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Killer in waiting: How should society deal with Kayla Bourque?

Steve Mertl
Yahoo! Canada News - The Daily Brew
Tue, 08 Jan 2013 00:00 UTC

Kayla Bourque
© The Canadian Press
Kayla Bourque is shown in a handout photo. The Justice Ministry in B.C. has issued an unusual public warning about Bourque, a female, high-risk, violent offender who's been released from jail.
There's a ticking time-bomb quality to the story of Kayla Bourque, the 23-year-old former university student whose release from jail this week prompted a rare public warning from authorities.

Bourque was freed Monday after almost nine months in custody and pleading guilty last November to weapons possession and torturing and killing animals.

Her crimes, ugly as they were, normally wouldn't have sparked more than some brief public outrage before the world moved on. Except for the fact the pretty young woman from Prince George, B.C., has been characterized as a serial killer in waiting who'll likely need supervision for life.

"Bourque has an escalating criminal history," says the public notice issued by the B.C. Ministry of Justice. "She has offended violently against both people and animals and is considered high risk to reoffend."

When she was sentenced last November, the judge set down 46 conditions for her three-year probation, including a curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., severe restrictions on movements and friendships, a ban on use of the Internet and on attending post-secondary schools.
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Light Saber

Judge orders NYPD to halt unlawful 'stop and frisks'

Kevin Gosztola
The Dissenter
Tue, 08 Jan 2013 12:49 UTC
Silent march on Father’s Day to end the NYPD's Stop and Frisk policy in New York City
© Alangreig
Silent march on Father’s Day to end the NYPD's Stop and Frisk policy in New York City
A judge in New York has ruled the New York Police Department must cease to perform "trespass stops" outside certain buildings in the Bronx without reasonable suspicion of trespass. The judge has determined the practice of "stop and frisks" is inherently unlawful or unconstitutional and should not be employed without "reasonable suspicion of trespass."

Judge Shira Scheindlin outlined in her ruling, "In order for an officer to have 'reasonable suspicion' that an individual is engaged in criminal trespass, the officer must be able to articulate facts providing 'a minimal level of objective justification for making the stop.'" This means, as she cited, they must have "something more than an inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or hunch."

The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by African-American and Latino residents of New York who argue the NYPD has a "widespread practice of making unlawful stops on suspicion of trespass outside buildings in the Bronx that are enrolled in the Trespass Affidavit Program ("TAP"), which was formerly known in the Bronx as Operation Clean Halls." It is a program that permits "police officers to patrol inside and around thousands of private residential apartment buildings throughout New York City."
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Nuke

In Japan, a painfully slow sweep

Hiroko Tabuchi
The New York Times
Mon, 07 Jan 2013 21:34 UTC
Bags of contaminated soil
© Ko Sasaki/ The New York Times
Bags of contaminated soil outside the Naraha-Minami school near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Naraha - The decontamination crews at a deserted elementary school here are at the forefront of what Japan says is the most ambitious radiological cleanup the world has seen, one that promised to draw on cutting-edge technology from across the globe.

But much of the work at the Naraha-Minami Elementary School, about 12 miles away from the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, tells another story. For eight hours a day, construction workers blast buildings with water, cut grass and shovel dirt and foliage into big black plastic bags - which, with nowhere to go, dot Naraha's landscape like funeral mounds.

More than a year and a half since the nuclear crisis, much of Japan's post-Fukushima cleanup remains primitive, slapdash and bereft of the cleanup methods lauded by government scientists as effective in removing harmful radioactive cesium from the environment.

Local businesses that responded to a government call to research and develop decontamination methods have found themselves largely left out. American and other foreign companies with proven expertise in environmental remediation, invited to Japan in June to show off their technologies, have similarly found little scope to participate.

Recent reports in the local media of cleanup crews dumping contaminated soil and leaves into rivers have focused attention on the sloppiness of the cleanup.
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Arrow Down

'Best Funeral Ever': Most frightening reality TV show to date?

Clinton Yates
The Root DC
Mon, 07 Jan 2013 12:35 UTC
Best Funeral Ever
© Jen White - TLC
Best Funeral Ever
I've been to a lot of a funerals. Never once did it occur to me to consider I might rank one "better" than another. After all, someone has died. But some people consider death a time to celebrate gaudily and that's where Dallas' Golden Gate Funeral Home comes in. And TLC's new show, Best Funeral Ever is positively frightening.

To be clear, I'm not passing judgment on anyone that chooses to make their funeral a big, even if ridiculous event, but those events are private. A television show that effectively trivializes death for the purpose of a party is not the direction that we need to be moving in as a society.

Listen, I get it. Absurd reality shows have become the backbone of television programming, in the way that game shows once littered the landscape. And as I said before, even in the face of seemingly obvious dysfunction, not all of these shows (such as All My Babies' Mamas) are without merit.

But for Best Funeral, the problem is that there is absolutely no payoff. The show seems to highlight the fact that people think these forms of "mourning" are weird. The idea of inserting a reality show into the business of death is more ghoulish than I care to ever see again.

Some might say this is another program in a long line that makes black people look bad. Between the Real Housewives series, the Love & Hip Hop shows, the aforementioned All My Babies Mamas and so on, there is no shortage of programming that seems to capitalize on highlighting how some people of color tend to operate. But this show is worse than that. This show makes America look bad.
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Eye 2

Wife's 'inappropriate relationship' with adopted son a motive in husband's botched hit

Alyssa Newcomb
ABC News
Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:45 UTC
Image
© Las Vegas Metro Police Department/KTNV/ABC News
Amy Pearson is seen in this undated booking photo for the attempted murder of her estranged husband.
A Las Vegas woman accused of masterminding a botched plot to kill her estranged husband was motivated by a life insurance payout and a romantic relationship with their adopted son, according to a police report.

Amy Pearson, 42, surrendered to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department on Friday on charges of attempted murder, battery and conspiracy to commit murder against her husband, Robert Bessey.

An extensive police report detailing the crime, taped jailhouse conversations and interviews with witnesses was released Monday by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

Bessey, 49, was shot in the neck while driving south on Interstate 15 on Nov. 14, in what the suspects designed to look like a road rage incident, according to the report.
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Evil Rays

Florida woman pulls gun, poops in kitchen after finding hubby with another woman

Will Greenlee
TCPalm
Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:41 UTC
Image
A 33-year-old woman and her older boyfriend were sleeping in their Vero Beach bedroom about 2:30 a.m. when the boyfriend's wife stormed in with a rifle.

The wife, identified as Brenda Schumann, 51, pointed the weapon at her 42-year-old husband and his younger girlfriend, threatening to kill them both, according to accounts given by Schumann's husband and his girlfriend.

The husband got the gun away, but that didn't stop Schumann's apparent rampage.

She urinated on the carpet outside the master bedroom, defecated on the kitchen floor, grabbed a second rifle and started destroying Christmas decorations and other things.
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Wine n Glass

Study: Nearly 14 million American women engage in binge drinking three times a month


Raw Story
Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:38 UTC
Image
© Shutterstock
Binge drinking is an under-recognized problem for US women, nearly 14 million of whom engage in it about three times a month, downing about six drinks each time, says a study released Tuesday.

The practice is most common among women aged 18 to 34 as well as high school students, whites, Hispanics and women with household incomes of $75,000 or more, said the report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That US government institution defines binge drinking as having four or more drinks on a given occasion for women and girls.

And half of all high school girls who drink alcohol admit to binge drinking, said the new study.

Excessive drinking, including binge drinking, is responsible for about 23,000 deaths among women and girls in the United States each year.
      Read More...
Pistol

Utah town ordinance calls for guns in every home, every classroom

David Edwards
Raw Story
Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:35 UTC
Image
A small town in Utah is responding to the recent mass shooting of 20 children in Connecticut by pushing through a resolution that calls for every home to have a gun, and the town wants to provide free concealed carry training for all elementary school teachers.

"The first recommendation was that we require, or we recommend, every household have a gun and be properly trained to use it," Spring City Councilman Neil Sorensen, who authored the resolution, told KSL on Monday.

But some residents - including the Sanpete County sheriff - were a little uncomfortable with requiring all residents to be armed so Sorensen agreed to dial back the resolution.

City officials are hoping to quickly get the ordinance onto the city books. Little resistance is expected at a public hearing next month.
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Bad Guys

Boy Scouts to release sex abuse allegation files after order from California Supreme Court


Huffington Post
Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:24 UTC
Image
The Boy Scouts of America must release two decades of files detailing sexual abuse allegations after the California Supreme Court refused the organization's bid to keep the records confidential.

The decision came after a Santa Barbara County court ruled last year that the files must be turned over to attorneys representing a former Scout who claims a leader molested him in 2007, when he was 13. That leader later was convicted of felony child endangerment.

The former Scout's lawsuit claims the files, which date to 1991 and involve allegations from across the nation, will expose a "culture of hidden sexual abuse" that the Scouts had concealed.

The Boys Scouts of America has denied the allegations and argued that the files should remain confidential to protect the privacy of child victims and of people who were wrongly accused.
      Read More...
Padlock

Michael C. Gilliland, former Sunflower Farmers Market CEO, sentenced for attempted pandering

Jacques Billeaud
Huffington Post
Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:19 UTC
Image
© AP
In this undated photograph provided by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, Michael Gilliland, the founder of Sunflower Farmers Market, is shown.
The former chief executive of an upscale Colorado-based grocery chain accused in a child prostitution case in Phoenix was sentenced Tuesday to four weeks in jail for his guilty plea to misdemeanor attempted pandering.

Authorities say then-Sunflower Farmers Market CEO Michael C. Gilliland agreed to pay $100 for sex in February 2011 in a police sting in which an undercover officer posed as a 17-year-old prostitute. Prosecutors say Gilliland showed up at a Phoenix hotel to meet the undercover officer even though she told the businessman during an earlier phone conversation that she was 17.

"I sincerely regret the mistake that I made that brought me here today. I understand the damage I have caused," Gilliland said in court, adding that he has taken responsibility for his actions. The 54-year-old was ordered to start serving his sentence Tuesday afternoon.
      Read More...
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