News

News Clips

07/30/10 Responding in part to the case of Greg Taylor, an innocent man who spent 17 years in prison for murder, the North Carolina attorney general suspended all bloodstain pattern work at the state crime lab and reassigned its director. Related posting

07/30/10 To combat crime and domestic violence in Indian lands, twice to twenty times worse than the national average, a new Federal law expands the roles and authority of tribal police, courts and correctional authorities, enhances their training and provides increased access to crime records.

07/30/10 Worried that “loss of respect” for sentencing guidelines, especially in cases of child pornography and fraud, has led to widely disparate outcomes, DOJ has asked the US Sentencing Commission to review the effect of the 2005 Booker decision, which made the guidelines optional.

07/29/10 A bill expected to be signed by President Obama raises the minimum amount of crack for a mandatory 5-year sentence from 5 to 28 grams (powder remains at 500 grams.) There will be no minimum for simple possession. Penalties for using violence in drug distribution will increase.

07/29/10 To save millions in overtime costs Houston’s police chief has ordered his officers not to show up at municipal court hearings until 1 pm regardless of the appearance time on the subpoena, as trials don’t begin until the afternoon. Court representatives and the police union are crying foul.

07/29/10 Wrongful convictions such as those of William Dillon and Wilton Dedge led the Florida Supreme Court to create the Florida Innocence Commission. It will only review cases where innocence has already been established and issue recommendations for improvement.

07/28/10 Finding that they likely intrude into Federal jurisdiction, a Federal judge enjoined key provisions of Arizona’s immigration law, including the requirement that officers check the status of those whom they suspect of being illegal aliens. A lengthy court battle is forecast. Ruling

07/28/10 About 1,800 Minnesota convicts abscond from supervised early release every year. Many commit violent crimes while on the lam. One killed a police sergeant last May.

07/28/10 The FBI confirmed an investigation into whether hundreds of agents cheated on an exam that tested their knowledge of new rules regarding the initiation of terrorism investigations. A letter from the FBI agents association says any mixups that took place were caused by confusion.

07/27/10 New York City settled the notorious 2006 Sean Bell shooting case, paying $3.25M to Bell’s survivors, $3M to Joseph Guzman and $900K to Trent Benefield. Bell was shot dead and the others were wounded by NYPD detectives who mistakenly thought the men were armed.

07/27/10 Bell’s $457,000 police chief (see 7/21/10) resigned. A retired Sergeant has filed suit, claiming he was forced out because he told the Feds that cops distributed absentee ballots and told persons for whom to vote. A sexual assault by the city manager was also supposedly ignored.

07/27/10 Facing budget woes, San Francisco is hiring 15 civilians to respond to non-urgent crimes, take reports and gather evidence. They’ll earn half as much as cops. In Mesa (Az), where the chief last worked, it freed up officers and cut response time. But S.F.’s police union isn’t happy.

07/27/10 Immigrant rights groups are upset with the “Secure Communities Initiative,” which lets local jails that run the fingerprints of arrested persons simultaneously query DHS to identify aliens previously arrested or deported. ICE said the goal is to remove those who threaten public safety.

07/26/10 “You don’t have to be a successful criminal to be a criminal.” That’s how a prosecutor summarized the case against former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who is accused of repeatedly trying to sell his favors for contributions and a prominent position but apparently never scored.

07/26/10 To save money and reduce parole caseloads, a California program releases supposedly worthy inmates early, without supervision. They land in a jobless economy with few government services. That, say Glendale police, is why property crime is up sharply in their jurisdiction.

07/26/10 Residents of Milwaukee, where crime is down, complain about slow police response. One said that it took three hours for an officer to respond to someone stealing yard furniture. A shop owner said that after prolonged waits they’re told to report crimes over the phone.

07/26/10 Two years after a Chicago weekend left seven dead and scores wounded, no shooter has been convicted and only one killing was cleared (the suspect awaits trial.) Detectives say witnesses seldom come forward; those who do are often criminals whose testimony isn’t considered credible.

07/23/10 Four months into a “proactive” and “intelligence based” police program that was supposed to analyze data to anticipate where gun violence would occur, Columbus suffered its 61st. homicide of the year, a 33 percent increase from the same period in 2009, when there were 46.

07/23/10 With gun violence on the upswing and ten more killings this year (29) than in all of 2009 Minneapolis is implementing “Project Exile,” a joint local-Federal program that imposes heavy mandatory Federal penalties on felons caught with guns.

07/22/10 Although New York passed a law outlawing NYPD’s stop-and-frisk database, officers will keep documenting these events on paper forms. Agency critics say that’s OK, since the threat that centralized electronic records posed to liberty interests has been greatly reduced.

07/22/10 Killings are up in Philadelphia, where budget cuts eliminated two academy classes and forced reassignments from specialized units to patrol. Officers are being shifted to work at night and in crime hot spots. A warrant service campaign and motorized sweeps are also in the works.

07/21/10 Two L.A. County sheriff’s deputies were fired and eight were disciplined for scanning duplicated bar codes instead of regularly checking the cells of “high security” inmates. The scheme was discovered after one prisoner hung himself.

07/21/10 An Alaska man who had converted to Islam and espoused a Jihadist philosophy and his British wife pled guilty to lying to the FBI about a terrorist hit list that the man compiled and delivered to an unnamed person, assumedly an informant.

07/21/10 Dogged by the SWAT killing of a 7-year old girl during filming of a reality TV show, his appearance in a TV trailer with an assault rifle, and an aggressive, take-no-prisoners style, Detroit chief Warren Evans resigned. Mayor Dave Bing said Evans’ actions had “compromised” the city.

07/21/10 Five current and former Tulsa cops were indicted for stealing drugs and money and framing suspects. Others named include a disgraced ATF agent and a Tulsa cop later hired by the Secret Service. Eleven persons charged or imprisoned for drug offenses have been exonerated.

07/21/10 According to the NLEOMF as of July 1 police gunshot deaths are up 41 percent, from 22 to 31 compared to the same period last year. Traffic deaths are up 35 percent, from 31 to 42.

07/21/10 Bell, a poor community of 37,000 near Los Angeles, has a police department with 33 officers. Its chief makes $457,000 a year, about a third more than LAPD’s chief and twice as much as the NYPD commissioner. Its city manager, at $787,637, may be the best-paid in the U.S.

07/20/10 Armed with a pistol, a shotgun and a .308 rifle, a violent ex-con shot it out with CHP officers on a freeway. Byron Williams, a right-wing extremist was on his way to attack the San Francisco ACLU and the Tides Foundation, the latter described by Glenn Beck as a Marxist group.

07/19/10 What was former Illinois Gov. Blagojevich’s motive for “selling” state board jobs and trying to sell former Senator Obama’s seat? Prosecutors say money. Evidence at his trial shows that he and his wife dropped $400,000 on clothes in seven years and were heavily indebted.

07/18/10 Two groups of armed men, possibly gang members, were picknicking separately at a Seattle-area park when words were exchanged. As other visitors scrambled to get out of the way a shootout erupted, leaving two of the men dead and four wounded.

07/17/10 A Ninth Circuit panel is weighing the ACLU’s appeal of a ruling that has allowed California to collect DNA from felony arrestees since January. State A.G. Jerry Brown says it has led to many convictions, but the justices, concerned about privacy, describe it as “a very hard case.”

07/17/10 Union concessions including a one-year reduction in police pay and benefits allowed San Jose to avoid laying off seventy officers, for a year. But the city’s underlying budgetary shortage remains, and the future is uncertain.

07/17/10 Against police protests that it will deprive them of a valuable information resource, New York Governor David Paterson says he will sign a measure that prohibits NYPD from placing identifying information of innocent people who are stopped into a database.

07/16/10 A major healthcare fraud sweep netted 94 persons in Miami, Baton Rouge, New York, Detroit and Houston. Doctors, nurses, therapists, patients and even Russian mobsters are charged with filing false claims for treatment and medical equipment, defrauding Medicare of $251 million.

07/16/10 Facing a budget gap and unwilling to give the police union a 3-year no-layoff guarantee, Oakland dismissed eighty officers out of a department of 775. Shortages mean that property crimes without suspects won’t be investigated; victimized citizens are urged to file crime reports online.

07/16/10 Jay Bybee, the former DOJ lawyer who co-authored memos authorizing torture with John Yoo, testified that they did not permit repeated waterboarding, a technique the CIA applied 83 times to one suspect alone. A 2004 CIA Inspector General report had called such conduct illegal.

07/15/10 Directed to resentence a woman lawyer convicted in 2005 of passing messages from an imprisoned client to his followers, a judge upped her term from two years to ten. His reasons: she had lied at trial and showed no remorse, bragging that she could do the time standing on her head.

07/14/10 LAPD complains that a gang member who was killed in a shootout that left one officer wounded and another hurt had been placed on unmonitored, “non-revocable” parole after serving only two years of a two-year term for drugs, evading police and possessing a gun and silencer.

07/14/10 Under terms of a Federal consent decree, four New York state youth prisons, which never had a psychiatrist on staff, will be hiring psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and nurses. New rules will limit the use of force. Two monitors will oversee the process for two years.

07/14/10 Virgin Islands prosecutors are pursuing murder charges against an ATF agent for shooting and killing a drunk and angry neighbor who tried to bean him with a metal flashlight. The man’s girlfriend had come to the agent for help. Federal agents and lawyers are irate.

07/14/10 A Federal sting led to the arrest of three Philadelphia police officers for ripping off drug dealers and selling their drugs. Only problem was, the man to whom they sold the stolen heroin was an undercover DEA agent who had been in on the scheme all along.

07/14/10 Using the “call-in” strategy popularized by the Boston gun project, Pittsburgh summoned influential gang members, some on probation or parole, to a meeting where community leaders spoke about the impact of gun violence and the US Attorney warned of tough Federal sentencing.

07/13/10 A Federal grand jury indicted three current and one former New Orleans police officers for civil rights violations in shooting two persons to death and wounding four in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. One current and one former cop are charged with covering up the crimes.

07/13/10 Accusing U.S. authorities of failing to turn over documents and of using bad faith, Switzerland refused to extradite fugitive film director Roman Polanski to be sentenced in a three-decade old child rape. Why America didn’t move sooner against the auteur is an open question.

07/13/10 Ahmed Ghailani, an Al Qaeda member allegedly involved in bombing U.S. embassies in Africa, was at Gitmo five years before being transferred to Federal Court for trial. The delay, ruled a Federal judge, wasn’t meant for “gaining an advantage” over Ghailani and is thus lawful.

07/12/10 An armed man walked into an Albuquerque manufacturing plant, shot six persons, then turned the gun on himself. Three are dead, including the gunman and his live-in girlfriend, and four wounded. A domestic quarrel is suspected.

07/12/10 Residential burglaries in Houston, sometimes repeatedly at the same home, have police and residents frustrated. Apartments seem particularly vulnerable; few residents know their neighbors and detecting crimes in progress is rare, as are arrests. Ditto in Boston.

07/12/10 An eight-block area of Brooklyn thick with low-cost housing is one of the crime hot-spots targeted by teams of NYPD officers for stop-and-frisk, with 13,200 last year, about one per resident. Although cops were originally welcomed, their active presence has left many wondering.

07/11/10 After two years on the lam and countless thefts and break-ins the 19-year old “barefoot bandit” has been arrested, in of all places the Bahamas. A folkloric hero to his thousands of Facebook followers, the troubled Washington State youngster faces all-but certain extradition.

07/10/10 Cigarettes made with K2, an herbal blend infused with synthetic marijuana, has been getting teens high around the U.S. Some wind up in emergency rooms complaining of hallucinations. A few states are moving to ban the product, which is sold everywhere, including online.

07/09/10 DOJ announced it will conduct a preliminary inquiry to determine whether to formally investigate Mehserle (and, assumedly, other BART police officers) for Federal civil rights violations. Meanwhile the Oakland Tribune released a public letter written by Mehserle while the jury was out.

07/09/10 In connection with a project that encourages them to give up their dangerous occupation, Dallas prostitutes, particularly those working truck stops, are contributing their DNA to a “high-risk” database should they become victims of foul play and their remains dumped far away.

07/08/10 Johannes Mehserle, the ex-BART cop who shot and killed an unarmed man last year, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Mehserle had insisted that he meant to draw his Taser but accidentally fired his pistol. He was tried for murder. Posting 1 Posting 2

07/08/10 To help track down a serial killer who used a certain handgun model, Daytona Beach police have asked area gun stores for the names of those who bought that weapon in 2004 and 2005. But Florida law outlaws “compiling” buyer information, and an NRA lobbyist is crying foul.

07/08/10 In a rare move, Federal prosecutors are appealing the 4 1/2 year sentence given to veteran Pennsylvania state senator Vincent Fumo, who was convicted of selling his office for decades to finance a profligate lifestyle. Fumo’s lawyer says they will retaliate by appealing the conviction.

07/08/10 Four private persons and a gun retailer filed a Federal lawsuit to overturn Chicago’s new gun ordinance. They object to provisions that forbid possessing handguns outside the home, limit the number of working handguns to one and prohibit gun stores and firing ranges in the city

07/07/10 LAPD arrested Lonnie Franklin, Jr., 57, charging that he is “The Grim Sleeper” who killed eleven persons, all but one women, between 1985-2007. Franklin is not in the state DNA database but a close match (familial inquiry) led to his son. DNA from a pizza slice then did him in.

07/07/10 Handcuffed behind his back, a man grabbed an officer’s gun and opened fire, repeatedly shooting one officer in the chest and another in the hand. Injuries were moderate, an armor vest saving an officer’s life. It happened at a K-Mart where the suspect had allegedly stolen DVD’s.

07/06/10 Suing Arizona under the Supremacy Clause, the Justice Department asked a Federal court to enjoin its new immigration law from taking effect because it would “conflict [with] and undermine” the Fed’s balanced approach and distract it from focusing on dangerous aliens. Lawsuit

07/06/10 To satisfy the desires of residents of 32 states with whom it has CCW reciprocity, Utah issues permits over the Internet, regardless of where one actually lives. Utah-approved safety classes have popped up everywhere; even better, it’s not required that one actually fire a gun.

07/06/10 Ordered by the state Supreme Court to serve an accused in a capital case after his court-appointed lawyers withdrew for lack of payment, two public defenders appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court that they’re not getting the necessary funds either. But in Georgia that’s routine.

07/05/10 Prompted by neighborhood complaints and pressures from the city council and city attorney, LAPD has started raiding unauthorized pot clinics, arresting owners and employees and hauling away large amounts of marijuana and hundreds of thousands in cash.

07/04/10 Baltimore credits aggressive gun-law enforcement and a partnership with the Feds that yields long prison sentences for driving down murders. Residents convicted of gun violations wind up on a registry (425 names so far) and get regular visits from the cops.

07/04/10 Dontae Morris, sought for killing two Tampa police officers (see 6/29 and 7/1) surrendered to police after a massive dragnet. He is also being charged in another recent murder and is a prime suspect in a fourth.

07/02/10 A member of the Russian spy ring has supposedly confessed. Meanwhile Russians decry the gambit as a useless throwback to Soviet times. “They should be all sacked for wasting the state funds on things an ordinary student can get hold of operating a laptop” said an expert in Moscow.

07/01/10 Chicago Mayor Daley introduced a new ordinance that would bar gun stores in the city, require handgun owners to be registered and trained, prohibit possessing more than one working handgun, and prohibit taking it outside one’s home.

07/01/10 Fearing that a civil suit would expose it to astronomical damages, California agreed to pay $20 million to a woman who was kidnapped and held as a sex slave by a parolee for 18 years. Post

07/01/10 Correctional authorities claim that Dontae Morris, the alleged killer of two Tampa police officers was released from prison two months ago even though he had an outstanding felony bad checks warrant because the sheriff’s office had refused to pick him up. (See 6/29/10 entry)

Home Top Permalink