Shoplifting for resale
When I walked into the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail on March 21, I was in for a surprise. I was armed with a list of general questions about the black […]
“For Tobacco Use Only”
I bought my first illegal CD a couple of Sundays ago. It did not feel wrong or illicit. I did feel like I was getting a good deal, though. Forty-one […]
Crystal meth, the shopping list
Crystal, crank, tweak, speed, chalk, glass, tina, ice, poor man’s cocaine. Methamphetamine can be snorted through the nose, smoked in a pipe or mainlined with a syringe. Those who do […]
Street legal
“When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns” may be a bumper sticker-ready bit of NRA rhetoric, but there is a certain logic to it: If the law prohibits […]
Turn off the red light
“Operation Hook-Up” began in the summer of 2006 when Fifeville neighbors began calling the Charlottesville Police Department to complain about alleged acts of prostitution in Tonsler Park on Cherry Avenue. […]
How we wrote it
We know you’re wondering: How did we find all this information about the black market? The short answer: by asking everyone we could think of who might know something. First, […]
Friendly firearms
I am with a colleague at a gun show in Richmond, talking to an ex-cop selling stun guns. I’m looking for evidence of the so-called gun show loophole: the fact […]
Phony as a three-dollar bill
It’s not hard to guess which are the most popular forms of black market documents. Even the most straightlaced of us have heard that folks of the under-21 variety go […]
This ain’t Vegas, baby
Thirty years ago, it was more common to arrange sexual favors through a direct trade for narcotics, according to an inmate at the Charlottesville-Albemarle Regional Jail. But Charlottesville’s finest don’t […]
Toil and trouble
For all the political bluster about how illegal labor hurts Americans and the economy, it’s extremely easy for undocumented workers to become victims in the employment system they’re supposedly milking. […]