Trust, but verify

That was a Ronald Reagan signature line, from the Russian proverb (“doveryai, no proveryai”). I found it interesting to learn that Reagan learned how to say it in Russian so he could repeat it to Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the old Evil Empire, whenever they met. That amused Gorby to no end.

“You repeat this phrase every time we meet.”

It reminds me of something I heard a small businessman say about the keys to success for sole proprietors. At the end of a short list of things to do, he emphasized his final point, “…and keep your eye on the register!” The way he said it, and the fact that this is the only part of his message I remember, seems to emphasize that everything before that final bit was not that important if you did not keep an eye on the money.

The message he wanted us to hear was, “…nobody will safeguard your economic interests as well as you.“

One employee with his hands in the till can rob a business blind. And, if that employee runs the books as well, it can go way beyond theft and take one to financial ruin and serious legal issues.

I remember a case involving a very successful family run business that hired a comptroller that they came to trust too much. There was a production manager who ran one side of the business and the comptroller handled all the money issues. The family, survivors of the founder of the business, let these two men run everything and just collected their profits in the form of regular checks.

Their world went to shit one morning when they got a call from the office saying that there was something strange going on. The Internal Revenue Service wanted to know why the company had not paid payroll taxes in years, and why they had ignored their repeated written demands for payment and an explanation.

The business manager was responsible for making those payments, and he also was the only employee trusted with a key to the company’s post office box - the same box where the IRS had been mailing their demands.

I can’t remember how much the guy actually stole from the company, but when you added in what the IRS said was owed, and all of the fines and interest charges, the company found itself more than $5 million in the hole.

One guy, working alone, brought a company to financial ruin. He was not the first, nor will he be the last. And, apparently, when it comes to the record for the dollar amount stolen, he is not even on the list of “also rans“.

French prosecutors on Sunday ordered trader Jerome Kerviel to be held in police custody for another 24 hours as a probe continued into multi-billion-dollar losses at the Societe Generale bank.

Kerviel, 31, turned himself in to police on Saturday, two days after Societe Generale — one of Europe’s biggest banks — revealed it had lost a staggering 4.9 billion euros (7.15 billion dollars) at the hands of a rogue trader.

Say that number out loud and then try to see that much cash piled up in one place. Here’s a visual aid to help you, click to get a good view of a million dollars in twenty dollar bills.

Imagine a stack one thousand times as large and that’s a billion. It takes a little work to wrap your mind around that picture, doesn’t it?

Now, imagine a stack 7,150 times as large as the one in the picture. Then imagine Jerome Kerviel with a can of gasoline and a book of matches.

The 7.15 billion figure is just what Jerome lost. According to the most recent reports, he had $73 billion in real money on the line when he got caught.

Le Societe General claims that Jerome was some kind of mad computer genius who was able to hack through three levels of security to pull this off, all by his lonesome. Through his lawyer Jerome is claiming that Le Societe is blaming him in order to cover up losses that the bank took without his help. There are more shoes to drop before this story is done.

As you consider the case of Jerome Kerviel baisez le chien*, you might want to wonder, “what happened to all that money?” Jerome was playing with real money - who foots the bill? Do you think le Societe General just writes a check to cover Jerome’s fuck up?

More importantly, what happened to the $73 billion in trades that Jerome had on the felt when somebody at Le Societe unraveled what was going on? What role did the unwinding of those trades have on the hundreds of billions that disappeared from the markets last week?

There is more to this story.

You have to wonder how someone like Kerviel was able to make all of these moves without someone stopping him, or at least catching him before he had a king’s ransom laid out on the craps table of the hedge fund world.  He was in a position where his job was to make investment decisions based on his analysis and read of the markets, but there has to be some administrative oversight  Trust is important, but somebody should have been verifying the transactions in Kerviel’s accounts.

* screwing the pooch

Sheep get sheered; Pigs get fat; Hogs get slaughtered

Confidence games rely on one important factor - the greed of the “victim”. The Jamaican Switch, Pigeon Drop, Pyramid Schemes, Nigerian Email Scams, etc., all rely on a willing and greedy idiot who believes that he is getting something for nothing. Among my favorites: The “white van guys” who con marks into buying crappy stereo speakers by claiming that they are delivery men who find themselves with too many speakers due to a warehouse error; or the “warehouse” worker who is selling a brand new television - still in the box - that he lifted out of the warehouse.

Someone’s misfortune could mean a heck of a bargain for you, until you plug in the speakers to hear static or open the box and find some heavy junk and no TV.

When I was a detective and someone called to report being “victimized” by one of the something for nothing schemes, I refused to take a report.

Let me see if I understand this correctly. You thought you were buying stolen merchandise so you didn’t check it out too closely. And now that you’ve discovered that you were ripped off by a smarter crook, you want the police to get involved and look out for your interests? I think the better question here is why shouldn’t I arrest you for attempted theft by receiving.

Hello, are you still there?

So, the US stock markets just opened and all the indexes, and almost all of the stocks, are deep in the red. The Asian and European markets got the hell slugged out of them yesterday and earlier today, and the Fed just announced a 75 basis-point (.75%) cut in the fed funds rate. Billions of dollars in unrealized capital gains have evaporated, and it’s shaping up to be one of those days when either you cowboy up or you run for the hills. This is where the suckers get cleaned out and even the steel nerved veterans find themselves hanging on with white knuckles.

The stock markets are not a scam in themselves, but there are flim-flam men selling cons by the dozen. People get in the market because they want to make a profit, and there are always predators there who will try and take advantage of anyone whose desire for profit outweighs their common sense. What we’re experiencing now is the fallout from the latest con game played in the markets.

The subprime mortgage mess is just the aftermath of a scam in which someone created a new investment vehicle and announced that “this time is different and the old rules don’t apply.” Yeah, right. Everybody saw money to be made and they jumped in the water without checking for the sharks. And they were all lying to each other, and themselves.

As defaults and foreclosures rise, the various players in the housing market are all pointing fingers at each other. State prosecutors like Andrew Cuomo, the attorney general of New York, are investigating whether investment banks that packaged mortgages into securities disclosed the risks to investors and credit-rating agencies. Investment banks, in turn, are accusing lenders and mortgage brokers of shoddy business practices.”What strikes me here is that this a tainted system from A to Z,” said Tamar Frankel, a law professor at Boston University. “Everybody blames everybody else. If you look at what is being said, there isn’t one who doesn’t blame another and there is half-truth in everything.”

Anybody who didn’t see this one coming is an idiot because they didn’t understand what they were investing in. There is a reason why some people are identified as being poor credit risks - loaning them money is a risky proposition. Creating a whole industry to extend billions of dollars of credit to such people might not be a bad idea, provided that everyone involved understands the degree of risk, and that there is adequate compensation for that risk. Even then, a wise investor finds a way to hedge the bet.

Greedy people ignored common sense and extended that credit and then passed the risk on to someone else - after they took as much as 20% of the loan value in “origination fees”. Some genius came up with the idea of bundling these risky mortgages together as a kind of bond and they were sold to investors all over the world - with some nice fees and commissions attached. It didn’t hurt the sales of those bundled mortgages that credit rating and insurance companies stamped AAA ratings on paper of questionable value - after they got their commissions. And the final greedy suckers to line up were all the fools that are now stuck holding this garbage - all of whom were willing to believe that the so called “collateralized debt obligations” and “structured investment vehicles” were really sound investments - and “Oh, look at the interest rate we’re getting!”

Once again, we are learning that anybody who says “this time is different” is a lying thief or a moron. We are also learning that the new global economy and markets are not quite as decoupled from the US markets as everyone wanted to believe. Yes Virginia, when the US sneezes the rest of the world really does catch a cold.

And now, an hour after the market open, the indices have recovered a lot of ground - but the real test will be where everyone is when the market closes at the end of the trading day.

Look what I found on the door of the refrigerator

The Blond Chick has a rare “Why yes, it is all about me” moment.

Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!

One day, while I was in the police academy, we had to attend a speech by the Comandante del Policia of Mexico City. He was in town on some official visit and part of the giant dog and pony show was his speech to the cadets. He spoke about law enforcement being an honorable form of service.

A year later he was in prison after they discovered that he was one of the biggest crooks in Mexico.

It is a recurring theme:

McALLEN, Texas — A former Mexican police commander accused of playing an active role in guiding drug shipments served as a tax collector for the Gulf cartel, a witness testified Thursday in a federal drug smuggling case.Carlos “El Puma” Landin Martinez collected pisos, or tolls, from smaller drug gangs crossing through the cartel’s turf in Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, said Daniel Zamorano Marchant, a Chilean restaurant manager who once smuggled marijuana and methamphetamine for the cartel.

Anyone wanting to run drugs or transport illegal immigrants between the Mexican cities of Diaz Ordaz, south of Sullivan City, and Rio Bravo, had to pay tolls to Landin, Zamorano said. Landin is accused of running a drug smuggling operation for the Gulf drug cartel while also working as the state police commander in Tamaulipas, Mexico.

There may be honest cops in Mexico, but I never actually met one.   The odds against an honest man making it to a position of authority in Mexican law enforcement are simply astronomical.

I want to thank my chemistry professors

My youngest son asked for help preparing for the semester final exam in chemistry. It’s an honors class, so the information is somewhat advanced, and more than a little beyond what my liberal arts education prepared me for. My week has been spent deciphering babble of this sort:

The more electronegative species gains a full negative charge while the other gains a full positive charge. The bond is purely coulombic, and as our theme of opposite charges predicts, the plus-minus is low energy and the attraction holds the two toms together.

When I first read that, my eyes crossed and I wondered why it wasn’t written in English.

I have discovered that chemists, while incredibly smart at all things chemical, are ignorant of how to explain such things to the chemically challenged. I’ve overcome the obstacles by reading two books, reading websites, and watching/listening to several informative podcasts. Not only do I actually understand this stuff, but I can teach it. After a fashion.

The boy’s textbook was simply horrible, and given the tax dollars expended it is criminal. It covers a scads of material, but it does a rotten job of explaining many concepts. This seems to be a recurring theme in academia. The oldest son is a freshman in college and he waits a week or more after a class has started to see which required books he needs to buy, because, as is the case with the high school kid, many instructors find it much more effective to teach from lectures and handout materials from other sources.

So, the textbook was little help, and I was able to counter some of its weaknesses with a copy of Chemistry for Dummies. Yeah, I know - how appropriate. But still, there were some concepts that weren’t explained very well and I was finding myself in the weeds too often. I started searching the internet and found thousands of websites, many of them for schools and colleges.

What I was looking for was something comprehensive, that didn’t assume I already knew a lot about chemistry but explained the material in depth from A to Z.

What I found were sites that were either too elementary - A, B and C were explained and it stopped there - or too complicated - X, Y and Z were detailed and it was expected that the reader knew everything that came before “X”. It was taking, on average, 8 - 10 websites and both books to understand a single concept.

I began to harbor a deep hatred for a number of college and high school chemistry instructors. At one point I realized that you didn’t need to know chemistry to blow things up, and I fantasized about being the next Unabomber. Chemistry profs and teachers across the country would run in fear at the sight of their friendly postman.

But foolish fantasies, while briefly enjoyable, were not solving my problem.

At one point I placed my hopes in the audio podcasts from some community college chemistry classes. After all, what were once known as Junior Colleges are for all the people who weren’t quite ready for real college - right?

I teach a community college and I can say unequivocally that I teach at a more basic level, even though our credits transfer to “big name” colleges and universities. I know someone that almost lost her job because students bitched and moaned that she “taught like it was Yale.” She had to dumb down and break down her courses to meet the needs of her less skilled students.

That’s a quote from Rate Your Students, a site for professors to bitch about rate the simpletons darlings that are their students. There is a debate there at the moment on the quality of community college students and professors.

If I didn’t instruct community college students on a more basic level than university students, my community college students would drop out at an even more alarming rate than they already do (I sometimes lose half a class over the course of a semester–this is standard in our neck of the woods). I do have some intelligent students who would do better with more focused and higher level instruction. I am grateful for them every day, and I try to push them to excel in their work–many of them have thanked me for doing that.

Unfortunately, all of the profs who are dumbing their lectures down are evidently too busy to make a podcast or a website that doesn’t suck suffer from being babble that only chemistry geeks understand.

Nearly at the point of losing all hope, I ran across some podcasts for chemistry class lectures at UC Berkley, which has a phenomenal reputation for its college of chemistry. At least four elements on the periodic table were first isolated by Berkley researchers. I downloaded a few on to a flash drive and popped it into my truck’s stereo so I could listen while I was driving. Honestly, I have to say that I had little hope, and I was sure that it would be wasted time because I believed that the material would start out over my head and get more complex. In fact, what I found was that I started to understand the material. The only thing missing was being able to see the visual aids being used in the class.

I was so close.

Then I found MIT’s Open Course Ware website.

MIT was an early adopter of providing an open university of sorts on the internet. The same lectures (as video/audio podcasts), lecture notes, test materials, and related links, as on campus students receive, are all available for a variety of courses. The only thing missing in most cases are the textbooks. You can check it out by clicking here to go to the MIT Open Course Ware site.

Ultimately I watched all of the lectures for about half of a semester of two different chemistry classes (actually, one was a engineering materials class for solid state chemistry)

Professors Sylvia Ceyer and Donald Sadoway’s lectures were phenomenal and my comprehension of chemistry skyrocketed. If you consider MIT’s reputation, the caliber of the students and instructors, and the complexity of the course, it’s amazing that I understood anything. Not that I understood everything, there was always a point at which it became very complicated and my eyes glazed over - “So, the attractive energy is simply Q1 times Q2 over 4 times Pi Epsilon zero R…” - but, up to that point I was in the groove. And besides, I didn’t really need to know how to measure the energy, I just wanted to understand the basic behavior of electron energy in chemical bonding. Unlike the 9th grade textbook, my Chemistry for Dummies book, or a dozen tutorials on different websites, at MIT I found the material I needed to know and understood it.

Youngest son has been complaining about not being able to understand his chemistry teacher. So have a number of other students, and the drop rate in the class has been pretty high. I’ve talked to the man several times and he does speak with an accent, and since English is not his first language he does occasionally use some awkward wording. It’s not that big of an impediment, but I think that when it’s coupled with some difficult material presented at a rapid pace that communication problems do account for some of the kids’ lack of understanding. Or, you could choose to believe what my son believes is the problem - “He’s not that good of a teacher, Dad. All of the kids in class agree that nobody understands half of what he is teaching.”

After my recent experience with chemistry teachers I can sympathize with the little darlings.

But when I was having difficulty translating a point, I resorted to sharing part of an MIT video with him. It was short, just a two minute segments of an hour lecture, but he got the point I was trying to make - and he had a sudden epiphany on another point I didn’t know he was having problems with.

That’s how you calculate those! I tried to get Mr. (Teacher) to explain that to me three times, he talked about it for thirty minutes in class, and I still didn’t understand it.

Junior is taking physics next semester, a subject that I enjoy and know a few things about, and I am looking forward to helping him. But if I stumble, I know where to go to fill in the blank spaces in my knowledge.

What kind of job did you think you were applying for?

My search for a decent blog written by a chief of police continues. Richard “The Most Idiotic Police Chief in Britain” Brunstrom was briefly in the running until the Cerberus Inc. crack research time found indications of severe stupidity, or blatant prevaricating, in one of his posts. I’m looking for one that is written with some style, appears to be the genuine words of the chief rather than one of his house cats, and exhibits more than a passing familiarity with common sense.

It’s proving to be a tall order.

On one of the candidate’s blog I found a post about something his recruiting staff brought to his attention. They received a number of email requests for information about the hiring process, and from that they had amassed a list of the return email addresses of potential applicants that seemed to cast doubt on their character, intelligence and/or common sense:

metallicaboner17@
pleasurephantom@
copenhagenmam69@
spacydream@
cootiecakes@
spoilme5948@
poodonkey18@
tk_paddywacker@
squishycheerfish@
strokin_100@
babypies1@
thumperhard69@

and the one that really confused me…mytieisbroken@

According to the chief, the recruiters also have a collection of humorous voice mails.

My guess is that a lot of people have email addresses that express something that they want to convey to others. It doesn’t take too much guesswork as to what messages “thumperhard69″ or “metallicaboner” are trying to send. But I think I’m also right in believing that most people also have an email address that presents a more refined, and less profane, public image. Common sense would seem to be conspicuously absent from those who choose their “fun” email address, as opposed to their “business” email, to send a job inquiry.

Unless I’m hiring clerks for the night shift at an adult bookstore, there is little chance that “tk_paddywhacker” or “strokin_100″ are going to get a job offer from me. To be honest, I’m not sure I would hire them for that job either.

While it’s interesting to note what people inadvertently give away in their job seeking, it is absolutely astounding what can be learned about folks when you’re given a lot of leeway in the interview and hiring process.

I had one brief fling at a non-policing job in my career. A nine month stint in recruiting as a sergeant (it was an effort to gain some investigative experience, as tenuous as it was) which was ended by budget crisis that brought on a hiring freeze.

We saw, on average, roughly 1000 applicants each month. A small percentage of them would voluntarily withdraw their application at some point, but most would have their application suspended or rejected for cause, either permanently or temporarily, and a very small percentage would be favorable applicants who were offered a position in the academy as a cadet. We rejected at least 95% of all applicants for cause, and after a small percentage declined the offer by withdrawing their application, we were able to field a class of 70 every 2 months. Those figures are consistent with what most other police departments report.

My domain was over the preliminary processing unit, which handled the initial background interview of the 1000 folks that wandered in off the street each month. A huge chunk of that 95% rejection rate came from one of 15 people working for me who were doing those interviews based on a 30 page questionnaire. If the applicant answered the questions truthfully, the questionnaire would give us an accurate assessment of the applicant’s ability to meet most of the SCPD selection criteria. Those that lied were usually caught by a polygraph exam or a background investigation that sent investigators to physically verify the truth of everything they had said.

1,000 interviews a month, 30 pages of very detailed questions that hit a wide variety of details ranging from the mundane to the very personal - equals a regular supply of very bizarre responses by applicants.

About half of the interviewers were civilian HR professionals, and the rest were cops who were experienced background investigators. The latter took most of what they heard during interviews in stride, and would tell some of the funnier stories over a cup of coffee. But my civilians were a different story.

Police work is one of those occupations that give employees a degree of access to information, people, places and things that few other occupations approach. SCPD hiring practices reflect the degree of concern about who is hired that matches the degree of trust expected of the office holder. IBM won’t, and can’t, send a background investigator to every place you ever lived, worked or went to school to ask questions like: “Is he trustworthy?”, “would you say he is stable?”, or “how much does he drink?” Microsoft may ask a challenging question like “how would you weigh the moon?”, but SCPD will ask you to describe every drug you ever took, how much you drink and what criminal acts you committed - even if you were never caught, much less convicted. The questions and checks are all backed by a very expensive and exhaustive study to identify the bona-fide job qualifications for a beginning SCPD officer, but they are far beyond what most employers could legally pursue.

All of the civilian personnel officers had bachelor degrees, many had their masters, and a few were working on their doctorates. With the exception of one woman who was married to an officer, none of them had ever spent much time around cops or worked in a HR setting in which they were legally allowed to ask the kinds of questions we had them ask. Never did more than a couple of days pass when one of them didn’t come into my office, close the door, and say…

Sergeant Cerberus, you would not believe what this applicant just told me.

Actually, I would believe, because I had conducted a number of those same interviews, and I reviewed every completed questionnaire.

Some of the things people said were nonsensical. There was a young woman we rejected because of criminal activity and unfavorable employment history. She had been fired, that morning, after her boss at a greeting card store had found her stealing cash from the till. The card store was on the ground level of the office building where our offices were located. She must have walked straight out of her past employer’s place of business and jumped on the elevator to come visit us. I nicknamed her the “I need a job chick.”

Why is my application being rejected?

The fact that you were fired, today, for stealing from your employer puts you outside of our guidelines on criminal activity and employment history. If you can stay away from committing crimes and not get fired from a job, we will be glad to see you back here in 5 years to try again.

Yeah, but I need a job.

I understand that. But you can understand why we wouldn’t hire you to be a police officer, can’t you?

No, because I need a job and you’all are hiring, so why can’t we do this?

Let’s look at it this way. Being a police officer is not just a job. It’s a position of trust in the community. As an officer you could find yourself alone with other people’s property, or with other valuable items that are evidence at crime scenes. Given the fact that you were just fired from a position of your employer’s trust for stealing from her, wouldn’t it look pretty foolish for us to hire you for a position of even greater trust with less direct supervision?

Yeah, but I need a job.

That’s not going to happen here for you today. Maybe I can direct you to someplace else that might take a chance on you. Most of our applicants are interested in public service as a career, why did you apply with us?

I got fired this morning and I need a job.

Our questionnaire included a section on illegal and prescription drug use. When I first read “What type of medication are you currently taking, and why?”, I thought it was poorly worded. But the responses we got to the “why” part often generated some enlightening responses, and those included a smattering of goodies that were guaranteed to make you laugh. Almost weekly we got something along the lines of…

What type of medication are you taking, and why?: Birth Control Pills - I like to fuck.

On rarer occasions we got some scary responses to that question…

What type of medication are you taking, and why?: Haldol - My doctor prescribed this to keep me from hearing voices that tell me to do things I don’t want to do.

The questions on illegal sex acts caught a few really whacked out people. One of my folks, who was finishing his dissertation for a PhD., came in to my office one morning with a queasy look on his face. While I’m sure there are all sorts of young people who grow up on farms and ranches who never succumb to barnyard bestiality, there are some of them who find the temptation too great. About once a month there would be one who came in and answered the question about bestiality with forthright honesty.

The applicant in question was a regular expert in animal husbandry, and had described a number of critters around Old MacDonald’s farm with which he had carnal knowledge.

Yee-Eye-Yee-Eye-Oh - indeed!

The personnel officer said he was handling the interview well, until the applicant had mentioned a certain species of animal and a specific sex act.

As soon as he said that I thought he was just pulling some kind of joke. I imagined it was a like one of those radio show pranks when they wire a guy with a microphone and have him go into a business and do something stupid to see how people will react. So I called bullshit and told him that what he was talking about was impossible, and I swear to God, until just a few minutes ago, I really did think it was impossible.

So, what happened to change your mind?

He just gave me a ten minute explanation on how to get head from a cow. An extremely detailed explanation. Including how to select the right cow, what “lure” to use, how to keep from getting stomped on, or kicked, or bitten, and so on, to the point where I was ready to throw up. I’m telling you sergeant, I don’t think I can ever enjoy a cheeseburger again, and I know I will never drink another milkshake.

It’s not that more crazies, weirdos or criminals try to get jobs in law enforcement, we do get our fair share, it’s just that we get to ask the kind of questions that are supposed to identify them.

All of those people rejected get jobs somewhere. What do you really know about the people working with you?

If you’re following a link from CNN…

…here is the story you were looking for.  Whoever created the link misformed it and sent traffic to the graphic that was on the header of the story.  Congratulations to you who persevered and found your way.  Damn, I could have had 12 trillion hits.

And why is it that they always pick the trash posts to link to?  This is the third or fourth time some major media whatever has linked to something I wrote, and each and every time it was something I wrote when I had little inspiration.

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me.

On the morning of this past November 16th, Robert Jones set about as he does each morning to open his business, Perk Central Coffee, in Tacoma, Washington. He discovered that during the night someone had tried to break into the store.

Perk Central is outfitted with several video cameras that record the goings on in and around the store, and the previous night’s recordings from the camera revealed the events.

I say “tried to break into the store” because the inept buffoon that was intent on stealing some sweet goodies from display cases at Perk Central found the store too tough of a nut to crack.

I can’t believe it! They’ve locked the doors to the building!

The video shows the bandanna-wearing doofus kicking at the back door, repeatedly. A slow motion replay of the final kick shows the guy’s leg bending in a direction that nature did not intend.

After contacting the police, Jones edited the video and posted it on YouTube along with an offer of a reward for information leading to the incompetent burglar’s identity.

He also provided a voice over narration of the crime. Noticing a certain similarity in dress to that of Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow gave Jones the theme for his blow by blow description.

The video was noticed by media outlets and was broadcast in the Tacoma area. At least one friend of Captain Jack told him about the video, and that lead him to turn himself in to the Tacoma Police this past Tuesday.

I’m turning myself in ’cause I’m the guy in that coffee shop video.

Oh, you’re the guy they call Jack Sparrow, right?

Yeah, I guess so.

You have to be the worst burglar I’ve ever seen.

Ah, but you have heard of me then, haven’t you?

At the time of his arrest, it was learned that his knee was dislocated. I wonder how that happened.

I’m Alycia and I’ll be your Emmy Award winning waitress

I‘m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that not only did Alycia Lane win an Emmy for reading the news from a teleprompter, but that she was being paid an estimated $700,000 a year to do that. Wow America, let’s try to get our priorities straight.

Anyway, Alycia may be coming soon to a Denny’s near you…

A TV station fired a local anchorwoman who has been off the air since she was charged with striking a New York City police officer, only the latest dust-up for the telegenic brunette.Alycia Lane “has been released from her contract effective immediately,” KYW-TV said in a statement Monday, the day she had been due back on air…KYW, a CBS affiliate, had Lane start a previously scheduled vacation a week early and pulled her from station promotions during her absence.

“After assessing the overall impact of a series of incidents resulting from judgments she has made, we have concluded that it would be impossible for Alycia to continue to report the news as she, herself, has become the focus of so many news stories,” station president and general manager Michael Colleran said in the statement.

See ya girlfriend…wouldn’t want to be ya!

The other thing that bothers me about this story, is that this low class broad who seems to have problems keeping her paws off other womens’ husbands, was probably fired not because she made an ass out of herself and assaulted a police officer, but because she called the female officer a “dyke”. Being a complete tool and flagrant lawbreaker is not a problem, but violating the mandates of political correctness is a felony.

On contempt for authority - Or, “they were giving out time like it was lunch!”

One night I stopped a guy who was thinking about running. In fact, he was making the right moves but traffic was so heavy that he gave up before it ever became a true chase. The intent was there, but the opportunity was squelched. He deserved to go to jail, but I knew that the Assistant DA would see the case as weak and take an easy plea bargain, so I wrote him five moving citations. The potential fines were heftier than what a probation would have cost him, but there was no jail time involved so I figured justice would be satisfied.

A month later I went to my regular traffic court docket and saw him in the gallery. He had entered not guilty pleas on all five counts. It used to be that if you showed up for the court setting on the ticket, and the officer who wrote the tickets did not appear, a not guilty plea trumped the prosecution’s failure to be ready for trial because the only witness was not present. A common tactic was to show up, plead not guilty, and then see if the cop made it to court. If he made it to court you could always change your plea to guilty, pay the fines and be done with it.

I think that was what was going on that night, but somebody had neglected to explain to the idiot that he was supposed to change his plea if I was there, or else he was going to trial.

And, so we had us a trial. A couple of them actually. One of them was fast, and the other was over before it ever really started.

The guy was displaying major attitude from the second we started. Besides being guilty as hell, he was working with a defective game plan, and he was way out of his league. The prosecutor was sharp, it was an easy case for me to testify about, and the judge was a law and order type who socked it to liars and people with bad attitudes. She was the only judge I ever gave flowers to on her birthday - we had lovingly nicknamed her Becky the Butt Reamer.

One look at Mr. Attitude sending out his body language of “this is bullshit”, and I knew it was not going to be a good night for Mudville when Casey came up to the plate.

So there we were, ready for a trial before the bench: Attitude boy with his arms folded and a sneer on his face, me looking quite dashing and debonair in my blue attire, her honor Judge Becky looking “hanging judgish” in her black robes and a new blond frost job, and the prosecutor was…well he was sort of standing out. The man was color blind to half the palette, and while his mom came by on weekends to arrange the next week’s work clothes by color, on most Fridays he had run through the arrangements and was working on his own. It was Friday night and he was looking - colorful - wearing a green jacket, pale yellow shirt with a bright blue tie all over a pair of maroon pants.

The trial lasted five minutes. Mr. Colorful Prosecutor zoomed through his list of questions to prove the elements of the offense and I gave him short and concise answers. Her honor turned it over to Casey at the plate, and he whiffed a few lame questions that clearly expressed his contempt for the entire process. Judge Becky found him guilty and slammed him for the maximum fine plus costs.

“Strike One” cried the umpire.

And then it happened. The prosecutor immediately started the second trial by reciting the charge and asking Casey “How do you plead to the second count of the offense of running a stop sign?”

The reply was a piece of brilliant legal maneuvering by young Casey. He stood at the plate and swung mightily for the fences.

“Hell, I might as well plead guilty to everything. I ain’t gonna get no fair trial in this fucking kangaroo court.”

There was a moment of silence. I moved a hand back to my handcuffs because I figured home slice was about to spend some time in the can on a contempt charge. The rotund beach ball that was a bailiff struggled to raise his mass from his overworked chair. Judge Becky looked at the man as if he had just crapped his tuxedo at an elegant cocktail party. But the prosecutor, that colorful little man, quickly leaned in and looked up at the judge with a smile on his face…

“The prosecution has no objection to the pleas proffered by the defense.”

Judge Becky didn’t miss a beat and chimed quickly chimed in with her reply…

“I accept your four pleas of guilty on the remaining charges and find you guilty on each. You are sentenced to the maximum fine plus court costs. See the clerk to pay your fines. Mr. Prosecutor, call your next case, please.”

The sneer has fled from Casey’s lip, the teeth are clenched in hate.
He pounds, with cruel violence, his bat upon the plate.
And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go,
and now the air is shattered by the force of Casey’s blow.

“Strike Two, Three, Four and Five. You are out of here!” bellowed the umpire. Casey, who was just beginning to realize that he was suddenly in debt to the Some City Municipal Court for nearly three thousand bucks, slumped at the plate.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright.
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light.
And, somewhere men are laughing, and little children shout,
but there is no joy in Mudville -
mighty Casey has struck out.

People show up in court and represent themselves, and judges and prosecutors always give them leeway to make up for it. But when somebody shows up and displays utter contempt for everyone and everything in the courtroom, well, it comes down to a case of play ball or get smacked with the bat. Judges have little tolerance for games and disrespect.

Here is one of the funnier trial transcripts I have ever seen involving a contempt charge:

Murphy pleaded guilty to one count of distributing cocaine base and one count of using a firearm during a drug trafficking crime. At Murphy’s sentencing hearing, the district court sentenced him to 130 months imprisonment-seven months less than the guidelines maximum-on Count Nine and a consecutive term of 60 months on Count Ten. At the conclusion of the hearing, the following exchange occurred:

MURPHY: You should have just gave me the other damn seven-the other seven months is what you should have did, stinky mother fucker.

THE COURT: Mr. Benya-Mr. Murphy, you are summarily found in contempt of this court-

MURPHY: Just give me the other seven months.

THE COURT: You’re summarily found to be in contempt of this court. I sentence you to six months to be served consecutive to any other sentence imposed.

MURPHY: You should have just gave me the other seven months is what you should have done.

THE COURT: Mr. Murphy, I find you again in contempt of this court and you’re now summarily found in contempt for a second time and you’ll serve an additional six months consecutive to any sentence-

MURPHY: What about that? What about that? Serve that, mother fucker. . . .

THE COURT: Mr. Stone, just a minute. Mr. Murphy-

MURPHY: Bye.

THE COURT: You just gave the finger to the court. That will be a third contempt of court and that’s six-

MURPHY: Add another one to it.

THE COURT: -six more months at the end of your sentence. Well, that’s a quick year and a half.

They hand that time out quick down at the courthouse, but you serve it the old fashioned way in the big house. A day at a time.