Thursday, May 31, 2012
The Latin Kings Sued by Kane County
The Kane County state’s attorney’s office has filed a lawsuit against 35 members of the Latin Kings who reside in Aurora, seeking to hold gang members accountable for past violence and give police another tool against organized crime.
After the lawsuit was filed Thursday, Aurora police officers and Kane County sheriff’s deputies began serving defendants with the suit and a summons to appear July 10 before Judge Thomas Mueller.
The lawsuit seeks to prevent the defendants from loitering together in public, possessing weapons or drugs, vandalizing surfaces with graffiti, showing gang signs, wearing gang colors or even being present in certain parts of town. Once the lawsuit becomes a verified complaint, if police find a gang member violating its terms, they can take action. “We expect that this injunction will significantly diminish the gang’s criminal activity by stopping the Latin Kings’ ability to freely operate within the Aurora community,” Kane County State’s Attorney Joe McMahon said.
McMahon called the gang members targeted in the suit “the worst of the worst in Aurora.” A list of their previous convictions for crimes such as first-degree murder, unlawful delivery of a controlled substance, mob action and aggravated discharge of a firearm takes up 12 pages of the 18-page lawsuit.
Aurora police Chief Greg Thomas said violent crime in Aurora has decreased since its peak in 1996, when there were 357 reports of shots fired and 26 murders. By 2011 those numbers dropped to 60 instances of shots fired and two murders, but Thomas said work remains to be done. “When these violent crimes are reduced, police have more time to devote to other crimes like burglaries and theft,” he said.
Targeting gang members through the civil suit will help the city move further away from its previous image as an unsafe place, Mayor Tom Weisner said. “The initiative announced today is another tool our police officers can use to help ensure the city is safe from the violence of street gangs,” Weisner said.
Ross Bartolotta, a special assistant state’s attorney hired with $60,000 in federal grant money, spent several months researching gang members’ history of criminal activity to determine whom to sue first.
If defendants or their lawyers show up to their court dates, each case will go through a discovery process and trial to determine if the defendant will be prohibited from associating with other gang members. If a defendant doesn’t show up, McMahon said the gang member automatically will be held to the regulations of the injunction.
Violating the injunction could result in contempt of court or a misdemeanor charge punishable with up to a year in county jail and up to $2,500 in fines.
The lawsuit filed against Latin Kings members residing in Aurora isn’t the first of its kind. Kane County sued about 80 members of the Latin Kings in Elgin in 2010, and the DuPage County state’s attorney’s office has sued gang members four times since 1999, targeting groups that operated in Addison, Glendale Heights and West Chicago. “We did this again here in Kane County for one reason: We have a responsibility to take whatever lawful action we can to make this community safer,” McMahon said. “This lawsuit, which is a proven proactive tool, is another step in that direction.”
Thanks to Marie Wilson.
Christina Scoleri Profile from Mob Wives: Chicago
“I wanna get the story out there,” Christina Scoleri explains when she’s asked why she joined the cast of Mob Wives Chicago. And she definitely has a story to tell. With a dad who was “connected” and arrested over twenty times, she’s intimately familiar with the lifestyle, but she’s endured some of her own trials and…trivulations, too. She’s divorced but still living with her ex, and raising her daughter, and just fighting (figuratively and sometimes literally) to survive. Doing this show, she says, “Is therapy for me.”
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Should Blacks or Muslims Report Crimes Committed by Others of Their Race?
Thanks to Colin Flaherty
MSNBC’s new golden girl was in a pickle: If someone sees a black person committing rape or domestic violence, should he report it if it makes black people look bad?
Or if Muslims see wife-beating, genital mutilation and childhood sexual abuse, should they just keep it to themselves, because saying something gives ammunition to the “Islamophobes”?
The questions appear to be simple. But they posed a challenge for the host of the new “Melissa Harris-Perry” show when guest Mona Eltahawy talked about her Foreign Policy magazine cover story about abuse of women by men in the Muslim world.
Eltahawy speaks from experience: She had her arms broken in a demonstration in Egypt and was tortured and raped in an Egyptian jail cell.
So she seemed surprised to find Harris-Perry questioning her right to draw attention to “traditions” such as involuntary female circumcision, wife-beating and childhood sexual abuse.
“I start with a little bit of trepidation in this conversation,” the host said, “in part because I know some of the critiques of this. The very idea that Western press, those that are not from these nations, who are not Muslim ourselves, who are not part of these traditions can look at your article and say ‘ahhh, look at how horrible those men, or those societies, or that religion is.’ “And that is part of the reason why, for example, we have an under-reporting of rape and domestic violence in African American communities,” Harris-Perry continued. “Because we know the violence enacted on black men by police, so we often don’t call. Right?”
Then the MSNBC host brought in Harvard professor Leila Ahmed, who questioned whether Eltahawy should have written the article at all. Not because it was false, but because it made Muslims look bad.
“You began, Melissa, by noting that some things in the African-American community are not publicized precisely because of the racism,” said Ahmed as Harris-Perry nodded in agreement on a split screen.
“Mona, I appreciate what you do,” continued Ahmed. “I would love it if – I understand if you want to get your message across. It’s an important message. But if possible [you should not] give fuel, fodder to people who simply hate Arabs and Muslims in this climate of our day.”
Eltahawy seemed taken aback.
“That’s the whole point,” she said. “It’s not me that makes Muslims look bad. It’s those atrocities that make Muslims look bad. And as a writer, it’s my job to poke the painful places.” Harris-Perry declined to respond to a subsequent email asking if she ever refused to report a violent crime because it would make someone look bad.
Eltahawy point out that deposed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak oppressed the nation for 30 years, until his removal last year. She said “Mubarak” still needs to be removed from Egyptian minds and bedrooms.
The society that emphasizes Islam, she said, continues to “oppress women,” citing a statement from Saudi Arabia on the day her article was released saying that 10-year-old girls are “ready for marriage.”
“That’s outrageous,” Eltawy said.
She explained she wanted to go “straight for the jugular” and reveal misogyny in religion, culture and the law, and demand an answer.
“What are we going to do about that?” she asked.
Former Iowa Republican Congressman Fred Grandy, now with the Center for Security Policy, described what life is like for women under Islamic law, or Shariah, in an interview with “PolitiChicks.”
Grandy said there are a number of cases in which Muslim women, even in the United States, have been abused under Islamic law.
They include a case in which a judge concluded it essentially was a Muslim man’s right to beat and assault his wife. In another case, a Muslim woman who had fled Pakistan was forced by a U.S. judge to send her child back to Pakistan, because the father claimed it was his right to have the child.
Further appeals, the judge ruled, would be in Pakistan. When the mother argued that she could be accused of crimes and sentenced to death if she returned to Pakistan to fight for her child, the judge concluded, essentially, that it was her problem.
Colin Flaherty is an award-winning reporter whose work has appeared in more than 1,000 media outlets around the world, including the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times and WND. His critically acclaimed book, "The Return of Racial Violence to America and How the Media Ignore It." is in its second edition and available in paperback and e-book at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other popular outlets.
MSNBC’s new golden girl was in a pickle: If someone sees a black person committing rape or domestic violence, should he report it if it makes black people look bad?
Or if Muslims see wife-beating, genital mutilation and childhood sexual abuse, should they just keep it to themselves, because saying something gives ammunition to the “Islamophobes”?
The questions appear to be simple. But they posed a challenge for the host of the new “Melissa Harris-Perry” show when guest Mona Eltahawy talked about her Foreign Policy magazine cover story about abuse of women by men in the Muslim world.
Eltahawy speaks from experience: She had her arms broken in a demonstration in Egypt and was tortured and raped in an Egyptian jail cell.
So she seemed surprised to find Harris-Perry questioning her right to draw attention to “traditions” such as involuntary female circumcision, wife-beating and childhood sexual abuse.
“I start with a little bit of trepidation in this conversation,” the host said, “in part because I know some of the critiques of this. The very idea that Western press, those that are not from these nations, who are not Muslim ourselves, who are not part of these traditions can look at your article and say ‘ahhh, look at how horrible those men, or those societies, or that religion is.’ “And that is part of the reason why, for example, we have an under-reporting of rape and domestic violence in African American communities,” Harris-Perry continued. “Because we know the violence enacted on black men by police, so we often don’t call. Right?”
Then the MSNBC host brought in Harvard professor Leila Ahmed, who questioned whether Eltahawy should have written the article at all. Not because it was false, but because it made Muslims look bad.
“You began, Melissa, by noting that some things in the African-American community are not publicized precisely because of the racism,” said Ahmed as Harris-Perry nodded in agreement on a split screen.
“Mona, I appreciate what you do,” continued Ahmed. “I would love it if – I understand if you want to get your message across. It’s an important message. But if possible [you should not] give fuel, fodder to people who simply hate Arabs and Muslims in this climate of our day.”
Eltahawy seemed taken aback.
“That’s the whole point,” she said. “It’s not me that makes Muslims look bad. It’s those atrocities that make Muslims look bad. And as a writer, it’s my job to poke the painful places.” Harris-Perry declined to respond to a subsequent email asking if she ever refused to report a violent crime because it would make someone look bad.
Eltahawy point out that deposed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak oppressed the nation for 30 years, until his removal last year. She said “Mubarak” still needs to be removed from Egyptian minds and bedrooms.
The society that emphasizes Islam, she said, continues to “oppress women,” citing a statement from Saudi Arabia on the day her article was released saying that 10-year-old girls are “ready for marriage.”
“That’s outrageous,” Eltawy said.
She explained she wanted to go “straight for the jugular” and reveal misogyny in religion, culture and the law, and demand an answer.
“What are we going to do about that?” she asked.
Former Iowa Republican Congressman Fred Grandy, now with the Center for Security Policy, described what life is like for women under Islamic law, or Shariah, in an interview with “PolitiChicks.”
Grandy said there are a number of cases in which Muslim women, even in the United States, have been abused under Islamic law.
They include a case in which a judge concluded it essentially was a Muslim man’s right to beat and assault his wife. In another case, a Muslim woman who had fled Pakistan was forced by a U.S. judge to send her child back to Pakistan, because the father claimed it was his right to have the child.
Further appeals, the judge ruled, would be in Pakistan. When the mother argued that she could be accused of crimes and sentenced to death if she returned to Pakistan to fight for her child, the judge concluded, essentially, that it was her problem.
Colin Flaherty is an award-winning reporter whose work has appeared in more than 1,000 media outlets around the world, including the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times and WND. His critically acclaimed book, "The Return of Racial Violence to America and How the Media Ignore It." is in its second edition and available in paperback and e-book at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other popular outlets.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Mob Wives: Chicago to Scorch VH1 This Summer
"Mob Wives Chicago" follows the lives of five women allegedly connected to "The Outfit," Chicago's version of the Mob, as they bear the cross for the sins of their Mob-associated fathers. With lives that are right out of newspaper headlines, each woman has chosen her own way to live her life in the city that was once home to Al Capone, sometimes in spite of, and many times because of, who her father is. Along the way, these women battle their friends, families and each other as they try to do what's best for themselves and their children. But ultimately, it is the ghost of their fathers they battle, living and dead, as they try to overcome and persevere in the face of these men's notorious legacies.
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