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Task Failed Successfully: The Cracked Columbia Takeover and Expulsion

The sputtering 18-hour barricade-aided takeover of Columbia University by Hamas supporters ended last night faster than Humpty Dumpty falling off the wall; of course, the occupier’s task failed successfully only after being rightly pushed from the second story ledge of Hamilton Hall by NYPD riot officers. As a graduate of Columbia University, I was chagrined for the students who occupied Hamilton, and who are now about to learn the hard way why — the university does not not belong to the student — and those failed occupiers can now successfully weep into their expulsion letters.

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The ABCs of Surviving an Active Shooter Event

Well, we’ve sunk to the following new low arriving in a school email from university administrative powers –with a standard pre-warning that this is informational only, and not based on a current threat — with an active link to a NYPD Shield Safety Pamphlet included for good measure:

NYPD says: Avoid. Barricade. Confront. (ABC)

DHS says: Run. Hide. Fight.

The words are different, but the three actions are essentially the same:

1. Get out and get away, as quietly and quickly as possible, leaving your belongings behind.  Run. Avoid.

2. If you can’t flee, lock or barricade the doors, silence your cell phone and hide.  Hide. Barricade.

3. If all else fails, and only as a last resort, attack the shooter with whatever makeshift weapons you can find (scissors, portable fire extinguishers, chairs, etc.) to disarm and disable.  Fight. Confront.

Of course, call 911 to report the attack as soon as it is safe for you to do so.

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Gilberto Valle: Cannibalism, Sexual Sadism, Fantasy and Criminal Intent

The trial of Gilberto Valle, the “Cannibal Cop” began in Manhattan this week. The New York Police Officer is charged with Federal kidnapping conspiracy. The charge sheet can be found here. The evidence consists largely of e-mails and instant messages in which Officer Valle was “discussing plans to kidnap, rape, torture, kill, cook and eat body parts of a number of women.”

His defence team is arguing that this was just a sexual fantasy and that Valle had no intention of carrying out any of these crimes.

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The Dramatic Arc of a Manhattan Murder

Now that we know the shootings last week in Manhattan near the Empire State Building were a curious mix of both murder and bystander-gone-wrong, I’d like to take a moment to deconstruct the dramatic unfolding of events that happened that morning over a 2.5 hour arc to demonstrate how the social news spread first, as a terrorist attack on the Empire State Building, and ultimately became the truth of a revelatory revenge murder.

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New York Police Making New York into a Panopticon

In the film Minority Report, based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, police of the future arrest criminals before the crime even occurs based on three psychics who can predict the future. All seems to be going well until the captain of the police force is seen committing a murder thirty six hours later and he suspects that he is being set up by his colleagues. I couldn’t help but think of this story when I read about the New York Police Department plans to start a new system to track crime that will be practically all seeing and all knowing.

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