Rampant crime at Walmart has local police fed up. Who’s to blame?

Walmart stores around the country have become magnets for crime – from fights, stabbings, and kidnappings to an entire meth lab under a Walmart parking lot in Amherst, New York. Local police departments are feeling the strain, and they’re putting the blame on Walmart executives.

Then, in web news, security experts say the NSA has been hacked, Univision will buy Gawker only to shut down the snarky gossip website next week, and NPR has announced that soon listeners won’t be able to comment on their website.

Next, two girlfriends, one in LA and the other in San Francisco, maintain their friendship by chatting every week. It’s a podcast called “Call Your Girlfriend”, and listeners are like flies on the wall, eavesdropping on a conversation between long-distance besties. Now the “Call Your Girlfriend” podcast is bringing its realtalk to live audiences.

Then, a new book titled “American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst” follows Hearst’s SLA odyssey and tries to answer one big question: Was Patty Hearst a brainwashed captive or a true believer?

And finally, on May 17, 1974, police got word that the SLA were hiding out in a house in Compton. LAPD sieged the house in what became the first police shootout captured on live television. KCRW’s Warren Olney was working at the station that broadcast the shootout live and he recalls the day that changed modern media.

Photo courtesy of Mike Mozart