110
votes
Accepted
Do the Swedish police have a special code for immigrant crimes?
That there is a police code is true. The Swedish police use different codes for different types of work as a way to track, for instance, how much resources they use. Some examples of such police codes ...
- 2,354
71
votes
Accepted
Are all French citizens who go outside their home legally required to carry official papers with a reason why they are out (Covid-19 lockdown)?
Yes, it's true (but imprecise). All residents of France (this is unrelated to citizenship) need to carry an authorization and the police is checking these authorizations. The authorization is a sworn ...
65
votes
Were COVID-19 patients in Wuhan welded into their apartments to enforce the lockdown?
This event happened in late January, but not in Wuhan. The restriction was imposed on the accommodation of someone who had been to Wuhan. It was soon seen by the government as an over-reaction, and ...
- 709
54
votes
Did only one banker in the US go to prison for the Financial Crisis of 2007-08?
Only one Wall Street banker (a trader) went to jail. Other people, who could be considered bankers, were also jailed. No Wall Street CEOs were jailed.
Financial Times, August 9, 2017:
In the US ...
- 141k
51
votes
Accepted
Did French police fine homeless persons for not being confined at home?
It is a bit unclear at the moment. But it is certainly not just "fake news". It is an ongoing situation with "his word against his", with the police being one "his", and a not particularly trustworthy ...
- 44k
51
votes
Were over 3000 persons arrested in Britain for social media posts in 2018?
I can't speak for the exactness of the figure, but it certainly seems plausible. According to this article about arrests for online posts in London 857 arrests were made in 2015 in London alone as a ...
- 57.5k
50
votes
Did only one banker in the US go to prison for the Financial Crisis of 2007-08?
90 bankers were convicted, of which 62 went to prison:
Edward Woodard (conspiracy to commit bank fraud, false entry in a bank record, unlawful participation in loans, false statements to a ...
- 105k
38
votes
Were COVID-19 patients in Wuhan welded into their apartments to enforce the lockdown?
You will be able to find way more sources and direct video evidence if you know Chinese.
In the first two clips in the article, you can hear the filmers were talking about the coronavirus outbreak ...
- 758
32
votes
Accepted
Were over 3000 persons arrested in Britain for social media posts in 2018?
Not in 2020. In 2016.
The "3,300" figure is likely a reference to a 2017 piece in The Times.
More than 3,300 people were detained and questioned last year over so-called trolling on social ...
- 994
29
votes
Accepted
Do Japanese police roll drunks and criminals into giant futons?
Yes, they do in fact do this! It is called a "protection sheet" 保護シート and it is a thin sheet made from plastic, not a futon.
Here is a video of a violent drunk being rolled up, and another of a ...
- 44.9k
23
votes
Did the city of Berlin set up safe zones for women for New Year’s Eve 2017/2018?
There will be an area for women to come if they feel harassed. Interestingly, this area is called "Women's Safety Area" (in English) even in German media so it seems to be the official name....
- 4,658
19
votes
Accepted
Is this protest sign referring to Europe?
It may appear as if it's about police failing to stop the 2016 New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Germany, but using water cannon and tear gas on Pegida demonstrations.
But the picture pre-dated the ...
- 38.9k
17
votes
Are people with a high IQ not allowed to become police officers in New London?
The lawsuit reported on by ABC News did happen (Robert Jordan vs. the City of New London, CT). The court case can be found here. That page verifies many of the facts given in the article, including ...
- 30.7k
16
votes
Accepted
Are Swedish police banned from describing criminals?
An internal memo from the police is covered by a news paper article Får interna direktiv: Ange inte signalement. The article does not contain the entire memo, but it does cite a few key parts of it.
...
- 105k
15
votes
Did the city of Berlin set up safe zones for women for New Year’s Eve 2017/2018?
RBB summarizes it after the night as:
Zum ersten Mal hatte es auf der Festmeile einen gesonderten
Anlaufpunkt für Frauen gegeben, die sich sexuell bedrängt oder
belästigt fühlen. Die in einem DRK-...
- 33.3k
14
votes
Accepted
Do Kaziranga National Park workers shoot and kill poachers?
As far as we can tell, yes. Rangers in Kaziranga park have killed 72 suspected poachers between 2007 and February 10th, 2017
Here is a report from the BBC from February 10th regarding the park and ...
- 22.4k
12
votes
Is the leaked Aiden Hale "manifesto" authentic?
You have 2 questions:
Is it authentic? - Yes.
According to Metro investigating how images were released from Covenant documents
Nashville Mayor Freddie O'Connell said he and his administration were ...
- 894
10
votes
Accepted
Have the USDA bullied (allegedly criminal) raisin-marketers?
Yes, the actions of the USDA were found to be unconstitutional in HORNE ET AL. v. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE in 2015 after the OP question was asked.
The decision states:
In 2002–2003, raisin ...
- 105k
10
votes
Accepted
Did a non-US Hungarian citizen get extradited to the United States for not reporting an American customer of his bank?
There was more involved according to the US Department of Justice.
“As alleged in the indictment, the defendants engaged in an elaborate multi-year scheme to defraud the investing public of millions ...
- 105k
9
votes
Did the city of Berlin set up safe zones for women for New Year’s Eve 2017/2018?
Yes, Berlin set up one place that could reasonably be translated from German to English as a “safe zone for women”. No, this “safe zone” does NOT involve a large-scale, gender-segregated area where ...
- 1,572
9
votes
Accepted
Do Virgina and Connecticut have the death penalty for those who work on Sunday?
It is true that the death penalty was available to punish people who worked on Sunday in Connecticut and Virginia.
In Connecticut (specifically the New Haven Colony, not the entire state), ...
- 105k
8
votes
Did the alleged victim of Julian Assange's Swedish sex crime say that police made it up?
Assange is accused of raping one woman (SW) and molesting another (AA). He previously had consensual sex with both of them. The accusation is that he then had unprotected sex with both of them against ...
tim♦
- 51.8k
8
votes
Accepted
Is there a better-supported explanation than economic hegemony, why "70% of firms targeted for anti-bribery by the DOJ are overseas"?
TLDR: from the little research there is on this (one paper seriously trying to eliminate confounders, many off-the-cuff options otherwise), there's still an unexplained "foreign fine gap" in FCPA ...
- 59.6k
8
votes
Does most illegal fentanyl sold in the US come through Mexico?
I suspect that might be based on estimates using as proxy the US seizures of fentanyl at borders (points of entry more precisely). If we use that method, the claim is only nominally correct, i.e. in ...
- 59.6k
8
votes
Accepted
Are private contractors being used by Federal Agencies in the response to the ongoing George Floyd protests?
[Disclosure: This answer was written by the author of the Medium article, Bill Conroy.]
The contractor in Portland is revealed in this follow-up story:
Medium: Private Contractor Assisting Feds in ...
8
votes
Accepted
Did UK police agree to drop sex-offense charges in exchange for an apology?
There is no reason to doubt these figures; they are consistent with previous reports such as this one from 2019 relating to 2014-2018.
I would note that a community resolution is not necessarily an ...
- 5,231
7
votes
Did only one banker in the US go to prison for the Financial Crisis of 2007-08?
Banks took the money the American people gave them, and used it to pay themselves huge bonuses, and lobby the Congress to kill big reform.
The money that's they are referring to here is the bank ...
- 7,126
6
votes
Can mobile phone cell towers be spoofed in ways that allow interception of calls?
The basic idea of GSM is that a mobile phone scans for base stations and that are applicable and then syncs with the base station that has the strongest signal.
In 2010 the relevant equipment cost 1,...
- 33.3k
6
votes
Are dollar bills seen by the Turkish government as a secret sign of connections to Gülen?
Seem crazy, but the justice minister himself said yes... and was apparently backed up the prime minister. AP reports:
“There is no doubt that this $1 bill has some important function within the ...
- 59.6k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible