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filmhistorymptv1145 · 4 years ago

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Examine the ways in which films deal with social, political, cultural, and economic issues, both in direct and indirect ways. What is the political impact of cinema on audiences around the world and how do we see it? Should filmmakers directly engage with these kinds of issues or do so subtly? Discuss any of the films we have watched so far from this perspective, and draw upon other examples if necessary.

Social commentary exists in many forms. We read it in books and hear it in music of every genre. It does not discriminate, covering every issue from politics to economics. As film grew into its own medium, it became a new platform for artists to utilize in portraying their visions of the world. Whether they be whimsical and over the top, or down to earth and stunningly realistic, movies grew to become one of the largest entertainment industries. Directors and screenwriters, whether inspired by or displeased with their surroundings, came to use film as a method of sharing their thoughts and emotions. Be it through direct or indirect means, they would criticize politicians and governments to historic and current world events. Certain countries were more limited than others in controlling the content of films, pushing creators to become even more crafty and thoughtful when conveying their opinions on screen.

With the Motion Picture Production Code in full effect in the US, film makers who wanted to touch upon political issues in American society had to do so in a very subtle way. Take Force of Evil, for instance. On the outside, it reads like a classic gangster movie that was commonly seen in the 1940’s. However, it is deeply critical of the money and power-hungry American underbelly of society, digging into the Capitalism that has overtaken the country even in these earlier years. Irony is found in the two main characters, a pair of brothers. Joe is a lawyer who runs dirty deals with gang members, using his education and career to further their unsavory deeds. His brother Leo believes that his own line of work is earnest and respectable, when in reality it is not. Leo runs a ‘bank’ for the small number rackets that exist in New York City, mainly centered around bets that are placed on horse races. Leo strongly feels that he is not as morally corrupted as his brother, despite being in charge of an illegal business.

The mise-an-scene of the film is what really drives home the underlying critique of money and its corrupting force. Joe takes Leo’s former secretary Doris for a walk on Wall Street, taking her through a church cemetery. The church building is completely dwarfed by the towering buildings of Wall Street’s capitalist businesses. The implied message here is that money is the new God, that the hold it has over people is nearly as strong as religion.

For Polonsky, who was put on the blacklist by HUACC for his leftist ideals, this message is as true to him as it gets. In Polonsky’s eyes, people no longer feared God as much as they did losing money in capitalist America. Considering what the entire world had just lost three years prior in World War Two, it is almost insulting to showcase people like Joe and his associates on screen. Money grubbing is not what America wanted its people to think they had fought and died for, just the opposite. Justice and morality is what America wants people to think it stands for, not capitalism and the desire to supersede the people in their lives. Force of Evil is astoundingly subtle and simultaneously gritty, holding true to the film noir standard of the times.

At the end of the film, when Leo is killed by Joe’s nefarious associates, Joe goes to retrieve his brother’s body. Stairwells are used as a metaphor for an internal moral struggle. In a voiceover, Joe laments ‘I just kept going down and down. It felt like I was going to the bottom of the world.’ The decrepit area beneath the bridge is the exact opposite of the organized, shining city above. Finding his brother’s body is Joe’s moral rock bottom, both literally and metaphorically. It is a slap in the face for Joe, stripping away all of the justifications he has held for his less than moral behavior and actions.

Polonsky cuts to Doris as Joe says, ‘He is dead,’ juxtaposing the image of a living woman with the realization that his brother Leo is gone. It is jarring, but it also suggests a dual motivation rising within Joe. Inspired by Doris’ love and Leo’s death, Joe turns to make his way back up the enormous staircase. This finale leaves the viewers with some hope that Joe can possibly redeem himself after his selfish actions, but will it be as quickly as he ran down the stairs towards his brother’s corpse?

One wouldn’t think that in 1950’s America, a bold film would tackle such a hot social issue: equal rights for African Americans. Especially with the Motion Picture Production Code still in full effect. Typically, when reflecting on movies from that decade, our minds are filled with images of romantic melodramas, as well as musicals and other bright, cheery content. The Defiant Ones not only tackled the issue of racism in America, but it also set the standard for the ‘buddy’ films that are commonplace today. Two escaped convicts are chained together at the wrist, one white and one African American. The film goes back and forth between Johnny and Cullen’s escapades whilst on the run, and the officers who have been assigned to track them down and take them back to prison. The tone of the film is established in the first few minutes, when one of the officers refers to Cullen as the n-word. Later on in the movie, when Johnny and Cullen are apprehended by a group of townspeople after attempting to rob their general store, they start stringing up two nooses. Johnny is mortified, looking around at the townsfolk with terror in his eyes. ‘You can’t lynch me, I’m a white man!’ he pleads. The message is clear: lynching is something white people do to black people.

Not only does the movie look at the harsh reality of life for African Americans at the time, but the relationship that develops between Johnny and Cullen is in itself socially and politically charged. Over the course of the movie, the two convicts go from being at odds with one another to developing a close friendship. Not even Johnny’s mistake to trust the woman they holed up with can break their bond. Johnny leaves the woman behind to rescue Cullen from the dangerous swamps. At the film’s end, Cullen is cradling Johnny, who is wounded from a gunshot to the chest. They are collapsed on the grass together, sharing a cigarette while Cullen sings and the police detective approaches to apprehend them.

Not only has Johnny moved past his racist ideals, but one could also say that their positioning at the end of the film is borderline sexual. The way Cullen holds Johnny is almost as if it is in a lover’s embrace. Cullen’s portrayal in the film is especially bold, since he was portrayed to be well-spoken, intelligent and overall good. A far cry from films like Birth of a Nation where African Americans are put in the most negative light possible, portrayed as thieves and rapists while the Ku Klux Klan members are seen as heroic and noble. The Defiant Ones, supported by Sidney Poitier’s phenomenal acting, gave rise to a much more positive role for African American actors to portray on screen. Though the ‘righteous Black man’ did end up becoming a trope in Hollywood for many years, it was still a positive step in the right direction for civil rights.

Outside of the US, films were not constricted by strict standards of morality and content. They were much freer to openly criticize the societal norms and political atmospheres that were in place at the time of their creation. Hiroshima Mon Amour is a French made film that touches on the devastation of the nuclear bomb drops in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While the movie itself seems to be mainly centered around a couple who cannot be together due to extenuating circumstances and their own inner demons, it is also direct commentary on how Japan remembered the bombings, and how different it is from the perspective of the rest of the world.

The first ten minutes of the film are composed of an almost poetry-like sequence of shots of Hiroshima before and after the bombs paired together with the two main character’s voice overs. The characters, a French woman, and a Japanese man, are in bed together in a loving embrace. The opening shot features ash falling onto their naked bodies, which we can infer mimics the death ash that fell onto Hiroshima after the atomic bomb’s detonation. This frame cross fades into nearly the same image of the naked couple, but the ash is gone from their bedroom.

The woman is stating that she knows all about what happened in Hiroshima, from having seen the newsreels that aired after the bombs had been dropped. The man argues that she has no idea what really happened. She states that in the newsreels she viewed, bugs were already crawling up through the debris and dirt on the second day and that flowers were growing all over Hiroshima just a few days after the bomb had been dropped. This voiceover is paired with the footage of a young boy being treated for burns and lesions on his skin, the exact opposite of new life springing forth from the ashes. The obvious pain that the boy is enduring is starkly contrasted to how the French woman describes all the different kinds of flowers that began blooming after the bombs had been dropped.

The Hiroshima that exists in the French woman’s mind is completely different from the Japanese man’s. This speaks to the overall theme of the movie, that collective and individual memories, as well as one’s identity can be corrupted. That the human brain is not a perfect organ and at times, it can even be our worst enemy. The French woman protests that she has seen Hiroshima. She had been to its museums, she knew how it had been over ten-thousand degrees in Peace Square at the time of detonation, and she had seen the films that had been made about the devastation. Her partner states over and over during this intro sequence that, ‘You saw nothing in Hiroshima. Nothing.’ Her experience of the disaster when compared to his is hollow, a clever way of illustrating how two people can think of the same event so differently.

Even if the trend of filmmaking has changed, shifting from film noir and melodrama to the blockbuster and action movies, social commentary still persists throughout the media. As the world around us changes and moves forward (be it for better or worse), so does the real-life content that directors and screenwriters are inspired by. Seeing politically and socially charged movies, whether they are extremely subtle or right up in your face, helps us both cope with world events and immortalize what occurred. As if to say, ‘We were here. We saw what took place. This is how we remember it.’

#abraham polonsky #force of evil #the defiant ones #hiroshima mon amour

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thevividgreenmoss · 5 years ago

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“Time,” wrote the Byzantine princess Anna Komnene in the introduction to The Alexiad, “in its irresistible and ceaseless flow carries along on its flood all created things, and drowns them in the depths of obscurity . . . But the tale of history forms a very strong bulwark against the stream of time, and to some extent checks its irresistible flow.” Frank Sheeran is such a self-styled bulwark. He is like a character in a DeLillo novel, who willfully takes an active role in the shaping of history, attempting to divert the indefatigable cascading of time.

Even more than the mob, or the Teamsters leaders, or RFK’s crusades against both, time is nemesis in The Irishman. When Sheeran is shepherded to his first face-to-face with Hoffa, he’s advised to never keep him waiting. Because for Jimmy Hoffa, we’re told, “time is of the essence.” And, fitting the theme, The Irishman develops a theory that Hoffa’s fatal break with the ranks of mafioso control resulted, in part, from Teamster-associated wiseguy Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano (Stephen Graham) arriving late to a sit-down. Elsewhere in the film, new characters are introduced with onscreen titles, providing not just their names and affiliations, but how and when they’ll meet their (typically grisly) ends. The film itself attempts to roll back the tides of time by employing much-much-publicized digital de-aging techniques to believably depict De Niro, Pesci, and Pacino with period-appropriate skin-matting across The Irishman’s full historical sweep. While initial scenes of De Niro (and Pesci especially) in early middle age feel eerily uncanny, rendering them somewhere between Playstation 3 characters and da Vinci’s grotesques, the eye quickly adjusts. And the performances—from De Niro’s laconic affability to Pesci’s restrained menace to Pacino’s high-wire Hoffa—more than cover for any digital deficit. (One might gamely argue that the inability of digital effects to sufficiently cover for the casts’ telltale markers of age only further serves The Irishman’s themes of inevitability.)

Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker, his editor and colleague for half-a-century, adopt a shaggy, twisty structure. Flashbacks nest within flashbacks, weaving plots and incidents together en route to an extended, breathlessly tense centerpiece, which unfolds without the cathartic violence and rock ’n’ roll jukebox needle drops one might expect. On the whole, The Irishman doesn’t adhere to the ferocious propulsion of precedents in Scorsese’s gangster cinema canon (Mean Streets, Goodfellas, Casino, etc.). A few sumptuous sequences shot in super slo-mo (a technique exploited to excess in The Wolf of Wall Street) feel utterly out of place, as if the film were intermittently trying to reassert its status as a Martin Scorsese Picture. The Irishman is it at its best when it feels pallid and meandering. In this register, it seems to cut deliberately against its director’s crime film classics. Where, for example, the well-connected mobsters in Goodfellas treat a prison stint like a private resort vacation, The Irishman’s incarceration scenes are given over to slumped men with rotten teeth and diseased colons. The opulence of organized crime is nowhere to be found in The Irishman, replaced by a slogging ugliness that is intermittently enlivened by some raucous party scenes or images of De Niro gulping mucky chili dogs.

This wooly, low-key quality snaps into focus in The Irishman’s last act, which follows Sheeran’s long shamble toward death. Many of Scorsese’s protagonists are, in turn, humbled. Goodfellas’s Henry Hill is shuffled into Witness Protection, forced to live out the rest of his life “like a schnook.” Casino’s Ace Rothstein goes from running a major resort-hotel to running a modest sports book. The Wolf of Wall Street’s Jordan Belfort is busted, and reduced to shilling his story in motivational speeches for conference rooms full of sad-eyed Australians. Frank Sheeran faces no such stark chastening. Absent any redeeming moral lesson, and capable of only faintly apprehending the full breadth of horror he has visited on those closest to him, Sheeran’s fate proves even more undignified.

#*#essays

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didanawisgi · 6 years ago

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“For those of you living in free states, here is a glimpse of the living hell endured by those residing in blue states.

When the clock strikes midnight Tuesday morning, anyone in New Jersey who owns a magazine capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition is officially in possession of illegal contraband and is deemed a fourth-degree felon. Unlike previous magazine bans, this one retroactively bans people from even owningsuch magazines in their homes, even though they had been purchased legally. At the same time, the most violent criminal aliens will be actively shielded from deportation by state officials, against federal law. The inmates are running the asylum, while the law-abiding citizens and federal law enforcement are treated like criminals.

While the courts create insane rights for violent criminal aliens, they refuse to recognize the most unambiguous right to bear arms or the constitutional prohibition on ex post facto laws. New Jersey has become a sanctuary to the most dangerous criminal aliens and gangs, many of whom engage in gun trafficking, but peaceful citizens are stripped of the right to self-defense and treated like criminals.

Governor Phil Murphy signed the bill into law in June, giving residents 180 days to discard their magazines of higher capacity than 10, permanently modify them, or transfer them to someone who is legally able to possess them. The ban includes everyone except active-duty military and retired police officers under certain circumstances. Veterans are not excluded at all.

Late last week, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, ruled that the Second Amendment is not a real right subject to strict scrutiny against its regulation. As such, it ruled that the desire to stop gun violence is enough reason to retroactively ban all common magazines in use for basic self-defense and recreation.

The only right the courts will not recognize

Since the Heller ruling, five circuit courts have essentially abolished the ruling by allowing states to ban common weapons, common magazines, and any ability to carry any firearms outside the home. Until now, the Supreme Court, led by the clever obfuscator Chief Justice John Roberts, has refused to overturn these cases. Justice Thomas complained that the lower courts were “resisting this Court’s decisions in Heller and McDonald and are failing to protect the Second Amendment to the same extent that they protect other constitutional rights.”

The New Jersey law is more draconian than anything enacted so far because it bans the passive presence in one’s own home of an item that has been legal until now. Aside from running completely afoul of the Second Amendment, this law violates Art. I Sec. 10, which bars states from enacted ex post facto laws. The Supreme Court (Calder v. Bull, 1798) defines ex post facto as a law that “makes an action done before the passing of the law, and which was innocent when done, criminal; and punishes such action.” Crazily, with the courts commandeering every political issue from the political branches of government, granting citizens relief from ex post facto laws was the quintessential exercise of judicial review that Hamilton envisioned judges would use.

These same liberal judges are subjecting governmental actions against illegal immigrants to strict scrutiny in order to protect newly concocted rights, yet they refuse to use this standard against regulations on the most foundational and unambiguous right of self-defense. As Judge Stephanos Bibas, a Trump appointee, noted in his dissent, “Though the majority purports to use intermediate scrutiny, it actually recreates the rational-basis test forbidden by Heller.” In fact, the Heller opinion explicitly barred judges from using any “interest-balancing approach.”

Sadly, both in gun and immigration cases, the Supreme Court is callously allowing lower courts to violate settled law.

Just to illustrate the reckless nature of this law, the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs, a pro-gun group that is fighting the law in court, observes that there is already a state law prohibiting the transfer or disposal of high capacity magazines, thereby placing citizens in a catch-22.

The law is the law … except for illegal aliens

Now, juxtapose this fascist law and absurd court ruling to New Jersey’s other recent policy making the state a sanctuary for criminal alien transnational crime syndicates, gangbangers, and drug cartels. Last Thursday, N.J. Attorney General Gurbir Grewal issued a directive banning law enforcement from, among other things, participating “in civil immigration enforcement operations conducted by ICE” and providing “ICE with access to state or local law enforcement resources, including equipment, office space, databases, or property, unless those resources are readily available to the public.”

Even those illegals detained by local law enforcement “with violent or serious offenses – such as murder, rape, arson, assault, bias crimes, and domestic violence offenses,” may only be held for ICE until 11:59 pm of that day!

What are the results? The state has become a magnet for some of the worst transnational gangsters and drug traffickers who commit the most heinous crimes imaginable, in addition to poisoning thousands in the state with deadly substances. Just over the weekend, ICE completed an operation resulting in the arrest of 105 illegals, of which 80 percent “had prior criminal convictions and/or pending criminal charges.” The charges included child prostitution, domestic violence, drug trafficking, firearms charges, assault and robbery – and also included violent gang members.

Several of the individuals were previously released by sanctuary counties that refused to honor detainers. A number of others living in the state will now be set free unless ICE gets to them first.

And what about the drug crisis? Roughly 3,000 people are dying every year in New Jersey due to drug overdoses. And no, this is not a prescription problem. Prescriptions have plummeted to the lowest levels in recent memory nationwide and particularly in New Jersey, yet deaths from illicit drugs brought in by illegal alien traffickers have skyrocketed. Just 12 percent of the deaths in 2017 were attributed to oxy or morphine, and as I’ve noted before, most of those people are mixing them with illicit drugs. New Jersey is one of the fastest-growing crisis states, yet the same people who decry the crisis and blame it on doctors and pain patients are actively shielding the very criminal alien networks truly responsible for it.

Let’s not forget that these are the very sorts of people that are convicted for drug trafficking in the federal system, but often committed even worse crimes – and would be released early under the First Step Act.But sanctuary cities are already releasing them, and they go on to commit violence in other states.

Just last month, Luis Rodrigo Perez, an illegal who was apprehended by Middlesex County, New Jersey, for domestic violence was released in defiance of an ICE detainer. He went on to commit a triple homicide in Missouri.

Todd Lyons, acting Field Office Director of Boston’s ICE office, told me in an exclusive interview that he is particularly concerned about the effect of sanctuary states on one another, exacerbating each other’s problems and encouraging criminal aliens to move from one to another. “When other states, especially in the northeast, have a sanctuary police where violent and egregious offenders are released, it creates a problem for states like Massachusetts, where other sanctuary jurisdictions do not factor in criminal history. So, Massachusetts could have an illegal alien arrested for no valid driver’s license released because of the lack of coordination, yet the same alien may have a violent criminal history in a state like New Jersey or New York.”

These liberal sanctuary politicians release real, violent gun felons and are weak on crime but then take away the right of peaceful people to arm themselves, not only on the streets, an act clearly protected by the Second Amendment, but even in their homes, at a time when they need their right to self-defense the most.”

#controversy #debate #second amendment #freedom #law #law enforcement #bill of rights #immigrants #new jersey #police state #civil disobedience #violent crime #gun control #politics

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if-you-fan-a-fire · 4 years ago

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“Gang ‘Vermin’ Warned From City,” Border Cities Star. March 4, 1931. Page 03. ---- Prison For R. Formagin ---- 2 Years at Portsmouth For Hi-Jacking In Memorial Park ---- Same for Jail Break --- Magistrate Flays Others Who Turned King’s Evidence ---- An emphatic warning to gangsters and racketeers to give Windsor a wide berth, was sounded in police court today, when Magistrate Brodie was sentencing Roy Formagin, 22, to two years in the penitentiary on each of two charges, one of robbery with violence and the other with breaking jail. The sentences will run concurrently.

BEATEN AND ROBBED The charge against Formagin was the outgrowth of a liquor hi-jacking incident that occurred in Memorial Park on November 17 of last year, when Arsene Emery, Belle River, was severely beaten and robbed of $75 and 14 cases of liquor. Emery’s jaw was fractured in two places. Originally, police alleged, five others were involved in the ffair. They are Earl Lauzon, Peter Myer, Eugene Natais, Albert Small, and Alex Schotte. Charges against Lauzon and Myer were dropped at a previous hearing. The charges against Nantais and Small were withdrawn today by Louis St. Pierre, assistant crown attorney. Nantais and Small turned King’s evidence. Schotte has never been apprehended.

DENOUNCED BY MAGISTRATE Although Nantais and Small were given their freedom, Magistrate Brodie was particularly bitter in his denunciation of them.

‘You are what might be termed obnoxious human vermin,’ he told the men.

‘This is a class of crime that must be repressed,’ said Magistrate Brodie in passing sentence on Formagin. ‘It is very prevalent in Detroit, and the police there are meeting with considerable difficulty in stamping it out. If circumstances were different, that is, if I did not feel that you were a tool in the hands of others, I would have imposed the maximum sentence and also might have sentenced you to be lashed.’

NOT THE LEADER ‘However, I feel that you are no worse than the others, more particularly the leader of the expedition who is now a fugitive from justice. You have permitted yourself to associate with gangs of the worst type. It is unfortunate that the others cannot be brought to trial. I feel that although you have had less to do with the affair than the others, that an example should be made of you. You are sentenced to serve two years in the Portsmouth penitentiary.’’

‘Thank you, Your Honor,’ Formgain said.

Magistrate Brodie then asked the prisoner if he desired to be tried by him, or by a judge and jury, on a charge of escaping from the Hamilton jail on September 11 of last year.

‘I want to be tried by you, Your Honor,’ Formagin asserted.

MUST SERVE OLD SENTENCE ‘Then you are sentenced to two years on this charge also. The sentence will run concurrently with the other one. I want you to realize, however, that you are not escaping with a two-year term. At the conclusion of your term, you must complete the unexpired portion of the 18-months’ sentence you drew in Hamilton for the thief of an automobile.’

Louis J. Brody appeared in Formagin’s behalf. [AL: Formagin had never been in Kingston Penitentiary before. He was convict #2131, worked in the yard, and was confined in the Prison of Isolation section of the prison. He was considered an agitator, and was an active supporter of the 1932 riot in October. He was released to provincial custody in December 1932.]

#windsor #hamilton #armed robbery #robbery with violence #liquor hold up #criminal gang #jailbreaker #escape from jail #barton jail #sentenced to the penitentiary #kingston penitentiary #great depression in canada #crime and punishment in canada #history of crime and punishment in canada

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divine-valley · 7 years ago

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Voices of the Damned

(Hey this is just some random thing with an OC I made a looong time ago and was weirdly inspired. I like Batman a lot but not sure I’ll make anything out of this or continue it.)

“Whelp…it’s down there. Think I’ll be able to get it.”

“It? It’s not an it! It’s my body yeah can’t just call me it!”

“Seems like a it situation. How come it hasn’t floated up yet?”

“I’m wedged between something, look you helping me or not?!”

Looking unfazed at the spirit Ayumu gave a small shrug as he looked at the murky water of the channel. Wouldn’t be his first dip in there but he wasn’t up for another ear infection. The body of a petty low-level gangster, usually he wouldn’t be associating with his type but Jimbo here wasn’t easing up on the annoyance it was better to just get this over with. Peeling off his shirt first and started pulling at his sneakers when there was a shout.

“What are you doing?!”

“Go away Martha, I’m working.” Not bothering to even look in her direction he just wanted this night to end.

Here she was again the thorn in his side, keeping a blank expression he didn’t flinch when Martha appeared only inches from his face. Looking distraught as always she gestured to the river and his discarded clothing.

“You are not going in there to-to fish out a corpse.”

“It’s honestly not the first time I’ve done this, this would be like my 7th time.”

She cringed at that information but again he didn’t react, the fear over dead bodies had been lost on him long ago. “Look, Martha, I have class in the morning and if I have to suffer another night of Jimbo here wailing in my ear I might lose it.”

Martha’s gaze fell upon the gangster who looked put off by her sudden appearance. Turning back to him Martha gave him a pleading look her cold hands reaching out for his own but he was quick to move them away. “Why not use your cellular phone? You can tell the police and tell them where the body is.”

“My cellular phone can be tracked, Martha.” He replied keeping his tone neutral but considered the idea of calling. Pulling his clothes back on he walked down several blocks, the streets empty this time of night when he finally found a payphone. Depositing a few quarters he dialed 911 and squeezed his nose. “Yeeees hello? There’s a dead body in the canal by Greenridge Street.” He spoke in a nasally voice. “James Hicks he was shot in the head by a man named Harold Taylor. Kay bye.” Hanging up he started wiping his prints off and began walking home.

“Woah, woah! That it?! That’s how you’re helpin me?” Jimbo squawked as he flew after Ayumu who nodded his head, the teen putting on his headphones and started scrolling through his phone’s music.

“Yeah, your death will be all over the news, Taylor will be apprehended he kept the murder weapon and the bullet is in your brain still. It’s solved, maybe even Batman will show up.” He couldn’t help but glance in Martha’s direction. “I helped you so leave me alone now.”

Jimbo doesn’t reply, he doesn’t even utter a thank you, he vanished into the night probably back to where his body was to see the cops arrive for it. Staring at the empty spot for a moment Ayumu continued on his way still deciding on his music choice while Martha hovered behind him.

“Where’s Tommy?”

“With Bruce…”

“Hm, so you came to bother me. No rousing speech of morality from the good doctor tonight.”

“I came because Ray told me you were going to dive for bodies! Ayumu you are a 15-year old boy wandering around in the dead of night! Something can happen to you! What if someone saw or you were approached by someone dangerous.”

Finally looking up from the glow of his screen the light enhanced the bags under his eyes his mouth was a thin line now. “I’m not scared of the living Martha. I’ve been doing this long before you ever came into the picture. Don’t mother me.”

“Ayumu..."

“Go back to Bruce, I’m tired, I have to be up in four hours. Goodnight.”

Turning his back to her, he made his selection and increased it to full volume as he walked through the streets ignoring the figures that passed him by. Climbing the fire escape to his room he made sure to be quiet unsure if his guardians were still awake or in a drunken stupor. Closing the window and locking it he sighed heavily dropping onto the bed closing his eyes.

“You told her where I was going.” He mumbled keeping them shut even as a figure towered over him with a snicker.

“I didn’t want to have to deal with her nagging sorry. So how’d it look? Bloated up and soggy?”

“Didn’t see it this time, called the cops.”

Ray made a tutting noise, “You’re getting lazy. Well, that bozo is out of the way now. Get some z's. I’ll keep them all away for the night.” A freezing cold hand runs through his hair and Ayumu can feel his body finally start to relax.

“Thanks, Ray…” He whispered before he drifted off to sleep making sure his music would play for the rest of the night.

He needed something to drown out the voices of the damned.

#how to tag this?#my oc #random writing #batman #i guess???

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sunny760world · 4 years ago

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ESCAPE TO THE WEST

ESCAPE TO THE WEST A TRUE ESCAPE STORY

Cold War Era – The Most Legendary & Electrifying True Escape Story of the 80’s

Cold War | True Escape Story | Czech Republic | Extreme Zip lining | ESCAPE TO THE WEST

Czechoslovakia – 1985

Daniel Pohl, a 19 year old science minded railway tech graduate, was looking for answers to life outside the box. In the totalitarian regime where he lived and grew up. He dares to start Yoga sessions, religious discussions, and a raw food movement in his home town of Litomysl. Within that political environment, such new concepts were viewed as undesirable and contradicting to the leaders of the contemporary forced fed controlled dogma. In the eyes of the Communist establishment, Daniel became a dangerous and rebellious spiritual gangster. Website: www.extremezipliner.com In his home life, Daniel's parents had steered clear of political issues because Daniel’s father had previously been in prison for punching out a Communist informant.

During 1985, in a local tavern, he met Mr. Stritecky, an older man, who was sort of a recluse who had formally been both a Catholic priest and a professor at Charles University in Prague. Mr. Stritecky, who in his 50’s, was falsely accused of supplying arms to the opposition and for the next 20 years was “assigned” into the Uranium mines as a political prisoner.

Daniel befriends Stritecky and makes sure that the priest has a steady supply of beer. In secrecy, Professor Stritecky teaches Daniel christian biblical scriptures, English, Latin and the politically incorrect version of local political science.

The Law of Attraction works for Daniel because around that time in his favorite martial arts class, Daniel meets Marcus, a young, but eccentric “mad scientist” making his living as a lumberjack. At that time, Marcus is trying to crack the mystery of Free Energy with his gravity conversion experiments which were very similar to the water implosion experiments in Austria done by Viktor Schauberger before and during the second world war.

Daniel and Marcus become friends, agree on political issues, but mainly on sharing the same goals they each had for themselves and for their loved ones. The heart of their goals is TO BE FREE, even if it would mean breaking out of their beloved country.

The whole country and their very lives existed within a very strictly enforced militarized zone. They were indeed surrounded by an impenetrable Iron Curtain reinforced with barbed wire and in some places with land mines. These inhuman conditions, forced upon all the citizens, had already cost the lives of hundreds of those that were seeking freedom.

Live free or die! Some are ready to take the risk, but by the mid '80's, very few were willing to chance getting shot on the razor coiled barbed wire.

Daniel and Marcus decide to go about it in the least risky way possible, so they set off for Hungary. From there to somehow slip into Yugoslavia. From there the plan would be to sneak through the more lightly patrolled border areas into Austria. The two young men did not want to approach their escape to freedom recklessly. Both agree that they must plan a sensible strategy, understanding all the associated risks and bring about calculated precision and ultimate success.

As we all know, such are the dreams of both mice and men.

On their first attempt, they are betrayed and apprehended on the Slovak/Hungarian border. Now, in the hands of the authorities, they are grilled by the Secret Police for 48 hours and then sent back to their homes after their passports are confiscated.

Now what? No money, no passports and problems on the horizon because of the attention of their recent failure.

Should they join the Communist party to remove certain pressures as was suggested by friends and “play the game”, or actually stick to their grand goal of ultimate escape and freedom?

Of course, they agreed there would be no quitting. However to get out now, under the circumstance of Daniel’s impending mandatory military duty, they must double their effort and planning and initiate a new level of creativity.

Through one of Daniel’s mutual acquaintances, there was a chance to bribe a guard that was patrolling the Czech/West German border. Funds were needed to be raised by any means possible. Opportunities like that are zero to none so the next logical thing Daniel, and Marcus could think of was to raise the money by collecting and selling scrap metal.

East Europeans are not exactly known for half measures, that’s why it was decided to try an locate a buried WW2 German Tiger tank that was said to have sunk into the marshlands in the nearby forest.

Their thoughts began to take odd and maybe even crazy detours:

1st Option: Scrap the tank in place and sell the available metal. 2nd Option: Dig it out and leave it in one piece, then fix it if possible. Then crank it up and drive it home and then drive it back to Germany. This massive piece of hardware could penetrate the border no matter what stands in the way was their belief. Who knows, a stunt like this might even earn them a warm welcome from the old timers. The plan was to do it during Oktoberfest.

The repeated searches for the tank fail (thank God), so they resort to alternative solutions. They try to build a hot air and Helium balloon. They fail! They try to build a homemade mini submarine and get to Austria through the Danube River. They fail! They try to acquire illegal hand gliders. They fail again and again, and the time is ticking away.

Where others spirits would have been hopelessly crushed, these two believed that a way out is possible and refuse to give up! Why? The possibility of Freedom.

Their martial arts instructor Jiri Kurz, manages to escape to Austria by sneaking out through the mountains. Hopes are up again, however and unfortunately thanks to Jiri's escape, the Karate Club is monitored closely by the Government.

In the midst of all this, Daniel also lives a life of a beers and parties, a total “train wreck”. This is often the case in a restrictive totalitarian society. Escape your life, even if only for a few hours down at the local pub.

During this time Daniel finds himself in a relationship with pretty girl named Claire. Claire is the daughter of a female protestant minister in the same town. Why should anything in life be uncomplicated!

Instead of lying low, Daniel does his first act of open rebellion against the establishment. He draws more attention to himself by taking Claire to the U.S. Embassy in Prague. He wanted her to see a commemorative exhibit for the 35th anniversary of the U.S. Army liberating the Southern & Western Part of Czechoslovakia.

The U.S. Embassy was, of course, monitored by the Secret Police, and any Czech citizen who sets foot on American soil only means inviting problems. Now, Daniel is labeled as being a U.S. sympathizer and the Communists are convinced that there is no hope for Daniel and that it’s time to pull the plug on him.

During March 1986, after returning from a fruitless visit with a psychic and then drinking the whole night, Marcus gets a revelation that will soon be the talk of Communists and Freedom Seekers alike.

Power lines!!! There has to be one going out of the country. This was absolutely the most insane escape idea that they had thus far conceived. At first they rejected this idea, but as the days rolled on and the beers embolden their thought processes, they massaged the idea into a viable exit strategy.

A new series of planning, testing and trials began. Each step that they would take is met with some kind of obstacle or dangerous challenge. Just locating the right power line alone was a nightmare. There were no guide lines, no procedures and no blueprints to follow for the structures, specifications nor any functional information that could help them with a plan.

How could two people infiltrate the militarized zone without getting shot? How would one build the line pulley sleds properly? How to avoid getting electrocuted by the high voltage current? There were dozens of similar related questions and no one to ask. The only help that they had were each other. They could only make assumptions and try to figure out the best possible procedures for their needs.

Building the first 2 pulleys took them approximately a month. All the work was done in secrecy in Marcus’s basement; however from the idea to the execution of escape, it took a full 6 months. During that time, they rebuild the pulleys twice to modify them properly for the ride. By the way, the escape pulleys and sleds are on display at the Escape Museum at Checkpoint Charlie in present day Germany.

In this particular escape scenario, Daniel and Marcus engaged in 3 failed attempts, miraculously without the loss of life, injuries or capture.

Their years of rigorous exercise, Communist Boy Scout survival training and rough Karate school paid off. They would re-group and try again. Re-group and go at it again. The only power line that is going out of the country is the biggest, a 50 meter high, 380 000 Volt monster coming out of a nuclear power plant.

Several major setbacks occur prior to and during the last attempt. Near exposure of their plans in Litomysl, being followed by the police, face to face with border patrol guards, chased by the military, almost getting shot, food and water shortages and then came the scariest challenge of all:

Zip lining right above the border guard’s heads, traveling hand over hand on their home made pulleys just inches under the 380,000 volt carrier wire during the worst lightning storm in recent memory.

July 19. 1986 Daniel and Marcus made history. At around 5 am, they set their feet on Austrian soil, and their escape became legendary.

Their amazing story stole the headlines of the major European media and they became instant sensations with legions of fans. Daniel remained for a time in Austria as a refugee and 2 years later he received the permit to enter The United States of America as a political refugee.

Since 1987, Daniel's zip lining pulley is hanging in the museum and can be seen today in Berlin, Germany.

Please follow the links below to purchase the rest of the story for only $8.00. This will be immediately available to download on your computer. Read the story and be ahead of the movie! The whole story includes 29 action packed, personal and inspirational Chapters.

#ESCAPE TO THE WEST #Extreme Zip lining #Czech Republic #True Escape Story #cold war

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thisdaynews · 5 years ago

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JUST IN:Presidency, Nigerians Blame Banks For Negligence As Robbers Visit Homes With POS Machines

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/just-inpresidency-nigerians-blame-banks-for-negligence-as-robbers-visit-homes-with-pos-machines/

JUST IN:Presidency, Nigerians Blame Banks For Negligence As Robbers Visit Homes With POS Machines

Blame CBN, Not Banks – Association of Senior Staff of Banks, Insurance and Financial Institutions (ASSBIFI) President

Temidayo Akinsuyi, Lagos

Nigerians on Monday said banks were to blame for the rise in the use of Point of Sale (PoS) terminals by robbers to dispossess people of their money – a trend that has been going on for a while without a solution yet in sight.

Recently, there have been reported cases of robbers snatching people’s Automated Teller Machine (ATM) cards to withdraw money, using PoS device to accomplish their criminal acts.

The process is usually the same. The robbers break into a house at night or any time of the day. And with guns held to their heads, victims are ordered to furnish their ATM cards as well as disclose their pin numbers, which are then confirmed with a PoS device before the cards are taken away. The robbers then proceed to withdraw as much cash as possible before daybreak when the incident is reported and cash withdrawal stopped.

This trend is also common in robbery in mass transit buses popularly called ‘one chance’ where unsuspecting commuters are held hostage, ordered to surrender their ATM cards and disclose their personal identification number (PIN) – with the PoS terminal to authenticate the PIN – before heading to a convenient ATM terminal and empty the victims’ bank accounts.

During the latest robbery incidents in parts of Lagos and Ogun states as a result of the ongoing lockdown, a victim, Adeleke Adesola, said robbers who visited his home, after collecting his phone, forced him to surrender his three ATM cards and their pin numbers at gunpoint.

He said: “They pointed a gun to my head and asked me to give them the pins to my ATM cards. They came with a PoS machine and slotted in the ATM cards to verify if the pins were correct.

“After they left, I was able to reach out to two of my banks to block my accounts. They asked me some questions about my accounts which I answered and they blocked the accounts. The robbers transferred N31, 000 from my account.”

Another tenant, Olumide Abimbola, stated that the gangsters robbed him and his wife of two phones and N30,000, adding that they transferred the N10,000 in his bank account.

Speaking on the issue, Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN), Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC), said banks should be held responsible if robbers could go about dispossessing people of their hard-earned money through use of PoS terminals.

“I think the banks will have some responsibilities for it, in the sense that there has to be some qualifications for which such transfers are made. There must be a system for which that sort of thing can be stopped. This electronic banking has become an Achilles heel of the Nigerian financial system because it is being abused rampantly. But I think the banks should do more about it. Not only that, the police should be more vigilant.”

Yinka Odumakin, National Publicity Secretary of Afenifere, said banks deserved blame as they ought to have put measures in place to checkmate criminal activities.

“The banks should have put in measures to prevent this kind of situation from happening. The banks bear some blame owing to negligence in this regard. But more importantly, we should know that Nigeria is the world secretariat of poverty. You can’t just lock people down at home and not expect this kind of things. We are not a serious country.”

Hon. Kamal Ayinde Bayewu, fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria and former senatorial aspirant in Lagos, also said a bank could be held liable for the usage of PoS by robbers if it failed to do its Know Your Customer (KYC) properly before issuing out the machine to customers.

He also said anyone who perpetrated such criminal acts could be traced by security agents based on information provided by the clients who were issued the PoS.

“It is very simple. It is just to show that that person using that PoS is traceable. So, it is the security officials that should step up their game. Any customer given a PoS is traceable because it must have been attached to somebody and that person must give account of how money gets into his own account, knowing full well that the person who transferred that money with his own card is known and traceable. It is easy to get these PoS robbers.

“If you go to a bank and you inform them you buy and sell, the bank will do its Know Your Customer (KYC) to confirm the information given by the customer, and then issue the PoS. That is why I said the owner is traceable. The bank will only be negligent if they are unable to do their KYC well.

“Any bank that fails to do its KYC well before issuing PoS to a customer is negligent and, therefore, liable. Before you issue out PoS, you must know the person and where his business is taking place.

“I don’t even expect that PoS will be issued to an individual. PoS is a business equipment, issued to a business enterprise. What will any individual without a business need a PoS for? So, if the banks really want to get the enterprise that the PoS is issued to, they will get him easily.

“It is like issuing a cheque. If you issue a cheque, it is traceable, especially when it is crossed. Armed robbers can do anything but I believe security agencies can apprehend them because it is traceable. If a bank fails to do its KYC well, then it is liable and should pay those who have been robbed.”

Monday Ubani, former second Vice-President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), on his part described the development as shocking, saying banks should put in more stringent measures before issuing out PoS machines.

“It is very shocking and I think banks should put in more stringent measures to checkmate that. If armed robbers are going about collecting money from people with PoS, what that means is that those in charge in the banking system are the ones to be blamed.

“It means no proper measure is put in place to discover fraud and such bare-faced robbery by people who are users of the PoS. Also, anyone caught en��gaging in such acts should be severely punished so as to serve as a deterrent to others,” he said.

However, Kola Ologbondiyan, National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), argued that banks could not be blamed if a customer applied for a PoS machine and then converted it into criminal use. He however, said banks could be blamed if it failed to act on the complaints by customers who are robbed with the PoS machines.

“I don’t think banks should be blamed. People go to register business names and, in the process, they demand for use of PoS. So, if they now convert the PoS to carry out nefarious activities, you can’t hold the banks responsible. Except in situations where customers go to the banks to report that PoS was used to rob them and the banks refuse to take action. That is when the banks can be blamed,” he said.

Adeniyi Akintola, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), said the use of PoS to rob is one of the disadvantages of internet banking, which has discouraged a lot of Nigerians from embracing the cashless policy of the Federal Government.

“Of course, that is one of the drawbacks of technology and that is why a large number of Nigerians have refused to key into internet banking.

“In fact, many Nigerians who are into internet banking are the elite, the ordinary man on the street doesn’t believe in this ATM or PoS thing. So, many people still keep their monies at home or give it to thrift collectors,” he said.

When contacted, Comrade Oyinkan Olasanoye, President, Association of Senior Staff of Banks, Insurance and Financial Institutions (ASSBIFI), said banks could not be blamed for the usage of PoS by robbers as the issuance of the machine is part of the cashless policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

According to Olasanoye, “One, because of the unemployment level in the country, there was the introduction of agents that can transact business on behalf of the banks.

“Two, there are so many business organisations, even small medium enterprises (SMEs), that are permitted to have PoS. For any shopping mall that you can buy things from, because of the cashless policy of the Federal Government, they are entitled to have PoS.

How these machines get into the hands of criminals is what I don’t know. Maybe the PoS are stolen from these companies, maybe these PoS are being used by fraudulent persons – it is what should be investigated.

“If you have a shopping mall and you apply to your bank that they should give you PoS, it will be given to you, which means people coming to your mall have a right to use their card instead of paying you cash. That is part of the cashless policy that the Central Bank of Nigeria introduced.

“It is not the banks that we should hold responsible. Yes, the banks can try to trace which banks the money was transferred to and the account it was withdrawn from, but PoS is available for all business owners that applied for it. It is part of the Federal Government’s cashless policy and the banks are not responsible for that.”

https://www.independent.ng/banks-get-knocks-over-use-of-pos-terminal-by-robbers/

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abujaihs-blog · 5 years ago

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Why survival is becoming a luxury in the slums of Ajegunle

Walking down a popular street in Ajegunle on a cloudy Monday evening, I saw young boys between 15 to 18 years, muttering incantations and behaving awkwardly on the street in a broad day light. I thought they were mentally deranged, but was baffled when some people spoke in hushed voices that they were cultists. Cultists! I screamed, considering their age. Moreover, these innocent-looking teenagers who are supposed to be in school or probably at home running errands are now on the streets to cause havoc. From rape, stealing, gangsterism, touting, all manners of assaults, to any kind of crime you can imagine, these fellows are very vulnerable. The worse is that they are unleashing themselves in Ajegunle that is already notorious for its ghettos and high crime rate associated with slummy areas. Worried about safety of lives in the slum, I made efforts to understand how residents live with such hooligans in their midst. Mama Chiboy, a middle-aged woman who runs a local bar in the area, frowned at my inquest, fearing that I would walk into trouble. But on noticing my genuine concern, she opened up. “My brother, it is not easy here. We cannot tell all we see inside this Ajegunle. Everybody wants to be noticed, fight for superiority and the worst is that the children have taken to the streets and yet they said they are the leaders of tomorrow; which tomorrow”? She asked.

She is not worried about the many brothels that harbor prostitutes, but about how teenage girls who are still under the roof of their parents sleep around with men even without protection. “If you hear the meager amount these men pay to sleep with these girls, you will understand the level of sufferings that is driving them into prostitution. Some even sleep with thugs who in turn pay back by molesting their rivals or former boyfriends”, she explained further. Aside that, the level of school drop-outs is alarming in Ajegunle as many take to touting, commercial bus driving or conducting, car wash and all manners of menial jobs. But those who have guts do robbery, high level thugs for politicians, tax agents among others. The sad thing about Ajegungle is that the area, which was once famous for breeding creative talents, sports men and women, celebrities among others now breeds criminals. What happened, if one may ask? The irony is that while the city breeds talents, the talents leave to develop other areas in Lagos or Nigeria, once they rise to fame. “We no longer have football stars coming from here like before because all the stars that started here have all left to Lekki, making those living to feel dejected. What is wrong in developing standard stadium here, football academy, movie village, art gallery, among others to encourage youths here to use their energy positively”, an aggrieved resident lamented. Tracing the history of the area, the man explained that people in Ajegunle should be living in affluence because the area was supposed to serve as residence for the low cadre workers in the old Nigerian Ports Authority. If the low cadre NPA staff had lived here since then, the man argued that they would have grown in position by now and at least, buy and redevelop the old houses they lived in before moving to Lekki and Ajah. Of course, insecurity and neglect by government, especially lack of social infrastructure have driven some businesses that would have grown in the area to safer areas. Same businesses also employ people from Ajegunle and pay them peanuts.

“Apart from Mobil, there are no good companies in Ajegunle. Those who work in good companies in Apapa do not live in Ajegunle, so how will good money circulate, earning are low here and people resort to self-help in anything they can find to survive”, another resident said. A tell of the poverty level in the slum is the beating of electricity company staff who try to cut the source of light to some houses, and fight by landlords to collect their monthly N3000 to N5000 rent, common scenarios that make one think twice on establishing business or living in the area. In some extreme cases, fight of superiority among rival cults, touts and thugs have often led to the burning of houses, cars, business places with the culprits never apprehended till date. So, it is survival of the fittest amid slum madness. However, respite is not in sight as the bad state of roads, poor development and insecurity in the area have worsen in the last 10 years and have seen the exodus of many enterprising people from the area. But one area they don’t move to, according to Emma Orizi, an aggrieved resident, is Apapa because of its proximity to their area. “If I make money, I will move to a place far from here because closeness to your former area reminds you of the sad stories from time to time, especially if you wish to change things but do not have capacity to do so”. Source: By JONATHAN ADEROJU Read the full article

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gywair · 5 years ago

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Hey! I got the honor of being on Historical Hotties. It’s a podcast about researching hot historical figures and ranking them. I was on the episode about crime fighters. Below are my notes and references about Mabel Walker Willebrandt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabel_Walker_Willebrandt

http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/media_detail/2082505810-willebrandt/

https://themobmuseum.org/notable_names/mabel-willebrandt/

https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/willebrandt-mabel-walker-1889-1963

https://www.loc.gov/item/mm82059618/

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-jul-02-me-47028-story.html

http://www.anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.001.0001/anb-9780198606697-e-0600712

https://books.google.com/books?id=CfGHM9KU7aEC&pg=PA736&lpg=PA736&dq=dorothy+rae+willebrandt&source=bl&ots=Ot1Hr5r5jy&sig=ACfU3U1zTmlS6XVkw1QFXoWtYaMSk5dOWA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwia_-fX5KLhAhUELa0KHdrfC3gQ6AEwDXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=dorothy%20rae%20willebrandt&f=false

https://themobmuseum.org/blog/mabel-willebrandt-prolific-prosecutor-of-prohibition-laws/

http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jul/02/local/me-47028

https://sallyjling.org/2011/07/16/mabel-walker-willebrant-fascinating-women-of-prohibition/

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mabel-Walker-Willebrandt

https://books.google.com/books?id=55ctM_Uy6KgC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Mabel Walker Willebrandt

Born May 23rd, 1889

Died April 6th, 1963 at age 73

She was born in Woodsdale, Kansas as Mabel Elizabeth Walker.

Her family were farmers

She spent her early years traveling between prairie towns from Oklahoma to Missouri

Her father David was a local newspaper editor

She used to help him set the type for print

She was expelled from Park College in Parksville (a Presbyterian college), Missouri for being outspoken

She questioned the validity of a “virgin birth”

Reportedly she won the debate

In 1906 she began teaching in Buckley, Michigan

During this time she

Was almost lost in a blizzard

Trapped by a forest fire

Was threatened by a student with a knife

In 1910 she married Arthur Willebrandt, the principal

Together they moved to Phoenix, Arizona while Arthur recovered from tuberculosis

Mabel graduated from Arizona State University in 1911

Around this time she became severely hearing impaired and wore a hearing aid in each ear

She supposedly fixed her hair to hide them.

In 1912, they moved to Los Angeles where Mabel taught school during the day and took law classes at night

In 1916, she graduated from the University of Southern California with a masters in law

While completing her degree, Mabel began pro bono work in local police courts for mostly prostitution cases

She argued 2,000 cases as the city’s first female public defender

Her efforts led to courts permitting testimony from both women and men in these cases

This meant the male clients had to appear in court (in front of the press) as well as the female defenders

She successfully campaigned for the enactment of a revised community property statue at the state level (which involves property rights in marriages)

She was instrumental in getting the police to stop nickelodeon owners from preying on young girls during the “Rosebud Baby Case”

Apparently, the men were taking advantage of young girls during the movies

After graduation, she opened her own practice in downtown Los Angeles with Fred Horowitz (he built the famous hotel Chateau Marmont)

During World War I, she served as head of the Legal Advisory Board for draft cases

John Shepherd, perhaps the only man she really loved, who was killed in World War I.

In 1920, she moved her folks out west to be closer to her

In 1921, at 32, she was recommended by Frank Doherty (her old law professor), Senator Hiram Johnson, and all the judges in Southern California for the position of Assistant Attorney General under President Harding

Making her the highest-ranking women in the US federal government at the time and the first woman to head the Tax Division.

However, part of the issue is that no one wanted the job

It had no political advantage

It was a position that had to enforce unpopular laws

Her duties included overseeing federal taxation, federal prisons, and matters relating to the Volstead Act (the Prohibition Act)

She established the first female federal prison, Alderson federal prison in West Virginia

At the time, female prisons were too full to hold all inmates

If there was not enough space they would be housed with male inmates or otherwise alternatively punished

Sexual exploitation of women in the prison system was very high at the time

The prison was modeled as a boarding school offering classes for work-oriented fields

It had no armed guards or fences

Weirdly, still segregated

Things weren’t all great, however

In her 1929 book, The Inside of Prohibition, she described her problems

The law was too weak to do the job

The man in charge was not up to the task

She was only given volunteers to help make arrests

Things were so bad, one of her early arrests was a group that actually fielded a baseball team called the BOOTLEGGERS

She helped convinced the state department to give her boats and crews to apprehend alcohol coming into the country by boat

Reportedly, she met with the Treasury’s Prohibition unit, the US Coast Guard, and the Customs Service once and weeks later Congress okayed $11 million dollars for speed boats and equipment

She might have been the only person working to enforce prohibition

She said, “At one time it was quite apparent that no real effort was being made to put an end to such open defiance of our laws. Liquor runners operated off Florida practically in the open, in broad daylight, with little or no interference. There for years the prosecuting office and the prohibition agents engaged equally in the game of evasion of responsibility.”

In 1923, she successfully brought down the ‘Big Four of Savannah’

Reportedly the largest bootlegging ring in the US

She brought in George Remus, nicknamed ‘King of the Bootleggers’ and supposedly the inspiration for Jay Gatsby

Mabel came under a lot of trouble at one point for arresting Helen Morgan, a popular singer who had been reportedly duped into running a speakeasy

She regularly made the society magazines as a bit of a villain

She also argued to reform prisons for young offenders

She is credited with starting the prison work programs for male prisons

She started the first record keeping system for federal inmate populations

In 1924, Mabel and her husband Arthur got divorced

They were separated in 1916

Her mother-in-law moved in with Mabel and Arthur but Mabel financially supported the whole family

Reportedly because after putting Arthur through law school, he was unwilling to pay his share of expenses

In 1925, she adopted a two-year-old daughter named Dorothy Rae

Whom she raised with her friends

Feminism, Sexuality, and Politics by Estella B. Freedman

The book mentions that this was a more common practice at the time for career women that wanted a family.

Her parents took over when she was in Washington

Back in Prohibition, however, Mabel prosecuted 48,734 cases between 1924 and 1925, of which resulted in 39,072 convictions

278 cases went to the Supreme Court

She argued 40 of those cases

In 1927, she devised the plan to catch gangsters with tax evasion and in 1931 successfully prosecuted Al Capone

She recommended J. Edgar Hoover to head the FBI

In 1928, she campaigned for Republican candidate Herbert Hoover

To do this, she would address Methodist ministers and slam Hoover’s Democrat opponent, Al Smith as a ‘wet’ candidate

She began timing speakeasy raids to coincide with the Democratic convention

She was recognized as a major force behind getting Hoover elected

She took political help anywhere she could get it including the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the Ku Klux Klan saying, “I have no objection to people dressing up in sheets if they enjoy that sort of thing.”

For her service, she expected to be appointed Attorney General but was snubbed

In 1928, she resigned her post and returned to private practice

Mabel’s first case outside of the government was for California Fruit Industries that made wine and went on to serve as a lobbyist for the industry

CFI’s first big product push with her was Vine-Glo

Which was a concentrate that if added to water and sugar and left alone for two months made wine at home

Her casework set the foundation for the basic interpretations of the 16th and 18th amendments

In 1930, Mabel successfully argued for Frederick Albert Cook’s release from prison

He had been falsely imprisoned when several of his business partners committed fraud

Because his lawyer, Joseph Weldon Bailey, had a personal problem with the judge, he lost the case

Mabel managed to get him off his 14-year sentence in 7

Cook claimed to be the first explorer to reach the North Pole

In 1950, she served as counsel to the Screen Directors Guild

She defended the studios during the “Red Scare” and Joe McCarthy

She represented Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Aviation Corp. of America

Her famous clients include

Louis B. Mayer

Jean Harlow

Clark Gable

Jeanette MacDonald

She also began defending bootleggers she had helped put away

She went on to pioneer the fields of aviation and radio law

She was the first woman to chair a committee for the American Bar Association for aeronautical law

She got her pilot’s license and promoted air travel with Amelia Earhart and Jacqueline Cochoran (created the Women’s Auxillary Army Corps and Women Airforce Service Pilot organizations and was the first woman to break the sound barrier)

She received an Honorary Doctorate from the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce

Due to intense criticism of her role in Al Smith losing the presidency, as her rhetoric was seen as anti-Catholic, she converted to Catholicism

Later in life, she worked to destroy many of her personal records (especially from when she was Attorney General)

She, in fact, was overlooked by several early women’s history studies as she purposely erased many of her personal histories

Which is why much of what we know comes from her legal work

Mabel Walker Willebrandt died of lung cancer in Riverside, California

She was survived by her adopted daughter, Dorothy Rae (Van Dyke)

Her lifelong friend, Judge John J. Sirica, was quoted as saying, “If Mabel had worn trousers, she could have been president.”

Nicknames

“First Legal Lady of the Land”

“Prohibition Portia” (which is a joke from Julius Caesar–it’s Brutus’s wife)

“Deborah of the Drys”

“Mrs. Firebrand.”

Fun facts

She owned a farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Once advised a prostitute she worked for on “going straight”

Mabel looked over her books and said to keep working six more months

Then ended up footing the rest of the bill herself to get the woman and her sons into a nice home

Quotes

“Give me the authority and let me have my pick of 300 men and I’ll make this country as dry as it is humanly possible. There’s one way it can be done – get at the source of supply. I know them and I know how they could be cut off. I have no patience with this policy of going after the hip-pocket and speakeasy cases. That’s like trying to dry up the Atlantic Ocean with a blotter.”

In reference to herself “an instrument of God”

Physical Hawtness: 2/5

Described as Comely

Sort of an Elisabeth Moss

More of the way she carries herself than her looks (substance over style)

Mental Hawtness: 5/5

She started school at age 13

was teaching at age 17

a principal at 22

Assistant Attorney General at 32

Social Impact: 3/5

For her time, she made a huge splash

Lots of firsts

Set a tone for the whole decade of the ‘20s

Je Ne Sais Quoi: 2/5

Problematic

Reformed?

Sounds too unbelievable for a movie

Historical Hotties – Mabel Walker Willebrandt Hey! I got the honor of being on Historical Hotties. It's a podcast about researching hot historical figures and ranking them.

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summurous · 8 years ago

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Hacked Heart

I’ve been on such a Gangsters in Love tangent. Bought like every one of their side stories and got Chance’s S1 and S2...

Anyway, I wrote this during the last few days, so please read!

Rated T for language...I guess...

"One more aaand...you're in," I said into my headset. "Thanks, Kate," Jack's voice came into my ear via the headset. I monitored my team's progress by watching the screen on my laptop, the blinking dots showing their positions. They were only two rooms away from our target, a bejeweled tiara that would fetch a million on the black market. I was practically giddy from the thrill of hacking into the mansion's security, but was on pins and needles waiting for the rest of my crew to get the target and leave. I was waiting in a nondescript van a block away, the light of my laptop the only source of illumination on an otherwise dark night. It was still considerably early though, just after ten, so there was no one else on the residential street besides the van I was in. "The motion sensors are down?" another voice, Aaron's, suddenly spoke. "Of course, the sensors are part of the security system," I told him. One room away now. "Shit, door's locked," Ryan cursed under his breath, but I heard him perfectly. I could hear tiny scrapes of metal against metal, so I guessed that Ryan was picking the lock the old-fashioned way. "Got it," Ryan breathed out, probably just barely containing his victorious yell. I shook my head but smiled, refraining from commenting. "Huh. Front and center of the room. Kate, you sure there aren't any other surprises in here?" Aaron asked uneasily. "I'm positive. But you'll have to look out for any booby traps on your own, I'm afraid," I said with a smirk. "Hilarious," Ryan lamented. "Let's just get this thing out of here." I could hear them shuffling around to get the tiara in the special case we brought. "Target apprehended," Aaron commented cheekily. The rest of us groaned in unison. Minutes later, my three teammates made it back to the van. "Woo!" Jack breathed out. "I'm thristy! Let's go to a bar," he acted nonchalantly, as if we were out for a night on the town rather than pulling off a huge heist. "No," Ryan quickly shut that idea down before anyone else could join in. He sighed. "Let's just get this baby back to my place, alright?" he asked from the front passenger seat. With Jack at the wheel, we cruised off into the night with our prize. Later that same night, Jack, Ryan, and I crowded around Ryan's kitchen table while Aaron got out four celebratory beers from the fridge. "Good job everyone," Ryan congratulated us, "the client's going to be happy with this one," he said tapping the protective case holding the tiara. "But I think it's time we did something a little more...daring," he said, leaning forward, both hands on the table. Aaron handed me a bottle of beer and I twisted the cap off. "How daring?" I asked with a smirk, ready for anything. Ryan returned the smile, looking at his team while drumming up anticipation in all of us before his big reveal. Finally, he said, "Our next target...goes by the name of the 'Blood Rose.' You heard of it?" Aaron and I nodded, while Jack just looked confused. "What is it? A painting?" he asked, leaning forward too. "No, it's ruby," I explained. "One of the largest in the world," I looked at Ryan before taking a sip of my beer. "Where is it exactly?" I asked so that I could look up the blueprints for the building the Rose was housed in. "It's supposed to be in Franco Valentine's office," Ryan said with a shrug. I nearly spit out my beer. "What?!" I exclaimed after swallowing, all three men turning their attention to me. "You...you have to be joking!" Ryan gave me a bewildered expression. "Why would I joke about this? It's no big deal," he said. "No big deal?! Do...do you even know who Franco Valentine is?!" I was shouting at this point, having stood up to look Ryan directly in the eye. But he still towered a good four inches above me. "Yeah, he's a gangster. Again, no big deal," he looked to the side and made a wave with his hand as if to set the issue aside. "He's not just any gangster! He's the head of the most powerful gang in Los Angeles! Do you have any idea what he would do to us if we got caught?" I asked, the volume of me voice going back to normal. "IF we got caught," Ryan said with one finger raised. "But we won't get caught, right guys?" he asked of Jack and Aaron, who both looked equally nervous. "I don't know, Ryan," Aaron said. I hoped against all hope that he was taking my side. "Valentine's a powerful guy, and he'd have more men guarding his office rather than an electronic security system," he reasoned. He had a point. Valentine was probably old-school in that regard. "Ah, but I know for a fact that Franco recently got a high-tech system, nothing our resident hacker can't handle," Ryan said, turning to me with a flourish of his hand and a grin. I swallowed, feeling nervous. Since when did Ryan put any stock in my abilities? Usually he was putting me down for being a computer nerd. That or for being a girl. Sometimes I wondered why I put up with him... I sighed. "Should I even ask how you know about his security?" "I've said it before, I have my sources," Ryan shrugged with a self-important grin. That's what he usually said when he didn't want to answer any questions about his in depth knowledge about our targets. Pfft. He probably gets the information from our clients, anyway. I looked over at Jack and Aaron, who already seemed invested in acquiring the target. A ruby like the Blood Rose could easily go for a couple hundred thousand. "So, you in or are you in?" Ryan challenged me, not really giving me an option to back out. I looked at the three of them. They couldn't really do this without me. I was their hacker after all. And if they went ahead and decided to get the Rose without me, it was a sure chance they would get caught. And tortured. I shuddered. These guys (or rather Jack and Aaron) were like family to me, and I felt some weird sort of obligation to keep them out of trouble. I sighed again then nodded, finally relenting. With a whoop, Jack and Ryan high-fived. I couldn't help but smile at their enthusiasm, as contagious as it was. Jack held up his beer. "To another mission accomplished and more to come!" he congratulated us. We held up our own beers and clinked the bottles together, toasting our good fortune. If only we had known what was to come of that night...

It was the night of the heist. I was in a warehouse close to Franco Valentine's office, checking in on my team through my headset and laptop. I was sitting on the floor cross-legged, the computer in my lap. "Alright, we're coming up to the side entrance," Ryan's voice said into my ear. "Psh. Only one guy. Easy." "Just be careful. These guys are gangsters, remember." I said into my headset. I tapped a few keys on my computer to see how I could disarm the so-called high-tech security system. Within the span of a minute and furious typing, I managed to get the system down. "Alright, you're good to go," I told the guys. "Nice timing," Jack commented. "Not for long, you've got ten minutes before the security system automatically goes back on. If I try to shut it down again, it'll alert Valentine's goons," I warned them. "Shit, where is that ruby?" I heard Aaron curse. "Upstairs. Move fast but be quiet," Ryan told the guys. A minute later, I could hear the boys going opening a door, which made me cringe a little. They needed to be more discreet. "All right, it's got to be in that safe," Ryan observed, telling me what I couldn't see from my computer. "Got the code cracker--" That was the last I heard before I heard a click. I reflexively turned toward the sound and found myself staring up the barrel of a gun. "Oh god," I whispered, my eyes flicking upward to see who was holding the weapon. I met the stone cold gaze of a man I had never seen before, the moonlight streaming through the window illuminating his handsome features. But all I could think about was how I was going to die at that moment. "Kate?" Jack's voice came into my ear through the headset I was wearing. He must have heard me. "Is something wrong?" I thought about crying for help, but I was frozen to the spot. "Get up," the man told me. His voice unfroze me, as I found myself calmly taking off the headset and placing the computer in my lap on the floor, before complying with his order. I was shaking though, fear setting into my limbs like lead, and I found it difficult to breathe. I held my hands up, his gun now pointing at my head, right between my eyes. I could vaguely hear my teammates voices coming through the headset on the ground, but my attention was elsewhere. I almost didn't see the man reach for me, I was so preoccupied with looking at the gun. "You're coming with me," was all he said before he grabbed me by the wrist and started to drag me towards the exit. I didn't resist as he still had the gun trained on me, walking at my side rather than dragging me behind him. He and I briskly walked outside where a car and two other men were waiting. I couldn't discern their features right away due to the darkness, but I could tell they were surprised to see me. "Whoa, Chance. Someone was actually in there?" one of the men asked. The guy, supposedly named Chance, dragging me along spoke next, saying, "Of course. I'm always right, aren't I?" The other man seemed amused, while the guy next to him and the car continued to say nothing. "She's bound to be associated with the people who broke into Franco's place, isn't that right?" Chance suddenly said, turning to me, a small smirk on his lips. "And it would be in your best interest not to lie," he said, jabbing the muzzle of his gun into my side. I quickly nodded, deciding it would be also be in my best interest to play along, at least until my team got there. But Chance suddenly thrust me forward, toward the car and the other men. I stumbled, but one of the men, the silent one, caught me, gripping onto my upper arm. "Get her in the car. We'll take her back to the mansion," Chance said behind me. I looked over my shoulder at him, surprised by what he was saying. "Huh?" the man who had spoken to Chance voiced what I had been about to say, "We're taking her?" "That's what I said," Chance replied as the man who had grabbed me opened the backseat door of the car and practically shoved me inside before closing the door again. I thought to slide over to the other door to make an escape, but the guy was fast; he had run over to the other side of the car before I could even move. Chance and the other man occupied the front seats, with Chance driving the car. I could barely comprehend what was happening to me. Where were these men taking me? What was going to happen to me? Were they a part of Franco Valentine's gang? I was starting to feel nauseous as the car came to life and started to move. Were they going to kill me?

We drove for a while, I'm not sure how long, but eventually we reached the edge of L.A., driving up a long driveway to a stately mansion by the ocean. I couldn't help but gawk at the sight. I had never seen a house so large, even with all the heists I had been a part of. "Get out," Chance ordered me when we had reached the front lawn. I quickly broke out of my stupor to comply, all to happy to get out of that car. The others had done the same, and I suddenly found myself surrounded again. "What do we do with her?" One of the men asked. There were light posts outside the front door of the mansion, which illuminated the area and the men around me, so I got a better look at them. Needless to say, they were all, dare I say, attractive. And all of them were dressed in sharp suits, which only confirmed what I had asked myself earlier. These guys were definitely gangsters. "You," Chance suddenly said to me. "You have a phone?" I nodded and got my smartphone from out of my back pocket to show him. "Good. Call your friends. Now." With shakng hands, I opened my directory and dialed Jack. He immediately picked up. "Hello, Kate?" he said. I held the phone to my ear. "Jack?" I asked. "Look, I can't really explain, but--hey!" was all I got out before my phone was ripped out of my hand by Chance. "Listen carefully," Chance said into my phone, "You'll bring what you stole from Franco's office to us if you want to see your friend alive again," he rattled off a street address before adding, "Be here before three a.m. or she dies. Got it?" He ended the call without waiting for an answer, in true gangster fashion. He tossed the phone back to me, a smirk on his lips, probably enjoying the look of pure horror on my face. He walked past me to the front door, the man with the red hair following him. I looked down at my phone. It was just past midnight. Plenty of time for the guys to get here, right? The thought to call the police entered my head, now that I had my phone out. But the man who sat with me in the back seat of the car was staring at me with a hard glare, as if to dare me to try. I let out a heavy breath and pocketed my phone again. The last thing I wanted to do was piss off a bunch of gangsters, especially when I was their captive for the time being. The man gestured for me to go inside the mansion. I strode inside, feeling uneasy. If I thought the outside of the mansion was a sight to behold, the interior had me floored. The spacious foyer was undoubtedly bigger than my apartment and then some, with two sets of white marble staircases going up to the next floor. My eye was naturally drawn to the art, all of it definitely modern and tasteful, even though I wasn't an artist like Aaron. I heard someone clear their throat behind me. I turned to see the guy who made me go inside walking off to a room deeper in the mansion. I wasn't sure if he wanted me to follow him, but for some reason I figured it wouldn't be a good idea to be alone in that place. I scurried after him. He led me to what looked, at first blush, like a casino. The bright red walls and lights, coupled with the pool table and card table certainly made me think of Vegas. Chance and the red-haired man were in there too, along with two other people, one of whom I immediately recognized. Irving Monroe, the celebrity lawyer, was in an in-depth conversation with Chance and the red-haired guy. What was someone like Monroe doing with a bunch of gangsters? Oh. He was probably one of them, given how relaxed he seemed. Not even the law was on my side. The one other new person in the room was a woman, who immediately stood up and walked over to me the second she saw me, a wide grin on her face. "Well, hello beautiful! You must be one of Yoshimitsu's girls," she said, draping an arm around me, her suggestive smile never leaving her features. I blushed. Okay, I've been hit on by women before, but never so...directly. "You lost? Why don't I show you the way to my bedroom," she began to lead me out of the game room when a voice barked at her, stopping her in her tracks. "Hands off, Aurora. She's our hostage, not one of your playthings," Chance warned her. Aurora turned around, her arm slipping off me. "Hostage? What are you talking about?" she asked looking from Chance back to me. The red-haired guy, whom I assumed was Yoshimitsu, spoke up, "We weren't the only ones at Franco's tonight," he pointed at me, "Her and some guys got there before us." Aurora's eyes widened. "Really?" she seemed to see me in a new light, her flirtatiousness dropping completely. She looked back at Yoshimitsu. "So, you didn't get the info?" "No," Chance answered. The air in the room seemed heavy with tension, as Chance glared daggers at me from across the room. "We'll have to get him another time," he said, turning away. I blinked in surprise. "Wait, don't you work for Franco Valentine?" I blurted out, speaking for what seemed like the first time that night. Everyone in the room turned to me, expressions all either blank or as surprised as I was that I had spoken out. Aurora smiled at me kindly. "No, hon. We...sort of work against him," she explained with a shrug. "But you're gangsters...aren't you?" I looked around the room. If they weren't gangsters, they were the strangest kind of police force I had ever seen. "Gangsters aren't necessarily all on the same page," Irving said with a half-smile. Well, yeah. I'd heard of gang wars and gang turf, so it shouldn't have surprised me that these people wanted dirt on Franco. They had to be pretty powerful themselves to try, though. "Ash, get out the gin. I need a drink or three," Aurora left my side to walk up to the game room's bar. She turned back to me. "Did you want some, uh...what's your name?" she asked, her head cocked to the side. "Kate," I said. "And no, thanks." I wasn't sure if I could keep any kind of food or drink in my stomach, as awful as I felt. Aurora shrugged, turning back to the quiet guy named Ash. "More for me!" she exclaimed.

Two thirty and the guys still weren't there. As if I wasn't rattled enough, the gang was starting to contemplate my demise. "How do you want to do this? Shot to the head?" Chance asked Ash and Yoshimitsu. "That's the cleanest way possible," Ash replied, passing a glance in my direction. "Not in my house, you're not!" Irving cut in. "I'd rather not have a repeat of last time. I don't care how you do it, just do it outside," he went on to say. I tuned them out. I honestly doubted I had a say in how I was going to go, so I just sat on the sofa in the game room and kept quiet. What was taking the guys so long? Had...they really abandoned me? My stomach knotted at the thought. It wasn't so much the fact that I was going to die that bothered me, but the thought of my friends, my family, abandoning me...it was just too much. Tears pricked at my eyes from time to time when I thought about the guys leaving me to die for their mistake. Or should I say Ryan's mistake. Why did he have to choose tonight of all nights to rob from this Franco guy? Or to steal from him at all? What an idiot. "Hey," Aurora appeared in the room. She had left earlier to keep a look out for my crew. I looked up, hope filling my heart. "They're here," she said before walking out again. I breathed the biggest sigh of relief before standing up on my shaky legs. I felt a hand on my shoulder and saw Ash pushing me toward the exit. I followed his silent directions, eager to get out of there as soon as possible. I nearly ran to the guys when I saw them. But Ash's grip on me prevented me from doing so. They all looked happy to see me alive and well. Well, except for Ryan, but that was expected. Chance's gang surrounded us, all of them looking more serious than they had been before. "Hand over what you stole, then you get the girl," Chance commanded, his gaze unwavering and steely. Jack walked forward and gave a small bag, presumably containing the Blood Rose, to Yoshimitsu. I saw Ryan gritting his teeth, but he didn't say anything. I could tell I was going to get it later. Ash let go of my shoulder and gave me a small push forward. I practically ran to my teammates, letting Jack throw his arms around me in an embrace. "Are you hurt?" Aaron asked, concern etched into his eyes. "Did they hurt you?" "No, I'm fine," I replied as Jack released me from his hug. "Can we just go home?" I asked quietly. Both Jack and Aaron nodded, but Ryan just scowled at me. It would take some time before he would even consider forgiving me. "Not so fast," Chance said from where he stood behind us. I turned around to look at him, my heart in my throat. He was examining the Blood Rose, and it was truly something special. It glittered in the light like crystal clear water, and was nearly the size of Chance's palm. I saw Irving and Aurora move past us to block our only exit. Why weren't they letting us leave? "I have a...proposition for the four of you," Chance pocketed the ruby and looked at us, a glimmer of amusement in his eye. Jack moved in front of me, pushing me toward the back of our group. Ryan seemed to perk up though, probably at the word 'proposition.' "And what would that be?" he asked, daring to look Chance directly in the eye. "You managed to break into Franco Valentine's office and escape unscathed," Chance observed. "For that alone I'm...slightly impressed," he went on to say. It didn't seem like he was lying. "That being said, you're either highly skilled or incredibly lucky. And I'm leaning towards 'incredibly lucky,' just from the looks of you," he said, much to Ryan's displeasure. Yoshimitsu chuckled. "Are you just trying to piss us off?" Ryan challenged Chance, but didn't make any move toward him. "No. I'm offering you a deal," Chance said to my, and everyone else's, surprise. He continued, "We went to Franco's office tonight to gather information on him, information that would take him down," he said darkly. "You managed to screw that up for us." It seemed like Ryan was going to argue in our favor, so I put a hand on his shoulder. He looked back at me and I shook my head, trying to dissuade him. That seemed to make him relax before we both turned our attention back to Chance. "I'll give you an opportunity to correct that mistake. Help us break into Franco's office again, and we'll reward you," Chance said curtly. I could practically see my teammates suddenly become interested on the word 'reward,' but something just didn't sit right with me. "What kind of reward?" I heard Aaron ask. Chance smirked, seeing that three out of the four of us were interested in his 'proposition.' "Money of course," Chance explained vaguely, "and if everything goes well, I may have work for you," he went on to say. "Meaning you'll hire us?" Ryan reiterated, "to steal valuables for you?" Chance nodded, his smirk never leaving his lips. I pulled on Ryan's sleeve. "Guys, let's just go. These people are just going to cause us problems," I said, inclining my head toward the gang. The guys all looked at me, both Jack and Aaron looking slightly concerned, as if they might agree with me. Ryan just looked pissed. "But if that isn't enough of an incentive for you," Chance spoke up, interrupting us. "I can just tell Franco who broke into his office," he said, crossing his arms and looking pleased with himself. "And let him come after you. But if you agree to my terms, then we can offer you protection." My heart sank. That was it, huh? So they were going to threaten us if we didn't comply? They weren't giving us a choice in the matter... Ryan nodded almost immediately. Either he really wanted that reward, or he was as scared shitless as I was. "We'll help you," he turned to look at Jack and Aaron, completely ignoring me. "Right guys?" Jack and Aaron, being more thoughtful of my feelings, turned to me, a question in their eyes. I paused for a moment, feeling almost everyone's eyes on me. My eyes dropped to my feet. Then I nodded, letting my fear win out for once. Jack turned to Chance. "What exactly are your terms?" Chance looked serious, saying, "You're to know your place here. You listen to me and my gang before doing anything. And don't run off, or we'll come find you. Understood?" I looked up at Chance and nodded with the rest of my team. "Good," he said, a smile gracing his lips. "Welcome to the gang."

Well? Was it terrible?

Pleeease leave a like or reblog! I just might post the second chapter!

Hopefully good things to come!

#Gangsters in Love #voltage inc.#GIL #Chance Valentine #Chance #Hacked Heart #my writing

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dcroofingarizona · 4 years ago

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Annual Events In Tucson AZ

You can see the first release of this information Annual Events In Tucson AZ at this site: the DC Roofing Company blog

Whether you're jumping aboard the magical Polar Express train to visit Santa, taking part in local traditions, eating (or drinking) your fill at a festival, or strutting your stuff at the world's oldest continuous rodeo, there's always something to see and do in Tucson, Arizona.

El Tour De Tucson

Held annually the Saturday before Thanksgiving, El Tour attracts over 9,000 cyclists from throughout the United States and beyond who ride 106, 76, 54, 37 or 28 miles along the perimeter of Tucson, AZ. The Fun Ride offers shorter miles (10, 5, or 1 miles) on a generally flat course mostly using the Santa Cruz River path. El Tour is an excellent event for novice, intermediate, advanced, and professional riders. The alternative to the road-cycling event is Indoor El Tour (below).

El Tour de Tucson is a premier fundraising ride in the United States and the longest-running event of its kind in Arizona. The Banner-University Medicine El Tour de Tucson, presented by Casino de Sol and Tucson Medical HealthCare , as it's officially titled, has been a Tucson tradition on the Saturday before Thanksgiving since 1983.

This is a bucket list ride for many participants who range from novice to professional. They enjoy the ride and its festivities out of a passion for cycling, as a benchmark for a wellness program, as a symbol of surviving a major illness or other life challenge, or to honor another person. And they help nonprofit, charitable agencies raise funds for their organizations.

The main event distances are 100, 57 and 28 miles. Fun Ride distances are 10, 5 and 1 miles. Main event routes feature scenic landscapes and the crisp, cool air of a Tucson winter. Mountain ranges and saguaro cactus surround. Course profiles range from flat to rolling or moderately hilly. The 28-mile route is mostly flat, which is great for families and ideal for first-time and beginning participants. In 2020, the 28-mile route will be open to Class 1 pedal-assist e-bike cyclists.

El Tour de Tucson cyclists raise funds for Tu Nidito Children & Family Services, the American Parkinson Disease Association Water For People Ben's Bells Project Big Brothers Big Sisters of America Diamond Children's Medical Center , other Perimeter Bicycling charities, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society For the children and families at Tu Nidito, El Tour is much more than a ride. El Tour is our livelihood, said Executive Director Liz McCusker.

The ride is one of the largest road bicycling events in the United States. The El Tour de Tucson was started in 1983 by cyclist Richard DeBernardis, current president of the Perimeter Bicycling Association of America. The ride takes place every November in Tucson, Arizona. The first El Tour attracted nearly 185 riders while in recent years between 7,000 and 10,000 cyclists will attend.[ citation needed Bicycling Magazine gives three reasons for ranking Tucson as the second-best place among cities its size for riding a bicycle: "Sunshine, sunshine, sunshine." There are several routes of differing lengths ranging from 109 miles (175 km) to 0.25 miles (0.40 km). The event offers cycling tests for all levels of riders. The route weaves around the city of Tucson, which is surrounded by five mountain ranges. The courses range from rolling to moderately hilly, with the 35 mile route being fairly flat and the perfect course for beginners. The annual bike race has a new boss, TJ Juskiewicz, who has run successful bike races in Florida and Iowa. Juskiewicz has been hired as executive director by Perimeter Bicycling to grow the event in Southern Arizona.

Will it happen is the question being asked of many sporting events as the world continues to wage a war against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dillinger Days Tucson

History buffs, pop-culture fans and those who love everything to do with the 1930s may want to head to The Hotel Congress in Tucson for the annual Dillinger Days.

Dillinger Days is a two-day spectacle in honor of the capture of America's most notorious outlaw, said Dalice Shepard, senior marketing and events manager for the hotel.

John Dillinger, who earned the title Public Enemy No. 1 had evaded capture by the FBI. As Shepard noted, Dillinger Days features a re-enactment of Dillinger's apprehension by the Tucson Police Department and Tucson Fire Department.

For one weekend a year, the historical Hotel Congress takes you back to the 1930's.

The Historic Hotel Congress will commemorate the anniversary of the Tucson capture of America's Most Wanted gangster John Dillinger and his gang.

Activities include a Speakeasy, with adults-only whiskey-tasting as well as all-ages activities, including historical reenactments depicting Dillinger's capture, a vintage car show, historical artifacts exhibit, lectures, arts and crafts, historical walking tours of downtown, and the actual Tommy Gun on display.

Dillinger Days is a two-day spectacle in honor of the capture of America's most notorious outlaw.

Things you might not know about John Dillinger's capture in Tucson

On January 25, 1934, John Dillinger and his crew of criminals, Charley Makley, Russell Clark and triggerman Harry Pierpont, were apprehended by Tucson law enforcement following a string of bank robberies, murders and jailbreaks carried out from Kentucky to South Dakota.

The gang came to Tucson to hide from the heat and get out of the cold, but soon found themselves behind bars. They were eventually transported east to face their fates.

#roofer Tucson #roofing contractor #roofing

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angrycollectordaze-me-blog · 5 years ago

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Essay代写：Civil policing in British society

下面为大家整理一篇优秀的essay代写范文- Civil policing in British society，供大家参考学习，这篇论文讨论了英国社会的民间警务模式。18世纪中期以来，英国进入由农业社会向工业社会的递变时期，鉴于犯罪活动猖獗，传统治安管理制度渐趋瓦解，符合英国历史传统和宪政原则的社会警务模式以组成巡逻队和诉讼协会等形式，在维护社会秩序和人们生命财产安全方面填补了警察的真空期。民间警务作为社会治安的一支重要力量，满足了人们的不同安全需要。在没有职业警察力量和公诉制度的条件下，他们对个人及团体承担起人身财产保卫、侦查犯罪，维护社会秩序等职责，对社会转型时期的英国社会发挥了重要的保障作用。

Since the mid-18th century, with the continuous progress of the industrial revolution, Britain has entered a period of transition from an agricultural society to an industrial society. However, under the influence of poverty, poor urban environment, failure of traditional management system and other factors, the social security and crime problems in Britain during this period became increasingly serious, which was known as "the darkest era of crime in history" and "the golden age of gangsters". At the same time, civil police activities have developed rapidly and penetrated into all aspects of social life, filling the "police vacuum". In view of this, this paper, on the basis of previous studies, intends to sort out the general situation of civil police in Britain during the industrialization period, and explore the reasons for the prosperity of civil police and its impact on British society.

Self-protection is the need for human survival, is a human instinct. There are various ways for human society to protect the lives and property of its members, and different countries have often formed their own unique traditions in their long-term historical development. In Britain, individual citizens and civil society organizations play a very important role in maintaining public order and preventing crime. Before the establishment of modern professional police in Britain in 1856, the personal and property safety of the general public was mainly protected by the people themselves. In the period of industrialization, British civil police were divided into the following types according to their responsibilities:

A security patrol force that protects private property and personal safety from encroachment. As early as the 17th century, Britain established the principle of inviolability of private property of capitalism in the form of theory, law and political system. In rural areas, wealthy private individuals try to keep a firm hold on their property for a long time. In order to protect the hunting privilege and the right to control the land property, the nobles usually set up hunting ground wardens to prevent the poaching. ? gold, says professor Peter gamekeeper with wide powers, search whether there is a civilian house hunting or poaching of equipment is a kind of powerful social policing model representative; These rights date back to 1670, when gamekeepers were given the right to search houses for guns, arrows or hounds.

Since the 18th century, Britain, which was at the forefront of the industrial revolution, has been beset by crisis and turmoil. The urban and rural areas are more and more vulnerable to the influence of mass collective disturbance, which leads to the disorder of social order and the phenomenon of "taking advantage of the fire". When Britain is in a state of order crisis, social police activities are particularly important in protecting the safety of people and property. During the riots in Gordon in 1780, police officers and magistrates were completely incompetent at maintaining public order, and they refused to resist the mob for fear of retaliation. There was nothing the government could do about the riots, so londoners volunteered to form patrols to protect their communities and businesses from the vagrants of the streets. Lincoln college of lawyers civilian team, the college of lawyers guard group, the London infantry association and the London association have organized patrols, there are a number of civic groups, patrols are very large, some associations number close to 500 people. During the Gordon riots, the success of amateur groups in policing helped foster the development of policing societies. In order to protect their property at the wharf, the merchants of the Thames not only employed night watchmen, but also united to form a unified patrol. In June 1798, a group of west India company merchants established a private security force of about sixty men, armed with sabers but without uniform. In the first half of the 19th century, this kind of civil security force flourished, and every London dock company set up its own security force. 1806 Bristol dock company authorized to establish public security forces, security personnel salary is paid by the company and shall have the right to the seizure of persons or ships and searched for them, if get magistrates warrant, they can also search personal residence, have the authority to arrest the thief and all hostile, suspected suspects and notorious thief. Major league canal in 1809, commercial wharf in 1810, gloucester yard in 1836, Liverpool market in 1837, hull wharf in 1837, regent canal wharf in 1840 and tyne river in 1845 all established their own public security organizations.

A civil litigation association that assists its members in prosecuting suspects. Britain has long practiced criminal private prosecution in its history. Before the establishment of the police and prosecutors and other official forces to lead the prosecution in the late 19th century, whether suspects are arrested and prosecuted to court depends on the victims and their relatives and friends. Britain lacked a clear official authority to prosecute criminals to court. As a result, victims often need to track down suspects themselves, including collecting evidence, looking for witnesses, completing other matters related to prosecution, and bearing all the costs of tracking down and prosecuting suspects. Such victim-centred criminal self-prosecution often prevents many criminals from being prosecuted because of the victim's lack of ability to arrest and detain suspects to court and the heavy economic burden of the implementation of arrest and prosecution.

In order to better complete the prosecution of criminal suspects, so that criminals should be punished, the British people spontaneously organized many litigation social groups. Felony litigation association is a common form of voluntary association in English villages, towns and parishes. Felony associations focus on crimes against persons and property, especially property crimes, and in rare cases they also focus on crimes of morality, security, and government indifference. These associations, based on traditional public security principles, collectively protect the smaller areas of 100 and 10 households and undertake their own rather than prosecute suspects through police officers. Between 1744 and 1856, there were at least 450 such associations in England and wales. These felony associations generally provide their members with two basic services: rewards for information leading to the arrest and conviction of suspects; Assistance to association members in prosecuting suspects, usually including the payment of a lawyer to prosecute, the preparation of briefs and other documents, and the collection of evidence and witnesses. In addition, some associations offer other services, such as requiring their members to act as AD hoc search teams to track down suspects and setting up their own patrols. In industrial areas of Britain, employers have set up litigation groups to hire people to take on litigation. In 1777, the employers of the worsted industry established the worsted committee, which maintained, strengthened and improved the employers' control over the production process by promoting the increase of the criminal law's right of recourse. Commission inspectors need only obtain a search warrant signed by two magistrates, often accompanied by a police officer or the suspect's employer, to search the suspect's residence. Because rag and waste dealers were also direct recipients of stolen textiles, they had also attracted the committee's close attention since the mid-18th century. The committee meets quarterly to discuss trade and the detection and prosecution of thieves. In addition, in west reading, Yorkshire, woolen goods producers in halifax from 1802 to 1807, padsi in the 1830s, and huddersfield from 1844 to 1851 jointly paid for a woolen inspector to carry out investigations and represent victims as prosecutors. A professional thief who investigates and apprehends suspects. In the face of increasing crime and the serious shortage of public security personnel, the maintenance of public security can not do without the assistance of other social forces. Therefore, in order to increase the arrest and prosecution of criminals, the government implemented a reward system to reward those who arrested criminals and encourage individuals to arrest criminals, thus forming a group to catch criminals for a living -- thieves.

"Thieves" have been around since the seventeenth century. They do not have any official identity or authority for their personal actions, and they try to catch suspects in order to get rewards from the government or private hands. Some victims hire thieves to retrieve valuables or large amounts of money for a fee. Due to the positive role played by thieves, the government has issued a series of laws to encourage and reward their work. An act of 1692 provided that "a thief who catches a highwayman will receive a reward of forty pounds if he catches him, and the thief will also have possession of his weapons, horses, money and other non-stolen property." Since then, the application of this kind of reward has been extended to other types of crimes, and the amount of reward has been rising. At the same time, victims are rewarded for recovering stolen goods. As a result, thieves became a well-paid profession, and a group of criminals were arrested for offering rewards. Because they specialize in the investigation and arrest of criminal suspects, they can provide greater help to the thieves. Before the emergence of professional police in Britain in the 19th century, thieves played a very important role in the detection and arrest of suspects, and one of the representatives was bo street arrest team. In 1749, to cope with food riots and crime wave, Henry Fielding invited six outgoing, have good reputation, a former police officer Po street vice squad, "used to arrest a highwayman and similar crimes, the magistrate of merchants and citizens to raise funding, issued in the form of wages." Fielding do our best to make the security forces to become the real "stop thief", to distinguish it from like Jonathan Wilder "stolen", they soon with honest detective known by people finally extended its business to the country.

In short, since modern times, various types of security forces have been presented in an unofficial form. Individual merchants hired people to guard their property, and commercial communities set up security forces to guard stores and warehouses and hire night watchmen to patrol and agents to look for stolen property. The social police activities undertaken by these social members not only effectively maintain the life and property safety of individuals and groups, but also play an important auxiliary role in assisting the government to maintain social security order, prevent and combat criminal activities, alleviate the lack of public security forces and other aspects, and have made remarkable achievements.

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socialjusticeartshare · 5 years ago

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She fled a violent Honduran gang to seek asylum in Texas. Now she might be deported because she didn't file paperwork in Mexico.

The Trump administration's policy to deny asylum to migrants who didn't seek protections elsewhere is now being enforced. Immigration attorneys warn the new rule could forever diminish U.S. asylum policy.

BY JULIÁN AGUILAR AND ACACIA CORONADO OCT. 18, 2019

EL PASO — It wasn’t the first time men with guns showed up at Elizabeth's door. But this time, they were coming for her.

Six years after gangsters arrived at her house and took her brother away and killed him, Elizabeth, who as a young girl was teased for liking other girls, was running for her life from the same Honduran gang in April.

“We heard their footsteps and saw that they were armed, and they said, ‘This time we get the lesbian,’” she told an asylum officer, according to a transcript of her credible fear interview with a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officer. (Elizabeth is being used as a pseudonym for the woman to protect her safety.)

Elizabeth’s journey from her native Honduras led her and her mother through Guatemala and Mexico on their way to the U.S. In Mexico, they were confronted by members of a cartel, who Elizabeth said kidnapped and sexually assaulted her for days because she and her mother didn’t have any money or any relatives in the United States who could send them cash. After five days, she said, they were abandoned near a U.S. port of entry.

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Elizabeth is now detained in the U.S., but her previous journey through Mexico could spell more trouble for her because of the latest Trump administration policy targeting asylum protections for migrants who didn’t seek asylum in another country before arriving in the U.S.

The rule, announced in July, is the latest salvo in the White House’s efforts to deter asylum seekers from coming into the country, whether they enter the country at ports of entry or illegally by crossing the Rio Grande. It was halted and restarted again after several court battles. When Elizabeth was interviewed by asylum officers in early September, she was told how the rule will affect her.

Elizabeth gave a sworn statement to asylum officers that in 2013, gangsters and corrupt police officers killed her brother because he declined to be part of their group in Honduras, according to the interview transcript. But an asylum officer told Elizabeth that because of the new regulation, she can't apply for asylum in the U.S.

Immigration attorneys argue the rule could forever diminish U.S. asylum policy. Before the rule, the asylum process was still difficult for migrants who didn't receive previous permission to be in the country. But there was a process in place allowing applicants to argue their case and have a chance at an appeal should they be denied. But with the third-country rule, those opportunities are eliminated, attorneys say.

"Our laws require we offer a meaningful chance to seek asylum. This rule denies people that chance," Jeremy McKinney, second vice president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said when the rule was announced. "If the administration truly wanted to make our asylum system more efficient, maximize the chances that bona fide asylum seekers are protected, and live up to our values, then the steps they should take are clear. This rule isn't one of them."

The regulation was put in place after the controversial Migrant Protection Protocols were implemented late last year. That policy requires migrants to wait in Mexico for their U.S. court dates and has affected more than 50,000 asylum seekers. The combined effects of both policies could lead to the erosion of pathways for asylum seekers, said Linda Corchado, the director of El Paso-based Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center.

“This has been a hard rule for me to stomach because it really has been the gutting of our asylum laws,” she said.

Both regulations have been challenged in federal courts but remain in effect. During a news conference last week, acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan said the agency was intent on expanding the third-country rule.

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People like Elizabeth can still obtain relief from deportation if an immigration judge issues an order known as a "withholding of removal." That's applied when migrants prove there is more than a 50% chance they will be persecuted in their home country. But Corchado said that even if that order is granted, it doesn't include a pathway to legal residency and applies only to the migrant, not his or her family. And the relief can always be revoked.

"It feels like if the U.S. [government] feels there’s a change in that person’s country, they can always reopen proceedings and deport them," Corchado said.

The third-country rule is being implemented alongside the Trump administration's metering requirement, which mandates that asylum seekers add their names to a list of thousands of people waiting in Mexico before applying for asylum.

State officials in the Mexican state of Chihuahua said that there are 4,000 to 5,000 people on the waiting list in Ciudad Juárez, though only half of them are still waiting. Hundreds have either gone home or tried to cross the river illegally instead. It’s one sign that the MPP and metering policies are having some effect, Corchado said.

“I think, as a whole, all of these [policies] are compelling asylum seekers to go back,” she said.

Jodi Goodwin, a Brownsville-based immigration attorney, said lawyers expect the third-country rule will be brought up during the merit-hearing stage of the asylum proceedings along the border later this month, and attorneys will have a better idea of how the rule is affecting asylum applications.

But the Trump administration is seeing signs that its policies have had the intended effect.

The number of people who were apprehended by or surrendered to federal immigration officials dipped by nearly 20% last month, the Department of Homeland Security announced last week. After about 64,000 apprehensions in August, the agency reported a September total of about 52,500. That figure is about 40% of July’s estimated 82,000 and is the lowest monthly total of the 2019 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, according to government statistics.

Last week, Morgan, the acting CBP chief, touted the four-month decline of apprehensions of migrants on the country’s southern border. Federal officials see the figure as a barometer of how many fewer migrants are attempting to enter the United States.

“While Congress has failed to put forth a single piece of legislation — even be able to introduce it to the floor to address this crisis — we have addressed this crisis,” Morgan said.

The administration has also praised the Mexican government’s efforts to stop migrants from crossing through that country. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador deployed thousands of federal troops to his country’s southern border to stem the number of people arriving from Central America. The order came after Trump threatened to impose tariffs of up to 25% on Mexican imports if Mexico didn’t secure its border to Trump’s liking. Over the weekend, the show of force from the Mexicans was on full display when National Guard troops detainedabout 1,000 asylum seekers from moving northward.

But unrest is mounting as more migrants who did make the trip north are forced to wait. In the Mexican city of Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, makeshift tents have sprouted in camps full of migrants with nowhere else to go.

Andrea Rudnik, co-founder of the nonprofit Team Brownsville, which aids migrants across the Gateway International Bridge, said conditions in a refugee camp there are quickly deteriorating. She said the growing number of migrants is causing tension, leading people to grow desperate.

This week, hundreds of migrants protested at the entrance of the Gateway International Bridge in Brownsville, causing it to close for several hours early Thursday morning. Rudnik said the asylum seekers were asking to enter and complaining about the camp conditions. She said they don’t have access to clean water or medical care. She said in the last few weeks she has been visiting the camp, the river in which people bathe has had dead animals, and the lack of hygiene has caused a lice epidemic. Some migrants told her they were turned away at their hearings and told to return when they are clean of lice.

Scenes from the Gateway International Bridge in Matamoros, Mexico: Teenagers seeking asylum learn about factors with playing cards during a class taught by volunteers from the U.S.; memorial crosses on the banks of the Rio Grande honor those who lost their lives this year trying to cross into the U.S. from Matamoros; migrants wait in line to get meals provided by Team Brownsville, an organization that helps people seeking asylum. Verónica G. Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune

There has also been an increase in the number of Mexicans who are lining up just beyond the international ports of entry in Texas to try to seek asylum in the United States. The majority, from southern Mexican states including Michoacán and Guerrero, are fleeing violence they say the government can’t or isn’t willing to stop. Both states are under a “do not travel” alert from the U.S. State Department.

M.Q., a woman from Honduras, said she and her 17-year-old son have been living in a makeshift tent in Matamoros since August. She and her son left when local organized crime threatened her son. They rode on a train commonly referred to as "La Bestia" across Central America, crossed into the U.S. illegally, and were caught and told to remain in Mexico as they sought asylum. She said her tent has fallen to shreds, and she fears the upcoming cold and rain. Her son has been sick for a week and can no longer eat.

"It is hard to be here without my family," said M.Q., who asked not to use her full name to protect her family's safety. "They are asking me for a lot of proof that I don't have the money to have sent over, and my mom is too old to gather. I just hope we get a judge with a good heart."

Julián Aguilar reported from El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and Acacia Coronado reported from Brownsville and Matamoros, Mexico.

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#asylum seeker #mexico asylum seekers #violent honduran gang

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