Small Wisconsin town has crime involving videotaped rape, torture

[undeterred]

The town this happened in has just over 4000 people- its close to Madison, which has 200,000 but stuff like this doesn't happen in Madison even though there are gangs. I'm shocked and I wonder if the world is turning into Abu Gharaib or why something like this is happening in a place where there used to be virtually no crime at all. When I look at the ages of the people involved... they've come of age under this administration.

Torture video leaves court officials aghast
The videotapes of the torture of a 20-year-old Spring Green man at a rural Cottage Grove home earlier this week are nothing short of disgusting, Assistant District Attorney Michael Verveer said Friday at a bail hearing for three of the four suspects in the case.

Not only did the three men involved brutalize their victim for nearly eight hours -- because they thought he stole some cocaine -- but "they had the audacity to film it," said Verveer as he argued for high cash bail for those involved.

Verveer viewed the videotapes in preparation for Friday's bail hearing. "It shows a very distraught ... young man fearing for his life, naked, bound, pleading with his captors not to kill him," Verveer told Dane County Court Commissioner Todd Meurer. He said the video clearly shows the victim being beaten, punched and kicked as well as shot with a BB gun.

Meurer, who has been involved in the Dane County criminal justice system both as a prosecutor and as a court commissioner for some three decades, did not see the videos. But he set $75,000 cash bail for both Carl G. Ware Jr., 19, of Cottage Grove, and Dominique Hale, 19, of Madison after reading a detailed affidavit of probable cause which had been filed to hold the pair in jail until they could be brought to court for a bail hearing.

the rest is pretty graphic
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/index.php?ntid=129402&ntpid=5

The people involved in the crime knew each other - they were black and white, male and female, teenagers and young adults.

[aquart]

1. WTF is getting into that cheese?

[Joanne98]

2. What a great influence Bush has had on our society....

[dysfunctional press]

3. you can't blame this kind of stuff on bush-

it's been going on pretty much forever.

[undeterred]

6. sick individuals

but this was a group of people who knew each other

edit: when the people who deal with crime all the time are shocked, it worries me

[dysfunctional press]

11. it may not be common- and it still isn't...

but it does/has happened throughtout the past...

my point being that not EVERYTHING bad that happens is because of george bush, as some posters seem to want to believe.

[Joanne98]

8. Yes I can. He's the one who made torture cool!

[dysfunctional press]

12. whatever...

:eyes:

[undeterred]

13. I think Bush has made lying cool.

It feels like we are in an era when everyone lies and thinks nothing of it- it isn't a big deal unless you get caught and punished for it, but that hardly ever happens. It would be hard to prove, but it doesn't seem like as much of a stretch to say that Bush has made lying more acceptable.

It would be a longer walk to say that about torture, but I do worry about the youngest generation. Growing up, the only time I ever heard of torture was that it was something that other countries might do to American prisoners, things too horrible to imagine. I knew that Amnesty International was a group fighting against it. I never saw images of what it entailed.

During the past 6 years I have seen and heard more about what torture is, who is doing it, and what it entails than ever before. Honestly, I could have lived the rest of my life without knowing what "waterboarding" is. So I wonder- are teenagers, who have may have no adult guidance or common sense for processing what they see, being exposed to things they simply can't handle? Do they think its cool to do horrible things and videotape it?

[dysfunctional press]

15. and the right would say that it started with clinton...

just because we disagree with someone's political agenda, it doesn't make them responsible for all the ills in the world.

[Sadie4629]

4. Yup

Jeffrey Dahmer . . . Son of Sam . . . Boston Strangler . . .

Oh, wait a minute . . .

[WinkyDink]

14. Yes, there've been notorious killers. But I think the point may have been it's more an every-day

occurrence.

I don't know if it's Bushco's influence, but I do think our culture is FAR more coarsened (crime, brutality, vulgarity, pornography, and the graphic depictions of same) than it was a couple decades ago.

[dysfunctional press]

16. it's hardly an every-day occurence...

hence the shock expressed by the law-enforcement people in the op.

just because we disagree with a person's political agenda- it doesn't make them responsible for all the world's ills.

[hfojvt]

5. sort of an odd link

did you mean this one?

http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/local/index.php?ntid=129335&ntpid=1

[undeterred]

7. sorry, I fixed it above

[riverdeep]

9. They filmed this, this is why it got out.

Imagine the ones that don't get filmed. But really, this isn't really new is it. Mafia, anyone?

[undeterred]

10. Honestly, I would think that in these small towns

this kind of thing hardly ever happens so it is probably pretty shocking. There just isn't that much violent crime in rural areas, and most of it involves alcohol.

[hfojvt]

17. Cottage Grove is in the Madison metro area

and crime is not that rare in the area. For example, there was a school shooting, where the principal was killed, in Weston school, which is up by Lime Ridge. In Reedsburgh there were two teenaged idiots who stole a car planning to go on a crime spree that would make them famous, got caught in the act, shot the owner in the head and later torched the car. The owner survived and the idiots went to prison. In Baraboo a kid escaped from a kidnapping with two broken legs, and it was then determined that a kid who was earlier reported to have drowned in the Wisconsin River had been killed by the kidnapper who told his captive that he like to 'hear the sound of broken bones'. He had broken the legs of the first kid too, but an autopsy was not done until later since the kid's body was found in the river. Bizarre, considering that the buzz around the high school was that the murderer (as he was later found to be) had killed the kid. When I first moved there in 1987 there were three young women found dead in a very short period (an no, there was no causality in the two events). One was a teacher from Lyndon Station, the others were in their twenties and from small towns, or found near small towns. I think one was on highway 12 just north or west of Sauk City. Those come to my mind from Sauk County in the last twenty years.

[undeterred]

18. Right. I live in Madison.

But its a city of 200,000. You expect a different kind of crime there. Its a city, with neighborhoods, with gangs, nightlife, etc.

Some of the towns mentioned are very small towns with small police departments. They just aren't used to dealing with gang crime. Its not that crime doesn't ever happen, but its usually domestic or people who know each other, like the principal shooting was. The year I moved to Madison (2000) there were only 6 homicides in Dane County, and all 6 were related to domestic violence.

Its not that crime never happens in Wisconsin, or in small towns, but it seems like its becoming more frequent and that the nature of it is more vicious. I lived on the south side of Chicago for 19 years so I'm used to waking up and hearing some pretty bad stuff on the news, but when I heard this story I had to pinch myself and ask what state am I living in.

We have newly elected Democratic sheriffs in Dane county as well as in Rock county. There was a triple homicide at a trailer park in Rock County a few months ago, and though a suspect is being held, he still hasn't been charged with the homicides. I hope our Democratic Sheriffs do more than talk tough on this stuff- it feels like things are becoming less safe around here, and I hope they do a good job with it.

[Berry Cool]

19. Could there possibly have been other drugs involved?

Say, meth? The scourge of small-town America, that makes people do some truly insane things?

[undeterred]

20. All I heard so far was cocaine

but the story has that sound to it, doesn't it? I don't know whose home was the scene of this crime, or where these kids were getting their money. Maybe more information will come out.

I had a neighbor down the street whose home was raided a couple of years ago- turns out she had a meth lab. She was living there with her 3 children and taking in lots of other kids for the babysitting money- with all these dangerous chemicals around. Place was shut down and her children were put in foster care.

[MsUnderstood]

21. wow that is a strange logic used there

1) Bad stuff happens in a small town. In the 80's the lil town I lived in had a 80 year old woman raped at a gas convience store she worked at--no one blamed reagan.

2) coming of age during a president's administration doesn't influence you to be good or evil--if that were the case we'd have more people growing up in the 70's installing solar panels in memory of the "energy crisis"

So this was an evil event and the only thing different than other events is the technology involved. I'd blame you tube before I'd blame the administration.

[undeterred]

22. Kids have always liked to play soldier

Maybe in the past they learned what that was like through books and movies.

Today they're seeing it in violent video games, real videos on the internet, you tube, etc. They don't have a context for it as right or wrong.

I wouldn't blame the administration directly, but when you pull the whole picture together- this is the only president they've really known and we haven't taken him down. Every one of these small towns has lost a soldier, a war hero, and they are the last ones to turn against the war...