{"id":4088,"date":"2007-01-11T08:30:36","date_gmt":"2007-01-11T13:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com?p=4088"},"modified":"2007-01-11T15:24:42","modified_gmt":"2007-01-11T20:24:42","slug":"illegal_traffik","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2007\/01\/11\/illegal_traffik\/","title":{"rendered":"Illegal traffik"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s a story that I am sure will find it’s way to Bollywood soon. Two brown brothas, one desi and one latino, tied together by a common passion, risked everything to stick it to the MAN and got caught. Tipster RP alerted us to the story of “Kartik Patel and Gabriel Murillo<\/a> [who] pleaded not guilty to felony charges Monday” in Los Angeles. Los Angeles is not going to be a fun place to drive… officials took the threat seriously<\/span><\/p>\n\n

Patel and Murillo were members of a shadowy brotherhood, an organization I’ll bet you’ve never even heard of, called the “Engineers and Architects Association, ” a city union devoted to the dark arts of engineering and architecture. By going on strike, the union grabbed the city of Los Angeles by the golis. They warned: <\/p>\n\n

“Los Angeles is not going to be a fun place to drive.” City officials took the threat seriously. [Link<\/a>]<\/blockquote>\n\n

<<\/p>\n\n

p>You bet your rims they took the threat seriously! The only things that Angelenos fear more are disruptions to its cocaine and its silicone supply.<\/a><\/p>\n\n

<<\/p>\n\n

p>These two men were the elite of their organization, the special ops as it were:<\/p>\n\n

one a renowned traffic engineer profiled in the national media, [and] the other a computer whiz who helped build the system. [Link<\/a>]<\/blockquote>\n\n

<<\/p>\n\n

p>They executed their daring plan with steely nerves. This scene will need to be scored delicately, with a whole song written for it by A.R. Rehman:<\/p>\n\n

Fearful that the strikers could wreak havoc on the surface street system, … [the MAN] temporarily blocked all engineers from access to the computer that controls traffic signals.

But officials now allege that two engineers, Kartik Patel and Gabriel Murillo, figured out how to hack in anyway. With a few clicks on a laptop computer, the pair … allegedly tied up traffic at four intersections for several days. [Link<\/a>]<\/blockquote>\n\n

“Tied traffic up”?? No, dear readers, these two did far far more than that. They used an ancient technique known to brown people in India and Mexico to bring the MAN to his knees. They didn’t merely stop traffic at a few lights. No, they were far more subtle than that. Using their ancient cultural wisdom, they selected the most vulnerable locations in the city, its vital nerve clusters, and hit them with a strike that didn’t paralyze … it just slooooooowed everything down. Now traffic was moving like Bombay or Mexico city!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But authorities say the pair picked their targets with care — intersections they knew would cause significant backups because they were close to freeways and major destinations.

They didn’t shut the lights off, city transportation sources said. Rather, the engineers allegedly programmed them so that red lights would be extremely long on the most congested approaches to the intersections, causing gridlock for several days starting Aug. 21, they said.

Cars backed up at Los Angeles International Airport, at a key intersection in Studio City, onto the clogged Glendale Freeway and throughout the streets of Little Tokyo and the L.A. Civic Center. [Link<\/a>]<\/blockquote>\n\n

Unfortunately, the ending to this caper is both Hollywood and Bollywood, but in the wrong places. It’s Bollywood in that they got caught, and are going to trial. It’s Hollywood in that neither gets the girl. In fact, they’re both married (What, an 34 year old desi Engineer, married? You’re surprised?). As a matter of fact, this photo of what looks like Patel being scolded by his wife<\/a> might provide the psychological underpinnings for the character’s motivations . <\/p>\n\n

UPDATE:<\/p>\n\n

Here’s a simpler version for those readers having trouble following my bollywoody rewrite of what happened:<\/p>\n\n

Gabriel Murillo, 37, and Kartik Patel, 34 … allegedly hacked in to the Los Angeles city traffic center to turn off traffic lights at four intersections last August.

The two men were able to turn off signal control boxes just hours before a job action by city engineers, the LA district attorney said. What’s unclear is why they wanted to do this. [Link<\/a>]<\/blockquote>\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s a story that I am sure will find it’s way to Bollywood soon. Two brown brothas, one desi and one latino, tied together by a common passion, risked everything to stick it to the MAN and got caught. Tipster … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4088"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4088\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}