Isaac Cornetti, aka ‘Dash Dangerfield,' finds an audience for ‘The Slammer' in North Carolina - a publication that some think provides a public service but others call an unethical crime rag.

Looking like a "Goodfellas"-era Ray Liotta, Isaac Cornetti strolls into the Raleigh Times restaurant here in a faded corduroy jacket. He's carrying a stack of his famous - and infamous - tabloid newspaper, The Slammer.

Patrons grab copies. Some chuckle, some hunch over newsprint, and some simply gawk as they scan rows upon rows of mug shots and rap sheets in a frenzy that would spark envy in the hearts of newspaper publishers nationwide.

If "Jerry Springer" came in newsprint, The Slammer could be it - a garish compilation of the week's local crimes and their alleged perpetrators. The men and women, with their dour mugs, bloodied noses, and booze-induced grins, have been arrested for everything from skipping a court date to robbing a food mart. It is, in essence, the local police blotter writ large.

To devoted readers, The Slammer and similar publications - like Cellmates in Florida's Tampa Bay area and Jail in Orlando - perform a valuable public service, putting the gritty side of life on display and even protecting the community from predatory criminals.

"It really lets you know what's going on around you," says Omar Williams, a Raleigh bail bondsman who advertises every week in The Slammer and - no surprise - reaches a lot of clients through its pages. "You could see your best friend in there for forging checks or selling cocaine, and he's driving around in the car with you, and you don't know this stuff."

Critics, on the other hand, see the papers as sensational, tawdry, and ethically dubious - a modern form of the "crime rags" that flourished in the heyday of early 20th-century yellow journalism. "This is a sad commentary on the state of American journalism," says Bob Steele, a journalism ethics expert at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. "It's really painful to know that so many publications are struggling terribly and something as schlocky as this is succeeding."

And succeeding it is. At a time when dozens of US newspapers are searching for buyers and for cash, The Slammer's newsstand profit margin is four times that of most local dailies, and its circulation has grown to 29,000 - up nearly 50 percent from 20,000 just last year. At more than 500 convenience stores across North Carolina, it's selling at a buck a pop.

In fact, the chief complaints the weekly paper gets come from perps complaining that their photos didn't get printed. In February, the paper will expand its operations from three major North Carolina counties - including the cities of Charlotte, Raleigh, and Durham - to add Columbus, Ohio.

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Mr. Cornetti - "Dash Dangerfield" on the masthead - is a 30-something publisher with a thick shock of hair and a Philip Marlowe fascination with America's "simmering undercurrent of low-level crime." To him, The Slammer offers entertainment and, yes, social value as well, tracing the thin line many Americans tread between upstanding behavior and the occasional lapse into lawlessness.

"You look at this paper, and you're amazed by the amount of illegal stuff going on in what you thought was a sleepy little city," he says, referring to Raleigh. "The appeal is voyeurism and schadenfreude, and it has some redeeming qualities, too, like helping people protect themselves, their families, and their businesses."

Cornetti, the son of a well-to-do Smithfield, N.C., family, spent a lot of time in courtrooms as a kid: His mother worked at the courthouse, and during Cornetti's middle-school summers, he spent days watching lawyers and judges, then went home to watch "Law and Order," "Perry Mason," and "Matlock."

In his late teens and early 20s, he ran afoul of the law himself, and spent a year serving time for drug and larceny charges involving marijuana and a stolen TV. After that, he says, he grew interested in practicing law, and took the LSAT in 2004 in hopes of becoming a criminal attorney.

Instead, he took a series of entrepreneurial jobs in sales and software, then read about Jail (the Orlando-based publication) on a business trip and was inspired. He hopes The Slammer can become "the kind of wake-up call that I wish I'd had when I was younger."

To some extent, that may be happening: Some readers claim they've thought twice about drinking and driving, for fear of ending up in The Slammer. And Slammer readers have helped Charlotte police locate several felons with major warrants, Cornetti says.

Even when arrests turn out not to be justified, Cornetti insists, The Slammer can do some good. A Charlotte lawyer who is in the process of trying to settle a case with the police department for what he says was a wrongful arrest recently contacted him. The client had appeared in The Slammer.

"Obviously we won't run a correction," says Cornetti of cases like these. "But we'd be happy to tell a client's story.... If people are being arrested unlawfully, The Slammer is going to be a barometer for that."

A die-hard reader of the Sunday New York Times, Cornetti is modest in his assessment of his own publication, which is produced by a staff of 12. "I don't think [The Slammer] deserves the ‘journalism' title," he says. "But we do try to present research and we hope that when [readers are] finished with the newspapers, they've learned something."

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More colorful and more professionally produced than its counterparts, The Slammer's eclectic spread includes features such as the "Slammer Salon" of crazy arrest-night hairdos; a "mug shot extravanganza [sic]" of the bleary-eyed; the "Kiddie Korner" of busted young adults; and "Mature Menaces," featuring senior alleged larcenists and check forgers. A Wendell, N.C., woman was singled out for repeated driving violations, becoming a recent edition's "featured impaired driver."

"Oh, Monique," the text goes, "Aren't you feeling weak? So upset you can hardly speak? Knightdale Police done punched your card. Now from walking you'll be ‘tard' [tired]. Left-right-left-right."

Shakespeare it's not. But to fans of such tabloids, like St. Petersburg, Fla., resident Courtney Doerr, a regular reader of Cellmates, they're "street poetry." And The Slammer runs more sober pieces, too: A recent editorial came down against the death penalty.

Even some police officials see little difference between the role of The Slammer and those of more prestigious media outlets. These modern crime rags "may well be reaching some readers that the daily circulation papers don't on a regular basis," says Jim Sughrue, a spokesman for the Raleigh Police Department. "I would say there's a value to these publications."

But critics say ridiculing people who remain innocent in the eyes of the Constitution is the definition of unethical. "They're basically creating a miniature billboard in which these individuals are named and visually identified, often pejoratively, in a way that does not give them a fair hearing," says Mr. Steele at Poynter.

Indeed, Mike Hoyt, editor of the Columbia Journalism Review in New York, calls the publications barely a "step up from the stocks."

But Randall Brown has a different take. An avid reader of Cellmates, Mr. Brown is also a regular feature: He claims he's been in Cellmates 10 times, all for misdemeanor alcohol violations, and he doesn't mind the publicity. In his view, all of us are just a banana peel-slip away from arrest. "Everybody makes mistakes - the Bible says so," he says. "People love to gossip."

That love of gossip and the longing to know - drives older than newsprint itself - may be Cornetti's most reliable sales force. Philip Isley, a lawyer and Raleigh city councilor, likens The Slammer to "our own little ‘Entertainment Tonight' weekly."

"Clearly, there's a morbid desire for people to know exactly what's going on criminally in the community," he says, suggesting that awareness "can have a great deterrent effect, notwithstanding the thrillseekers who enjoy seeing their mug shot in print."

Back at the Raleigh Times restaurant, where Cornetti is a minor celebrity, one group of barstool readers is trying to determine if a friend's boyfriend, who supposedly got arrested recently, is in the paper. Cornetti gets up for a few minutes and returns to the table. He nods back toward the server, who had eagerly grabbed The Slammer when he came in. "She just told me she was in it in May," he says.

Apparently, she harbored no hard feelings.

By Patrik Jonsson | Staff writer / January 6, 2009 edition

Credit:

http://features.csmonitor.com/backstory/2009/01/06/a-crime-paper-flourishes-by-printing-mug-shots/

When first accredited by a Guinness World Record official in 2000, Davidson had 462 piercings, with 192 in her face alone.

Now, nine years later, she has 6,005 including more than 1,500 that are "internal".

However, despite her eye-watering record, Miss Davidson, born in Brazil, claims she doesn't like being pierced, and suffers for her art.

She said: "I don't enjoy getting pierced, but to break the record you have to get to a high level.

"I wanted to break the record.

"My family don't even like tattoos or piercings.

"But I am happy. I decided to change myself and be me."

Miss Davidson, a nurse who now lives in Edinburgh, was speaking in Darlington, Durham, as she opened a piercing studio.

She officially cut the ribbon at Arcadia.

Shop owner Les Fry said: "Elaine is a friend and she very kindly agreed to open the shop.

"We have got an excellent piercing artist who can perform the most up-to-date techniques."

MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif., Feb. 25 (UPI) -- Police say six California residents have been arrested in a sting operation that offered ski-lift tickets in exchange for drugs.

Mono County sheriff's deputies told The Orange County (Calif.) Register Wednesday that the suspects were busted after answering an ad posted on Craigslist.com that offered to swap ticket vouchers for the Mammoth Lakes ski area for narcotics.

Department spokeswoman Shannon Kendall told the Register that the operation netted a pond of marijuana and quantities of cocaine, ecstasy and prescription pills.

Four Orange County residents and two people from San Luis Obispo and Highland Park were arrested Friday and were in jail Wednesday on various drug-related charges.

Two guys arrested for throwing unopened beer cans at an unmarked police car. In their defense, it was Bud Light

Andrew Rickert and Charles Thoma

TAMPA - Two men found out this morning that a beer causes legal headaches after police said they used an unmarked patrol vehicle as a chaser.

Tampa police Cpl. Richard Blasioli was on duty about 3:20 a.m., driving an unmarked 2001 Ford Expedition, when he stopped at a traffic light near North Armenia Avenue and Cypress Street.

He noticed a 1999 Toyota Solara cruising north on Armenia Avenue, which is the wrong way for the southbound-only road in that area, police said.

Here's what happened next, affidavits say:

As the Toyota approached, driver Andrew Rickert, 28, scooted the car a lane closer to the Ford. Then Charles Patton Thomas III, 24, leaned out of the Toyota's passenger window and threw an unopened 16-ounce can of Bud Light at the Ford.

The can struck the right front fender, causing about $1,000 worth of damage, police said.

Police didn't appreciate the target practice. Blasioli and other officers arrested the pair within minutes, charging them with throwing a deadly missile at an occupied vehicle, a second-degree felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

Rickert, of Tampa, was held today at Orient Road Jail on $7,500 bail and was released on bond, records show.

Thomas, of Dade City, was held at the jail on $8,500 bail and was released on bond. Police also charged Thomas with misdemeanor marijuana possession and misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia after officers found a drug pipe and a gram of marijuana on him, an affidavit states.

Both work at Lake Jovita County Club, according to jail records.

Canadian mounted police admit they probably should have looked into that SOS message stamped into the snow by the stranded skiers a little sooner

GOLDEN, B.C. -- Ultimately fatal communication breakdowns that delayed the search for two skiers lost in the frozen wilderness will come under independent review, after Mounties admitted error yesterday.

With one of the pair dead after nine days in the unforgiving elements, RCMP should have initiated a search days sooner than they did, Cpl. Dan Moskaluk said yesterday in this mountain town 260 km west of Calgary.

"There's an error on the behalf of the RCMP for not initiating a callout on Feb. 21," he said.

"We are certainly facing the fact that in similar circumstances ... we do call-out search and rescue - we didn't in this incident."

It wasn't until Feb. 24 that 51-year-old Gilles Blackburn, of Lasalle, Que., flagged down a passing helicopter.

But efforts arrived too late for his wife Marie Josee Fortin, 44, who died on the mountain.

The staggering tale of survival, coupled with grim tragedy unfolded nine days after the couple skied out of bounds at Golden's Kicking Horse Mountain Resort.

But on Feb. 21 Mounties were aware of SOS signs stamped in the snow by the desperate couple, a stark fact prompting the independent external officer review of the tragedy.

Moskaluk said the probe could take up to three months.

The SOS signs were first noticed Feb. 17 by an off-duty employee of Purcell Helicopter Skiing, then again four days later when Mounties were brought into the loop.

"Tragically, there's some information that (Blackburn) did see some of the flyovers taking place as the days unfolded," said Moskaluk.

"He has gone through a horrific tragic event here where he's lost his spouse ... and he witnessed that."

The bereaved husband skied on his own steam down to the helicopter that finally saved him.

His brother Yvon Blackburn said in interviews that the ordeal was made more terrifying due to a pack of wolves that could be heard nearby at night.

Gilles was treated for frostbite to his feet and released from Golden hospital yesterday.

Blackburn's rescue came the same day Golden Mounties were notified of a missing persons report filed by the couple's family.

Moskaluk added Blackburn has acknowledged the couple willingly skied outside the controlled recreational area, only to quickly realize they had entered unforgiving terrain.

But as questions linger over delayed efforts to locate the pair, the manager of Golden's search and rescue service said the final call rests on RCMP shoulders.

"My hands are tied, I can't just go out and do rescues," said Ian Foss.  

"I can only do it at the behest of the RCMP, they're the sole authority here."

Foss maintained yesterday the onus was on Purcell, which was directed by a member of the local SAR team, to apprise Mounties of the first SOS sighting.

"That didn't happen," he said, adding the colleague who took the initial report has been plagued by what-ifs in the aftermath.

"Our organization wasn't aware - a single member of our volunteer organization was made aware.

"They're beating themselves up about it ... it's easy to look back and say we could've done things differently."

The incident has prompted Foss to call for a provincial review of SAR services.

RCMP are not releasing how Fortin died pending autopsy results, though they have previously said her death was possibly due to exposure.

Temperatures plummeted as low as -18 C one night while the couple was stranded.