There was another set of indictments that came down which I totally missed. And these are a surprise, though they don’t get the “tax-fattened hyena” tag.
Apparently, this was the old “create fake invoices” scheme. The players would turn the invoices over to the “Gene Upshaw NFL Player Plan, a health-reimbursement account set up for former players”, get payments, pocket the money, and kick some back to Rehab Express for creating the invoices in the first place.
If I run the numbers on this after taking out Ray’s share, it works out to an average of about $76,000 per player. Which isn’t exactly small change, but it’s not in the sevenn or eight figure range where I would consider doing a crime and escaping to a country without an extradition treaty. Also, the payouts seem to have varied quite a bit:
Today, I wanted to put up something that pushes a few of RoadRich’s hot buttons (and my own).
The California Highway Patrol has a YouTube channel. I thought it might be interesting to look at some aspects of operations that are common to both the Austin Police Department and the CHP. These are things that APD devotes presentations to in their Citizen’s Police Academy (which is on-hold at the moment), so why not take a look at how a department outside of the United States handles these things?
First up: “Air Operations”. This is a two-parter: Part 1.
(Can I note here that I hate “vlog”? I would say I hate the word, but it isn’t even a word.)
Part 2: this covers CHP’s fixed-wing (that is, not helicopter) operations.
There’s an interesting book by Mike Davis, Buda’s Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb (affiliate link). He views the Wall Street bombing as the first car bomb, even though it wasn’t really a “car” bomb.
I haven’t posted any vintage police training videos in a while, because I really haven’t been finding any. At least, none have been popping up in my YouTube feed.
However, I went looking for a specific FBI video that Bill Vanderpool mentioned in his book, Guns of the F.B.I. : A History of the Bureau’s Firearms and Training. (Longer write up about that book to come.) I couldn’t find it, but I did find this:
“Officer Down Code Three” from 1975. This is one of those Motorola videos, but the quality of the transfer seems to me to be a bit higher. It is also interesting for another reason: this video is adapted from Pierce R. Brooks’s book of the same name.
Officer Down Code Three is considered by some to be the first “officer survival” book. It precedes the somewhat more famous Street Survival by about five years.
(Pete Earley’s The Hot House is a swell book about Leavenworth specifically, and to some extent about the Federal prison system in general. I enthusiastically recommend it if you’re interested in prisons or criminal justice issues.)
I thought I’d do something different today. Instead of planes for our first video, trains. And instead of visiting a relatively civilized country, a fifth world banana republic.
“The California Zephyr”! With VistaDome! And courteous waiters!
To be fair, this is from the 1950s, prior to the decline and fall. And somewhat interestingly, Amtrak still runs a train called “California Zephyr” over a similar route (According to Wikipedia, the original Western Pacific Railroad, Burlington Railroad and Rio Grande Railroad incarnation shown here was discontinued in 1970, and Amtrak began running their version in 1983.)
Bonus video #1: More trains, this time the Santa Fe railroad. “Southern California Holiday”. Both of these videos also include some footage of the happiest place on Earth.
“You may cross here from country to country, with no passport problems.” I remember those days. (Never been to Tijuana, but when I was young, my family walked across the border between Texas and Mexico more than once. And when I was older, I made a couple more cross-border trips with friends. Then Homeland Security.)
Bonus video #2: Okay, travel by air this time. “California: World In a Week”, from the 1960s and United Airlines.
It is almost like being there. Except you don’t have to step over the needles and feces. Marineland of the Pacific operated until 1987, when it was bought by the people who owned SeaWorld. The new owners promptly moved all of the animals to SeaWorld San Diego, shut down Marineland, and poured concrete into the drains.
Well, I do like capers. But what I really meant was “capers”. You know, heists. Daring robberies. That sort of thing.
Something called “Wonder” has been popping up in my recommendations. I’m a little hesitant about posting much from them, but these are fairly short and part of what appears to be the same series: “Daring Capers”.
The first one is the one that I really wanted to post, for reasons: the December 11, 1978 Lufthansa heist.
You remember the Lufthansa heist, don’t you? Jimmy Burke Jimmy Conway, Paul Vario Paulie Cicero, those guys, those Goodfellas?
I thought this was an interesting supplement, if you will.
I chose this one because I’ve read Ira Berkow’s book about the Pierre, which tells the story mostly from Bobby Comfort‘s point of view. I note that the paper of record says $3 million, while the series claims $10 million. The $3 million figure is supported (to the extent anything can be supported) by Wikipedia. But as I recall, there are some questions about whether the robbery victims reported everything they lost: for example, stashes of untaxed cash.
