Tag: Crime

Why I voted for Trump

Bradley FarlessLeave a comment

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a political ad this uplifting before. Or that I’ve ever seen an uplifting political ad. This ad makes you feel good. It promotes the idea of leaving behind the fringe lunacy of online political discourse and coming back to a middle ground that advocates for something better, something normal, something genuine. And something that makes sense for the country as a whole.

Thinking about Kamala’s campaign and how she constantly lied, from outright lies like working at McDonald’s to how she changed her accent depending on her audience, to her non-answers about any question other than if she came from a middle-class family, the difference between Kamala and Trump is crystal clear. I couldn’t even tell you what Kamala stood for because she didn’t know what she stood for, and she wasted over $1bn USD letting us know it. The only things that stood out about her campaign to me is her horrible irritating cackle, how Beyonce snubbed her, and her saying she wouldn’t change a thing regarding Biden’s presidency, which tells me that four years of Kamala would be another four years of Biden’s disastrous policies.

Trump is what you see is what you get and, despite the lunatic ravings of the far left, what you get is a guy that wants to get the US back on track by securing our border, improving the economy, and by no longer pandering to far-left ideologies when it flies in the face of common sense. He can carry a conversation, make decisive decisions, isn’t afraid to tell it like it is, respects American traditions, and has charisma.

We need the return to normalcy that Biden promised but never delivered. We need the government to work for the majority of Americans and to create a narrative that unites people, instead of promoting the divisiveness of identity politics. We need a President that recognizes all Americans as people united by common ideals and goals, instead of one that would promote the interests of one group over another based-on race, sex, or ambiguous gender identity politics. And we need a President that will govern based on the will of the majority instead of the crazed rantings of the very loud minority.

I voted for Donald Trump because I believe that the United States is a country that can and should be proud of itself, despite its flaws. I believe that the United States is a country that should work on behalf of its citizens, instead of crushing citizens to take care of the rest of the world. I believe the United States is a place of opportunity and could be a place of prosperity again, if we refuse to let the Democratic establishment tear it down.

I want a secure border instead of an open border so my family will be safer. I want prices to go back down so I can afford to put away money for the future. I want housing to be affordable. I want a strong military that doesn’t have to be used because we’re respected in the world. I want common sense laws, rules, and regulations where criminals aren’t hailed as heroes and victims are helped instead of being prosecuted. I want the rights of women to be respected and to not have their accomplishments taken away by men in cosplay. I want children to be allowed to be children without having their parents manipulate them into making life altering and debilitating medical choices.

Trump was the obvious choice. I voted for Donald Trump, and I’m glad he won.

30 years isn’t enough, but more than I expected

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I guess this case was too high profile for DA Bragg to sweep under the rug.

Assamad Nash should never see the light of day again. He is the poster child for why New York’s bail “reform” law is not only a failure, but is actually harmful to residents. People with long rap sheets should reach a tipping point where they are just permanently incarcerated. There is no reason for Christina Yuna Lee to be dead, and she wouldn’t be if Assamad Nash hadn’t been repeatedly released.

Bronx shooting at Mt Eden train platform

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This is the train I would take if I used the subway to get to work. But I don’t take the train because, despite what the mayor and MTA officials have been saying, it’s not safe to use the subway system in New York City. They know it. We know it. They won’t police the city properly and then act surprised when people don’t want to expose themselves to danger.

I’m very much against congestion pricing because of situations like this. If the city and the train system was safe, it would be different, but the NYPD has been neutered. We need to bring back stop and frisk. We need to make arrests stick so that jails aren’t a revolving door for repeat offenders with rap sheets longer than a CVS receipt. We need to stop spending money on illegal aliens and spend it on things that matter.

Shootings on the trains. Protesters being allowed to shut down roads and buildings with impunity. Kids getting kicked out of schools so illegals can live in them. $53 million dollars for prepaid debit cards for illegals when US CITIZENS are living on the streets or struggling to keep bills paid, including US Veterans. It’s a shame. It’s scandalous. But elected officials don’t care. They seem to think that people value illegals over the rights and needs of citizens and keep wasting our money on them. What money they aren’t pocketing, like that missing $850 million dollars that disappeared into De Blasio’s wife’s pockets.

I can’t understand how these Democrats run the city into the ground and then act surprised that everything is going off the rails. They keep adding taxes and tolls and fare increases, but they don’t provide improved services, and no one’s salary is going up fast enough to cover all of these expenses, including higher rents. All of the money we pay in taxes is being mismanaged and misspent. New York City feels like a third world country. And what I can’t understand the most is how people in New York City keep voting Democrat anyway. I guess some people just like to keep hitting themselves.

Attempted break-in and slow NYPD response

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My wife and I were watching a movie and we started to hear this banging noise from the hallway. When it went on for more than a few minutes, I stuck my head out the door to see what was going on and I saw this skinny crackhead looking dude in a heavy black coat banging on a door down the hall with some kind of tool.

I looked at him and he looked at me and he didn’t even care. He just kept banging on that door.

While I was looking down the hallway, the super’s wife opened her door across the hall and I waved her back inside and told her someone is breaking into an apartment down the hall. I took one more look at the guy and shut the door and called the police.

I placed that phone call at 5:50 PM.

We listened to the guy hitting the door and using what sounded like a hammer and chisel for about ten minutes. Then we got bored and went back to watching our movie.

Twenty minutes later, we heard an altercation in the hallway so I went and looked again and the building super was running the guy off.

The police never showed up. I called 911 again and asked why the police hadn’t responded to a report of a man hammering his way through the door of an apartment. The operator told me that the “job [was] in the system” and she wasn’t sure why there was a delay in my area.

I could only say, “very reassuring” and ended the call.

The NYPD finally responded an hour after my first call. One hour. The criminal got away because the NYPD failed to respond in a timely fashion, which means the guy will probably be back. What if he had attacked someone in the hallway?

Thankfully, the door held. Even if there was no one home, no one deserves to have all of their property stolen or vandalized, or to possibly have pets injured because the NYPD was too busy eating donuts to respond to a call. We’re supposed to trust them to help us when we need them but how can we?

They don’t show up for 311 calls for noise or huge numbers of double and triple parked cars blocking the road, or parked on the sidewalk. They don’t show up for a crime in progress. Will they really show up and save you?

You can’t rely on the police to save you or even to help you, only to write a report about how you got wasted after the fact. We need more 2A friendly laws in New York City so regular citizens don’t become victims due to lax policing and even laxer sentencing.

Broken social structures

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If you see someone being attacked and you step in to help them and you injure the attacker, the attacker will sue you and most of the time you’ll lose in the lawsuit.

If you see an injured person and try to help them and the person dies, the family will investigate you and sue you.

Why bother to help people?

Part of growing up is learning to respect other people. That’s something adults have to teach children. It’s obvious that it’s not happening though. And it’s obvious that something is being lost in our society by this idea that’s being promoted that it’s ok to let kids grow up thinking that disrespect, even to family members, is acceptable.

The only thing that matters is just them, the individual. Their reality, their perception, their “truth”. Their enjoyment. There’s no concept of responsibility to the community and other people.

Why are we building systems and social structures that privilege criminals over victims? That prizes selfishness and disrespect?

I see people complaining online, but you get the society you build. If you don’t like it, change the laws. Stop voting in the same dirtbag politicians. Stop making excuses for poor behavior, either your own or those of people around you.

Goodbye, Citizen

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Citizen is an app that bills itself as:

The most powerful safety app for today’s world. Download Citizen to feel safer at home or out, get real-time safety alerts and live video of incidents happening near you, updates on natural disasters or protests, and know if your loved ones are near a dangerous incident.

Google Play Store Description

And that all sounds great, right? Who doesn’t want to feel safe and informed? When I first downloaded the app a few years ago, it was pretty neat being able to see where crimes were taking place at the street level. It gave me a better idea of what areas to avoid and what time to avoid them. The data wasn’t complete, it wasn’t always accurate, and the user videos were usually pretty bad, but it felt more genuine than what I would see on the news. It added value to my day-to-day.

Then, Citizen tried to be more than I needed or wanted it to be. And it got invasive. During the pandemic, I started to get really wary of the Citizen app. It started adding a lot of features that went beyond its original purpose, like prompting for always on location tracking for friends and family members, COVID-19 symptom tracking, and background contact tracing. All of that sounds cute and useful on the surface, but who is Citizen and why should they be trusted with that much of my personal data? And even more important, does giving them that information add real value to my life?

Ultimately, the answer to that question was no. I thought about it for a while and realized that after an initial period of usefulness, my most common interaction with the Citizen app was swiping away notifications. Sometimes not even notifications about crimes, but notifications about the weather, protests, politics, and so much other random nonsense that I stopped even paying attention to them. I also realized that knowing about the crimes in my area with immediate notifications and spending a lot of time looking at and thinking about them wasn’t improving my mood or making me a better person. Instead, it was cultivating an atmosphere of fear.

I’m apparently not the only one that feels this way, though I took it further.

So, I deleted the app a few weeks ago. I realized today that I haven’t missed it at all. If I need to know what’s going on, I can check the news when I want to check the news, so that my mood and my day aren’t dictated by the notifications coming from an app.

I’ve been going through a process of decluttering and minimizing, and I’m adding apps and other digital clutter to the list. I’m getting rid of unused email addresses, deleting duplicate or old backups, consolidating where my data is stored, and moving anything I can to simpler hosting solutions so that I can free up my headspace for other things that are more important to me.

So far, it has been a worthwhile journey.

The Attempted Burglar is Back in the Building

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The girl that lives next door sent me panicked messages saying she saw the person that tried to break into her apartment again, out in the hallway on our floor. I don’t understand how this person is back here again. How do you attempt to break into someone’s apartment, get caught, and then show up at the building again wandering around like nothing happened?

The police detective involved in the case said there’s nothing he can do to keep her out of the building. That’s up to the building owners. It just seems like it would be common sense, from a legal point of view, to prevent someone from being within a certain distance from a place they tried to rob previously. Now, the only thing to do is get the building owner to state that she is not allowed on the premises and then have her arrested for trespassing, but if she’s a crackhead and is coming here to buy drugs and rob people, will that even stop her? What a mess.

Oh, and she’s still wearing the same hoodie.

The Would-be Burglar Was Arrested

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20140503-214726.jpg

Over the past few days, we’ve seen the person that attempted to break into our apartment and our neighbor’s apartment wandering around the building in the stairwells and out on the streets. My wife took the photo above. As you can see, the person did not even bother to throw away the hoodie. Or leave the area.

We stayed in contact with a detective that was working on the case. Me, my wife and the girl that lives next door told him that we’d seen the suspect around the building and neighborhood multiple times so he came and reviewed the security footage. Turns out it’s not a he. It’s a she, and she is a crackhead that used to live in the building and is sleeping on the roof. I couldn’t make out features under the hoodie and just assumed this person was a man, I suppose because it seems a little unwise to do breaking and entering as a woman, when there is a greater chance of being overpowered by anyone inside. She has been arrested before for breaking into people’s apartments and stealing in order to support her drug habit.

Yesterday, my wife and the girl whose apartment was almost burglarized saw the suspect in the morning and I saw her in the afternoon, out on the street. I called 911, but the cops never showed up. That’s really disappointing. I waited outside for almost 15 minutes and then gave up. I went into the subway to try to get the transit cops to come out and arrest her, but they weren’t interested in helping. Their conversation with their colleagues was too interesting, I guess. I went home, and when I got to my floor, the building superintendent told me she had gone into one of the apartments in the building. I called the detective to let him know and found out later that she had been arrested.

I’m not sure what she’ll be charged with, but hopefully it’s something that keeps her away from our building for a while, or permanently.

An Update on the Break-in Attempt

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Around 9 PM, another cop knocked on my door. My neighbor had finally returned home and found my note taped to her door. Her parents were there as well. The cops took my statement and information again and this time at least told me to keep the photos in case they found or find the guy so they can build a case against him. My neighbor also wanted copies of the photos so I sent them to her. Funny thing is, we’ve lived next door to each other for a year but until tonight I never even knew her name. Nothing brings people together like misfortune, I guess, but it’s nice that we’ve managed to turn this into an opportunity to get to know each other.

Attempted Break-in by a Criminally Stupid Criminal

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This morning I woke up to the sound of banging. I went to check the door because I was expecting a package today (another book for my MA Arab-Israeli Conflict course), but no one was there. I figured it must have been the people downstairs that are renovating the apartment below ours. When I walked back down the hallway I heard banging on the window in our bathroom, so I went to see what was going on.

When I stepped into the bathroom I saw a guy standing there on the other side of the window out on the fire escape. I couldn’t see him clearly because the glass is frosted, but I could see a silhouette. I wasn’t sure what was going on at first because it was 10:30 am, very sunny and the corner of the building is still visible from the street because the trees haven’t grown leaves yet.

The guy must have seen me through the window as well. He moved over to his right, towards my neighbor’s apartment windows. I figured the guy was going to run or something, but instead he started kicking in the glass of my neighbor’s window. I peeked through the blinds to double-check, because really, who is stupid enough to keep trying to break into a apartments when they just saw someone in the next apartment? I saw glass falling. I went to the bathroom, opened the window, peeked around the corner and saw the guy leaning into the window, so I shut the window and called the police.

I can’t imagine the guy didn’t hear me open and close the window, unless it’s louder standing on the fire escape than it was for me inside. The whole time I was on the phone with the police though he kept at it, breaking glass on the window. When I got off the phone with the police, I went back to the bathroom, cracked the window open, stuck my hand out and snapped a few photos. Then I shut the window. I heard more glass breaking.

About 5 minutes later I heard the guy go up the fire escape to the roof. Two minutes later the police were at my door. I gave my statement and two cops went through my window onto the fire escape to look at the neighbor’s window. They confirmed the glass was broken. I showed them the photos I took. The weird thing was, the cop was using her iPhone to take a photo of the photo on my iPhone screen. I asked her if it wouldn’t make more sense to just forward the pictures to her and she declined. Seems like it would be better to have the real photo for ID purposes, especially since tattoos are clearly visible in my pictures.

While I was talking to the cops they got a call over the radio saying that a suspect matching the description of the picture had been spotted. I didn’t hear it exactly, but the sergeant I think replied, “He’s still wearing the same clothes?” Then they all ran down the stairs. I imagine they got the guy. Or at least I would hope they did.

I don’t believe in something like slut shaming, but I do believe in shaming criminal stupidity, especially in this instance, when I don’t know whether the cops caught this guy, so I’m going to share these photos I took of the guy, as a sort of public service. If you see this guy, don’t let him near your windows.

Glass on the fire escape. The metal window gate is an old one that’s been there for over a year.
My neighbor’s window.