidding me, it’s gone. And that’s really all I could get out of my mouth,” she said.

Gatti says she fell to her knees sobbing because all of the proof of all the hard work she had put in and bravery she’d displayed for the past eight months was in her backpack.

“A lot of my military documentation was in there. All my awards from my deployment were in there. I had company coins that my commander and first sergeant had given me as a job well done,” she said.

“The two hour ride home was, you know, we were crying and we were trying to control ourselves,” Gatti’s mother said.

well, they probably stole it because of the backpack, not even thinking about what was in it. But welcome home, SPC Gatti, those are the types of people you were fighting for over there.

Boston News, Weather, Sports | FOX 25 | MyFoxBoston

Robert sends us a link to an NBC story on our Facebook page about three rambunctious youngsters in Chicago who attempted to rob an off-duty cop at a gas pump;

Police say three males tried to rob the sergeant as he was pumping gas at a Citgo in the 700 block of East 103rd Street shortly before 10 p.m., according to Chicago police and Cook County Sheriff’s spokesman Ben Breit.

The three demanded the sergeant’s wallet, which he gave to them. One of the men then pulled out a handgun and aimed it straight at the sergeant, according to Chicago police. The sergeant pulled out his own gun and shot the male in the head, killing him.

The two other males ran off and were not in custody early Tuesday, police said.

Of course, it was in Chicago, so the youngsters were pretty certain that their victim was unarmed. I don’t know how those children got their gun, but they must have successfully jumped through the hoops Chicago requires for gun owners, because everyone knows that criminals go through the same process as legitimate gun owners to get their guns, right? So this victim was lucky to be a cop when he needed a gun to save his life, what about the rest of the potential victims at the pumps in Chicago?

Green Thumb and Pinto Nag sent us a link to NBC News which reports that Attorney General Holder at a Washington, D.C. symposium on sentencing laws made the crack that felons should be allowed to vote;

Holder said the restrictions bar 5.8 million Americans from casting a ballot, including 2.2 million African-Americans.

“Nearly one in 13 African-American adults are banned from voting because of these laws. In three states — Florida, Kentucky, and Virginia — that ratio climbs to one in five,” he said.

Holder called the laws a vestige of post-Civil War racial discrimination, with a disproportionately high impact on minority communities.

The laws were not intended to improve public safety but rather “to stigmatize, shame, and shut out a person who had been found guilty of a crime.”

Um, no, the laws were written so that law abiding citizens didn’t have their vote diluted by a criminal element. So that law abiding citizens didn’t have to live under a tyranny created by 5.8 million voters who have already proven that they don’t make good decisions. If they feel stigmatized, shamed or shut out, maybe there’s a reason for it. Maybe he thinks that those same felons should own guns, I’m sure they feel shamed that can’t own weapons, too. Of course Holder wants the law changed, he’s of the same mentality of criminals who flaunt the laws of civil society.