The official website of investigative reporter author and investigative reporter Diane Dimond
Best Way to Curb Youth Crime - Get to 'Em Early
This time let’s concentrate on the positive.
Any child psychologist will tell you young people crave attention, structure and discipline. Any cop on the beat will tell you there are plenty of kids who just don’t get it at home. Their parents are either too busy working to pay the bills or their parents can’t pass it on because they never got it themselves. [click to continue…]
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Time to Re-Think?
Until I’m not.
Mention a criminal who has sexually abused or murdered a child and I waver. Show me a terrorist who wants to kill Americans because we don’t share his religion and I vacillate. Catch a stone cold cop killer and I think if we don’t punish the murderer to the fullest we allow the very fabric of our nation’s security to unravel.
Yet, with all that said, there seems to be a built in contradiction to killing a killer, don’t you think? [click to continue…]
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Mom takes me to Sunday School
Let’s just say my long ago Sunday School lessons often went in one ear and out the other. But one passage from Matthew 6:3 always stuck with me, “…When you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing…”
I remember that saying confused me as a child. How could a part of your body not know what another part was doing?
As I got older I began to interpret the passage to mean when you give to those less fortunate do it quietly and with humility. To brag about your charity negates it somehow.
Every New Year I try to think of something more I can do to give back to the crime and justice community that fascinates me so. Almost always it comes around to what can be done for the most innocent victims – children – who through no action of their own are thrown into lifelong turmoil by the adults in their lives.
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President Obama Pardons "Courage"
Since the early 80’s Daniel Joseph Portley-Hanks has conducted undercover investigations for our government, specifically the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Along with his private investigation partner, the late Fred Valis, Hanks helped the feds crack a multitude of major cases that put away dozens of career criminals. [click to continue…]
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Words Matter - Words Hurt
Has the internet made us more vicious? I ask because it sure seems to me that we are quickly becoming a people who have forgotten how to empathize with others. With our computer anonymity many of us have decided we can “say” things over the World Wide Web that we would never ever say to someone’s face. Cruel comments can be lobbed without personal risk so we send them out like invisible hand grenades, set to explode when opened.
Read some of the remarks others leave behind at your favorite news web site. [click to continue…]
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An Autopsy on the Media Coverage
I took some time off my regular schedule to write a book. It’s all about how we as a society have abrogated our opinion-making and handed it over to whatever media we follow.
For some people these days it takes too much time and effort to engage in critical thinking. But what if the media is just playing follow the leader – parroting each other and not really checking out the facts? It happens all the time and now more than ever we need to use our common sense to help lead us to the truth.
My new book is about the couple the media branded “The White House Gate Crashers,” Michaele and Tareq Salahi. The name of it is “Cirque Du Salahi – Be Careful Who You Trust” and I don’t mention it here as just a shameless plug for my own work. I mention is because Cirque – or circus – perfectly describes the information superhighway traveling into our homes every minute of every day. It has become a circus of truths, half-truthful exaggerations and downright lies.
Many of us gobble it up without stopping to think what we’re digesting. [click to continue…]
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Think Outside the Box And Speak Up!
These columns are designed to get readers to think outside the box on issues of crime and justice, to ponder new possibilities for dealing with crime and to meet new people you might otherwise never come in contact with.
Some of my columns elicit kind words, some spark angry comments and still others introduce me to people who amaze me.
On my column about Tiger Woods being in a cage of his own making, reader Karen Kennemer wrote, “Its time there was some outrage over the behavior of our “celebrities”… it’s time to stop worshiping the ground they walk on. We have to stop idolizing the people who entertain us.” [click to continue…]
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Gina Gentile (L), Vanessa Dorwart (R)
I needed to get from New York to Washington, D.C. for a business meeting but a massive snow storm was set to slam into the Northeast. I thought the meeting would be canceled. It wasn’t, so a trip aboard Amtrak’s high speed Acela train seemed the best bet.
As two colleagues and I were strategizing we felt a bump and heard a cracking sound. There were murmurs of, “We must have hit a patch of ice,” and “I think it was a big tree branch on the track.” Then the train stopped dead.
There we sat for two hours in Norwood, Pennsylvania watching the snow fall outside our windows. [click to continue…]
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Contaminated Feed, Contaminated Beef
My husband says I worry too much. Naturally, I don’t agree. But there I was at the grocery store the other day and my mind began to work overtime.
Given the nature of the work I do – writing about crime and justice – I admit my brain doesn’t necessarily think like other people’s brains.
As I went about spending $271.52, which took a while, I noticed an unattended child in the cookie aisle. Fast as a cat he opened a bag, snatched a cookie and shoved it in his mouth. He then expertly sealed up the package again lickedy-split. No one was the wiser except for me.
In retrospect I think I should have stopped the boy, demanded he take me to his mother, been part of the ‘village’ that it takes to raise our children correctly. Honestly, there just wasn’t time, he was that fast.
The kid’s actions left me with the feeling that terrorist attacks on our food supply could also happen that fast. [click to continue…]
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Blind to our needs?
Get your heads out of the rule book and think about the human consequences of what you do! Think about how your actions impact the feelings of your fellow Americans.
Look, I’m all for practicing crime fighting skills – practice makes perfect, I’d say. But what bureaucratic moron thought it was appropriate to stage a mock Coast Guard drill in the Potomac River at the same time the president of the United States was leading a solemn September 11th commemoration ceremony for mourners a short distance away?
The Coast Guard didn’t warn anyone … [click to continue…]
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