Whipped Cream Difficulties

Everton Wagstaffe and Reginald Connor are serving time for the kidnapping and murder of Jennifer Negron. Ms. Negron was 16 years old when she was murdered.

Both Mr. Wagstaffe and Mr. Connor have maintained their innocence and, after years of fighting, were able to arrange DNA testing of every piece of physical evidence that could be found; none of it implicated them, and the DNA in hair found on the victim’s body came from at least one other person.

The main witness against the two men was a crack addicted prostitute who was “forcibly detained by the authorities in a hotel until she testified”.

In the case of Mr. Wagstaffe and Mr. Connor, no records were kept of police interviews with other important witnesses; there was no physical evidence to support the informant’s claims; one witness, a police detective’s daughter, who could provide a seemingly credible alibi for Mr. Wagstaffe, was never interviewed by police, prosecutors or defense lawyers; the owner of a car supposedly used in the kidnapping said she told detectives that she had it with her at church through the night of Ms. Negron’s death. There is no record of any interview of her, either, even though the car was cited as important evidence.

Is this our old friend Louis Scarcella? Is the Brooklyn DA reinvestigating this case?

No. And no.

The investigation into the death of Ms. Negron was led by a detective from a different squad, Michael Race of the 75th Precinct. His work with another informant led to the conviction of at least three innocent people.
Of 750 murder investigations that he ran, Mr. Race has said, only one was “done the correct way, A to Z.”

One. Out of 750. And three wrongful convictions.

Aye aye mateys, oh, come on the Pirate Radio
Land of the free and home of the brave
FCC crawl in your grave!

(Explained.)

Directors of Meade Instruments Corp., which has helped foster the consumer market with its easy-to-use telescopes and binoculars since 1972, may be tipping their hand by Monday on whether to recommend selling the company, plow ahead alone or possibly seek bankruptcy protection.

This sucks. I’ve wanted a good telescope for much of my life, even though I find it hard to use one with glasses and I really am not able to stay up late in order to do observational astronomy. Still, I’m sad to see the market shrinking, even though the technology gets better and better.

Verizon has a great idea for Fire Island. As you might have guessed, the island got the crap beat out of it by Sandy, and the phone system was devastated.

Verizon, the only phone company in town, wants most of the island and its 500 homes to go all-wireless, ending for good its century-old copper wire phone network. That means phone lines buried underground or strung between poles and then stretched into homes will go out of service and be replaced by an experimental wireless service that sends calls between cell towers and home receivers.

Sounds great, right?

Without phone lines, consumers don’t have the option of DSL Internet. Gone are faxes. Heart monitors that connect over phone lines to hospitals don’t work over wireless, either. And small businesses can’t process credit cards or operate cash machines without buying entirely new payment systems, as Verizon notes in its New York public filing.

Not mentioned in the article: Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) over copper works when the power is out. Will Verizon’s wireless system? The cell towers may have battery backup or generators, but do the home receivers?

This entry was posted on Friday, July 5th, 2013 at 9:01 am and is filed under Clippings, Cops, Geek, Law, Radio. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.