You are driving a truck, pulling a trailer in which your friends are sitting. You’re barefoot, wearing headphones – the big ones from the ‘70s – and steering the vehicle with a “suicide knob” on the steering wheel. You pull a U-turn and a police officer who was following you pulls you over. Can you be ticketed for any of this?

We’ve all heard or been told that various things are “against the law,” but rarely does anyone bother looking them up. So, I will give you a quick list of the most common things people mistakenly believe are against the law when it comes to driving. That is: This stuff is legal (unless noted otherwise for some states).

Driving barefoot. There is no law against it in any state. It is possible that there might be some place with a local ordinance against it but as of the most recent internet check, there are no federal or state prohibitions against it.

A “Suicide Knob” is a small spinning handle attached to a steering wheel that makes one-handed driving easier. They are called “Suicide knobs” because someone thought they should have a scary name to discourage their use. Be that as it may, suicide knobs are not illegal in most states. And I just use the qualifier “most” because I would have to disprove the negative in 49 different states to be conclusive. You don’t see suicide knobs very often in cars (they are sometimes used in boats and tractors) and I’m not sure why you’d want one. Maybe if you have a car with suicide doors you’d have one to flesh out the theme. If so, Amazon has them.

Wearing headphones while driving is not illegal is prohibited in a few states. Consult a local attorney or our buddies at Lifehacker.

U-turns can be dangerous but are they illegal? Well, one hint is that there are signs which say “No U-Turns.” Logically, if you need a sign to tell you when you can’t do them – then they must be legal otherwise. And others agree with me on this one.

I’ll admit, U-turns can get a bit tricky: for instance, if there is a double yellow line down the middle of the road. But in some states, that indicates “No Passing” but does not prohibit turns made over it.

Riding in a trailer? Not illegal in Michigan, where I live. This is the kind of thing that sounds like it might be frowned on by the Fun Police but no one has outlawed it yet. It is illegal for children to ride in the beds of pickup trucks going over 15 MPH but adults can ride back there all they want.

And while researching this theme, I came across another fun fact. In Michigan, there is no specific prohibition against drunk bicycling. Obviously, you could be nabbed for public drunkenness for the general action of being drunk and acting disorderly and so on, but doing it on a bicycle is not worse - legally - than if you had done it while staggering along on your own two feet.

Oh, and a lot of people seem to think that unpaid tickets received as a minor will be forgiven on your 18th birthday as some sort of reward for becoming an adult. That’s not true either. It’s stupid. But apparently a lot of people believe it (or wish it was true).

So, come to Michigan, put a suicide knob on your steering wheel, kick off your shoes and load your adult friends into your pickup bed. Or get a trailer and load everyone into it. Slap on your headphones and go pull U-turns until everyone is dizzy. The Fun Police will frown upon it but the real police won’t care. (Consult your state laws just to be on the safe side if you decide to do this outside of Michigan.)

Follow me on Twitter: @stevelehto

Hear my podcast on iTunes: Lehto’s Law

Steve Lehto has been practicing law for 23 years, almost exclusively in consumer protection and Michigan lemon law. He wrote The Lemon Law Bible and Chrysler’s Turbine Car: The Rise and Fall of Detroit’s Coolest Creation.

This website may supply general information about the law but it is for informational purposes only. This does not create an attorney-client relationship and is not meant to constitute legal advice, so the good news is we’re not billing you by the hour for reading this. The bad news is that you shouldn’t act upon any of the information without consulting a qualified professional attorney who will, probably, bill you by the hour.

One day, the users of Twitter dot com will realize that the site’s prompt—“What’s happening?”—is a suggestion, not a command. But until that happens, men who have been told they are important will talk about themselves exactly when their stories are needed the least.

Last year, around the time of the first wave of protests in Ferguson, Nate Silver—an Important Man—told a little story about how one night he got arrested but the cops let him eat a burrito in his cell. (Let’s all pause for a second and picture this exact scenario. Okay.) The point of the story, I guess, was that cops can be good but also bad, which makes you think.

Last night, as the citizens of Baltimore reacted to the death of Freddie Gray, the Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill—a self-considered Important Man—told a story about how he was robbed at gunpoint in Baltimore once, which makes you think.

A few weeks later, he came to our free food pantry and I was filling his bag. I said, "Dude, you robbed me a few weeks ago. What the fuck?"

April 30, 2015

His life was ruined. He told me the gun wasn't loaded, that he would never hurt me. He said he robbed me b/c he knew I wouldn't call cops

April 30, 2015

What I remember was thinking of what my life would have been like if a police officer killed my dad for stealing a fucking can of beer.

April 30, 2015

Not every story a man has is a good one. Please log out.

If there’s one thing Microsoft’s new web toy “How Old Do I Look?” is good for, it’s exploiting our collective narcissism to build a robust facial recognition database. But if it’s good for a second thing, it’d have to be answering the open question of how old alleged celebrity teenager Lorde really is.

The Lorde Age Truther movement first emerged more than a year ago, pointing to evidence like the time Lorde accidentally said “when I was a teenager” and then corrected herself, a lyric about being “kinda older,” and photographs of Lorde’s face. It’s since been joked about on South Park and by Lorde herself. The Hairpin even obtained a printout of Lorde’s New Zealand birth certificate, showing she was 17, but such things can be easily forged.

But amateur Lorde researchers have always lacked a smoking gun, some kind of scientific proof that Lorde is a middle-aged woman claiming to be a teenager. We ran a variety of Lorde photos, with and without makeup, through “How Old Do I Look?” to see if Microsoft would give it to them:

Conclusion: Sorry, truthers. Lorde could be in her 30s at the oldest, but is mostly likely a teen in adult makeup.

[Photos: Getty Images, Lorde/Instagram]

Earlier today, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders announced that he’ll be Hillary Clinton’s first official contender in the Democratic primaries. He’s almost certainly not going to win, of course, but he’s not running to win: He’s running to make Hillary Clinton’s apparently inevitable ascension more interesting.

Sanders, a technical independent (he caucuses with Senate Democrats) and self-declared democratic socialist (think Scandinavia, not Stalin), stands firmly to the left of Clinton, despite Clinton having recently scrambled to the left on social issues like same-sex marriage. It’s Sanders’ financial policies (socialism) that really set him apart. With the Clinton Foundation getting pounded with uncomfortable questions about how its spending its money and where that money’s coming from, and Clinton catching heat for her husband’s economic record, Sanders has taken it upon himself to represent the left-wing opposition to the pro-corporate New Democrat politics that made the Clintons so successful

Sanders also has a proud tendency to shy away from personal attacks. Asked about the Clinton Foundation controversy recently, he took it from the personal to the general, saying, “it tells me what is a very serious problem. It’s not just about Hillary Clinton or Bill Clinton. It is about a political system today that is dominated by big money. It’s about the Koch brothers being prepared to spend nine hundred million dollars in the coming election. … We’re looking at a system where our democracy is being owned by a handful of billionaires.”

Still, as an old white man from an old white state, left-wing Democrats hoping to combine identity with class politics won’t be as excited for Sanders as they were for the (always unlikely) Elizabeth Warren campaign. And no one seriously expects Sanders to win, unlike many proponents of the Draft Warren movement.

Still, it’s nice to finally have a competitor that could put some pressure on Hillary to start speaking about income inequality and labor in specifics instead of generalities, even if that’s about all he’ll do.

Image via AP

Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com.

Knicks star Carmelo Anthony and a man who is not business magnate Russell Simmons marched in Baltimore today, Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera confirmed this evening in an awkward on-camera interview.

Rivera, who has already spent much of the week getting owned in various capacities, spoke briefly with Anthony before turning his attention to former Def Jam president and non-Russell Simmons Kevin Liles.

“Mr. Simmons, Russell,” Rivera addressed Liles, “the hip hop mogul, why are you here?”

After Liles corrected Rivera, however, the semi-sentient mustache quickly apologized, saying, “I’m sorry, you look just like him.”

Minutes later, CNN’s Brian Todd also noted the resemblance, weirdly joking, “You bear a striking resemblance to Russell Simmons, you tell me you’re not him, you tell me you’re Kevin Liles, I’m not sure I believe you. We think this is Russell Simmons, Wolf.”

It was not Russell Simmons, Wolf.

[h/t Mediaite]

California prosecutors dropped lynching charges today against 20-year-old Black Lives Matter activist Maile Mae Hampton, the Guardian reports. In January, Hampton was accused of interfering with the arrest of another activist.

According to the Guardian, California’s 1933 lynching law was intended to prevent mobs from removing people from police custody. However: “The statute has long been used against protesters as well and refers to any ‘riotous conduct aimed at freeing a person’ from police, according to court documents. It carries the possibility of four years in jail.”

While they dropped the lynching charge—a felony—prosecutors in Sacramento presented an amended complaint against Hampton: a misdemeanor charge of “interference with a peace officer in the performance of his/her duties.”

“I am very surprised that Sacramento chose to do the right thing, but happily surprised,” Hampton said outside the courthouse today. “That could have straight-up ruined my life.”

Hampton posted photographs to Twitter of herself participating in an anti-police brutality demonstration last night.

#Sacramento #FreddieGray #Baltimore pic.twitter.com/DfOUAOWie4

April 30, 2015

Pictures from last nights protest, more to come. #Baltimore #FreddieGray #Sacramento pic.twitter.com/onciiKrgII

April 30, 2015

Couples that fight against the capitalist system together, stay together #Baltimore #FreddieGray pic.twitter.com/3nrgXkGJKk

April 30, 2015

Photo credit: AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

Feeding whole watermelons to large animals and uploading the resulting videos to YouTube is a thing that people do, and it is one of the best uses of the internet. It’s pretty exciting to watch these beasts lay waste to a 10-pound piece of fruit like it’s a grape or something. So here are some videos of large animals eating watermelons, ranked in descending order based on the efficacy and entertainment value of their technique.

1. Hippo

There’s a lot of good hippo-watermelon content out there, like this guy just crushing one, or this guy giddily chasing one down underwater. The common theme across these videos is how clear it is that love for watermelon is a species-wide thing. Hippos love watermelon so much that they can’t even slow down while eating them: It looks like they’re going to choke, but they never do.

2. Crocodile

The thing many people (like me until about an hour ago) don’t know about crocodiles is that they are way more vicious than alligators. They’re bigger, more aggressive, and their jaws can snap down at 3,700 pounds per square inch. And this croc is incredible! Look at that slow-mo! Dude waited for the whole thing to get in there and slammed shut, trapping a lot of the good red stuff and discarding the bad rind.

3. Pig

Pigs have a lot of structural limitations when it comes to chowing down watermelons, as they’re built for rolling around in mud and eating slop. But that doesn’t stop this pig from gaining the necessary purchase to carry this one around to his favored watermelon-eating spot, and if the video went a minute longer, I’m sure we’d see the entire thing eaten.

4. Alligator Snapping Turtle

I always kind of laughed about snapping turtles. I mean, yeah, they snap and take down some small creatures, but they’re turtles! They’re basically designed to go into a shell and hide, and you can defeat them by just flipping them over! But alligator snapping turtles are mostly carnivorous, and they’re even known to take down other turtles. A Louisiana study even found that that 80 percent of the stuff found in adult alligator snapping turtles’ stomachs is other turtles. So they’re not to be trifled with.

Perhaps because of their ferocity, however, these guys aren’t great watermelon-eaters. They have no chill, and they don’t even seem to enjoy it.

5. Alligator

I love the grit this alligator shows in going after the watermelon, and his technique—from that little hop forward to the wide-open jaws allowing all sizes of watermelon in—is flawless. His timing is poor, however. Gotta watch the watermelon into the mouth—can’t be chomping at it early!

6. Donkey

This is a bad video—it starts halfway through, the donkey is mostly chill—but the donkey gets credit for stealing a watermelon. The important point is that he got it, not how he eats it.

7. Human

I watched way too many videos of humans lamely cutting up a watermelon and ignoring the rind, like this guy who goes by the YouTube handle MC Fructose and promotes “mono meals”:

MC Fructose eats an entire watermelon in one sitting and discusses why eating mono meals or eating only one type of food until satiated is beneficial for optimal digestion and absorption of nutrients. Our bodies have a really difficult time breaking down and assimilating nutrients when we combine foods. I eat mono meals ever day. Mmmmm I love eating watermelon

I’m no doctor or nutritionist, but c’mon, you’re not fooling anybody.

The bro in the video above is an incredibly noxious brand of internet star and takes 10 (fast-forwarded) minutes to finish the damn thing, but at least he does it rind and all. Imagining eating the entire rind of a watermelon makes my stomach hurt.

8. Big Cats

My parents have an awesome Maine Coon named Pele, and I love him—I named him, actually, in consultation with my brother—but he, and all other cats, kind of suck at this. They get a cool gift of a watermelon, and they’re barely even interested in it! Most of them just sorta carry it around in their mouth for awhile before moving onto something else. Except the jaguar, so I guess he’s the best of the worst.

Got any good large animal + whole watermelon videos? Drop them in the comments.

As the police, protestors and media go head to head in Baltimore over Freddie Gray’s death from injuries he sustained while in police custody—that he allegedly gave himself—it’s tough for everyone. It’s especially tough for anyone who’s been brutalized by cops. Anyone like me.

I remember the first time I realized, as a black woman in America, I could not count on police protection. That night began like any other for me back then, when I was a UC Davis undergrad. I got gussied up in my denim capris, platform flip flips (I know, I know), and a halter top. I didn’t have pockets for my car keys and ID, so I gave them to a friend to hold.

Later in the evening, I was in line for a party in Oakland. There were ten or so of us, and about half got in before we were stopped at the door; the function had reached capacity. The Oakland police, acting as security for the event, instructed everyone to go home. The only problem was half of my group of friends were inside the party with the car keys to go home, while the other half was outside without transportation to leave as the cops kept instructing us.

Standing on the stairs in front of the building, we tried to reason with the cops, asking a black officer to allow one of us the party to find our buddy with the car keys so we could leave and find food. But the cop was adamant. We couldn’t go in.

“So, what now?” my girlfriend asked. “You won’t let us in to get the keys to leave but you want us to go? How does that make sense?”

In response the officer said something like “If you don’t get outta here, I’m going to punch you.” Outspoken even then, I replied, “That would be breaking quite a few laws....”

And before I could finish my sentence, the cop clocked my friend in the face, pushed her down a number of stairs and began dragging her by her two braids down the street in front of the venue.

It happened in slow motion, the punch, the fall, the dragging. I was stunned, all of the sounds around me ceased. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. When I snapped back, I saw that all of my friends were being attacked by various officers—of all ethnicities, I must add—who seemed like they’d materialized from nowhere. There was so much screaming, running and yelling as batons, fists and pepper spray flew into the night air.

Immediately, I ran toward my friend and tried to push away the cop dragging her by her hair. Then he turned his attention on me. I ran as fast as my platform flip flops would carry me. He caught me from behind and began chocking me with his baton held across my neck and pulling me backward. My feet were dragging on the ground, I didn’t know what to do or how to wriggle free. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw my best friend charging toward the cop holding me. The officer let me go. He disappeared, like the rest of the cops involved, and probably scrambled to his squad car to escape before anyone could get their badge numbers.

My friends and I picked up our girlfriend who’d been punched, beaten, and dragged, and carried her to a nearby ambulance—you know, the ones fraternities often have to hire just in case a partygoer passes out. Walking up to the emergency vehicle with my friend in our arms, we yelled “Help us, they beat her! The cops beat us! Help us!”

At first the EMTs were confused, but once they saw our faces and bruises, they let our friend inside the truck and examined her.

Later, my best friend and I drove around the venue looking for the cop who assaulted me to get his badge number and report him. But he was gone and none of the officers remaining would tell me who or where he was. I went to Oakland police headquarters to report the incident but was turned away at the front desk. They said they weren’t taking reports at that time.

I had nothing left to do but make sure my friends were OK, drive home and try to go to sleep. But I couldn’t sleep that night, because my face was on fire thanks to the pepper spray. It was an awful, dehumanizing experience, and it happens to people of color in America every day. I had no weapon, had committed no crime—hell, I didn’t even have pockets. It took me years to look at police without immediately assuming they wanted to abuse me.

But now, every time I see news about police brutality, a part of me has a flashback and I am furious. Furious about what happened to myself and my friends, furious about Walter Scott, Rekia Boyd, Akai Gurley, Mike Brown, John Crawford, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray and all of the names I don’t know.

Have you been brutalized by the police in your city or town? Let’s talk. Or not, if you don’t want to, because if you’re anything like me, you might need a break.

Image via AP.

Contact the author at Hillary@jezebel.com.

According to a new report, the American Psychological Association collaborated in secret with the C.I.A. and the Bush administration to establish legal and ethical justifications for the torture program. The report focuses on the emails, newly disclosed, of a recently deceased researcher at the RAND Corporation who was later a defense contractor.

The report—available here—is authored by three long-standing critics of the APA: Stephen Soldz, Steven Reisner, and Nathaniel Raymond. “The A.P.A. secretly coordinated with officials from the C.I.A., White House and the Department of Defense to create an A.P.A. ethics policy on national security interrogations which comported with then-classified legal guidance authorizing the C.I.A. torture program,” they conclude.

According to the New York Times, the report examines closely the email archives of Scott Gerwehr, a researcher “who had close ties to behavioral scientists at both the psychological association and in the national security agencies.”

In 2004, George Tenet suspended the torture program in order to make sure that the Bush administration still supported it. (The APA ordered an independent review in November of its actions during this period, the Times reports.) At this point, the report’s authors contend, the APA stepped in. From the Times:

In early June 2004, a senior official with the association, the nation’s largest professional organization for psychologists, issued an invitation to a carefully selected group of psychologists and behavioral scientists inside the government to a private meeting to discuss the crisis and the role of psychologists in the interrogation program.

Psychologists from the C.I.A. and other agencies met with association officials in July, and by the next year the association issued guidelines that reaffirmed that it was acceptable for its members to be involved in the interrogation program.

To emphasize their argument that the association grew too close to the interrogation program, the critics’ new report cites a 2003 email from a senior psychologist at the C.I.A. to a senior official at the psychological association. In the email, the C.I.A. psychologist appears to be confiding in the association official about the work of James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, the private contractors who developed and helped run the enhanced interrogation program at the C.I.A.’s secret prisons around the world.

In the email, written years before the involvement of the two contractors in the interrogation program was made public, the C.I.A. psychologist explains to the association official that the contractors “are doing special things to special people in special places.”

Photo credit: AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

NASA’s robotic Messenger probe crashed into the surface of the planet Mercury today, having orbited the planet closest to the sun 4,104 times. Messenger ran out of fuel after more than a decade in space. RIP Messenger.

A new study published Thursday in the journal Science has found that, if climate change continues apace, one in six species on the planet could face extinction.

University of Connecticut ecologist Mark Urban conducted a meta-analysis of the hundreds of studies published over the last twenty years making predictions about the number of extinctions that global warming might cause. Those predictions, the New York Times reports, have varied widely, from just a few to 50 percent of species worldwide:

There are many reasons for the wide variation. Some scientists looked only at plants in the Amazon, while others focused on butterflies in Canada. In some cases, researchers assumed just a couple of degrees of warming, while in others they looked at much hotter scenarios. Because scientists rarely were able to say just how quickly a given species might shift ranges, they sometimes produced a range of estimates.

Urban filtered that data to its most essential components.

Dr. Urban ended up with 131 studies examining plants, amphibians, fish, mammals, reptiles and invertebrates spread out across the planet. He reanalyzed all the data in those reports.

Overall, he found that 7.9 percent of species were predicted to become extinct from climate change. Estimates based on low levels of warming yielded much fewer extinctions than hotter scenarios.

By his calculation, with an increase of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit in surface temperature, 5.2 percent of species would become extinct. At 7.7 degrees, 16 percent would.

Dr. Urban found that the rate of extinctions would not increase steadily, but would accelerate if temperatures rose.

“The loss of one in six species, would be an absolute tragedy, not only because it is sad to lose any part of our rich natural world, but also because biodiversity is fundamental in providing important functions and services, including to humans,” the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Jamie Carr told the Guardian.

“Such significant changes to biological systems would undoubtedly have knock-on effects, and could potentially result in the collapse of entire systems.”

Still, the situation is not yet completely dire, Urban said. “We still have time. Extinctions can take a long time. There are processes that could be important in mediating these effects, for example evolution, but we really need to very quickly start to understand these risks in a much more sophisticated way.”

Photo credit: AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

On Wednesday, the Washington Post published a police report alleging that Freddie Gray had injured himself while being transported in police custody, based on an account given by another prisoner in the van. That man, Donta Allen, has come forward, speaking to CBS Baltimore’s WJZ today.

“I am Donta Allen. I am the one who was in the van with Freddie Gray,” he said. “All I did was go straight to the station, but I heard a little banging like he was banging his head.”

“They trying to make it seem like I told them that, I made it like Freddie Gray did that to himself,” Allen said. “Why the fuck would he do that to himself?”

Allen had been arrested for stealing cigarettes and was never charged, WJZ reports.

“I had two options today right, either come and talk to y’all and get my credibility straight with y’all and not get killed,” Allen said, “or not tell a true story.”

“The only reason I’m doing this is because they put my name in a bad state.”

Image via WJZ. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

In the sixth round last night, the fight started in the crowd.

A skinny guy in a red t-shirt waded halfway into a row of seats and started firing straight punches, right left right left right left, into the skull of someone I could not see. Everyone in a ten row radius rose to their feet to get a better look. It was a one-sided fight, over in about 15 seconds.

A little fight at a little fight, an appetizer to a monster fight. This was at The Palms, a mile off the Vegas Strip, where ESPN was hosting a “special Thursday night edition of Friday Night Fights,” which should give you some idea of how crowded the calendar becomes in the week before the The Biggest Richest Fight We Ever May See So Help Us God. The headliner was Ishe Smith, a hometown boy, who now fights under the Mayweather Promotions banner, one of the recipients of Floyd’s grace. Ishe Smith has very light brown skin, a bald head, a beard that looks drawn on with a black marker, and soft eyes that make him appear to be the sensitive type. He is not a hard puncher, so now matter how viciously he attacks, he appears to be fighting like the sensitive type as well. Last night, he faced a Baltimore fighter named Cecil McCalla, who fought in the same style as Floyd Mayweather himself, without the requisite level of skills. A poor man’s Mayweather, or just a poor Mayweather. McCalla lost by a wide margin. He should have considered the fact that Ishe Smith, who trains at Floyd Mayweather’s gym, might have some experience against that style.

I had covered a fight in this arena before, a few years ago. Then, I was sitting ringside, with a press pass. Yesterday, I had to buy myself a motherfucking ticket. (At $40, you could watch Ishe Smith fight 100 times for the price of watching Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao fight once, not that you would want to.) My inability to get a press pass for such a low-level fight—or even to get my wheedling emails to various publicists returned—has caused me to further embrace the conspiratorial theory that all my troubles are due to the fact that Floyd Mayweather’s people hate Deadspin for telling the ugly truth about him, though of course it would be journalistically irresponsible for me to posit that my own logistical problems here in Las Vegas stem from the profound moral shortcomings of the various cronies who have conspired to deny me a press credential.

I am being too harsh. In fact, after I complained earlier in the week about being denied a credential, the press team agree to “reconsider” my application. And early this morning, they sent me a reply: “We are sorry to say that after reviewing the media applications for this event, we are unable to accommodate your request and will not be able to provide you a credential ... You previously received this letter and requested reconsideration. We reviewed this with the PR Team and still regret to say that they are unable to help you.”

Never say that customer service is dead.

This whole Thursday night Fight Week pre-pre-fight event was just an effort to spread the attendant riches of the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight as widely as possible throughout the Mayweather kingdom, and Vegas at large. Floyd Mayweather sits at the head of “The Money Team,” a stupid name that he just made up, but a name that nevertheless represents a sprawling set of business interests. Mayweather promotes other (lesser) fighters—who fought last night, and tonight, and will fight on the undercard of the Big Fight.

What The Money Team really is, though, is a brand of clothing that is, in Las Vegas, as unavoidable as “NO FEAR” t-shirts were in my high school. Normally it is a safe bet that anyone wearing “Team [Fighter]” t-shirts are a friend or family member or at least go to the same gym as that fighter. If that were true for Floyd Mayweather, it would mean that the Mayweather Boxing Club would have hundreds of thousands of members, half of them holding a beer as they work out. It seems unlikely. It is impossible to overstate how ubiquitous TMT-brand clothing is at this very moment in the heart of Las Vegas. The only thing more ubiquitous are the homeless people crouched on the open-air walkways between casinos. It seems that every other male tourist under the age of 30 has become an official member of The Money Team. TMT baseball hats, which are extra-deep and swallow the head of a wearer like a hungry squid, are everywhere. Las Vegas Boulevard is a sea of floating TMT logos, bobbing gently in the desert heat.

“Make some noise if you getting money in 2015!” exhorted the DJ at the fights last night. “That’s right, real money!” He played exclusively money-themed tracks in between rounds, in order to keep with The Money Team theme of the evening.

“Money in the air, like I don’t really care... 50 for the earring that’s 100 for the pair...”

“I want the money and the cars, cars and the clothes... I just wanna be successfulllll.....”

“It’s raining hundreds, throw some mo, throw some mo....”

Easy to say, if you’re Floyd Mayweather. The rest of you people wearing TMT hats are fools. You work day jobs. Get off The Money Team and get on The Money Management Team. You’ll never get rich throwing hundreds in the air. It’s profligate.

The mass of humanity in Las Vegas offers little middle ground between “utter slob” and “semiprofessional MMA fighter.” Nearly everyone—and everything—here will either disgust or intimidate you. There is a distinct lack of unremarkable normalcy. What, really, are the inhibitions that Les Vegas allows us to discard? Not sex and drugs. People everywhere do those things. What is discarded in Vegas are the inhibitions against unironically carrying a selfie stick everywhere you go, or consuming an all-you-can-eat buffet for three meals a day, or publicly day drinking from a pink plastic yard glass of peach bellini as a grown man.

It is torpor, not frenzy, that animates this town. Its decadence is rooted in lethargy. Leading into the Excalibur is a moving sidewalk flanked on each side by a regular sidewalk. If you walk down the sidewalk at a normal speed, you will pass by everyone on the moving sidewalk, all of whom are standing still. Yet the regular sidewalks are empty, and the moving sidewalk is full. Full of self-proclaimed members of The Money Team, being graciously conveyed into the place their money will never escape.

The fight is one day away.

[Image via AP]

Five of the six officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray are now in custody, according to Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

Contact the author at taylor@gawker.com.

Brad Viner is the only police officer in the town of Campo, Colorado. The 400 traffic tickets he wrote last year accounted for 93 percent of the 107-person town’s revenue. “Basically, the police department pays for the town,” he told the Grand Junction Free Press, seemingly without irony.

Viner, KUSA reports, essentially polices a speed trap: he sits in an unmarked car at either end of the town and tickets people as the speed limit on Highway 287 drops from 65 MPH to 30 MPH. Those tickets, Viner says, are all issued out of a concern for “public safety.”

“Everybody is treated the same. If you’re 10 (MPH) or over, you should get a ticket,” Viner told KUSA. “If a kid darts out in the middle of the road from one of these sides streets, that 10 over could cost a life.”

Campo previously had a three-officer police force—drama led to Viner being the only officer in town. In 2013, Campo’s then mayor, Ray Johnson, was busted with his twin sons siphoning $5,000 worth of gasoline for their personal vehicles. One of Johnson’s sons was also one of the town’s three cops. The brouhaha surrounding the gas siphoning scandal apparently led to the resignation of another Campo cop, leaving Viner to stand alone.

According to Rocky Mountain PBS, the state average for town revenue made from traffic tickets is 4 percent—Campo, along with a handful of small towns in Colorado, rake in more than half their budgets in traffic fines.

The town’s mayor, Tim Grey, has openly admitted that Campo’s budget is almost entirely dependent on Viner issuing those tickets.

“Yes, if we don’t have revenue coming in, and presently, most of our revenue comes in from tickets, then we won’t have the money to pay anyone,” he told the Free Press.

Viner even told KUSA that he had been ordered by the Grey to write more tickets, or be fired; Grey, naturally, denies ever saying this.

Image via Rocky Mountain PBS. Contact the author at aleksander@gawker.com .

This 9/11 cake was created by Austrian baker Thomas Kienbauer as a metaphor for the current state of Vienna politics. In this metaphor, the Twin Towers of cake represent the ruling coalition Kienbaeur opposes, and the planes represent various fringe parties he apparently supports. (It is not a very good metaphor.)

SPÖ and ÖVP are Austria’s two leading political parties, the Social Democrats and the People’s Party. The planes are the opposition: the greens on the left and the xenophobic, right-wing Freedom Party on the right. And on top, represented by the plane that hit the Pentagon, is the liberal New Austria (NEOS) party.

Konditor baute #9/11 für Wien-Wahl nach! Vienna based confectioner creates 9/11-cakehttp://t.co/BoNfz0FMlx pic.twitter.com/U3dx6KmPoa

April 29, 2015

“Sometimes, you have to present an exaggerated view of the situation if you really want to make a point,” Kienbauer told Kronen Zeitung.

Hmm, yes. “An exaggerated view” is certainly one way to describe the sentiment, “The Sept. 11 attacks were pretty cool and a metaphorical version of them or maybe actual terrorism (just spitballing, here!) would solve many of the problems created by our dominant political paradigm. Anyway, to be clear, I’m rooting for the planes in this cake-based hypothetical.”

[h/t Animal NY]

I think in a way we all wish we were Chuck Tingle. Increasingly notorious for being the author of modern classics like Pounded by the Gay Unicorn Football Squad, My Billionaire Triceratops Craves My Ass, and Pounded in the Butt by My Own Butt, Tingle is one of the leading lights in the monster erotica movement—and a reminder that we live in a world in which it is not uncommon for authors to make sizable amounts of money writing eBooks featuring explicit encounters between man and beast. That’s just a thing now, and we might as well accept it. Tingle, in particular, is a self-professed master of the “tingler,” which he describes as “a story so sensual, so erotic, and so powerfully gay that it will change the whole way you look at erotic romance literature.”

The enigmatic author is fixated by unicorns, Bigfoot, and dinosaurs, but he isn’t above opportunism: one of his stories is called Pounded by the Gay Color Changing Dress. I can’t vouch for the quality of that particular tale, but I have had the pleasure of reading Gay T-Rex Law Firm Executive Boner, an action-packed 17-pager that contains stirring prose like the following: “Of course, that’s only the beginning of what these ancient monsters have in store for my ripped body. Almost immediately, the T-rex that had picked me up in the first place then positions himself in front of me. Two more of the prehistoric lawyers approach from either side and hold my legs back, spreading me open completely as I’m hammered up the ass from below.”

I don’t know about you, but I can’t read lines like that without wanting to get inside the mind of their author. And thus, in a bid to emulate the success of Mr Tingle, I took it upon myself to try my hand at the noble art of dinosaur erotica, as well as contact Tingle in search of some helpful comments about my work. The 43-year-old—whose answers here should be treated with about 10 pounds of salt—claims to be a doctor and Tae Kwon Do grandmaster from Billings, Montana, “near the Kmart and the Starbucks.” He says that because he is a doctor from DeVry University he cannot reveal his true identity; his first name is Charles, he says, but his last name remains a secret. He follows one person on Twitter. That person is Taylor Swift.

Here is exactly what he says when I ask him which of his books is his favorite:

Number one favorite book is I’m Gay for My Living Billionaire Jet Plane because it reminds me of good times with my son in las vegas. we played games and his friends called me rain guy. look up to my son so much, such a cool guy you should see the way he kisses girls left and right. acts like its no big deal. i want to be like him but i know im just a guy with some fries watching the fun train and thats okay.

Tingle says that he started writing stories as a home-schooled child in Utah and that the author he most admires is Stephen King, in part because “his son probably loves him and never gets mad.” He is hoping that I’m Gay for My Living Billionaire Jet Plane is made into a movie starring Channing Tatum, with Taylor Swift providing original songs.

Though Tingle is disparaging of Fifty Shades of Grey (“dinosaurs like to kiss not fight, only good times where nobody cries”) and he claims that it makes him “feel weird to look up sex words.” I asked him to read my original dino erotica, and to tell me what he made of it.

Here’s my first try. Brace yourself.

It was with some trepidation that I approached the stegosaurus’ cock. I had bedded dinosaurs in the past, sure, but this was different. They had all been comparatively small, slender beasts – a few velociraptors, a pterodactyl back at uni, and an archaeceratops after I’d broken up with Gareth. I was a good-looking guy and these prehistoric monsters were drawn to that – species divide or no species divide. Now I was staring at the biggest dinosaur schlong I had ever seen, two feet long, six inches away from my face. Could I handle it? There was only one way to find out. I closed my eyes and opened my mouth.

And now for Chuck Tingle’s comments:

first things first, stegosauruses can be angry customers so you gotta approach with caution or they might be mean to you, exchange a few words that make you feel like punching or like crying maybe. if youre on their good side your in luck though because they can be bad boy types with a hot kind of way, maybe like channing tatum on a motorcycle. not sure about the other dinosaurs but all and all it sounds like this guy is a real stud and probably kisses a lot know what i mean? definately a good part of the book though made me feel weird like i wanted to find out what happened next. has a nice flow like were talkin’ buddy to buddy, just two cool guys without a care in the world. maybe like, hey this dinosaur make me feel weird in a good way, wanna shoot the breeze about it? conversation good times like when me and my son went to las vegas.

Here was my next attempt:

The diplodocus was wet, and I was panting with desire. Through her satin thong I could feel how much she wanted me.

“Fill me, Clive,” she whispered as I caressed her scaly back with my gloved hand. As she became increasingly aroused, her huge tail swung from side to side, knocking over the fridge and smashing several of the champagne flutes that had been drying next to the sink.

“Don’t worry about those,” I muttered into her ear, licking it slowly.

“Take me,” she said.

I looked into her eyes. We both knew this affair would soon come to an end. Perhaps that was why our bodies coursed with a lust powerful enough to dent a car. We needed one last gulp of the love cup.

In one smooth movement, I slammed my dick inside her.

What did Chuck Tingle make of it?

not sure what part of this diplo guy is getting wet but he sounds like a sharp dresser with a thong on, probably works out a lot and poses in hunk shows. anyway, too bad about the kitchen but sometimes thats how parties get when angry customer dinos show up. i dont really know on my own because my son dosnt have a lot of parties but when he does a normally stay in my room. hope the fridge is okay. last part about slamming the dick was pretty hard to read but it was also nice, like maybe something i might think about to relax after a long day? has some good passion words like slammed but also hard to read. slammed is how you know somebody means business. first theyre kissin and then you know the rest buddy, not gonna trick me into saying it. maybe better words when they talk togaether like about other thinks than just touching? like hey this makes me think of my own personal stuff, which is sexy instead of just ‘i want you.’ i want you too’ thats fun stuff but sometimes you gotta ask how a day was.

And, my final attempt:

There were more dinosaurs at this orgy than I had anticipated. With merely a cursory glance over the room I could count sixteen, and I knew there were dozens more behind me. Some were wearing underwear; there was a triceratops holding a glass of white wine, whose corset was attracting a great many flattering remarks; a rhabdodon in a gimp mask reclined in a chaise longue. Most, however, were butt-naked – the way I liked them.

I was wearing only a top hat. I was standing too close to the door – a breeze kept whistling its way up my arse whenever someone left or came into the room. Having decided that this was too irritating to endure, I sauntered over to a T-Rex with a chiselled jaw, who was speaking quietly to a busty brontosaurus in a G-string. With no more than a wink and a glance in the direction of one of the bedrooms, I was leading the T-Rex by the hand into a room of our own.

I got his attention by dropping my top hat and catching it with my throbbing boner.

“Intriguing,” he said, his eyes lighting up. I waggled my erection and the top hat wobbled around.

“I’ve never fucked a T-Rex before,” I said, lying through my teeth. He waddled over to me and lay his tiny hands on my lips. My own hands reached down and began stroking his substantial cock.

“My oh my,” I whispered, watching his eyes flutter as pleasure began to invade his body.

This was going to be a fun night.

We pass over to Chuck Tingle:

sounds like a good party with james bonds types, guys hangin out just catchin the breeze drinking wine. mostly i like choclate milk but these guys sound like wine guys in a good way. like the part about the top hat and made me want to go get one at kmart down the street, no wonder the t-Rex gave him the best friend treatment. very rich dinos wear top hats and besides that its a good look. maybe one thing to change is the t-Rex waddle, thats not a very sexy way to move so maybe he could have a confident strut like if you were at a party and channing tatum was there and he wanted to kiss you. maybe like that.

style has a nice balance, and it ends on a good summary when you say ‘this was gonna be a fun night.’ probably makes the reader think ‘you betcha bub.’ i have a good that says ‘guess im fucking these dinosaurs tonight.’ people like a summary at the end makes em know that they did a good job getting that far like a nice pat on the back.

thanks for sending your stories. youre writing is very good and from the heart like a real deal hollywood writer. maybe publish these in the jezebel paper and get a lot of number one fans. i know i would. imagination is real, and you are my Best Friend (one of them, thanks). thank you.

I think it safe to say that Tingle’s comments taught neither myself nor anyone else anything about how to write erotic prose. But I didn’t expect them to. That’s not who the man is.

And, if he handed out all of his secrets for free, people wouldn’t need to pay $2.98 to read books like My Ass Is Haunted by the Gay Unicorn Colonel. The author will remain an absolute mystery; he is an enigma wrapped up in a tingler. His actual prose, though peppered with grammatical errors, is clearly that of a competent writer. His communication outside of his eBooks, by contrast, are like the ramblings of a madman. His success comes from convincing the world he’s an idiot—the greatest trick Chuck Tingle ever pulled.

Image by Jim Cooke, source photos via Shutterstock.

Ralph Jones is a journalist and comedy writer from the UK. He has written for Vice, the Guardian, Esquire, and many other titles. He is in a sketch group called The Awkward Silence.

Given what you know (in your heart) about the gentle demeanor of Barbra Streisand’s beloved canine Samantha, the following information will shock you: Samantha viciously bit a flight attendant on Tuesday, sending her to the hospital for stitches. I know. [Charlotte voice] Samantha!

Us Weekly reports that Babs was traveling from New York to Washington, D.C. on Ron Perelman’s private jet with Samantha, a 12-year-old Coton de Tuléar. (More about this rare breed later.) The mag’s description of the incident comes from a “source” not directly identified as Ms. Barbra Streisand, but curiously defensive nonetheless:

A source tells Us Weekly the legendary singer’s beloved dog was behaving herself on the private jet owned by Ron Perelman, until a flight attendant attempted to pat the dog without offering it her hand first. (Such a gesture is a common way to get acquainted with unfamiliar animals.) When Samantha felt threatened, she bit the stewardess so severely that the woman required stitches.

A rep for Babs tells Page Six, “This never happened before and Barbra apologized profusely to the flight attendant.”

As of yet, no lawsuits have been filed in relation to the incident, and animal control was not called.

How do we know Samantha’s bloodthirsty behavior was just an aberration? Let us look to the Wikipedia page about Cotons de Tuléar, which, again, does not identify Barbra Streisand as its author, but who’s to say. Who’s to say who wrote the following “facts” about the Coton de Tuléar, which is “named for the city of Tuléar in Madagascar and for its cotton-like coat”?

• “The Coton de Tuléar has a medium-to-long, fluffy, cotton-like coat that is considered hair rather than fur.” [emphasis added though obviously strongly implied in original]

• “This breed does not have the common ‘doggie smell’ and, when properly bathed and groomed, has little to no odor.”

• “Cotons love swimming; owners who have pools are recommended to let their Cotons play in the pool with supervision.”

• “The fact that this is a breed being revived from extinction means that the Coton de Tulear is rather expensive to purchase and prices may reach $1,800.00-$3,500 per dog.”

• “A common trait of the Coton de Tulear behavior is to come alive in the evening.”

Cotons de Tuléar are covered in long, luxurious hair, like that of a human who is a princess. Cotons de Tuléar do not have “the common ‘doggie smell’”—in fact, when you smell pure, clean air, what you are smelling is the scent of a Coton de Tuléar. Cotons de Tuléar love playing in their owners’ swimming pools. Cotons de Tuléar were revived from extinction to make the world a better, more Coton de Tuléar-filled place. Cotons de Tuléar come alive after a glass of wine in the evening.

Interesting.

According to Babs, Samantha has even developed the power of speech.

Barbra’s caption:

“I took this picture of Sammie playing with her “hot dog” as she calls it!”

Samantha is “perfectly friendly and well-behaved,” as she calls it.

Photo via Instagram. Contact the author at allie@gawker.com.

Just three minutes before allegedly causing an accident that killed her passenger, a 22-year-old old Florida woman reportedly texted her boyfriend, “Driving drunk woo …” and “Ill be dead thanks to you ….” The woman, Mila Dago, had a blood alcohol level of .178 two hours after the crash, according to police.

Dago was, according to prosecutors, in the middle of a break-up on Aug. 14, 2013 and had been texting her boyfriend throughout the night. The last text was sent just before Dago and her friend, 22-year old Irina Reinoso, got behind the wheel of a rented Smart Car.

At about 4:45 am, Dago allegedly barreled through a red light and t-boned a truck driven by Benjamin Byrum, who escaped with only minor injuries.

“The Smart Car is what saved me,” Byrum told the Miami Herald. “If it had been anything bigger, I would have been in trouble.”

Dago also survived, but Reinoso “showed no signs of life,” according to court transcripts obtained by the Herald, and was pronounced dead at the scene.

A responding officer said Dago smelled of alcohol; blood tests later showed her blood alcohol level to be .178, more than twice the limit in Florida.

Dago has pleaded not guilty to DUI manslaughter, and two counts of DUI with damage to a person, and vehicular homicide.

Contact the author at taylor@gawker.com.

On Ambassador Road, just off I-695 around the corner from the FBI, nearly 100 employees sit in a high-tech suite and wait for terrorists to attack Baltimore. They’ve waited 11 years. But they still have plenty of work to do, like using the intel community’s toys to target this week’s street protests.

They are the keepers of the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center, a government “fusion center” set up to share information and coordinate counterterrorist activities between 29 law enforcement agencies—federal, state, and local, including Baltimore city and county cops—in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Seeded by a state anti-terror advisory council whose meetings are closed to the public, nourished by Republican and Democratic governors alike, MCAC has expanded its access to spying tools over the past decade and a half. It can pinpoint cellphone users. It can monitor movements of state motorists through their license plates, as it has done with an estimated 85 million drivers.

It turns out that Maryland hasn’t been under sustained assault from international terrorists, despite the wild fears of the homeland security boosters who seek to justify the center’s budget. So rather than accept the possibility that MCAC and other fusion centers were guarding against an overhyped threat, the federal government has expanded the mission to include threats that have always existed: When your job is to find bad guys, it makes it easier to define everyone as a bad guy.

The MCAC has adopted what the Department of Homeland Security calls an “all-crimes approach”—one focused not just on monitoring gangs and other criminal threats, but all manners of civil unrest, from Occupy protesters to the Baltimore residents who have clashed with police on the city streets this week. And it is run by a cop who has been accused of racism in the past.

“Twelve emergency support functions have been activated” in Maryland to address the violence in Baltimore, authorities told WBAL earlier this week, including “the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center, which provides situational awareness and intelligence.” In fact, as protests over Freddie Gray’s death in police custody spread to other major cities across the country, MCAC and other fusion centers set up by DHS will be crucial to how local law enforcement agencies confront civil dissent.

From terrorism to tax-stamp fraud

Shortly after 9/11, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered his U.S. Attorneys’ offices to set up district “Anti-Terrorism Advisory Councils.” The council for Maryland, led by a hard-charging Bush appointee, wasted no time in creating MCAC to coordinate the region’s terrorism response. It was given state-of-the-art tools, including “a 15-foot wide split television screen tuned into CNN, Fox News and a local news broadcast,” and office space to hold representatives of the FBI, ATF, DHS, Army, and Baltimore police, among others. In fact, one of the center’s early directors, Captain Charles Rapp, wore another surprising law enforcement hat, according to a 2007 profile in National Defense Magazine (emphasis added):

While there is no formal definition of what constitutes a fusion center, and no congressional mandate directing states to create them, DHS has disbursed $380 million in grants to help fund them so far, and their numbers are growing.

While the ultimate goal is to correct the well-documented mistakes that led to the 9/11 attacks, the centers are increasingly being used to track crimes not typically associated with terrorism, said Rapp, who also serves as the chief of the Baltimore Police Department.

By 2006, the greater Baltimore area had been identified by feds as a major drug-crimes target, and MCAC used its high-tech tools to pivot to fighting whatever crimes it could jam up under the guise of anti-terror and counter-narcotics:

A terrorist cell may be involved in other non-terror crimes to fund its activities. It’s the city cop, for example, who may enter an apartment on an unrelated call, and notice there is nothing inside but computers.

MCAC, and other fusion centers, are branching out to keep tabs on major crimes. Coupon fraud, evasion of state tax stamps on alcohol or cigarettes and identity theft, for example, can be used to fund plots. “You can’t really determine what type of crime is going to be related to terrorism,” Rapp said.

Our 'Most Wanted' page is most popular. Have you checked it out lately? http://t.co/88YvTxBawI

April 21, 2015

“Geofencing” in evildoers

Nobody can say for sure what all of MCAC’s tech capabilities are—it exists to “fuse” a wide variety of intelligence collected by its constituent outfits. But the few that are known have wide applications. In 2012, Baltimore’s director of emergency management confirmed to Congress that area law enforcement could track suspects using their phones. With the help of DHS, he said, “We have developed cell phone tracking capabilities allowing law enforcement the ability to pinpoint the location of a specific cell phone, enhancing efforts to locate an individual.”

The most notable of MCAC’s intelligence has been a state-of-the-art license plate reading (LPR) system that has hoovered up motorists’ information and alarmed civil libertarians with its unprecedented speed. Maryland’s transportation chief, Marcus Brown, defends the system with an out-of-context quote by Thomas Jefferson—“information is the currency of democracy”—and adds:

In the event of a critical incident, the MCAC has the ability to enter the critical license plate information into the LPR central server. By doing this, anyone who is networked to the MCAC will automatically be notified if the vehicle in question passes by the LPR.

Those critical incidents aren’t confined to terrorism or even violent crimes: “Some states are using LPRs to collect taxes,” Brown reported. “Anything associated with the license can be used with the LPR.”

More recently, conservative libertarians have expressed fears that MCAC is using its LPR technology to track gun owners traveling through the state. John Filippidis, a Florida man with a concealed carry permit, was driving, unarmed, with his wife and daughters in the family SUV to a Christmas gathering in December 2013 when he was stopped by Maryland transportation police outside the Fort McHenry Tunnel in Baltimore:

Retreating to the space between the SUV and the unmarked car, the officer orders John to hook his thumbs behind his back and spread his feet. “You own a gun,” the officer says. “Where is it?”

“At home in my safe,” John answers.

“Don’t move,” says the officer.

Several hours later, after multiple police had unpacked and inspected his entire minivan, Filippidis was sent on his way with nothing but a warning. Maryland authorities have never revealed how they knew he owned a gun.

If you’ve been on I-95 in the Old Line State recently, chances are MCAC has your license plate on file, too; they keep all their info for a year, even if it isn’t linked to a crime. A 2013 ACLU study using MCAC data obtained under a FOIA request found that the fusion center had collected “more than 85 million license plate records in 2012 alone”:

According to statistics compiled by the fusion center for that year to date through May:

• Maryland’s system of license plate readers had over 29 million reads. Only 0.2 percent of those license plates, or about 1 in 500, were hits. That is, only 0.2 percent of reads were associated with any crime, wrongdoing, minor registration problem, or even suspicion of a problem.
  
• Of the 0.2 percent that were hits, 97 percent were for a suspended or revoked registration or a violation of Maryland’s Vehicle Emissions Inspection Program...
  

For every one million plates read in Maryland, only 47 were potentially associated with more serious crimes—a stolen vehicle or license plate, a wanted person, a violent gang or terrorist organization, a sex offender, or Maryland’s warrant-flagging program. Furthermore, even these 47 alerts may not have helped the police catch criminals or prevent crimes. While people on the violent gang, terrorist, and sex offender lists are under general suspicion, they are not necessarily wanted for any present wrongdoing.

Besides the potential chilling effect this kind of data collecting could have on drivers’ freedom of movement and other behavior, the report suggested that this license plate data could be used for more insidious “forms of crime analysis,” specifically geofencing: “Law enforcement or private companies can construct a virtual fence around a designated geographical area, to identify each vehicle entering that space.” Such tactics would have obvious appeal to police agencies seeking to limit the size and scope of street protests in Baltimore and elsewhere.

Targeting gangs, or something like them

More troubling than MCAC’s controversial license plate program has been its fuzzy focus on “gang” crime in Baltimore. Led by Rod Rosenstein, the Bush-appointed U.S. Attorney for Maryland who helped set up MCAC, the effort includes a “proactive component” that he says “involves not just waiting for dangerous criminals to get arrested, but actually going out to investigate them and develop cases against them and prosecute them and remove them from the community.”

Publicly, MCAC’s efforts show up in a “gang news” column that reports the latest arrests and rumors from inside Maryland; its most recent update was the Baltimore PD’s assertion that “they have received a ‘credible threat’ that rival gangs have teamed up to ‘take out’ law enforcement officers.”

MCAC’s public-facing intelligence on gang crime is equally superficial. In its most recent “public gang threat assessment,” the center reported: “Poverty and despair could be contributing factors of why juveniles join gangs.” The report added:

Law enforcement in Maryland has identified the following trends:

• Youth gangs using social media sites like Facebook®, Instagram®, Kik®, and Twitter® as tools to communicate, recruit, and threaten...
  
• Gang members commuting to other areas to participate in criminal activity.

The center also puts out alarmist bulletins from its partner police organizations, such as one describing criminals’ alleged use of “trash bag bombs” and a 2011 warning that even bandanas can be used as weapons against officers:

MCAC has also expressed concerns that suspects are using publicly available police scanner apps and websites to listen in on law enforcement activities:

Further investigation revealed that the general public, as well as criminal gang members and associates, are utilizing the website www.radioreference.com to listen to law enforcement secure channels streaming via the Internet. Registration and access to the site is free... This situation presents a concern for officer safety.

More recently, MCAC has helped cohost an annual intel and law enforcement training conference with popular sessions like a seminar on “African-American Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs” and a workshop “on exploiting social media and the internet revealing the information investigators can obtain from it.”

All of these efforts are overseen by MCAC’s current director, David Engel, who previously ran the Baltimore police department’s intelligence unit—a unit that has been criticized “for sending undercover intelligence officers into public meetings to monitor debates,” the Baltimore Sun reported.

Engel’s time at MCAC has certainly been quieter than his tenure in the Baltimore PD, when a black female detective sued him for discrimination, alleging he’d demoted and transferred her because of her race. The 11-year veteran also charged that Engel had four other black detectives “transferred out of the unit for frivolous reasons and replaced by Caucasian detectives” in the half-year before her demotion, and he’d disciplined her for the same minor infraction that a white detective had committed without consequence. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission “determined that there was reasonable cause to believe that she was discriminated against,” but a federal court dismissed the charges.

Preoccupied with Occupiers

If the Baltimore center is using its assets to track and thwart protesters, it wouldn’t be the first time DHS’s network of fusion centers have done so. Last year, the New York Times documented the centers’ efforts to monitor Occupy protesters nationwide—surveilling their social media accounts, cracking their communications codes, and swapping tips to combat the protests, often with military assistance:

In many cases, law enforcement officials appeared to simply assemble or copy lists of protests or related activities, sometimes maintaining tallies of how many people might show up. They also noted appearances by prominent Occupy supporters and advised other officials about what — or whom — to watch for, according to the newly disclosed documents.

One of them, an intelligence research specialist working in the threat analysis center of the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, circulated an email describing Google searches as “a very handy intel gathering tool” to keep tabs on Occupy protests.

Documents obtained by the Times show that MCAC and the Baltimore city and county police departments assisted in these efforts to gather intelligence on Occupiers.

If all this sounds like a vast threat to privacy and civil liberties, the Department of Homeland Security agrees. In 2008, its privacy office issued a report that “identified a number of risks to privacy presented by the fusion center program.” Chief among these, it stated, were “threats to privacy associated with mission creep.”

Absent any terrorists to thwart, how exactly has the Baltimore fusion cell’s mission creep—from stopping 9/11s to monitoring protesters, drivers, and suspected gangbangers—extended to the street unrest that racked Charm City this week? No one’s saying: Emails and calls by Gawker to the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center and its director all went unanswered.

[Image by Jim Cooke; photo via AP]