Tag: crime

Mystery as landscapers find car filled with bags of concrete BURIED in backyard of Facebook engineer’s $15m Silicon Valley mansion: Cadaver dogs ‘indicate possible human remains’ in decades-old vehicle as its registered owner is investigated

Police in Silicon Valley are working to unravel a potential murder mystery after a wealthy couple performing renovations on their yard unwittingly dug up a car filled with concrete that also may contain human remains. 

Paul Saab and Christal Condon Saab live in the $15million home with their three young kids. Paul is a software engineer at Facebook and Christal is an angel investor. Records show that they bought the property in 2020. 

Yesterday, while digging up the yard to perform renovations, the couple’s team of contractors discovered a car buried deep in the ground behind the house.  Cadaver dogs were brought in and detected a ‘slight’ possibility of human remains. 

The car was registered to a previous owner of the home and police believe it is from the 1990s. That owner has not yet been named, but police are working to track them down for an interview. 

DailyMail.com has viewed property records which indicate the Lew family lived in the home between 1990 and 2014.  

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New York wants to ban the sharing of violent crime videos online

Leaders in the state of New York are calling for the criminalization of sharing videos of violent crime.

While the proposals are seemingly ignorant of the First Amendment, and were spurred by a mass shooting, they also could be used to stop people from sharing videos of crimes that take place in the city.

Overall indexed crime in New York City increased in July 2022 by 30.5% compared with July 2021 and, after a recent uptick in crime in New York over the last two years, social media users are sharing videos of violent crime to draw attention to a reversing trend.

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‘SuperFly’ actor sentenced to 50 years to life in prison for multiple rapes

A Los Angeles-based rapper who acted in the 2018 movie “SuperFly” was sentenced Monday to 50 years to life in prison after he was convicted of sexually assaulting seven victims — including three minors.

Kaalan Walker, 27, was also ordered to register as a lifetime sex offender for the series of crimes dating back to 2013, according to City News Service.

The performer was convicted of three counts of forcible rape, two counts of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, two counts of rape of an intoxication victim and one count of assault with intent to commit oral copulation by a Van Nuys jury on April 18.

Deputy District Attorney Cynthia Wallace said she believes Walker is “truly a predator” for his assaults on young women and teenagers between 2013 and 2018, according to City News Service.

Walker used Instagram and Twitter to find his victims — who were often aspiring models and actresses — and lure them to locations by saying he had booked them for photo shoots and music video productions that never happened.

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Don’t Believe the People Blaming Crime on Defunded Police

Police budgets are up in cities across America. It’s a tale as old as time that politicians benefit by whipping up crime panic and accusing opponents of being soft on the issue. And so it goes in 2022, with candidates—mostly conservatives, but also some Democrats trying to position themselves as centrists—insisting that 1) crime is rising, and 2) it’s the fault of criminal justice reform policies. Both claims are highly suspect (see this recent Roundup for more on crime data), and especially so the flavor of blame that suggests this mythical crime wave is the fault of liberals and progressives “defunding the police.”

Yes, “defund the police” became a popular rallying cry in the summer of 2020, as people all over the country took to the streets to protest police brutality. And, yes, it can still be heard as a refrain in some activist circles. But even as some mainstream politicians briefly flirted with this rhetoric, it’s never been a serious policy proposal, nor one that many (if any) leaders—local or national—have acted upon.

President Joe Biden—long a friend of the police and proponent of dubious crime panic policies—recently proposed in his Safer America Plan some $37 billion in federal funding for cops. “President Biden’s fiscal year 2023 budget requests a fully paid-for new investment of approximately $35 billion to support law enforcement and crime prevention – in addition to the President’s $2 billion discretionary request for these same programs,” noted the White House.

Cities and counties, too, have been raising police budgets. ABC News “examined the budgets of more than 100 cities and counties and found 83% are spending at least 2% more on police in 2022 than in 2019.”

The ABC News analysis included most major big and mid-size metropolitan areas, including Albuquerque, Anchorage, Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boise, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Honolulu, Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Louisville, Memphis, Miami, Milwaukee, New Orleans, New York City, Newark, Oakland, Omaha, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Sacramento, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, Washington, D.C., and Wichita, among others.

Of the 109 areas examined, 49 raised law enforcement funding by more than 10 percent and 91 raised it by at least 2 percent. Only 8 places cut funding to law enforcement by more than 2 percent.

Nonetheless, politicians, pundits, and police persist in spreading the politically convenient myth that law enforcement agencies have been massively defunded. “Despite what the public record shows, an analysis of broadcast transcripts reveals that candidates, law enforcement leaders and television hosts discussed the impact of ‘defunding the police’ more than 10,000 times the last two years and the mentions aren’t subsiding this campaign season, ABC found.

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Missing Paris girl, 12, found dead in suitcase with numbers ‘placed’ on body

A 12-year-old girl was found stuffed in a suitcase in Paris with her throat slashed and a bizarre, chilling clue — the numbers 1 and 0 “placed” on her corpse, authorities said.

The hands and feet of the French child, who was not named, were bound with tape, and she appeared to have died from asphyxiation, according to Fox News and the Independent.  

At least four people have since been taken into custody for questioning in the case, but no arrests have been announced.

The girl’s parents notified police when their daughter didn’t come home after school in the French capital Friday, the outlet said.

The girl’s father, who is a caretaker in their building, told police he saw his daughter with a woman in her 20s on video footage from the building — with the woman later emerging on the footage carrying a suitcase.Cops later found evidence of a kidnapping in the basement of the building.

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California serial killer: Police arrest man suspected in Stockton murders

Police in Stockton, California announced that a suspect has been arrested in relation to six murders and one shooting since April 2021.

Stockton Police Department Chief Stanley McFadden announced that Wesley Brownlee, 43, was arrested while he was armed and on a “mission to kill” another victim.

McFadden said that police followed Brownlee while he was driving on Saturday morning, and while watching his “patterns,” officers determined that “he was on a mission to kill” and he was “out hunting.”

When police officers made contact with Brownlee at around 2 a.m. after stopping him, they observed he was wearing a mask around his neck with dark clothing, McFadden said, adding that he was armed when taken into custody.

“We are sure we stopped another killing,” McFadden said.

Brownlee was arrested in relation to the fatal shootings of Salvador Debudey Jr., 43; Paul Yaw, 35; Jonathan Hernandez Rodriguez, 21; Juan Cruz, 52; and Lawrence Lopez Sr., 54, which all took place over the last three months.

Police earlier said that the suspect is being linked to several additional incidents dating back to April 2021, which include the shooting of a 46-year-old Black woman  who was unarmed on April 16, in addition to the fatal shooting of a 40-year-old Hispanic man who was also unarmed on April 10.

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St. Louis preparing to sue Hyundai and Kia over rampant car thefts in the city

Car thefts have skyrocketed in St. Louis in recent months, with city leadership threatening lawsuits against Kia and Hyundai for an alleged defect that makes certain makes of the cars easier to steal.

“Our drivers probably get about five of these things a day. Just Kias and Hyundais getting stolen,” tow truck driver Mark Hartmann told KMOV last week of thefts in the city. 

Auto thefts in St. Louis have doubled this year, according to KMOV. In July alone, the city averaged about 21 Kia and Hyundai theft incidents each day. That number increased to 23 thefts each day in August, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch previously reported. 

In August, St. Louis leaders threatened to sue Hyundai and Kia, demanding the car companies address a defect that allegedly makes stealing vehicles made before 2021 easier to steal. KMOV reported last week that plans to sue the carmakers over the city’s spike in auto thefts are still in the works.  

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MISSING MURDERS: Latest FBI homicide numbers OMIT New York and LA

On Wednesday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released their national crime statistics report for 2021. However, that report leaves out key data from Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and other high-crime locales.

That report revealed that the murder rate had increased compared to the previous year.

According to a press release, the estimated number of murders nationwide increased from 22,000 in 2020 to 22,900 in 2021, a 4.3 percent jump.

The FBI explained that while murder and rape went up in 2021, robbery was down 8.9 percent, balancing things out, which they say resulted in a relatively consistent violent and property crime rate compared to 2020.

“It is important to note that these estimated trends are not considered statistically significant by NIBRS estimation methods,” they wrote, adding that “the nonsignificant nature of the observed trends is why, despite these described changes, the overall message is that crime remained consistent.”

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, however, the FBI’s latest report should be viewed with caution for a number of reasons.

Firstly, they explained, law enforcement agencies across the country have had to transition to the new National Incident Based Reporting System, which not all have done.

This has left sizable gaps in the reporting, including a lack of information from places known for having a higher than average crime rate.

Among the areas that have not switched over to the new system, and thus were not included in the 2021 report, are New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, which has stated that they don’t plan on making the shift until 2025.

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US Postal workers arrested in $1.3 million fraud and identity theft scheme, authorities say

Three US Postal employees are among four people arrested in connection with a $1.3 million fraud and identity theft scheme allegedly carried out in New York and New Jersey since 2018, according to the Department of Justice.

A further five people facing changes in connection with the case remain at large, it said.

The individuals are accused of stealing credit cards from the mail and using them to buy merchandise at a variety of stores, including high-end retailers in New York and New Jersey, authorities said.

They are then said to have sold some of the merchandise on the website LuxurySnob.com, according to a statement from the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

US postal workers Nathanael Foucault, Johnathan Persaud, Fabiola Mompoint, and civilian Devon Richards were arrested on Thursday, according to the statement.

Officials said five other people face charges, including Conspiracy to Commit Access Device Fraud, Access Device Fraud, and Aggravated Identity Theft charges, and each face lengthy prison sentences if found guilty.

“The defendants took advantage of the public trust we place in US Postal Service employees for their own financial gain,” US Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement. “Thanks to the diligence of USPIS (the Postal Inspection Service), the NYPD, and USPS-OIG (the Office of the Inspector General), the defendants will now be held accountable for their brazen criminal conduct.”

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