Crime

By Alan Gottlieb When the British newspaper the Telegraph asked readers which of six suggested measures they would like to see introduced in the House of Commons, the response was surprisingly tilted toward one significant proposal. Of the six suggestions, which included setting a flat tax and placing a term limit on the office of prime minister, what drew more than 86 percent of reader support was a proposal to repeal the handgun ban of 1997. This is an unscientific poll, but the results should signal to U.S. gun prohibitionists that their habitual use of the United Kingdom as an example of domestic tranquility where guns are concerned just took a direct hit in the credibility department.

USUALLY Tattle writes about actors and actresses who get famous doing movies or television. Actress/singer Joselyn Martinez may one day be famous for her work (she'll soon be seen in the Web series "Wives in the Heights"), but the New York Daily News reported her story yesterday because of her ability to solve a crime. And not just any crime. Joselyn, 36, tracked down the man who allegedly killed her father, Jose Martinez , 26 years ago. She then gave his address and phone number to police at New York's 34th Precinct.

NEVER AGAIN, said the feds, and they meant it. Never again will owner Rosalind Lavin nor the managers of her four personal-care centers in Philadelphia and Media allow more than 210 residents to live in what U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan called "appalling" conditions. Never again will Lavin or her managers allow residents to lie in vomit or feces for days, unattended. Never again will Lavin or her managers serve insufficient food to residents, like a slice of bologna and a piece of cheese between bread, and call it nutritious.

AW, SHUCKS! Child rape is not a capital crime. No state may execute for it. In a perfect world, all murderers, rapists, heroin-heads, etc., would be exterminated. Can you imagine? Lawful jurisprudence protecting the innocent instead of protecting the guilty and damning the innocent? Whew! Makes your head spin. M. Anthony Vare, Philadelphia

Re "If guns are the problem, why aren't Hispanic, Asian and white males killing each other?": First, the press reports more black-on-black crimes. Second, whites are so busy leaving the border open, killing people in schools, molesting in churches, kiddie porn, meth labs, political crimes. Maybe whites are killing whites in the suburbs. There is crime everywhere. Not just blacks - whites, Asians, Hispanics. And whites who run the White House are getting whites, blacks, Asians, Hispanics killed every day in a war that isn't necessary.

The next time John Street, Ron White or any other African-American cries race when investigated by the FBI or any other agency I would ask them to read page 47 of the Daily News on Tuesday, June 22. Maryland's former police superintendent Edward Norris, a white man, was sentenced to six months in prison for misusing thousands of dollars in police funds while he was Baltimore's Police Commissioner. Please spare everyone the race card when the indictments are served and remember crime and graft knows no color.

I AND A lot of others blame the system for these continous crimes. A suggestion: When criminals commit these horrible crimes with little or no fault of the victim, it really should be a stiff sentence. Jury duty never calls on me because I'll send the criminals to hell. Cissy Benjamin, Philadelphia

In taking a fresh look at the allegations of womanizing and sexual misconduct by former Warminster Police Chief Elmer P. Clawges, Bucks County District Attorney Alan M. Rubenstein has added fuel to the notion that this case is too hot to handle. A few weeks back, the D.A. said the former police chief's alleged conduct in one instance was "not only criminal, it is reprehensible and it's wrong. " The case involved a former township police clerk, Julie Beekman, who said the chief had sex with her regularly, beginning when she was 16. While he said he wanted to prosecute, Mr. Rubenstein said he was "absolutely barred by the statute of limitations.

Philadelphia Interfaith Action tried yesterday to present a fiddle to Commissioner Richard Neal at Police Headquarters, saying he and mayoral chief of staff David Cohen are fiddling while the city burns. The group cited a lack of response to rising crime and police scandal.

USUALLY Tattle writes about actors and actresses who get famous doing movies or television. Actress/singer Joselyn Martinez may one day be famous for her work (she'll soon be seen in the Web series "Wives in the Heights"), but the New York Daily News reported her story yesterday because of her ability to solve a crime. And not just any crime. Joselyn, 36, tracked down the man who allegedly killed her father, Jose Martinez , 26 years ago. She then gave his address and phone number to police at New York's 34th Precinct.

* MAJOR CRIMES. 9 tonight, TNT. * KING & MAXWELL. 10 tonight, TNT.   "ONE OF the nice things about me," Los Angeles Police Capt. Sharon Raydor (Mary McDonnell) tells a new assistant D.A. in tonight's season premiere of TNT's "Major Crimes," "is that when I'm really unhappy about something, people never have to ask. " The line's delivered in the beautifully modulated but very specific tone I've come to think of as Raydor's mom voice. And it's as much a part of McDonnell's character as the Southern accent that Kyra Sedgwick adopted was to Raydor's predecessor, Brenda Leigh Johnson, in "The Closer.

*  GRACELAND . 10 p.m. today, USA *  IN THE FLESH . 10 p.m. today, Friday and Saturday, BBC America   USA'S STILL the "blue skies" network, but sea and sun come at a price in its latest drama, "Graceland," which premieres tonight immediately after the final-season opener of "Burn Notice. " Loosely based on actual events involving a government-seized beachfront property used to house federal agents, "Graceland" stars Aaron Tveit ("Les Miserables") as Mike Warren, a rookie FBI agent who finds himself thrown into the deep end when he's assigned to live and work with undercover veteran Paul Briggs (Daniel Sunjata, "Rescue Me")

WASHINGTON - A sharply divided Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for police to take a DNA swab from anyone they arrest for a serious crime, endorsing a practice now followed by more than half the states as well as the federal government. The justices differed strikingly on how big a step that was. "Taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee DNA is, like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the court's five-justice majority.

Once in a while a crime story comes along that makes you smile. I'm talking about the jewelry thefts at the Cannes Film Festival, which to me are good, clean fun. After all, there's no murder or mayhem, which can be icky. I'm speaking, of course, as a crime writer. Anyway, to make a long story short, the Cannes Film Festival has a red carpet that cries out for young actresses to swan around in borrowed gowns and glittery diamonds. There was probably a time in the world when this was unusual, but nowadays there are red carpets, young actresses, and glittery diamonds appearing somewhere on a weekly basis, filmed for television shows that no one watches.

Whitey Bulger   America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice By Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy W.W. Norton & Co. 478 pp. $26.95 Whitey   The Life of America's Most Notorious Mob Boss By Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill Crown. 435 pp. $27 Reviewed by George Anastasia   It was supposed to be the FBI's "dream team," two high-level informants in position to provide chapter and verse about the workings of the Boston underworld.

WHEN Philadelphia put up its first surveillance cameras in 2008 to help police fight crime, a few civil libertarians squawked that the system smacked of Big Brother-like spying. But now it seems that being Big Brother has been a big bother for the city, because roughly two-thirds of the 202 cameras have fallen into disrepair, and the city weaseled out of its promise to repair them by early last fall, according to City Controller Alan Butkovitz. Mayor Nutter said that Butkovitz's findings, released in an audit yesterday, were wrong.

"Being Oscar: From Mob Lawyer to Mayor of Las Vegas - Only in America" (Weinstein Books), by Philadelphia native Oscar Goodman, with former Inquirer staff writer George Anastasia, arrived in bookstores Tuesday. This is the second of of two excerpts.   Chapter Ten IBM, NOT FBI The FBI and the New Jersey and Pennsylvania State Police had been building cases against the Philadelphia mob for a number of years, and it all came to a head in the mid-1980s. Two murder cases were pending in Philadelphia's Common Pleas Court, and a drug case and a racketeering case were pending in federal court.

LONDON - Seven men were convicted in London on Tuesday of sexually abusing underage girls, including one who was just 11, by plying them with alcohol and drugs before forcing them to commit sex acts. The guilty verdict followed five months of testimony indicating the pedophile sex ring exploited girls between 2004 and 2012 in the Oxford area, about 60 miles northwest of London. Charges include rape, trafficking, and child prostitution. The case follows several other high-profile ones of sex rings that took advantage of underage girls.

IN THE DARKNESS of night, the complaints were etched in chalk up and down the walkways of Swarthmore College, a 399-acre oasis of green quads and liberal student activism southwest of Philadelphia. "Welcome to Swarthmore," said one of the scribblings that recently confronted students - and administrators - when the sun rose. "Home of my rapist. " The so-called chalkings, which infuriated Swarthmore's president, were a turning point in a controversy that has rattled one of America's top-ranked liberal-arts schools.