Stupid people of the week

Radio station baffled after 200-foot radio tower disappears without a trace: ‘Seen it all now’

A radio station is on standby after thieves somehow stole a 200-foot radio tower in Alabama.

No one’s sure how the ambitious bandits made off with the heavy steel structure, WJLX station general manager Brett Elmore told WBRC.

“I have tried all weekend to figure it out, and I just can’t,” Elmore told the TV station.

“I have been in the radio business, around it all my life and then in it professionally for 26 years, and I can say I have never heard of anything like this,” he added. “I can say I’ve seen it all now.”

Elmore learned of the theft on Friday when a landscaping crew went to the rural tower site to maintain the property, but there wasn’t much left to maintain.

“When he arrived, he called me Friday and said, ‘The tower is gone,’” the station manager explained.

“I said, ‘What do you mean the tower is gone? Are you sure you are at the right place?’ He said, ‘The tower is gone. There is wires everywhere, and it is gone.’”

Thieves dismantled the tower by cutting the wires that secured it and also stole other equipment from the property, Elmore said in a post to Facebook.

Elmore said the radio station will work to rebuild the tower, but he wants thieves to know — loud and clear — that he will work with investigators to find out who committed the puzzling federal crime.

“This really hurts a small operation like this, but like I said, I believe we will find out who did this,” he said. “It is a federal crime and it absolutely will not be worth it to them.”

If caught, the suspects could face a fine or up to 10 years in prison.

The Jasper-based radio station used the tower for its AM radio channel, Elmore said.

Elmore said WJLX was able to get temporary authority from the FCC to continue broadcasting its AM channel through other means.

Source; NY Post

Prosecutors Say a Senior Enlisted Leader at Fort Liberty Smuggled Meth, Put Strip Club on Travel Card

A senior noncommissioned officer based out of Fort Liberty, North Carolina, faces numerous charges tied to a yearslong scheme to smuggle methamphetamine across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Military prosecutors say Sgt. Maj. Jorge E. Garcia, the career counselor for U.S. Army Forces Command, or FORSCOM, made numerous unauthorized trips abroad between 2021 and 2022, smuggled meth, lied to his unit about his whereabouts, engaged in fraudulent charges on his government travel card at a nightclub near the Pentagon, and coordinated the drug activity with gangs online.

It’s the latest in a string of drug-related criminal activity from soldiers at Fort Liberty, the base previously known as Fort Bragg, and the highest-profile installation in the Army — serving as the home of the 82nd Airborne Division and several of the service’s elite special operations units.

Garcia, who has been in military pretrial confinement since June 2023, and his attorney could not be reached for comment ahead of publication. It was unclear as of Thursday whether Garcia had entered a plea to the military court or if he will face additional charges from a civilian court.

Court documents say Garcia traveled abroad or lied about his whereabouts at least five times since 2021. Authorities said at least one of those occasions included travel to Tijuana, Mexico. That trip included “cyber-related activities” in support of “a criminal gang by promotion of such activity … with the knowledge that such activities involve an extremist cause.”

Garcia was seemingly caught in May 2023 at San Ysidro, a border town in California just outside of San Diego. Authorities found him with about 24 pounds of methamphetamine, a highly potent illegal stimulant, “with intent to distribute,” court records show.

Garcia also allegedly accrued a $241.89 charge at The Flirt Lounge in Arlington, Virginia — a nightclub less than two miles from the Pentagon — in October 2021 on his government travel card.

The news follows the 15-year sentencing of Gordon Custis last month, a former Fort Liberty soldier who held the rank of specialist and served as a medic, for trafficking ketamine while on duty and laundering more than $700,000. His wife, Sgt. Shabrea Bright, was also indicted in the scheme and is awaiting trial.

Fort Liberty has the most overdose deaths among all military installations, according to Pentagon data, with 31 deaths between 2015 and 2021.

Early last year, at least 13 soldiers assigned to the Army’s Special Operations Command were under investigation for drug trafficking.

The base is in the so-called Corridor H, a designation from the Justice Department of eight different parts of the country in which drugs, particularly fentanyl, are heavily trafficked. That corridor encompasses I-95, a highway that stretches from Miami to Houlton, Maine.

In March 2022, Spc. Jacob Dickerson was sentenced to 75 days in prison, removed from the service and given a bad-conduct discharge after a plea agreement, according to Army court records.

Dickerson was a military police officer at Fort Liberty who sold oxycodone, an opioid used to treat pain, out of his military police vehicle at least once. He was assigned to the 21st Military Police Company, 503rd Military Police Battalion, which is part of the 16th Military Police Brigade.

Source; Military.com

New York professor caught on video holding machete to reporter’s neck reportedly fired after anti-Israel rants

A New York professor notoriously caught on camera holding a machete to a reporter’s neck last year has reportedly been fired from her latest teaching gig after espousing anti-Israel views.

Shellyne Rodriguez, who was terminated last year from her position at New York City’s Hunter College, was fired again – this time from her most recent role at Cooper Union in Manhattan.

“Cooper Union has fired me because of a social media post I made about ‘Zionists’… effective immediately,” Rodriguez, 47, wrote in a Jan. 23 email to students, according to the New York Post. Cooper Union Students for Justice in Palestine shared the email on Instagram the next day.

“This is fascism. Ya’ll are learning about it in real time,” Rodriguez wrote. “Stay strong, [stay] brave, stay defiant, don’t bite your tongue, and drink plenty of water! Pa-lante!”

“This firing represents an intense escalation of McCarthyist repression meant to intimidate and punish those in support of a Free Palestine, and must be resisted to prevent its further normalization and the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” the student group wrote, calling on followers to email the art school dean.

Reached by Fox News Digital about Rodriguez’s reported termination, a spokesperson for Cooper Union said, “We don’t provide comment on personnel matters.”

The Post noted how Rodriguez is no longer listed as an adjunct on Cooper Union’s faculty page.

The reasoning for her latest termination was not immediately clear but came after Rodriguez participated earlier last month in a CUNY for Palestine virtual panel in which she spoke about the possibility of a Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement rent strike in New York involving not making rent payments to Jewish landlords or landlords who support Israel.

Her remarks, widely condemned online as antisemitic, also included Rodriguez explaining, “the idea that we could be a Trojan horse, that we are inside empire, and you’re here to upend it.” Of others supporting Israel, she told those on the panel, “You probably wait tables where they go to brunch. Find them, go to their offices, don’t let them sleep.”

According to the Post, Rodriguez also torched former Bronx Borough President Rubén Díaz Jr. as a “roach” and “Zionist lapdog” in one post on her own Instagram account.

“Jewish students at Cooper Union are very relieved that they fired her,” Jeffrey Lax, a CUNY law professor and co-founder of Students and Faculty for Equality at CUNY, which advocates for Jewish students on campus, told the Post. “Her comments were really despicable.”

“Normally, I would say I commend the university for taking action against this professor but in this case, how can I possibly say that she did something far worse before they hired her? I mean, she held a knife to a reporter’s neck,” Lax told the outlet. “They’re not to be commended, they should be ashamed of themselves.”

Last May, Rodriguez, an adjunct professor at Hunter College at the time, was caught on camera cursing at students who set up a pro-life table, claiming they were “triggering” others.

“You’re not educating s—. This is f—ing propaganda,” Rodriguez said in the video shared online by Students for Life of America. “What are you going to do like anti-trans next?”

When a New York Post reporter arrived at her apartment seeking comment about the incident, she was caught on video again – this time holding a blade to the reporter’s neck.

She pleaded guilty to harassment and menacing in connection to the attack on the reporter, the Post reported, citing the Bronx District Attorney’s Office. If she completes a therapy program, she would be permitted to withdraw the misdemeanor plea under the terms of her plea agreement and would be sentenced on the violation to a conditional discharge.

Rodriguez was sentenced in October to 13 months of behavioral therapy for menacing.

Her termination from Cooper Union also comes months after pro-Palestinian protesters there banged on the windows of the school library while Jewish students were inside.

Rodriguez also notably organized “f— police” demonstrations in 2020 after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Source; Fox News

Chicago Gang Member Misses Attempted Murder Court Date While Allegedly Attempting to Kill Someone Else

A Chicago man accused of stabbing a stranger on Christmas was released by a judge — then missed his court date for attempted murder while he was allegedly busy stabbing another random woman.

Allen Erenburg was set to be in court Wednesday after a grand jury charged him with seven felonies for the December 25 incident during which he allegedly knocked a man off his bicycle, “struck the man in the head with a hammer and stabbed him repeatedly with a knife,” CWBChicago reports.

Instead of going to court, the 44-year-old was back on the street stabbing a woman and threatening her boyfriend with a hammer, prosecutors say.

Erenburg was caught in the first place not after he allegedly attempted to kill the man on the bike, but five days after that attack when he was arrested in a separate incident in Roscoe Village, according to the outlet.

“A 49-year-old woman reported that she was sitting in her car in the 2300 block of West Belmont when a man started shouting at her, then pulled out a knife and slashed one of her tires,” the publication stated, citing a Chicago Police Department (CPD) report.

Erenburg then allegedly broke the woman’s rear window and fled, but CPD was able to find and arrest him just minutes later when the victim identified him as the perpetrator.

The man was charged with misdemeanor criminal damage to property, and Judge William Fahy released him the next day.

According to court records obtained by CWBChicago, the grand jury charged Erenburg with one count of attempted murder and six counts of aggravated battery on January 17, “but he was never arrested to face the charges and failed to show up for his arraignment on January 31.”

The outlet went on to detail the discombobulated events that led to Erenburg being free to allegedly commit more violent crimes:

The judge rescheduled the hearing for February 14 and instructed the clerk of court to send Erenburg a postcard with the new date.

There is conflicting information about which judge issued the postcard order, but their handwritten notes say Erenburg was never notified of the January 31 date because he was in custody for a misdemeanor when the indictment came down. We could not locate any court law enforcement records showing Erenburg was in custody at that time.

Erenburg didn’t show up for the rescheduled hearing, either.

Erenburg then allegedly committed a second holiday attack — this time around 11:00 a.m. on Valentine’s Day, two hours after he was set to be in court.

When a couple walked past him at a bus stop in the 2800 block of West Diversey, prosecutors allege that Erenburg took the 28-year-old man’s skateboard, prompting him to snatch it back.

Erenburg escalated the situation by allegedly pulling out a hammer and a knife, miming a stabbing action at the woman, 25, but, instead, cutting her purse.

The woman then threw a cup at the perpetrator, prompting him to stab her, prosecutors said in a detention petition obtained by CWBChicago.

“The blade entered her chest and punctured her right lung,” the outlet reported. “Both victims ran to a gas station and called 911.”

CPD officers said they stopped Erenburg nearby, finding “several knives” in his possession. Investigators later found surveillance footage showing Erenburg disposing of a hammer in a trash can, prompting a search that recovered the hammer, as well as three more knives, from the bin.

The arrest report stated that Erenburg is affiliated with the Insane Deuces street gang.

Prosecutors then hit him with attempted first-degree murder, attempted armed robbery, attempted robbery, and aggravated battery causing great bodily harm.

Finally detained at the state’s request, Erenburg was taken to court Friday to face the December attempted murder case as well.

Source; Breitbart

Category: "Teh Stoopid", Crime, Police, Stupid Criminals