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ms-demeanor · 5 months

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i’m curious what your opinion is on the finer points of the case mentioned in the JSTOR post you reblogged earlier. the two sources in the post say that JSTOR didn’t press charges against him and had already settled with him by the time he killed himself. from what i read on wikipedia, the concern seems to be that JSTOR complied with a subpoena, which i don’t believe they have a choice to ignore? if anything it seems like the us government had reason to want him dead for wikileaks and public court records reasons, so they took a terms of use violation and blew it up into a dozen federal crimes.

is there more context i should be aware of? i have no particular affection or malice for JSTOR but the sources i found don’t exactly implicate the database or its employees in murder.

That's from page 175 of this document. This line: "The activity noted is outright theft and may merit a call with university counsel, and even the local police, to ensure not only that the activity has stopped but that - e.g. the visiting scholar who left - isn't leaving with a hard drive containing our database" is where I think the culpability starts.

If someone is downloading 1000s of articles (what seems like reasonable threshold for us to take action), what's wrong with us - or the university in collaboration with us - alerting the cyber-crimes division of law enforcement and initiating an investigation, having cop search dorm room and try to retrieve any hard drive that contains our content, etc. Our content is extraordinarily valuable and hard to replicate by the sweat of one's brow, but can be duplicated by savvy hackers and who knows what they want to do with the content?

Page 379: "Does the university contact law enforcement? Would they be willing to do so in this instance?

From page 1296:

I think the important thing to note here is that JSTOR had worked with MIT and had plans in place to prevent future similar downloads, but remained focused on identifying the person responsible for the downloads and ensuring that their data was deleted.

"I might just be irked because I am up dealing with this person on a Sunday night, but I am starting to feel like they need to get a hold of this situation right away or we need to offer to send them some help (read FBI).

And there it is. Page 3093 of the document.

JSTOR can hem and haw about it all they want, but you can't un-call the cops.

MIT was working with JSTOR on preventing future incidents of pirating, but JSTOR repeatedly said that they weren't going to let it go, that it was unacceptable to drop the issue, that they were going to continue to pursue the pirate.

You can scroll through the document and see the JSTOR tech department and abuse team talking about Swartz as a script kiddie, and a hacker. You can see someone talking about how this was real theft - making the comparison to stealing books even while admitting that piracy doesn't close others out of access.

You can see the thread starts with a joke about punching someone in the face for hacking their system, and includes the tech team ominously considering whether they should threaten the MIT librarians with the FBI.

There's something really important to note here which I don't think that people who aren't PRETTY DEEP into hackery shit aren't aware of: US law enforcement is absolutely rabidly feral about prosecuting hackers. People may be more aware of this now because of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden (and perhaps a bit on tumblr because of maia arson crimew), but people who work in tech and who are in infosec - like the people joking about calling the FBI in these emails - would be aware of the bonkers disproportionate punishments faced by hackers. And knowing that, they kept pushing and pushing and pushing for identification of the hacker. They kept digging with MIT, they kept saying that simply preventing future incidents wasn't enough.

Early in the exchange someone from JSTOR asked "what's wrong with us - or the university in collaboration with us - alerting the cyber-crimes division of law enforcement and initiating an investigation, having cop search dorm room and try to retrieve any hard drive that contains our content, etc." and the answer is what happened to Aaron Swartz.

It is absolute bullshit for JSTOR to say "we arrived at a solution privately and didn't want to press charges" after law enforcement has gotten involved with a hacking case, especially one where they're talking about "real theft" and are attempting to quantify and emphasize the amount that was "stolen" from them.

The *public* may believe that private individuals or institutions are the ones who "press charges" but that's simply not the case. It's prosecutors who decide whether or not to go ahead with charges; they do it based on what cases they think they can win and what their office's perspective is on the crime. When you hear about people choosing to press charges it simply means that they decided to tell the prosecutor they wanted the case to go forward. It's up to the prosecutor whether or not that happens.

And the tech team at JSTOR had to know that law enforcement wasn't just going to wag a finger at an academic hacker.

There's a parallel here that happens sometimes when people have their identities stolen by their parents. If you mom takes out a credit card in your name, that's identity theft. That's fraud. That's illegal. If you reach the age of 25 and realize that your credit is ruined because your mom has been defaulting on cards in your name, you've got two choices to fix that: one is to accept the debt and pay it off and build up credit, and the other is to report the identity theft - which will end up with your mom in prison for a decade or so. Ruin your own personal finances, or your mom goes to jail for ruining your finances. So if you find out that your mom stole your identity you can't just call the cops to pressure her into transferring the debt to her name or something. That's not an option. The cops are not a threat to wave over people, they are not a way to get people to fall in line or act right. They aren't someone you can send to a college student's dorm room to retrieve a hard drive and have the matter drop.

When you call the cops on someone you are sending the full force of the law after them, and the full force of the law falls really heavily on hackers, and how heavy that blow can be is something that the JSTOR team must have been aware of when they were making snide comments about calling the FBI because they were frustrated with the noncommittal responses they were getting from librarians.

Ultimately it was the carceral state that killed Aaron Swartz, but they would not have been involved if JSTOR didn't think that what he did constituted theft.

Taking an *EVEN LARGER* step back from that, the idea that information can be owned and locked behind a paywall is what killed Aaron Swartz, someone who fought for information to be free.

Like. JSTOR is a licensing company. At the end of the day, cute social media posts and all, they're the same as the RIAA and ASCAB. They exist to extract a fee from people attempting to access information.

Aaron Swartz and all that he stood for are an existential threat to their core function.

Are JSTOR's hands as dirty as the federal prosecutors? Absolutely not. But they operate on a model that puts them in opposition to open information activists and it ended up with a hammer falling on Aaron Swartz that they dropped.

#long post #very long post

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probablyasocialecologist · 5 months

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First, let’s address the fact that hackers recently accessed the personal data of about 14,000 23andMe customers. Because of how 23andMe works—it has a “DNA Relatives” feature that lets users find people they are probably related to—this breach created 6.9 million “other users” who had data stolen in the breach, according to reporting by TechCrunch. This data included people’s names, birth year, relationships, percentage of DNA shared with other 23andMe users, and ancestry reports.

[...]

Getting your DNA or your loved ones’ DNA sequenced means you are potentially putting people who are related to those people at risk in ways that are easily predictable, but also in ways we cannot yet predict because these databases are still relatively new. I am writing this article right now because of the hack, but my stance on this issue has been the same for years, for reasons outside of the hack. In 2016, I moderated a panel at SXSW called “Is Your Biological Data Safe?,” which was broadly about the privacy implications of companies and other entities creating gigantic databases of people’s genetic code. This panel’s experts included a 23andMe executive as well as an FBI field agent. Everyone on the panel and everyone in the industry agrees that genetic information is potentially very sensitive, and the use of DNA to solve crimes is obviously well established. At the time, many of the possible dangers of providing your genome to a DNA sequencing company were hypothetical. Since then, many of the hypothetical issues we discussed have become a reality in one way or another. For example, on that panel, we discussed the work of an artist who was turning lost strands of hair, wads of chewing gum, and other found DNA into visual genetic “portraits” of people. Last year, the Edmonton Police Service, using a company called Parabon, used a similar process to create 3D images of crime suspects using DNA from the case. The police had no idea if the portrait they generated actually looked like the suspect they wanted, and the practice is incredibly concerning. To its credit, 23andMe itself has steadfastly resisted law enforcement requests for information, but other large databases of genetic information have been used to solve crimes. Both 23andMe and Ancestry are regularly the recipients of law enforcement requests for data, meaning police do see these companies as potentially valuable data mines.

#23andme #genetics #ancestry #DNA sequencing

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shewroteaworld · 6 days

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The Aftermath

Premise: You're nearly killed on the job. Aaron is there to help you through the aftermath.

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x Reader

TW: descriptions of canon-typical violence, brief mention of ableism, survivor's guilt

Word count: approx. 1,000

The fraying threads of his throw blanket are the only things keeping you from crying. You pick at the red tassels, rolling them between your fingers over and over again. It’s a desperate Hail Mary. You’ve officially come unglued. You’re too shaken to do anything productive, like baking or taking a drive, without snapping into reality and breaking down. But the silence of nothingness is also too painfully loud. So you’re frozen, like an invalid, rhythmically stroking this fucking blanket because if you don’t, you’ll be there.

You’ll see the gun perfectly pointed at the inches between your eyebrows. You’ll see his smirk, the way he smiled, as his partner tightened the binds around your wrists, the warmth of your own blood dripping down your fingertips as the gun inched closer and closer and closer. You’ll watch as he and his smirk take over your field of vision as the carbon steel of the gun barrel brushes your forehead. He moves into kiss you– the fucking freak– before a shot rings out, and for a moment, you’re certain you’ve heard your own death– as if your spirit you weren’t sure you believed in left your body and you’re observing your last moments in an astral projection.

But you were listening to his death. The barrel of the gun fell away 100 times faster than it came as the unsub succumbed to the bullet through his temple. You screamed as you thrashed against the wooden pole, like a child screaming for a lifeguard. More shots rang out and you heard from roughly two yards behind you the crack of his accomplice's body smacking against the concrete.

It was over.

“Are you okay?” You flinch and whip around to the source of the hand that had the audacity to touch you. It was Aaron. You snap back into the present, and the coil in you relaxes. You force it back into its spiral before you come undone.

You allow yourself a moment to take in his face: the shadow of the deep set of his eyes and his signature tense brow. Your eyes disobediently drift to his torso and your breath hitches. You recall collapsing against it. You recall how the air in you and the room disappeared as you sobbed. You recall how he gently cupped your shoulder blade as you fell to pieces on his shoulder.

You recall how something in you froze when the paramedic touched your shoulder. How the fear choked you.

You can’t breathe.

Aaron’s suddenly kneeling before you. “Are you okay?”

You scratch your head. Your eyes burn. “I’m…” You rub the tassels between your fingers. “I’m losing it.” You whisper.

“You’re not losing it.”

“How would you know?” You ask genuinely.

“I know you.” He says gently. He pauses. “What you’re feeling is normal and right. It would be worrying if you weren’t affected by what happened.”

“Of course I’m affected by what happened.” It spills out of you before you can block it along with a few rogue tears.

He reaches for the coffee table and grabs a tissue. He offers it to you. You smear your cheeks dry.

“We can talk about it." He says. "I’m here to listen or talk with you if it will help.”

You were silent when the medics checked you over. You were silent on the jet ride. Aaron let you exist in your silence even when you both knew you would have to puke up the intimate details for an incidence report for the FBI that would be scrutinized by higher-ups and mental health officials. The most violating moments of your career, from start to finish, would be under the detective lights of anyone with the authority. It would be immortalized in some database. The most terrifying experience of your life couldn’t even just be yours.

You both knew that, even if he couldn’t know how much it terrified you to your bones– how violated you felt– to have your life like that on display to whomever it may concern. But he allowed you to cling to your safety blanket all the same.

But now you were off the jet and not in prying eyes. And though, over the course of your blissful yet short love affair, you knew he would not go away quite as easily. You suspected he wouldn’t pry; it wasn’t in his nature. But he would make it clear how open he was. And knowing you, and feeling the emotions bubbling against the lid of the pot you’d trapped them in, you felt like you had two options. And you didn’t like either.

“I don’t…” You swallow. “I’m upset.”

He gently grabs your hand like he’s cupping a fragile thing. When you don’t jerk, he squeezes it. The knot begins to unfurl and before you can register it, more tears stream down.

“I feel like I should’ve been ready for this, but I’m not.” You admit.

“Being held hostage?” He asks gently.

You sniffle. “It’s my job.”

“It’s not your job. Your job is to solve crimes. That was not another job responsibility. That was a traumatic experience.”

You sob. He cups your wet cheeks.

“I’m here.” He says. “I’m right here.”

“How can I go back to work after this?”

“You don’t have to bounce back.” He assures.

“I feel…I feel…I can’t put it into words.” You wipe your face in frustration.

“Is trying to explain it helping or hurting?”

You sniffle, mucus uncomfortably coating your throat. “I think it will help if I…stop being so hard on myself.” You confess. “It’s just…I feel so frozen. I still feel frozen.”

“It’s normal to feel that way directly following something like this." He says gently.

You shake your head. “No, I’m not talking about the aftermath. I’m talking about during. When I was tied there.” You swallow thickly. “When he had me.”

“I couldn’t breathe.” You continue, grateful he gave you a moment of silence to pull your thoughts together. “I was…helpless. At their mercy and I…I...”

You squeeze the blanket in a white knuckle grip. “How could they do that to me? How could that happen to me? How can…how can I feel this way?”

His eyebrow furrows. “What do you mean?” You know he can feel the guilt radiating off of you.

“He killed those other young women. Mutilated them. Violated them. I was the lucky one, wasn’t I?” your voice cracks.

“No. No one is lucky in a situation like this. Your pain is valid and doesn’t take anything away from his other victims.”

“I feel helpless.”

“It’s okay to feel helpless.”

Something in you jumps at his response. “What do you mean?” You sniffle.

He bites his tongue. You see that furrow in his expression– like he’s weighing his approach. “Your life was in grave danger. The pain won’t go away; your mind and body need time to heal. And I swear I will take care of you as long as you need. You have all the time in the world to recuperate.”

“What about–”

“You don’t need to worry about work right now. All I want you to do is worry about you.”

Your lip can’t help but quirk upwards. “Pot meet kettle.”

He smiles. “Pot meet kettle.” He kisses the tip of your nose. “I love you. I’m here for you.”

“I love you too.”

He hugs you, his arms warming you through the cover of the throw blanket. You’re can't comprehend how you will heal from this. But in his arms, you know you won't be walking alone.

Author's Note: Thanks for reading! Grateful for you <3

#aaron hotch x reader #criminal minds fic #criminal minds fanfic #criminal minds #aaron hotch imagine #aaron hotchner x reader #ssa aaron hotchner #aaron hotchner #aaron hotch hotchner #aaron hotch fanfiction #hotch

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cuddledemon · 5 months

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Sooo I’ve been arrested by police lol, “fbi open up”-style. Of course they didn’t have anything on anyone so we were let go after they took our photos and phone numbers, but not before terrorizing everyone for 3 fucking hours. I’m sore everywhere but otherwise physically unharmed, and now exist in a database of the extremism department somewhere. God I can’t wait to leave this lawless fascist hellhole if I can

#nyxposting #nyxlore #lgbt #trans #russia #лгбт+

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lemonadeinfuser · 12 days

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Holiday House

Aaron Hotchner x Fem Reader

In short: Hotch needs help, and you need a job. Part 1 of ?? we shall see how far this goes :) Warnings for mentions of alcohol (very infrequent) possible mentions of smut/cut to black scenes in the future! ;) __ Is in place of Y/N!!

“And the town said, ‘How did a middle class divorcee do it?’”

Aaron Hotchner was never one to admit to needing help, let alone one to ask for it. But as he sat in the dim light of the kitchen, a case file in one hand, a glass of whiskey in the other, a million thoughts ran through his head. His thumb rubs his temple gingerly, averting his gaze from the graphic crime scene polaroids, over to his son’s bedroom. Just a few hours earlier, he had called off abruptly to pick up Jack prematurely from school, after he had climbed to the very top of the jungle gym in an attempt to do something Garcia called “parkour”.

He survived with only a few scrapes and bruises, but it was clearly a drastic cry for attention.The door was open ajar, illuminated only by the dinosaur night light, casting a soft blue glow over the sleeping boy. When Haley had died, he had quickly realized that being a full-time father would not prove easy with his job. As time went on, it only got more difficult for him to divide his attention- and Jack’s recent episode at school was a cruel wake up call. One thing was evident- he needed someone to attend fully to him, and Hotch needed the ability to commit fully to his team, and to the BAU.

So, first thing in the morning, Penelope was faced with a curt knock on her office door. Spinning around in her chair, she rises and opens the door, Starbucks in hand. “Fancy seeing you here, hands- Oh, hello, sir, m-my apologies. I thought you were Derek.” She cleared her throat, but arched an eyebrow as she detected a faint twinkle in Hotch’s eyes. “Garcia.” “What do you need sir? Stats? Access to a secure database?” She spins around quickly, already typing the nearest case details into her supercomputer. “Well, actually, it’s more of a personal question. Do you happen to know any, uh, childcare workers?” “Like a nanny, sir?” He cringed at the cutesy word, but nodded nonetheless.

“Yes, I suppose.” Garcia pushed her glasses up her nose slightly, observing the man in front of her. Although she wasn’t technically a profiler, she knew Hotch well enough to find things out of place, as they were now. “Actually, yes, sir, I know just the person.” A slight plot began to form in her head, as she sent a number through her printer and into Hotch’s hands. “That’s my friend, __. She’s perfect, lots of experience, Jack would love her. Actually, sir, you would too..” Hotch fumbles for a second, before raising an eyebrow in her direction. “That’s quite enough, Penelope. This is strictly for Jack’s benefit. I appreciate this, however.” He nods curtly, backing out and bumping straight into a coffee-bearing Morgan. “Trying to steal my girlfriend, boss-man? Not cool.” Derek chuckles, pushing past him politely and planting a kiss on Penelope’s cheek. “Damn, I beat you to it!” He gestures to the coffee already in her hand. “I can always use more,” Penelope giggles.

Hotch shuts the door quickly, glancing down at the number in his hands. He walks quickly back to his office, passing right by Spencer and Rossi arguing about something or another. “With all due respect, sir, Logan Paul has absolutely nothing against Mike Tyson-” “He’s a billion years old!” Shaking his head slightly at his team’s banter, Aaron sinks into his chair, punching the number into the landline on his desk. Everyone else may use cellphones now, but Aaron still preferred the old fashioned way, when it came to business.

You had just finished an extremely degrading night shift at the diner, picking up your phone with a raised brow as you exited the back room. “Hello?” “Hello, this is SSA Aaron Hotchner. Is this __?” Your heart rate picked up- maybe from the fact that an FBI agent was calling you, maybe because his voice was low and steady and weirdly attractive. “O-oh, um, hello sir do you- need something?” Hotch takes notice of the light and airy pitched voice on the other side of the line, and something about it makes his heart skip a beat. He ignores it, proceeding, “I was wondering if you were prepared to interview for an in-home, uh, nanny job? For lack of a better word. Penelope Garcia gave me your number, and I trust her judgment for better or worse.” A smile spread across your face. “Absolutely, sir. When would be a good time to meet, Mr Hotchner?”

It’s strange. Aaron gets called sir about a hundred times a day, but something about your innocent voice sends a shiver down his spine that he can’t explain, but does his best to ignore. “Why don’t you stop by my house at around 6 tonight? We can talk, you can meet Jack, and we can go from there.” “That works for me, sir.” You smoothen out your skirt, a sudden blush chasing your cheeks as you think about meeting this mystery man, one you’d only heard anecdotes about from your best friend and her boyfriend. “Perfect. I’ll have Garcia send over my address.” The line clicks before you get the chance to respond, leaving you slightly flustered, with your hands wrapped around your cellphone a little more tightly than you thought, almost as if you were holding onto the idea of him. The poor man, left alone with his son, with a job like that.. You shake your head, quickly grabbing your purse, clattering your nametag down on the counter with a defiant “I quit.” to your manager as you happily left that damn place for the last time.

Back at the office, Aaron watches his team out in the bullpen, Morgan and Garcia enveloped in something on his desk while Spencer spins a rubix cube towards Emily, with a “good luck” sort of look. He’s not sure what the emotion he’s feeling is, but whatever it is, he brushes it off and grabs the case file dropped off earlier, emerging into the open office, with the same professional air as always- if a little less uptight than usual.

“Who knows, if she never showed up, what could have been?”

A/N: AHHH this was so so much fun to write!! I hope my writing style and the way I write Hotch is okay, I’m still new to the fandom and show but I did my very best! Suggestions are always welcome! Please like, comment, reblog and send me requests!

-e.a <33

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ssa-atlas-alvez · 1 year

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Sunflower Seeds (BAU x cowboy!reader)

Warnings: Death, sadness, abuse, bad foster parents, death of a child, murderous foster parents, smoking, addition (to cigarettes)

Word count: 2403

Taglist: @xweirdo101x @xdark-acadamiax @ara-a-bird @heidss @chubbyboyinflannel @pendragon-writes @migwayne @bigolgay @technikerin23 @supercriminalbean @honestlycasualarcade @caffeine-mess @1s3v3n1 @oddmiles @kevyeen @stealing-kneecaps @criminalskies

“This case is a rough one, folks,” Garcia said as she entered the room, handing you each a file. “Some sicko in Colorado is targeting foster kids,”

Hotch made sure the briefing was short, not wanting to waste any time before you all got on the jet.

"What are you doing?" JJ asks.

"Readin' the file." You answered, before offering the bag of seeds you were currently making your way through, "Sunflower seed?"

"Why are you eating sunflower seeds?" She sits down next to you and you shrug.

“Got hungry,” You lied, “‘S all I had in my bag,” JJ rolls her eyes slightly as she chuckles with a smile.

“Garcia’s calling,” Morgan cut your current conversation and you all turned to the laptop.

“Speak and be heard!” Garcia exclaims as she pops up on the screen.

“Have you managed to look up the foster history of the victims yet?”

“The database is running as we speak,”

“These kids were all well behaved,” You state with a sigh, flicking through the file, “I don’t understand how they were in so much trouble at school,”

"I bet you were such a sweetheart as a kid," Garcia teased, the rest of the team chuckling.

"Er, no ma'am, I was not," You answered, embarrassment flushing against your cheeks, "I was actually quite the little shit - pardon my language. I mean I was goin’ through a lot, but that doesn’t excuse my past behaviour, I did chill out at about fifteen though,"

“What happened at fifteen?” Reid asked curiously.

“My Mama and Pops adopted me and Aden,” You said with a small smile.

When you got to the station, introductions and the set up was quick and soon enough, the team had all split up to different crime scenes. Hotch, however, had asked you to stay at the station, to interview different foster kids who might have known or seen something. Hotch had told you that he would be back soon, he just needed to follow a lead with Prentiss.

“Excuse me? Mr FBI Agent, sir?” You look up, a small boy, only about seven. He was the last one to be interviewed (in fact you were about to go and get him for his interview), his foster parents had dropped him off three hours ago and left, claiming that they needed to pick up another one of their foster children from daycare. You had made sure the boy had been comfortable sitting in the breakroom with some snacks, a drink, and a colouring book.

“Hi, how can I help you?” You ask, giving him a small smile.

“I- You are FBI, right?” When you confirmed, he continued, “Is there a way you can tell them to move me to a different foster home?”

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Jacob,”

"I'm (Y/N)," You said, before asking “Why do you want to move, Jacob?”

You furrowed your eyebrows as he answered, “I want to be with my sister.” You swallow the lump in your throat, only having known the worry about being separated from your sibling.

“I can try, kid,” You said, “But I can’t promise anything…”

“They’re not nice people.”

“Who?”

“My foster parents,” Jacob whispered, “They yell… and they throw stuff…” You close your eyes for a moment, being able to read behind the lines.

“How bad is it?”

“It’s bad,” Jacob’s voice wobbles as he tries his best to keep his emotions at bay.

“Hey, kid, look at me,” You crouch down and wait until he’s looking at you, “I’m g’nna make sure this place gets shut down, you hear me?”

Jacob gives a small sniff as he nods, desperately wiping at his eyes. “It’s okay, kid, it’s okay.” You mumbled, pulling him close to your chest. “I promise, I will make sure you go somewhere nice.” Jacob clung onto you tightly and you lightly rocked the pair of you back and forth in hopes of helping him calm down.

“Jacob, your foster parents are here to collect you,” Hotch said as he appears in the doorway and your heart breaks as Jacob only clings onto you tighter.

“Jacob, hey, look at me,” You swallow slightly before continuing, “I’ll do everything I can to get you somewhere else, okay?” He nods as he forces himself to let go of you and stand up.

“Promise?”

“Yeah, kid, I promise.” You reached into your pocket, making sure the foster parents weren’t looking before you handed him your card. “You have access to a phone?” He nods, “Okay, you phone me if you need me, okay?” He gives another nod as he pockets the small card. You watch as Hotch leads him out of the room, to his foster parents and you have to look away for a moment. When you gather the strength, you look back to find Jacob looking at you anxiously, you give him what you hope is an encouraging smile and then he’s gone.

You didn’t account for the foster parents being the killers. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

It’s been maybe five hours since getting back to the hotel when you get the phone call, it’s the middle of the night and you were laid in the dark trying to sleep. When you answer it, Jacob’s scared whisper on the other end of the phone, begging you to come and get him, that he was in the kitchen, and he was scared. And then the line goes dead. You’re standing up and putting your shoes on as you wake Hotch up, only giving him enough time to knock on Rossi’s door before you’re out of the hotel and in one of the SUV’s ready to go.

You all but kick the door off it’s hinges as you enter the house, heading straight to the kitchen, stomach dropping when you see his small figure on the floor. You’re kneeling next to him in an instant as you put pressure on the wound.

“Hotch? Hotch, call an ambulance, he needs an ambulance-” You rush out when he walks into the room. Hotch nods, with a grim look on his face as he takes in the kid’s condition, knowing he’s not going to make it.

"You're g’nna be a'ight kid, you hear me? You're g’nna be a'ight," You give him a small smile, “You’re g’nna be just f’ne,”

“You came?” Jacob’s voice is quiet and you have to strain your ears to hear him.

“Course, kid,” You reply, “You’re g’nna be okay kid,”

“Promise?”

“Yeah, kid,” You answer, voice shaking, “You need’a hold on, a’ight??”

Jacob nods slightly before he goes limp in your arms, “Kid?” You bring a hand up to lightly tap his cheek, “Kid?! Kid, come on! Hotch!” When Hotch is in the room, you look up from Jacob’s face to Hotch, “Hotch, he’s stopped breathing, what do I do?!”

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do.”

“What?” You look up at him, face a mix of desperation and anger, “Hotch, we can’t do nothin’-”

“(Y/N), he’s lost too much blood, nothing we can do will help him,”

“We could try a transfusion-”

“We both know we can’t do that,”

“We have to do somethin’!”

And then the rest of the team (minus JJ - who stayed behind to be with Elena, Jacob’s sister, who had made her foster parents take her to the station in worry for her younger brother, she had quickly told JJ about her ‘big sister intuition’) and the paramedics arrive. It takes Hotch and Morgan to pry away and you want to hit both of them for it. Instead, you get into one of the SUV’s and drive back to the station. You needed to be the one to tell his sister.

JJ looks up when you enter the room, “JJ, can you give us a minute, please?” JJ studies you for a minute before she nods, telling Elena that she’ll be right outside.

“Where’s Jacob?” You swallow heavily as you sit down on the couch, next to Elena.

“I- I’m so sorry,” You begin, “I did everything I could, but he- he didn’t make it,” Elena’s eyes are immediately filled with tears as she stands.

“No, no you’re lying! No!”

“I’m so sorry.”

“This is your fault! This is all your fault! You killed him!” She screams and just hearing it makes your throat hurt. You stare at her, desperately trying to keep the tears at bay as she continues to scream at you. “Your fault! All your fault!” She shouts, hitting your chest as she does, you barely flinch. “All your fault!”

You look up, meeting eyes with JJ as Elena lands another open hand hit against your chest as she yells. Your eyes drift back to Elena as she collapses against your chest, sobbing. “I got you,” You mumble, and she grabs your shirt tightly in her fist as she sobs loudly. “I’ve got you,”

“He can’t be gone,” She hiccups, “He can’t be dead. He can’t be.”

“I’m so sorry,” You mumble, swaying lightly. “I’m so sorry,”

The door opens and closes quietly and your head shoots up. JJ gives you a small smile as she sits next to the two of you, she gently scoops Elena in her arms and gives you a look – telling you to have a moment to yourself. You nod a thanks and leave.

You walk straight to the closest shop – not stopping to talk to any of the team, mind too caught up as to how you still haven’t managed to make an arrest, despite knowing exactly who was behind all of this. Being caught up in your own head also meant that you didn’t hear Hotch tell Morgan to follow you and keep an eye on you.

You were usually so good, whenever you had the urge to pick up a cigarette again, you'd munch your way through your weight in sunflower seeds until it left. But after this case? There was no way that was going to happen now. When you get there, you buy a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Wasting no time, you sit on the curb outside of the shop, lighting the cigarette now in your hand and taking a long, deep breath. Part of you had missed this.

And then, out of pure luck, you spot Mr Richards, Jacob’s foster dad, crossing the road. You ditch the cigarettes and lighter on the floor and the next thing you know, you’re sprinting after him and then tackling him to the ground. When he struggles, you pull your arm back and punch him, and then again and then- A hand’s on your shoulder, trying to pull you off.

“(Y/N), that’s enough.” Morgan? You ignore him and shrug the hand off, punching him once more before you’re ripped off of him and being held back. Richards is on the floor, groaning. Prick.

The rest of the team all jog to the scene, Prentiss and Reid cuffing Richards and Hotch approaches you and Morgan. “What happened?” He’s looking at you as he speaks, but you assume he’s talking to Morgan, so you continue to glare at Richards, whose nose is still bleeding. You can’t help but smirk slightly at that.

“He tackled him and kept punching,” Morgan answered shortly.

“Take him back to the station, don’t let him see Richards.” Morgan nods as he leads you to the SUV.

You're restless on the flight back, legs shaking, hands fumbling. You knew everyone noticed (it was a bit hard not to), but we're thankful that no one said anything yet. Your body was itching for another cigarette. The familiarity of it between your fingers, the repetitive motion. You place your hand in your jacket pocket, feeling the small box and feel yourself relax slightly.

"Clint Eastwood over here has been smoking," Morgan said.

“So?” You asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“So it’s not exactly good for you,” He answered, you huffed slightly.

“I’m not doin’ this now,” You reply, closing your eyes as you let your head hit the back of your seat.

“Let me talk to him,” JJ says softly and there’s the quiet sound of someone sitting down opposite you, “(Y/N)?”

You open your eyes, finding yourself automatically gazing into JJ’s. “Yeah?”

“Talk to me,” She says softly and you have to look away. You don’t want to spill everything. You don’t want to be vulnerable, not when the others are so close by. You knew the second you started, you’d want to tell her everything, spill your heart out. So instead, you just shake your head.

“I’m fine,” You give a small smile before shutting your eyes once more, you hear her sigh and feel her gently place her hand on your shoulder and then it’s gone and suddenly you feel cold.

When the jet lands, Hotch makes it known that he wants to talk to you in his office. You don’t say anything, you just nod. And so, you follow him to his office.

“Normally, I wouldn’t be too concerned,” Hotch said, “But this isn’t healthy, smoking isn’t healthy. You’re using it as a coping mechanism.”

"I know it's not exactly the best solution-" You began, "But it's better than, I don't know, some coping mechanisms for sure."

“You need to talk to someone about this,”

“I’m fine.”

“(Y/N), I’m serious,” He says, voice stern. “You can’t bottle this up.”

“Hotch-”

“Don’t make me put you on leave, (Y/N).” That hits a nerve and the next thing you know, you’re sort of yelling.

"What do you want me to say Hotch?! I held that kid as he died Hotch!" Your raised voice caught him off guard, you didn't generally raise your voice. "I- I told him he was gon' be 'kay. And then I had to tell his sister he'd died. And what, y’all expect me to just be 'kay after that? I'm sorry to disappoint ‘cause I ain't. N I'm sorry if that means I'm not the person you thought I was or if that somehow disappoints you, but I- I can't just forget about it that easy,"

“Of course you’re allowed to be upset, it’s normal.” Hotch replies, keeping his voice comforting but still stern, something you didn’t even realise was possible until meeting Hotch, “Take the weekend to relax, we’ve all got the time off, see how you feel on Monday, okay?” You nod, mumbling an ‘okay’, “Alright, I’ll see you later, have a good weekend.”

“You too,”

“And (Y/N)?” You turn to him, “Try and quit the habit while you’re ahead,” You give a small nod and leave the office.

#cowboy reader #bau x cowboy reader #x cowboy reader #Criminal Minds Fanfiction #Criminal Minds #criminal minds fanfic #aaron hotchner #spencer reid #david rossi #Jennifer Jareau #derek morgan #Penelope Garcia #emily prentiss #male!reader #male reader #x male reader

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ausetkmt · 7 months

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Where It’s Most Dangerous to Be Black in America

Black Americans made up 13.6% of the US population in 2022 and 54.1% of the victims of murder and non-negligent manslaughter, aka homicide. That works out, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, to a homicide rate of 29.8 per 100,000 Black Americans and four per 100,000 of everybody else.(1)

A homicide rate of four per 100,000 is still quite high by wealthy-nation standards. The most up-to-date statistics available from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development show a homicide of rate one per 100,000 in Canada as of 2019, 0.8 in Australia (2021), 0.4 in France (2017) and Germany (2020), 0.3 in the UK (2020) and 0.2 in Japan (2020).

But 29.8 per 100,000 is appalling, similar to or higher than the homicide rates of notoriously dangerous Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. It also represents a sharp increase from the early and mid-2010s, when the Black homicide rate in the US hit new (post-1968) lows and so did the gap between it and the rate for everybody else. When the homicide rate goes up, Black Americans suffer disproportionately. When it falls, as it did last year and appears to be doing again this year, it is mostly Black lives that are saved.

As hinted in the chart, racial definitions have changed a bit lately; the US Census Bureau and other government statistics agencies have become more open to classifying Americans as multiracial. The statistics cited in the first paragraph of this column are for those counted as Black or African American only. An additional 1.4% of the US population was Black and one or more other race in 2022, according to the Census Bureau, but the CDC Wonder (for “Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research”) databases from which most of the statistics in this column are drawn don’t provide population estimates or calculate mortality rates for this group. My estimate is that its homicide rate in 2022 was about six per 100,000.

A more detailed breakdown by race, ethnicity and gender reveals that Asian Americans had by far the lowest homicide rate in 2022, 1.6, which didn’t rise during the pandemic, that Hispanic Americans had similar homicide rates to the nation as a whole and that men were more than four times likelier than women to die by homicide in 2022. The biggest standout remained the homicide rate for Black Americans.

Black people are also more likely to be victims of other violent crime, although the differential is smaller than with homicides. In the 2021 National Crime Victimization Survey from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (the 2022 edition will be out soon), the rate of violent crime victimization was 18.5 per 1,000 Black Americans, 16.1 for Whites, 15.9 for Hispanics and 9.9 for Asians, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders. Understandably, Black Americans are more concerned about crime than others, with 81% telling Pew Research Center pollsters before the 2022 midterm elections that violent crime was a “very important” issue, compared with 65% of Hispanics and 56% of Whites.

These disparities mainly involve communities caught in cycles of violence, not external predators. Of the killers of Black Americans in 2020 whose race was known, 89.4% were Black, according to the FBI. That doesn’t make those deaths any less of a tragedy or public health emergency. Homicide is seventh on the CDC’s list of the 15 leading causes of death among Black Americans, while for other Americans it’s nowhere near the top 15. For Black men ages 15 to 39, the highest-risk group, it’s usually No. 1, although in 2022 the rise in accidental drug overdoses appears to have pushed accidents just past it. For other young men, it’s a distant third behind accidents and suicides.

To be clear, I do not have a solution for this awful problem, or even much of an explanation. But the CDC statistics make clear that sky-high Black homicide rates are not inevitable. They were much lower just a few years ago, for one thing, and they’re far lower in some parts of the US than in others. Here are the overall 2022 homicide rates for the country’s 30 most populous metropolitan areas.

Metropolitan areas are agglomerations of counties by which economic and demographic data are frequently reported, but seldom crime statistics because the patchwork of different law enforcement agencies in each metro area makes it so hard. Even the CDC, which gets its mortality data from state health departments, doesn’t make it easy, which is why I stopped at 30 metro areas.(2)

Sorting the data this way does obscure one key fact about homicide rates: They tend to be much higher in the main city of a metro area than in the surrounding suburbs.

But looking at homicides by metro area allows for more informative comparisons across regions than city crime statistics do, given that cities vary in how much territory they cover and how well they reflect an area’s demographic makeup. Because the CDC suppresses mortality data for privacy reasons whenever there are fewer than 10 deaths to report, large metro areas are good vehicles for looking at racial disparities. Here are the 30 largest metro areas, ranked by the gap between the homicide rates for Black residents and for everybody else.

The biggest gap by far is in metropolitan St. Louis, which also has the highest overall homicide rate. The smallest gaps are in metropolitan San Diego, New York and Boston, which have the lowest homicide rates. Homicide rates are higher for everybody in metro St. Louis than in metro New York, but for Black residents they’re six times higher while for everyone else they’re just less than twice as high.

There do seem to be some regional patterns to this mayhem. The metro areas with the biggest racial gaps are (with the glaring exception of Portland, Oregon) mostly in the Rust Belt, those with the smallest are mostly (with the glaring exceptions of Boston and New York) in the Sun Belt. Look at a map of Black homicide rates by state, and the highest are clustered along the Mississippi River and its major tributaries. Southern states outside of that zone and Western states occupy roughly the same middle ground, while the Northeast and a few middle-of-the-country states with small Black populations are the safest for their Black inhabitants.(3)

Metropolitan areas in the Rust Belt and parts of the South stand out for the isolation of their Black residents, according to a 2021 study of Census data from Brown University’s Diversity and Disparities Project, with the average Black person living in a neighborhood that is 60% or more Black in the Detroit; Jackson, Mississippi; Memphis; Chicago; Cleveland and Milwaukee metro areas in 2020 (in metro St. Louis the percentage was 57.6%). Then again, metro New York and Boston score near the top on another of the project’s measures of residential segregation, which tracks the percentage of a minority group’s members who live in neighborhoods where they are over-concentrated compared with White residents, so segregation clearly doesn’t explain everything.

Looking at changes over time in homicide rates may explain more. Here’s the long view for Black residents of the three biggest metro areas. Again, racial definitions have changed recently. This time I’ve used the new, narrower definition of Black or African American for 2018 onward, and given estimates in a footnote of how much it biases the rates upward compared with the old definition.

All three metro areas had very high Black homicide rates in the 1970s and 1980s, and all three experienced big declines in the 1990s and 2000s. But metro Chicago’s stayed relatively high in the early 2010s then began a rebound in mid-decade that as of 2021 had brought the homicide rate for its Black residents to a record high, even factoring in the boost to the rate from the definitional change.

What happened in Chicago? One answer may lie in the growing body of research documenting what some have called the “Ferguson effect,” in which incidents of police violence that go viral and beget widespread protests are followed by local increases in violent crime, most likely because police pull back on enforcement. Ferguson is the St. Louis suburb where a 2014 killing by police that local prosecutors and the US Justice Department later deemed to have been in self-defense led to widespread protests that were followed by big increases in St. Louis-area homicide rates. Baltimore had a similar viral death in police custody and homicide-rate increase in 2015. In Chicago, it was the October 2014 shooting death of a teenager, and more specifically the release a year later of a video that contradicted police accounts of the incident, leading eventually to the conviction of a police officer for second-degree murder.

It’s not that police killings themselves are a leading cause of death among Black Americans. The Mapping Police Violence database lists 285 killings of Black victims by police in 2022, and the CDC reports 209 Black victims of “legal intervention,” compared with 13,435 Black homicide victims. And while Black Americans are killed by police at a higher rate relative to population than White Americans, this disparity — 2.9 to 1 since 2013, according to Mapping Police Violence — is much less than the 7.5-to-1 ratio for homicides overall in 2022. It’s the loss of trust between law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve that seems to be disproportionately deadly for Black residents of those communities.

The May 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer was the most viral such incident yet, leading to protests nationwide and even abroad, as well as an abortive local attempt to disband and replace the police department. The Minneapolis area subsequently experienced large increases in homicides and especially homicides of Black residents. But nine other large metro areas experienced even bigger increases in the Black homicide rate from 2019 to 2022.

A lot of other things happened between 2019 and 2022 besides the Floyd protests, of course, and I certainly wouldn’t ascribe all or most of the pandemic homicide-rate increase to the Ferguson effect. It is interesting, though, that the St. Louis area experienced one of the smallest percentage increases in the Black homicide rate during this period, and it decreased in metro Baltimore.

Also interesting is that the metro areas experiencing the biggest percentage increases in Black residents’ homicide rates were all in the West (if your definition of West is expansive enough to include San Antonio). If this were confined to affluent areas such as Portland, Seattle, San Diego and San Francisco, I could probably spin a plausible-sounding story about it being linked to especially stringent pandemic policies and high work-from-home rates, but that doesn’t fit Phoenix, San Antonio or Las Vegas, so I think I should just admit that I’m stumped.

The standout in a bad way has been the Portland area, which had some of the longest-running and most contentious protests over policing, along with many other sources of dysfunction. The area’s homicide rate for Black residents has more than tripled since 2019 and is now second highest among the 30 biggest metro areas after St. Louis. Again, I don’t have any real solutions to offer here, but whatever the Portland area has been doing since 2019 isn’t working.

(1) The CDC data for 2022 are provisional, with a few revisions still being made in the causes assigned to deaths (was it a homicide or an accident, for example), but I’ve been watching for weeks now, and the changes have been minimal. The CDC is still using 2021 population numbers to calculate 2022 mortality rates, and when it updates those, the homicide rates will change again, but again only slightly. The metropolitan-area numbers also don’t reflect a recent update by the White House Office of Management and Budget to its list of metro areas and the counties that belong to them, which when incorporated will bring yet more small mortality-rate changes. To get these statistics from the CDC mortality databases, I clicked on “Injury Intent and Mechanism” and then on “Homicide”; in some past columns I instead chose “ICD-10 Codes” and then “Assault,” which delivered slightly different numbers.

(2) It’s easy to download mortality statistics by metro area for the years 1999 to 2016, but the databases covering earlier and later years do not offer this option, and one instead has to select all the counties in a metro area to get area-wide statistics, which takes a while.

(3) The map covers the years 2018-2022 to maximize the number of states for which CDC Wonder will cough up data, although as you can see it wouldn’t divulge any numbers for Idaho, Maine, Vermont and Wyoming (meaning there were fewer than 10 homicides of Black residents in each state over that period) and given the small numbers involved, I wouldn’t put a whole lot of stock in the rates for the Dakotas, Hawaii, Maine and Montana.

(https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/09/14/where-it-s-most-dangerous-to-be-black-in-america/cdea7922-52f0-11ee-accf-88c266213aac_story.html)

#Where It’s Most Dangerous to Be Black in America #Black in america #Black Lives Matter

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