#Homicide A Year on the Killing Streets

[bkenber]

'Homicide: Life on the Street' Commentary on 'Son of a Gun'

It has been a bit, but I am now back with another “Homicide: Life on the Street” commentary track. This time it is for “Son of a Gun,” the fourth episode of the first season. This episode contains several plot threads as the detectives furiously investigate the shooting of Officer Chris Thormann (Lee Tergesen), Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor) and Frank Pembleton (Andre Braugher) continue to investigate…

[proceduralbob]

A good man is hard to find, but twelve of them, gathered together in one place, is a miracle.

Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, David Simon

[gingerhastoomanyobsessions]

Things that actually happen in hunchback of notre dame, in no particular order

The book mostly is told from the POV of Pierre, a self-insert who is failed author and, I cannot stress this enough, utterly pathetic 

Quasimodo damaged his hearing as a teenager from years of bell ringing and now uses sign language whenever he can

There is a scene where Quasimodo and a fellow deaf guy have to have a conversation without using sign language because they’re in a courtroom and the jury doesn’t know sign. It goes about as well as you’d expect 

Frollo has a little brother, Jehan, who he raised after their parents died. Jehan is now a frat bro in college whose hobbies consist of getting drunk and being mean to Quasimodo. In his first scene Jehan complains about college DEI because an Italian guy got a scholarship he wanted. 

Esmeralda is accused of witchcraft because she taught her pet goat Djali how to do math

Djali may or may not be sapient. He can and does imitate human mannerisms to make fun of people on purpose. He does this while on trial. 

Yes. They tried the goat for witchcraft, too. 

Pierre writes a whole play riding on the pun of dolphin/Dauphin. Nobody likes it. 

Frollo is an alchemist and has a secret mad science lab where he writes on the walls

Jehan literally pulls a “buy my silence” and frollo gives him money to make him shut up

There’s a trio of catty girls who bully Esmeralda like it’s Mean Girls

Quasimodo and Frollo literally have Cryptid Status— Parisians circulate rumors that Quasimodo is either a familiar, a homunculus, or the result of demonic mpreg, and that Frollo is a wizard with wizard powers and/or a ghost

There is a little old woman who lives in a hole and shouts slurs at people. She has a tragic backstory. 

There is a homicidal con man/king of thieves named Clopin Troillefou (surname translation: The Fool of Fear) who deserves tumblr sexymanhood.

Pierre learns how to carry chairs with his teeth 

There’s an entire chapter dedicated to the layout of the streets of Paris in painstaking detail

There’s another chapter that is a rant about interior design 

Esmeralda and Pierre get platonically married due to Clopin’s murderous shenanigans. Pierre tries to make a move in her but ends up being more emotionally attached to Djali the goat than to her. I think that should be grounds for divorce

There is a scene where Pierre has to choose between helping Esmeralda escape or helping Djali. He picks Djali. 

Frollo hides from his own brother by laying face down in mud and playing dead. Somehow this works 

There is a Plot Significant Tiny Shoe. A Tiny Shoe Chekhov’s Gun. And Victor Hugo will not stop telling you just how Tiny this shoe is. 

There’s a soap opera style plot twist that involves a false accusation of cannibalism and the woman in the hole who shouts slurs

Quasimodo makes up a stupid little song that doesn’t even rhyme to confess his love to Esmeralda, who remains oblivious

He then attempts to demonstrate his affection via convoluted metaphors that involve props. She doesn’t get it. Boy please say what you mean

Frollo pulls the classic discord groomer tactic of threatening self-harm if Esmeralda doesn’t give in. 

Jehan rolls up to a party/rescue mission scheming session in Clopin’s secret hideout in full plate armor (how did he get that???), drunk off his ass, and acts like he owns the place. Everyone finds this so ridiculous that they just let him

Hugo goes on and on about how innocent and naive Esmeralda is but then casually reveals that Esmeralda carries a dagger on her person at all times to fend off assault. When Frollo attacks her and Quasi intervenes, she takes Quasi’s knife and almost kills Frollo (fair!) but he flees. She contains multitudes?

Frollo has a psychotic breakdown in the middle of a field surrounded by chickens and hallucinates skeletons everywhere 

For the first half of the book Esmeralda is like 70% sure Frollo is a ghost, not helped by his aforementioned Cryptid Status

Jehan eats a moldy piece of cheese off the ground 

Frollo tries to send Pierre on a suicide mission in drag. Pierre objects to the suicide part but not the drag part  

Clopin’s preferred weapon is a scythe, he’s very good at using it, and he sings when he fights. Again: sexyman potential. 

Victor Hugo has a foot fetish. I initially dismissed it as Frollo having a foot fetish until Victor Hugo included a foot fetish torture scene without any Frollo in it. So I can only conclude that the foot fetish is authorial in nature. Unfortunately the foot scenes are important to the plot. 

Frollo is canonically 36, he just aged like shit and is bald. The narrator will not stop telling you just how bald he is.

Despite being in full plate armor, Jehan gets splatted like a bug

Almost every named character dies. Djali the goat lives. 

[violetrainbow412-blog]

Decoy [S. R.]

Spencer Reid x fem!reader

word count: 6.9k

summary: when you go after an unsub who catches students making out, the unit is called upon to resort to desperate measures. Or in other words, where you and Spencer become the decoy to catch a voyeur.

warnings: +16. Making out, mentions of alcohol, mentions of violence, insinuation of smut, sexual tension

Do yourself a favor and imagine Spencer in these clothes during the case

You sighed, completely frustrated, while you looked for the thousandth time at the blackboard with some information from the profile that you had made for the criminal in this case.

You believed that the unsub was a Caucasian man between 30 and 35 years old, whose motive was to spy on and photograph university students who were escaping in their cars to make out at night, then force them to have sex in front of him and finally kill them cold-blooded. You imagined that he was a person with a mediocre job, that he felt insufficient, and that his voyeuristic behavior probably came from sexual frustration, something that could be corroborated by the violence that he inflicted on the genital area of the students whom he stalked using a knife, his mark on all homicides. You also believed that perhaps the rejection or abandonment of his last partner (preceded by a bad streak from his youth) due to his impotence had been the triggering event for all his repressed impulses to come to light.

All the psychological analysis was fine, it wasn't something you hadn't seen before, but the hard part of all this? Because he only threatened and killed people, he didn't rape them, at first it was almost impossible to tell who it was. He already had 20 victims in total and you weren't even close to catching him. In the last scene he had made the mistake of leaving a fingerprint and Garcia had been able to trace his true identity: Oliver Davis, a guy who fits the description perfectly. Unfortunately, this turned out to be useless because beyond the accusations of being a pervert, the man didn’t have much information that would give a clue to his whereabouts, you had even called the job that he had registered and all you had obtained was that he had several months without working there, which coincided with the beginning of the murders. After that Rossi suggested that he probably lived in a trailer (old, due to his lack of employment) where he developed the photographs and kept his trophies. That only made more sense when you thought that it would make it easier to transport or escape in case things got messy.

But words on paper and intelligent conclusions were of absolutely no use to you. You needed a plan to catch him.

"Do you have something, Reid?" Hotch had asked. You had already interviewed some students, you had set up guard duty to look for any suspicious behavior and you had even shared the photograph of the suspect in the media, but nothing had worked; The only thing left was to carry out the geographical profile to know the area in which he was attacking and thus be able to search for possible targets.

“I triangulated the locations we have of his previous homicides and I'm guessing he hits in this specific area,” he muttered, pointing to a space on the map he had on his blackboard with his middle finger. “Considering it's an area frequented by the age group due to its proximity to the universities and that it has several parks that the students told us they use to drink or go out as a couple”

"So what?" Morgan said from his spot. "We just wait until he kills someone else and hopefully we're near the scene to hear the screams?"

“Maybe we can ask the cops to patrol the area for the unsub's car,” JJ suggested.

“He's smart, there's a trailer park right here. It wouldn't be strange to find one on the streets as well.” Reid was visibly frustrated like everyone else and he ran a hand through his hair with some despair.

Your options were running out and frankly you couldn't think of anything else.

“And if we give him a target?” Emily murmured. Noticing that none of you said anything, she went on to explain her plan, “We ask police officers to send any young people they see around to home so we force our unsub to get close to who we want”

"And what are we going to do? Hire a couple of college kids to stalk them?”

“We can use our own team”

"Not to offend you, Prentiss, but we are no longer in the prime of youth"

"We don't, but Y/L/N and Reid do" when you heard your last name you were surprised, but when you heard your friend's you practically froze. First you looked at her and then at the doctor, whose gaze reflected the same stupefaction as you "You two are young, you might look like students"

"Are you saying you want to send us straight into the hands of a sexual predator?" you couldn't be offended, after all, those risks were part of the job, but you did feel somewhat reluctant about the idea.

“Do you have a better suggestion?”

“It doesn't sound so bad” Rossi murmured “It's a smart move”

“Besides, we would be watching around and we would intervene before that madman got close to you. Once we catch him, the photographs and personal items that he probably has in his trailer will be enough evidence, in addition to the fingerprint from the last crime scene” to your surprise, Derek was also pretty convinced of the plan that Emily had just devised.

"Reid, Y/L/N, would you guys be up for it?" Hotch exclaimed with his usual serious tone, looking at you and then at your partner.

Thinking objectively, the suggestion was very good. But thinking about it personally, you felt worried about the danger you two would be running into… oh, God. It wasn't until then that you realized that the plan to catch the suspect involved the two of you making out like a couple of hormonal college kids. 

You knew that the options that remained wouldn’t be as opportune as that and taking into account the temporary nature with which Oliver operated, in addition to the fact that he was already deteriorating as a murderer, it was most likely that he was already looking for new victims, so if you did that same night the chances of success were quite high. You were between a rock and a hard place and all you could do was look at him while the gazes of the rest of the room were divided between the two of you.

“I… I'll only do it if you say yes” you exclaimed in his direction, with a cautious voice and a fearful look. You knew your friend and you didn't want to make him feel uncomfortable in any way, even though you knew that both you and he knew that your personal interests would take precedence against the possibility that another couple of victims would lose their lives if you refused. It was your job, you had to do it. 

"Are you sure you guys are going to catch him before something happens?" Spencer asked your boss. You thought that with his background the last thing he wanted was to end up kidnapped or seriously injured again, even though the truth was that he was caring just as much about himself as he was about you. He had seen the photographs and knew that women were the most affected by the murder weapon… he didn't even want to imagine something like this happening to you.

"Of course. You will have communication with us and if something goes wrong we will get you out of there immediately" Aaron answered and your friend sighed nervously and then looked for your approval. You nodded slightly and he delivered the verdict, to which everyone agreed.

He was still standing, but after that he slumped into the nearest chair as he listened to everyone brainstorming ideas for setting up the scene, distributing the crew, and what they would tell the local police to do to make the decoy effective.

At some point you lost the whole point of the conversation, to start thinking about what was implied by what you were about to do.

The feeling of attraction for your co-worker had been latent in you for a couple of years, but you had never confessed it to anyone to avoid creating tension in the team or suffering the humiliation of certain rejection. Also, you knew that a crush meant distractions from what was truly important and you had tried, in vain, to eliminate it completely. But even if it hadn't completely gone, you had known how to control it, only allowing yourself to look at him with loving eyes from time to time and avoiding being too confident with him during group drinking outings. You even limited physical contact, not because you didn't like it but because you knew your greed would demand more and more of you until it became inevitable to beg for his touch. But now all that good work holding you back was screwed because in a few hours you would have to be passionately making out with him.

Still with the internal crisis, you raised your head to look at him and realized that he too had been submerged in his own tide of thoughts, which you hoped would be more positive than yours. At some point Spencer felt you watching him and when his eyes met yours he gave you that tight-lipped smile that was strangely comforting, to which you responded with the same gesture. After that it didn't take long for everyone to leave the room to fulfill their respective tasks, but you stayed seated because you honestly didn't feel enough energy to move. Besides, you had nothing entrusted to you, you were the bait.

"Hey, are you sure you're okay with this?" Spencer asked you, once everyone else had left. He looked so tired of everything, but at the same time there was a kind tone in his voice about him that made you smile.

“It's just kissing, Spence. I think we'll be fine" you assured him, trying to swallow all your embarrassment and nerves "And you?"

"I agree. I just hope we get lucky today or we'll just have to keep trying” 

"Reid, I need you to tell the cops what area we'll be in," Hotch interrupted you from the door. "You still have time to regret it," he added, looking at the two of you.

You immediately denied and after that Spencer withdrew from there in the company of Aaron. When you were about to drop you exhaled, completely concerned about the last thing your partner had said.

We will just have to keep trying. You didn't know if the idea excited you, or terrified you.

As night fell, Spencer drove the old pickup truck the unit had managed to rent for the two of you to drive into the park, with you in the passenger seat and a six-pack of beer in the backseat.

Although you were sure that it would be cold, you had decided to wear shorts and a button-down shirt that you normally wore for work, but that you had adjusted to make it look more youthful. Spencer was wearing an outfit that Morgan had gotten for him from a department store, simple jeans with a rather baggy cotton shirt and some nice boots that you didn't know where he got from, since in Quantico you had never seen him wear anything like that.

Both of you had showered at the hotel (separately of course) and you had made sure to brush your teeth and put on a good amount of deodorant and perfume before getting in the car. You had paid special attention to your appearance, not because it was necessary, but because you wanted to look perfect for him. Even with all this, you were a nervous wreck next to him, not saying a word along the way and only soft music from the radio filling the air.

When you stopped, the two of you put your headphones on to the channel the team was supposed to be on, and Morgan answered in the affirmative.

"Remember, he doesn't have to see the communicator or your weapon," Rossi spoke, who was also in the van, along with Prentiss and Hotch. "García will be watching with the security cameras and he will warn us if the trailer is coming"

"And meanwhile what do we do?"

"Pretend to be a couple, sit on the tailgate and drink beer, laugh, I don't know"

“Did you ever run away like that in college?” you asked, directly at Reid.

“Do you remember that I was like 16 when I studied at the university, right? I wasn't even old enough to drive, much less a car" he muttered and you gave a short laugh "I guess you did"

“I was too busy being the best in the institution to even think about going out and making out with idiots,” you replied, proud of yourself for that. “I mean, it's not like you're an idiot, but they were. You're very smart," you rambled, still twiddling your fingers, "Hotch, you guys will tell us when we're going to start kissing, will you?"

“When the suspect approaches, yes”

"Okay, well... then we have to go out, huh?" you muttered to him as you reached for the beers and tried to open the door to get out. You turned, expecting to see Spencer do the same as you, but noticed that he had lingered in the car for a moment, checking himself in the mirror and applying his lips with chapstick.

My God, could that man make you more nervous?

When he finally caught up with you, you went to the back of the pickup, where you opened the tailgate to sit down with a little hop. Spencer was tall enough to keep up with you just by leaning over the edge, where you watched him cross his arms. You were silent for a few moments, listening to the sound of crickets and cars in the distance.

"Do you think it's a good idea to drink?"

"Only a little. I'm having a hard time thinking while sober, I don't want to ruin the little reasoning I have left” you exclaimed as a joke. Or maybe you weren't joking so much "Just empty a couple of cans and leave them on the floor so he'll think we're really drunk." Spencer was about to do what you said when you noticed an important detail and called him over to look at you "Come here, let me fix your hair."

"What's wrong with my hair?"

"You're very well combed, it's not the image we expect" you carefully took his hand until it was close enough to pass the other through all his golden locks, messing them up enough to give him that relaxed touch that he should have. He looked so handsome, but not in the style of a fancy FBI agent but just like a young intellectual who went to parties and smoked weed “Like this. Perfect"

“Do you think we have to think of some backstory?” he asked and you looked at him with a frown. “You know, something about us. What degree are we studying, what are our names…”

"This is not a play"

"It's rude to eavesdrop on conversations, Prentiss," you said visibly annoyed, although looking at your partner that expression softened "As you wish, Spencer. Although being honest, I would say that you study… literature”

"Really?" he exclaimed with slight enthusiasm. You knew that his mother had been a teacher in the subject and you wondered if he had ever considered it.

“Morgan wasn’t wrong to choose those clothes for you. It suits you” you complimented him and Morgan whistled from the other end of the line. You felt like you were having too much fun for the situation you were in, but you needed to talk about something else to put off the reminder of what you had come to do for as long as possible. “I think you would have that hopeless philosopher/romantic vibe who flirts by whispering memorized poetry in your ear.”

“I actually know some good ones”

"Sure you do" you smiled gently, suppressing the thought of him sighing close to your neck at Bécquer "I'd probably study science or something."

"The unattainable scientist with whom the captain of the soccer team has a secret crush, but she is completely unaware"

"Where did you get that? From a 90s movie?

Spencer's laugh was one of your favorite sounds and today that was precisely not helping your situation. You felt intoxicated by how handsome he looked, like you'd discovered a side to him that no one else had, and the thought of kissing him made you tremble a little with anticipation.

“Do you want to share a beer?” he murmured, carefully opening the can and offering it to you first. You knew your partner wasn't the most enthusiastic about doing anything that involved germs, so it made you feel good that he took the lead. You took a big gulp of the drink to gather something of value and when it was his turn to drink he kept looking at you intently, you would even say that he seemed entranced.

You had made sure you were in a strategic position, with enough light for the unsub to see you and quite lonely, except for the patrol cars and the van that had been positioned at a safe distance.

“How does voyeurism develop?” you asked quietly, with genuine interest, as you shifted a bit to get closer to him.

“Voyeurism usually begins in adolescence and since during that age it is usually seen with greater tolerance, there are people who continue with these behaviors until adulthood. When voyeurism is pathological, they spend considerable time looking for opportunities to watch, often at the expense of not fulfilling important responsibilities in their lives, and people reach orgasm by masturbating during or after watching. Although if you think about it a bit, everyone is a bit of a voyeur."

"Why you said so?"

“Many men and women enjoy viewing pornography, which can be classified as voyeuristic behavior. It's not a worrying thing, but it's interesting to think about it” he explained, with those expressions on his face that he had every time he shared knowledge with you. He liked that about you, that you were always willing to listen to his data and statistics even at the most inopportune moments.

"I'm still a little scared that Oliver is trying to do something to us."

“I have my gun. If he tries to do something to you, I'll use it" you knew that killing the unsub was always the last option Reid considered, so you widened your eyes a little to show your surprise "All lives are worth, but when that life has already taken so many and it puts you at risk, I would not doubt it. You have nothing to worry about” he assured you and your heart warmed a little at feeling so protected.

"Do you know if Oliver attacks at a specific time?"

"No, he doesn’t. Just as we can be here for ten minutes, we can also be here all night."

You exhaled loudly, before taking another gulp of beer.

“Drink some, boy. I feel kind of selfish around here."

"I am nervous"

"And why do you think I'm drinking?" you exclaimed wryly, still holding out the can to him, and when he finally agreed he drank a little more than you expected “Have you ever…” you started to say, but suddenly remembered that literally the whole team was listening to you. If the answer was embarrassing, you didn't want to hear Morgan and Emily taunting you all week, so you covered your microphone for a moment and spoke again, but so quietly that only he could hear you. "I suppose you kissed someone, did you?"

"Yes," he said quickly and you sighed with relief. It comforted you a little to know that it wasn't his first kiss, because you didn't want him to have such a bad memory “Do I look so inexperienced?"

"No, that's not what I meant" you smiled "You're handsome, I know you've probably kissed a couple of girls"

"You don't need to tell lies, you know I'll kiss you anyway"

"But it's not a lie. I really think you're handsome" you confessed, gathering all the courage in you, while you smiled at him in the most serene way possible "And if we weren't literally waiting for a murderer, you know I'd be happy to do this with you"

"Smooch me?"

"Having this bad date attempt, Reid," you hissed, flushing red, as you slammed your palm into his forehead with just a little bit of force. Spencer seemed quite pleased that he made you nervous, rather than the other way around, so he grinned, “Though I think we should have brought food. I'm starving,” you pouted, swinging your dangling legs back and forth.

"That's not a picnic, Y/N"

You hated for a second that everyone was so intent on the conversation. A part of you wanted a moment alone with the brunette, even if it was in the midst of such a strange situation.

You began to talk pleasantly about things completely unrelated to the case for a couple of minutes, staying where you were, until Hotch's interruption made you jump a bit in place.

"Garcia intercepted an approaching trailer, get ready” your heart immediately sped up and you noticed him tense beside you, too, probably with the same thought flooding his head.

"Okay, come closer," you exclaimed, trying not to panic, as you spread your legs a little to allow the man to step into the space between. He wasted no time and just as you wrapped your hands around his shoulders you heard the sound of another car pulling up.

"Is that our unsub?"

"It is"

You were about to turn your head to peek when Reid grabbed your cheek and stopped you.

"He's smart. If you look at him, he'll realize it” he reminded you with a serious voice. You were so worried about everything that you were forgetting about your training “Okay, so I… Is it okay if I put my hands here?” he asked with a different tone, nervously placing both hands on your waist. You had always admired the size and anatomy of those hands, but until now you had not had the pleasure of feeling them on your body in this way.

“Tonight everything you do is fine. I promise"

"It would be a good time to start, he'll see you" Emily reminded you and you could only sigh shakily.

You two were adults, why were you so scared about kissing?

"Close your eyes" Spencer whispered to you, masking his nerves better than you "I'll kiss you, just close them," he asked you and you did.

You felt his body lean against you a little until his chest almost touched yours and then his lips shakily pressed against yours. You would always remember your first kiss, which in essence was such a brief caress that you didn't even know if it could be counted as one, the one where he wordlessly asked your permission to explore your mouth. Still with your eyes closed, you pulled him by the neck towards you and started a new kiss, a little more confident and deep this time, allowing you to savor the beer mixed with strawberries and that strange flavor that each person has.

“We…” you started to say, once you separated “you have to do it slowly, what he wants is a show” you exclaimed. Spencer felt unable to say any words and your hands caressing him so deliciously wasn't helping at all “Slow,” you repeated.

You arched your back a little to get even closer and when you finally looked up you met his caramel eyes. You needed a moment to recover and you unconsciously licked your lips, as if you needed to pick up and savor his presence in your mouth again, something that didn’t go unnoticed by his attentive look at your movements. 

It didn't take long for you to give up, as beginning the third kiss you felt that you no longer had any control over your body, your heart, or your mind. And while it was true that neither of you were experts on the subject, you guys managed pretty well as the seconds ticked by. Spencer gasped as he simultaneously felt you pull the hair from his neck and caress his lips with the tip of your tongue, while you were taken by surprise when his hands left your waist and lowered to the height of your hip, where his thumbs gripped firmly on the clip of your shorts.

There was a kiss, then another and another; they became too many to count. You didn't want to touch him anywhere and at the same time you wanted to touch him completely, in the grip of the fantasy that this was real and not just a performance. And even if you were aware that it was all fake, that would probably only have encouraged you to enjoy something to the fullest that you knew would never come back. Amid everything you didn’t know which of the two situations would be worse.

The sound of your lips colliding became so obscene that you were embarrassed, but you had no plan to stop. Your hands slid gently down the length of his neck until you reached his chest and cupped the soft cotton of his garment in your fists to make sure he didn't move away from you. The heat of the moment just went up and up, but a voice on the intercom brought you back with a jolt.

“He started the trailer. He's going to go"

Spencer closed his eyes in frustration, and you sighed. From the position he was in it wasn’t possible to get around him without being seen, so keeping all his attention was on you and him.

Maybe you weren't doing it right? You wondered what the hell this man wanted to see if you were practically eating each other, but suddenly you remembered that his motivation was even more sexual than a couple of wet kisses. Maybe he was getting bored because he needed to see that you were about to… well, do it.

"Take off my shirt," you said immediately, still too close to his swollen lips and looking right into eyes that seemed to be pitch black.

"Take... what?"

"Take off my shirt" you repeated, with a tone that made the man shudder completely. With the hands that were still holding his shirt you pulled him to you and he held his breath “And kiss me better. Like you really want me"

But Spencer didn't need to pretend that he wanted you. 

He made you completely dizzy when he began to kiss you so hungrily and you managed to keep enough composure when you felt one of his warm hands travel under your blouse, limiting yourself to letting out sighs that were drowned against his lips. But what finally caused you to let out an indiscreet and unwelcome moan was when he pulled you by the hip until you were on the edge of the tailgate and you could feel the growing bulge in his pants pressing against you. Spencer had almost managed to suppress his, but in the end, you having your own situation down there didn't help one bit. 

His trembling fingers fussed with the buttons on your shirt until it ended up somewhere on the floor at incredible speed, leaving you half-naked before him and the collection of FBI agents standing around. You might have been embarrassed if your brain could connect two coherent thoughts, but you'd lost that from the moment Dr. Reid first dared to kiss you.

You carefully guided his hands to the beginning of the curve of your breasts and now you both sighed in unison, feeling goosebumps on every inch of your skin. You pushed yourself forward just for the satisfaction of hearing that guttural sound again and your prayers were immediately answered, for it was enough for him to feel the slightest friction and he would go crazy. It was inappropriate to need him like that, but you couldn't help it.

Holding your lower back, he leaned over you and at the same time pulled you towards him until your breasts collided with his chest. In that position, your neck was exposed and your partner’s hot lips didn't hesitate to go down there, while you sighed agitated just at the height of his ear. Spencer asked you, between each kiss, to look in the direction of the trailer to see if he was still there and as you could you answered yes, which was victory enough for both of you.

As he could, he maneuvered to lay you down carefully on the cold metal of the truck without stopping kissing your neck, and by inertia you wrapped both legs over his hip. When you were hidden by the panels of the pickup he finally looked at you.

"I hope it's enough to get his attention," he said, sounding as agitated as expected, and although the circumstances meant that you two would be taking a break you flatly refused, pulling him back to kiss him.

That kiss did take Spencer by surprise and it was perhaps the sincerest of the night. It wasn’t as passionate as the previous ones, but rather it was loaded with softness and you would even say that a hint of supplication. You were begging for him not to stop, for the night to get stuck in an infinite loop where the two of you could kiss for eternity. And suddenly you felt how he, who had been so tense the whole time, completely relaxed against you, as if he understood exactly what you wanted to say. His hands came to rest on the sides of your head to be able to kiss you more comfortably and you dared to take him by the waist with the same care that you were kissing him, feeling even above the cloth the softness of his skin. 

And then he broke up with you. You feared you had done something wrong due to the suddenness of the movement and your frightened eyes searched his gaze for a sign of the reason, without finding anything. He just looked at you with something you couldn't describe, but that made you feel butterflies fluttering all over your stomach... and he stayed like that for a few seconds: just looking at you, as if he wanted to memorize all your features.

You opened your mouth to say something, but your words were drowned in a new kiss, totally different from the previous ones. Spencer was taking time with him, trapping your lower lip between his and sucking on it gently, pressing himself a little more against your body, sighing heavily into your mouth.

Your hand was already running up his side to make its way to his cheek just as screams filled the silence and you hugged him reflexively. The screams had come from Morgan, who had already moved across the park to take down the unsub and was now wrestling with him to get the knife out of his hand. Spencer hesitated for a moment if he should come over to help, but he preferred to hold you better against his body to protect you and wait for Emily to place the handcuffs on the man under her partner's knee.

From a distance you saw that he only brought with him, in addition to the knife, his camera, and a small backpack with some other murderous instruments that they managed to confiscate without any problem.

"All clear, we've got him," Hotch spoke over the radio. As you exhaled in relief too many emotions washed over you, combined with the adrenaline coursing through your body and the arousal still flowing into your crotch.

"Are you okay?" Reid's gentle voice called to you, as he pulled away to check with his eyes that everything was in order. His hair was messy and his lips were so swollen that it was almost painful to look at the image without launching yourself to kiss him again "My God, your shirt..." he said, completely embarrassed, as he bent down to pick up the garment. You looked him up and down and blushed when you noticed how tight his pants were, feeling your stomach turn a little. When he got up, he took the opportunity to look at your chest covered only by the black lace bra and a big gulp of saliva went down his throat.

You thanked him quietly and put your shirt back on, feeling the sneaky glances Spencer was giving you, just before Hotch walked up to you.

"How are you?"

"Very good, excellent" you stammered.

You could perfectly feel your swollen lips, the light sheen of sweat on your face, the heat flowing from all the places Reid's fingers had been, and the abundant moisture between your crossed legs.

After Hotch congratulated you on your performance, the two of you walked as best you could toward the rest of the agents, who were already placing Oliver on patrol. Another group was analyzing the trailer and they managed to pull out enough evidence about the murders that would be very useful in prosecuting the man.

"All good?" Emily asked in your direction, once things had settled down and the rest of the team had gathered in a circle by the van. You and Spencer just nodded at the question.

“I honestly think I'm going to need therapy after what I heard,” Dave murmured, so serious that you couldn't help but burst out laughing.

"Don't you even dare make fun of this"

“No, we won't. I'm just saying you guys seemed to be enjoying it there."

"That's supposed to be the plan, right?" Spencer said nervously, finally daring to look at you and looking away almost immediately as he smoothed his hair back.

Once your boss said you could retire you escaped in a patrol car as fast as you could, wanting to get home so you could take a cold shower and soothe what wasn’t satisfied by the man. You could hardly sleep that night, still haunted by the ghost of the kisses you received from your gorgeous coworker, and the next morning you hoped that double coffee would do the trick. But apparently you weren't the only one who thought so, because at the same time that you arrived Spencer Reid crossed your path.

"Hey," he said, in that high-pitched voice that came out when someone caught him off guard, "How are you?" 

"Fine, and you?"

"Fine too"

You knew that the two of you wanted to talk about what happened, but it only took one of you to have the courage to speak first. At the same time your phones rang indicating a message and you mistakenly assumed that it was JJ contacting you to announce a case. What was your surprise when you opened the file and found a collection of photos from the night before. You knew from Spencer's face that he had received the same thing.

"Garcia did you… did she send you the same evidence?"

"That's right," he said nervously. You had to admit that if Oliver had one quality it was that of a photographer: you were sensual and perfectly captured the desire that had existed between you. Well, the one you had pretended to feel… right?

Spencer held his breath as he came to a picture of you topless in which his hand was practically on your breast, immediately remembering how that had felt. He just hoped his memories didn't affect him too much or it would be embarrassing enough to walk into the boardroom with a boner.

"They're good," you said to the air and he suppressed a laugh "But I can delete them if that makes you feel uncomfortable"

“No, no, I… I think I want to keep them too. After all, the bureau will have them in the files as evidence of the case, I prefer to have access too”

"I just hope she doesn't send them to anyone else, I wouldn't want to see my bra photos going around."

“I'll tell Garcia, don't worry,” Spencer murmured, rushing to type something on his phone.

While you waited for him to type you took another look, feeling your whole body heating up again at the memories. A part of you was grateful to have such material in your custody.

"I never thought of being the protagonist of an erotic photo session and here we are," you said ironically.

“Speaking of which…” Spencer started to say, “Not the erotic sessions by any means, don't think I'm planning on inviting you to one or that, because it would be super weird and inappropriate, but I was thinking if… huh…”

“Sell them online? I thought so too, but it depends on how much profit there is. Garcia can help us find the highest bidder and not get charged for tampering with evidence."

"What? No!" he said, completely shocked, and you laughed because you got the reaction you expected with your joke "Why would we do that?"

“Just kidding, Reid. Those photos are something I prefer to keep to myself" you clarified and your smile made him feel shy "Seriously, sorry for interrupting you. What did you want to tell me?"

"What…? huh, yes, right. It's just that this morning I was thinking about what you said yesterday, about how under normal circumstances you would have liked to have a bad date with me, right? and it just kept spinning in my head, so I was asking if you wanted to go for a drink sometime. Not like a date, of course, I'm not saying it is if you don't want to. I can just be like… well, go get a drink. As friends"

Yesterday Spencer had practically eaten your mouth and now he was nervous about asking you out. So adorable.

“You're not doing this just as compensation, are you? because you know that it is not necessary…”

“I do it because I want to. And I want to believe that… that I didn't misunderstand what happened yesterday."

You no longer even cared that it was unethical to date team members, or that if things went wrong, you would probably go into the worst of depressions. What mattered to you was that Spencer was interested in you, even if he had implied it, and that he was asking you out alone with him. Just the two of you, with fun and alcohol involved, without gossipy colleagues or mortal danger.

"Then I'd love to, Reid."

“Wow, excellent then” he smiled, feeling lucky that you agreed “I know a great bar near here, the atmosphere is generally calm, I like it because they don't play loud music. What day is right for you?"

“I'm available any day you want” you responded genuinely, grinning from ear to ear just being around him. That was the effect Reid had on you.

It was stupid to try to deny that you were still attracted to him, especially since now you had a taste of what he could do with you. You wanted to kiss him again, of course, but you were also anxious to earn that completely adoring look you'd received the night before.

“Today?”

"Yeah, why wait?" you responded, more excited than you wanted.

“Hey, I didn't ask you, but I wanted to know if I didn't go overboard with you last night. I mean… did something bother you?”

It was a smart move, you could see it clearly. It was obvious that Spencer cared about you, but you also picked up on his intentions to find out if you were interested in him too. Well, that's how it was from your perspective, because that probably would have been your motivation being in his place.

Even if it wasn't the case, you weren't going to miss the opportunity to take a little advantage of the situation.

"The kisses on the neck were something he definitely didn't expect, but they weren't unpleasant at all," you assured him, feeling your cheeks heat up again. "Did it feel good to you?"

"It did"

"So everything's perfect," you murmured, shrugging off the matter. But you both knew you couldn't see each other in the office and acted as if nothing had happened.

Something had happened. Those kisses had only fueled the tension that had always existed between you but that you wanted to ignore.

"Do you want to go after work, then?"

“Sounds good to me”

Spencer gave you one last smile and then went to prepare his usual cup of sugar with a dash of coffee. All day you were thinking about him and more than once he caught you looking at him, but you didn't even care.

So, at nightfall, with a few drinks on you and more courage in your body, you finally confessed that kissing was something you had wanted to do for a long time. You almost didn't believe it at first, coming from him, but when you finally accepted it, it wasn't hard at all to rush at him and kiss him feverishly. And this time there did not impede for you to give free rein to your desires, which led you to the soft mattress in your friend's house and kept you awake until a few hours before dawn.

[coochiequeens]

Thousands protest against increasing violence against women in Kenya as they march to the parliamentary building and supreme court in the capital Nairobi [Gerald Anderson/Anadolu Agency]

Published On 27 Jan 202427 Jan 2024

Thousands of people have gathered to protest in cities and towns in Kenya against the recent slayings of more than a dozen women.

The anti-femicide demonstration on Saturday was the largest event ever held in the country against sexual and gender-based violence.

In the capital, Nairobi, protesters wore T-shirts printed with the names of women who became homicide victims this month. The crowd, composed mostly of women, brought traffic to a standstill.

“Stop killing us!” the demonstrators shouted as they waved signs with messages such as “There is no justification to kill women.”

The crowd in Nairobi was hostile to attempts by the parliamentary representative for women, Esther Passaris, to address them. Accusing Passaris of remaining silent during the latest wave of killings, protesters shouted her down with chants of “Where were you?” and “Go home!”

“A country is judged by not how well it treats its rich people, but how well it takes care of the weak and vulnerable,” said Law Society of Kenya President Eric Theuri, who was among the demonstrators.

Kenyan media outlets have reported the slayings of at least 14 women since the start of the year, according to Patricia Andago, a data journalist at media and research firm Odipo Dev who also took part in the march.

Odipo Dev reported this week that news accounts showed at least 500 women were killed in acts of femicide from January 2016 to December 2023. Many more cases go unreported, Andago said.

Two cases that gripped Kenya this month involved two women who were killed at Airbnb accommodations. The second victim was a university student who was dismembered and decapitated after she reportedly was kidnapped for ransom.

Theuri said cases of gender-based violence take too long to be heard in Kenyan court, which he thinks emboldens perpetrators to commit crimes against women.

“As we speak right now, we have a shortage of about 100 judges. We have a shortage of 200 magistrates and adjudicators, and so that means that the wheel of justice grinds slowly as a result of inadequate provisions of resources,” he said.

People gather to protest in an anti-femicide demonstration, the largest event of its kind ever held in Kenya. [Gerald Anderson/Anadolu Agency]

Kenyan media outlets have reported the slayings of at least 14 women since the start of the year. [Gerald Anderson/Anadolu Agency]

A protester holds a Palestinian flag during a march to protest against the rising cases of femicide, in downtown Nairobi. [Brian Inganga/AP Photo]

Women and feminists in Kenya took to the streets to march against the rising cases of femicide. [Brian Inganga/AP Photo]

In Nairobi, protesters wore T-shirts printed with the names of women who became homicide victims this month. [Gerald Anderson/Anadolu Agency]

Protesters react against the rising cases of femicide. [Brian Inganga/AP Photo]

A human rights activist reacts as she attends a protest demanding an end to femicide in the country. [Monicah Mwangi/Reuters]

Protesters gather during the anti-femicide demonstration. [Gerald Anderson/Anadolu Agency]

The crowd, composed mostly of women, brought traffic to a standstill. [Gerald Anderson/Anadolu Agency]

[deposedefenddeny]

Some legal experts contend prosecutors in New York overreached by charging Mangione with terrorism in the indictment. One criminal defense attorney, Stacy Schneider, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday prosecutors might face more challenges proving that argument in court. “This victim was shot in the back of the head, not the front of the head, on a quiet sidewalk, early in the morning, in the dark. It doesn’t appear from a defense attorney’s perspective that this was intended to be a terroristic type of murder,” Schneider said. Mangione’s defense team, according to Schneider, could move to dismiss the top count of murder against him, arguing the reactions following the killing were “unintended consequences.” “The murder happened first, the outcry was second and totally unpredictable,” Schneider said. “So, I think this might be a case of overreaching on murder one.” Including terrorism in the indictment – making Mangione eligible for life imprisonment – may be part of a broader strategy by the district attorney, according to former federal prosecutor Jessica Roth. “By including that, the district attorney is setting up the conditions for a plea to a lesser charge where he has the possibility of, at some point, getting out of prison,” Roth said Tuesday on Anderson Cooper 360. “If there isn’t a plea, it’s also setting up the condition for a jury compromise on that lesser charge,” Roth added. The two-pronged prosecution is a strategy [Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg] employed unsuccessfully in another high-profile case this year. Daniel Penny was charged with both second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in the death of Jordan Neely, who Penny restrained with a chokehold, later saying he felt threatened by Neely’s erratic behavior on the New York subway. The jury was instructed to consider the two charges separately, beginning with the more serious charge. Ultimately, they deadlocked on the manslaughter count and the judge dismissed the charge at the request of prosecutors, allowing them to consider the criminally negligent homicide charge. The jury then found Penny not guilty of the lesser charge. [...] Throwing the book at Mangione risks backlash from the public, which in some corners has treated the murder suspect as a folk hero, said criminal defense attorney Jeremy Saland, who is not representing Mangione. “If you kill a police officer, that’s one thing. If you kill a witness to a crime, that’s something else, too, that would rise to this first-degree homicide or murder,” Saland told CNN’s John Berman. “If I��m someone whose brother or sister or sibling was murdered on the street, why should a CEO’s murder be treated differently than my loved one?”

CNN on Dec 18, 11:11 a.m. ET

[jewish-vents]

Six months. That's how long the people who planned and executed a fucking pogrom are gonna spend in jail. Six fucking months. For contrast, hurting a stray dog will land you in jail for three years in the Netherlands.

But this time the victims were just Jews, so it's six months. The age of majority there is 18, but they're treating a 19-year-old defendant as a minor. They're going out of their way to coddle people who hunted human beings down through the streets, ran them over with cars, and threw them into rivers.

I'm fucking done. There is something deeply wrong with goyim on a fundamental level. They are incapable of recognizing Jews as human or even as living things. We are worth less than dogs to them. They see beating and killing us as some natural instinct that these homicidal monsters just can't help but give in to.

Make no mistake, this absolute joke of a sentence and the way they are handholding and pampering the perpetrators is sending a very clear message: the government of the Netherlands condones antisemitic violence. They condone pogroms.

There is no fucking hope. We can never come back from this. Six fucking months for a self-described "Jew hunt." Goyishe notions of "justice" are a fucking lie.

Fuck goyim. Fuck them all.

.

[mariacallous]

Late on a Sunday night in June of 2023, a woman named Carlishia Hood and her fourteen-year-old son, an honor student, pulled into Maxwell Street Express, a fast-food joint in West Pullman, on the far South Side of Chicago. Her son stayed in the car. Hood went inside. Maxwell is a no-frills place—takeout-style, no indoor seating. It’s open twenty-four hours a day. Hood asked for a special order—without realizing that at Maxwell, a busy place, special orders are frowned upon. The man behind her in line got upset; she was slowing things down. His name was Jeremy Brown. On the street, they called him the Knock-Out King. Brown began to gesticulate, his arms rising and falling in exasperation. He argued with Hood, growing more agitated. Then he cocked his fist, leaned back to bring the full weight of his body into the motion, and punched her in the head.

When the argument had started, Hood texted her son, asking him to come inside. Now he was at the door, slight and tentative in a white hoodie. He saw Brown punch his mother a second time. The boy pulled out a revolver and shot Brown in the back. Brown ran from the restaurant. The boy pursued him, still firing. Brown died on the street—one of a dozen men killed by gunfire in Chicago that weekend.

In the remarkable new book “Unforgiving Places” (Chicago), Jens Ludwig breaks down the Brown killing, moment by moment. Ludwig is the director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, and he uses as a heuristic the psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s version of the distinction between System 1 and System 2 thinking. According to Kahneman, these are the two cognitive modes that all human beings toggle between. The first is fast, automatic, and intuitive. The second is slow, effortful, and analytical. Ludwig’s innovation is to apply the dichotomy to criminal acts. A System 2 crime might be a carefully planned robbery, in which the assailant stalks and assesses his victims before attacking them. This is what criminologists call instrumental violence: acts, Ludwig writes, “committed in order to achieve some tangible or ‘instrumental’ goal (getting someone’s cash or phone or watch or drug turf), where violence is a means to some other, larger end.” A System 1 crime, by contrast, is an act of what Ludwig calls “expressive violence”—aimed not at gaining something tangible but at hurting someone, often in a sudden burst of frustration or anger.

The central argument of “Unforgiving Places” is that Americans, in their attempts to curb crime, have made a fundamental conceptual error. We’ve assumed that the problem is instrumental violence—and have fashioned our criminal-justice system around that assumption. But the real problem is expressive violence. The ongoing bloodshed in America’s streets is just Maxwell Street Express, over and over again.

For the better part of a generation, the study of American crime has been in a state of confusion. The first destabilizing event came in the nineteen-nineties, with a sudden and sustained drop in urban crime across the United States, most notably in New York City. At the time, the prevailing view was that gun violence was deeply rooted—a product of entrenched racism, poverty, and despair. But, if that were true, how did New York’s homicide rate fall by more than half in the span of a single decade? Deeply rooted problems aren’t supposed to resolve themselves so swiftly.

The conventional wisdom adapted. Attention turned to shifts in policing—specifically, the rise of proactive tactics in the nineties. The N.Y.P.D.’s stop-and-frisk strategy, aimed at getting guns off the street, was credited with driving the crime decline. But then, in 2013, a federal judge ruled that the police’s stop-and-frisk practices violated constitutional rights. And what happened? Crime continued to fall. New York got safer even though the police stopped doing the things that we thought were making the city safer. It made no sense.

Then there were those who argued that violent crime was a matter of individual pathology: stunted development, childhood trauma, antisocial tendencies. Look closely at the criminal, we were told. But research—from criminologists like David Weisburd and Lawrence W. Sherman—showed that, in city after city, crime was hyperconcentrated. A handful of blocks accounted for a disproportionate share of violence, and those blocks stayed violent, year after year. In other words, the problem wasn’t people. It was place.

Last summer, I was given a tour of a low-income neighborhood in Philadelphia by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. Its program Transforming Vacant Lots has led a concerted effort to clean up thousands of vacant lots scattered across the city. The approach is simple: clear the weeds, pick up the trash, plant a lawn, put up a post-and-rail fence. The initiative works on over twelve thousand lots, and the results are striking. What once looked like a struggling neighborhood now resembles, at a glance, a middle-class one.

What’s remarkable, though, isn’t just the aesthetics. It’s that the neighborhoods where these lots have been turned into green spaces have seen a twenty-nine-per-cent drop in gun violence. Twenty-nine per cent! The people haven’t changed. The pathologies haven’t changed. The same police force still patrols the neighborhood. The only new variable is that someone comes by to mow the lawn once or twice a month. As economists like to say: How do you model that?

This is the puzzle that Ludwig sets out to solve in “Unforgiving Places.” His answer is that these episodes confound us only because we haven’t appreciated how utterly different System 1 criminality is from that of System 2. System 1 thinking is egocentric: it involves, Ludwig writes, interpreting “everything through the lens of ‘What does this have to do with me?’ ” It depends on stark binaries—reducing a range of possibilities to a simple yes or no—and, as he notes, it “focuses more on negative over positive information.” In short, it’s wired for threats. System 1 catastrophizes. It imagines the worst.

Brown’s encounter with Carlishia Hood pushed him into System 1 mode. He made an immediate egocentric assumption: if he knew that special orders were a norm violation, then Hood must know, too. “Given that System 1 assumption,” Ludwig explains, “from there it is natural that Brown believed the person in front of him was deliberately holding things up.”

Hood, meanwhile, didn’t know about the special-order taboo, so she was operating under her own egocentric assumptions. She “knew she wasn’t being disrespectful and deliberately trying to hold up everyone else in line, so the curse of knowledge led her System 1 to assume that Brown surely also knew that,” Ludwig writes. “So why was he getting so bent out of shape? She didn’t mean to be inconsiderate to the people behind her in line; she just wanted the Maxwell Street Express people to change whatever it was that she wanted changed on the burger.” Neither had the cognitive space to consider that they were caught in a misunderstanding. They were in binary mode: I’m right, so you must be wrong. From there, things escalated:

Hood says to her son, who’s standing behind Brown, “Get in the car.”

Brown seems to think that comment is directed at him—another misreading of the situation.“WHO?!?” he says. “Get in the CAR?!?”

Hood says something that’s hard to make out from the video.

Brown says, “Hey lady, lady, lady, lady. GET YOUR FOOD. GET YOUR FOOD. If you say one more thing, I’m going to KNOCK YOU OUT.” You can see his right fist, clenching and unclenching, over and over.

She says something that is again hard to make out on the video.

He says, “Oh my God I SAID if you say one more thing, I’m going to knock you out.”

At which point he punches her—hard.

Hood’s son is standing in the doorway, watching the assault of his mother. Had he been in System 2 mode, he might have paused. He might have asked for help. He might have called 911. He could have weighed the trade-offs and thought, Yes, it’s unbearable to watch my mother being beaten. But, if I kill this man, I could spend years in prison. But he’s filled with adrenaline. He shifts into catastrophizing mode: There is nothing worse than seeing my mother get pummelled by a stranger. Brown punches her again—and again. The boy shoots him in the back. Brown runs. Hood tells her son to follow him. There is nothing worse than letting him get away. Still in System 1, the boy fires again. Brown collapses in the street.

Ludwig argues that this is what most homicide looks like. Much of what gets labelled gang violence, he says, is really just conflict between individuals who happen to be in gangs. We misread these events because we insist on naming the affiliations of the combatants. Imagine, he suggests, if we did this for everyone: “ ‘This morning by Buckingham Fountain, a financial analyst at Morningstar killed a mechanic for United Airlines.’ Naturally you’d think the place of employment must be relevant to understanding the shooting, otherwise why mention it at all?”

The “super-predator”—the remorseless psychopath of television dramas—turns out to be rare. The mass shooter, meticulously assembling his arsenal, is a statistical anomaly. The professional hit man is mostly a literary invention. “A careful look at twenty years of U.S. murder data collected by the F.B.I.,” Ludwig writes, “concluded that only 23 percent of all murders were instrumental; 77 percent of murders—nearly four of every five—were some form of expressive violence.”

The Chicago Police Department estimates that arguments lie behind seventy to eighty per cent of homicides. The numbers for Philadelphia and Milwaukee are similar. And that proportion has held remarkably steady over time. Drawing on data from Houston in 1969, the sociologist Donald Black concluded that barely more than a tenth of homicides occurred during predatory crimes like burglary or robbery. The rest, he found, arose from emotionally charged disputes—over infidelity, household finances, drinking, child custody. Not calculated acts of gain, in other words, but eruptions rooted in contested ideas of right and wrong.

Ludwig’s point is that the criminal-justice system, as we’ve built it, fails to reckon with this reality. We’ve focussed on the signalling function of punishment—on getting the deterrents right, offering the proper mixture of carrots and sticks to influence rational actors. Mass incarceration, which swept the country in the late twentieth century, rested on the assumption that a person spoiling for a fight with another person was weighing costs: that the difference between ten years and twenty-five would matter. But was Jeremy Brown calculating odds when he punched Carlishia Hood? Was her son performing a Bayesian analysis as he ran from the restaurant, gun in hand?

This misapprehension, he argues, is why the American experience of crime so often seems baffling. Murders are volatile—a city really can go from dangerous to safe overnight—because the behavior driving most homicides is volatile.

Why did crime in New York continue to fall after the N.Y.P.D. ended stop-and-frisk? Because what makes police officers effective isn’t how many people they stop or arrest—it’s how many arguments they interrupt or defuse, ideally without resorting to handcuffs or charges.

Why does crime seem more related to places than to people? Because some places are simply better at de-escalation than others. Imagine Maxwell Street Express in a more stable neighborhood, with a core of regulars—people connected to one another, who know something about Jeremy Brown and his temper. Another customer might have stepped in and said, “Hey, wait a minute, Jeremy. Cool it. I don’t think the lady knows how this restaurant works.”

And why did Philadelphia’s vacant-lot program work so well? Because, when an empty lot becomes a well-kept lawn, people come outside. They have barbecues and picnics. Kids play. And suddenly, as Jane Jacobs famously put it, the block has “eyes on the street.”

“Jane Jacobs claimed that informal social control contributed vitally to public safety by interrupting criminal and violent acts in the moment,” Ludwig writes. It’s an idea that doesn’t make much sense if you assume that violence is instrumental. The rational criminal, after all, will just move a block over—set up shop where the odds tilt in his favor. But that’s not how most offenders operate. They’ve lost their temper. For a few volatile minutes, they’re not thinking straight. And, in that state, violence interrupted is violence prevented.

One subject that Ludwig all but ignores in “Unforgiving Places” is guns. It’s a notable omission, since what turns the confrontation at Maxwell Street Express from a fight into a homicide is the peculiarly American fact that Carlishia Hood had a handgun in her car. In any other developed country, a fistfight between Jeremy Brown and Carlishia Hood would in all likelihood have remained a fistfight.

But Ludwig is weary of gun-control arguments. He simply doesn’t believe that the United States is ever going to enact serious restrictions. “Over the last 243 years of U.S. history, the number of major, restrictive federal gun laws has been (depending on how you count) something like five or six.” That’s what economists call the base rate—and Ludwig’s position is that the energy devoted to that lost cause might be better directed elsewhere.

He wants us, instead, to take System 1 behavior seriously. First, stop talking about criminals as if they occupy some distinct moral category. Neither Jeremy Brown nor Hood’s son was evil. They were caught in an unforgiving moment. Second, stop locking up so many people for long prison terms. The best way to keep arguments among teen-agers from turning violent is for adults to step in and tell them to cool down—and mass incarceration drains adults from troubled neighborhoods.

Third, spend more time thinking about what makes one neighborhood safe and another unsafe. Ludwig cites a randomized trial in New York City’s public-housing projects, which found that developments given upgraded outdoor lighting experienced a thirty-five-per-cent reduction in serious crimes compared with those left as is. A well-lit space makes it easier for bystanders to see a confrontation unfold—and makes those involved a little more self-conscious.

But the biggest opportunity, Ludwig argues, lies in behavioral modification. He writes about a program in Chicago called BAM—Becoming a Man—which teaches teen-agers how to navigate potentially volatile encounters. In a large randomized trial, Ludwig compared students on Chicago’s West Side and South Side who had participated in BAM with those who hadn’t, and found that participation reduced arrests for violent crime by fifty per cent.

He describes one of the program’s exercises, in which students are paired off. One is given a ball; the other is told he has thirty seconds to take it.

Almost all of them rely on force to try to complete the assignment; they try to pry the other person’s hand open, or wrestle or even pummel the other person. During the debrief that follows, a BAM counselor asks why no one asked for the ball. Most youths respond by saying their partner would have thought they were a punk (or something worse—you can imagine). The counselor then asks the partner what he would have done if asked. The usual answer: “I would have given it, it’s just a stupid ball.”

Exactly. It’s almost always a stupid ball. Or someone asking to hold the pickle. No one walked into Maxwell Street Express that night expecting to die, or to kill. But that’s the nature of expressive violence: no plan, no purpose—just a match struck in passing. As Ludwig reminds us, we have been trying to stop violent offenders without understanding what goes on in the mind of the violent offender.

[felinepipebomb]

Philly harm reduction update: one of our more homicidal council members (Lozada) is in the process of banning mobile service providers in her district in Kensington-specifically targeting people who do street outreach to hand out wound care kits, narcan, water, and other supplies. Literally banning handing out water bottles as our summers get increasingly hotter, knowing that risk of overdose from opioids increases in the summer as heat & dehydration affect how people’s bodies process the drugs.

A few days ago tons of residents came to give public comment against the ban being passed, including a woman giving testimony on how Mayor Parker’s cop-loving, anti drug user sweeps killed her brother, but city gov doesn’t care about any of us, just developers.

community action relief project has a google doc tool kit with more thorough information on the proposed ban and ways to fight it getting passed, pls get informed and keep an eye on this situation. Last year I saw cops jump at the opportunity to shove & harass harm reductionists just because we were giving out bags and helping people pack up their stuff as the cops trashed it on the street during an encampment sweep, and that was AGAINST the order of a higher up on the PPD. If they’re empowered by this ban they WILL escalate their already horrific brutality against unhoused Philadelphians and take every chance they can get to arrest, harass, & fine harm reductionists.

Giving up and abandoning each other is just not an option for anyone here if preventing the ban from being passed doesn’t work. Under the Parker administration, multiple drug users have already been murdered by the PPD and local judicial system, dying from withdrawal in our jails because of malicious arrests and medical neglect. If this bill passes you Will be seeing increased clashes with police & increased tension in Philly between the people living here trying to look out for each other and the pigs that get hired in from the suburbs to stomp on us for pay.

[offender42085]

Post 1416

Chase D Jones, Washington inmate 448159, born 2006, incarceration intake May 2025 at age 19, sentenced to 17.5 years, scheduled release date not published

Vehicular Homicide, Vehicular Assault

In April 2025, a man who was traveling at 112 mph and crashed into a minivan, killing one woman and three kids, and injuring two other kids in the Renton Washington area was sentenced to 210 months in prison — a little over 17 years.

Jones was a high school senior at the time of accident. He was acknowledge with his achievements in the state-wide High School wrestling.

Jones pleaded guilty as charged to four counts of vehicular homicide and two counts of vehicular assault that occurred on March 19, 2024, at the intersection of Southeast 192nd Street and 140th Avenue Southeast in Fairwood Washington..

According to charging documents, the event data recorder in Jones’ vehicle showed that he was traveling over 100 mph during the crash. The Prosecutor in her statements to the court said that Jones was traveling at 112 mph when he crashed into the victims.

When Jones had his opportunity to address the court, he attempted to read his letter, but after about two minutes of trying to begin speaking, he was unable. Jones’ attorney read his letter for him, which began with Jones telling the family of the victims that he was incredibly sorry for their losses. Jones said that he apologized for the unimaginable pain and suffering he caused and acknowledged that he had made poor and selfish choices.

“Truth is, I was addicted to speed, but not because of an adrenaline rush or excitement or any of that. I used speed like a tool to ignore my problems,” Jones said. “I used a pedal to put all my emotions into, which turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life. I never thought I could cause such a tragedy.”

The Judge said the state and Jones’ defense agreed on a sentence recommendation of 210 months, and he would follow it in his sentence.

Charging documents report that Jones’ car T-boned the minivan, which also held the five passengers. According to the police report, the force of the impact from Jones’ car caused Hudson’s minivan to collide with two more vehicles, where one other driver received non-life-threatening injuries. Described as an “incredibly violent collision,” the force of the impact caused the minivan to roll and come to a rest 125 feet south of the intersection.

The impact was so severe it caused approximately three feet of intrusion into the passenger compartment and the fire department had to cut off the roof to extract the occupants.

5y

[bkenber]

'Homicide: Life on the Street' Commentary on 'Night of the Dead Living'

I am back with my latest audio commentary on an episode of “Homicide: Life on the Street,” and the one on display here is “Night of the Dead Living,” a nice little play on words on the title of the classic horror film, “Night of the Living Dead.” It was directed by Michael Lehmann who gave us one of the greatest black comedies ever made, “Heathers” which starred Christian Slater and Winona Ryder.…

[my-vanishing-rad]

Hi guys now I will introduce the woman in this picture.

Aileen Carol Wuornos (/ˈwɔːrnoʊs/; born Pittman; February 29, 1956 – October 9, 2002) was an American serial killer.[3] In 1989–1990, while engaging in street prostitution along highways in Florida, she shot dead and robbed seven of her male clients. Wuornos claimed that her clients had either raped or attempted to rape her, and that the homicides of the men were committed in self-defense. Wuornos was sentenced to death for six of the murders. She was executed on October 9, 2002, by lethal injection after spending more than 10 years on Florida's death row.[4]

Aileen Wuornos (born February 29, 1956, Rochester, Michigan, U.S.—died October 9, 2002, Starke, Florida) was an American serial killer who murdered at least seven people in 1989–90. Her case drew national attention to issues such as the relationship between gender and violence and the legal treatment of acts of self-defense by women. Her life was the subject of documentaries and a film, Monster (2003).

Arrested in early 1991, she admitted to the killings but claimed that she acted in self-defense after the men assaulted her. Supporters of Wuornos viewed her as a strong independent woman—and even as a heroic figure for defending herself against male aggression. In 1992 she was convicted of one of the murders and sentenced to death. She later pleaded guilty to three more of the murders and admitted that she had killed for profit and not in self-defense. She was executed by lethal injection.

[luxiomahariel]

Remembering the victims: Banko Brown

Banko Brown, a 24-year-old Black transgender man, is remembered as being “bold” and “funny.” Banko, who also used the surnames Brown and Paso, was a young community activist who helped assess the needs of young folks, including young trans folks, during the pandemic. According to a GoFundMe page created by Julia Arroyo, the co-executive director of the Young Women’s Freedom Center where Brown was working as a community organizing intern, Banko “was brilliant and made everyone laugh.” Arroyo wrote that although Banko was shy, he “made friends easily and connected deeply with others.” Banko had been part of the nonprofit organization since he was 12 years old.

"Banko was the type of person to give you the shirt off his own back. That's how much he thought about others. Even when he was struggling himself," said Julia Arroyo, executive director of the Young Women's Freedom Center, where Brown was coming into his own -- fighting for transgender rights. "He tried on positions at the center. He organized a talk about trans housing, particularly about trans-masculine folks. He taught us a lot," Arroyo said.

https://www.hrc.org/news/remembering-banko-brown-a-bold-and-funny-trans-man-shot-outside-a-san-francisco-walgreens-by-an-armed-security-guard

https://abc7news.com/banko-brown-anniversary-it-has-been-1-year-since-24-year-old-man-was-shot-killed-by-a-san-francisco-walgreens-security-guard/14740056/

According to news reports, the San Francisco Police Department responded to a report of a shooting at a Walgreens located at 825 Market Street near Fourth Street. When officers arrived at the scene, they found Banko suffering from a gunshot wound. The officers rendered aid and called for medics. Banko was transported to a nearby hospital while suffering from life-threatening injuries. He was later pronounced dead. Different accounts claim that Banko was possibly shoplifting and on-duty security guard Michael Earl-Wayne Anthony pulled out a gun and shot at Banko. However, two separate eyewitnesses to the shooting said that the security guard had already escorted Banko out of the establishment and had returned inside, only to turn back and shoot Banko. One of the eyewitnesses, Donald Washington Jr., said that the security guard “could have used pepper spray. He could have used a baton. He’s a big dude. A gun, though? You go outside, you come back in the store, think about things for a minute. He processed it.” On May 1, 2023, community members, friends and family members as well as activists held a rally outside of the Walgreens where Banko was killed. Anthony was initially arrested and booked into the San Francisco County Jail on the charges of homicide. However, on May 2, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins declined to file any charges against security guard Michael Earl-Wayne Anthony, who was later released from jail. The San Francisco Police Department is looking to claim self-defense for this case, according to the same news report.

[dertaglichedan]

Colorado Murder Rate Dives After ICE Deports Tren de Aragua Gangbangers

New data shows that homicides in Denver and Aurora, Colorado, have experienced a significant drop in the wake of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) efforts to take down the Tren de Aragua gang members that had been causing so much chaos in the area.

But local Americans are still being killed by President Joe Biden’s migrants, including a 24-year-old woman killed in July of 2024 in Aurora by a 15-year-old reckless illegal-migrant driver. The local prosecutor just offered a sweetheart probation and community service deal to the youth migrant who is now applying for humanitarian asylum.

The numbers have taken a significant downturn in the first quarter of 2025, according to data from the Major Cities Chiefs Association, KSUA-TV reported.

Homicides in Denver declined 58 percent during the first three months over the same time last year, and nearby Aurora saw a 36 percent decline during the same period.

Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlin added that all crime is down in his city.

“The City of Aurora and Aurora PD are actually in a really good spot right now. Our crime numbers are down 22.8% overall,” Chamberlin said.

The Trump administration made the Denver area an important focal point of immigration removals. Even as the president was being inaugurated, ICE had moved in to arrest 538 illegal aliens in cities including Denver.

ICE quickly announced an expansion of efforts in Colorado to target members of the violent Venezuelan street gang, Tren de Aragua.

[dccomicsbracket]

Motivations:

Jaime Reyes (Blue Beetle)

My man has no idea what's going on throughout his entire movie. He's possessed by a homicidal bug from outer space. He is the official successor of a guy who REALLY wanted to be possessed by the outer space bug but couldn't get it past management and just decided to fake it till he made it with his billionaire budget. His family loves him. His suit is iconic. Sometimes his little outer space bug just goes "hey lil mama lemme whisper in your ear" and then it forcibly takes control of his body and tries to murder people. But also it loves him <3 I think he deserves to win, personally The writers were like "What if the teen superhero had parents that were alive and loving and not criminals" and proceeded to make the most wholesome guy. He power of friendship-ed a homicidal murder ai into being good. His darkest power fantasy is becoming a dentist. Lex Luthor tried and failed to turn him evil so hard he killed him about it, because that was easier. Also his costume kicks so much ass that the main thing that changes about it between redesigns is the eye colour. It's just that good. the 2006-2009 blue beetle run is not only my favorite dc comic, but one of my favorite comics period. it flips so many typical superhero tropes on their heads and does it well. jaime is an incredibly kind and well-written character and his relationship with his family and friends is so touching. Jaime is the perfect blend of goofy and sad, street-level and cosmic, kind and flawed. He was forced into becoming a hero by the weight of a legacy he didn't even know existed and a presence in his mind that would have him become a weapon. Before he even figured out his powers, he was hauled into space by established superheroes to deal with a Crisis and then left for dead for a year while his loved ones mourned him. His primary guides for his first solo were the hostile AI fused to his spine, a mercenary biker who only stuck around to see if he had to kill Jaime, and his normal parents. His greatest power fantasy was becoming a dentist because the power he already has over people's lives was crushing him. And yet, through all of that, his family and his culture and the mundane reality of being a teenager in El Paso were enough to keep him grounded. Read Blue Beetle 2006 and you will understand why Jaime is my son.

Mia Dearden (Speedy)

she's soooo cool and fun and silly. her boyfriend once cheated on her with emma watson! she's always wearing silly little y2k crop tops and baggy pants! she's a csa / sex trafficking survivor and lives with hiv! teenage girl character of all time!

[wuxiaphoenix]

On Characters: Partners in Crime

There may come a time when you want your characters to come in contact with the criminal element without either immediate arrests or gunfire. In which case, if you want to get the interactions right, you’re going to want to know why criminals do what they do.

A good place to start is What Cops Know and Pure Cop by Connie Fletcher. (The first one was an assigned text in an Intro to Criminology class.) Between them these books will clue you in on who’s most likely to know what’s going on in the streets, why you should never wear cheap shoes to a Mob funeral, and when you’re going to need a moving truck to cart off relevant evidence.

I also advise Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon, about the Baltimore Homicide unit, and You’re Under Arrest: I’m Not Kidding, one of several books by Don Parker. America’s Dumbest Criminals, the TV series or the book, would not be amiss either. Real-life criminal masterminds are rare.

Not that all criminals are dumb, either. A lot are just people, who for one reason or another, often more than one, have decided that certain laws were just made to be broken. Some are evil, some are addicts, some aren’t right in the head, some just don’t see any value in law-abiding behavior, and most are manipulators. And never ignore the possibility of “all of the above.”

They’re people, for better or worse. (Often worse.) If your characters can’t treat them accordingly, they’re likely to cause more problems than they solve.

For example, consider the case of a confidential informant. You see them all the time in detective fiction, the PI trading money for information; think Angel from The Rockford Files. And that does happen. But a lot of CIs are not motivated by money. Some want to cause havoc. Some act out of spite. Some are trying to remove a rival, or skate out from under their own criminal charges.

And some are legitimately motivated to inform on a crime as any honest citizen. A burglar might report a drug dealer near a school; a leg-breaker might turn in a rapist. And just about every class of criminal thinks they’re better than a child molester.

If your characters need to deal with an informant, they don’t have to like, respect, or even trust that informant. What they need to know is what motivates them. Because when you know that, you’ll know when your informant is lying.

...Look, criminal. Lying is part of the territory.

Yet even if they’re criminals, they may have lines they won’t cross. If your characters know where those lines are, your heroes might brush up against the shadows and walk away mostly unscathed. If they don’t....

When good guys run into bad guys, there are Consequences. Think about what those consequences will be!