By Nicholas Stix
I was just checking my Google numbers, and who was linking to or citing me, and came across a reference to this story.
I hit the link, and it was none other than serial plagiarist Jim Kouri, a retired cop who for years has impersonated a crime writer.
In an April 19 column, Kouri spoke of himself in the third person, as having learned though “anonymous, drug enforcement officer source” that the victims were likely killed by “drug cartels.”
At Worth Reading:
“No group has claimed responsibility for the massive slaughter, but drug cartels are the most likely to blame, according to the Law Enforcement Examiner's anonymous, drug enforcement officer source.”
At Examiner, on April 18:
“Mexican police officers yesterday discovered dismembered bodies packed into plastic garbage bags left inside an abandoned van, according to the Law Enforcement Examiner'sU.S. [sic] drug enforcement source.”
(“Law Enforcement Examiner” is Kouri going third- person, like a narcissistic girl singer!)
I knew that Kouri has no sources, because developing them takes hundreds, if not thousands of hours of work, not just copying and pasting someone else’s work, and changing a word or two, here and there, or merely reprinting a government press release. His “source” wasn’t hard to track down: A Reuters report from April 17!
Besides which, there is no such thing as a “source,” anonymous or otherwise, who tells you that the victims were “likely” killed by a cartel. My son could have figured that out when he was in second grade. A real source gives you specifics. He confirms or denies that the vics were killed by a specific cartel, and ideally tells you why.
I'm tempted to call Jim Kouri the Mario Biaggi of crime writers, but that would be unfair to the late Biaggi. Before finally being convicted for taking bribes in the Coastal Dry Dock and Wedtech scandals, Biaggi, a Bronx congressman and former NYPD cop, was routinely referred to by the New York media as "New York's most decorated cop." The source for that grand assessment? Biaggi himself! But at least, Biaggi did win legitimate NYPD honors for his courage under fire.
I reprint other people’s work every day, but I never claim to have written it. But I've writen about 1,200 of my own stories, and many have been variously huge scoops or investigative reports that set the standard for their subjects ("'Disappearing' Urban Crime," The Pearcy Massacre I & II--here and here, "The Sally Hemings Hoax," "Ebonics: Bridge to Illiteracy," The Duke Rape Hoax, etc.). I spend over 70 hours a week researching and writing my own and, yes, re-printing other people's stories. (No one can produce several major stories a day.) A mook like Kouri probably spends at most 10 hours a week doing copy-and-paste work, and emailing other people’s work under his own name to the various blogs that print his plagiaries.
Fourteen found dead, dismembered in Mexico border town
Reporting by Patrick Rucker; editing by Mohammad Zargham
Tuesday April 17, 2012, 10:16 p.m. EDT
Reuters
(Reuters) - The dismembered remains of 14 men were found on Tuesday stuffed inside a minivan left near the town hall of a Mexican city on the U.S. border that is often a flashpoint for the country's drug war, officials said.
The remains were found in downtown Nuevo Laredo just after sunrise packed inside 10 black plastic bags found in the vehicle, the officials said.
A threatening message was found with the bodies.
[N.S.: Somehow, I doubt the letter was necessary.]
Nuevo Laredo, adjacent to the south Texas city of Laredo, is a stronghold for the Mexican drug cartel the Zetas.
More than 50,000 people have been killed since President Felipe Calderon began a campaign to curb drug trafficking in 2006.
Much of that violence has been focused on border towns that serve as transit points for illicit drugs.
(Reporting by Patrick Rucker; editing by Mohammad Zargham)
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