Junk Food Cops

As reported by Blottered in October, close to Halloween, Iowa cops stole candy from a prisoner. And now things have gotten even more dicey. In Texas, land of guns, cowboys, the Alamo, beer bottles flung from trucks adorned with male symbols like chipped antlers and hunting lights a new A has been added to the word atrocity. So let this one hit you like a sad Townes Van Zandt song, right where it hurts, in your thirsty gland.

A Haltom City patrol sergeant has been fired and two detectives disciplined for taking soft drinks out of a refrigerator in a Fort Worth house during the execution of a search warrant, authorities said Tuesday.

What is going on in the buttock touseled halls of copperdom?

"These police officers are human, but we don’t have the luxury of making these type of mistakes," Haltom City Police Chief Ken Burton said Tuesday.

Running from reporters, Ken reached the back of the station. He unzipped his human mask revealing the ghoulish lizard face beneath, complete with Diana pleasing tongue. Pulling out a cross between a cigarette lighter and bug zapper he contacted the Vector Armada to inform them that invasion plans must be carried out post-haste, as the secret alien settlement in Texas was about to be discovered. Go Bush!

Haltom police helped themselves to drinks during search (Star Telegram)

"Who would steal candy from a prisoner?" (Blottered)

O My Clementine

There's at least one person in prison who won the lottery. Robin Lovitt did not win a million dollars and a sudden avalanche of MySpace and Friendster invites from willing cyberblondes. He was given clemency. He was to have been the 1,000th person executed in the United States since capital punishment was reinstated in '76.

The governor of Virginia commuted Lovitt's sentence to life in prison with no chance of parole.

Robin Lovitt was convicted for killing a man named Clayton Dicks during a robbery. He supposedly used a pair of scissors. Although admitting he robbed Dicks, Lovitt said someone else did the killin'.

That means Kenneth Lee Boyd, another member of the murderer's club, gets to stand in as lucky 1,000. Does this also mean that another politician who might be scamming to get mercy votes for the upcoming Presidential election will pardon Boyd? Either way, if you concentrate real hard you can hear Robin Lovitt's "Jesus H Christ" echoing from the stony heart of Virginia's penal system.

Killer Escapes Landmark Execution (BBC)

Halloween Prank Or Hate Crime?

Have a thing for dolls? So does a man in Iowa. He likes them so much, he hung a "child-sized black mannequin wearing a diaper and a blindfold strung up by a noose" on his property, ostensibly an idea originating with Halloween, but one he thought so ingenious he's continued to let the ebony body swing in the fall breeze.

The property owner told the Hardin County Sheriff's Office that the figure is a
1930s storefront dummy and that he put it up as a Halloween prank. He said it
was left up to deter trespassers, NewsChannel 8 reported.

Well, it's caused quite a furor.

Rev. Toussaint Cheatom says:

"Without knowing all the details, I could not say, but it looks very close to
hate crime. I would pray that my children would never see this so close to a
trail."

Chief Deputy Don Orel, of the Hardin County Sheriff's Office says:

"I can see how it would be shocking to some people who come upon it, but
after I saw it I believe it was just a prank."

I woke up this on the news this morning. Around 9 this morning I regaled an acquaintance with the grisly details. Here's a transcript:

Her:

I had another bad dream. I was in some park or something and as what I can only
think was a joke people hung a whole bunch of dummies all around the trees like
they had hung themselves. Thinking it was in poor taste i started to cut them
down and drag them into a pile, then I pulled on one and it was a person a live
person, she was trying to kill herself and got mad at me for cutting her down
and started rolling herself towards water, mad at me yelling for ruining her
plans.

Me:

This morning I watched (listened face-first into a pillow) to the news.
Apparently there is some situation where some guy hung a black skeleton in the
woods, and it seems to have been at least...racially questionable. so, perhaps
you were psychically orchestrating it.

Her:

I wouldn't orchestrate such a thing! it was a disturbing sight to see. I don't
even see anywhere on the news about this that you're talking about. I think
you're making it up. I do see bed bugs are on the rise though.

Really Iowa isn't all bad, though. Home of the Caucus!

I'm pretty sure the 1930's were not the best place for equal rights. At least judging by the Scottsboro Boys rape case when nine young African Americans were charged with raping two white women in Scottsboro, Alabama and found guilty based on false testimony.

So --- how many people keep a "child-sized black mannequin wearing a diaper and a blindfold and hanging from a noose" on hand as a Halloween prank? Not surprisingly, very few. And I'd guess the majority of those who do own one of these, also enjoy comedies in black-face.

At present no charges have been filed against the property owner and black child mannequin-enthusiast.

Figure Hanging Near Trail Causes Stir (KCCI)

To Keep The Internet Safe

Since Krucoff is stuck in a Maine theater watching Jesus is Magic for the next month (That's Israel to him) I'll do the honors.

Let's all take a second to welcome the latest rough-talking veteran cop, here to put perps in a jail cell and yet make sure they get three square meals a day and a backrub.

Bucky Turco. Editor-And-Chief of Animal magazine.

So everyone, give a hearty holiday welcome, full of cheer and warm beer breath, to Bucky.

Hicks blames it on the coke, gets the needle

Self-confessed coke head, convicted murder, and lunatic John Hicks will be put to death on Tuesday, November 29^th at 10 a.m. He becomes the 18th person to be executed in Ohio since 1999, when that state resumed capital punishment. Hicks will also receive the distinction of being the 999^th prisoner to be executed in the US since 1976 according to the DPIC.

Hicks was found guilty of murdering his 5 year old step daughter, Brandy Green, and his mother-in-law in, Maxine Armstrong (no relation to Lance) in 1985. He was craving cocaine and needed money so he murdered Armstrong with a clothes line and stole $300. After scoring (and most likely snorting a huge rail), he realized that the 5 year old could pin him to the crime so he went back and truly became Satan incarnate. Wikipedia of all places, provides the gruesome details:

He returned and smothered her with a pillow. When this failed to kill his stepdaughter, he tried to use his own hands, and then duct taped her mouth and nose. …Returning to the body of Brandy Green, he removed her underpants and penetrated her with his finger.

With that said, today is a great day for killing. In fact it’s only supposed to rain in the morning with partial clouds in the afternoon.

Board upholds execution for stepdaughter's killer- THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER

Cautionary Tale Of The Light Pole Burglers

Crime enthusiasts know that crime, like celebrity marriage, is often stranger than fiction. It's been a heart breaking "Turkey Day" in that regard, as Nick and Jessica finally threw in the diamond studded watch. I know I was crying as I speared bits of Turkey and stuffing and argued for Jessica's side.
"She's NOT just a rank bimbo!" I yelled, murk of cheap wine and turkey on my breath. My family, quietly afraid for their lives, wondered how to excuse themselves from Thanksgiving dinner without further fuss.
Thank God for a Blottered informant from Baltimore, Maryland. Just when things were looking dim, and I was sitting in front of the tube in my sweatpants, weeping and trying to order anything, just any old thing, from the TV ---- Hon tipped this story off:

Given that they stand some 30 feet tall, their disappearance is attracting a
good deal of attention here -- even as their final destination remains a
mystery. Thieves are sawing down aluminum light poles. Some 130 have vanished
fromBaltimore's streets in the last several weeks, authorities say, presumably
sold for scrap metal. But so far the case of the pilfered poles has stumped the
police and left many local residents wondering just how someone manages to make
off with what would seem to be a conspicuous street fixture.

Hon also had this to say:

it makes one big crack pipe - all the HOs and Dudes line up and hit it like a
pro

Hon, a shut-in detective has clearly done the leg work. But just in case some of those pieces of street lamp don't go to a massive, sectional Crack Cocaine pipe whose length spans several neighboring states ---- Maryland readers, next time you buy an expensive anodized aluminum iPod case, you might just be buying up a little piece of Baltimore.

Light poles vanishing -- believed sold for scrap by thieves 130 street fixtures in Baltimore have been cut down (SF CHRONICLE)

XXX XBOX

As foretold the season's HOT TO MAKE YOU TROT Christmas present is the Xbox 360. They'll kill for this thing. Them meaning Everyone. Us, these abstracts.

Here goes:

A crowd of about 300 people were waiting late Monday for the game to go on
sale at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday. Some of them had waited 12 hours when a night
manager said the Xboxes would be sold on a first-come, first-served basis,
instead of using a number system devised by customers.

"That's when
all hell broke loose," said Ben DiSabatino IV, a 23-year- old
Bear, Del.,
resident, who had been waiting in line since 4 p.m.

"It was like a mosh
pit," 30-year-old Michael Pearman of Newark, Del.,
told the Cecil Whig.
Some customers were knocked down and trampled, though
there were no
serious injuries, said Elkton Police Lt. Lawrence Waldridge.

An Elkton
police officer assigned to monitor the crowd called for
backup. In all, it
took more than 10 officers from Elkton, the state police and
the sheriff's
office to restore peace.

Then Wal-Mart decided to cancel the sale and police ordered everyone to
leave. A store employee who wouldn't give her full name told the Cecil Whig
that
some Xboxes were sold later that night.

The kids and young at heart really dig the improved processor. The sharp barb to the heart comes from discovering that Wal Mart sold some Xboxes later that night! It's a cruel, unfair world when Wal Mart employees have control. Pretty soon they'll tell you when you can go to the bathroom and when you can make sweet love to your portable entertainment system. Or do they do that already?

Shoppers Scuffle While Waiting for Xboxes (breitbart)

Blottered's Early Bird Holiday Shopping Tips And Other Holiday Strategies Pt 1 (Blottered)

Forget about the fact that she's attractive

Debra LaFave. Today she was sentenced to 3 years of house arrest and 7 years of probation for having sex with a 14 year old boy. Apparently, her lawyer argued that should a judge or the prosecutors office decide to send her away, they be making a mistake because,"to place an attractive young woman in that kind of hell hole is like putting a piece of raw meat in with the lions. I'm not sure she would survive."

Gee you don't say. If this was any other woman, guaranteed that she'd be going away for a while.

No Time for Florida Teacher in Sex Case - Fox News via AP

Blottered's Early Bird Holiday Shopping Tips And Other Holiday Strategies Pt 1

In an effort to help Blottered readers manage their holiday purchases early (AKA The cheap shit in the trunk that was on Totally Fucking Clearance at the local Grog & Gag) here's an exclusive helper for the mad days to come. Pt 1. (Pt 2) in December.

• On Thanksgiving Americans celebrate the rape of Indian civilization and the decline of Western Civilization, as a whole. The day after: an orgy of consumer shopping. Here's a helpful tip for the biggest shopping day of the year! Since you got up so early in the first place, and found your way through armpits of sweaty mother daughter shopping teams, be safe and store your purchases in the trunk of your Fiero, not in open view, the back seat, front seat, or tied to the roof.

• People are going to kill for Xbox 360's this year because kids really want an impressive graphics and processor update. So if you find yourself surrounded by knife wielding geeks who want to grab your core or deluxe system, surrender it. This shiny new toy is going to be the impetus to kill for many and you don't want to put yourself out there, like that. Don't expect those dudes at mall security to help, either.

• If you're a father wishing to get your son "a real coming of age" gift and you pay for a female escort, do yourself and your family a favor and don't try her out yourself first and then try to pass off the sloppy seconds to your son. Also, make sure you call a reputable service that does extensive HIV testing. You don't want your son to be paying for this Christmas forever no matter how cheap it was. Remember: that dude who got over HIV didn't actually ever have HIV.

• The safest way to keep your holiday purchases out of the hands of the crooked is to exclusively purchase sweat pants for family members. It might not make you more-loved but it's cost effective and no one wants any.

• See #the tip about sweatpants. Same with socks. I don't care if you bring Jesus down here and he can do some "mind shit" like Stranger In A Strange Land grokkin', there's nothin' so fine as slipping your feet into a pair of warm, soft socks. And, by the way, here's a tip: If you buy a package of socks that has ziplock lips on it, you can open this and snag a few pairs for your feet. Just shrug and say, "Musta' be a manufacturing error or somethin'." Meanwhile your feet are undergoing what sock enthusiasts like myself call, "Pleasurin' Tyme".

• Nephew hasn't seen Bad Santa yet? There's an uncut DVD out there just waiting for your nephew's Christmas sock. Do him a favor even if he's like, six or seven. Cynicism and despair offer a lifetime of extraordinary riches that he can mine for the rest of his life. In fact, doing this, you might eventually cause his divorce when he's like, your age. Merry Christmas, nephew! You thought life was a dream but in fact, good ole' buddy, it's a nightmare.

Magic On The Highway This Holiday

The central state forces of good are not going to take this holiday season sitting down (or bending over). No, not this year.

Hundreds of additional state police officers are scheduled to patrol six
Midwestern states during the Thanksgiving weekend to ticket motorists not
wearing seat belts, and they will focus especially on rural roads, authorities
said Monday.

For those of you who live in these states, keep to the message. The message is: Drive drunk through urban areas, eschewing all rural roads and B Access roads. When you are finally pulled over, bits of a raw turkey on your dress shirt, your underwear around your knees, and one hand stroking the dry leafy hair of the corn fed Midwestern prostitute leaning with her ass on the glove compartment and her head between your legs, make sure you click in your seat belt BEFORE the Police Officer taps on your window with his Home Depot style flashlight.

Let them try to take you down with a seatbelt fine then. Let them just try.

Police set holiday seat belt crackdown (QC TIMES)

Bridges And Balloons

Blottered Chief Detective Andrew Krucoff's in Israel for a month. But rumor is he's finally finishing up a sentence at a New Jersey correctional facility for snorting cocaine off the entire printed oeuvre of Rosie O Donnel's Crazy Haiku's Blog.

Or maybe not.

It is not easy
To be Krucoff's lil' Skeezy
LA Confidential

Under the bridge,
On pubescent skies
It's like Dennis Cooper's ride.

Tryin' to keep it real
Steady like a girl on a diet
Sorry Rosie.

Yet fear not, Blottered will continue to revel in the bittersweet pastiche of crime while Andrew serves the remainder of his sentence, which may or may not involve Lindsay Lohan's hard eye of a crotch. Let's all wish him well during his stay in Herbie's moist star-lit dungeon. Andrew Krucoff can be reached:

Judith Miller@Krucoff.newyorktimes@EMAIL.COM.internet

Or else. So everybody wish him luck for the next month.

Blottered is currently accepting job applications. Only bleeders, please. Email: insider@blottered.com if you're a joiner. Rallying cry: "With health benefits rivaling Gawker Media without any of the responsibility!"

O, Camden

CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY - It's where Walt Whitman went to die, and it won't surprise any reader of his poems that he took 19 years to do it.

Contemporary residents of the city tend to die much more quickly, which is why Morgan Quitno Press has named Camden the most dangerous city in America in its annual City Crime Rankings report.

Camden was a 19th century industrial powerhouse and the vibrant sister city to Philadelphia, but 20th century suburban migration took its working and middle classes - everyone who could leave, did. In 2000, just in time for the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, the State of New Jersey leveled the mile of strip clubs that lined Route 30 just east of the Ben Franklin Bridge, largely eliminating one of the only two industries for which Camden was still famous. (The other being soup-making.) The state didn't develop all that land - it made a park.

When Christie Whitman was governor she sent in the N.J. State Police to "take charge" of the city, but they wound up taking flight when the bodycount started to climb. (Any State Trooper will gladly put his life on the line for New Jersey, but Camden is a tougher sell.) After that, the State of New Jersey seemed to give up on rebuilding the city, and has focused instead on removing it. Camden should be prime real estate, after all, but the tax base of the city is incredibly low - it's Pyongyang to Philadelphia's Seoul. Each new state or federal project built in Camden takes up an inordinate amount of space. The land is cheap, and if you keep building new colleges, aquariums, ballparks, courthouse complexes and parks, eventually you'll take it all. It's too clear a trend to be anything but intentional. The State of New Jersey wants Camden to go away; to cease its Camden-ing; to end its intrinsic Camden-ness.

So let's all salute Camden, which in its last years of existence as an incorporated municipality has exceeded all expectations of brutality and thuggishness. And let's all say a prayer for Camden's next-door-neighbor Cherry Hill, once the jewel of Philadelphia's suburbs, and the place where everyone from Camden will move when they have nowhere else to go.

Should British police be armed?

The call for British police officers to be armed has been renewed after the fatal shooting of a police woman in Bradford yesterday. Another female police officer was shot in the shoulder. Both were apparently wearing body armour.

Between 7,000 and 8,000 officers in England and Wales are already armed with 1 in 10 London Metropolitan police officers armed following the bombings in July. Most of those officers with weapons are part of special armed response units while the majority of British officers remain unarmed.

The last poll of police officers some four years ago then showed that 80% of them did not want to be armed. This reflects the fact that since 1975 only 89 officers have died in the line of duty and shootings are still very rare. The debate is now front page news again, but it remains unlikely that all officers will be armed anytime soon.

The police officer killed yesterday has been named as Sharon Beshenivsky. She was shot in the chest. Teresa Milburn is recovering from being shot in the shoulder and is under armed police guard in hospital.

Two people were arrested this morning in London in connection with the shooting.

This is the first fatal shooting of a female officer in the UK since 1984.

Tributes to shot women officers - BBC News

Nothing to Crowe about

Bad boy actor Russell Crowe today pleaded guilty to a third degree assault for when he hit a hotel employee over the head with a phone. He's obviously already settled with the poor guy but NYPD just had to get him. Totally sucks that you throw a hissy fit cause you can't call your wifey right?


I personally love the perp walk pictures....

Russell Crowe Pleads Guilty in Phone Case - Fox News via AP

British Crims get their own Fan Site

It's all the same, only the names will change
Everyday it seems we're wasting away
Another place where the faces are so cold...

Little did 80s girl-wetter Jon Bon Jovi know when he penned those lines that they'd be used to sum up a new crappy UK website that allows us to laugh at the criminal element without them taking a workboot to our happysacks.

Crimestoppers Most Wanted is the straight-to-video version of the FBI's altogether classier big star version. No Bin Laden's on our list, but we do get the delightfully named SERIOUS ASSAULT from Hull. Nice girl.

They have gone all out for the launch and added a competition though:

To mark the launch of Crimestoppers' Most Wanted website, do your duty and test your detective skills by solving the clues in Crimestoppers' Most Wanted Quiz

I'm impressed that they've found a way to mimic the condescending tone you get from real British police officers.

The Beeb report that it's almost as popular as porn and throw up a couple of choice quotes:

The internet is used for all types of crime. This is one step back toward reclaiming that and making the internet work for us

That's right internet criminals - reclaiming the virtual night starts HERE.

Most Wanted - Crimestoppers

Users flood 'Most Wanted' website - BBC News

Computer Composites Of The Criminal

No doubt you've seen a police sketch in the nightly news or maybe you've even been the subject of one. In the old days police sketchists drew their pictures on paper as quickly as they could, using fractured and disparate eyewitness accounts to populate the sketch, get it in the hands of the chief of detectives, so he could assemble his team of crack investigators and hunt down the suspect.

dundundun! Blottered Art Week Day 4

Welcome to the age of computers. The age of cheap data and cheaper fingers. Sweatshop data mines run by flabby North Korean boys who wear pirate patches, the age of the inhuman highways that pipeline from room to room, driving information from one eye to the next, the age of corporate machines, the age of... cyberpunk forensic artists. dundundun!

There are some who don't like the age of the computer generated forensic sketch and prefer the flim and the flam of a real pencil and a piece of the white:

The shift toward computer-generated composites bothers some in the field who fear the technology will be used by people who are not formally trained or visually adept. But Taylor, who worked for the Texas Department of Public Safety for nearly two decades and now teaches forensic art to law enforcement officials around the country, isn't disturbed by the trend. She said computer-generated composites are a valuable tool.

"The most important factor in the composite is the interviewing skills," Taylor said. "They are more significant than whether you are doing computer-generated or hand-drawn sketches."

A much deserved round of applause for the men and women coordinated and talented enough to be able to produce a sketch that can then be used to identify a suspected criminal. Whether they use a computer or draw with a #2 pencil, they are doing a fine job helping keep our streets clear of phantoms made of pencil strokes.

This concludes Blottered Art week. wait --- only 4 days? Yes. dundundun!

A New Wrinkle in Forensic Art (WASHPO)

Alabama Progresses

Finally a real crime. Coldplay singer goes to jail for recording vocals for X&Y which just about takes the cake for a soundtrack to watching field mice copulate using their minds Cocoon-like to pleasure each other's small parts (You know you miss Steve G.)
No, I'm kidding Chris Martin is out of jail breastfeeding Apple! "Chris, Your kid has the best name." (in a perfect world best would be said in a lisp). Maybe Steve Albini can produce the next album, 'member how Bush did it? Boy that was a triumph.)

Troy King, Alabama Attorney General warns people in a new public service ad that Identity Theft is serious. Quote

"..especially with the holidays coming up."

I like that Alabama is on top of things. What's next? Troy King, Attorney General reveals that Treat William's career suffers from stagnation.

Blottered Cops: putting the dark edge thingies back in edgy.

Attorney General Warns of Identity Theft (WSFA12)

Real Love

OKay I read some pretty crazy shit about the reasons why people get shot and whatnot, but this story definitely takes the cake. In 2002, Tina Marie Stebbins was shot in the groin and held hostage by Christian Leroy Lindblad in San Bernadino, CA. Christian was sentenced to 20 years in the big house for attempted murder and his mom and dad were also convicted of lesser crimes as they tried to cover up the shooting and tried to cure Tina Marie with "home remedies". Tina has now come forward and saids that she loves Christian and she wants to marry him. She has forgiven him (and presumably his parents) for shooting her and wants to spend the rest of her life making conjugal visits. You go girl!

Woman to Marry Man Who Shot Her - Fox News

Top Ten Bob Rosses Of Felony

Sploid is a big help For Day 3 of Blottered Art Week. If you're not familiar (and bitch you're familiar with Sploid if you read Blottered) it's claim to fame is the "Choose your layout Grid or Plain" box where you, the end user, are able to choose the layout most pleasurable to your eye. Of course, some people say "Neither" but I like it. If Gawker is the Microsoft of the Blog, then Sploid is its Windows ME. I don't know how good an analogy that was, but dudes and dudettes, face it, Gawker is not "Indie". 'Kay now I feel smart and on top of things. Here's the list.

FBI's Top Ten Art Heists

7,000-10,000 looted
and stolen Iraqi
artifacts, 2003

12 paintings from the Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum theft, 1990

2 Renoirs and 1
Rembrandt stolen from Sweden's National Museum, 2000
(Recovered)

Munch's The Scream and The
Madonna from the Munch Museum in Oslo, 2004

Benevenuto Cellini
Salt Cellar from Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, 2003

Caravaggio's
Nativity with San Lorenzo and San Francesco from Palermo,
1969

Davidoff-Morini
Stradivarius violin from a New York apartment, 1995

Two Van Gogh
paintings from Amsterdam's Vincent Van Gogh Museum, 2002

Cezanne's View of
Auvers-sur-Oise from Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, 1999

Da Vinci's Madonna
of the Yarnwinder from Scotland's Drumlanrig Castle, 2003

Can you pick the one that doesn't fit? The Davidoff-Morini Stradivarius violin stolen from a New York apartment. Strads are generally named after the person who played them or owned them, usually famous musicians. The King of Spain has the largest collection, which would seem rather small to Baseball card enthusiasts, two violins, two cellos, and a viola. But in reality, that's quite a lot, considering there's about 700 or so left in existence. "Beuno, King of Spain!"*

The one I think most people are familiar with, since everyone has an Aunt Poppingew or two who specifically tarries in the Borders clearance section with all those mysterious bundles of joy, wrapped candied candles, elegantly designed minimalist journals, Yoga books with lots of pictures of 70's people playing an elaborate unofficial game of Twister with their gross nylon clothed bodies --- is Munch's the Scream whose reprint populates just about every third postcard or so at Borders. Munch was Norwegian, in case you wanted a background.

FBI TOP TEN ART CRIMES Via Sploid

*Thanks encyclozine!

Blowing Your Professor = Good Grades, Wood Sculpture Of Naked Chick = Priceless

Blottered Art Week. Day 2.

It happened all the way back at the first of the month but the sheer worthiness of the story has led me to believe that it must be repeated, ad infinitum.

Boise, ID -
Boise Police say who ever took it had to climb over an 9 foot
wall and over the top of some vending machines. They also apparently were only
interested in one piece of art that was created by a BSU art professor.
Police are calling it a valuable art sculpture. The victim says the sculpture is
worth around $2500. He also says it has a lot of sentimental value to him. It
was the first time the piece was on display to the public in Idaho.
The
wooden sculpture depicts a reclining nude woman. It is made of cherry
wood and stands about 3 feet tall. The exhibit included about 20 other pieces
made by BSU staff. None of the other objects were taken.

I draw pussies and dicks all the time with my spraypaint can using the art program "paint" that comes prepackaged in all versions of Microsoft Windows. I also tend to draw a lot of bald men in blue jumpsuits with fanny packs but I don't examine that too closely.

You can't just set some arbitrary value on your art, otherwise my "paintings" would be gettin' it 'done, if you know what I mean.

Don't get me wrong, I think my erotic art is valuable. I tend to get pretty bizzare with it, cock rings with detective badges looking for the missing cocks, vaginas with capes stopping bank robbers from tunnelling under the city. The cocks and pussies rarely meet but they read about each other in the breaking news section of CNN's website. I plan that they will eventually meet, and reproduce a sort of hermaphrodite being shaped like an ice cream cone, but that's the future.

The moral is: Stealing art is bad unless it's mine and then I'll give it to you for free.

Boise Police Investigate Art Theft At Boise State (KBCI)

Raising Christazona

No stranger to folk art, but I've never really grasped the aesthetic beauty of a bunch of fast food straw wrappers sculpted with spit by a retired guy in Indiana into an image of Mother Theresa blessing the poor in Calcutta --- HOWEVER, I do give whoever does folk art props for "keeping it real" because traditional art is sometimes less than thrilling.

Welcome to Blottered Art week.

First up:

Alfred Gaynor used to have a specialty: He sodomized women and then
strangled
them to death.
Gaynor was convicted of the rape and murder of
four women in
Springfield, Massachusetts. The crimes occurred during a
three-month killing
spree in 1997-1998 that terrified the town. He is
serving four
consecutive life sentences.
No longer able to pursue his main
interests,
Gaynor is now producing craptacular
prison drawings like this absurd crayon/pencil rendering of a one-legged
cartoon Jesus apparently visiting Arizona.

That picture makes traditional art seem way nuanced, not to mention, ethical. Now you're like, ohmygod, whatever. I'm like, no really. I read Either/Or once. It is the philosophy of the aesthetic VS the ethical life. Okay -- I skimmed it.

But in that picture, Jesus seems entirely out of place.* And the whole idea that capitalism somehow plays a part in this -- I'm not squeamish but c'mon Prison isn't about painting! What's it like an extended vacation? We need to ship our bitches to Turkey, where they lock you up in a cell and you basically have to give blow jobs to big Turkish bald men. And there's no painting! None.

For sale: serial sex killer's crap art (Sploid)

*You were sooo going to say the cactus is out of place but I was like, noooo pretty boy, pretty girl, that man has no room for Jesus, only the desertttt. It's Jesus In Arizona. Man walks into a bar ---

Alpha Tristan Tzara Brotherhood

This hasn't been the best year in US history, that goes without saying. But on the other hand, 2000-2004 felt pretty sterile, and not nearly as organic as 2005 has been so far.

Two escaped prison inmates from Louisiana took advantage of sympathy for
Hurricane Katrina victims to pass themselves off to University of Tennessee
students as fraternity brothers who had been displaced by the storm, police
said.
Steven Ridge, 31, and Zachary Arabie, 22, were arrested in Knoxville
last week after Ridge tried to buy gas with fake money, authorities
said.
Ridge and Arabie integrated themselves on the Tennessee campus,
attending fraternity parties, dating coeds and renting an off-campus apartment,
police said.
"We believe they were in the process of creating new identities
to disappear again and possibly do an abduction," police Sgt. Sean Hejna said.
"We got these two just in time."

And Lo, 2005 dawns. That's pretty goddamn good,--- pretty goddamn organic, I must say. It's about time that escaped prison inmates created a sort of performanc art piece, to celebrate the fraternity life, hurricane Katrina, and buying gas with fake money. It all kinds of fits doesn't it? If Warhol was alive, this is -exactly- what he'd be doing, having moved beyond the precious confines of pop art into a much more nihlistic --- AND --- interesting "phase"

La. Convicts Claim to Be Katrina Evacuees (Townhall)

Ray Of Light Or "War veteran loses out to post theft"

It is hard to blink away the sensation that this has all happened before. That today is just the latest moment in a neverending series of similiar moments, that our lives are like bubbles which rise to the top of a carbonated beverage and burst, and that crimey news stories are exactly the same, but it's true, dear God:

When It Comes To ID Theft, Beware Of The HypeWPBF Channel.com, FL - 52 minutes agoBOSTON -- If some of the numbers being cited about identity theft are to be believed, it's just a matter of time before some unseen cyberhustler steals your ...
When It Comes To ID Theft, Beware Of The HypeKansas City Channel.com, MO - 52 minutes agoBOSTON -- If some of the numbers being cited about identity theft are to be believed, it's just a matter of time before some unseen cyberhustler steals your ...
When It Comes To ID Theft, Beware Of The HypeNBC4i.com, OH - 52 minutes agoBOSTON -- If some of the numbers being cited about identity theft are to be believed, it's just a matter of time before some unseen cyberhustler steals your ...
When It Comes To ID Theft, Beware Of The HypeKSBW Channel.com, CA - 54 minutes agoBOSTON -- If some of the numbers being cited about identity theft are to be believed, it's just a matter of time before some unseen cyberhustler steals your ...
When It Comes To ID Theft, Beware Of The HypeWMUR Channel.com, NH - 54 minutes agoBOSTON -- If some of the numbers being cited about identity theft are to be believed, it's just a matter of time before some unseen cyberhustler steals your ...
When It Comes To ID Theft, Beware Of The HypeWJACtv.com, PA - 54 minutes agoBOSTON -- If some of the numbers being cited about identity theft are to be believed, it's just a matter of time before some unseen cyberhustler steals your ...
When It Comes To ID Theft, Beware Of The HypeChannel Oklahoma.com, OK - 54 minutes agoBOSTON -- If some of the numbers being cited about identity theft are to be believed, it's just a matter of time before some unseen cyberhustler steals your ...
When It Comes To ID Theft, Beware Of The HypeFoxReno.com, NV - 54 minutes agoBOSTON -- If some of the numbers being cited about identity theft are to be believed, it's just a matter of time before some unseen cyberhustler steals your ...
When It Comes To ID Theft, Beware Of The HypeNews4Jax.com, FL - 54 minutes agoBOSTON -- If some of the numbers being cited about identity theft are to be believed, it's just a matter of time before some unseen cyberhustler steals your ...
War veteran loses out to post theftic Coventry, UK - 56 minutes ago... to arrive. The dad of four, who also has four grandchildren, discovered the theft only when he received his bank statement. Mr Hitchcock ...

Wait, is that a slender ray of hope just over the next hill?

MS-13: America's Best Gang

Mara Salvatrucha 13 are the gang to belong to. You know you're bad ass when the arrest of one gang member merits a mention on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement web site.

PittsburghLIVE fills us in on some details:

Not only have the numbers of these "gangstas" exploded but so has their organizational ability.

Initially, a MS13 clique would not exceed 20 people -- a dozen younger hangers-on as messengers and a near-full complement of young women. A lot of work is done by these women: communications, computers, begging, soliciting and cooking.

That's right. Cooking. That shit is fucked up.

An interesting subtext here is the decline of urban crime. The cities are becoming nice places to live. All opera houses and poetry clubs. The suburbs? Crime-riddled hellholes. Obesity may save us, but only if it can outpace the burgeoning wave of amphetamine abuse that threatens to make a svelte killer of every suburban reject in the country.

And that is why now, more than ever, this internet needs good meth crime coverage. Stay tuned.

Also note the use of the term "gangstas". Their quotes, not mine.

DMX Of The Disabled, Ruff, Ruff

I want to make certain that when addressing fan mail to me you clearly print my address because I haven't been receiving a lot. Now, this might seem like nothing but a G thing baby, to you, and you might even be right, however there's a man in St Louis, Missouri, who isn't r'prezentin' 90's rap, even though, he still claimed to head up a charity that helped provide service dogs to people with disabilities, and is on his way to the big house for stealing more than 400,000 thousand dollars from Support Dogs Incorporated--- Note that is not the Snoop Dogg porn company - that has an entirely different name and presents wildly entertaining feature length films of various erotic and sensual content --- I think.

Hansen apologized for his thefts and offered to make restitution once he gets
out of prison.

Man, I still haven't paid my Aunt back after she paid my towing and repair bill from several years ago when I broke down on a country road in the black heart of the dead of winter. So, Hansen, since you were found guilty of 15 counts of fraud, how can I trust you? I didn't commit fraud but I still lied to my big bird looking aunt about paying the tow truck bill, the $50 I paid for a motel room, the porn, the cigarettes, the Vodka, the cocaine, the heroin, and Auntie's birthday gift that I used her credit card number to purchase: A hooker.

Man sent to prison for charity theft [Ktvotv]

Rape Apes

We don't take too many editorial stands around here but as observers of crime observers, we are disgusted by the whimsical treatment Gawker and Gothamist are giving the Peter Braunstein rape case. There are victims on the other end of these type of stories and the lack of sensitivity is appalling. Please let us know if we ever cross that line.

We will soon return to our regularly scheduled programming of campus bike cops making faceplants on fraternity row.

Related: LAW AND ORDER: F.U.C.K. Y.O.U.