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Obit watch: May 28, 2026.

Thursday, May 28th, 2026

Robert Daley, author and deputy commissioner with the NYPD. He was 96.

Daley served as deputy commissioner of the NYPD in 1971 and 1972, a turbulent period marked by police corruption investigations, organised crime violence, major robberies and attacks on officers. He later drew on that experience in ‘Target Blue: An Insider’s View of the N.Y.P.D.’, giving readers a close look at the inner workings, pressures and contradictions of the force.
‘Prince of the City’ became his most enduring work. The book followed Robert Leuci, an NYPD narcotics detective whose cooperation with investigators exposed corruption within the department’s Special Investigation Unit. The story centred not only on criminal conduct, but on loyalty, guilt and the complicated moral code that shaped police life. Critics recognised its force, with contemporary commentary noting the power of Daley’s portrayal of the flawed policeman as a modern literary figure.

Haven’t read the book, but the movie version of it is…pretty okay. I do think it could have been trimmed down some (the movie comes in at 2:47: “The Best Years of Our Lives” comes in at 2:52).

(Archive.is is still broken. Sorry.)

Posted in Books, Cops, Law, Movies, NYPD, Obits | 1 Comment »

Noted.

Saturday, April 11th, 2026

Today is the 40th anniversary of the FBI Miami gunfight.

Mike Wood has a good piece up at the RevolverGuy blog. I have heard through the grapevine that he’s working on a book about the incident, but I haven’t confirmed that directly with him. I still recommend Edmundo Mireles’s FBI Miami Firefight: Five Minutes that Changed the Bureau as the best current reference on the subject, followed by Massad Ayoob’s Ayoob Files 1985-2011 collection (which includes multiple columns about the gunfight).

(Previously.)

In other, more cheerful news, DACK Outdoors has shut down and is planning to file for bankruptcy. I never dealt with them, because Mike the Musicologist did, and they tried to screw him over. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Posted in Books, Cops, FBI, Guns, Heroism, History | No Comments »

Obit watch: February 17, 2026.

Tuesday, February 17th, 2026

Another one of those “it got busy up in here all of the sudden” days.

Robert Duvall. THR.

Other credits include “T.H.E. Cat”, “The F.B.I.”, and he was the original Frank Burns in “M*A*S*H.”.

Mike the Musicologist tipped me off to this tweet. I can’t find the “embed” function on X, but here’s the long version of the video.

Frederick Wiseman, documentary filmmaker.

His directorial debut, “Titicut Follies” (1967), a harrowing portrait of the Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane in Massachusetts, remains the only film ever banned in the United States for reasons other than obscenity, immorality or national security. (The ban, imposed by Massachusetts on the grounds that the film violated the inmates’ privacy, was lifted in 1991; the film subsequently aired on PBS.)

This may just be a personal reaction, but “Titicut Follies” is the most frightening film I have ever seen in my life. (I actually saw it in a screening at the old Dobie Theater.)

Mr. Wiseman’s approach to his films — shot in what he wryly referred to as “wobblyscope,” thanks to his hand-held camera — was perhaps never better expressed than during a face-off with his fellow documentarian Werner Herzog, onstage at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.
Mr. Herzog, who had been espousing a theory of “ecstatic truth” and a willingness to manipulate his nonfiction films to achieve something sublime, confided to the audience that a shot apparently made through a dewdrop in his film “The White Diamond” had actually been made through a leaf to which glycerin had been applied. Asked whether he had ever done anything similar, or would, Mr. Wiseman said he had not, but admitted that he might change a lightbulb if a room seemed too dark.

Jesse Jackson.

Posted in History, Movies, Obits, Politics, Texas Rangers, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 11, 2025.

Thursday, December 11th, 2025

Three obits today for people who aren’t as notable as usual, but who I find interesting for one reason or another.

Stephen Downing. He was a police officer with the LAPD. One day he picked up the phone at the precinct.

Jack Webb was on the other end of the line. He was looking for a technical advisor for “Adam-12”.

Mr. Downing — who had studied creative writing in the 1960s at what is now California State University, Los Angeles — got the job and quickly surmised that he could offer more than guidance on police policy and tactics. He wanted to write a script.
“Webb said, ‘It’s harder than it looks,’” Michael Downing said in an interview, recalling what his father told him. “My father went home, wrote the script over the weekend and sold it.”

He continued to write scripts (under pen names) while still working for the LAPD.

As Michael Donovan, he wrote 21 episodes of “Adam-12,” 11 of a “Dragnet” reboot in the late 1960s that starred Mr. Webb and Harry Morgan, and 13 of “Emergency!,” a show Mr. Webb produced in the 1970s about Los Angeles paramedics. Under the name Sean Baine, Mr. Downing’s writing credits included “Police Woman,” “The Streets of San Francisco,” “Kojak” and “Police Story.”

…

After retiring from the L.A.P.D. in 1980, he produced and wrote, under his own name, action series like “T.J. Hooker,” a police procedural set in Los Angeles that ran on ABC and then CBS from 1982 to 1986 and starred William Shatner, and for ABC’s “MacGyver,” with Richard Dean Anderson as an agent whose only weapon is a Swiss Army knife.

IMDB.

Donald McIntyre, opera singer.

The booming voice of Mr. McIntyre, a giant of a man who once seemed destined for a rugby career in his native New Zealand, rang out for more than five decades in the world’s major opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, where he had 16 major roles from 1975 to 1996.
But “the highlight of my career,” as he put it in his 2019 autobiography, was his performance at Bayreuth as Wotan, the king of the gods, in “Das Rheingold,” “Die Walküre” and “Siegfried” in a groundbreaking 1976 production of Wagner’s four-opera “Der Ring des Nibelungen,” directed by Patrice Chéreau.

I don’t get to use my “Wagner” tag enough. But anyway:

By presenting the operas, based on Germanic mythology, as a neo-Marxist allegory of capitalist exploitation in the 19th century, Mr. Chéreau’s production — the so-called centenary “Ring,” marking the 100th anniversary of the tetralogy’s premiere at Bayreuth — shattered norms and set the stage for decades of updatings of canonical operas.
Audiences around the world were used to seeing Wagner gods and heroes holding spears and wearing pseudo-Norse winged helmets. While some postwar Bayreuth productions had emptied out the stage for radically spare visions of the classic works, putting Mr. McIntyre’s Wotan in an Edwardian frock coat and dressing the Rhinemaidens as cancan girls caused a near riot at the tradition-encrusted summer festival.
As Mr. McIntyre recalled in his memoir, an enraged older lady beat another spectator over the head with an umbrella; “howls of fury” greeted his entrance onstage in the frock coat; and the composer’s daughter-in-law, Winifred Wagner, a onetime confidant of Hitler’s, told Mr. McIntyre that if she came across Mr. Chéreau, she would “shoot him” for politicizing the “Ring.”
Over four years, however, with the production revived, revised and refined each summer, many holdouts eventually warmed to it, and at the final performances, in 1980, there was a 45-minute standing ovation. When Winifred Wagner and Mr. Chéreau finally met, she admitted that “many times I wanted to kill you,” but added, “After all, isn’t it better to be furious than bored?”

There’s something to be said for that.

George Altman, baseball player. He was one of only three people who played in the Negro Leagues, MLB, and in Japan. (Don Newcombe and Larry Doby are the other two.)

At Tennessee A&I State University (now Tennessee State University), he played basketball and baseball. After graduating in 1955 with a degree in physical education, he landed a tryout with the Kansas City Monarchs, a Negro Leagues team managed by Buck O’Neil.
Altman took batting practice with the Monarchs before one of their games.
“Evidently I must have impressed them a little bit because as I was getting comfortable on the bench, sitting back to just enjoy the game, Buck came up to me and said, ‘Boy, you’re in there,’” Altman wrote. “It almost scared me to death.”

…

After three months with the Monarchs, he signed with the Cubs and was assigned to the Burlington Bees, in Iowa, in the minor leagues. He was drafted into the Army in 1956, and then rejoined the Cubs organization in 1958. He was promoted to the major leagues the next year.
“The thing I like about Altman is the fact that he knows where the strike zone is,” [Ernie] Banks told The Sporting News in 1959. “That’s one thing most young ballplayers don’t know about. They swing at anything they can reach with the bat. Altman waits for his pitch.”
In need of pitching, the Cubs traded Altman to the Cardinals in 1962. St. Louis traded him to the Mets the next year, and the Mets traded him back to the Cubs before the 1965 season. By then, he was struggling with injuries, once joking that he played for Blue Cross.
After Altman hit just .111 in 15 games in 1967, his career in the majors was over. Unwilling to quit playing, he joined the Tokyo Orions in Japan. During seven seasons with the team, he hit 193 home runs, becoming a popular player for his slugging and willingness to learn Japanese phrases.

Baseball Reference.

Posted in 1970s, Cops, Law, Music, Obits, Sports, TV, Wagner | 2 Comments »

Historical note. Parental guidance suggested.

Saturday, November 1st, 2025

70 years ago today, United Flight 629 (a DC-6B) disintegrated near Longmont, Colorado. There were no survivors among the 44 passengers and crew.

(more…)

Posted in Cops, Explosives, FBI, History, Law, Planes | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 30, 2025.

Thursday, October 30th, 2025

Bjorn Andresen. There’s a certain lack of notability here, but I think it is offset by the sadness of this story.

Mr. Andresen was 15 when Luchino Visconti cast him as Tadzio, the object of desire in his adaption of “Death In Venice”.

Tadzio’s mere appearance bewitches the composer Gustav von Aschenbach, played in the film by Dirk Bogarde. They meet in an elevator, leaving Aschenbach spellbound as they lock eyes but do not speak. Aschenbach then follows Tadzio around the city and fantasizes about him as a kind of artistic and romantic muse, before growing sick and dying in a beach chair as he reaches toward the boy.

Visconti called him “the most beautiful boy in the world”.

Visconti was also fixated on Mr. Andresen. During the boy’s screen test, the director asked him to strip to his swimsuit.
“When they asked me to take off my shirt, I wasn’t comfortable,” Mr. Andresen told Variety after the release of “The Most Beautiful Boy in the World,” a 2021 documentary about him directed by Kristina Lindstrom and Kristian Petri. “I wasn’t prepared for that. I remember when he posed me with one foot against the wall, I would never stand like that.
“When I watch it now,” he said, “I see how that son of a bitch sexualized me.”
He told The Guardian that Visconti was “the sort of cultural predator who would sacrifice anything or anyone for the work.”

…

During the making of “Death in Venice,” Visconti acted protectively toward Mr. Andresen. But the boy felt unprepared when Visconti took him to a gay club after the film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1971.
In the documentary, Mr. Andresen recalled feeling besieged by “voracious looks, wet lips and rolling tongues” and getting drunk to cope with the unwanted attention. He wondered if Visconti, who was gay, was testing him to see if he was also gay, which he wasn’t.

…

Over the last 20 years or so, his flowing hair became gray and he obscured his face behind a beard that made him look something like Ian McKellen as the wizard Gandalf in the “Lord of the Rings” films.
Mr. Andresen continued to act, mostly on television in Sweden but also in films, including a memorable turn in Ari Aster’s 2019 horror movie, “Midsommar.” He was also a keyboard player in a dance band, a composer of jazz and bossa nova music, the arranger of the music for a Swedish production of “The Rocky Horror Show,” and the manager of a small theater in Stockholm.

Lawrence sent over an obit for Pierre Robert, long time Philadelphia DJ. The NYPost ran one as well.

His legendary career with WMMR spanned over 44 years, beginning in 1981 and became a constant voice for listeners in southeastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, Delaware and parts of Maryland.

This isn’t quite an obit, but I don’t know where else to put it. I also don’t quite know how to write about it, so I’m just going to do the best I can.

Officer Lauren Craven of the La Mesa (California) Police Department was killed on October 23rd. She was 25 years old, and had joined the department in February of 2024.

She came upon a deadly rollover crash on Interstate 8 northeast of San Diego just before 10:30 p.m. last Monday, officials said.
She reported the incident over the radio before stepping out and walking toward a car that had flipped over.
Craven was struck by another car, which triggered a chain reaction, smashing into the vehicles involved in the initial crash.

David Pearce was sentenced yesterday.

Pearce met Christy Giles, 24, and Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola, 26, at a rave party in Los Angeles and lured them back to his place — plying them with fentanyl-laced coke and drugged drinks and then refusing to call for help when they overdosed.
A witness claimed Pearce said “dead girls don’t talk” when he begged the killer to call 911.
Instead, Pearce dragged their limp bodies into his Toyota Prius and dumped them on the sidewalk in front of two different hospitals.

After the girls were murdered and scumbag Pearce was charged, seven other women came forward and said they’d been assaulted by him.

It came out yesterday, during the sentencing, that one of those women was Ms. Craven.

Pearce assaulted Craven while she was unconscious in 2020, prosecutors said at trial. He was given six years for that crime, plus sentences of 15 years to life for the other rapes.

…

Pearce was sentenced to a total of 146 years in prison for his crimes…

She was assaulted by someone who isn’t even worth being called “human”, but she didn’t let that stop her. She worked her butt off to get through the police academy and get sworn in as an officer, and she died a hero.

Anybody else notice that there’s an awful lot of dust in the air today?

Posted in Cops, Heroism, Law, Movies, Obits, Radio | Comments Closed

Update.

Monday, September 29th, 2025

I know I said on Friday I’d try to address the Yogurt Shop Murders after today’s press conference.

I didn’t get a chance to watch the press conference today due to continuous meetings. I’m sure there’s a recording somewhere that I will try to watch.

My other issue is that yesterday was a rough day for me, and I haven’t had time to do much with the murder story because I’m trying to clean up from that.

I drove down to Kyle yesterday since it was a kind of off day for my regular church, and I thought I’d visit a friend at her church.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to connect with her, but that was okay. That also wasn’t the issue.

On my way back from Kyle, one of my car tires catastrophically failed on the Southwest Parkway.

Then I had an appointment at 4 PM at the Apple Store in Barton Creek Mall to get my iPhone battery replaced. I made the appointment and waited around for about 90 minutes while they replaced the battery. Everyone was very nice (the Apple employee who checked me in was especially awesome), and I got my phone, got in my car, started driving out of the parking lot, decided to call home and see if I needed to pick up food…

…and nobody could hear me. I checked with a couple of other people, and it wasn’t just one phone. It seems that, when they replaced the battery, Apple broke the microphone on my phone, so I can’t make calls. (Well, technically, I can make calls: I just can’t talk to anybody.)

So now I need to get in touch with Apple and figure out the next steps to get the microphone fixed. This is complicated by the fact that I have 2FA software on my phone that I need for work, so I can’t be without it for more than a few hours.

I just bought a new Dick Tracy two-way wrist radio with some of my bonus money, and enabled cell service on it. I’ve tested, and in a pinch, I can use that to make voice calls. But it isn’t an ideal solution.

I did manage to get an appointment today with Discount Tire to get my tire replaced. They were efficient and nice…

…and it turns out they don’t have the Michelin tires I want. They thought they had one in stock, and told me I could come back in a day or two for the second one. Then it turned out they couldn’t find the one, either.

So they slapped a loaner tire on my car, and I get to come back in a few days to get the two tires done.

There were, however, two redeeming points. The tire that failed was under warranty, so they’re replacing it for free. They suggested I might want to get a second tire done, since it had more wear on it than the other three. I kind of resisted that at first. But then I asked about doing something to replace the doughnut spare on the car, which I’ve put some wear on and no longer trust.

Discount offered me a spare full-size wheel at a reasonable price, and offered to take the more worn – but still good – tire off, replace it with a new tire, and mount the old tire on the new wheel. Thus giving me a non-doughnut spare, which I think is swell, as I hate driving on those.

But I still have to go back to Discount once they get everything together, which is more time out of my schedule. Good thing this isn’t one of my busy weeks.

I’ll try to have some commentary up about the murders in the next few days. In the meantime, “New DNA technology key to solving 1991 Austin yogurt shop murders” from KXAN. It looks like the new technique is Y-STR DNA testing. As I’ve said before, I wish I knew more about DNA testing than I do, and I can’t really comment on the soundness of the methodology. The article also states that there is ballistic evidence which ties these murders to a case in Kentucky and several other crimes.

The connection of the suspect to Texas remains unclear to me. And I hate to be cynical, because the reports are making this sound like good police work.

However, if this turns out wrong, it wouldn’t be the first time. Four other men were convicted in 1999, but were cleared in 2009 after Y-STR profiling excluded them. It could be that they have the right guy this time. It could be that they’re clearing a cold case by playing “pin the tail on the dead guy”. At the moment, I’m leaning more in the direction of this being the right guy, but I can understand the cynicism some people in my circle have expressed.

(Previously on WCD.)

Posted in Apple, Austin, Cops, Law | 3 Comments »

Crime watch.

Friday, September 26th, 2025

I’m going to make this short, because it broke at the end of the day today and there’s more to come.

The Austin Police Department says that they have identified a suspect as the Yogurt Shop Killer.

Police identified the suspect through DNA and ballistics testing.

…

On Dec. 6, 1991, Austin firefighters responded to a fire at the yogurt shop. The structure call would sadly reveal the quadruple homicide case, when the bodies of four teenage girls were found.

APD says they plan to hold a press conference on Monday to provide more information, so I’ll probably wait until Monday night to do a longer write-up. But I wanted to get at least this out now.

The identified suspect killed himself in 1999.

Posted in Austin, Cops, Law | 1 Comment »

What is this I don’t even have any words.

Thursday, July 17th, 2025

A New York City police officer who previously worked for Wells Fargo was charged on Thursday with spending $87,000 in bank customers’ money on personal bills that included BMW payments and a gluteus-building program called Booty by Jacks.

The Booty by Jacks website.

The complaint does not indicate whether the subscription for Booty by Jacks, described on its website as “the world’s best glute-building program,” was for Officer Rodriguez Acosta. The Booty by Jacks Instagram account, which has more than 730,000 followers, says: “We Help Women Lose Fat, Build Muscle & Look Incredible in a Bikini.”
Subscriptions range from $33 a week for workout training alone to $47 a week or $127 a month for programs that combine fitness and nutritional guidance and other services. The website shows what are presented as several sets of before-and-after photos of swimsuit-clad female customers. There are also versions of the programs for men.

Posted in Bagatelle, Cops, Law, NYPD | Comments Closed

Note from the legal beat.

Tuesday, July 8th, 2025

A story I missed over the weekend:

Nearly Half of America’s Murderers Get Away With It

…the Louisville police do not arrest anyone in roughly half of murder cases. I spoke to family members of a dozen victims. They all conveyed a similar sentiment: that the police had abandoned them and theirs. “The police don’t really care,” said Deondra Kimble, David’s aunt. “They’ve proven it to me.”

…

Louisville is representative of a national issue. In the United States, people often get away with murder. The clearance rate — the share of cases that result in an arrest or are otherwise solved — was 58 percent in 2023, the latest year for which F.B.I. data is available. And that figure is inflated because it includes murders from previous years that police solved in 2023.
In other words, a murderer’s chance of getting caught within a year essentially comes down to a coin flip. For other crimes, clearance rates are even lower. Only 8 percent of car thefts result in an arrest.

…

Why does America solve so few crimes? Experts point to five explanations.

Number two on the list, is, of course, “guns”. There’s even a handy little graph of “Gun homicide rates, 2023”, that includes the U.S., Canada, Sweden, Spain, and Australia. Not included: Switzerland.

What this story brings to mind, though, is David Simon’s great book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. My copy is in a box somewhere, so I’m going off memory here: Lawrence can probably fill in the lacunae. (I’d buy the Kindle edition for reference, but they want $14 for that.) There’s a several page section where Simon breaks down the numbers for one year’s worth of homicides. (I believe it was 1988.)

Some of the homicides were things like vehicle accidents (remember, there’s a difference between “homicide” and “murder”). Some were self-defense incidents. Some were cases where the killer died in the act (such as arson or a murder-suicide)…

…and at the end of the day, as best as I recall, your chances of even being charged with a homicide in Baltimore that year were about one out of three. And your chances of getting a sentence of more than ten years were basically zero: you had to do something awful (like molesting and killing a child) to get more than that. And a ten year sentence, with the parole laws in effect at the time, plus time spent in prison before trial, and good time credit, meant that you were likely to get out of prison after three years.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

And for what it’s worth, the Austin Police Department cleared 100% of their homicide cases for 2023. I don’t think 2024 figures are in yet, but APD has been consistently above 90% clearance since 2014.

Posted in Austin, Cops, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#148 in a series)

Friday, June 6th, 2025

Marcos Lopez is the sheriff of Osceola County in Florida, though he is currently suspended.

Why is he suspended? Because he was indicted on racketeering and “conspiracy to commit racketeering” charges on Thursday.

A charging document released by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier’s office said the case centers around a money-laundering operation through an illegal gambling house in Kissimmee known as the Fusion Social Club run by Lopez and his co-conspirators. The establishment conducted illegal lotteries while illicitly possessing slot machines as part of an operation enriching the sheriff while in office.

NYT:

The charges stem from a joint investigation conducted in 2023 by Homeland Security Investigations and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The inquiry uncovered a criminal syndicate that prosecutors say operated an illegal gambling network that generated about $22 million across Central Florida, especially in Lake and Osceola Counties.
Prosecutors said that Sheriff Lopez’s ties to the casino, the Eclipse Social Club in Kissimmee, Fla., date to 2019, a year before his election. After becoming sheriff in 2020, prosecutors said, he continued to protect the gambling ring as it expanded in Florida while collecting a portion of proceeds.
Prosecutors said that Sheriff Lopez’s involvement in the gambling enterprise continued until as recently as August 2024, months before he was re-elected in November.

Switching back to the Tampa Bay Times:

It all amounts to a disgraceful denouement for Lopez, who has been a magnet for controversy since he became Osceola’s first Hispanic sheriff in 2020. The longtime lawman has been accused of personal indiscretions such as receiving a nude photo of a co-worker, and professional missteps including his deputies’ aggressive actions in pursuing shoplifters at a Target and killing their driver. Most recently, Lopez posted on social media a picture of the corpse of 13-year-old Madeline Soto, then lied about what he had done.

Posted in Cops, Law, Politics | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: May 30, 2025.

Friday, May 30th, 2025

Bernard B. Kerik, former commissioner of the New York Police Department.

He was in charge on September 11th.

Like the mayor himself, Mr. Kerik received kudos for his response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He and Mr. Giuliani rushed to the site to speed the evacuation of the World Trade Center. They were showered by debris from the collapse of the towers and were temporarily trapped in a nearby building.

He was also convicted of several crimes, including tax fraud, and served three years of a four year federal sentence. He was pardoned by Trump in 2020.

NYT obit for Harrison Ruffin Tyler (share link). Previously.

Dr. Robert Jarvik, the artificial heart guy.

By the mid-1980s, medical ethicists and theologians were debating whether artificial hearts improved life or extended a painful decline toward death. At a 1985 symposium of religious figures and doctors in Louisville, Ky., a Jesuit theologian noted that in the Christian view, “life is a basic good but not an absolute good,” adding, “There is a limit on what we may do to preserve our lives.”

…

In January 1990, the Food and Drug Administration withdrew its approval of the Jarvik-7, citing concerns about the manufacturer’s quality control.
In a 1989 interview with Syracuse University Magazine, Dr. Jarvik admitted that his belief that the Jarvik-7 was advanced enough to be used widely on a permanent basis was “probably the biggest mistake I have ever made.”
Still, he defended his work. Of the five recipients of the permanent Jarvik-7, he told the magazine, “These were people who I view as having had their lives prolonged,” adding that they survived nine months on average when some had been expected to live “no more than a week.”

…

In the late 1980s, his company, Jarvik Heart Inc., began developing smaller, less obtrusive implements, known as ventricular assist devices. Unlike the Jarvik-7, these devices do not replace a diseased heart but assist in pumping blood from the lower chambers of the heart to the rest of the body. One such device, the Jarvik 2000, is about the size of a C battery. A pediatric version, called the Jarvik 2015, is roughly the size of an AA battery.
According to a 2023 study of the artificial heart market, a descendant of the original Jarvik-7, now owned by another company, is called the SynCardia Total Artificial Heart. It is designed primarily for temporary use in patients who face imminent death while awaiting transplants. The study found that the device had been implanted in more than 1,700 patients worldwide.

Posted in Cops, History, NYPD, Obits | 1 Comment »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#145 in a series)

Thursday, March 27th, 2025

Some people might say that Robert Farley, the police chief of North Bergen, New Jersey, has an unusual sense of humor.

Other people might say that he’s an a–hole. Including some of his own officers, who are planning to sue the department.

The chief’s sense of humor includes such hits as:

Michael F. Derin, who worked as a special captain in an administrative role, accused the chief of chasing him around the office before cornering him and poking him with a hypothermic needle through his jeans and into his penis in August 2024.
“When I told chief Farley I was unhappy with his actions, he told me that I didn’t know how to take a joke,” Derin wrote in a notice of claim – the precursor to a lawsuit.

And:

“Chief Farley has, on several occasions, pulled his pants down and defecated on the floor in front of his entire office staff,” Guzman wrote in his notice of claim.
One time he even pooped in the trash can of an office he was moving out of so the next police official moving into the space would find it, Guzman alleged.

And:

“Chief Farley has also tampered with office coffee by adding prescription medications such as Adderall and Viagra, causing staff to inadvertently experience the effects of these substances without their consent,” Guzman wrote.

And:

Farley was also accused of sneaking hot peppers into officers’ food, sending sex toys and gay pride flags to the home of a cop and tossing eggs “in fits of anger” in the legal documents.

And:

Derin, a former detective in the department, also claimed Farley shaved his body hair over people’s property and their food.

These are just allegations, of course. And there are more of them, but those are relatively minor: the usual retaliation and harassment.

North Bergen stood by its police chief amid the accusations, telling NBC News the town “has full confidence in Chief Robert Farley’s leadership.”

Edited to add 3/28: The NYPost has a follow-up story. While these are still allegations, the story includes some photos that would tend to support the claims.

Warning: I don’t usually have to put a content warning on flaming hyenas. But these photos include a shirtless Chief Farley shaving himself (or pretending to shave himself) over a subordinate’s desk. These photos also include a pile of poop, allegedly from the chief, though it is unclear to me if any DNA testing was done to establish that.

Posted in Cops, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 20, 2025.

Thursday, March 20th, 2025

George Bell, actor, Harlem Globetrotter, and the tallest man in America.

He was 7’8″, and passed away at 67. He also served honorably with the Norfolk Sheriff’s Office for close to 14 years.

Nadia Cassini, Italian actress. Lawrence emailed this obit and added the observation that she was “the woman in ‘Starcrash’ who wasn’t Caroline Munroe”. IMDB.

Mark Dobies, actor. Other credits include “Nash Bridges”, “CSI: Miami”, and “Law and Order: Criminal Intent”.

Posted in Cops, Movies, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Of making many books there is no end…

Thursday, February 27th, 2025

It has been a difficult week. I thought it might cheer me up some to catalog more gun books for the library. As the saying goes, “I’ve suffered for my art. Now it’s your turn.”

This time, though, I have one that’s only sort of tangentially a gun book, and one that’s not a gun book at all. I’ll get into the reason for that one later.

Van Halen mode on.

(more…)

Posted in Books, Cops, History, Hoplobibilophilia, Law, Mixology, O'Connor | Comments Closed

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