- This next story just flat-out amazes me. The fact that anyone - let alone someone charged with serving and protecting the public and catching criminals - would for one second think it’s okay to beat someone who is restrained to a wheelchair is stunning. The idiot in question would be veteran police officer William Cozzi of Chicago, Illinois, who was videotaped beating a man restrained in a wheelchair at a hospital emergency room and pleaded guilty Thursday to using "excessive or unreasonable force" against the victim. This case has been winding its way through the legal system for a couple of years, so Cozzi’s beating of Randle Miles isn’t all that recent, but that makes it no less egregiously awful. Not when Miles was sitting in the emergency room after being taken to Norwegian American Hospital after being stabbed and getting beaten down by Cozzi because he was deemed to be “loud and verbally abusive.” That led Cozzi to handcuff and shackle the man, after which he "used a 'sap,' a dangerous weapon, to repeatedly strike [the victim] in the face and body," even though the victim posed no physical threat. Oh, and Cozzi also prepared a false arrest report stating Miles had tried to punch him, but omitting that Cozzi had struck Miles. Nice job there, botching justice on virtually every count. Thankfully, Cozzi was indicted on the civil rights charge last April, has now been convicted and will be sentenced March 26 before U.S. District Judge Blanche Manning. Johnny, tell Mr. Cozzi what he’s won! That’s right, an all-expenses paid trip to a federal penitentiary not of his choosing for as many as 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000! Readers, all of this can be yours as well if only you too are willing to violently assault a stabbing victim for no real reason in your local hospital’s emergency room…….
- I’ve been looking for that little something extra to spark my interest in professional men’s tennis - okay, so that’s a lie, I couldn’t care less if I ever have an interest in it - and I may have found it. While the women’s game has the uber, uber-hot Maria Sharapova (when healthy) parading around the court with her sweet Russian smile and never-ending legs, the men’s game doesn’t really have anything to garner my attention. That would change if there were more matches like the third-round Australian Open contest between Novak Djokovic and Amer Delic. At the Melbourne-based tournament, violence erupted outside the stadium after their match Friday, with the melee including the throwing of several chairs, one of which left a woman briefly unconscious. Also thrown around in heavy doses were insults and water bottles, with arrests aplenty made and dozens of people ejected from Melbourne Park. This looks to be just the type of scene organizers feared when they announced before the tournament that there would be a no-tolerance policy for disruptions. But they got them anyhow, right after Djokovic, a Serbian-born player, and the Bosnian-born Delic finished their match. As their respective supporters watched on a big-screen TV outside the stadium showing the match, a fight broke out. The chief culprits appear to be about 30 Bosnian and Serbian youths who were ejected from Melbourne Park. Among those charged with crimes were two men hit with charges of riotous behavior and a third individual who was fined on the spot. Oddly enough, neither of the players had their fans’ backs when it came to the brawl. "There's absolutely no place for that here. This is a tennis match," said Delic, who actually lives in Jacksonville, Fla., not in Bosnia. "As I'm sure you all saw at the end, Novak and I are friends. We're both competitors. In the end it was a fair match, and there was no reason for such things." Djokovic did a slightly better job of not putting a knife in the backs of his loyal fans, saying only that players can't control their fans. So neither of these two appear to share my enthusiasm for the infusion of violence into their sport, which is fine. Heck, Delic even posted messages on his website to ask his supporters, who were extremely disruptive in the his first two matches, to tone it down. With an attitude like that, no wonder I and many others don’t care enough to pay attention to your sport, A. Either you get on board with this and incite your fans to violence at every opportunity or I’m going to keep tuning in to watch the lovely Miss Sharapova bounce around the court while ignoring men’s tennis……
- As always, you like to know that when one sibling pulls a knife on a brother or sister and threatens to cut them, there’s a good reason. Thankfully, that’s the case in an incident near Fort Pierce, Florida, where a disagreement over chicken wings between two siblings landed one in jail after he allegedly pulled a knife and threatened to go O.J. on his brother. Okay, so he didn’t threaten to cut him quite that badly, but Calvin Edwards does still face aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and battery charges following the Tuesday incident. But as I said, he did have a good reason. See, he and his brother were arguing over some chicken wings. Edwards said he was looking in the oven for a wing, and planned to take out a tray of wings when his brother told him to get the other tray and both his mother and brother started yelling at him and said he felt the need “to defend himself.” In order to settle the dispute, Calvin pulled a small pocket knife and threatened to cut his brother. A reasonable reaction, I have to say. Who among us with a sibling hasn’t argued dozens of times over who gets a certain food item or the bigger portion of said item? And who among us hasn’t gone right past name calling, hair pulling, slapping, punching and headlocks right to pulling a knife? You know you’ve done it, so don’t deny it. Plus, how proud must Edwards’ mother have been two seen her two adult sons in her kitchen, looking to go gang warfare on one another over some chicken wings? Thankfully no one was hurt because Edwards’ brother backed away and went to notify authorities, fearing his brother would follow through on his threat. Ultimately, the brother received only a scratch on the wrist from Calvin….and sadly, no chicken wings. It’s just good that this wasn’t a pointless, violent incident over something silly and stupid, because then it would just be a pathetic tale…….
- And everyone thought Britney Spears was a terrible mother just because she asked her toddler son to fetch her cigarettes for her, calling them “mommy’s lollipops.” As bad as that may be, Spears still has a leg up on Kelly Marie Pocock, a British mother who has been given a suspended jail sentence after her toddler was filmed smoking a cigarette in front of her. Pocock pleaded guilty to one count of cruelty to a child under 16 at a hearing last month in the Merthyr Crown Court. According to prosecutor Jonathan Rees, the video shows the child “placing a cigarette into his mouth, lighting it with a lighter and sucking, drawing smoke clearly into the lungs and he seems to do it with some accomplishment.” Rees went on to say that the boy showed no signs of discomfort and did all of this while seated on a chair close to his mother, who was busy talking on the phone. Judging by the video, this isn’t the first time this kid has seen a lighter or cigarette and he has a pretty good idea of how to use both of them. How did this video come to be shot? Well, Pocock’s friend Natasha Dudley happened to be visiting and filmed it on her camera phone. Seems Dudley went looking for the boy while visiting Pocock's home just after Christmas 2007 and found him under a bed with the aforementioned cigarettes, smoking one of them. In Dudley’s humble opinion, it looked like the boy had been smoking “for many years.” Given his age (3), many doesn’t seem like an apt description unless you’re implying that reincarnation was involved and that he smoked in a former life as say, a New York cab driver. But wait, it gets better. Dudley took the boy downstairs, where he apparently went into the living room, picked up a cigarette butt from an ashtray and smoked it. Still, his mother was sat idly by, talking on the phone. That’s when Dudley filmed the boy and later forwarded it to social services. Oh, you may also be interested to know that Pocock claims that she hadn't seen her son smoking on that occasion, or ever before, going so far as to say that she was "shocked" when the matter was drawn to her attention. Well, now she can be shocked by something else: 40 weeks imprisonment, suspended for two years, and a 12 month supervision requirement as part of the sentence. No word on whether she will also be required to also take her son to regular Narcotics Anonymous meetings……..
- What I’m about to say is true whether a famous person is involved or not: if you attempt to extort money from someone in relation to the death of one of their loved ones, you are a piece of crap. A family is in a time of immense grief and your only response is, “Hey, this is a good chance for me to make a dishonest living by extorting money from them.” I always hesitate to say that someone is irredeemable, but if you engage in this type of activity you just might be. That means I don’t hold out much hope from the yet-to-be-identified individual who tried to extort money from John Travolta in relation to the death of his son. The matter is currently under investigation in the Bahamas. "We received an official report regarding an attempted extortion," said Bahamian Assistant Police Commissioner Raymond Gibson. "At this time we have two persons in custody who are assisting us with this investigation." Not a lot of details and so far, no explanation as to how the investigation got started or how the extortion scam was done, but does it really matter? If it’s true, then whoever is involved is absolute garbage and can’t possibly receive a stiff enough sentence. Nothing like looking to capitalize financially on Travolta's son Jett, 16, being found unconscious on January 2 while on vacation with his family in the Bahamas' West End, being taken to a hospital and pronounced dead on arrival to shake your faith in humanity. The family isn’t commenting on the matter and they really don’t need to; let the investigation play out and whomever is behind this plot will be sufficiently vilified in due time……
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