Looking for "Good"

Sometimes when you work a lot of long nights, where news can be kinda grim, you try to remember some of the good people you've met. I know, as a reporter you bristle at the naivete of calling people "good" (no simple stories -- there's always something, right?), but...

This couple were definitely two of the best, to me. Call me a sucker, but hey, if you can't have faith in a pair like that, you're a more hardened soul than I am. In the city, I've rarely seen such selflessness.

Been wondering lately what they're up to -- whether they ever got the church going again.  Time to reach out and find them.

An Unhappy Ending

Welp, everybody said it would happen. James Fields, the East Side gang leader I profiled here, has been arrested and convicted of shooting a gun at someone after a heated argument outside a bar. A guy who testified against his brother during a murder trial. Even my editors joked about how shocked they were.

Everybody wants a simple story. Let's face it: it's easy not to have any faith in folks like James, or to see him as a "good" or "bad" guy. There's people who say - casually, and let's face it, maliciously - that a wall should be built around Detroit. These people make my blood boil.

NObody ever said they were sure James would make it. He was always "the enforcer" of the gang. Many will claim he never got out. I personally think he did, for a bit. But it's a hard life to leave.

Quintessential Confidence Man

I don't think I've ever gotten more phone calls -- not for murders or rapes or, well, anything -- than I did about this guy: by all reports the quintessential con man. It started with a simple theft by swindle of the St. Paul Hotel, a couple thousand dollars. In the following weeks, I made contact with two ex-girlfriends who said he'd taken them for tens of thousands.

At first it was hard to believe -- but after some follow-up, the stories were all the same. In time, five ex-girlfriends, none of whom knew each other, all said the exact same thing:

1.) He met them online, posing as a millionaire.

2.) Took them out house hunting, going so far as to put in purchase agreements, for million-dollar homes.

3.) Would show documents and screen-shots proving his riches/debts paid.

4.) After weeks, months, and in one case years, it became evident he never had any money, and had sucked their funds away. The purchase agreements were never followed up on. Any access he had to his girlfriends' finances was exploited.

He was released by the judge, and never showed up for sentencing. But I have a feeling he'll turn up someday.

The Kinda Folks You Meet: Part 3

It took three months to get James Fields to talk to me, and I don't think he ever called or returned a call.  I didn't take it personally, though, and the amount he opened up in the end was surprising, given his history.

James founded The East Side Boys, one of the city's two largest street gangs.  I have a hard time trusting anyone, but James has a certain candor to him.  Maybe I do trust him a little, though I got plenty of calls telling me I shouldn't.  You be the judge (I had to re-upload the video on Youtube):

You can read the whole profile here.

The Kinda Folks You Meet: Part 2

Here's another night shift lover: one of the spunkiest cabbies you'll ever meet. I'll probably do a video a month with Chey; she's a blast. As she notes, only 1 in 400 cabbies is female, but she handles the screwball drunks pretty well.

The Kinda Folks You Meet

Been doing a few ridealongs with people that actually like the night shift, and worked up a few videos. Here are a few: two paramedics that much prefer the traffic-free streets and crazy calls of the after hours.

Somewhere to go

So we're not supposed to know anything about juveniles in the justice system: their cases are off-limits to info requests, you don't see their names in criminal complaints, and nobody is authorized to say squat about them.

But occasionally you hear things. Because they seem to be the cases that affect cops the most. 

Take tonight for example: an 11-year-old kid who broke a window and pulled a knife in a foster home, and the others won't take him because he's already been through all of them. He's yelling, "I just wanta go somewhere where they love me!" Yeah, those things get to people.

He's probably going to stay in juvie tonight. Even with all the new rules emptying out the juvenile detention centers, even if he tests out on the intake -- which he normally would -- they're probably going to have to take him anyway. No place to put him. Amazingly enough, a cop or two actually wants to take him home too.

Thanks where it's due

I remember growing up, at the end of the night when there wasn't anything better to do, we’d ask each other who our heroes were. Eddie Vedder, Gandhi, heck I was an 80’s child. But a year ago I met a new one.

I read about Amanda Hocking on a website somewhere, but no large American newspaper had done a story on her. It was like she didn’t exist, as far as the U.S. media was concerned. Papers in Germany and the U.K. were writing all sorts of things about her, but as for us… barely a peep. Despite the fact that she’d made over a million, at the age of 26, all on her own, publishing books online. Kinda sounded like a story.

I was warned to be skeptical: our book reviewer, who’d been in the industry for decades, had told her editors -- who then told me -- to be wary of the numbers. She’d heard all kinds of claims from self-published authors, and she was pretty much jaded for life. I didn’t blame her, in a way.

Anyway, I asked the editor of my paper if I could drive down to Austin to do a story on this girl. And she was a girl, to me. She was young – 26. Living in a house her parents owned, half-finished, with bare wood and holes in the staircase so you could see the ground. You could see the struggles, just looking around.

She was open, honest, and talking to her, a strange thing happened: I didn’t get jealous. She so deserved it. Our competing paper, also a large metropolitan daily, hadn't treated her so well. Which didn’t surprise me. But she didn’t seem bitter.

She became a hero to me. If this girl, working as an assistant to the disabled making $15,000 a year while every friend of hers was getting married and moving on to real jobs and real careers, could push out five books a year on faith and Red Bull and Spaghettios, what the hell was I doing?

I never did read any of her books, but she’ll probably remain a hero of mine forever.

Anyway, here's the first big story published about Amanda Hocking in an American paper.

A little reading to take the edge off

So after burning gallons of midnight oil, I went ahead and pushed out a novel that has absolutely no relation to my day-to-day reality. One, I live in the frigid Midwest, and it's set in the Arizona desert. Plus there's a space station that reaches from the earth to the heavens, so there's that.

But there is a little homicide and fugitive manhunts and ... well anyway, I'm happy with it, and I hope other folks will be too. You can find it on Amazon here.

Silent Nights

Contrary to conventional wisdom, after six years as a night reporter covering a lot of crime, I can safely say that people don’t stab or shoot or strangle each other with any higher frequency during the holidays. It’s long been the belief among jaded reporters such as myself that if you pack a bunch of relatives in a house, add a rack of sharp knives, some cabin fever and a dash of financial stress, it’s a quick and easy recipe for domestic assault.

But after six years, I have to say that hasn’t been the case. If anything, it’s been quieter than usual around the holidays. I asked a few cops, long-time vets, and they said the same thing. Sucks that they have to work, but usually a dull night.

Which makes me wonder where that rumor came from. The fevered imaginations of night reporters perhaps?

Conflicting Stereotypes

So a unique conundrum at the jail. Apparently, prisoners that are brought in who want to go to the bathroom need to be watched. Legally, by a same-sex cop.

We’re talking temporary holding, not real jail.

In walks a person named Kai.

“I usually can tell the trannies,” says the female officer that has to watch. "I honestly can't tell if she's... he's a boy or a girl."

They still don’t know.

Kai: No help. Shaved head with earrings, no makeup, no bra, and none apparently needed. Still no help. Wore boxer shorts … and bikini underwear.

So finally, they think Kai’s a she (Kai’s license says so), and the female officer has to watch the person take a piss. But they stand with their back to the officer, and go standing up.

“She peed like a boy,” the officer says. "I'm dying to know." Still no confirmation, and she’s worried about being sued.

Crime and Politics

You kinda have to cover both at night, but given a choice, I’ll take crime every time. Honestly, I’d much rather cover the aftermath of a bloody shooting than listen to some blowhard city council members take rhetorical swings. You see the pure consequences of bad actions when you go to a crime scene. With politics, on the other hand…

So I went to a suburban meeting recently where they seem to love screaming at each other. This city has been qualified by a local weekly as the most dysfunctional suburb in the metro area. The mayor had to get up and close the doors, and looked like he almost came to blows with a couple people standing there. Everybody was denying the other sides’ facts (we’d already stated our analysis for the record; nothing seemed to matter to anyone).  People were calling each other communists or idiots. The topic: garbage hauling.

O.K. maybe it’s been worse lately, political climate and all, but I’ll say again: give me a shooting any day.

Immersion Reporting

So to get closer to my work, I decided to have somebody break into my house last week. Well, it wasn’t really my decision, but subconsciously I might've brought it on. It’ll definitely help out with interviews: "Oh, I know man, I just got broken into last night... So how did it feel when you got beaten up/stabbed/shot/robbed/stalked/spat upon?"

You know how people always tell you that it feels like your home isn’t your home anymore after it gets “violated?” Didn't happen. Maybe I have a high violation threshold. I’ll ask my wife about that. Could be all those times my car kept getting broken into/stolen in Chicago; this time felt kinda meh.

Actually, the second time my car got stolen in Chicago, somebody left something in it. I’ll say no more, but technically it was a net gain.

All they got was a HP Mini: in, opened a few drawers, took what was in plain sight, and then ran back out the busted up door.

Screw it, they said it

Intensely personal stuff. Ever feel the unprofessional urge to grab someone by the shoulders, shake them and yell, STOP TALKING!? People who tell you waaaay too much and you know you’re absolutely going to use it and they're probably going to catch some crap -- you know this because you’ve read way too many online comments sections over the years.

But they said it. Case and point: Double murder suicide and this married couple’s priest tells me all about all the problems they were having, how the guy used to drink and be violent (duh), and how he went away for a few months and then came back and thought she was cheating on him but she wasn’t and…oh and they were here illegally and slept in separate bedrooms and...

Oh my god you realize you’re talking to a reporter, right? Right?

But he said it, so… in it goes. That's the job.

Still, sometimes I do feel that urge.

On your deathbed, will you Google yourself?

I was kinda wondering that lately. Everybody in America googles themselves. I myself am surprised by what comes up. Really random things. I play-tested a board game my brother published, and he gave me a credit. I can’t seem to shake that from the top ten.

It’s really surprising because even my top e-mailed stories, my Sunday centerpieces – and my paper has hundreds of thousands of readers – never seem to come up. Instead, I get an obituary for an old appliance salesman I wrote really late one night. I get a story from a paper I used to work for, years ago; a not so big story that took me a couple hours to write. It's not worth explaining: a no-comment reaction to a conviction.

So I just don’t know. How do you create a legacy in digitalville, when it all seems so random? Legacies are out of your control, and they should be. Should it all be up to an algorithm? Maybe.

Crashes

Crashes suck. In a big city they happen every day, and you try to care, but they’re like wallpaper. Lots of tragedy you’ve seen time and again.

So I’ll never stop being shocked that they’re the most e-mailed story of the day. For reporters, they’re a chore.

Online rubbernecking – never understood it. I mean, you can download the most perverted porn or violent videos. 

You could conclude that people are genuinely worried, wondering whether it’s somebody they knew. Seriously, what are the chances? – I can’t imagine online browsing as remotely pure. Maybe that says something about me.

It’s antithetical to the pathos of the Internet: you’ve seen it before, you can’t see anything. You want to read a couple sentences about a stranger in a car crash more than anything else that day.

Watching

Believe it or not, a lot of people suck at watching. Even reporters.

Especially the T.V. guys – they just kinda gaggle around, looking where people point. Talking to people that don’t know anything. Kinda lose-lose there.

Sometimes reporters get assigned to just stand in a spot. I remember going to a fire, and there were three reporters from a competing (crap) paper, each designated to a spot. News tip: their story sucked. I heard one dude on his phone, begging to go home.

So watching. You can’t do that talking. The little things are the only thing readers remember anyway.

We're all a bit safer now. Maybe.

Kevin Costner is promoting "The BodyGuard" -- an idea "hatched on the back patio of my (Kevin's) house."  Hatched not by Kevin, but by a music video producer. So it might actually gross some money. 

It's kinda like a batman glove, with a stungun, camera, laser pointer and flashlight. 

http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2011-05/2011-invention-awards-stunning-development


Slightly less painful than the movie, I'm sure.

Late Night Calls, Ch. 3

“This is Todd, your tipster… got a four-alarmer over in Cambridge!”

Tipster Todd refers to himself as just that. He listens to his scanner, every night, and calls with the goods.

I actually like Tipster Todd. At first I thought he was annoying as f---. But as one of the few regular callers who actually relays factual information, he’s gotten to be a relief. I mean, compare him to that other lady who calls up to recite some political talking points -- I mean, literally reading them off some print-out from her tiny church or action committee -- and Todd’s a Godsend. Despite my editors’ efforts, I’ve tried hard to stay in a job where I report on anything but politics -- and Todd’s my man.

I often wonder what Todd gets out of it. I mean, he’s not paid; he never stays on the line long enough to thank him. He gruffly gives his facts and moves on to the next scanner scrap.

Cops: the whiners and the pros

I always get a kick out of attending a press conference and listening to some sheriff or police chief complain about how cops are portrayed on television. What televisions shows do these guys watch?

Shows I’ve seen, they’re pretty much a combination of Clooney, Schwarzenegger, and Gandhi with a gun. Well maybe not the Gandhi part.  Across the river Styx, journalists are portrayed as scheming weasels that can't wait to butcher granny in the back so they can talk about how it changed the town forever. If anyone at a press conference should be complaining about how they’re portrayed in the media, it’s the media.

You know how helpful a ranking law enforcement official will be by how many words it takes them to answer a simple fucking question. There are some that reach for a manual when you ask if they have cream in their coffee.

The guys that have been sipping cold sludge for years know the world won’t end if you release the name of the suspect old Danno just booked -- like they're supposed to under the law. The folks that haven't, well, they’re the ones that are always talking about the media and how horrible it is.