Search Results for: crime

A trip through the “bike-crime underbelly”—and the futility of new technology when it comes to preventing it:

The purpose of stealing a bike, after all, is to sell it. SFPD’s McCloskey estimated that 90 percent of bike thieves are drug addicts. In America’s rough streets, there are four forms of currency—cash, sex, drugs, and bicycles. Of those, only one is routinely left outside unattended. So the story of bike thieves would not be complete without a trip through the second half of the transaction—the recycling of cycles.

Stolen bikes suffer many fates. In the Bay Area, they are often sold at flea markets, particularly in Alameda, just south of Oakland. In Portland, within hours of being taken, a few will appear at pawn shops just outside city limits, where documentation rules are lax. But just as they do in New York City, which shut down most ad hoc bike dealers years ago, the majority end up online, either on eBay or on Craigslist, the black hole of bicycles.

“Who Pinched My Ride?” — Patrick Symmes, Outside

See also: “Anatomy of a Greenpoint Bike Accident.” — Camille Dodero, Village Voice, Aug. 17, 2011

Who Pinched My Ride?

Longreads Pick

A trip through the “bike-crime underbelly”—and the futility of new technology when it comes to preventing it:

“The purpose of stealing a bike, after all, is to sell it. SFPD’s McCloskey estimated that 90 percent of bike thieves are drug addicts. In America’s rough streets, there are four forms of currency—cash, sex, drugs, and bicycles. Of those, only one is routinely left outside unattended. So the story of bike thieves would not be complete without a trip through the second half of the transaction—the recycling of cycles.

“Stolen bikes suffer many fates. In the Bay Area, they are often sold at flea markets, particularly in Alameda, just south of Oakland. In Portland, within hours of being taken, a few will appear at pawn shops just outside city limits, where documentation rules are lax. But just as they do in New York City, which shut down most ad hoc bike dealers years ago, the majority end up online, either on eBay or on Craigslist, the black hole of bicycles.”

Source: Outside
Published: Jan 9, 2012
Length: 23 minutes (5,805 words)

A Dallas murder suspect is also a paranoid schizophrenic, and his changing mental state raises questions about whether he can stand trial:

With medication he becomes someone else entirely, capable even of calm rationality. He would have to be induced into a state of synthetic sanity before he could stand trial for a crime that he allegedly committed while unmedicated.

For now, though, he was just another uncooperative suspect.

“We need your help. Are you going to help us?” Thompson’s index finger jackhammered the photo. “Look at him!” With his slight build and his short, blond hair, Winder looked hunted, like a boy among men. He looked up at the detectives and murmured, “I don’t remember.”

“Can an Accused Killer Stay Sane Long Enough to Stand Trial?” — Brantley Hargrove, Dallas Observer

See also: “The Lost Boys.” — Skip Hollandsworth, Texas Monthly, March 24, 2011

Can an Accused Killer Stay Sane Long Enough to Stand Trial?

Longreads Pick

A Dallas murder suspect is also a paranoid schizophrenic, and his changing mental state raises questions about whether he can stand trial:

“With medication he becomes someone else entirely, capable even of calm rationality. He would have to be induced into a state of synthetic sanity before he could stand trial for a crime that he allegedly committed while unmedicated.

“For now, though, he was just another uncooperative suspect.

“‘We need your help. Are you going to help us?’ Thompson’s index finger jackhammered the photo. ‘Look at him!’

“With his slight build and his short, blond hair, Winder looked hunted, like a boy among men. He looked up at the detectives and murmured, ‘I don’t remember.'”

Source: Dallas Observer
Published: Jan 12, 2012
Length: 20 minutes (5,202 words)

Cain, writer of “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” “Double Indemnity” and “Mildred Pierce,” on the pros and cons of living in Southern California in the 1930s:

There is no reward for aesthetic virtue here, no punishment for aesthetic crime; nothing but a vast cosmic indifference, and that is the one thing the human imagination cannot stand. It withers, or else, frantic to make itself felt, goes off into feverish and idiotic excursions that have neither reason, rhyme, nor point, and that even fail in their one, purpose, which is to attract notice.

Now, in spite of the foregoing, when you come to consider the life that is encountered here, you have to admit that there is a great deal to be said for it.

“Paradise.” — James M. Cain, Los Angeles Times, March 1, 1933

See also: “Sweatpants in Paradise.” — Molly Young, The Believer, Sept. 1, 2010

Paradise (1933)

Longreads Pick

Cain, writer of “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” “Double Indemnity” and “Mildred Pierce,” on the pros and cons of living in L.A. and Southern California in the 1930s:

“There is no reward for aesthetic virtue here, no punishment for aesthetic crime; nothing but a vast cosmic indifference, and that is the one thing the human imagination cannot stand. It withers, or else, frantic to make itself felt, goes off into feverish and idiotic excursions that have neither reason, rhyme, nor point, and that even fail in their one, purpose, which is to attract notice.

“Now, in spite of the foregoing, when you come to consider the life that is encountered here, you have to admit that there is a great deal to be said for it.”

Published: Mar 1, 1933
Length: 38 minutes (9,665 words)

In 1990, a trash bag with human remains was found in the Vinegar Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn. The investigation soon expanded to killings in Albania and Belgium, and focused on the activity of a Yugoslavian former cab driver named Smajo Dzurlic:

“Smajo Dzurlic, who is now 71, shuffled into the room, his wrists and ankles unbound. He wore a brown argyle V-neck sweater, and his head barely came up to the guard’s chest. ‘Do I look dangerous to you?’ he asked, as we sat beside each other at the end of a long, rectangular table. ‘They figured I was some big man, like Son of Sam or something,’ Dzurlic said in rusty English. ‘But they gave me time for no reason. I’m not a murderer. Not a murderer whatsoever.’”

“On the Trail of an Intercontinental Killer.” — Nicholas Schmidle, New York Times Magazine

See more crime #longreads

Kevin Purdy: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011

Kevin Purdy is a freelance writer, and a frequent Longreader. Check out his site here.

Not all written in 2011, but brought to my attention and saved in 2011:

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The city’s reaction to the fire, the most lethal in 30 years, was fierce. Many residents had grown tired of these tattooed and pierced panhandlers. In the days after the fire, there were calls to enforce vagrancy laws more strictly and bulldoze the squats. Yet the conditions in the crime-infested streets of the Ninth Ward were already very rough, and that hadn’t kept anyone away. As Flea’s procession the day before the fire had demonstrated, there were a lot more of these traveling kids in town than those begging for change in the French Quarter.

“A World on Fire.” — Danelle Morton, Boston Review

See more #longreads on New Orleans

Businessweek's Sheelah Kolhatkar: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011

Sheelah Kolhatkar is features editor at Bloomberg Businessweek.

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Some of my favorite non-Businessweek features that were published this year:

“Lost at Sea,” Jon Ronson, The Guardian

This piece combines a genre I love—the gritty crime story—with the utter weirdness of the cruise ship industry. Apparently people disappear from cruise ships all the time, but you usually don’t hear about it because the cruise lines keep it quiet. Ronson goes deep into the bizarre cruise culture as he tries to figure out what happened to Rebecca Coriam, who vanished from the Disney Wonder last March.

“All The Angry People,” George Packer, The New Yorker

This story accomplished what seemed almost impossible, at least from an editor’s perspective: it made a compelling narrative out of the Occupy Wall Street encampment in lower Manhattan. Even though OWS was being covered to death, this story—along with Bloomberg Businessweek’s own fine contribution, Drake Bennett’s profile of David Graeber—found a new angle on it and made it fresh and compelling.

“The Girl from Trails End,” Kathy Dobie, GQ

This devastating story just really stayed with me.

“California and Bust,” Michael Lewis, Vanity Fair

His piece about Iceland (“Wall Street on the Tundra”) is my favorite one he’s done about the global financial crisis, but Michael Lewis’s breakdown of the fiscal disaster that is California was his best in 2011. It really makes you think about the scary place we might be headed as a country, and the scene with Arnold Schwarzenegger is priceless.

“Lady, Where’s My Magazine**?” Ann Friedman

This is a parody, and it isn’t terribly long, so I’m not sure that it qualifies. But it is hilarious, and perfectly illustrates much of what is wrong with the publishing business.

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See more lists from our Top 5 Longreads of 2011 >

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