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Citizens' arrest: Alleged thief fails to shake off bystanders with his fists, knife
By adamg on Wed, 03/25/2009 - 1:30pm
Boston Police report a pair of Good Samaritans teamed up to catch a man who'd stolen a woman's wallet from her office at 50 Congress St. downtown around 2:30 Monday afternoon:
A witness, after hearing the victim’s cries for help, assisted the victim in chasing the suspect down the stairs, and into the lobby of the building. In the lobby, the suspect attempted to pull a knife from his waist but the witness stepped on it before the suspect could use it. The suspect then continued running until he was grabbed and restrained until officers arrived. A second witness recounted the same story to officers but told them that the suspect punched him while fleeing from the scene.
Police say they recovered both the wallet and the knife. Jameel Hakim, 55, of Roxbury, was charged with trespassing, larceny, assault by means of a dangerous weapon, assault and battery and carrying a knife with blade length greater than two and a half inches.
Meanwhile, Mayor Menino and Police Commissioner Ed Davis today honored four people who kept an allegedly crazed South End man from cutting his wife's head off with a butcher knife on March 12:
Robert Asbury, Eustace Fitzpatrick, Aida Cepeda, Cristobal Vizcaino and Raul Estremera all received proclamations at City Hall:
Commissioner Davis added, "On behalf of the Boston Police Department, I would like to extend our appreciation to these individuals who not only showed tremendous character and courage, but risked their own personal safety to assist someone in need. The quick thinking and swift actions of several citizens stopped this violent assault and saved this young woman’s life."
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Comments
It's that time again...
EX-E-CUT-ION, CLAP, CLAP, CLAP-CLAP-CLAP
Its all fun and games
until you are the one who is misidentified.
In any case, there is no execution for anything less than murder in the United States. You would think that somebody with such a rich interest in the death penalty would read a paper once in the while and know that.
Clearly....
...the difference between fact and opinion eludes you. I'm not a moron. I'm familiar with the FACTS of the death penalty.
It is my OPINION that robbing a person and pulling a knife on those trying to apprehend you is grounds for execution.
So I could set you up
Claim that you pulled a knife on me and you could die for it?
Okay.
You know, they have a similar attitude about crime in the Taliban controlled areas of Afghanistan. Just saying.
What setup?
They found the knife on his person! Three people fingered him as the perpetrator! I'll also bet you that said office building has surveillance cameras (the kind that should exist everywhere to combat this behavior.) He's clearly guilty.
There are many stories I see
There are many stories I see in the news for which I automatically assume the accused is guilty. I think that's human nature. What's humbling and even horrifying is when I later learn in some cases that the person was innocent, after I had immediately written off him/her as guilty.
Andrew Vaughn, for
Andrew Vaughn, for instance:
http://www.mass.gov/da/suffolk/docs/12.18.07B.html
It's a bummer
M'sieur La Tulippe wasn't packing his
blankierod in the vicinity.We'd have been delivered of two problems.
Wake up Swirlygirl.
Sounds to me like you'd even call into question the authenticity of a video showing someone committing a crime. You must not trust anyone. How sad.
Inoperator
I didn't question that a crime was committed - I merely pointed out that even the US does not execute people for threatening people with knives.
I am calling into question your reading comprehension level here, though. I could also point out that poor-quality surveilance video tapes have resulted in false convictions based on mistaken identity as well, but I leave you to your own research.
We now return to your regular UHub programming.
Welcome to the real world Swirlygrrl.
From this, and from what you write below, it appears that in your fantasy world, in order for someone to be found guilty, they would need to be both caught on camera (10 megapixels at least) and witnessed by at least two people. It doesn't usually happen like that so here in the real world we use common sense, not wild imagination, to try to stop dangerous people from hurting others. Next I bet you'll be saying that DNA of the suspect needs to be at the scene or else they are to be set free.
Huh?
Boy, aren't you a fantastic projector of stereotype.
I guess that's what happens when a lack of reading comprehension collides with a vivid paranoid imagination.
Sorry, but my real world includes the rule of law, the precidents of the supreme court, the constitution, and an understanding of how mistaken identity has become a gigantic headache in the justice system.
Keep up the paranoid rantings operator. The extrapolation and projection of your putrid fantasies to my rather easily understood words are most entertaining.
SwirlyGrrl here is on the
SwirlyGrrl here is on the side of well-understood reality as well as a fundamental principle of the American judicial system.
Odd
I was just thinking the same thing about trivia DJs who follow the old Hannibal Lector Hammurabi code of "A whole head for an eye".
You'd make a splended Juror No. 3
in the next local production of Twelve Angry Men. Have you considered auditioning?
The nerve! Arrest these
The nerve! Arrest these busybodies
AG Martha Coakley discourages 'self help'
http://massbackwards.blogspot.com/2008/07/this-is-...
Evidence?
Was there a video camera? Witnesses? Or are we simply taking the father's word for it, when he could have just decided to punch someone and find a reason for it.
For all we know, the guy "molested" the kid by having a pink triangle patch on his back pack or a rainbow or even an "=" sign. Sort of the "David Parker Definition" where "molest" = "exist".
Funny, but I'm having trouble finding a link to this incident even happening ... outside of massbackward blog flogging it. I would have thunk that the Herald would have been all over this - unless it was found to not have happened like it was said to have happen ...
I harvested these links from the massbackward blog articles
Well, I just read through the massbackward.com blog articles and found these two links:
1. WHDH: Man accused of groping boy in Raynham grocery store
2. EnterpriseNews.com: Raynham father warns Market Basket shoppers of ‘predator’ employee he says groped his 4-year-old son
Now SwirlyGrrl, I understand that you don't necessarily believe all that you write, but rather enjoy provoking some in the audience here. For example, I can't believe you really see this man who attacked a 76-year-old pedophile caught groping his son as a likely homophobe lying to explain commission of a hate crime, even though that's what you wrote in the last comment.
I would like to know, SwirlyGrrl, what you would personally think after finding out that there is a level-3 sex offender, convicted of multiple child rapes, living within 500 feet of a school bus stop, a church, and an elementary school. Because that is the case on a certain street in Dedham. This man already owned his home before the relevant laws were passed, and thus cannot be removed from the neighborhood under zoning laws.
This means that, every single school day, children in the age of 6-9 must walk past his doorway on the way from the bus stop to the school, and again on the way back.
I want to know what would be your approach to solving this problem? Or perhaps you do not see it as a problem. If he kidnaps or molests one of these children, what would your response be? I am asking out of sincere curiosity -- I cannot imagine what your solution would be.
Certainly, in that case, my instinct is along the lines of Will LaTulippe, but I'm willing to be convinced if you actually know a better way.
So ...
A guy takes his kid into the restroom, that gives him automatic free license to punch anybody who is in there in the face that he doesn't like, and simply claim that the other guy is a perv (regardless of whether or not he did anything)? Really?
Sounds like a great cover for gay bashing. Oh, maybe I'll yell "RAPE" next time I'm near you and feel like beating the shit out of you with a bike lock (same principal applies, no?) ... or find a reason to attack you coming out of the bathroom because my son called me and said there was a perv in there with him because he heard somebody wearing jeans talking about how he had a date with another man last week. That is where this sort of "blanket excuse" leads, and why it does not get a free pass.
In any case, he could have just detained the guy - he was both old and small. It wasn't clear the guy was a perv anyway ... he was a janitor and they had taken his bucket for the boy to stand on. The motive for touching the boy's leg really wasn't clear here ... he could have been a perv, but it might have been his way of saying "yo! my bucket!". In any case, he was threatening neither the father nor the kid at that point.
For the record: I'm vastly less concerned about the identified sex offenders living near my kid's bus stops and schools (and there are some around - and a halfway house, too!) than I am of all the UNIDENTIFIED sex offenders wandering around (never mind that most sex offenders start with their own families ... not random kids on the street). We don't know who they are and where they live, and the cops aren't watching them.
Wrongside Hysteria
One of the interesting things about Swirly is how often she comes to the defense of sexual predators. What's up with that? You got your Grabby Marzilli and then you've got creepy janitor dude. Both big Swirly faves. Maybe she should have them both over for dinner and a feely.
As anybody could learn from reading the news articles, the dad was in the bathroom with his kid, and watched the perv reach out under the stall wall and grope the little boy's leg. The old coot has since admitted he did it? Fantasy? Hearsay? Gay-Bashing? Um, nope. That'd be reality over on one side, and Swirly over on the other, going off into hysterical paroxysms of hyperbole in the defense of another groper.
The creep claims he was "joking around." The police don't think it's a funny joke, and he has been charged with a felony account of indecent assault and battery on a child.
So you've got a little boy who won't go to the supermarket anymore and is scared to go the bathroom in a public bathroom.
But hey, what's a scared child when we can get up on our high horses and blame teh Heterosexuals for this Gay-Bashing! I can just imagine if Swirly's boy came home and told her he got molested by some old creep. She'd probably scold him for being so heterosexist, tie a bow on him, and tell him to bring the dear old sweetie some cookies.
I think
she does a pretty decent job playing devils advocate, but I did laugh out loud at this line sockpuppet.....
"You got your Grabby Marzilli and then you've got creepy janitor dude. Both big Swirly faves. Maybe she should have them both over for dinner and a feely."
I have had Jim Marzilli over for dinner
I have been to his house numerous times, too. When he is sane, he is perfectly well behaved. (I also know that woman who is being represented by that piece of work pseudofeminist harpie hack is not exactly credible or sane herself - but her reputation for being other than truthful also would have made her a really convenient target when Jim got creepy).
Since when is "skeptical about an unwitnessed story found on the internet" and "believes that civil rights belong to ALL PEOPLE" mean "likes sex offenders?". Seriously. Why are you all so hating of basic constitutional rights?
It needs to be said that is too easy to harness this hysteria and end up with lynch mobs, dead innocent people, innocent people in jail, and convenient excuses for beating up people you don't like and covering your ass with allegations. It gets so stupid and beyond the foundational values of our justice system that suddenly "law and order" means "just grab and try and fry someone convenient" rather than "do good work and get the right people".
Why do all of you hate the justice system set up by our founders as a bedrock American value so much? Seriously?
Setting aside for the moment
Setting aside for the moment that you do in fact like a sexual offender, a serial sex offender at that, and not only make excuses for his behavior but blame his victims… Setting aside the fact that we aren’t talking about an unwitnessed story at all, but a story in which a father witnessed sexual abuse of his child, and the offender admitted his guilt… Setting aside the fact that the only hysteria in this thread is coming from one SwirlyGirl…
It’s just so hard to imagine what must be going through your mind when you sympathize with and defend a man who has admitted to committing a sexual offense against a 4-year-old boy. So now that’s because all of us hate America?
No, nobody really buys your red herring. This isn’t a matter of a public lynching. This is a matter of you being wrong, and being too egotistical to admit it. You like to play devil’s advocate, and that’s all fun and games. But what’s next for you? Are you going to ask if that little boy provoked the attack by being too saucy?
I can't believe
I can't believe it took me until this article to realize that SwirlyGrrl trolls the comments here.
That is hilarious!
Find one instance where I blamed his victims
Go ahead - search and link. I bet you won't be able to find a single one. I think that you will find that I was at first skeptical (given knowledge of things not reported), then correct that there was a medical issue involved (biopolar disorder is biochemical and identifyable through specific response to pharmocological intervention).
Like I said before, the first woman who came forward has certain issues herself. I could have been a real asshole and identified and smeared her way back when and listed all the things she did in the past that make her less than credible. I didn't then and I won't now because I know damn well that women who have low credibility are often the first targets of choice for pervs. Even sick people like Jim may know that a word-vs-word situation is in their favor.
As for "serial sex offender", um, no, try again honey. In the United States, you need to be CONVICTED of a crime to wear that label, not just accused and attacked and tried by the Herald and some grandstanding lawyer whose vast bile is only outmatched by her vast ignorance (judging from her "columns" in the Metro).
In any case, I note here that I wanted to know more about the janitor story, as I could not find a hard report of it (e.g. not Wingnut Daily, not Freeper, and not a blog) going five layers back in the links. FURTHERMORE, I find it amusing that you somehow equate my pointing out exactly WHY this sort of "protection" claim, if unchallenged, could go really wrong (or be used to get away with assault) based on some pretty basic principles of justice that our country was founded on with my somehow thinking that sexual assault was acceptable. I find it hard to believe that you are that stupid.
All I can say is this: may you live long enough and have enough friends that you someday have to learn what you need to learn when one of those friends or family members becomes ill like this. Then it will be your turn to be attacked for pointing out some simple medical science and basics of the law.
QED
One victim of your friend the molester is:
-not sane
-not credible
-has certain issues
-you could list all the things she did in the past
-has low credibility
QED. There you are attacking the victim of a sexual predator. Just one of them, because there were several who we know about now.
So is there anything else you'd like to say about her? Were her skirts too short? Did she deserve it? Go on, get it off your chest.
I have a question
Why on earth was the kid standing on a white bucket in the toilet? (most reports seem to mention this mysterious bucket).
Not sure this has any significance to anything (other than the fact that the father seemingly was paying little attention to what his kid was doing).
Simple Answer
Having two boys myself, I would guess that the kid or the dad grabbed the bucket as a booster so that he could stand while using the toilet.
We used to have an IKEA step stool in the bathroom at home, and would sometimes press a useful sturdy object into service when on the road.
Would you leave the kid standing on the bucket....
...unwatched?
Just curious (as we had three boys -- and never had to resort to this, so far as I can recall).
Kid's fault
The kid probably had too wide of a stance.
Nope....
...he was supposedly standing on a white bucket. (see my question above).
Whoosh
Larry Craig would like to bring you up to speed.
Oh, I understood the reference....
...but not its applicability to the present discussion.
;~}
You think *you're* confused?
Imagine what the guy with the knife who just fought off 2 Good Samaritans was going through when he suddenly discovered himself in a bathroom with an irate dad, a KO'd pedophile, and a kid peeing in a white bucket!
Swirly would say "where's the video?"
She'd say that without high-resolution video, DNA proof, fingerprints and 2 Supreme Court Justices or a bus load of Nuns as witnesses, the suspect is not the one who did it. She probably even thinks Colin Ferguson got railroaded.
An Explication of Self-Defense
Kick his ask!