Old Mobster’s Lawyers Object to Jury Background Checks

James “Whitey” Bulger was a ferocious Boston gangster.  As the former leader of the Winter Hill Gang, he was suspected of countless crimes, including murder.  He took it on the lam in 1994 and the law did not catch up with him until 2011.   They found Bulger living a quiet life with his girlfriend, in Santa Monica, California.   They had a modest apartment with cash money stashed in the walls.  Some unique insulation.    His Santa Monica neighbors thought of Bulger as grumpy and private.  That would figure.

So now he is back in Boston, Massachusetts and preparing to go on trial.   Now the prosecution wants to conduct background checks on prospective jurors.  Bulger’s defense attorneys consider this harassment.  Interesting.

According to Boston.con…”Prosecutors filed a motion Thursday arguing that background checks could help determine whether potential jurors have truthfully answered questionnaires and would minimize the possibility of a mistrial.”

Be curious to see how this plays out in court.

Shoplifting rings–the Scourge or Retailers

There is a new term for shoplifting rings–ORC, or Organized Retail Crime.  Nasty Stuff.   Retailers are having a tough time preventing this highly organized and sophisticated method of retail theft.  Organized boosters do not just steal the big stuff, but the smaller and seemingly incidental items they can resell within the underground market.

According to the article on ABC–”Tide detergent is currently a hot target because it is compact, expensive and easy to sell on the streets for profit, police said. The Street name: “liquid gold.”

“Sometimes we get rings that just do alcohol,” Lee said. “And then we get some that do just meat and seafood.”

Investigators say boosters move the loot for cents on the dollar to fencing operations — the black market resellers of the stolen goods — which sell the stolen merchandise in plain sight in stores. Boosters, fencers, Mr. Bigs, all of those involved in these shoplifting operations can potentially make millions a year from boosting and re-selling stolen goods.”

According to the article, annual losses to retail shrinkage are as high as $37 Billion.

Police are cracking down on the  boosters.   There are raids galore and secret warehouse are filled with contraband confiscated from the raids.

Nurse in Western Pennsylvania Hospitals Live in Fear of Workplace Violence

Over the years, I have written and commented on issues involving workplace violence.   One such article was entitled…”If You Want to Decrease the Chance of Workplace Violence, Have an Employee Firing Protocol Established.”  The article explains, as the title suggests, that this is sound advice.

It is no secret anymore that a large number of employees live in fear of workplace violence and workplace bullying.  The violence can come from job hazards as it comes from, say, taxi drivers and retail staff.  Or it can come from within the job, either through patients, as the most frequent case for healthcare workers, or from managers and staff members, or agitated relatives and lovers who intrude upon the workplace to raise havoc.

None of this is good for employment morale.  There are esteem issues, a notable decline in productivity, and of course the threat of real injury and the subsequent liability issues.

This article comes from TribLive.  It discusses the different cases of assaults and violent episodes that the nurses in Western Pennsylvania Hospitals must encounter as part of their daily routine.   No fun, for sure.

According to the article…”

Thomas’ experience is similar to that of many ER nurses surveyed during the past four years by the national Emergency Nurses Association, half of whom said they had been physically or verbally abused at work during the past week.

Of that, about 12 percent suffered physical abuse, while about 42 percent suffered verbal abuse, said Lisa Wolf, director of the group’s Institute for Emergency Nursing Research.”

Read more: http://triblive.com/news/westmoreland/3423102-74/hospital-emergency-health#ixzz2SomJpF5k

Top Employee Performances are Much More Productive and Tend to Be Friends With the Same Type of Candidates

Dr. John Sullivan, in an article on ERE.Net addresses how top performers are really just that, being as much as four times as productive as the average worker.   Top performing employees also tend to hang with other top performing employees and provide referrals for job applicants of a similar caliber.

Here is but part of what Sullivan had to write…”Fortunately, a recent research study covering several industries demonstrated that top performers do in fact make higher quality referrals. The University of California/Berkeley study, “The Value of Hiring through Referrals” highlighted the output and profit impact differential between referrals that emanated from high, average, and low-performing employees. The study allowed for a ROI calculation because it included both the added costs of the referrals as well as the positive business impacts created by more effective hires. Conclusions that I have drawn from this research include:

• Referral hires produce more – Hires from referrals produce approximately 25 percent more profit impact than hires from other sources.
• Top performer referrals produce three times more – A referral from a top performer who is hired will produce nearly three times more profit impact for the firm compared to the referred worker from a below average performer. A top performer referral who is hired will have a 90 percent greater profit impact than the average referral.
• Higher retention — Referred workers are between 10 percent and 30 percent less likely to quit than workers hired from other sources.”