By Brian Callaway | Of The Morning Call
10:29 PM EST, January 26, 2008
Allentown police had suspected William Torres of dealing drugs in the city. But an undercover narcotics investigation yielded much more, and resulted in Torres, 21, being charged early Saturday with two counts of homicide.
Police said Torres, whose last known address was 436 Turner St., Allentown, gunned down two men at Fourth and Allen streets last month. According to court documents, Torres admitted killing the men.
Torres was driving on Turner Street Friday afternoon when he was pulled over by police and arrested. He was wearing a hooded sweartshirt with a skull-head pattern on it, pajama bottoms and fuzzy lion-faced slippers at the time. He was still wearing the get-up when he was arraigned after midnight at Lehigh County prison.
?Even growing up around it, little shards of the language stayed alive in our mouths and came out as slang,? he said, spouting a string of words that sounded straight out of a James Cagney movie.
?Snazzy? comes from ?snasach,? which means polished, glossy or elegant.*
The word ?scram? comes from ?scaraim,? meaning ?I get away.? The word ?swell? comes from ?sóúil,? meaning luxurious, rich and prosperous, and ?sucker? comes from ?sách úr,? or, loosely, fat cat.
There is ?Say uncle!? (?anacal? means mercy), ?razzmatazz,? and ?malarkey,? and even expressions like ?gee whiz? and ?holy cow? and ?holy mackerel? are Anglicized versions of Irish expressions, he said. So are ?doozy,? ?hokum,? ?humdinger,? ?jerk,? ?punk,? ?swanky,? ?grifter,? ?bailiwick,? ?sap,? ?mug,? ?wallop,? ?helter-skelter,? ?shack,? ?shanty,? ?slob,? ?slacker? and ?knack.?
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — The Dutch government said Friday that it will ban the sale of hallucinatory mushrooms, rolling back one element of the country’s permissive drug policy after a series of high-profile negative incidents. The Dutch government has announced it is to ban the sale of hallucinogenic mushrooms. The decision will go into effect within several months and doesn’t need parliamentary approval, Justice Ministry spokesman Wim van der Weegen said.
“We intend to forbid the sale of ‘magic’ mushrooms,” he said. “That means shops caught doing so will be closed.”
Under the country’s famed tolerance policy, marijuana and hashish are technically illegal but police don’t bother to prosecute people for possession of small amounts, and they are sold openly in designated cafes.
Possession of “hard” drugs like cocaine and Ecstasy is illegal.
Psilocybin, the main active chemical in the mushrooms, has been illegal under international law since 1971.
However, mushrooms that are fresh and unprocessed in any way have continued to be sold legally in the Netherlands, on the theory that it was impossible to determine how much of the naturally occurring substance any given mushroom contains. Mushrooms will fall somewhere in the middle of the Dutch legality scale.
“We’re not talking about a non-prosecution policy, but we’ll be targeting sellers,” Van der Weegen said.
Van der Weegen said that, in the end, that was also the reason the policy proved unworkable.
“The problem with mushrooms is that their effect is unpredictable. It’s impossible to estimate what amount will have what effect.”
Calls for a re-evaluation arose after a French 17-year-old, Gaelle Caroff, jumped from a building after eating psychedelic mushrooms while on a school visit to Amsterdam. Caroff’s parents blamed her death on hallucinations brought on by the mushrooms, though the teenager had suffered from psychiatric problems in the past. Her photographs was splashed across newspapers around the country. Since Caroff’s death, other dramatic stories involving mushrooms have been reported in the Dutch press, though mushroom vendors complained that each of the cases involved tourists who were using other drugs and alcohol at the same time — against their usage instructions for mushrooms.
The users include:
? A British tourist, 22, who ran amok in a hotel, breaking his window and slicing his hand badly.
? An Icelandic tourist, 19, who thought he was being chased and jumped from a balcony, breaking both his legs.
? A Danish tourist, 29, who drove his car wildly through a campground, narrowly missing people sleeping in their tents. (Everyone knows you don’t drive on mushrooms! - Ed)
“It’s a shame, the media really blew this up into a big issue,” said Chloe Collette, owner of the FullMoon smart-shop in Amsterdam. She said all the incidents had involved the use of multiple drugs — against the advice of sellers — but it was the mushrooms that were blamed.
“Used in the right way, there’s no problem with mushrooms: The biggest problem is with alcohol, in my opinion.”
FLINT TOWNSHIP (AP) ? An officer by the name of Santa has told two men they need to return Snow White’s body and find Grumpy, too. The stone head of a Snow White statue was spotted in a Flint backyard and three of the four dwarf statues stolen from Sue Austin’s Flint Township home have been returned.
Austin tells The Flint Journal the head likely broke when the statues were stolen August 31st.
Flint Township police detective Jim Santa says he was told the Snow White statue’s body had been dumped on the side of a road. He says the two men told him they could retrace their steps to find it.
Bashful, Sneezy and Dopey already have been returned.
Meanwhile, Captain Tooth Fairy and Detective Easter Bunny will keep looking.
There’s something about the name “Flesh Club” that makes it sound more horror-movie than house of ill repute.
The 12-year battle to shut a notorious strip joint in San Bernardino got a major boost Thursday when a judge issued a tentative order closing the Flesh Club and fining the owner $25,000.
“Lewdness is lewdness, and covering it with a patina of ‘free expression’ is a fiction which the law will not tolerate,” San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Donald Alvarez wrote in a 15-page statement that detailed sexual activity at the club.
Wondering where the Flesh Club is located?
The club has been especially annoying to local leaders not just for allegations of prostitution but also because it sits on Hospitality Lane, the one thriving district of hotels and restaurants in a struggling city.
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) — A mini-car and a dune buggy collided during a Shriner’s parade, sending one of the vehicles into the crowd and injuring eight people, police said Monday. “It was just a freak accident,” said a police spokesman, Rick Mincy. “I don’t think they were careless.” No charges were filed in the accident Saturday. The two vehicles were going in circles around each other when the car ran into the crowd.
Even more (thanks, Eve)
and in (Illinois, that is) …
BRUSSELS ? A thrown bag of popcorn triggered a weekend melee that involved more than 100 people brawling after the close of the annual St. Mary?s Catholic Church picnic.
Almost as many people were involved in the fight as live in the community of Brussels.
?It ended up being almost mob action,? Calhoun County Sheriff Bill Heffington said, admitting that he and just two deputies ?simply couldn?t contain them.
?We had to call in backup from several other police agencies,? he said.
Meanwhile, makes an odd headline, considering the suicide of China’s Mattel exec: “Mattel Gets the Lead Out.” Um, okay. Maybe they were smoking some of
ROCHELLE, Ga. (AP) — A woman was arrested after she called police to help “get her money back” after she was unhappy with the crack cocaine she purchased.
Juanita Marie Jones, 53, called Rochelle Police late Thursday night after she purchased what she thought was a $20 piece of crack cocaine, according to police reports.
She told officers she broke the rock into three pieces and smoked one, only to discover the drugs were “fake.”
And yeah, is brutal enough, but did they have to illustrate it with a hammer and nails?
Police in Wilkes-Barre are holding a man accused of storming into a beauty salon and bludgeoning four grandmothers with a hammer.
Forty-one-year-old Thomas Leyshon of Mountain Top was arrested after a daylong manhunt Friday. Authorities said he got away with less than $90 from the victims in the Hairem Family Hair and Nail Care.
Family members said the victims, ages 56 to 76, suffered injuries that included a fractured skull. At least one woman required surgery. At least two of the women remained hospitalized Saturday, both in stable condition.
Andy Chopka, whose grandmother, Jeanna Chopka, underwent surgery Friday night, said only a coward would attack old women.
And my friend in NC sends me Cletis and his
Feeling stupid? Don’t, after you read about
An Australian sheep farmer who sought love over the internet was instead kidnapped and held hostage for 12 days after his African “bride” turned out to be machete-wielding gangsters.
Des Gregor, 56, flew to Mali promising a dowry of gold and marriage to “Natacha”, reportedly a Liberian refugee in her 20s, following a whirlwind romance over the web.
But when he stepped off the plane, men claiming to be the woman’s relatives took him to a flat in the capital, Bamako, where he was robbed, bound and threatened with having his limbs hacked off unless he arranged a £42,000 ransom.
But wait, it gets worse:
It was not the first time Mr Gregor, of Hoyleton, South Australia, has fallen in love online. He travelled to Russia three years ago on a similar trip, but failed to come back with a bride.
Here’s another After the woman he tries to rape escapes his apartment and her coworkers follow him, he gets a bright idea:
An hour later, Milan contacted the Sheriff’s Department to report that he had been followed by two suspicious men, authorities said. He agreed to meet deputies at a Starbucks, where they arrested him.
The cops put it better than I can:
“We’re checking across the United States to see if he has similar crimes,” Amormino said. “He did it at his own house. Obviously not a Rhodes scholar.“
Torrance firm sees the nonlethal ‘light’
Torrance firm’s police flashlight disorients and provides a nonlethal way to incapacitate subjects.
A newly invented law enforcement tool to combat crime can do more than make suspects throw their arms up in surrender.
It can make them throw up - literally.
Touted as a nonlethal device to subdue suspects or control crowds, the LED Incapacitator looks like a normal flashlight, but packs so much power it can disorient a bad guy and cause temporary blindness.
Before long, it might be hanging from police officers’ belts throughout the land.
“The whole purpose is to be able to create a nonlethal way to hold off perpetrators,” said John Farina, chief executive officer at Intelligent Optical Systems Inc., a Torrance research and development business that invented the device. “It’s a lot less lethal than a .38-caliber revolver.”
The device - using light emitting-diode technology - produces such a dazzling display of blue, green and red lights that those who find themselves in front of its strobe can’t see, may develop a headache or even become physically ill.
Imagine a strobe light in a disco - Department of Homeland Security-style.
“It’s at its base a very, very bright light that flashes at a frequency that, if you keep looking at it, will be extremely uncomfortable for you,” said Bob Lieberman, IOS’s president and chief technology officer.
“If you looked at it a very long time, it can become extremely disorienting. In some cases, it can cause vertigo and possibly nausea,” Lieberman said.
I’ve heard the same thing said about Martini Revolution.
State high court limits seizure of cars of prostitution and drug suspects
A sharply divided California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that local governments cannot confiscate the vehicles of drivers arrested on suspicion of buying drugs or soliciting prostitutes, a decision law enforcement officials say will greatly curtail their efforts to crack down on such crimes.
The ruling came against a Stockton ordinance that allowed the seizure of a vehicle immediately after the driver’s arrest, but it essentially overturns the laws of more than two dozen cities from Oakland to Los Angeles.
In its 4-3 decision, the court ruled that only the state can mete out punishment for drug and prostitution offenses, and that without authorization from the Legislature, cities can’t pass seizure ordinances that are harsher than state and federal laws. Even drivers suspected of buying a small amount of marijuana ? a low-level crime punishable by a $100 fine ? faced seizures under many ordinances.