To Catch a Book Thief

ALBANY, N.Y. - It's official. I will be attending Beijing's Tsinghua University this spring for language classes.

In preparation for attending the "MIT of China," I've been spending time acquainting myself with the library's rules of operation.

The library closes six days a week promptly at 9:50 p.m. The library has only seven rules, but the Web site sternly reminders users, that "offenders are subject to criticism, admonition and even punishment."

Policies are further explained in a question-and-answer section of the Web site.My favorite is the response to the question, "What happens to a book thief?":

"Book theft will be reported to the university, and be seriously punished with corresponding disciplines. Taking books out of circulation desks or reading rooms without checking out will be regarded as attempted theft."

Sounds serious. I'll be sure to check out any books I take from the library.

The Capture of Jiang Zhendong

WICHITA, Kan. - At 8 p.m. on December 19th, Wang Donghong picked up the phone at Central China Television's Beijing office.

The caller, a man, didn't immediately reveal his reason for calling. He would only admit that, "When I see a police car or hear a police siren, I get very afraid," and that he was involved in a crime.

Wang pressed for more, but the man didn't give any additional information. She gave him her cell phone number, and the next day he called the studio.

"My name is Jiang Zhendong," he said. "I am from Funing county, Qinhuangdao city. I committed a crime in Tangshan."

Jiang wanted to surrender, and for Wang to accompany him when the time was right. They agreed on December 20 in Beijing.

When Jiang arrived at the studio, police were in place on the floor above the interview room. But Jiang was having second thoughts. He thought he might not turn himself in after all. What he didn't know was that the news crew had already made the decision for him.

"Ultimately, Jiang Zhendong was not especially clear about surrendering. On the other hand, we cannot let a known wanted criminal just walk right out. Therefore, we still needed to notify the police. As soon as the police are involved, everything has to follow the judicial process. Therefore the police gave Jiang Zhendong a lot of time to think about what he wanted to do," said producer Fu Liaojun.

Halfway through a catered lunch with his mother, the police escorted Jiang out of the building. He is now police custody, facing an unknown sentence for economic crimes.

Xu Youyu, a Chinese academic, disagreed with the reporter's action. He believed Wang erred by notifying the police about this man's crime. The decision to surrender is Jiang's alone, and Wang broke her journalistic responsibilities by informing the police. Here are a couple of answers from an interview Xu gave with the Chinese magazine yWeekend in response to the case:


Q: What do you think the reporter should have done?
A: She should not tell her supervisor, and she should definitely not tell the police. I believe that she ought to find some personal friends who can give her advice. At the very least, she ought to feel that it was painful and immoral to inform her supervisor and the police.

Q: But this reporter received a call to the program unit during office hours. It was not a personal telephone call. Should she inform her supervisor and the police?
A: (brief silent pause) I am going to insist on my viewpoint. Even if she was at work, she is not a machine spare part. She is human above all, and so she ought to heed the call of morality. Perhaps my viewpoint is extreme. But I am worried that they made sure that many fugitives who might have wanted to talk will choose to continue to remain in flight because they are afraid of being turned in.


A criminal wants to turn himself in for a crime. Should the reporter involved notify the police?

This would be a tricky situation no matter the country. Is the reporter just an observer, or are there times when he or she become part of the events unfolding around them?

***

Dawn on the second day of the Kansas autumn arrived under clear skies. The sun rose parallel to the eastbound lane of Kellogg Drive, Wichita's main traffic artery. I saw the rays through my rear view mirror, speeding at 67 mph towards a stand-off in the suburb of Maize.

I arrived 10 hours in to find a pile of weary Maize residents hunched against a fence near a street corner. Blocking their entrance were half a dozen police cars and a Salvation Army van. These people told me, drooping eyes testament to a night without sleep, how they'd been cleared out of their homes around dinnertime by police, who said a neighbor barricaded himself inside a nearby house and claimed to have explosives. They had to leave right away, unsure of when they'd be back.

The Salvation Army arrived soon after the standoff began, offering food, hot drinks and hotel vouchers. Few took the vouchers, sure that they would be back inside long before daybreak. Nearly half a day later, it looked as if vouchers would have been the smart option.

Three hours later, it appeared as if I might be wasting my time as well. I had little to report back to the office for several hours on the scene. A stern police officer blocked my approach to any of the negotiators, and all anyone else at the scene had was constant but false rumors that the standoff would soon end.

I crossed the street where the police cars gathered and sat down on the sidewalk. I took out my breakfast - a mostly crushed bag of Chex - and started to eat.

"Hey. Excuse me," a voice said from a white SUV parked just up the road. It belonged to a woman, in her early 30s, with bleached blond hair messily arranged in a ponytail. She wore a white T-shirt with a faded design on it, and a mostly smoked cigarette sat in her right hand.

"Do you have a cell phone charger? I really need to make a phone call. It's urgent."

I did have a cell charger, but we quickly realized that my ancient phone wasn't compatible with her model.

I stood there, apologizing, when the woman started unloading her story: She was the girlfriend of the man inside the neighborhood. He had a couple warrants against him, but he was a good person. Now the police surrounded the house of another friend, guns trained at the man she loved.

Her phone rang. The conversation was short, her battery was almost dead.

"He says he's going to turn himself in." She looked up at me, tears forming in face, "No, no, no, No! NO! NO!"

I rushed over to the neighborhood's entrance, trying to see the action that was about to unfold. I couldn't. The only media who witnessed the surrender was one of the local television stations, which raised a camera to the top of their truck's transmission tower. My editor, watching back in the newsroom, saw the man leave his home peacefully, wearing no shirt or guns, and be swarmed by over a dozen police officers.

A police captain walked through the barricade and fielded questions from the standoff. Who was this man? We don't know, we know he didn't live at the house, he said. Are other people involved?

"We know that the man was talking to people inside the home," he said. "We'd like to talk to those people."

During the press conference, two police officers went over to the white SUV and escorted the woman away.

Back in the newsroom, I wondered if I should have gone to the police when I first met the girlfriend. The police would have wanted speak with her, and trained negotiators might have been able to end the standoff sooner.

But I'm a journalist, not an agent of the police, and that's why I believe I made the right decision in holding back. I can report the actions of suspected criminals and their associates without turning them into the police. Criminals should be captured by the police or turn themselves in out of their own free will, not because they decided to tell their story to a journalist.

Wang Donghong's decision to interview the Jiang Zhendong was a good one, even more commendable because it took place in China. And since Jiang hinted that he wanted to turn himself in, bringing the police to the station was also a good idea.

I admire Wang's careful balance of duty to her audience and her legal responsibilities. As I know, the decision can be difficult.

(The facts and quotes of Jiang's case presented here are based on EastSouthWestNorth's translation of the yWeekend article.)

Currency Fraud

ALBANY, N.Y. - Mail workers are associated with crime, crimes of passion or frustration that have entered the lexicon as "going postal." The felonies committed when "going postal" can be myriad, but I'm not sure they are assumed to include money laundering.

My life of crime began yesterday at the Albany regional post office, which processes packages in the area. I came here since I needed my parcel to arrive in Beijing as soon as possible. If it doesn’t arrive by Tuesday, I might not get into language school.

I waited in a lengthy line, filled with people breaking up their afternoon commute to send out holiday thank you notes. At the designated “Next!” I went to the open counter and spread out the contents of my shoulder bag: the two-page application for Beijing Normal University, an express mailing envelope, a customs form and 450 Chinese Renminbi. I asked the cashier if I'd completed the form correctly.

"You can't send money to China," he said.

"What do you mean?"

He turned a computer screen to the left so I could see it. It showed a page on the company's internal server, with a list of banned items sent to China. Currency was at the top of the list.

"What I am supposed do to?" I said, voice rising. "I went through considerable machinations to get this money. This is what the university wanted. I need to send it to Beijing."

The man lowered his voice. There’s another way, he said. As a federal employee, he couldn’t accept the package because he saw the money. But if hypothetically someone came into the post office with a package to China already closed, he wouldn't open it. And if they placed "University Documents" on the package, he wouldn't ask what was inside. It would just be sent, fast post.

Why he’d do it? The man offered one possible explanation: he'd been to China. He understood the mindless regulation and confusion in the country.

As I walked away from the counter, the man continued to offer words of advice.

"Take food! It's nothing like what we have here! Completely different!"

I don't want to convict myself in print, but the next day I mailed the package. I took the contents of the envelope up to the cashier sealed.

The White Elephant in the Newsroom

WICHITA, Kan. – Today marks the end of an era. Dennis Rader, the BTK Strangler, has agreed not to appeal his conviction in 10 killings during the 1970s and 1980s.

Rader is Wichita's most famous citizen – certainly more people have heard of him than Wyatt Erapp or Kristie Alley (who recently bought property here). His string of murders were terrifying. He stalked young women for weeks and then killed them in their homes. His crime spree went unsolved for years, and generations of young women here didn't know if they would be the next victim.

BTK was captured in 2004 after a dramatic reappearance. He turned out to be Rader, a respectable citizen in nearby Park City. He had a Boy Scout troop. He attended church. Many he came back because he had more time with his children finishing high school.

I knew the basic outline of the case before I arrived here. What I didn't realize was the central role the Eagle played in the drama. Many letters and notices were addressed to the Eagle.

Some of the paper's most talented writers haven't been available this summer because they're busy writing a book on BTK. Their deadline is steadily approaching – October 1 for the final manuscript – and it doesn't seem like the right to ask them to sit back and reminisce. The book, after all, will be available next spring.

Slowly though, stories have trickled out. About the time CNN gave several interviews from the desk where I now sit. The psychic who came here to film a British documentary to crack the case.

I interviewed BTK's pastor for an unrelated story about a missing dog (Don't laugh: that story ran on the front page).

BTK was the biggest story ever to come out of WIchita. It is the biggest story most people in the newsroom will ever cover. It's hard to imagine the newsroom when it was so consumed with this one giant story – terrifying and compelling in equal measure. It's not something I've ever seen in a newsroom, and it's not something I'll necessarily ever see, either. The closest I can get is the occasional stories from the people who worked the case.

When a reporter confirmed the news that Rader is not appealing, a strange mood came over the Crime & Safety section of the newsroom where I now sit.

"This is it, isn't it?" I said.

"Yes, I hope so," a reporter said. "He was a terrible, terrible person."

He still is.

Parking Lot Pimpin'

WICHITA, Kan. – For me, an ideal Saturday would be dinner at a trendy restaurant, a drink at a fun bar, a few more at a good club and then some greasy late night snack before crashing at an ungodly hour of the morning. For some people in Wichita, it's a trip to an empty piece of pavement, where they pop their hood, roll down the window and blast some music.

I live across the street (different street than the recent armed robbery) from Kansas' largest flea market. Two days a week, this lot fills halfway with people from the surrounding towns, buying cut-rate used books, jewelry and faux-folk crafts at not terribly good prices. If a strongly-accented caller to my desk a couple weeks back is to believed, they also aren't paying sales tax.

The building's day function doesn't concern me. What does is on Friday and Saturday nights, when dozens of cars return to the lot. They are teenagers mostly, although some are well into their 20s. It starts around 10, and I've seen them there at 3 or 4, when I return from a night out. They play music, sometimes shout at each other, but mostly stand around.

Their scene – I use that term loosely – is impenetrable. Even though these people are roughly my age, they way they point their cars toward each other isn't welcoming. When I pass by them on a late night drunk run to QuikTrip, they don't beckon me over with a wave. Instead they glare, wondering why I am on their piece of pavement.

Now comes news that elsewhere in town, these armies of parking lot vagrants are causing trouble. In Wichita's northeast quarter, a group of nearly 900 people assembled in the Kenmar strip mall parking lot. At around 3 a.m., someone opened fire into the crowd, getting off nearly a dozen shots before disappearing ahead of the police. No one was arrested, and police are now patrolling the area. (One of the Eagle's reporters wrote an excellent article on the situation, which appears in today's paper.)

It should come as no surprise that 1,000 people + alcohol + gang affiliations + Late Nights sometimes equals violence. But I'm not sure whether the police should take any action about the people hanging out in the flea market parking lot. Although I don't think their gatherings seem particularly exciting or welcoming, that doesn't mean they don't have the right to do it.

So parking lot people, you're welcome to your post. Maybe someday you'll find something better to do.

Dispatch from the Other Side

WICHITA, Kan. – Crime has a way of happening right around meal time.

Seconds after I walked back into the newsroom after a tasty sandwich, a call came over the scanner. People were being arrested! Near a school! Many of them! I was on my way, still digesting as I drove my car down Douglas Avenue.

I arrived. Hundreds of students were on the front lawn, playing hackey sack, soccer, chatting on cell phones and just looking aimlessly off into space. In front of the school were the cops: at least six cars, with red-and-blue lights still flashing. Inside many of the cars were teenage boys looking aimlessly into space.

These must be the suspects. These cops were the ones who did the arrests. Now all I needed was someone to tell me those very facts. I went up to a low ranking officer. She was friendly, but told me to wait over on the sidewalk. Not just the sidewalk in general but one tiny square of the sidewalk. It felt like I was the one back in high school.

Then Susan entered my square. She looked in my the eye, shook my hand, and asked me who I was. Right then I knew she was a PR person. Only PR people care about who you are at events like these, and that's because they want to control you. Susan was well put together, as PR people tend to be. In her middle 40s, with dirty blonde hair pushed by into a ponytail, her look was confident, but not too confident, a kind of casual that takes work to pull off. It exudes trust.

The policeman, who I needed to talk to, was taking his time making the statement. He seemed to be more interested in walking between each of the six police cars and seeing if anyone had snuck out. ("Nope? Better go check the first one then.") I decided to put my time on the sidewalk square to good use, and interview Susan, not about the arrests, but her career.

Do PR people make a lot of money? Well, no that much, but more than journalists.

Why'd you leave journalism? Too much time at the office, and as a TV producer, I never got to leave. We had to do all the work, got none of the credit, and still took the blame.

Is PR easy? I still work long hours. This arrest is killing me. I'm going to have to come tomorrow to finish this (On Saturday really? Yes - really.) But we get spring break off every year. That's nice.

Should I stay in journalism?

Before she could answer that one, the officer came over and answered my questions about the crime. Or he told me that yes, those were people that were arrested, and that yes, they were arrested by police officers. And I went back to the office, mostly digested and definitely not a PR person.

The Phone Call I Had To Make

WICHITA, Kan. – Being a journalist means doing uncomfortable things.

We have to stand around as a criminal comes out of a courtroom, badgering him with questions when all he or she wants to do is see their family. We have to rush to the scene of a crime, hoping to see someone arrested. We also will stand outside an event, seeing if anything goes wrong.

Our obligation to cover the news means that we have to do these things, but as a journalist, I can tell you that there are plenty of other things that I'd rather be doing. Like drinking a beer.

Today I had to do something very unpleasant. I was covering a big story. A man murdered his girlfriend and a friend before shooting himself while the police looked on. It was incredibly graphic. I'm glad I didn't see any of the pictures the police took on the scene. It was definitely the most graphic crime that's happened here for months.

I spent the first few hours gathering information from the police. Then I turned to the extensive criminal history of the now deceased criminal. It was very large, including 46 violations inside jail. The next thing to do was talk to the other people involved. While a colleague when to the scene of the crime, I got out the phone book. I wanted to speak to the victim's families, to see if they knew anything.

This is an incredibly painful time for the families. They just found out their young children were unexpectedly murdered. I really, really, really didn't want to bother them, but I would be derelict in my duties if I did not. I picked up the phone and dialed. On the third ring, a woman answered. She wouldn't give her name, only idenifying herself as a family member. I'm pretty sure it was the young woman's mother.

"I think the media knows more about it than we do at this point."

A pause.

"We saw her... off-and-on."

Another pause.

"Her family loved her very much. And I think that's about the extent of our comment."

And then she hung up.
I thanked her and said I was sorry for her loss. I really was.

The Sound of a Gun

WICHITA, Kan. -- Until 24 hours ago, I'd never heard the sound of bullets leaving a handgun.

I've lived a pretty sheltered life. The places I've lived, Boston, Albany and Hong Kong, primarily, are all pretty safe, especially in the areas of town that I was living in. Wichita, as I've written before, is different.

Yesterday I had a wonderful evening out in Wichita. There's a local bar that screens old movies outside in the summer, so some colleagues and I went over after work for a couple drinks and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I returned slightly after midnight, and was typing a quick entry for this blog when I heard a loud bang. It came from the north, but sounded really close and echoed. Closely behind that first noise were four more.

I hit the deck - or at least jumped off the couch and onto the floor. My apartment's small, and there's precious few places to hide. I wished for a hidden annex and/or a root cellar. But I had none. I wasn't sure what the noises were, but it didn't sound terribly good.

I grabbed my handy book -- still reading Paul Theroux, by the way -- and spent 20 minutes on the floor, nervously reading about Welsh trains. Then I decided that since I was due at work before 7 the next day, it was time to go to bed. After all that excitement, I fell asleep quite easily, until ---

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

My first thought was that I'd overslept, and that my editors were banging on the door for me to come into work. (I'd just woken up, go with me.) I stumbled over to the door, my now rather long hair standing several inches into the air and squinting without my glasses. The man introduced himself as a Wichita police officer, I was far too tired to remember his name.

He wanted to know if I saw anything that evening.

"I heard some shots, just after midnight. But I didn't see anything.'

He didn't say anything.

"By the way officer, what happened?"

Turns out there was a drive-by right across the way, on a little street that runs past my side of the apartment complex. The home was literally across the street, not more than 60 feet from where I'm typing this now. There were flashing lights when I peered out the door. The officer said no one was hurt, took my name and phone number for possible follow up, and woke up Oscar next door.

One of the blessings and curses of being the sometime police reporter here at the Eagle is that I get to find out exactly what happened in incidents like these. The story as it stands now is that there were two shootings last night, both gang-related. The second shooting -- the one by my house -- was actually a walk-by shooting, and no one was hurt, thankfully. But teenagers are in the hospital for a related incident uptown.

I know this stuff happens in Albany and Boston and Hong Kong, but I managed to live 21 years without seeing it. Now I've been here two months and been involved with two violent crimes.

So, do I feel safe and sound in the Heartland? Not likely.

On Police

WICHITA, Kan. - A policeman is one of those professions, like being an astronaut or a race car driver, that fascinates children of a certain age. Ask a few 6-year-olds what she or he wants to be when he grows up, and an assortment of professions that deal with high-tech gadgets, frequent danger or swashbuckling will come up.

I don't know any astronauts or race car drivers. But I do know cops. I spent the better part of 40 hours this week with them, stumbling my way through a week on the police beat.I covered a runaway truck, a domestic violence beating, pickle juice damaging a car and a shooting. It was a pretty normal week.

Police talk to media more than any other profession, even politicians. Therefore police departments need to have specific protocols for handling the media. Here in Wichita, that means a daily briefing, held in the monolithic police headquarters downtown. From a dull conference room, a captain reads the most important items off of a dispatch known as the Interwatch. He takes questions and then repeats the most important cases for radio and television cameras. As he's talking, sheets are passed around with arrests and reported incidents in the past 24 hours. Reporters furiously scribble down cases that they believe are interesting, the vast majority of which will prove irrelevant later in the day.

The briefings are generally light. One captain makes self-deprecating jokes about his lack of hair, another allows himself to be taunted for not wearing a bulletproof vest.

One heavily pregnant reporter gives daily updates on her hopefully-soon-to-be born child. A few minutes before a 3 p.m. briefing today, she cracked this joke:

"The date is the 31st, but my husband thinks it's coming today," she said. "At three o'clock."

The chief of police smiled, and then read from a statement about how one of his officers beat up his own mother while trying to destroy his apartment.

That's the thing that bugs me. No matter how many awkward jokes they make or times they allow me to peek a couple feet over the line, I can't be convinced that I should let my guard down around cops. These are people who control one of the really "cool" gadgets that children like: the law.

Wednesday I was interviewing a witness to that runaway truck. The poor man watched as a 15-foot rig slammed into the side of his sister-in-law's shiny red Mustang. I left, but forgot to ask him the rather obvious question of whether the back of the cab was attached. I stopped the car across from the Mustang on the narrow street.

Then an officer came up from a nearby van.

"What do you think you're doing?" he said to me. "You stay like that and I'm going to have to write you a ticket."

My wheels were facing the wrong direction, he said. This offense carries a $120 fine -- three days pay to a minimum wage worker.

He didn't write me a ticket, but he could have. There are enough laws that cops can almost always find a reason to charge people. I have to wonder what someone did to get a charge of "disturbing the peace" or "asking for money." Surely dozens of people do these things each day without getting arrested. Who does is solely up to the man in the uniform. He may come armed with a few jokes these days, and make cameos in elementary school classrooms, but he can still put me away for a long, long time.