According to a tweet from the Montreal police:
D.Markuze was arrested for social media harassment (breach of probation). Thanks to those who helped with the investigation
#Mabus#SPVM
Think it will stick this time?
Here is today’s Montreal Gazette article on the arrest.
And here is an amazingly detailed article by Tim Farley with the full timeline of what it’s taken to get the Montreal authorities to take the whole Markuze situation seriously.
37 comments
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Zinc Avenger (Sarcasm Tags 3.0 Compliant)
November 19, 2012 at 4:36 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I hope he gets the treatment he needs to help him rejoin society as a happier person.
Lord Narf
November 19, 2012 at 6:39 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I think we can pretty much give up on that, since he’s not schizophrenic or something along those lines. I think he’s the non-medicatable, Faux News sort of crazy.
Stacy
November 19, 2012 at 6:51 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I thought he’d been diagnosed as bipolar, with substance abuse problems.
Lord Narf
November 21, 2012 at 11:28 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
The substance abuse could potentially be a contributing factor. The Bipolar Disorder, not so much.
In the worst 1% of cases, manic episodes can sometimes cause dissociation and severe behavioral effects. But the biggest characteristic of Bipolar Disorder is its cyclical nature.
My grandfather was a severe case. He’d occasionally go completely nuts … for about two weeks. Then, he’d be more or less normal for a few months … then swing down to the depressive side, for a couple months, and ask my grandmother to bring him his rifle, so he could shoot himself.
Speaking from personal experience, the manic, potentially-delusional period of the cycle is very short, relative to the rest of the cycle. I’m not a very severe case, so mine are just like a 2 or 3 week long adrenalin hit.
Dennis is delusional ALL THE TIME. There’s something else causing it. Maybe there’s nothing causing it. Some “psychotic” people have a clinically diagnosable and treatable condition. Some are just assholes, and the only way to fix them is by wiping their mind and giving them a new personality.
MJ
November 20, 2012 at 4:46 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I can’t begin to say how happy it makes me that the first response to this news was something mature, and not gloating namecalling or worse. Especially on the internet, that’s not very common.
Lord Narf
November 21, 2012 at 11:30 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
And then I had to ruin it. ^.^
Ichthyic
November 19, 2012 at 4:47 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
nope.
those that build houses in swamps…
well, takes at least 3 times, right?
Kazim
November 19, 2012 at 4:54 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
The third one burned down, fell over, and THEN sank into the swamp. BUT THE FOURTH ONE STAYED UP.
mickwright
November 19, 2012 at 5:26 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Thank you for that. So much. You made my night.
jdon
November 19, 2012 at 5:50 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Markuze’s shootin’ for those huge… tracts of land.
Compuholic
November 19, 2012 at 5:01 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I am slightly disturbed that the montreal police publishes such things on Twitter. I could understand it if there had been a massive manhunt and everybody knew who they are after.
I would trust my local police department to perform their duties with a little more discretion.
Rodney Nelson
November 19, 2012 at 5:32 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
The Montreal police have been receiving numerous complaints about Markuze, often by Twitter. Essentially they’re saying “he’s arrested, you can stop telling us about his violations of parole.”
jdon
November 19, 2012 at 5:56 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. How much you breach conditions of probation is taken into account by the system. Stopping accepting instances of what he’s done is merciful in one quarter, but also makes it less likely he’ll get help. So, yeah. Good-bad.
Although they may be assigning someone to directly investigate his activity… but I can’t imagine they’d put that level of resources into an internet harassment dude, breach or no.
F
November 19, 2012 at 7:37 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Mabus has no discretion, and has made himself a public figure. Don’t you think people should know he is off the streets and internets for the moment?
Compuholic
November 20, 2012 at 12:13 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Well I admit that I have not experienced much of him. I only heard that he was spamming and stalking a lot of people. But it is hard for me to imagine that he made such a huge impact that everybody in the Montreal area (and the world) needs to know about his arrest. Most people probably never have heard of him.
I mean seriously. Would you want to see your name on twitter after the police has arrested you for let’s say a traffic violation?
I could understand the police tweeting about it, if he was a wanted criminal that everybody knew by name anyways.
Martin Wagner
November 20, 2012 at 3:31 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
A traffic violation is hardly comparable to spending two decades of your life sending out emails to dozens, if not hundreds, of recipients, informing them that you plan to murder them and their families. Markuze is a tangible danger to himself and others.
heicart
November 20, 2012 at 7:36 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
He’s the epitome of the guy who, after he kills/injures someone, everyone reads the bio and asks “What the hell was someone like that doing running around loose?!” It’s like the guy who shoots up the school, and you find out he got a gun while on prescription strength, anti-psychotic medication, which he had stopped taking a few weeks prior.
Compuholic
November 21, 2012 at 8:37 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Well I certainly agree that he is dangerous and that the police should do something about him. The point I was trying to make was entirely different: I would like to see a little more discretion from the police.
Markuze might be dangerous but he is not a guy that everyone knows by name. The commenters here do know him because he targeted many of the bloggers but I am reasonably sure that hardly anyone in Montreal knows him.
IMHO are they are entirely right to arrest him. But I don’t think it is right to make a big deal out of it. And my comparison with a traffic violation was not meant to compare the severity of the offense but to compare it with the number of people who are affected by it.
Jean
November 19, 2012 at 5:17 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Since the victims were on the internet, it seems appropriate to make this announcement this way.
And I do appreciate that my local police department does act in an open way (at least in this case).
ladyatheist
November 19, 2012 at 6:18 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
He spammed me once a few weeks ago but I didn’t report it because it was a short spam, not his usual long, incoherent rant. I wasn’t sure it was him. YAY for spam folders. I’ll report it now that I know he was out and off his meds.
F
November 19, 2012 at 7:38 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I wonder what his mom will say this time.
Midnight Rambler
November 19, 2012 at 10:03 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Doubt it. Note the last paragraph:
And I’m sure, given his recent history, he’ll hold to those promises, right?
For someone this disturbed he seems to have gotten at least one thing right.
F
November 20, 2012 at 8:43 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Never mind the fact that the police or state were not monitoring, at all, the conditions of his probation WRT internet belligerence. Hell, who was it – Farley? – had to convince the police that there was a court order in the first place, by producing it for them. Which is probably why Markuze has roamed free on the net spewing his shit for months.
heicart
November 20, 2012 at 7:38 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
“The police won’t save you”? Nah, that’s not at all disturbing or scary…?!
left0ver1under
November 19, 2012 at 10:31 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Remember Kevin Mitnick? He was naught more than a computer trespasser, silently poking his way into computers to learn systems. His biggest “crime” was downloading a file that a phone company sold for $20, while the media pretended he was some sort of “destroyer of worlds”. His sentence? Four years in prison (released after one) and barred from using ANY communications technology – other than landline telephones – during his probation.
The judge in Markuze’s case let that sociopath out after six months despite uttering threats of violence and puts no restrictive limits on his use of a computer. Clearly, some judges have no sense of proportion – on no sense, period.
Minor Fact Check
November 20, 2012 at 7:03 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
I think you may be confusing Mitnick with Craig Neidorf, aka Knight Lightning, co-founder and editor of Phrack magazine in the mid to late 80s.. He was charged with receiving stolen documentation on the E911 system, and publishing it online.
During the trial, it was shown that more detailed documentation could be purchased from Bell South for as little as $13. Charges were dropped after that.
Mitnick was guilty of many things, including cellular fraud (cloning phones, etc), penetrating many companies computer systems (and thus the clean up costs), wiretapping, invading the privacy of others by reading their email.
Now, he certainly wasn’t the destroyer of worlds that he was made out to be in court and by the press, but he certainly was no angel.
rrpostal
November 20, 2012 at 4:46 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
So the police needed to be “convinced” there was an actual crime, then he was let go after promising to be good. I’m sure that’ll teach him to toe the line.
F
November 20, 2012 at 8:45 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Yep, that’s about right. The priorities of law enfarcement are seriously confused, just like the rest of the legal system.
krelnik
November 20, 2012 at 5:06 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
There’s even more to the story of how we had to convince the police to arrest Markuze. Check it out at my blog. IMHO, the real story is how the courts have let Markuze down.
Adam
November 20, 2012 at 8:07 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Didn’t he get help the last time around?
Martin Wagner
November 20, 2012 at 10:16 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
It looks like all he got was a wrist-slap, after being asked to pinky-swear never to be a bad boy again. Courts are notoriously inept at realizing that such “punishments” don’t work with genuinely crazy people.
Trebuchet
November 21, 2012 at 10:20 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
As I recall, the facility that evaluated him was upset that he was NOT ordered to get help, just told to stay off the internet. You can see how well that worked out.
adamfuehrer
November 21, 2012 at 11:15 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Dude hit me and I didn’t even know it who it was.
https://twitter.com/oper443/status/269309456104443904
Jason Rebelato
November 22, 2012 at 9:49 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
This is the problem with the way our legal system handles cases of potentially dangerous people. The police scoff at these accusations, thinking it’s just some guy talking smack on the internet…we have WAY more important things to worry about.
However, aren’t these the kind of things we’re told to watch out for BEFORE something more sinister happens? The police have been served up a great example of a person who needs serious mental help and surveillance now, instead of waiting until after he follows through on these threats. If this man ever does commit a violent act, no one can use the cliche “I never saw it coming…he seemed like such a quiet, peaceful man”.
Lord Narf
November 24, 2012 at 2:47 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Yeah, always much more comforting to hear from the neighbors that a serial killer was a sadistic bastard and that they feared for their life every moment. Then, when the police came and arrested the guy, no one was surprised.
braimer
November 25, 2012 at 2:14 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
2 major problems demonstrated with this situation. First, putting people in jail won’t help especially because mental health services are even less available than they were thanks to fed government policies so he will come out worse. Second our legal system resources are drained by the futile and wasteful enforcement of drug prohibition laws so they don’t have time to devise real solutions or engage in prevention activities. Further, people on probation or on bail are not monitored because there are not enough resources.
Lord Narf
November 25, 2012 at 10:40 am (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Are you speaking of the US or Canadian system? It’s sounds like you’re referring to the fucked-up American legal system. Isn’t the Canadian system a lot better?