GLENN GREENWALD: The now-viral video of police officers in their Robocop costumes sadistically pepper-spraying peaceful, sitting protesters at UC-Davis (details here) shows a police state in its pure form. It’s easy to be outraged by this incident as though it’s some sort of shocking aberration, but that is exactly what it is not. The Atlantic‘s Garance Franke-Ruta adeptly demonstrates with an assemblage of video how common such excessive police force has been in response to the Occupy protests. Along those lines, there are several points to note about this incident and what it reflects…MORE BOING BOING: Lt. Jon Pike sprayed […]

THE FIX: Coatesville has long been the primary coke supplier for Philly’s western suburbs. Local teens who move the crack bags and act as corner lookouts call their hometown “Cook Cokeville.” The town was once a major supplier of steel under the Lukens and later Bethlehem Steel banners; its mill even produced girders for the World Trade Center. The mill remains operational, owned now by Luxemburg conglomerate ArcelorMittal, and while its sprawling campus still dominates the landscape, it no longer drives the local economy as it once did. Crack cocaine replaced the steel. […] One benefit of the collapse of […]

ASSOCIATED PRESS: The location of the mass grave remained elusive until recent weeks. A radar survey of the land beneath the stone monument a few years ago yielded nothing, so the Watsons assumed the marker was inaccurate. But geophysicist Tim Bechtel recently used more sophisticated techniques, including electrical imaging and seismic surveys, to conclude the ossuary is likely near the monument after all — but 30 feet below the surface. It’s also on Amtrak property. The rail company will not permit any digging because of its proximity to the tracks, spokeswoman Danelle Hunter said. “I don’t blame them for not […]

INQUIRER: The woman charged with keeping four adults with mental disabilities locked in a squalid Tacony basement while collecting their Social Security checks may have victimized dozens of others, police said Monday. When Linda Ann Weston was arrested Sunday, she had identification records for as many as 50 people in her possession, including power of attorney paperwork, forms of identification, and Social Security numbers, according to Philadelphia Police Lt. Ray Evers. The documents suggest that Weston has been running a wide-ranging fraud operation, he said. “She might have been doing this for years, probably since she got out of prison,” […]

DAILY BEAST: A shocking discovery on a weathered but quiet stretch of Longshore Avenue in the working-class Tacony neighborhood shook Philadelphia on Saturday afternoon: four cognitively impaired disabled adults were found malnourished, chained to a water heater, and locked behind a steel door in a filthy 15-by-15-foot closet in the basement of an apartment complex. The details of the story are still taking shape. The four adults and their “caretakers”—charged with kidnapping, aggravated assault, and various other crimes—arrived in the city by way of Florida just a few weeks ago, but lived in Texas prior to that. What brought them […]