On the Stoppage of Crime
A modest proposal: that crime is not stopped by terrorizing a city with a guerilla marketing campaign aimed at encouraging people to snitch on the poor.
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“There’s no worse feeling in the world than feeling all alone in a city of seven and a half million people.”
Seamus Heffernan is not the first Newfoundlander whose background in journalism led him eventually to fiction. But finding his home in crime writing has been the culmination of a long-held dream. “Some kids dream of wanting to be an astronaut, some kids dream of scoring a Stanley Cup overtime winning goal, but for me, I always wanted to be a writer,” he recalled, the day after the launch of his debut novel Napalm Hearts. “So I guess last night was my overtime winning moment.” Throughout years of working for newspapers, magazines, and policy think-tanks, Heffernan yearned to write a serious piece of fiction. “I knew if I did that it was going to be in the crime genre, it was always the one I was drawn to. That was the format I was most comfortable with and I thought you can have fun with it while also saying an awful…
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Stolen Sisters: Victims are only half of the crime
Violence against Aboriginal women is not just about Aboriginal women; it is equally about those who commit the violence and the societal values and cultural attitudes that allow it to be commonplace
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An Alternate History of the Dana Bradley Murder Investigation
Recent developments cast new light on the province’s most notorious cold case
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St. John’s 3rd best city in Canada to be a woman: report
Well, sort of.
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Guns don’t belong on campus
“The recent deregulation of firearms at MUN has normalized the excessive use of police force.”
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Is crime getting worse?
Some recent reports of rising crime rates in St. John’s are misleading because they neglect to account for some important facts…
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The inevitability of marijuana legalization
Marijuana legalization is starting to look inevitable, but how long will we have to wait?
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Havin’ a time (not getting stabbed)
There’s a growing dissonance between our image of ourselves, and the reality
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Former NL telemarketer convicted, operating again in Florida
The CBC is reporting that Michael Mouyal, a telemarketer formerly operating out of St. John’s and convicted of defrauding customers in excess of 130 million dollars, is now back in business – in Miramar, Florida. Mouyal ran several operations in Canada between 1994-2001, receiving a $287,000 federal grant and provincial tax breaks to open his call centre in the capital city. In the midst of critical media fire, police raided his centres in Toronto, Montreal, and St. John’s, shutting down this centre in the early part of the last decade. By that point, Mouyal himself had accumulated more than $2.8 million dollars, in part because his employees pretended to represent other companies when speaking to clients, and were able to charge staggering mark-ups on products – as high as 700%. In 2007, Mouyal was fined $1 million dollars and forbidden from selling business directories or commercial supplies for 10 years.…
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Cambodia and Angkor – what??
Our correspondent arrives in Cambodia…and is pleasantly surprised
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Should crime be an election issue?
As the Federal Conservatives are pushing through new “tough-on-crime” legislation at the national level, many people are left wondering “why?” The crime rate in Canada, afterall, is the lowest it has ever been in almost 30 years – and that rate has been in general decline during that same time. But here in Newfoundland and Labrador – on the northeast Avalon especially – crime is becoming more and more of a problem. While Stats Canada reports that nationally crime decreased by 4% in 2009, the total crime rate in St. John’s actually saw an increase of 4% – and our capital city now has the seventh-highest metropolitan crime index. With money comes prosperity, but it also brings nastier elements of society – that quite frankly us Newfoundlanders aren’t used to. Disappearing are the days where we can leave our car idling in front of the convenience store, leave our front…
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