Million-Dollar Idling Complaints And A City On Edge

A teenager is lured on Snapchat, vanishes across state lines, and is found hidden in a basement box. That story alone would stop anyone cold, and it sets the tone for a conversation about safety, trust, and how fast predators move in the shadowy corners of social apps. We talk about the relief of a rescue, the gaps that let this happen, and the daily choices parents, platforms, and law enforcement can make to close the distance before harm is done.

From there, we swing to New York City’s Citizens Idling Complaint program—the one where a handful of residents have pulled in hundreds of thousands of dollars by filming trucks idling too long. Is this climate-minded civic action or just a clever cash grab? We break down how the incentives work, why a few professionals dominate the payouts, and what it reveals about policy design, enforcement costs, and public trust. If you care about air quality, governance, or the unintended consequences of “crowdsourced” compliance, this segment will get you thinking.

We finish on turf and turf wars: a head coach leaves Auburn as chatter rises about his love of golf, while NIL and the transfer portal redraw the map of college football. We ask what fans expect now, what coaches can actually control, and whether off-field optics should matter when the job itself keeps changing. To cool it down, we close with a simple question that always lights up a room: sweet tea, unsweet, lemon, or no thanks?

If you’re into true crime prevention, policy that actually works, and the culture of college sports, you’ll find a lot to chew on. Hit play, share your take on the idling payouts and the golf debate, and tell us—how do you take your tea? Subscribe, leave a quick review, and pass this along to a friend who loves a spirited breakdown.

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Liberty Line each week on Sunday, look for topics on my X file @americanistblog and submit your 1-3 audio opinions to anamericanistblog@gmail.com and you'll be featured on the podcast. 

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Chapters

• 0:29 Opening And Tough News Search
• 0:59 Teen Rescue After Snapchat Lure
• 4:07 Anger At Online Predators
• 6:27 NYC Idling Bounty Hunters Exposed
• 10:57 Who Profits And Why It Matters

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:15

Well, hello my little love bunnies. I hope you're doing great. We have three topics for you today, and I struggled so hard to find something today. It was rough, it was rough. Because either it's all too gross and gory, and I don't want to share that, and you know, because it's just or it's just stupid. So we're going with mainly stupid today. Well, except for this one. This this one is pretty serious, and but it has a good outcome, I think. Hopefully it does. I alright, so a missing girl who is 13 years old. She was found hidden in a box a thousand miles away in an accused sex trafficker's basement. This is from the New York Post. I think she was found alive. I hope she was found alive. A missing 13-year-old Louisiana girl was found hidden in a box more than 1,000 miles away from home, having been repeatedly abused by a sex trafficker who tricked her into thinking she was being adopted. Y'all be careful what your teens are watching and doing on Snapchat. This all happened over Snapchat. The teen had been reported missing from East Baton Rouge Parish on October 20th before she was found Thursday inside a box covered by a sheet in the basement of a house in Pittsburgh. There she was allegedly sexually abused, repeated by repeatedly by Keyshawn Crumity, who was 26 years old, after he plied her with booze and fed her marijuana edibles, according to a criminal complaint obtained by CBS News. Now I don't know what the home life to this girl is. She could I don't know. Crumety had befriended her on Snapchat and persuaded her to travel more than 1,000 miles by bus on the cruel line that she would on the cruel lie, sorry, that she would be adopted by trusted adults. Instead, she was groomed, exploited, and then sexually abused by strangers who found her online. Y'all, this is disgusting. And all these people finding them online, how come the FBI or whoever is in charge of this kind of thing, surely they can infiltrate the internet and find these derelicts? Derelicks is not the right word. There needs to be a harsher word for them. This is just one example of the dangers of social media and of human trafficking. The girl was not the girl has not been identified because of her age and the belief she is a victim of sex crimes. She was first abused the day she arrived at the house, and Crumity had sex with her at least once or twice daily during the week she was there, according to the complaint, so she's gone a week. She was forced to sleep in a bed in the basement uh with him and an and an identified woman. Oh boy. Crumity allegedly told investigators that he knew she was a runaway and that he would get in trouble. Yeah, he looks like a frickin' asshole. Uh Crumity is charged with sleuths. Okay, whatever. But she was found alive and returned home. I like I said, I don't know what her home life is like. I don't know what prompted her to do this, but or be suckered into it. I don't know. But she's found safe. And and something has been exposed again. Again, Snapchat online. Y'all be careful. Alright, moving on. Oh, so here this is an interesting. This is an interesting article, and I want your take on this. New York City bounty hunters, and the word bounty hunters is in quotation marks, making almost$1 million a piece by reporting idling trucks, and they are professionals. They live in posh enclaves. You ready for this story? This is, I didn't know this was a thing. The street snitches who have raked in up to nearly one million dollars apiece of reporting idling trucks to the city are lawyers, doctors, and residents of posh enclaves enjoying the lucrative perks of a program that targeted even mobile COVID testing trucks during the pandemic. Among the people profiting the most off the Big Apple Citizens Idling Complaint program, boy, that's a big title for a program, is Patrick Schnell, who records who records show, who I'm sorry, who records show has made five hundred and eighty-two thousand dollars since 2019 by filming trucks idling for more than three minutes, then sending his clips to the city and collecting checks worth up to 50% of the vehicles ensuing fines. Okay, so this is one way the city can get rid of needless spending. Get rid of this program, how are you paying for this? But it's just a side hustle for Schnell, who lives in a leafy Borham Hill, Brooklyn, and is a pediatrician with a long resume from high-powered medical groups such as Pfizer. Well, of course. So he's probably a climate activist, too. Uh as part of his street reporting shtick, Schnell appears to have an X account where he posts footage of cars and drivers who have obscured their license plates or parked legally. Schnell's estimated half million take from the complaint program only places him at the bottom of its top five earners. He protested to the post on Sunday that the amount of money the city says it has shelled out to him is not the money I have received, before adding, it's hard work. Oh, sure it is. Manhattan residents Ernest Weld has meanwhile brought home a staggering eight hundred and ninety-five thousand dollars under the program since 2019, more than$100,000 per year while working as an environmental lawyer by day and living on a hip East Village Street near Thompson Square Park. This sounds like these people even created this program so they could get money from it. Oh my gosh. Oh, another top earner is Michael Streeter, with$709,000 in bounties under his belt, who lives on a leafy and secluded Brooklyn Heights street, which views the East River. Michael is awesome, said neighbor Nick Burkett Caudle, who called Streeter a hardworking sweetheart and fully supports his idling complaints. Oh, you people, I swear. I swear. This it goes on and on and on. If you want to go finish reading that, it's interesting. Uh I hope the Pat Ungrade people bring this up because it's stupid. Wow, what a way to make some money, huh? Alright. Down my last one. I really have no idea what I'm talking about here, so I'm just gonna wing it. It's the Auburn football coach, head football coach that got fired recently. And it might be because he likes golf better than football. Hugh Freeze's love of golf may not have been the reason he was shown the door at Auburn, but the football coach's love for the Lynx didn't help the cause either. Uh Freeze was given a$15.8 million buyout to leave Auburn football program over the weekend after the Tigers' 10-3 loss to Kentucky, and they're and they've gone four and five. One okay, I don't understand all those numbers. During his three seasons at Auburn, it's been no secret that Freeze loves to golf. But it appeared that some people began to take issue with how much he prioritizes golf. They they goes on to say that people even saw him on the links the day before a game on Friday. Uh wasn't playing golf, he just came out to watch them, and he's posting all of his scores when he plays. Apparently, the guy spends a lot of time on the golf course. But you know, in today's age, why not? Because the, you know, with all the portal things happening now for college football, I mean, can the coaches even go out and recruit properly? Because I don't think the coaches can offer money. I could be wrong. The those portal things come from other corporations and sponsors and all that that uh pay the that pay the players money. So, I mean, can it even does it even coach? Do coaches even coach anymore with this new portal thing for the college football players? I don't know. So, what do you think about that? All right, we need to move on, and we're gonna do the question of the day. And I had a really good one the other day, and of course, I have forgotten it. So the let's come up with a different one. If let's see what I can come up with. The question of the day is How do you take your tea? And I don't mean hot tea, I mean cold tea. Down here in the south, we have unsweet and sweet tea. I know, I notice up there in northern people, when you go into a restaurant and I order sweet tea, they look at me like I have two heads and they say, We don't have sweet tea, but I can bring you some sugar. And so, which is weird because you know, uh, I don't get it. Why don't you have sweet tea? And then some people like lemon in their tea. I do not, but every time I order a tea, sweet, I like unsweet tea, no lemon, they always bring me, they always put the lemon in. I think it's just a habit somebody came up with because they think everybody likes lemon in their tea. No, ma'am, I do not. And then some people like some people like they call it the Arnold Palmer, where it's um half half lemonade and half tea. I just I don't see the attraction with tea and lemon. I just I don't I don't get it. If I want lemonade, I'll order lemonade. Because lemonade and tea are two different things, they're not good together. I'm sorry, Arnold, they're not. Okay, I know. I know, I know. Probably a huge disrespect there. I'm sorry. All right, and some but now I do like some other flavored teas, like I like raspberry tea, um other like other things like that, but I don't like lemon in my tea. Okay, whatever, you don't care. How do you like your tea? All right, I gotta go. Thanks for listening. Bye.