Tag: trench reynolds

  • Trench in the Security Executive press

    Mr. Safety Keeps Watch on MySpace Security:

    This is an excellent article by Sarah D. Scalet for CSO Online about MySpace’s CSO Hemanshu Nigam and the job he’s been doing since he was hired.

    Yours truly happened to be interviewed for the article as well. I think that Mr. Nigam is doing the best job possible but his hands are tied with the nature of the internet…

    Still, the reports of unsavory characters on the site continue, as attested by a quick visit to the crowded MyCrimeSpace.com, which tracks crimes related to MySpace and other social networking sites. “I don’t think whatever security measures [Nigam] put in place are being all that effective,” says Trench Reynolds, the nom de blog of the North Carolina dad and “9 to 5-er” who runs the site in his spare time. “MySpace can only do so much on their end of things. Parents need to do a better job monitoring their kids’ activities.”

    Thanks again to Ms. Scalet for taking the time out to interview me.

  • On page 42 of the Rolling Stone

    On page 42 of the Rolling Stone

    Yes, it’s true. If you haven’t heard by now, yours truly was interviewed by Sean Woods of Rolling Stone Magazine, and the interview is in the current issue with Borat on the cover.

    It tells the story of how I got started doing this and of my brush with Kimveer Gill. It really is an interesting read, and I’m not saying that just because I’m the subject.

    Mr. Woods also gives a list of what he calls the best crime blogs on the net, including MyCrimeSpace, Steve Huff’s CrimeBlog.us, Mark Gribben’s The Malefactor’s Register, and Kim Cooper’s, Larry Harnisch’s, and Nathan Marsak’s 1947project.

    Steve Huff also gave mention to some of his favorite crime blogs that he felt deserved attention. I’m going to add some more to both of those lists…

    T.O. Crime

    We here in the states are pretty much ignorant of the crime going on in other countries, and we’ve kind of gotten the impression that our friendly neighbors to the north are virtually crime free. Not so says our good friend Harding, who focuses and writes very eloquently about crime in Toronto.

    Crime in Charlotte

    This blog is about the crime happenings in my own town of Charlotte, North Carolina. It is written by a woman who was the victim of crime herself and who is very frustrated about the revolving door policy of the local courts. The Recent Arrests feature, complete with mugshots and arrest records, is my favorite.

    Parents Behaving Badly

    By one of the masters of blogging himself, Jay Allen. This blog focuses on some of the stupid and sometimes downright evil acts parents can perpetrate on their children.

    Bonnie’s Blog of Crime

    Bonnie is a virtual pack rat when it comes to crime news. When a crime story breaks that piques her interest, you can bet that she’ll have all the links you’ll need for that crime.

    Now, this isn’t to say that any of the other blogs on the blogroll are any better or worse. As a matter of fact, all the blogs on the true crime blogroll are worth reading.

    Here are some other mentions about the article:

    1947project

    Media Bistro

    The Rap Sheet.

  • Playing it big

    Playing it big

    In school killings, journalists have duty to report, must fight danger to sensationalize:

    This is a great article by American University journalism student Max Ringsgwandl. And I’m not just saying that because he interviewed me for the article.

    Max’s article explores the roles and actions of mainstream media when it comes to school shootings. It should be a must-read for all “professional” journalists.

  • More on Kimveer Gill posting here

    More on Kimveer Gill posting here

    Postings sympathized with school shooters:

    This is nothing that I haven’t already posted about. Just an interview I did with the Montreal Gazette about Kimveer Gill leaving comments on my site.

  • Kimveer Gill was here

    Kimveer Gill was here

    I was going back over Steve Huff’s entry on Kimveer Gill seeing what comments he was getting. Steve had updated his entry and I read something that made my heart drop…

    UPDATE, 5:52 p.m. EDT

    Kimveer Gill, as you might expect, didn’t just start aping the style and mannerisms of past psychos like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. He probably had been going down the deadly road he was on for quite some time.

    To my surprise, I found posts by Gill (and at this point, for all I know, others have already found these as well — this story promises to be very heavily covered by everyone because the guy had an online journal) on the Usenet.

    Gill used the Yahoo address rogue_warrior_50@yahoo.ca, and in November of 2005, he posted to this newsgroup: http://groups.google.com/group/aps-global-solutions/.

    I knew that e-mail address well. rogue_warrior_50@yahoo.ca had left comments on this very site. I understand that you’re skeptical. I would be, too. Let me provide some photographic proof for you. This is a picture of my blog’s control panel…

    He went by the name Rogue and left the following comments…

    On an entry about Christopher Penley, the Florida teen who was shot and killed at his school for brandishing a pellet gun at police, entitled “Was lethal force justified?” Gill left this comment

    The police used extreme force. It’s completely unacceptable. The Rebel was moving the gun in all directions, very fast. He didn’t once point, steady, stance and aim it. He was just swinging it around. And everyone knows you can’t kill someone like that, if you’re moving it around, at the sky, and whatever. No shots were fired by the young Rebel, he didn’t even hurt anyone.

    That cop is a coward. He was attacked earlier in his life. And ever since that he has become paranoid, and scared. Like a girl after she gets raped. Afraid of everything and everyone. The police had been told earlier that it wasn’t even a real gun. They didn’t even mention that on T.V.

    The police kill another innocent person

    This comment was left on an entry about a high school murder plot

    I don’t understand what’s wrong with this country. Two schoolgirls were playing around, joking if you will, and now they’re going to go to jail, just for a joke.

    When I was in High School people would say they were going to kill each other all the time, no one got in trouble.

    Why have the masses on this earth turned into cowards?
    Where are the warriors

    This comment on an entry about a teen who made a threat that he was going to use a pitchfork in a school attack…

    A student at school makes a joke, and the police spend all their resources to stop him. “A little joke”

    The young lad was just letting off some steam. Give him a break. Come on, where’s your sense of humour?

    Nobody goes on a killing spree with a pitchfork.

    The country is full of child molesters, priests, rapists, and child molesting priests. Can we perhaps take them off the streets before spending all law enforcement resources on a teenager’s prank.

    You people make me sick

    This comment on an entry about a Florida teen that threatened to shoot up his school

    Poor Christopher
    He did nothing wrong
    Commit no crime

    And now they’ve sent him to prison
    It’s just not right
    Well at least we can rest easy that this young lad will be free and back to his old tricks in a few short months

    Here’s hopin’

    This comment on an entry about a teen from Michigan who got in trouble for printing out a bomb threat on his school computer…

    I can’t believe the school would over-react like that. Children at school can’t even joke around anymore. And for the police to go along with this, I mean, come on…..this is shocking.

    They’re slowly turning the country into a police state

    My friends and I have said things like that at when we were still in school, and we never thought we would go to jail for it. I don’t understand what kind of society this is. I thought we had freedom of speech.

    IT’S JUST A JOKE PEOPLE, DAMN…..

    This comment on my first post about the Riverton, Kansas school shooting plot

    I had a feeling someone was going to try to do something like this on the 20th of this month. The cops got it all wrong. They wern’t going to do it for real. They’re just kids having a little fun. I hope the pigs don’t actually give them a fine or 2 weeks in jail, cuz’ that would be an injustice.

    If they were really going to do this, they would not be posting messages on MySpace and telling people in their school about it.

    I can’t believe the police have nothing better to do than waste tax payers money on stuff like this. I mean come on now……Boys will be boys

    This comment on an entry about a threat made by a student that he claimed was a joke

    Why would the student face disciplinary action?

    It’s just a joke……we’re sending our kids to jail, and ruining their lives over silly childhood pranks

    The governments really going over board here

    It’s time to take the power back

    This comment on an entry about a Washington State teen who was arrested for planning his own school shooting plot

    How can the police arrest this young rebel, and send him to jail? He hasn’t done anything wrong. Many teenagers feel isolated and alone, and for such a reason they may create an imaginary reality within their own mind, such as shooting people.

    If he was really going to kill alot of people then he wouldn’t be telling people he was going to do it. It’s just common sense. I believe he just wanted a little attention, nothing more.

    Lets hope he gets outta jail soon, and the police give him back the guns the seized

    For that comment, I banned him from leaving comments on my site.

    The last time I heard from him was from an e-mail he sent me, which you can see here.

    (UPDATE 7/1/2012: Some of the entries that Gill commented on have since been deleted from the site. However, I have created a standalone blog called Gill Was Here that has all his postings from my site.)

  • What would we do without experts?

    What would we do without experts?

    School shooters resist telltale patterns:

    I did a phone interview with The Globe and Mail last night about the Dawson College shooting. It was done before we knew anything concrete about the situation. I’m not making excuses, just setting the time frame because I still stand behind what I said…

    Trench Reynolds, the pseudonym of a Charlotte, N.C., man who runs a website devoted to school shootings, concluded from early reports that the Dawson rampage was another in a long line of copycat incidents that have followed the 1999 shooting at Columbine in which two students killed 12 fellow students and a teacher.

    “To me, it sounds like a copycat almost to a T,” he said.

    At the time, I meant the media reports reminded me of Columbine with the unconfirmed reports going out. However, knowing what we know now, I still stand behind my statement that Kimveer Gill was emulating Columbine in someway. The experts disagree…

    But analysts say it would be a mistake to draw conclusions based on the gunman’s appearance.

    “When you see something like a mohawk or a piercing, that is not a predictive behaviour of anything violent,” said Michael Hoechsmann, a McGill University educational psychologist. “I think it’s a dubious proposition to draw too many parallels to something that is unfolding right now.”

    University of Toronto education professor Kathy Bickmore agreed. “It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that there’s a parallel in particular to Columbine,” she said, referring to the gunman’s trench coat. “But it’s not uncommon enough clothing for me to say that has anything to do with it.”

    O RLY?..ahem…I mean, oh, really? I’m not basing this on a particular article of clothing but more of a subculture. For the most part, since Columbine, school shooters and would be shooters have been considered at some point goth, metal, punk, etc. They feel excluded because of their choice of music and dress. They sympathize with the Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold over their mythical status of being heroes to the outcasts and bullied, even though Harris and Klebold were neither, in my opinion.

    “There is no real type,” said James Sheptycki, a criminologist at York University in Toronto. “Any psychological profile that people could come up with would identify too many individuals to actually be useful and wouldn’t necessarily fit all potential perpetrators. There simply isn’t a profile that works.”

    Maybe not all perpetrators, but I think there’s a profile for most of them. Now I’m not saying all goths, punks, and metalheads, are potential school shooters. Just the ones that have a fascination or obsession with a certain Colorado school shooting.

    Again thanks to Harding for the article.

  • Trench in TIME

    Trench in TIME

    The Thin Blue Line at MySpace:

    How’s your Memorial Day? Mine is kicking ass. Why, you ask? Well, in case you didn’t click the link, yours truly has made the pages of Time Magazine. I haven’t read the entire article myself, but so far, it looks promising. So be sure to pick up the June 6th issue of Time.

  • A story of the south

    A story of the south

    I love living in the south, but the locals know next to nothing about good pizza. They prefer The Hut to most anything else.

    However, a few years ago, some guys from Brooklyn opened a real pizza parlor in my town. I was in there about a year ago when I was waiting in line to pick up my pizzas.

    The guy behind the counter said to a female customer in front of me, “Ok, here are your pies.” The woman said “I didn’t order pies. I ordered pizza.”

    I about fell over trying not to laugh in this woman’s face.

  • Gas Panic

    Gas Panic

    This is the first time and last time you’ll see me talking about gas prices, unless to tell you what some assclown did because of it.

    Now I’m sure this is going on all over the south tonight, but I specifically want to address the people of Charlotte, NC and the surrounding areas who rushed to the gas pumps today because of the downed pipelines in Louisiana…

    *ahem*

    You’re all a bunch of fucking idiots.

    You all panicked, thinking the area was going to run out of gas. So what do you do? You rush to the gas pumps to quicken the depletion. Did you ever think to conserve gas? How about driving less? Maybe not using your car’s air conditioner. No, you didn’t. You bought into the fucking hype. And I really wonder how many of you had an actual urgent need for gas and how many of you still had 3/4 of a tank.

    If Charlotte runs out of gas, it’s your fault.

    Assclowns.