JANUARY 6, 2019

NEWS AND VIEWS

HERE IS A LITTLE ONE OF A KIND BIT OF INFORMATION THAT SHOCKS ME, THOUGH I’M NOT SURE WHY. I THINK IT’S BECAUSE I HAVE ALWAYS TRUSTED THE IDEA PROMOTED IN THE USA THAT “THE POLICE,” AS A WHOLE, ARE NOT CRIMINALS AND SADISTS HIDING BEHIND A UNIFORM. I GREW UP WHEN YOUR NEIGHBOR NEXT DOOR, WHO HAPPENS TO BE A POLICE OFFICER, IS NOT AND WOULD NOT BE THE SORT OF BRUTE THAT SOME CLEARLY ARE.

THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE, THEREFORE, IS DISTURBING TO ME. WE ARE AT A TIME IN OUR COUNTRY WHEN I FIND MYSELF THINKING THAT THINGS ARE REALLY GETTING UGLY, AND LIKE IT OR NOT, I HAVE TO ASK “HOW UGLY?”

SEVERAL ARTICLES ON RACISM IN RELATION TO THE LAW, HAVE SHOWN THAT IT LIVES IN THE RANKS, IN AN ACTIVE IF NOT NECESSARILY VIOLENT WAY. ONE PD IN THE WEST, TEXAS MAYBE, HAD FREQUENT AND CRUDE SEXUAL AND RACIAL JOKES AND OTHER REFERENCES ON THE INTERDEPARTMENTAL WEBSITE WHICH SHOULD BE UNACCEPTABLE. THE ISSUE WAS INVESTIGATED AND SOME OFFICERS FIRED. IT’S HARD TO UNDERSTAND IN A POSITIVE LIGHT WHY IT CONTINUED UNTIL SOMEBODY BECAME A WHISTLEBLOWER AND TOOK IT TO THE PRESS, THOUGH. IS IT BECAUSE THERE IS A HIGH LEVEL OF COMPLICITY ALL ROUND WITHIN THE RANKS? I THINK IT IS.

IT’S ABOUT WHAT THE BELIEFS UNDERLYING OUR ACTIONS ARE. IT’S ALSO ABOUT HOW WE RECONCILE BELIEFS WITH REALITY. PEOPLE HAVE A TENDENCY TO SAY, “EVERYBODY IS DOING IT,” AND THEY OFTENTIMES ARE, BUT WE NEED TO PUT A CONTROL ON THAT BY WALKING AWAY FROM THINGS THAT ARE PLEASURABLE, BUT HARMFUL. IN THE LIGHT OF THIS, READ THE FOLLOWING TWO ARTICLES TO SEE IF THERE SEEMS TO BE ACTUALLY SOME LEVEL OF CONSPIRACY HERE? DOES THIS GO BEYOND THE “BLUE WALL OF SILENCE,” INTO SOMETHING MORE ACTIVE?

THESE TWO ARTICLES FROM 2015 STAND ALONE, AND I DIDN’T FIND ANY MORE RECENT OR FULLER INFORMATION. THE STRANGENESS OF THE SITUATION BOTHERS ME MORE THAN THE POSSIBILITY THAT THEY MIGHT TRY TO CLEAN UP THEIR PUBLIC IMAGE. COULD THIS BE COMING FROM SOMEONE IN THE CHAIN OF COMMAND, OR IS IT ONE PERSON WITH A LOOSE SCREW WHO IS BORED AND PLAYING ON THE COMPUTER? AMAZINGLY, THE NUMBER OF COMPUTERS INVOLVED WAS NOT ONE OR TWO, BUT 85. PASSING STRANGE.

I DID LOCATE WHO “CAPITAL NEW YORK” IS. IT IS THE POLITICO MAGAZINE NEWS ANALYSIS AND OPINION COLUMN. THAT MAKES ME MORE CONVINCED THAT THIS SHOULD BE PROBED MORE THOROUGHLY.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/03/16/eric-garners-wikipedia-page-was-edited-from-an-nypd-computer-the-nypd-admits/
Eric Garner’s Wikipedia page was edited from an NYPD computer, NYPD admits
By Abby Ohlheiser March 16, 2015

Photograph -- New York Police Commissioner William Bratton at a December news conference. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

The New York Police Department has confirmed that at least some edits to Wikipedia entries about people who died following confrontations with NPYD officers were made from computers on the department’s servers, Capital New York reported Sunday.

The department’s admission came two days after Capital first reported that hundreds of Wikipedia edits were made from computers on the NYPD network — and that those edits included tweaks to Wikipedia articles about Eric Garner, Sean Bell and Amadou Diallo, all of whom were killed in police-involved incidents. Capital also identified edits from NYPD servers to a “stop-and-frisk” entry and the portion of Wikipedia’s NYPD entry that deals with allegations of misconduct.

Wikipedia logo, Associated Press

New York police officials said they were only able to identify the editor for the “Death of Eric Garner” page because the department only keeps computer activity logs for about a year. In total, the edits identified by Capital New York span about a decade and include 85 IP addresses registered to 1 Police Plaza.

Deputy Commissioner Stephen Davis’s statement to Capital specifically addressed two rounds of edits to Garner article, on the same December evening that a grand jury declined to indict the officer involved in Garner’s choke-hold death. “We are conducting an internal investigation to identify what member of the service may have accessed the Department’s server,” Davis said. “These incidents did not originate from computers located at Police Headquarters.”

One such edit: “Garner raised both his arms in the air” was changed to “Garner flailed his arms about as he spoke.”

Juliet Barbara, a spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation – the non-profit that supports Wikipedia – said in an emailed statement that “edits by the NYPD about something the pertains to their work would generally be considered a conflict of interest by the Wikipedia community.”

The site, in the interest of maintaining the neutrality of its articles, strongly discourages people from editing articles in which they might have a personal or professional stake. Wikipedia’s long-standing conflict of interest policy is outlined in more detail here. It reads, in part: “when advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia, that editor stands in a conflict of interest.”

Wikipedia’s editorial policies are enforced by the volunteer editors of its community and not the Wikimedia Foundation, but Barbara noted that “the community has developed a number of governance mechanisms, including warnings and blockings, that empower editors to respond” to apparent violations of the site’s policies.

“One of Wikipedia’s great strengths is its transparency: Every change to an article is public information,” she added. “Anyone, anywhere can assess how an article has been created and maintained, identify issues when they arise, and take action to maintain its neutrality and accuracy.”

Davis told Capital that the anonymous editors would potentially be of concern to the NYPD for a different reason: They were using their work computers for non-work activity.

“If this had been done at someone’s home computer, there wouldn’t be an issue,” Davis said in his statement to Capital. “The only issue here is that you’re not supposed to use a department computer for personal purposes, whether that’s shopping, whether that’s browsing, whether that’s going onto a Web site or whatever, you shouldn’t be doing that.”

In light of NYPD editing Wikipedia pages, re-upping this gem from the always-cyber-savvy NYPD's intelligence files. pic.twitter.com/Rz8U2DGR16

— Matt Apuzzo (@mattapuzzo) March 13, 2015

Many of the edits don’t pertain to major national controversies involving the NYPD. For instance, Capital found edits to the pages for the British band Chumbawamba, “UFC Fight Night: Brown vs. Silva,” actor Ralph Macchio and a handful of comic book characters. (The full list of NYPD-associated edits is here, for those who are interested in going deeper down this rabbit hole.)

But others directly pertained to cases involving the NYPD.

In the case of Bell, an individual accessing Wikipedia from an NYPD server even tried to petition for the deletion of the entire “Sean Bell shooting incident” article. Bell was killed in 2006, the day before his wedding, when five officers fired 50 bullets into his car. Bell was unarmed.

“He was in the news for about two months, and now no one except Al Sharpton cares anymore,” the anonymous user wrote. “The police shoot people every day, and times with a lot more than 50 bullets. This incident is more news than notable.”

Another edit, to the page describing the fatal 1999 police shooting of Amadou Bailo Diallo, changed “Officer Kenneth Boss had been previously involved in an incident where an unarmed man was shot, but remained working as a police officer” to “Officer Kenneth Boss had been previously involved in an incident where an armed man was shot.”

[This post has been updated to include a comment from the Wikimedia Foundation.]


https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/nypd-wikipedia-edits-see-the-most-alarming-changes-allegedly-made-by-police-to-online-articles-10106834.html
NYPD Wikipedia edits: See the most alarming changes allegedly made by police to online articles
Someone at an NYPD IP address allegedly has been changing Wikipedia entries on controversial NYPD-related events
Payton Guion
Friday 13 March 2015 16:10

PHOTOGRAPH – A NYPD SQUAD CAR

An unknown person or persons working on computers at New York Police Department’s headquarters allegedly have been altering Wikipedia articles about controversial events that NYPD has been involved in over the years, including the death of Eric Garner, according to a report from Capital.

Reporting by Capital found that the IP addresses of computers located at 1 Police Plaza had made changes to pages regarding the death of Mr Garner and a number of other high-profile, officer-involved events.

Read more: NYPD computers allegedly edited Wikipedia pages

Mr Garner died after police accosted him last summer for allegedly selling loose cigarettes. His death prompted national protests, intensifying after police killed another man in Ferguson, Missouri.

Often the Wikipedia changes appear to have been made to make the incidents seem less severe than they may actually have been, or to add context intended to sway the reader’s opinion on the event.


Read some of the most alarming changes below:

• “Garner raised both his arms in the air” was changed to “Garner flailed his arms about as he spoke.”

• “[P]ush Garner's face into the sidewalk” was changed to “push Garner's head down into the sidewalk.”

• “Use of the chokehold has been prohibited” was changed to “Use of the chokehold is legal, but has been prohibited.”

• The sentence, “Garner, who was considerably larger than any of the officers, continued to struggle with them,” was added to the description of the incident.

• Instances of the word “chokehold” were replaced twice, once to “chokehold or headlock,” and once to “respiratory distress.”

• An NYPD computer tried to delete an entire article about the death of Sean Bell, a man killed by NYPD in 2006.

• A user changed the wording in an article of the Sean Bell incident to say he and two other men were “shot at” 50 times, instead of “shot” 50 times.

• Someone using an NYPD computer allegedly deleted 1,502 characters from the “scandals and corruption” section of the NYPD Wikipedia article.

• A user on the NYPD network deleted the entire “Allegations of police misconduct and the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB)” and “Other incidents” sections from the entry, cutting a total of 25,611 characters.

• On more than one occasion, an NYPD computer edited the section on the NYPD Wikipedia page about police misconduct.

• Often the NYPD computers would edit Wikipedia entries not at all related to the police force, including entries about the Catholic Church and Derek Jeter.

• A full list of alleged changes by NYPD can be found here.

To be clear, it is not illegal to alter or add to Wikipedia entries. That is actually the entire purpose of the website. But for computers belonging to NYPD to be making changes to NYPD entries, especially to controversial events appears questionable.


NYPD officials did not respond to calls from The Independent seeking comment on the Wikipedia changes.

emptywheel
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If we were smart, we'd find a way to use NYPD's editing of Wikipedia entries to help Wikimedia get standing for 702 lawsuit*.

6:59 AM - 13 Mar 2015
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Eitan Arom
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14 Mar 2015
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Replying to @emptywheel
.@emptywheel interesting thought. Do you have anywhere I can read up on the NYPD/Wikimedia issue?

Follow @PaytonGuion on Twitter.


702 LAWSUIT* [EFF IS “ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION”
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/06/response-eff-lawsuit-doj-releases-18-new-opinions-fisc-concerning-section-702
In response to EFF lawsuit, DOJ releases 18 new opinions of the FISC concerning Section 702
BY MARK RUMOLD JUNE 14, 2017

Last night, the Department of Justice produced eighteen previously secret opinions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). The opinions all relate to Section 702, the warrantless surveillance authority scheduled to sunset at the end of the year. The opinions were disclosed as a result of a FOIA lawsuit EFF filed last year.

We're still working through the documents, but from our review, we know that two opinions relate to a provider challenge to a 702 directive in 2014. The provider challenged the legality of Section 702 surveillance, as well as the government's refusal to provide it access to other FISC opinions cited in the government's legal briefs. Although the primary ground for the provider challenge is redacted, the FISC ultimately upheld Section 702, and ordered the provider to comply.

These opinions also provide important context about the operation of Section 702 and the FISC's oversight. And they show that 702 is a law in need of reform. The opinions show that, almost from the outset of the law in 2008, the intelligence community has overstepped the court-imposed legal restrictions on the operation of the surveillance. Most of the documents tell a story of the IC overstepping boundaries, getting reprimanded by the FISC, but nevertheless being allowed to continue and even expand surveillance under the law.

We expect to have more to say about the documents in the days to follow.

The opinions have been published on DocumentCloud. We have also uploaded a .zip file of the PDFs (direct download link).

RELATED ISSUES
DECODING 702: WHAT IS SECTION 702?
https://www.eff.org/702-spying

Decoding 702: What is Section 702?
Why can the U.S. government collect my emails?

Under authority ostensibly granted by something called Section 702, the U.S. government routinely collects and searches the online communications of innocent Americans without a warrant through what are commonly called “upstream” and “PRISM” (now called “downstream”) surveillance.

Section 702 is a surveillance authority passed as part of the FISA Amendments Act in 2008. That law amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.

Section 702 is supposed to do exactly what its name promises: collection of foreign intelligence from non-Americans located outside the United States. As the law is written, the intelligence community cannot use Section 702 programs to target Americans, who are protected by the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures. But the law gives the intelligence community space to target foreign intelligence in ways that inherently and intentionally sweep in Americans’ communications.

Currently, Congress has to renew Section 702 every few years. It was last renewed in 2018 and is set to expire at the end of 2023.

The bill that was most recently passed, S. 139, endorses nearly all warrantless searches of databases containing Americans’ communications collected under Section 702. It allows for the restarting of “about” collection, an invasive type of surveillance that the NSA ended in 2017 after being criticized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for privacy violations. And it includes a six-year sunset, delaying Congress’ best opportunity to debate the limits NSA surveillance.

The Congressional failure in 2018 redoubles our commitment to seek justice through the courts and through the development and spread of technology that protects our privacy and security. Read more about our efforts here.

PROTECT DIGITAL PRIVACY AND FREE EXPRESSION. EFF'S PUBLIC INTEREST LEGAL WORK, ACTIVISM, AND SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PRESERVE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS.


BERNIE SANDERS VS LIZ CHENEY

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/01/04/bernie-sanders-reminds-liz-cheney-iraq-war-lies-after-daughter-bush-vp-attacks-so
Published on
Friday, January 04, 2019
byCommon Dreams
Bernie Sanders Reminds Liz Cheney of Iraq War Lies After Daughter of Bush VP Attacks So-Called 'Fraud of Socialism'
"Really? I wasn't aware that it was 'socialism' that lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."
byJessica Corbett, staff writer

PHOTOGRAPH -- Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) was sworn in as a member of Congress in 2017 with her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, at her side. (Photo: Rep. Liz Cheney/Facebook)

After Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.)—daughter of the notorious warmonger former Vice President Dick Cheney—attacked the so-called "fraud of socialism" in a "Trumpism-inflected" speech on the U.S. House floor on Thursday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) clapped back with a reference to what has been called her father's "biggest lie."

"Really? I wasn't aware that it was 'socialism' that lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and got us into a horrific war that we should never have started," Sanders tweeted Friday, a clear reference to Dick Cheney's hand in misleading the American public ahead of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq that launched a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people—including, by some estimates, more than than 200,000 civilians.

Liz Cheney's speech on the first day of the 116th Congress, in which she endorsed Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for speaker, was a largely symbolic move, as Democrats regained a majority of seats in the November midterm elections. The younger Cheney has her own leadership position in the GOP—as the Republican conference chair in the House, she holds the party's third-ranked spot in the lower chamber and is responsible for communications strategy.

Since Sanders, who identifies as a democratic socialist, ran for president in 2016 and several progressives—including some candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), such as newly sworn-in Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)—have sought elected offices at various levels of government in the years that have followed, many Republicans have ramped up attacks and helped solidify "socialism" as a buzzword of the current political moment.

Prior to Sanders' response to Cheney, People for Bernie, the grassroots movement that grew out of the independent senator's last presidential run, issued its own rebuttal, charging that "the real fraud is capitalism."

While Liz Cheney on Friday responded to Sanders by falling back on the favored Republican invocation of Venezuela and dismissing the senator's reference to her father's history of lying to promote war, critics such as independent journalist Thor Benson were quick to shut her down on both fronts, asserting in a pair of tweets that she does not "even vaguely understand what happened in Venezuela," and that her "father is a war criminal."


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License


WHO IS THOR BENSON?

https://thorbenson.com/about/
THOR BENSONIndependent journalistToggle Sidebar
ABOUT THOR
thor benson
Credit: Ellie Jameson

Thor Benson is a traveling writer, currently located in Los Angeles, Calif. Benson was born in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. His journalism has been featured in: The Atlantic, Wired, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, MTV News, Slate, Salon, Vice, ATTN:, Mic, In These Times, Paste, The New Republic, The Verge, Fast Company, Truthdig and elsewhere. He has been interviewed on The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann, Ring of Fire, HuffPost Live, The Lip, The Young Turks, in upcoming documentaries and elsewhere. He can be found in a run-down whiskey bar.



https://twitter.com/thor_benson?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1081290895310254080%7Ctwgr%5E363937393b70726f64756374696f6e&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2F2019%2F01%2F04%2Fbernie-sanders-reminds-liz-cheney-iraq-war-lies-after-daughter-bush-vp-attacks-so

Thor Benson
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I'm not a socialist, but I constantly find myself defending socialists, because their critics come up with the worst arguments. If screaming "Venezuela!" is all you got, you're not very good at this and don't know what you're talking about.

3:03 PM - 5 Jan 2019
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Thor Benson
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Furthermore, as I've said before, none of the lawmakers who refer to themselves as socialists are pushing very extreme policies. They're basically European-style social democrats.

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stephani chapman.
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I'm 90 percent sure all the people screaming about Venezuela wouldn't be able to point it out on a map.

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ONLY ON METV

https://www.biography.com/people/peter-falk-9291304
Peter Falk Biography
Actor, Television Actor, Film Actor, Theater Actor (1927–2011)


https://www.metv.com/stories/peter-falk-used-his-fake-eye-to-become-the-ultimate-pool-shark
Peter Falk used his fake eye to become the ultimate pool shark
A true character - onscreen and off!
By: MeTV Staff
January 4, 2019, 9:45AM

It's well-known that the character of Columbo was a special concoction of quirky mannerisms only Peter Falk could've ever dreamed up. The actor himself was a true character, just as the characters he played on TV and in movies, and of the many colorful stories we've heard, one of our most recent favorites comes from an unusual source: the legendary sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison.

In an interview with the Archive of American Television, Ellison recalled the many hours he spent whiling away at a regular pool game between four players: himself, the actor Omar Sharif (Doctor Zhivago), the notorious baseball player/manager Leo Durocher (who mouthed off so much, he once got suspended from the sport for a year), and Peter Falk, the actor most folks know as Columbo. “Peter was a dynamite pool player," Ellison confirmed, describing games were he said they'd bet up to $30,000 against each other, but also against anyone game enough to accept their challenge.

Ellison said that while Durocher and Falk were highly skilled, he and Sharif were absolutely not, but what gave both Falk and Durocher the extra confidence their partners may be lacking was that both of them, according to Ellison, had experience rattling and hustling their opponents. Of the two, though, it was Falk whose pool shark behavior was by far the most absurd.

Fans of Peter Falk know that the actor had an artificial eye, and it was this that Falk used to his advantage when securing his winnings running tables. He used it as a distraction, drawing the crowd's eye elsewhere to take his shot unobserved. Ellison said that if "Peter got a bad leave and was leaning over the table like this, you know what Peter would do?" Then he launched into this description:

"He would pop his fake eyeball out of his head onto the pool table and it would spin around, and everybody would be frozen… Everybody in the room would go, ‘Ahh!’ and Peter’s eye is spinning, and he would take his shot, and he would... hit a bank and everybody would go, ‘Great shot!’ And we would go on, and we would win. Every… time.”

Particularly observant fans of Columbo will remember that there was at least one episode that actually featured Peter Falk running a pool table, as he intimidated his suspect in that unique way of Columbo. The episode aired in 1972 and was called "The Greenhouse Jungle." It was a kidnapping case, where a girl has gone missing and the only motive Columbo can find tracks back to her trust fund, which is managed by the man who lives in "The Greenhouse Jungle," Jarvis Goodland, who, by the way, really, really likes orchids. Falk, on the other hand, prefers a game of pool to greenhouse gardening.

Peter Falk's real wife appeared on Columbo more than any other actress

In the episode, Falk asks Goodland's forgiveness, picking up the pool stick and saying, “I’m sorry, sir. I happen to love this game. I played it when I was a kid.” He sinks ball after ball, off-camera, but the satisfied twitches in Falk's face lead us to believe he really is running the table.

Then, maybe because the genuine pool shark in him told him to or maybe because it's who Columbo was — fans and folks who collaborated with Falk on the show would likely agree the two became one — Falk says before the pool scene concluded, “I can’t miss a shot.”


SHARA DANESE

https://www.metv.com/stories/peter-falks-real-wife-appeared-on-columbo-more-than-any-other-actress
Peter Falk's real wife appeared on Columbo more than any other actress

PHOTOGRAPH -- The real Mrs. Columbo was hiding in plain sight.

We're used to watching Columbo searching for clues, but on the set of Mikey & Nicky, the actor found himself suddenly looking for love. He was struck by a woman who caught his eye on the sidelines while he was filming. So struck, in fact, that he had to stop everything and meet her. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 1991, the actress who Peter Falk eventually married, Shera Danese, described their meet-cute moment: "He saw me walking down the street and that was it."

By the time Mikey & Nicky was in theaters at the end of 1976, the pair was not only already inseparable, but Danese had already made her first appearance on Falk's series Columbo. The episode was "Fade In to Murder," and in it, the actress who'd previously only been seen in bit parts suddenly found herself wedged between two of the most towering TV actors of all time: Peter Falk and William Shatner. Although her performance suited the story, Danese downplayed her role at this humbling time, saying in the interview, "As soon as I came out here in the mid-'70s I did a Columbo. I was dumb then. I was just checking my lip gloss."

Fade In to Murder

It would not take long for Danese to appear on another episode of Columbo, and it will come as no surprise to fans of Peter Falk who know how much he adored Danese, by then they were also already married. Danese said at the time she was a mess during filming. The pressure was on. She described her biggest issue working with her husband for the first time: "I didn't know how to act as a person. I didn't want to act like his wife."

Peter Falk got to pick Columbo's car and this is why he chose the Peugeot 403

As their bond grew, so did her parts on Columbo, featuring more prominently in episodes where she often played the love interest of the criminal Columbo was investigating. Such was the case in "Murder Under Glass," "Murder, a Self Portrait," "Columbo and the Murder of a Rock Star" and "A Trace of Murder." In the same interview with L.A. Times, Danese revealed she actually wanted a different part in "Columbo and the Murder of a Rock Star." She wanted to play the victim! Apparently, Falk said no because of a certain scene, but she did halfway get her way. Danese said, "I wanted to play the rock star ... but he wouldn't let me because she is in bed with some young guy. But I am singing her songs. How is that for a twist? She is doing the scenes and I am doing the singing."

PHOTOGRAPHS OF DANESE
Murder Under Glass
Murder, a Self Portrait
Columbo and the Murder of a Rock Star
A Trace of Murder

Perhaps the most delightful performance to watch between the husband and wife onscreen, however, came in the 1994 episode "Undercover." In it, Columbo goes undercover and tries to fool Danese's character, a proprietess of an art gallery who isn't fooled by Columbo's disguise one bit. Here, we get to see the couple exhibit their clear chemistry, and there's even some champagne involved (even though Columbo abstains to keep a clear head, of course).

SHERA DANESE PHOTOGRAPH
Undercover

SHERA DANESE PHOTOGRAPH
Undercover

In the end, Shera Danese featured in more episodes of Columbo than any other actress. And while the series never had the heart to make the real Mrs. Columbo a murderer, at least they made up for it by giving her a ton of killer jewelry. Meanwhile in the lovebirds' actual life, Danese and Falk were one of those Hollywood couples who were truly in love. They were married for 33 years, and although plenty of people considered Columbo kooky on the show, in the real world, the actor admitted that was at least partly true when he gushed at an awards ceremony: "I'm crazy about my wife."


Watch Columbo on MeTV!
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