U.S. Helps Israel Defend Against Hamas By Sending In An Aircraft Carrier Strike Group

 As a former sailor who served on an aircraft carrier during the Vietnam War, I often debate those who state that carriers are outdated and useless. 

Since post-WWII, an American president's first question in a world crisis is to ask, “Where are the carriers?” 

And once again we see an American president’s first action in a crisis is to send in a carrier strike group. 

Jim Garamone at the DOD News offers a piece on the U.S. support of Israel after being attacked by Hamas, and the sending in the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (seen in the above photo).  

… The United States is "surging" support to Israel, including air defense capabilities and munitions. "We remain in constant, ongoing contact with our counterparts in Israel to determine, and then support, their most urgent requirements," the official said. "The bottom line is we are working as fast as possible to provide critically needed munitions of various types and other equipment." 

… The United States is also bolstering U.S. presence in the region. Austin ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. The aircraft carrier has an embarked airwing and accompanying cruisers and destroyers. The force will conduct maritime and air operations in order to assure allies and partners throughout the region and ensure regional stability. The strike group is prepared for the full range of missions. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

U.S. Helps Israel Defend Against Hamas Attacks > U.S. Department of Defense > Defense Department News

My Crime Beat Column: A Look Back On The Scene Of A Tragic Police Accident In South Philly

The below column appeared in the South Philadelphia American on August 29, 1996:

Tragedy often brings out both the best and worst in people. Following the sirens last week, I came upon the scene of an accident at 22nd Street and Snyder Avenue a little after 9 p.m.

As most of you know from the intense media coverage, two police cruisers racing to an "assist officer" call collided, spiraled up on the pavement and killed Lemore Rich, 28, and his 7-month-old son, Lemore, Jr.

Rich lay in the street as a crowd gathered on both sides of the avenue. A group of men helped lift one of the police cruisers off of the critically injured man, who subsequently died. The baby stroller lay crushed on the pavement as testimony of the great force of the crash. The child was rushed to Children's Hospital where he too died.

There were those in the growing crowd who wanted to help, like the nurse who offered her services to the police and rescue personnel, but most people just stood there, gazing and commenting on the utter tragedy of a deadly accident.

The print and electronic media vultures were quickly on the scene, which includes, I must admit, yours truly. The press, notebook or microphone in hand, chatted up the crowd about the accident and their particular take on the event. The accident would be the top story for the 10 and 11 o'clock TV news broadcasts and the frontpage story for the two daily newspapers the next day.

While the police waited for the accident investigators to come to the scene, they tried to maintain crowd control. The police spread yellow tape from one side of the avenue to the other and a handful of onlookers attempting to get a better look at the carnage were told to get back - several times.

Some young thugs gathered around, looking and hoping for trouble. A retired detective who said he had 27 years on the job, remarked that the police ought to remove Rich's body from the street.

"They should just draw some chalk around it and move it," he said a few minutes prior to the body being taken away when the accident investigators arrived on the scene.

The mothers in the crowd appeared to be the most affected. They no doubt identified closely with the child's mother, who had survived the accident, but lost her child and the child's father.

Adding to the circus atmosphere was a drunk, bloated and slovenly poor excuse of a Dean Martin impersonator, replete with cigarette in his left hand and a cocktail in his right. He staggered about Snyder Avenue, muttering senseless obscenities. The accident brought out all of the neighborhood characters for a good viewing.

Most of the racially mixed crowd of onlookers grieved equally for the victims, but race came into it for some. I overheard one man say, "5-0 will cover it up, that's for sure."

 Another commentator added, "They just run over black people."

But I saw two of the injured police officers being taken away to the hospital and the shocked and saddened look on their faces belied the type of callus racism some in the crowd would have you believe. One of the officers was crying softly,

Inspector Bruce Forstator, the commander of the South Police Division, later remarked that it will be tough for the officers to carry this with them for the rest of their lives. Deputy Police Commissioner Richard Zappile, a South Philadelphia native who grew up on Snyder Avenue about a dozen blocks east of the accident, said that investigators would be looking at whether the officers were within the guidelines of the department.

The police driving "Bible" is Directive 45, "The Safe Operations of Police Vehicles." The policy reads: "High speed vehicle pursuits are possibly the most dangerous of all police activities. the safety of innocent citizens, involved police personnel and suspects must be paramount when an officer becomes involved in a pursuit. The most important reason for an effective pursuit policy is to protect life and property - the basic police mission."

Having been out on patrol a good number of times with police officers in their cruisers in several police districts throughout the city, I've rode along on hot pursuits and high speed responses to 911 calls. I've witnessed some good, safe driving from the officers, who are under intense pressure to quickly get to the scene of a crime. I've also witnessed the stupidity and arrogance of some drivers and pedestrians who don't quickly give way to the lights and sirens of the police cruiser.

In this case, the officers were responding to an assist officer call, the highest ranking call in the 911 system.

People often complain that the police don't respond quickly enough, and then when an accident like this happens they are quick to complain about the reckless driving of the police.

Let's wait for the accident report to see if the officers were truly at fault.

Note: The officers involved were later cleared of wrongdoing.

A Little Humor: Elderly Woman Escapes Nursing Home, Rants About Deprogramming The Populace

 The satirical Babylon Bee offers a funny take on Hillary Clinton’s latest CNN interview. 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Viewers are perplexed by a CNN television interview featuring a deranged old lady who recently escaped from an elder care facility, angrily ranting about wanting to "deprogram" half of the nation's population.

"They must comply! Deplorables! All of ‘em!" the disheveled geriatric growled at the camera while CNN's Christiane Amanpour attempted to de-escalate the situation. "If they don't fall in line, we'll round them up and re-educate them! De-program them! Re-program them! If that doesn't work, then we'll just disappear them! Yes! Yeeeeeeessssssss! Ahahahahahahaha!"

The CNN interview team did their best to remain calm, despite the obvious threat posed by the tottering, decrepit woman. "She may be old and frail, but you can tell she's serious," said one member of the television crew. "We heard she escaped from a nursing home nearby, but you could tell she's terrorized people in the past. Chilling, dangerous stuff. Or maybe she's just completely insane, who knows."

 You can read the rest of the humor piece via the below link:   

Elderly Woman Escapes Nursing Home, Rants About Deprogramming The Populace | Babylon Bee

My Washington Times On Crime Column On 'The Italian Squad: The True Story Of The Immigrant Cops Who Fought The Rise Of The Mafia,' Part One

The Washington Times published part one of my On Crime column on Paul Moses’ The Italian Squad: The True Story of the Immigrant Cops Who Fought the Rise of the Mafia.

 

You can read the column via the below link or the below text:

BOOK REVIEW: 'The Italian Squad' - Washington Times

 

Being half Italian and growing up in an Italian American neighborhood in South Philadelphia, I was aware of organized crime at an early age. Back in the 1960s, I lived around the corner from Angelo Bruno, who was then the boss of the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra crime family.

 

I also lived around the corner from Richard Zappile, the Italian American Philadelphia chief of detectives who fought the Cosa Nostra and later served as deputy police commissioner. There were and are far more Italian police officers than Italian mobsters.

 

So I was interested in Paul Moses’ “The Italian Squad: The True Story of the Immigrant Cops Who Fought the Rise of the Mafia,” and I contacted him and asked why he wrote the book.

 

“It spins off from my previous book, ‘An Unlikely Union: The Love-Hate Story of New York’s Irish and Italians’ (NYU Press, 2015). That book explores how these two ethnic groups, once so antagonistic to each other, eventually came together. Part of that story was about the early Italian officers in the Irish-dominated NYPD. I focused a chapter on Lt. Joseph Petrosino (seen in the above photo), founding commander of the Italian Squad. He did not have an easy time in getting respect within the department, but eventually was celebrated and then mourned by the entire city after he was murdered while on an undercover mission to Sicily in 1909.

 

“Petrosino’s life and death have been well covered in many books, some movies, and even comic serials. But I saw that the history of what happened to the Italian Squad after his assassination was not as well known. I wanted to write it because it’s both an exciting crime story and a revealing window on the immigrant experience in America. It resonates in today’s debates about immigrants and crime, and police-community relations. It’s a true-crime story that explores social trends that continue to affect us today.”

How did you research the book?

“Newspaper archives from the period I covered, 1904 to 1922, were certainly important. But over-reliance on the newspapers has sometimes skewed the historical record, I found. So a lot of other sources were needed to figure out what really happened.

“These included transcripts of trials and other government proceedings; records that Joseph Petrosino’s family kept; some records, including a diary, kept by the family of Petrosino’s successor and friend, Lt. Anthony Vachris; prison records; State Department correspondence (since New York police communicated with Italian authorities through diplomatic channels); daily reports of Secret Service agents; archives such as the records of the U.S. consul in Palermo; City Hall correspondence; annual police reports, and so on.

“The NYPD’s records from the period are mostly lost, but there was a lot of detail on personnel, discipline and other police matters published in The City Record, a sort of Federal Register.”

Why did the NYPD establish the Italian Squad?

“Two reasons. First, the newspapers hyped Italian crime, instilling in the public the false idea that there was a massive ‘Black Hand’ crime syndicate directed by mob bosses in Sicily or Naples. They demanded action, creating a political headache for the mayor.

“Second, there were some serious crimes afflicting the Italian community — blackmail, enforced through bombings and kidnappings targeted at immigrant Italians who’d managed some small success, such as owning a grocery store. The Italian community demanded better policing — more Italian-speaking officers, for starters.”

Why did the immigrant Italian police officers join the squad and agree to fight the Black Hand?

“Joseph Petrosino and his successors felt that the entire Italian immigrant community was being tainted as crime-prone because of crimes committed by a small minority. They knew that their fellow immigrants by and large just wanted to improve their lives by working hard.

“Because of language barriers and perhaps indifference, the NYPD was failing to protect the community. And most Italian immigrants wouldn’t cooperate with law enforcement, either, partly because of their experiences with police in Italy, and partly out of recognition that the criminal justice system in New York was stacked against them.

“The mission that Petrosino began and passed on to his successors was to be a bridge between an Italian community that distrusted the police and a police department that was very skeptical of the immigrants flooding into the city.”

How was the Italian Squad perceived by Tammany Hall politicians?

“Tammany did not like the idea of having an Italian Squad. Tammany leaders had a lot of influence on the Police Department, and that helped protect their gambling interests. The Italian Squad was a wild card; its commanders generally reported to the commissioner or a deputy commissioner, rather than through the ranks of the Detective Bureau.”

In part two, Mr. Moses discusses the Black Hand and Cosa Nostra in America.

• Paul Davis’ On Crime column covers true crime, crime fiction and thrillers.

• • •

THE ITALIAN SQUAD: THE TRUE STORY OF THE IMMIGRANT COPS WHO FOUGHT THE RISE OF THE MAFIA
By Paul Moses
NYU, 304 pages, $29.95 

Note: Below is a photo of former Philadelphia Cosa Nostra crime family boss Angelo Bruno and a photo of the former Philadelphia Police chief of detectives Richard Zappile.

  

National Security Agency To Open AI Security Center

Joseph Clark at the DOD News offers a piece on the September 28^th announcement of the National Security Agency’s creation of an AI center.

Director Army Gen. Paul M. Nakasone (seen in the above photo) today announced the creation of a new entity to oversee the development and integration of artificial intelligence capabilities within U.S. national security systems.

The AI Security Center will become the focal point for developing best practices, evaluation methodology and risk frameworks with the aim of promoting the secure adoption of new AI capabilities across the national security enterprise and the defense industrial base.  

The new entity will consolidate the agency's various artificial intelligence and security-related activities.  

"The AI Security Center will work closely with U.S. Industry, national labs, academia across the [intelligence community] and Department of Defense and select foreign partners," Nakasone said during a discussion hosted by the National Press Club in Washington.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

AI Security Center to Open at National Security Agency > U.S. Department of Defense > Defense Department News 

My Crime Beat Column: Take Steps To Avoid The Violent Crime Of Carjacking

A Texas Congressman was recently the victim of carjacking in Washington D.C.

Carjacking is on the rise in Philadelphia and across the country, often with deadly results.

Back in 2010, I wrote a Crime Beat column on carjacking for small business owners, but the information and crime prevention tips apply to all, and still apply today.

You can read my column below:

Carjacking is a crime that can end not only in the destruction of property, but also injury or loss of life. Here are things you can do to protect yourself from would-be carjackers.

For many small business owners, a car is as essential a tool as a computer.

In past columns, I’ve covered how car thieves can strip a parked car of its parts in less than five minutes, and I interviewed a police captain about thieves who break into parked cars and steal valuables.

In this column, I’d like to cover carjacking, which is a far greater crime as it involves an armed criminal and often the victim is terrorized, hurt or killed.

One story that illustrates the violent nature of carjacking occurred on Galveston Island in Texas last week. According to reports of the incident, a woman was sitting in the passenger side of an idling car when a man armed with an ax stepped into the driver’s seat and took off. The man would not let the woman out of the car, and he threatened to kill her with the ax.

This story might have ended in tragedy had the carjacker not crashed into another car. As a result of the crash, the carjacker was trapped in the car. Local firefighters pulled the man out. Local police officers arrested him. The woman was unharmed.

In Atlantic City back in May, another victim of carjacking was not so fortunate.

The family of Martin Caballero, 47, pleaded with the public to help find their loved one after Caballero disappeared on May 21st from the Trump Taj Mahal casino parking lot just minutes just minutes after arriving. He traveled to Atlantic City to help celebrate his daughter’s birthday.

According to the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office on June 3rd, Jessica Kisby, 24, and Craig Arno, 44, were charged with murder after a body discovered in a farmer’s field was identified as Caballero. According to the Atlantic County Medical Examiner, the cause of death was multiple stab wounds to the chest.

A day earlier the Atlantic County Prosecutor Ted Housel charged Kisby and Arno with the carjacking and kidnapping of Caballero. Housel stated he believed the victim did not know his attackers. The carjacking was a random crime.

Police officers and security experts say carjacking is preventable if one stays alert to their surroundings and follows the below security steps:

• When stopped for a traffic light or other reasons, carefully observe what is happening around your car, via your side and rearview mirrors. Keep your windows up and doors locked.
• Keep your purse, laptop, and other valuables out of view while driving.
• Drive in the center lane to avoid being pushed over to the shoulder.
• Don’t stop at isolated cash machines or other isolated areas.
• Don’t stop to help a disabled motorist or pedestrian. Stay in your locked car and offer to call a service station or the police from your cell phone.
• Don’t open your window for someone approaching your car asking for directions or trying to sell you something.
• Don’t park your car in an isolated area.
• If you are pulled over by someone in an unmarked car who claims to be a police officer, stay in your locked car and call 911 on your cell phone. Tell the person you are calling 911 to confirm they are in fact a police officer. If the person is truly a police officer, he won’t have a problem with your actions, and if he is not a police officer, he will take off to avoid arrest.
• If you can’t drive away from a bad situation, stay in your locked car and yell and honk your horn repeatedly. Criminals don’t like noise and they tend to run away to avoid attention.
• Below are some of the most common carjacking scenarios:

• When the victim is stopped at a traffic light.
• The carjacker pretends to be stranded.
• The carjacker fakes an accident to get you out of your car.
• The carjacker attacks the victim as they get in their car in parking garages, shopping malls and complex parking, and driveways.     

The best defense against a carjacking is having more than one person in the car. Another essential defensive tool is a working cell phone with a charger.

I bought my wife and daughter a large, heavy, tactical flashlight, which they keep beside the driver’s seat in their cars. It is good to have a working flashlight in the car if you need light, and the flashlight doubles as a club if you need to slam it on the hand of someone reaching into your car to harm you.

Businesspeople out on the road can be distracted with thoughts of business, but one should always remain alert and aware of the surroundings. This is the best defense against carjacking. 

Ian Fleming: The Complete Man By Nicholas Shakespeare Review – The Other International Man Of Mystery

I've always thought that Ian Fleming, sans fist and gun fights, was a more interesting character than his creation, James Bond. 

A naval intelligence officer during WWII and a journalist before and after the war, Fleming led a most interesting life. 

So I look forward to reading Nicholas Shakespeare's biography of Ian Fleming and covering it in my Washington Times On Crime column when the book is published in America later this year. 

Anthony Cummins at the British newspaper the Guardian offers a review of Nicholas Shakespeare’s biography of Ian Fleming: 

Nicholas Shakespeare’s elegant biography of the James Bond author Ian Fleming takes its subtitle from a journalist’s observation, quoted halfway through, that its subject was “for a moment of time, a complete man” while working for British naval intelligence in the second world war.

 

Yet you can’t help read it as a promise to give the reader what was left out of previous biographies such as John Pearson’s crisp, more portable authorized life from 1966. And is there a claim, too, for the alpha male credentials of the man called “Flemingway” by his friend Noël Coward? Journalist, stockbroker, thriller writer and – like his famous creation – a playboy and 70-a-day smoker, who died of a heart attack in 1964 at the age of 56 after a plagiarism row over the origins of Thunderball, the ninth Bond novel.

 

After a dutiful account of how Fleming’s Scottish financier grandfather became a millionaire – later cutting Fleming and his brothers out of his will – Shakespeare gets going with his subject’s troubled boyhood in the shadow of his father’s death in the first world war. Family friends in Switzerland take his education in hand after hasty exits from Eton (hanky-panky with a woman) and Sandhurst (gonorrhea). His exams aren’t good enough for the Foreign Office; an engagement to a Swiss lover ends amid maternal threats to cut off his allowance.

 

He falls on his feet at Reuters – it was that kind of life – further honing his knack for a scoop at the Sunday Times, a handy source of contacts for his war work.

Shakespeare goes to great lengths – not least tracking down a 94-year-old veteran, the last surviving member of a covert commando unit that Fleming organized – to dispel the idea that Fleming’s service, occluded by state-sanctioned secrecy, was just “in-trays, out-trays and ashtrays”. 

The book’s first half puts the future author at the heart of military and journalistic history – a search for German weapons of mass destruction; the race to get an inside scoop on the Cambridge spies – as well as the bedroom shenanigans of the English well-to-do.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

Ian Fleming: The Complete Man by Nicholas Shakespeare review – the other international man of mystery | Biography books | The Guardian 

Note: Below is a photo of Commander Ian Fleming during WWII: