What is it about razor blades and food? Is this, like, the ultimate scary thing we can think to do to someone? Is it an American tradition? I ask because of this story on Deseretnews.com. A couple complained that they found pieces of a razor blade in some doughnuts they bought at a Smith’s Food Store in Draper, Utah. A co-worker of theirs also bit into one of these pastries. They reported this to police, but police said the couple’s story didn’t add up (criminals rarely are
New concoctions prove legalizing drugs won't end crime People who want to get legally high and who think alcohol (or in certain states, marijuana) is just too old fashioned and boring, have entered a sort of cat-and-mouse game with state legislatures. As soon as those august lawmaking bodies pass restrictions against some new mind-bending substance, people who make those substances just change the chemicals up a bit. The problem is, they often make a dangerous substance even worse. Read this Deseret News story to get an idea of what’s happening. Several years ago, young people in Utah and elsewhere started getting high with substances called “spice” or with bath salts or, believe it or not, good old-fashioned nutmeg, which can be smoked or consumed, as the experts say, to excess. The Utah Legislature, for instance, outlawed
As an old saying goes, anyone who knows all the answers likely has misunderstood the question. Or, as Richard Nixon famously said, “Solutions are not the answer.” And yet, when it comes to mass murdering maniacs, we are ever searching for the quick fix. I haven’t been to Spring City, but I’m guessing not too many folks there are fans of Obamacare and
If you want to avoid crime, move someplace far away from criminals. You might consider this common sense, but think about it for a moment. If you were a criminal, wouldn’t you want to work someplace far away, where your victims might be less likely to recognize you? But then, if criminals were generally intelligent people, this world would be a lot more dangerous than it already is. Now we have some interesting evidence of this. This interesting report on journalistsresource.org, of a study by researchers at Loyola University of Chicago and the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, looks closely at how criminals behave. The study covered the years 1996-98, and was confined to the Chicago area, but it’s probably representative of criminals most anywhere.
Even if a lot of people like a thrill or two around Halloween, the phone call our family received recently was the kind of scare no one wants. It was our bank telling us about some unusual transactions on our debit card account, several thousand miles from anywhere we had been lately. We were lucky. Our bank caught the problem quickly and the losses to some East coast merchant were minimal. Once we have finished disputing the purchases and receive our new card we probably won’t lose a cent. It would be accurate to say this experience was a wake-up call. It’s much harder to say we
When Salt Lake Police Chief Chris Burbank held a press conference recently to apologize to a 76-year-old woman whose house his officers busted into by mistake, it raised feelings of horror, along with a host of questions. How could police have gotten the location of suspected drug dealers so wrong? How can the department really ever make up for the trauma it caused a woman after violating the sanctity of her home? How seriously did they compromise their investigation into the real bad guys? These are good questions, but they have to be weighed against the extreme danger police face while investigating drug crimes, which themselves present an extreme hazard to public safety.
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The author
Jay Evensen is the Senior Editorial Columnist of the Deseret News. He has nearly 40 years experience as a reporter, editor and editorial writer in Oklahoma, New York City, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. He also has been an adjunct journalism professor at Brigham Young and Weber State universities. Archives
November 2023
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