Eideard

You have to feel sorry for the police officers who are required to frisk people for guns or knives – after all, if someone who doesn’t want to be arrested is carrying a lethal weapon, the last thing that most of us would want to do is get close enough to that person to touch them. That’s why the New York Police Department teamed up with the United States Department of Defense three years ago, and began developing a portable scanner that can remotely detect the presence of a gun on a person’s body. The NYPD announced the project yesterday.

The device uses infrared light rays to image radiation being emitted by a person’s body. Wherever a solid metal object such as a gun is blocking those rays from reaching the body, a silhouette of that object will appear on the scanner’s screen. So far, the technology only works from a distance of about 1 meter, although NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly hopes that its range can ultimately be extended to at least 25 meters.

The plan is for the scanner to be mounted on a van, then used on suspects who would otherwise have to be physically searched.

Har. Long way to go, folks.

Coppers will not only follow your every step – they’ll count the number of zipper teeth on your fly.

Passengers on the Warsaw Underground take part in the flashmob

People take part in the 2012 No Pants Subway Ride…Started by Improv Everywhere, the goal is for riders to get on public transport dressed in normal winter clothes, but without trousers, and keep a straight face.

Looks like fun. Though it would take a warm subway to get me to take part.

Faced with the difficult task of balancing a budget in austere times, officials in New York’s Suffolk County said on Friday they had no choice: they had to sack Santa Claus. The county executive said he could not justify carving out $660 from his $2.7 billion budget to pay David McKell, 83, a World War II veteran and former homicide detective, to don his Santa suit for the tenth year running and greet children on Long Island…

He said that some 750 county employees were facing layoffs as a result of budget restraints, including what he described as a $20 million cut in state aid to the county’s health system…

Steve Levy was quickly called a Grinch by his opponents.

“Do we really have to hold Santa Claus hostage to balance the budget?” said Bill Lindsay, a Democrat and the presiding officer of the county legislature.

“I mean, $600? Give me a break,” Joseph Sawicki, a Republican who as county comptroller is charged with overseeing the county government’s fiscal prudence, said in an interview. “There comes a point where you go overboard in terms of penny-pinching…”

In the end, Steve Bellone, the current town supervisor of nearby Babylon, who is running as the Democratic candidate to succeed Levy, said he would pay for Santa.

Levy, who is not running for reelection, dismissed Bellone’s gesture as “pure grandstanding”, and said his office was investigating whether the check breached rules governing gifts to county agencies.

Exactly the kind of response I’d expect from a Scrooge getting caught out at being a cheapskate at managing somebody else’s money. He hates like hell to admit he’s a lousy money manager; so, he blames the people who point out his distorted values.

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An artist arrested for applying body paint to a nude model in New York’s Times Square will have charges against him dropped if his models strip naked only after dark, according to a court agreement.

Police arrested Andy Golub, 45, in July and charged him with violating public exposure and lewdness laws. He has been painting nude models for about three years.

Golub’s lawyer, Ronald Kuby, argued that New York laws do not prohibit public nudity in the name of art, and a compromise was reached that was the basis of the court ruling. Under the agreement, “he is permitted to paint bare breasts any time, anywhere, but the G-strings have to stay on until daylight goes out,” Kuby said after a hearing in Manhattan criminal court…

Golub, of Nyack, New York, said he likes to paint nude models because their bodies have energy and dynamism that he finds lacking in canvas.

“I feel that when I do live body painting it’s a good thing, a positive thing,” he said.

Charges against Golub will be dropped in six months if he abides by the terms of the agreement and is not arrested again. Charges against Karla Storie, a model from Texas arrested with him, will be dismissed if she too is not arrested again in the next six months.

Golub said he was planning to return to criminal court today and paint a nude model in a park near the courthouse. After the sun sets.

Police said on Friday they eavesdropped on thieves speaking Russian, Mandarin and Arabic to make the biggest identity theft bust of its kind in U.S. history against a $13 million crime ring specializing mainly in selling Apple electronics overseas.

Authorities said “Operation Swiper” indicted 111 people from five criminal enterprises in Queens, New York, the nation’s most ethnically diverse county, where 138 languages are spoken and more than half the population is foreign born…

A two-year investigation revealed the enterprises had ties to larger syndicates in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and eastern Asia, Kelly said. The crime rings ran nationwide shopping sprees in which “crew leaders” oversaw “shoppers” and thieves conducted their business from five-star hotels, renting luxury cars and private jets…

Police said they seized $650,000 in cash, Apple computer products worth tens of thousands of dollars, $850,000 worth of computer equipment stolen from the Citigroup Building in Queens, seven handguns and a truck full of electronics, computers, designer shoes, watches and identity theft equipment…

Bosses of each crime ring received blank credit cards from suppliers in Russia, Libya, Lebanon and China.

The bosses then hired “skimmers” who posed for jobs such as waiters and retail shop workers so they could use electronic devices to steal information from customer credit cards. That information was then sent to a “manufacturer” who programed the information into the magnetic strips of blank credit cards.

The crime rings also used card printing machines to forge credit cards and state drivers licenses to match them…

Police then said “shoppers” in the crime rings would use the forged credit cards and IDs to go on weekly shopping sprees around the U.S. at retailers such as Nordstrom’s, Macy’s, Gucci and Best Buy and sell those items mostly to people overseas.

But by far, Gregory Antonsen said, thieves spent the most time buying computer products from Apple. “This is primarily an Apple case,” Antonsen said. “Apple is a big ticket item and a very easy sell.”

Antonsen added forged credit cards were easy for criminals to make here because U.S. credit cards are less sophisticated than those in Europe, where fraud of this magnitude would have been much more difficult…

The indicted individuals are charged with crimes ranging from identity theft and forging credit cards to robbery. Police said 86 of the 111 people indicted for the crimes are currently in police custody and the remaining 25 were being sought.

It starts with the simplest thing in the world. Always read the details of your credit card statement. Doesn’t matter if it belongs to the company you work for or if it’s your own. You’re the best person to catch the skimmer.

Cripes, the first time I caught someone doing it was in the late 1970′s at my [then] favorite Indian/Muslim restaurant in NYC. I saw dinner at the restaurant come through twice in a month – weeks apart – but, I’d only been there for a long weekend at a trade show. The style of theft ain’t any different – just the tech that makes it easier.

Michael Bloomberg, Christine C. Quinn, Mario Cuomo march in 2011 NYC LGBT Pride March
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Many New Yorkers and thousands of visitors this weekend may make last month’s Gay Pride celebrations seem tepid. Beginning Sunday, New York’s same-sex couples will become eligible for marriage licenses. Tens of thousands of those couples are expected to marry over the next few years, and their vows will resonate across America…

New York’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, and city leaders must be cheering the economic shot in the arm as hotels, restaurants, caterers, florists and legions of vendors welcome the wedding and honeymoon brigades. Some estimate nearly $400 million in revenues for the state over the next three years.

These rewards are also the result of changing tides among American corporations and employers over recent decades. Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s same-sex marriage legislation was endorsed not only by major corporations like Xerox and Google but by scores of smaller business owners across the state.

First, many employers already “get it.” Beginning in 1982 with New York’s Village Voice, thousands of employers have added spousal-equivalent work benefits including health coverage for their workers with same-sex partners. Today, nearly 60% of Fortune 500 companies do so…

If employers give equal benefits to same-sex couples, why worry about marital status? Ask employers in New Jersey, where same-sex civil unions are the law instead. Civil unions, domestic partnerships and other makeshift legal arrangements offer some measure of legal protection. But real-world experience shows that they do not measure up in crucial ways.

“Marriage lite” not only creates a social apartheid among families, it opens significant gaps, confusion and conflicts that businesses confront in areas such as survivor benefits, pensions and bankruptcies, along with disparate tax treatment at the state and federal level.

Keeping it simple and consistent are important to businesses…Furthermore, administering payrolls and maintaining accurate, timely benefits and tax withholding procedures can strain any employer. When you add the complexity that accompanies different marital and tax status for many couples, from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and workplace to workplace, it is another unacceptable and costly burden on business.

Sooner rather than later, chambers of commerce will recognize that their best interests are served by the simplicity, uniformity and cost savings that come with marriage equality across the nation…

Part of today’s political dichotomies is the decline in principles and standards of traditional organizations of all types. Churches, political parties – local and national, trade organizations and national business representatives like the US Chamber of Commerce have walked away from any pretense of representing a broad base.

Just as fundamentalist churches less and less often engage in dialogue with the broad reach of Christianity, the US Chamber of Commerce long ago turned its back on small business. In truth there are whole segments of American commerce ignored or deliberately affronted by the entrenched leadership of the Chamber. If you ain’t from Big Oil or Pharma or Insurance and Finance – just punch their meal ticket; but, don’t waste anyone’s time with issues outside of extraction taxes or capital gains.

It wasn’t all that long ago that the Shanghai Convention Center was little more than a rice paddy, but this week, the sprawling facility will play host to what has rapidly become one of the world’s most important auto shows.

By a quirk of the calendar, this year’s big Chinese car show not only overlaps but threatens to overwhelm the New York Auto Show and its ability to garner valuable media time – a development that echoes the rapidly transformation occurring in the global automotive business.

Michael Dunne, the founder of Automotive Resources Asia – today a part of J.D. Power and Associates – recalls his first trip to China, barely two decades ago, when the roads were ruled by bicycles, motorbikes and buses, and the sight of an automobile was enough to draw everyone’s attention. Today, the most populous nation on Earth is also the biggest automotive market, having surpassed the U.S. two years ago, never to look back.

There will be a number of major launches that might have, until now, been steered to New York. Yet few could have anticipated that boom…Even as recently as 2007, skeptics wondered just how much more growth the Chinese car market could support. But that year was a milestone for a number of reasons. One that many initially missed was the decision by several major Western automakers to stage significant global previews at the Shanghai Motor Show for the first time. That included the debut of the BMW CS Concept car – which would only eventually return to the U.S. and a domestic preview at New York’s Jacob Javits convention center…

Few will downplay the significance of the 2011 Shanghai Motor Show. By one estimate, as many as 100 different electric vehicles will be displayed by the scores of manufacturers participating in the event. That’s no surprise considering the Beijing government’s increasing emphasis on battery power to help it overcome the country’s endemic pollution problems – and to reduce the Chinese dependence upon foreign oil…

But there’s no question that the days when the U.S. and Europe dominated the auto show circuit are over – much as the old, industrialized markets are no longer the drivers of automotive sales growth.

For Americans there even was a time back in the day when the European auto shows were meaningless. Volkwagen and Volvo changed that forever. The last people to respond were the Detroit Big 3.

This time around give credit where credit is due. Detroit iron – especially General Motors – were quick to respond and even quicker to profit from demand in China that still looks to the United States for economic guidance. Recognizing the difference between what’s good and what’s bad – but, not rejecting the knowledge from either.

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Whoever killed four prostitutes, and possibly four other people, and then dumped their bodies in heavy underbrush along a beachfront causeway on Long Island appears to have a sophisticated understanding of police investigative techniques…

A series of taunting phone calls made to the teenage sister of one of the victims — calls that the police suspect came from the killer — were made from in or around some of the most crowded locations in New York City, including Madison Square Garden and Times Square, according to the people briefed on the case and to the mother of Melissa Barthelemy, that victim.

The locations, detectives say, were probably chosen because they allowed the caller to blend into crowds, so that if investigators pinpointed his location from the cellphone’s signal, they would be unable to pick him out of the crowd using any nearby surveillance cameras, one of the people said.

This fact, as well as the killer’s use of disposable cellphones to contact the four victims who have been identified — women in their 20s who advertised their services on Craigslist — suggested to some investigators that the killer was well versed in criminal investigative techniques, gleaned either through personal experience or in some other way, and could even be in law enforcement himself…

Also, the caller kept each of his vulgar, mocking and insulting calls to less than three minutes, according to the dead woman’s mother, Lynn Barthelemy. The caller made about a half-dozen calls over roughly five weeks to the victim’s sister.

One investigator said the brief duration of the calls thwarted efforts by the New York Police Department to use the signal to pinpoint the caller’s location and find him, something Lynn Barthelemy said they told her they tried to do four times…

Ms. Barthelemy’s body was one of four uncovered over the course of three days in December in the thick undergrowth along Ocean Parkway, near Gilgo Beach, in the town of Babylon. All were dumped in burlap sacks.

RTFA for a bit more detail. I guess back in the day before the multiplicity of CSI variants on TV it would have required a bit of research to know how forensic investigation has moved on since the days of Quincy.

We even had a suicide here in New Mexico that imitated an episode of CSI in an attempt to make it look like murder. Life imitates art, once again.

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Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Thursday that some city snow plows will be fitted with global positioning systems in a pilot program meant to better track sanitation vehicles as officials brace for a winter storm.

“It gives us the ability to check on the location and progress of our snow plows,” Bloomberg told reporters, saying that the devices will be added to some trucks in New York’s Brooklyn and Queens boroughs where heavy snowfall last month left many residents snowbound.

The city will also deploy scout teams to transmit video images of neighborhoods back to City Hall during clean-up efforts, the mayor said…

The heavy slow hampered morning commuters, delayed first responders and even prevented aircraft service personnel from reaching airports where 29 international flights were stuck on the tarmac for more than three hours, officials said.

Though it may get in the way of goof-off time, the fact remains that decent logistics software combined with rather inexpensive GPS locators enables more efficient traffic management and even the potential of cost reduction while getting a better job done.

The only surprise is why hasn’t this been done earlier? Cab companies figured this out a long time ago.

A Brooklyn cyber-merchant who recently drew attention by boasting that he used unusually bad customer service to boost his business was due in federal court in Manhattan Monday, following his arrest for allegedly threatening customers and other violations.

Vitaly Borker was charged with cyber-stalking, the making of interstate threats and both mail and wire fraud.

“Vitaly Borker, an alleged cyber-bully and fraudster, cheated his customers, and when they complained, tried to intimidate them with obscenity and threats of serious violence,” said Manhattan US Attorney Pheet Bharara in a press release. “Especially during this holiday shopping season, today’s arrest should send a message that we will protect online consumers and that victims of people like Borker are not alone.”

In a Nov. 26 article in the New York Times, Borker told a reporter that securing many online reviews, regardless of what they say, is part of his strategy to generate business for his site, DecorMyEyes.com, which sells high-end eyeware…

Google announced last week that it changed the methodology behind how it ranks search results in order to make it harder for unscrupulous merchants to appear prominently in searches…

The complaint spells out details of the offenses, in which Borker’s firm sent customers defective and counterfeit eyeglasses, refused to give refunds and threatened customers physically.

According to the complaint, Borker told one customer, known as Victim 4, “I know where you live” and “I can hurt you,” after the victim threatened to file a complaint against the merchant with the Federal Trade Commission.

I read the article in the Times, last weekend. Didn’t post about it, then, because I felt it wasn’t productive to introduce some other lowlife bastard to the same stunt.

But, Google has repaired the fault – and the Feds will hopefully throw this creep in jail.