Xenophobia erupts in Binghamton New York

NVDL: More and more people are taking strain and snapping. These sort of crimes are likely to increase in frequency. And get worse. This is the dawn of The Dark Night.

clipped from news.yahoo.com BINGHAMTON, N.Y. (AP) — A gunman opened fire on a room where immigrants were taking a citizenship exam in downtown Binghamton on Friday, killing as many as 13 people before committing suicide, officials said. Gov. David Paterson said at a news conference that 12 or 13 people had been killed. The suspected gunman carried identification with the name of 42-year-old Jiverly Voong of nearby Johnson City, N.Y., a law enforcement official said. The gunman had recently been let go from IBM in nearby Johnson City, said Rep. Maurice Hinchey, whose district includes Binghamton. The gunman opened fire on a citizenship class, he said. "People were there in the process of being tested for their citizenship," Hinchey said in a telephone interview. "It was in the middle of a test. He just went in and opened fire." "One of the first questions is going to be, what motivated this?" he said. "What caused this to happen? What was the kind of person who did it?"

Whites Are Scum

I was reading on someone elses blog about the death penalty in the States, and it turns out that in the last 31 years in America, of the 1099 people executed 57% were whites. A little more than half of that number were black. Does that mean that the death penalty has worked in terms of dissauding blacks from perpetrating crimes, and that whites think they are smart enough to beat the system, or does it mean that whites (in America) are at the lowest level in terms of the scum bucket.
Also quite shocking: 120 people were released from death throw. That doesn't mean they were innocent, maybe some were, but on appeal there was not enough to prove them guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

I had a heated discussion on this topic, and my reasoning is simple: do you allow criminals to murder (50 murders a day in this country) and deprive your own community of defending itself (because that is exactly what it is, one small means of defending a community against out of control predators)?

The counterarguments are to be expected: what about the guy who gets sentenced to death in error?
Two things:
1) I'd argue that this individual is probably pretty sick and has a record of sick activity to get him facing this sort of sentence. In other words, you;re not talking about putting innocent or even seemingly innocent people on death row. You want the Criminal World's Top Achievers.

2) More lives are spared because the burglar or kidnapper decides not to also murder the woman he has just raped, reasoning, quite correctly, that if caught the most he could get is a life sentence. The death penalty may save thousands of potential lives in the sense that the criminal has pause - not in every case but in many cases - not to take the lives of people that come into harms way each and every day in this country.

In this sense, the saving in terms of lives saved - I'd argue - is incalculable, especially in South Africa.

City Homicides Still Dropping, to Under 500

“What are you going to do, send cops to every house?” said Peter K. Manning, the
Brooks professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University in Boston. “We know that historically, homicide is the least suppressible crime by police action,” he added. “It is, generally speaking, a private crime, resulting from people who know one another and have relationships that end up in death struggles at home or in semipublic places.”

New York City is on track to have fewer than 500 homicides this year, by far the
lowest number in a 12-month period since reliable Police Department statistics
became available in 1963.

But within the city’s official crime statistics is a figure that may be even more striking: so far, with roughly half the killings analyzed, only 35 were found to be committed by strangers, a microscopic statistic in a city of more than 8.2 million.

By AL BAKER

If that trend holds up, fewer than 100 homicide victims in New York City this year
will have been strangers to their assailants. The vast majority died in disputes
with friends or acquaintances, with rival drug gang members or — to a far lesser
degree — with romantic partners, spouses, parents and others.

The low number of killings by strangers belies the common imagery that New Yorkers are vulnerable to arbitrary attacks on the streets, or die in robberies that turn fatal.

In the eyes of some criminologists, the police will be hard pressed to drive the killing rate much lower, since most killings occur now within the four walls of an apartment or the confines of close relationships.

For the rest of this astute New York Times article, go here.

NVDL: This is exactly South Africa's problem. What makes it so hard to solve is that a terrifically high fraction of crimes are perpetrated by South Africans that know each other; thus, in homes. The majority of violence against the vulnerable (women and children) is also perpetrated in homes.

Breaking News: 14-Year-Old Gunman Shoots Four, Commits Suicide At Cleveland High School

By Gil Kaufman For Think.MTV.com

A 14-year-old student opened fire in the hallways of SuccessTech Academy high school in downtown Cleveland Wednesday afternoon (October 10), injuring five people. The student — who has been identified as Asa H. Coon, according to The Associated Press — then shot and killed himself.


Gunshot Wounds

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson spoke to the media several hours after the incident, saying two teachers — a 57-year-old man who was later identified as David Kachadourian, and a yet-unidentified 42-year-old — were shot and injured in the incident, but that they were in stable condition. He also said that an 18-year-old male, Darnell Rodgers, was treated for a gunshot wound to the elbow and released, and that a 14-year-old male was in stable condition with a gunshot wound to the side. A fifth person, a 14-year-old female student, was also injured when she hurt her knee in the aftermath; she was treated and released.

Dr. Eugene Sanders, CEO of Cleveland's metropolitan school district, said classes would be canceled for the entire district on Thursday and that an already-scheduled day off on Friday would be used to speak to teachers about the incident and come up with strategies to avoid similar situations in the future.

Coon, who had been suspended earlier this week for fighting, entered the school with two handguns and began opening fire in the early afternoon, hitting several students on at least two floors of the school, according to CNN.

While Coon was running through the halls, the principal called out a "code blue" alert, telling students to get to a safe space, with some hiding in closets or on the floors of their classrooms. Police responded to the incident within two minutes and quickly secured the building. A police spokesperson said Coon took his own life before police arrived at the school.

For more click here.
For the CNN story, click here.
For blogs on this story, here.
Asa had a troubled past - click here.

A Tiny Town, Suddenly Smaller by Seven, Mourns and Wonders, Why?

NVDL: South Africa has per capita one of the highest crime rates in the world (41 per 100 000). This is around 80 times higher than Japan, and twice as high as the USA. In South Africa around 50 people are murdered daily. That's a full busload each day, 19 000 people a year, enough to fill a decent sized soccer stadium.

By MONICA DAVEY

Residents of a tiny town in the Northwoods of Wisconsin were reeling yesterday, struggling to understand how six of their young people wound up dead at a homecoming weekend pizza party at the hands, the police said, of a local law enforcement officer who was also, after all, one of their own.

In Crandon, a town, like so many in Wisconsin’s lake-filled northern region of water skiing and snowmobiling, school was closed yesterday. Ballgames were canceled. Ministers held quiet prayers. And the entanglements of a truly small town — 2,000 people live in Crandon — felt especially painful.

The family of Tyler Peterson, the off-duty sheriff’s deputy who the police say shot and killed six people on Sunday and injured a seventh before dying, apparently of a gunshot wound, issued a statement of apology to the town yesterday afternoon.

“We also feel a tremendous amount of guilt and shame for the horrible acts Tyler committed,” the family said in a statement read aloud at a news briefing by Bill Farr, a local pastor. “We are struggling to respond, like most of you. We don’t know what we should do.”

The Petersons’ statement went on, “There is nothing that happened before or after yesterday’s events that has given us any insight into why.”

Before 3 a.m. Sunday, state authorities said, Mr. Peterson, 20, who also served as a part-time police officer in Crandon, arrived at the home of his former girlfriend, Jordanne Murray, 18. Ms. Murray and others — most of them graduates or students of the same close-knit high school in town — were watching movies, dozing and eating pizza.

Mr. Peterson, who many people said had a tumultuous relationship with Ms. Murray and had not been invited to the gathering, argued with the group, then left, state authorities said. But he quickly returned with a weapon — a rifle similar to the type and model carried by local sheriff’s deputies, though officials said they had not yet determined whether Mr. Peterson’s work rifle was used.

He sprayed the apartment with at least 30 rounds of gunfire. Ms. Murray died. So did five others, ranging in age from 14 to 20, including two young men whom schoolmates said Mr. Peterson considered close friends. A seventh person, Charlie Neitzel, 21, was wounded and remained hospitalized.

From The New York Times. For the rest of the story, click here.