Police Issues

News Clips

02/12/12 NYPD arrested 50,700 persons for marijuana possession in 2011, the most in a decade. Many are apparently connected with stop-and-frisks. Getting tough on low-level offending, NYPD officials say, reduces violence.  But pot arrests have declined 13% since a more restrictive policy went into effect in September (see 9/26/11 entry.)

 

02/12/12 Philadelphia has a high rate of violence but a low rate of convictions.  It took Federal prosecution for a local armed robber man to finally face a stiff sentence after 44 prior arrests yielded not a single conviction.  A gas station was robbed, allowing the Feds to invoke the Hobbs Act, prohibiting robberies that affect interstate commerce.

 

02/02/12 DOJ spent $1.8 million on private lawyers to defend six Federal prosecutors who were investigated for unethical conduct in the Ted Stevens case.  Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) called the expenditure “an unseemly high amount of money being spent by the taxpayers to defend what appears to be egregious misconduct.”

 

02/01/12 Milwaukee’s new “evidence-based” pre-trial release program freed a man charged with robbery-murder without cash bail. It wasn’t a mistake; that’s what his score, which plugs in various factors to predict the likelihood of appearing for trial, called for. He’s now back in jail after a judged changed the conditions to a $30,000 bond.

 

02/01/12 After 3 1/2  months Occupy Miami’s downtown camp was swarmed and dismantled by police. Organizers had a permit but renewal was denied because homeless persons and transients created health and safety problems, defecating in public, using drugs and fighting.  All went peacefully and there were only a few arrests.  Related post

 

01/31/12 Democratic members of the House released “Fatally Flawed,” a report criticizing four ATF investigations during 2006-2010 that let guns fall into the hands of criminals. Agents complained that US Attorneys had created nearly insuperable obstacles, requiring that guns had to be recovered before buyers could be charged.  Related post

 

01/31/12 In 2009 DOJ criticized Harris County (Houston) jailers for using excessive force.  Authorities say that training and supervision have improved and incidents are down. But the ACLU and victim families complain that brutality persists.  Seven employees were disciplined for excessive force in 2011, same as in 2010.  Related post

 

01/31/12 Four East Haven, Ct. police officers were indicted for terrorizing Latinos they encountered while on patrol. Called “bullies with badges” by the FBI, their arrests followed a civil rights investigation that found a pattern of discrimination.  Now the chief has retired, and citizens and editorial writers are clamoring for the mayor to go.

 

01/30/12 Rep. Darrell Issa, the congressman whose recent hearings blasted ATF, has set his sights on DEA. Its undercover money-laundering operations, he says, may facilitate rather than prevent crime (see 12/5/11.) But an insider says Issa’s example, where two American pilots got caught with millions in Panama, is not such a case.

 

01/30/12 In Memphis, where juvenile crime fell in 2011 but violence tied to gangs increased 35 percent, a rash of gang-relating killings, including the death of a grandmother caught in a crossfire, is leading resources-strapped Memphis PD to partner with the Feds. Gangs to be targeted include the Crips, Vice Lords and Gangster Disciples.

 

01/30/12 Foreign nationals who commit serious crimes, including murder then flee to their homelands are seldom extradited even when found.  Issues include a lack of resources devoted to the effort, its cost, which must be borne by requesting jurisdictions, and the reluctance of countries to cooperate, sometimes because they doubt the evidence.

 

01/30/12 Clashes broke out in Oakland as police arrested 400 Occupy protesters who vandalized City Hall, took over  a YMCA and tried to break into the convention center.  Officers used gas and non-lethal projectiles to regain control. Weekly Occupy marches are resulting in violence and police and protesters are blaming each other.  Related post 1 2

 

01/30/12 A California state appeals court will decide whether police must release the names of officers involved in shootings to the media.  Long Beach, Calif. argues that it need not because such incidents automatically become confidential personnel matters, and that releasing the names could imperil officer safety.

 

01/27/12 Baltimore began 2011 with a crime spike, but by year’s end there were two dozen fewer homicides than in 2010.  A big reason, police suggest, is a $500,000 Federal overtime grant that enabled teams of local and state officers to arrest 2,200 violent offenders on unserved warrants.

 

01/27/12 Federal law requires background checks for all guns sold by stores, but regulating private party sales is left to states. Thirty-four allow persons to sell guns to each other cash and carry, no background check required. “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” wants to change that, but opinions are mixed.  Mayors Report

 

01/27/12 St. Louis, Missouri recorded seven “Castle” doctrine shootings in 2011, versus two in 2010.  Several that seemed borderline executions were allowed by prosecutors and judges whose interpretation of state law differed from that of police.  St. Louis has now adopted rules that require each shooting be formally review by the D.A. Related post

 

01/27/12 Blue CRUSH, a Memphis PD program that used crime stat’s to allocate cops, supposedly led to a large crime drop.  But the new chief says that officers were inappropriately writing “memos” rather than crime reports about 7 percent of the time. The old chief denies crime was undercounted and threatens to “come out firing.”  Related post

 

01/26/12 Last September Trenton PD laid off one-third of its force, causing havoc with patrol coverage. Now there’s an “all hands on deck plan” to recall off-duty officers via Blackberry when crime spikes.  But the union insists that having cell phones on is like being on duty, and with overtime funds running low, the program may be out of reach.

 

01/26/12 A sweep by Federal, state and local agencies in San Diego County netted more than 100 arrests of gang members for crimes including meth dealing, kidnapping, robbery and extortion.  Wiretaps were extensively used. Among the 50 picked up on a Federal racketeering indictment were two leaders of the Mexican Mafia.

 

01/25/12 New York State legislators say that DNA’s success in solving decades-old cases and freeing the innocent is reason enough to require profiling the DNA of everyone convicted of a misdemeanor or felony. But the ACLU argues that present safeguards are insufficient to prevent fraud and error. Related post

 

01/25/12 Changing his story, NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne told the New York Times that Commissioner Kelly was indeed interviewed for “The Third Jihad,” and at his recommendation, but that Kelly now regrets it.  Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that showing the film to police officers demonstrated “terrible judgment.”

 

01/24/12 “The Third Jihad,” a “wacky” documentary that depicts an Islamist flag flying over the White House and warns that Muslims intend to take over America was shown to 1,500 NYPD officers. The film features a past interview with NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, who has not said if the clip or his inclusion in the website were authorized.

 

01/24/12 LAPD officers are involved in an average of one traffic accident each day. Often they’re at fault.  Citizen injuries and deaths have cost the city $24 million in nine years, and that’s only for claims that have been resolved.  LAPD is now considering treating crashes more seriously and investigate them as they might a shooting. Related post

 

01/24/12 Cincinnati’s new chief commissioned an audit, and the results please both cops and citizens. Patrol will be emphasized, with fifty officers shifted from other assignments to work the streets, and the quasi-military atmosphere will be supplanted by a collaborative style that brings officers into the decision making process. Related post

 

01/23/12 Amid concerns that crime reductions may be a “mirage” caused by underreporting NYPD has issued a memo requiring that officers take reports even when victims cannot identify suspects or provide sale receipts for allegedly stolen goods.  But NYPD insists that the memo simply reminds cops of correct procedures. Related post

 

01/23/12 To help prevent mistaken arrests Denver PD proposes to consolidate booking with the Sheriff’s Department so that complete ID’s are available for all arrestees. Meanwhile some St. Louis residents are jailed because their names and DOB’s closely match wanted persons who may not have fingerprints on file and may use multiple ID’s.

 

01/23/12 Methamphetamine-induced psychosis has led to horrific killings in central California, which is beset by clandestine “super labs” funded by Mexican cartels.  In one recent incident a young mother in a meth rage shot and killed her two small children and a cousin, wounded her husband then killed herself.

 

01/23/12 In U.S. v. Jones the Supreme Court ruled that attaching a GPS device to a vehicle and using it to track its movements is a “search” under the Fourth Amendment, and therefore requires a warrant.  Related post 1 2

 

01/22/12 Gun sales are way up.  In 2011 NICS, the system that checks gun buyer backgrounds reported 16.4 million checks, two million more than in 2010. The trend is evident in strict-law and weak-law states.  The Brady Campaign says this may not reflect more gun owners but stockpiling, as 20 percent of gun owners have 65 percent of the guns.

 

01/22/12 FBI agents seized Megaupload, an Internet site that allows users to exchange large files.  Seven of the site’s principals were indicted for knowingly letting users upload and download pirated music and movies, making $175 million in ads and subscriptions.  Four principals were arrested in New Zealand; the other three are fugitives.

 

01/22/12 According to longtime LAPD critic Connie Rice, the drop in crime and violence is due to a “changed dynamic” in which LAPD moved away from a “centurion-warrior” model to a cooperative, community-building approach that involves the department, citizens and gang members working together to keep the peace.

 

01/19/12 After being sentenced to death for murder, an Alabama man got lawyers to agree to file an appeal.  But they abandoned him without notice, causing a missed deadline, and state and Federal appeals courts refused to intercede.  The Supreme Court reversed, ruling that what happened goes beyond a lawyer’s simple negligence and deserves relief.

 

01/18/12 NYPD is testing a portable device that can detect weapons under clothing.  Emissions of teraherz-frequency radiation (i.e., body heat) create body images on screen, and metallic objects that block the signals show up as black shapes.  Whether guns are sufficiently distinct to be recognizable is an issue, as is the useful distance of 3-4 feet.

 

01/18/12 Chicago prosecutors dismissed indictments that accused four men of a 1994 rape/murder to which they confessed as youths. In 2011 DNA victim DNA was matched to a known rapist, leading to the release of the two men still in prison. The others had already completed their sentences, one in 2011 and one in 2010. Related post

 

01/17/12 Criminologists and the FBI blasted CQ Press’s 2010 city crime rankings for providing a distorted picture of the incidence of crime.  Among the objections are the rough nature of city boundaries, variations in reporting, and the fact that risk of victimization is far more tied to individual variables than to the city where one lives. Rankings

 

01/17/12 A university study reports that states with medical marijuana laws have nine percent fewer traffic deaths. Alcohol consumption in those states, particularly of beer, is also lower.  Researchers say that’s due to easier access to marijuana. Whether it’s safer to drive after smoking or users who light up don’t do so is unknown.  Related post

 

01/17/12 DOJ is conducting twenty “pattern and practice” investigations of police agencies for unconstitutional practices, including discrimination and excessive force. Some say the unusually large number reflects a worsening problem, while others say it’s a conscious decision by the Administration to pursue such matters.  Related post

 

01/17/12 Deputy sheriff Henry Marin, 27, surrendered on charges that he helped a woman sneak a heroin-filled burrito into the Los Angeles County courthouse in 2010.  Marin is best known from the reality series “The Academy,” which depicted him flunking out of the Sheriff’s academy.  He was allowed to go through a second time and passed.

 

01/16/12 Murders in San Antonio, Texas jumped from 79 to 88 and more, 39 percent, are going unsolved. Police blame a surge in stranger homicides, including barroom disputes, where the identity of the assailant isn’t readily apparent.  Offering cash tips through CrimeStoppers has helped; of 15 offered in 2011 two have led to arrests.

 

01/16/12 Murder was up twelve percent in Detroit in 2011, from 308 to 344.  “Broken Windows” criminologist George Kelling is helping the agency combat quality-of-life crimes.  A local activist wants to change the culture so that minor disputes don’t escalate. “Those small things are what make someone go home and get a gun and come back.”

 

01/16/12 Ten days after Miami-Dade county commissioners refused to impose an additional five-percent healthcare contribution on police and corrections officers, police director Jim Loftus issued layoff notices to 118 cops, effective 2/3. He said that patrol and anti-violence teams won’t be affected and 911 response time will “for now” stay the same.

 

01/15/12 Former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy Gilbert Michel, 38, agreed to plead guilty to Federal charges.  Michel, who allegedly accepted money from an FBI undercover agent to smuggle a cell phone into the county jail, has  reportedly been giving the Feds information about deputies who used excessive force against inmates. Related post

 

01/14/12 U.S. agents at the Southern border recorded 223 incursions by ultralights during the 2011 fiscal year, fewer than in 2010 but double 2009 totals. These planes usually fly low enough to evade radar and are usually only up a few minutes, just long enough to drop hundreds of pounds of contraband to confederates waiting on the ground.

 

01/12/12 A disgruntled former Austin Police lab scientist claims that pressures to “rush cases,” which some attribute to the D.A.’s “rocket docket,” caused shoddy work. An inquiry turned up instances where preliminary reports were sent in before samples were analyzed.  But a 2010 state report cleared the lab of wrongdoing.  Related post

 

01/12/12 A judge blocked many of the 203 pardons issued by Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour as he left office for possibly failing to comply with a law that legal notices must be published thirty days before an inmate’s release. Pardons for five killers, including four Governor mansion trustees convicted of murder, will also be reviewed.

 

01/12/12 Homicide dropped off the list of America’s top 15 causes of death. In 1990, at the peak of the violence, it ranked tenth.  Homicides fell from 16799 in 2009 to 16065 in 2010, and those by gun from 11493 to 11015. Jailing domestic abusers, improved victim services, better policing and shifting demographics are credited.  Report

 

01/11/12 An eyewitness to a home invasion testified that Juan Smith shot and killed the victim. Based on that alone Smith was convicted of murder. But prosecutors had withheld statements by the witness that he wouldn’t be able to ID the shooter.  The Supreme Court ruled this a Brady violation and overturned the conviction. Related post

 

01/11/12 Shootings and near-shootings of persons holding replica air guns have become commonplace.  In the most recent incident, police fatally shot a Texas middle-school student who refused to drop a realistic-looking air pistol after an altercation with another youth. But calls for restrictions on such weapons have been rejected.

 

01/11/12 Barion Perry’s conviction will stand.  Perry was picked out from a distance by an eyewitness as he stood detained at the scene of car burglaries. Police, said the Supreme Court, did not try to influence the witness, so Perry’s identification was properly admitted as evidence at trial, where jurors  could make up their own minds.  Related post

 

01/10/12 Outgoing Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour pardoned the last of eight inmates, all former Governor mansion trustees.  Seven were in for murder, one for manslaughter, mostly for killing spouses and girlfriends. One example, David Gatlin, shot and killed his wife while she held their baby, then wounded a family friend. Related post.

 

01/10/12 During the past seven years identification blunders have landed 500 Denver residents in jail on warrants meant for someone else.  Many were mistakenly held for weeks, with some pleading guilty to minor infractions just to get released.  Similar problems are said to beset agencies around the U.S. (For a Los Angeles example click here.)

 

01/10/12 A Florida man who had been telling an informer since September that he wanted to carry out terror attacks was arrested when he tried to buy explosives and machineguns from an FBI undercover agent. Sami Osmakac, 25, had been banned from local mosques for expressing views that suggested he was “mentally unbalanced.” Related post

 

01/09/12 An attempt to DNA-type all Virginia state forensic files for cases between 1973-1988 that resulted in felony convictions revealed that in 37 of 638 instances (5.7 percent) the profile did not match the convicted person and seemed to support their claim of innocence.  Whether this is a true wrongful conviction rate is yet to be determined.

 

01/09/12 Pharmacy robberies, often for prescription painkillers such as Oxycontin, have become so common that many drugstores prominently post notices that they no longer carry the drugs.  DEA data indicates there were 688 such holdups in 2010, a single-year jump of 79 percent.  Related post

 

01/09/12 A newspaper investigation concludes that city police officers in St. Louis, Missouri fire their guns up half again as much as county police, up to three times more often than officers in comparable cities. Unlike other cities there is no outside review of shooting incidents, such as by the D.A., unless police request it. Related posts 1   2

 

01/09/12 California recently transferred responsibility for confining and supervising non-violent prison inmates and those newly convicted of non-violent felonies to the counties. Nearly a third suffer from mental health issues and sixty percent are addicts. But funds and facilities to treat them are scarce. Related post

 

01/08/12 Stung by criticism that it grovels to Wall Street, the SEC announced that financial firms that are criminally convicted or reach formal agreements with prosecutors must also admit wrongdoing when settling civil cases with the Commission.  But critics say the real improvement would be to get admissions in strictly civil matters.  Related post

 

01/08/12 NYPD credits heavy-handed transit enforcement, including ticketing and physically arresting passengers for nuisance violations such as hogging seats, for a sharp drop of crime in the subways. But an officer who disdains  petty arrests admits that pressures from superiors to make at least one “collar” a month is a factor.  Related post 1 2

 

01/08/12 Juan Rivera, convicted three times of a 1992 rape/murder, was released from prison.  A 2005 DNA test that proved he was not the sperm donor was introduced at his second retrial, but jurors agreed with prosecutors that it didn’t mean Rivera was innocent.  A judge has disagreed, and prosecutors elected not to retry him.  Related post

 

01/08/12 In 2000 there were 28,663 deaths and 75,685 injuries from gunfire; by 2008 the numbers had climbed to 31,593 and 78,662 respectively.  But since 2002 injuries have increased sharply and far more quickly than deaths, leading experts to fear what will happen once increases in gun lethality outstrip advances in medical care.  Chart

 

01/07/12 Pennsylvania law no longer requires that persons who feel threatened outside their homes try to flee before using deadly force. Thirty-one states now have “Castle laws,” and the trend is to expand rights of those who feel threatened, even, in Ohio, allowing the use of deadly force if an intruder is unarmed.  Related post

 

01/07/12 Last May St. Louis, Missouri judges started setting $30,000 bail, full amount cash only, on persons caught illegally packing guns.  That keeps most in jail.  Homicides began dropping, and the year ended with 114, 20 percent less than in 2010 and the fewest since 2004. Researchers studying the program think it holds special promise.

 

01/06/12 Jerry Ramrattan, a New York City man who framed a former girlfriend for charging him with rape got 32 years. During 2009-2010 Ramrattan created phony scenarios and paid others to file reports accusing Seemona Sumasar of robbing them on the street. She was arrested and was pending trial when an informer tipped off police.

 

01/06/12 On December 31, John Capano, 51, an off-duty ATF agent, shot a robber, then tackled him outside the pharmacy he had just held up.  Within moments a retired lieutenant and an off-duty officer ran up to the scene.  The retired cop mistakenly shot and killed the agent.  Recognizing the error, the off-duy officer shot and killed the suspect.

 

01/05/12 Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies shot and killed a seemingly mentally ill woman who advanced on them with a hammer.  She was confronted while threatening passers-by outside a mental health clinic. Deputies had tried to talk her down and used a Taser but to no apparent effect. Related post

 

01/05/12 In 2006 the owners of Milwaukee’s Badger Guns surrendered their Federal gun dealer license (FFL) for selling guns to straw buyers.  The FFL passed to a son, Adam, who resumed operation. Now his FFL has been revoked.  So he is planning to pass it to his brother, Michael.  It’s all perfectly legal, and ATF is powerless to stop it.  Related post

 

01/05/12 One officer is dead and five officers and a suspect are wounded in a shootout during service of a search warrant by an Ogden, Utah police narcotics task force.  Conditions of the surviving officers range from serious to critical.  Dead is Ogden, Utah police agent Jared Francom, a 7-year veteran.

 

01/04/12 Dallas D.A. Craig Watkins, known for his work in overturning wrongful convictions, has moved to vacate the conviction of man who has served 31 years for rape, agreeing with defense lawyers that vital information contradicting the victim was kept from the defense.  DNA is of insufficient quantity to make a determination.

 

01/04/12 Under investigation by DOJ since June for allegations that its officers use excessive force, Portland PD will require that sergeants respond to scenes where citizens are injured by cops, or claim they were injured. In the past supervisors reviewed officer use-of-force reports after the fact.  Related post

 

01/04/12 To increase the number of cops on the street, Detroit plans to close police stations to the public between 4 pm and 8 am. Many citizens object.  One said he needed a station open at night to file a report.  Others insist that police stations should always be open. “This is insanity. This is preposterous,” said a local minister and activist.

 

01/03/12 Murders fell in Baltimore, from 223 in 2010 to 196 in 2011, the fewest since 1977.  Homicides are also down in D.C., from 132 to 109, but up slightly nearby. They’re also up in Cleveland, from 77 to 88, still fewer than the 122 in 2009. Where it’s down authorities credit targeted policing; where it’s up they note spikes during the summer.

 

01/03/12 A German national who made an angry outburst during a recent extradition hearing for his mother was arrested in connection with a string of more than fifty arsons set in Los Angeles during the New Year’s weekend. He was identified by a Federal official who recognized him from surveillance video images that were broadcast on TV.  Authorities estimate the damage, mostly to cars but also involving several buildings, at more than $3 million.

 

01/02/12 Police called to a condominium early New Year’s morning in tony Coronado, California, found four bodies, three men and a woman, all shot dead in an apparent murder-suicide.  At least two of the dead are believed to be officers from a nearby Naval base.

 

01/02/12 Hours after shooting four partygoers, a Washington state man used an assault rifle to kill a park ranger at a roadblock in Mount Rainier.  He exchanged gunfire with responding officers, abandoned his vehicle and fled on foot.  Dead is ranger Margaret Anderson, 34, a mother of two.  Related post

 

01/01/12 Extra firefighters and police were deployed throughout Los Angeles after unknown persons set more than forty arson fires in a two-day period. Most of the targets were vehicles, with more than a dozen destroyed. Carports, homes and apartments suffered collateral damage, some heavy.

 

12/31/11 As a year-old panel of experts looks into into allegations that NYPD downgraded felonies to misdemeanors to keep Part I crimes down, victims complain that officers are refusing to take reports in the first place.  Cops say it keep stat’s low, with one commander calling it “the newest evolution in this numbers game.”  Related post

 

12/31/11 “Shotspotter,” clusters of acoustic sensors that detect and pinpoint the source of gunfire, are used in San Francisco and nearby communities.  Police credit the devices with enabling quick responses, and in high-crime areas, with supplanting citizen alerts that may never come.

 

12/31/11 With 197 homicides in New Orleans this year, 12 more than in 2010, experts say that murder reflects the city’s entrenched poverty and disorganization, made worse by the upheavals brought on by Hurricane Katrina.  Officials are sending in reformed ex-cons as social workers to try to stem the violence, much like in Project Ceasefire.

 

12/31/11 Philadelphia’s homicide numbers, 324, are up from last year, and its rate remains the highest of the ten largest cities.  Meanwhile clearances are down.  Philadelphia officials prefer to point out that murders are still 17 percent less than in 2007, when there were 392.

 

12/30/11 A Ninth Circuit panel let a lawsuit by author Carolyn Jewel proceed. Jewel sued the U.S. for a post-9/11 program based solely on Presidential authority that scanned telephone (including Internet) traffic, using automated rules to pick out suspicious messages. But cooperating phone companies were dismissed as defendants.  Ruling

 

12/29/11 In Chicago’s Englewood area the 56 killed so far in 2011 reflect a 40-percent jump over 2010.  “If you live in a very dangerous neighborhood, you’re still seeing a lot of crime,” said a criminal justice professor, who also said that things are a lot safer than 40 years ago. Indeed, homicides overall are nearly 50 percent fewer than in 1970.

 

12/29/11 Just as quickly as states and the Feds pass laws and regulations banning specific chemicals used in “spice,” synthetic marijuana often sold under pretense of being a “botanical incense,” chemists alter their formulas. “I don’t know whether we are going to be able stay one step ahead of these chemists,” said a local prosecutor.

 

12/29/11 To stem the spread of pill mills Texas passed a law requiring that pain management clinics which dispense controlled substances register with the state. So unscrupulous doctors labeled their operations as “wellness” and “urgent-care” clinics. But authorities are investigating, and some physicians’ licenses have been suspended.

 

12/29/11 Thanks to an abortive redevelopment plan, Stockton, a gritty Northern California city of 300,000 is nearly bankrupt.  Although its violent crime rate is the state’s second-highest, there are 25 percent fewer cops than in 2008.  The police union is now suing to invalidate a declaration of fiscal emergency that cost officers $10 million in wages.

 

12/28/11 Why do people falsely confess? An expert says there are three causes: detectives who have their minds made up before interrogation; using coercive tricks such as promises of leniency or threats of execution to convince a suspect that they’re better off confessing; and wittingly or unwittingly providing details about the crime.

 

12/28/11 On Christmas morning a Texas man upset by his failed marriage used 9mm. and .40 cal. pistols that he owned for “protection” to kill six family members and himself. Dead are Aziz Yazdanpanah, his estranged wife, their two children, ages 14 and 19, his wife’s sister and her husband, and the couple’s 22-year old daughter.  Related post

 

12/28/11 A newspaper investigation that revealed nearly 200 persons were jailed in 2011 on warrants actually issued for someone else has led Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca to form a task force to minimize the problem of misidentification, both within his agency and by local police.

 

12/27/11 Testimony by Texas deputy Keith Pikett in 2007 that his bloodhounds linked the scent of a murder scene to an ex-con and his adult daughter landed both in prison. An adult son, tried after the deputy was discredited, was acquitted. A Texas appeals court has since freed the father, and a hearing for the daughter is expected.  Related post

 

12/27/11 Two paroled lifers committing murders one year apart brought such paroles to a halt in Massachusetts last year.  Twenty-five of 336 paroled lifers are wanted for violations.  A completely new parole board has recommend releasing eleven more, but under far more stringent standards, including a year-long preparatory program.

 

12/26/11 More than 240,000 North Carolinians have a concealed-carry permit. During the past five years, more than 2,400 (one percent) were convicted of non-traffic crimes, including more than 60 of gun/weapon assaults and at least ten of murders or manslaughter, all but two with a gun.  Revoking permits after convictions has also been spotty.

 

12/24/11 Mistaken identification has led hundreds of persons to be wrongly arrested in Los Angeles County during the past few years, with nearly 200 so far in 2011.  A few were held for as long as a month. Incomplete information on warrants, sloppiness by issuing agencies and failure to promptly investigate claims of innocence are blamed.

 

12/24/11 Federal judges are refusing to endorse SEC settlements that go easy on corporations or which fail to cite specific wrongdoing. The SEC’s head complains that the agency lacks resources to pursue cases more aggressively.  However, the agency recently sued individual executives for hiding problems, an action that was rare in the past.

 

12/24/11 A nationwide survey of police officials reveals that law enforcement agencies are seriously burdened by dealing with mentally ill persons who remain on the street and untreated because of overly restrictive commitment laws.  Encounters with the mentally ill frequently lead to deaths, both of the mentally ill and police.

 

12/24/11 TSA body scanners aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, says Rep. John Mica (R- FL), the chair of the House Transportation Committee.  “If we could reveal the failure rate, the American public would be outraged.” Apparently scans can miss objects that would be found by pat-downs, a fact that was confirmed during a recent DHS review.

 

12/22/11 Following a decision to deauthorize Maricopa County (AZ) from screening the immigration status of arrestees, ICE has assigned fifty agents to the facility, where they will check everyone booked. Detainers will be placed on illegal aliens and on legal aliens who may have committed violent crimes and would thus be deportable.

 

12/22/11 DOJ has declared the police department in East Haven, CT (pop. 30,000) “profoundly broken” and accused its chief of erecting a “blue wall of silence” to conceal rampant discrimination by officers against Latino residents.   A year-long grand jury investigation may lead to the indictment of a dozen or more officers on civil rights charges.

 

12/21/11 Police and sheriff deputies in Sacramento, California will be using grant funds to implement a youth-violence reduction program. But instead of enforcement the main focus will be on crime prevention through job development, internships, counseling and literacy programs.

 

12/21/11 Most categories of violent crime continue falling in Minneapolis, but a sharp uptick in larceny and burglary is driving overall crime up for the second year in a row.  Drug dealers are now breaking into homes to steal electronics, and vehicle thefts are up. Robberies have also increased this year, although not as much.

 

12/21/11 Forty percent of officers in a study had a sleep disorder. Many said they fell asleep driving and had other problems, such as losing their temper.   Nearly one-third had sleep apnea, which was linked to high levels of obesity. Officers in an agency with a mandatory physical training regime were less likely to suffer from either affliction.

 

12/21/11 Central Falls, Rhode Island is officially broke. So it got police and fire retirees to agree to pension cuts of as much as 55 percent.  In exchange they’ll get supplemental payments for up to five years. Curiously, sixty percent are drawing tax-free disability pensions, and that won’t change.

 

12/20/11 Appearing on the CBS Early Show, former LAPD Chief and NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton said crime has declined because police “began to focus once again on preventing crime; ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, we focused on responding to crime. It’s a lot different to try to prevent it, and we’ve become very successful at preventing it.”

 

12/20/11 FBI agents are investigating allegations that Philadelphia’s traffic court judges regularly fix tickets for friends and influential persons. According to state Supreme Court Chief Justice Ron Castille, outside auditors found that granting such favors had become “institutionalized in the operation of the courts.”

 

12/19/11 Since 1993, one in five indigent Pennsylvania murder defendants gets a public defender.  The others get court-appointed lawyers working on poorly-paid contracts.  According to RAND, the differences in outcome are startling: defendants with PD’s are 19 percent less likely to be convicted and 62 percent less likely to get a life term.

 

12/19/11 He was 23 when he went to prison for murder. Sixty years later, Texas inmate Harvey Stewart, 83, has been granted parole.  He’s missed a lot, but he won’t be missing prison.  “Imagine that!  Sixty years being down in this damn hole.  I wouldn't recommend it.  Man’s a damn fool to even stick his foot in here.”

 

12/19/11 By the time they reach 23, nearly one-third (30.2 percent) of youths have been arrested. These findings, from a national longitudinal study, suggest that arrest rates have increased from the 60’s, when 22 percent was reported.  Researchers surmise that the difference may be due to more drug arrests and a more punitive atmosphere.

 

12/18/11 A disgruntled Los Angeles-area electric company employee armed with a pistol shot and killed two supervisors and critically wounded two other employees.  He then committed suicide.  Witnesses say he deliberately targeted his victims.

 

12/16/11 DOJ has formally determined that Seattle PD officers engage in a “pattern or practice” of using excessive force. Discrimination against minorities, says DOJ, does not rise to this level but is still of serious concern.  DOJ demands changes, but Chief John Diaz disputes the findings and says he’s treating them as allegations. Related post

 

12/16/11 Notorious for illegal alien sweeps and pink jailhouse underwear, Maricopa County, Ariz. Sheriff Joe Arpaio has been warned to sign an agreement to curtail civil rights violations or face a lawsuit. DOJ alleges that Arpaio’s deputies mistreat Hispanics, illegally targeting them for stops and abusing those in custody.  Related post

 

12/15/11 Private undercover agents hired by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg reported that a majority of private gun sellers who advertised on Internet sites were willing to deliver guns to persons who said they probably couldn’t pass a background check.  Related post

 

12/15/11 NIDA reports “significant increases” in marijuana use by 10th and 12th graders over the past five years. About 28.8% of 10th graders and 36.4% of 12th graders say they’ve used marijuana in the past year, exceeding the rate of cigarette smoking. One reason may be that concerns about the risks of using marijuana have declined.

 

12/15/11 The U.S. prison population fell by 6/10 of a percent in 2010 to 1.6 million, the first decline in forty years. Inmate numbers shrank in half the states, led by California (6,213 fewer), Georgia (4,207), New York (2,031) and Michigan (1,365.)  Illinois, Texas and Arkansas were up the most: 3,257, 2,400 and 996 respectively. Data

 

12/15/11 A man with a prison record for drugs and guns threw grenades and sprayed fire from an assault weapon in Liege, Belgium, killing three and wounding more than 120, several critically.  Nordine Amrani, 33, then killed himself. He had been ordered to appear before police about sexual abuse.  He has no known extremist ties. Related post

 

12/14/11 Despite early assurances from DOJ that it wouldn’t go after medical pot users, in California, the first state to pass such laws, the Feds have raided numerous dispensaries and ordered others to shut down.  That confuses users and has led states to call for reclassifying marijuana so that its medical use is legal under Federal as well as State laws.

 

12/14/11 Six years after Charles Singletary finished a prison term for armed robbery, D.C. authorities revoked his parole based on hearsay that he committed a murder.  Ten years later the U.S. Parole Commission ruled there was no evidence he was responsible and released him.  A civil jury just awarded Singletary $2.3 million for his troubles.

 

12/13/11 NYPD officer Peter J. Figoski was shot and killed by a robber wanted for a shooting in North Carolina. Lamont Pride, 27, was arrested by NYPD twice since September, most recently on a drug charge for which he failed to appear.  He was released both times on low bail because the warrant did not authorize extradition.

 

12/13/11 Crime in Dallas is down 4 percent, and violent crime nine percent. Chief David Brown partly attributes the improvement to his plan, implemented earlier this year, that places detectives on patrol for two weeks every six months to supplement the field force.  While some detectives seem to enjoy it, critics say it disrupts investigations.

 

12/12/11 The Supreme Court accepted for review Arizona’s appeal of a Ninth Circuit ruling that invalidated key aspects of the state’s immigration law, including requirements that police check the immigration status of everyone  arrested, and of everyone officers encounter whom they reasonably suspect is an illegal lien.  Related posts 1   2

 

12/12/11 The Milwaukee Journal reports that legal standards requiring that persons be proven dangerous beyond a reasonable doubt to compel their treatment makes it difficult to help the seriously mentally ill before it’s too late.

 

12/12/11 In Seattle, a small pilot program that punishes parolees who fail to take drug tests or comply with other requirements of supervision by swiftly sending them to jail for 3-5 day stints seems to be reducing crime and drug use.  Unlike Hawaii’s Project Hope, on which it’s modeled, the program accepts serious offenders.

 

12/12/11 An unarmed drone operated by U.S. Customs helped North Dakota police safely swoop in on a group of right-wing extremists who had been stealing livestock. Federal agencies with drones use them to help local police when they’re not otherwise busy. But civil libertarians say that use of these aircraft raises serious privacy concerns.

 

12/12/11 One week after LaDondrell Montgomery was sentenced to life for armed robbery, his lawyer discovered that the Houston man had been in jail for domestic violence when the crime occurred. Montgomery, who has a long armed robbery record, remains in jail facing trials on five more robberies.  He was convicted based on eyewitness ID.

 

12/09/11 Rep. Darrell Issa, chair of a committee investigating ATF’s botched Guns-to-Mexico case, accused Attorney General Eric Holder of being like John Mitchell, the A.G. who went to prison for lying about Watergate.  Holder fired back with “have you no shame?”, the words that propelled Sen. Joe McCarthy into infamy.  Holder refused to resign.

 

12/08/11 Despite questionable conduct by “rogue” officers during the recent Occupy protests, some policing experts claim that agencies handle protests far more professionally and with much more restraint than in the 60’s and 70’s.  Policies now require that police dialogue with protesters, and dogs and fire hoses are out.  Related post  1   2

 

12/08/11 There have been 183 homicides in New Orleans this year, eight more than in 2010. With a rate that’s ten times the national average, the city is instituting a “public health approach” to include deploying street gang workers. Demoralized and under DOJ investigation, police are clearing only half the killings, and the future seems grim.

 

12/08/11 Claiming that witnesses are no longer available, authorities have resentenced Mumia Abu-Jamal, the celebrated defendant on death row for the 1981 murder of a Philadelphia police officer to life without parole. Federal courts had ordered a new capital hearing due to errors, and the Supreme Court refused to hear the state’s appeal.

 

12/07/11 A Federal judge sentenced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to 14 years imprisonment on eighteen counts of corruption.  Jurors found him guilty of repeatedly seeking campaign contributions and other tangible favors  in exchange for filling a vacant Senate seat and performing other duties of office.

 

12/07/11 In 2006 John Greiner, Ogden, Utah’s police chief, was elected to the State Senate as a Republican. That violates the Hatch Act, which prohibits persons overseeing Federal funds, which the police get, from holding partisan office.  Greiner didn’t run again in 2010, but the Feds now say that if Greiner isn’t fired they’ll withhold further funds.

 

12/07/11 A woman who had been denied food stamps stormed a Laredo, Texas welfare office, took the manager hostage at gunpoint, then held off a SWAT team for hours.  She eventually shot and killed herself and critically wounded her two children, a boy, 10 and his sister, 12.

 

12/07/11 Thomas Haynesworth was paroled in March after doing nearly 27 years for three 1984 rapes.  Last year DNA proved that one was committed by a known rapist. But there was no DNA for the other two, and one victim still insists it was Haynesworth.  Yesterday a Virginia court finally declared Haynesworth factually innocent. Related post

 

12/06/11 Troubled by youth “flash mobs” organized through social media sites, Cleveland passed an ordinance that forbids inciting to riot and included computers and cell phones in a list of prohibited tools. Civil liberties advocates raised concerns that people could be prosecuted for innocently calling a gathering that turned violent.

 

12/06/11 Two elderly women complained of being unnecessarily strip-searched by TSA agents at JFK airport. One, 85, avoids scanners because of a defibrillator.  She had to pull down her pants to reveal an insulin pump. Another, 88, had to do so to reveal a colostomy bag.  Now a woman in her 60’s has stepped forward with a similar complaint.

 

12/06/11 NYPD officers who resented assignments to provide security for a trouble-prone Labor Day parade by West Indians posted many highly disparaging comments about the event and its participants on Facebook.  “Let them kill each other,” wrote one officer.  Another warned to be careful since “rats” from internal affairs might be reading.

 

12/05/11 Even when other factors are equal whites are far more likely to receive Presidential pardons than minorities, a study shows. Among the reasons given are that pardon attorneys favor persons of means, who are married and have a stable background, and have been recommended for clemency by a member of Congress.

 

12/05/11 Milwaukee police use traffic stops to fight crime. Of the 45,000-plus stops between January-March 2011 nearly 69 percent were of blacks, who were seven times more likely to be stopped as whites.  But contraband was not found more often.  Police say the disparity in stops is caused by a higher concentration of blacks in high-crime areas.

 

12/05/11 U.S. Park Police dismantled a barn-like wooden structure being erected by Occupy protesters at their camp in Washington D.C. Officers arrested several dozen Occupiers who refused to exit the building but allowed other campers to remain. All went peacefully and relations between police and the Occupiers are reportedly good.

 

12/05/11 DEA undercover agents, often working with Mexican counterparts, launder hundreds of millions of drug money for the Mexican cartels each year. Proceeds are received in Mexico and the U.S. and deposited in the cartels’ American accounts. The practice enables agents to identify top-echelon members, but it’s not without controversy.

 

12/03/11 Forty-six Occupy L.A. protesters who had outstanding warrants, prior records or who resisted arrest were charged, mostly for failing to disperse. The remainder of the nearly 300 arrested were released without charges, which could still be filed.  A few complained of rough treatment and of wrist cuts from handcuffs. Related post

 

12/03/11 Randy Katakofsky, the NYPD IA detective who uncovered the ticket-fixing scandal is being investigated for passing on unrelated wiretap information to Lt. Jennara Cobb, who was indicted for leaking word of the ticket probe to the union. He says he was testing her integrity.  But doing so requires special permission, which he didn’t have.

 

12/03/11 Sympathizing with illegal aliens and sharing personal views against marijuana laws cost a Border Patrol agent his job. Cops who support the goals of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a national organization of current and former officers who favor decriminalizing pot, have been disciplined.  Is that wrong?  The ACLU thinks so.

 

12/02/11 New Jersey’s loss is Tennessee’s gain. Seventeen of 30 officers who just graduated from the Nashville PD academy were from out of state, including three from New Jersey. Another department looking to hire experienced cops, Fort Worth, Texas, is also prowling New Jersey, where 705 cops laid off since January are still seeking work.

 

12/01/11 Two governors - of Washington and Rhode Island - have petitioned the DEA to reclassify marijuana as a Schedule II controlled substance, thus allowing physicians and medical providers in states with medical marijuana laws to legally prescribe and dispense it under Federal law.

 

12/01/11 To save money more than a dozen states retain law firms to handle indigent cases for a flat fee. That, say critics, creates incentives for shoddy work, leading to “plea mills” that work to the detriment of defendants, and particularly those whose cases are more complex. Related post

 

12/01/11 Retired Los Angeles County sheriff’s captain Robert Olmsted said that he informed his superiors that the captain of the Men’s Central Jail was not acting against deputies who formed cliques and abused prisoners, but that he was ignored. Sheriff Baca said he was told but said that Olmsted should have fixed the problems himself.  Related post

 

11/30/11 Officer fatalities are up. According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, 158 officers died while on duty so far in 2011, a 12 percent increase from this date last year. Fifty-seven of the deaths were gun related, a 16 percent increase from 2010, when 49 officers were killed by gunfire.

 

11/30/11 Letters from the U.S. Attorney warning marijuana clinics that dispensing pot is illegal under Federal law have led 139 of 222 San Diego outlets to close.  A second wave of letters, some delivered by DEA agents, repeated the warning to those still open. But it’s assumed that some prosecutions will be needed to secure full compliance.

 

11/30/11 Houston PD and Harris County D.A. Pat Lykos are at odds over her practice of not charging minor drug cases as felonies in favor of using prosecutorial resources to go after “dangerous criminals.” But officers say that these cases provide an opportunity to lock up exactly that kind of person before they commit a robbery or murder.

 

11/30/11 In Part III of a series, the Las Vegas Review-Journal criticizes agency training and practices with fostering a culture that encourages LVPD officers to “come on strong” and aggressively resolve situations. That can lead to the use of force, including lethal force in situations that could have been peacefully resolved had more time been taken.

 

11/30/11 Police overran Occupy encampments in Los Angeles and Philadelphia.  About 1,400 LAPD officers arrested 200 protesters without chemicals, munitions or significant force.  No injuries were reported.  It was also mostly peaceful in Philadelphia, where dozens were arrested.  Many had heeded prior warnings and left in advance.

 

11/29/11 “Talk about blaming the victim.  Not only isn’t there any remorse, there is umbrage and outrage on the part of Dr. Murray against the decedent.” So said Los Angeles Superior Court judge Michael Pastor as he sentenced Dr. Conrad Murray to four years on his conviction of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Michael Jackson.

 

11/29/11 Quoting protesters and LAPD critics, the Los Angeles Times suggests that LAPD’s tolerant, low-key approach is “emboldening” Occupy campers, who remained ensconced by City Hall. But Chief Charlie Beck urges continued restraint, insisting that should action become necessary his officers are up to the task.  Related post

 

11/29/11 Seven persons were shot, two critically, when gunfire erupted in the parking lot of an Oakland, Calif. liquor store. At least two gunmen fled after firing fifty or more rounds, many striking a local rapper’s promotional van.  The rapper, Kafani, said he wasn’t present, but that his cousin and her child were among the wounded.

 

11/29/11 On August 3, 2010 Federal law changed to greatly increase the amount of crack cocaine one must possess to draw a stiff mandatory minimum term.  But the liberalization is not retroactive.  Now the Supreme Court will decide whether to extend relief under the law to persons who were convicted before this date but sentenced after.

 

11/29/11 Las Vegas police have shot and killed eleven persons this year, a record high. A newspaper investigation reveals that of 16 major agencies they are third in number of shootings per capita.  It calls LVPD’s culture “hard-charging,” criticizing the department as reluctant to change and  “slow to weed out problem cops.”  Article part I   II

 

11/28/11 The Police Executive Research Forum has hosted two telephone get-togethers for police executives who wish to “compare notes” on the Occupy protests.  “What keeps police chiefs up at night is that somehow the purpose of the movement will become about actions that the police have taken,” says Chuck Wexler, PERF’s executive director.  He denied a post by a San Francisco alternative news site that PERF was coordinating police response to the protests.

 

11/28/11 DOJ criticized Seattle PD, which is under a patterns-and-practices inquiry, for misinterpreting case law that protects officers against self-incrimination.  Seattle PD policies discourage submitting use of force reports after a shooting occurs, thus depriving the agency from learning why officers thought gunfire was necessary. DOJ letter

 

11/28/11 NYPD reports record lows in officer-involved shootings.  In 2010 officers purposely fired at 33 persons, nearly 1/3 fewer than in 2009. Sixteen were wounded and 8 were killed.  That contrasts with 1971, when officers wounded 221 and killed 93, nearly two a week.  Police attribute the decline to good policing and a plunge in violence.

 

11/23/11 DOJ sued Utah to overturn recently enacted state laws that, among other things, require police to ascertain the immigration status of arrestees and to arrest persons illegally in the U.S. and those who harbor or transport illegal aliens.  DOJ, which calls such laws an unconstitutional intrusion, has also sued Arizona, Alabama and South Carolina.

 

11/23/11 Calling his state’s death penalty “a perversion of justice,” Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber declared a moratorium on executions.  He acted two weeks before the scheduled execution of a killer whose competency is in question.  Kitzhaber said he acted because the death penalty is applied inequitably, not because it is morally wrong.

 

11/23/11 Funding for the National Criminal Background Check System, which performs gun buyer checks, was cut 71 percent. Sen. Charles Schumer recently asked that funds be cut for non-complying states, including Alaska, Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Hampshire, Vermont and Wyoming.  But 71 percent overall seems drastic.

 

11/22/11 Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, 21, the man charged with shooting at the White House with an AK-47 type rifle, was suffering from delusions that an expert said were consistent with paranoid schizophrenia. He bought the weapon in Idaho last March for $550 from Jake Chapman, another 21-year old who was known as “the gun guy.”

 

11/22/11 Shortly before its expected publication, the CQ Press yearly city crime ranking was denounced by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which insists that the process is flawed.  One criticism is that citizens and cities report crimes differently. Another is that the risk of being victimized depends on one’s activities and neighborhood. Related post

 

11/22/11 Educators, police experts and media pundits across the U.S. are criticizing the harsh treatment of California’s student protesters. Former Seattle chief Norm Stamper decried police militarization and the use of tear gas. “It is all too easy to resort to weapons that ought not be used at all, or in last-resort situations.” Related post

 

11/22/11 An investigator appointed to review the prosecution of the late Senator Ted Stevens concluded that Government lawyers illegally withheld exculpatory materials from his lawyers and the judge.  He did not recommend charging prosecutors with contempt, but made no recommendation as to obstruction of justice. Related post

 

11/22/11 Does taking a drug-detection canine to someone’s front door, then using its alert to help secure a search warrant for the home violate the Fourth Amendment? Yes, says the Florida Supreme Court. No, say state prosecutors, who are appealing to the Supreme Court.

 

11/22/11 Sources say that the FBI declined to become involved in the case against Jose Pimentel, the man arrested by NYPD for conspiring to make bombs, because Federal law lacks a one-party conspiracy charge, and because agents feared that the informer may have played too large a role in getting Pimentel to make bombs. Related post

 

11/22/11 In the wake of the tear-gassing incident at UC Davis, Mark Yudof, president of the University of California, urged the ten campus Chancellors to not use police against “peaceful, lawful protests.”  Students at the UC and Cal State systems are ramping up protests against tuition hikes and plan to reestablish tent cities taken down by police.

 

11/21/11 In response to California’s shift of “nonviolent” inmates to the counties, Los Angeles D.A. Steve Cooley has instructed his staff to try to make their cases meet the “serious, violent or sexual” criteria that require prison time. Meanwhile a RAND report cautions about giving counties with limited social services the new workload. Related post

 

11/21/11 More than 250 license plate readers dot the streets of Washington DC and its suburbs, storing information for as long as three years.  That lets police connect vehicles with crimes and develop leads.  But it makes some uneasy. “The government has no business collecting that kind of information on people without a warrant,” says the ACLU.

 

11/21/11 Manhattan man Jose Pimentel, aka Muhammad Yusuf, was arrested by NYPD as he put the final touches on three bombs at an informer’s residence.  He intended to practice on mailboxes and then go on to bomb post offices and police stations. Pimentel, 27, had been under watch for two years.  No one else was involved. Related post

 

11/20/11 Five weeks in, Portland’s Occupy camp had become a haven for vagrants, runaways and drug users, so the city’s liberal mayor stepped in. Police moved in quietly, without gas or rubber bullets, and in the end most campers left voluntarily.  Only a few arrests were made, and even many radicals agree that the authorities handled things well.

 

11/20/11 Congress sent the President a partial budget bill that increases funding for the FBI, ATF and Bureau of Prisons but reduces funding to COPS by $296 million, leaving a lot less money to help hard-pressed police agencies hire and retain officers. “Certainly, there will be police officer jobs that will be lost,”  said the president of the IACP.

 

11/19/11 UC Davis is investigating an incident where a campus police officer with a large pepper spray container methodically doused a line of sitting protesters.  Officers earlier removed an Occupy encampment from the campus, arresting ten. The chief, who said she regretted the incident, said officers had been surrounded and wanted to leave.

 

11/18/11 Marches and mostly peaceful demonstrations marked the second month anniversary of the Occupy movement.  Seventy-two protesters were arrested in Los Angeles for blocking roads and taking over a plaza; 200 were arrested in New York, 46 in Chicago and 45 in Portland for blocking bridges. Labor unions also participated.

 

11/17/11 Homicide overall is at the lowest rate in forty years. In large cities it dropped from 35.5/100,000 to 11.9/100,000 between 1991 and 2008.  However, the proportion of homicides involving gangs and juveniles is up, and the actual count of homicides by teens and young adults (to age 24) is about the same as in the mid-1980’s.

 

11/17/11 Despite allegations that moneymaking shenanigans in the real estate and financial sectors helped bring on the financial meltdown, the past decade has seen the number of Federal prosecutions for frauds at or by financial institutions fall by more than fifty percent.  Data Related post

 

11/17/11 DOJ announced a “patterns and practices” probe into the deaths of seven black men shot and killed by Miami officers in 2010 and 2011. It will look into training, leadership and procedures. Criminal culpability is being investigated by local prosecutors. Miami’s new chief is also conducting a “top to bottom” review of the department.

 

11/17/11 NYPD officers clashed with protesters, arresting dozens who blocked streets and tried to keep employees from entering the New York Stock Exchange. Other protesters streamed into Zuccotti Park, from where they had been expelled the other night, flinging aside police barricades and resuming their occupation.  Related post

 

11/17/11 A new 60 Minutes report on the Taser concludes that the devices are handy tools that can if used wisely prevent deaths and injuries, but they’re prone to overuse. Researchers and police are interviewed, notorious episodes are discussed, and viewers are taken into the factory where the devices are made. Related post

 

11/16/11 A Chapel Hill, N.C. police tactical team armed with rifles stormed a vacant car dealership and removed dozens of protesters one day after they took over the premises.  Thirteen persons including two reporters were handcuffed; seven were arrested. Criticisms of excessive force and of acting without warning are being investigated.

 

11/16/11 In 2008 a schizophrenic man died after he was Tasered, hit with a baton and hog-tied by Spokane officers who mistook him for a robber.  A Federal jury just convicted one cop of civil rights violations. Evidence of a major police coverup has led the city’s mayor to ask DOJ to conduct a patterns and practices inquiry of the department.

 

11/16/11 Pennsylvania troopers arrested a 21-year old man suspected of firing a bullet that struck the White House last Friday. An AK-47 type rifle was discovered in an abandoned vehicle parked nearby.  Authorities estimate that the round, which did not penetrate, traveled 700 to 800 yards.

 

11/16/11 A misdemeanor indictment charging Kansas City Bishop Robert Finn with failing to report sexual misconduct by a priest was set aside in exchange for his agreement to faithfully (no pun intended) keep prosecutors informed about all such allegations over the next five years.  Related post

 

11/15/11 Despite Federal regulations requiring them to do so, few States share information about adjudicated mentally ill persons with the NICS, the Federal database used to check whether prospective gun buyers are prohibited from acquiring firearms. Many don’t know what’s needed; those that do usually have laws that mandate reporting.

 

11/15/11 A California man had a brake job done on a minivan he bought from a car-rental firm. A mechanic offered to fix the windows, which wouldn’t roll down all the way.  So the owner said sure, go ahead. That’s when they found $500,000 worth of cocaine stuffed in the door panels.  Police were called, and the seller agreed to replace the vehicle.

 

11/15/11 Hundreds of NYPD officers cleared the Occupy Wall Street encampment, removing tents and arresting 150 protesters who refused to leave. City workers cleaned the plaza and the mayor said protesters could return but not camp.  A judge then issued a temporary restraining order against the city; its effect is unknown.  Related post

 

11/14/11 A new California law shifting oversight of persons convicted of nonviolent crimes to the counties means that as many as 8,000 prisoners will be released to Los Angeles in the next year.  With its jails running full plans are to set free thousands of inmates awaiting trial, leading to worries that crime will go up and witnesses will be intimidated.

 

11/14/11 In “Controlling Crime: Strategies and Tradeoffs,” criminologists argue that fighting crime can be done better and cheaper. They call for increasing the “swiftness and certainty” of punishment while slashing imprisonment.  Savings would be used for such things as more cops, raising the compulsory schooling age to increase graduation rates, expanding programs such as Head Start, and providing therapy to delinquents and families. Related post

 

11/14/11 In 1986 Federal law (18 USC 921[a][20]) was changed to let felons have guns if their State civil rights have been fully restored. Many states now do so automatically once a certain period has lapsed after a conviction. Some violent ex-felons have misused these rights, but gun lobby pressures prevent any thought of a rollback.

 

11/14/11 Hundreds of police officers cleared out the Oakland Occupy encampment. Most protesters had already left.  Twenty who remained submitted peacefully to arrests while chanting “We Shall Overcome.”  Oakland’s mayor said she supported the protesters’ goals but camping would no longer be allowed.  Related post

 

11/11/11 A California appeals court ruled that a state law that authorizes and regulates medical marijuana does not prevent cities and counties from banning them. About 168 cities and 17 counties prohibit dispensaries, while about 40 cities and 10 counties allow them.  Eighty and ten respectively have placed them on hold.   Related post

 

11/10/11 An altercation between two groups led to the shooting death of a man near the Occupy Oakland camp. A news videographer was also roughed up. A protester said that neither the victim nor his assailants were connected with the movement. But critics said the encampment is drawing the wrong crowd and what happened is inevitable.

 

11/10/11 Police arrested a 57-year old man for the 1986 murder of a Texas woman after their DNA was matched to a bloody bandanna found near the scene.  Her husband, Michael Morton, was released last month after serving 25 years in prison for that crime.  The real killer’s DNA has also been matched to an unsolved Austin homicide. Related post

 

11/09/11 California assault weapons laws prohibit the sale of certain semi-auto rifles and high-capacity pistols and magazines. But police officers with letters from their departments are exempt.  ATF is now investigating cops at several agencies who apparently misused their credentials to buy these items then resold them to ordinary citizens.

 

11/09/11 Budget cuts are basically shutting down California’s Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, the state’s equivalent of the DEA.  With all but $6 million of its $77 million budget eliminated, more than 200 agents are expected to be shown the door come January 1st. Their leadership of local drug task forces will also come to an end.

 

11/09/11 Of 53 murders in Boston this year, police have so far cleared nineteen.  According to detectives the problem is a pervasive code of silence.  “We solve crimes because people tell us who did it. The physical evidence helps us prove it.”  Related post

 

11/09/11 Police patrol the perimeter of Zuccotti Park.  To avoid confrontations they have ceded the interior to citizen volunteers, burly men and martial-arts experts who surround belligerent persons and walk them out. Within the encampment there is wary coexistence, with drug users in one area and “political science” types in another.

 

11/09/11 Arizona State Senate president Russell Pearce, author of Arizona’s tough anti-illegal alien law, was edged out by a fellow conservative and recalled from office. Pearce was accused of running a campaign that was replete with dirty tricks, including funding a bid by a Hispanic woman who was supposed to draw votes away from his challenger.

 

11/08/11 Felony arrests in New Orleans were up slightly in the first half of 2011 while arrests for misdemeanors declined.  That reflects an  effort to concentrate on serious crime, police say. But felony convictions dropped sharply.  Prosecutors are only winning 52 percent of jury cases and 56 percent of those tried in front of a judge.

 

11/08/11 During the third quarter of 2011 there were 97 murders in Detroit, nearly one-third more than for the same period last year.  Meanwhile other kinds of crime show decreases.  Police Chief Ralph Goodbee attributes the carnage to the abundance of firearms in the city.  Three-part series in the Detroit Free Press

 

11/08/11 DOJ has so far recovered more than $61 million in settlements with body armor companies that used Zylon fabric.  Litigation against the makers of Zylon continues. “Zylon materials degraded quickly over time and were not suitable for ballistic use,” said DOJ, which criticized manufacturers for knowingly endangering officer safety.

 

11/08/11 A 14-year old Alabama boy killed a man by beating him with a baseball bat and setting his house on fire.  A 14-year old Arkansas boy was a lookout in a robbery where a clerk was shot to death. Both got life without parole.  In  Graham the Supreme Court ruled that this sentence is inappropriate for persons under 18 in non-homicide cases. Now it will decide if life without parole is cruel and unusual punishment for those under 18 when death results.

 

11/07/11 A spate of arrests and convictions of parents who allegedly beat their children to death has focused attention on Tennessee pastor Michael Earl.  His books, which have been found at some of the scenes, encourage parents to discipline their children physically and describe how to fashion implements to use for that purpose.

 

11/07/11 Pennsylvania authorities criticized Penn State officials, including coach John Paterno, for not telling police that prominent football assistant Jerry Sandusky was seen sexually abusing young boys. Sandusky has been arrested on multiple counts of sexual abuse, and two Penn State officials have been charged with lying about it to a grand jury.

 

11/07/11 An L.A. County jury found Dr. Conrad Murray guilty of involuntary manslaughter in causing the pop star’s death. Prosecutors claimed that Murray recklessly administered the powerful anesthetic propofol, commonly used only in hospitals, and failed to properly monitor Jackson’s health.  Murray faces up to four years in prison.

 

11/07/11 In July 2010 a man doing six months at the Rock County, Wisconsin jail for assault got a 5-year prison term for assaulting his cellmate. Jerry Jones, then 24, insisted he was innocent and that the “victim” caused his own injuries, then accused him out of spite. A diary kept by the accuser now confirms that Jones was telling the truth.

 

11/05/11 A Florida judge sentenced a 26-year old man with no criminal record to life without parole for having 454 pornographic images of children on his home computer.  Under state law each image can be charged as a separate, five-year count. A prosecutor said the sentence was per guidelines, but an outside expert thought it unconscionable.

 

11/05/11 Preliminary, non-peer reviewed findings by researchers at Brown University revealed no difference in teen use of marijuana between Rhode Island, which legalized medical pot in 2006, and Massachusetts, which has not.  In both states teen marijuana use before and after the change in law was common, about thirty percent.  Related post

 

11/04/11 A Chicago judge vacated the convictions and released three men imprisoned since their teens for a 1991 rape and murder after DNA tests implicated a convicted rapist for the crime. Two others convicted along with them have already done their time; petitions to exonerate them have been filed.  Related post

 

11/04/11 Black-clad anarchists have made themselves unwelcome guests in the Occupy Oakland encampment.  With a taste for tagging, vandalism and tangling with police, their actions threaten the movement’s ability to draw support and further its goals. Yet “taking the brick out of the hand” of the violent fringe is easier said than done.

 

11/04/11 A New York judge convicted an NYPD narcotics detective of planting drugs on citizens, apparently to augment his case productivity. A former narcotics officer who faces prison after pleading guilty to similar charges testified that the practice was common.

 

11/03/11 FBI agents arrested four retired Georgia men, all in their 60’s and 70’s, for seeking to purchase ingredients to make ricin and bombs so they could wage a campaign of terror against the government.  An informer passed them on to an FBI undercover agent. None have a criminal record; one had supposedly been involved with a militia.

 

11/03/11 Disorder overtook downtown Oakland after midnight as a group took over a vacant building near the Occupy encampment, set a trash fire and tangled with police. Officers used tear gas and arrested about 40.  Things later quieted. At the port truckers criticized the protests, while union leaders sought cooperation.  Related post

 

11/03/11 In oral arguments (Perry v. New Hampshire) Supreme Court justices seemed reluctant to require that judges exclude witness ID’s made under “suggestive circumstances” even when police did nothing wrong.  In this case a physically distant eyewitness pointed out a man being questioned by officers as being the perpetrator. Related post

 

11/03/11 A crowd of 7,000 marched from downtown Oakland to the port, shutting it down.  Called by the Occupy movement, the mostly peaceful strike was marred by some vandalism, allegedly by anarchists,  and a collision between a car and two protesters.  Police largely remained in the background and made no arrests.  Related post

 

11/02/11 Nashville’s arrest of dozens of Occupiers led the ACLU to step in. A Federal court has now enjoined the city from enforcing a curfew and requiring insurance. So the city is again letting Occupiers camp overnight, engaging them in dialogue and providing toilets.  Occupiers, in turn, are excluding aggressive persons and panhandlers.

 

11/02/11 Washington D.C.’s “All Hands on Deck” floods neighborhoods with officers on select weekends.   Chief Lanier touts the program but cops say it’s a distraction. Some residents say it helps but it’s no panacea. “For a few days, the criminals stay away [but] if you don’t have persistent policing, of course they’re going to come back.”  Related post

 

11/02/11 An analysis of the impact of the Mexican cartel on crime along the Texas border reveals that in a few areas, including El Paso, violence is up. Violence in border regions also decreased only 3.3 percent between 2006-10, much less than 12 percent statewide.  But many murders and other incidents counted as Cartel-related are apparently not.

 

11/02/11 An open letter on the Oakland police union website says that cops are troubled by the mayor’s order to let Occupy protesters return to their campsite and to give city workers the day off so they can join in a planned general strike.  “Is it the City’s intention to have City employees on both sides of a skirmish line?” the union asks. Related post

 

11/01/11 DOJ official Lanny Breuer said that he didn’t sound the alarm about “Fast and Furious” because he didn’t realize its tactics were similar to “Wide Receiver.” “The tragic truth is that if those criminals who killed Agent Terry had not gotten the guns from this one source, they would have gotten the gun from another source.” Related post

 

11/01/11 Federal grants are enabling testing thousands of unexamined rape kits left behind after the 2008 shuttering of the Detroit PD crime lab. Tests on an initial sample of 400 recently led to an arrest for sexual assault and other charges. Two to three thousand more kits will be tested in the next 18 months.  Related post 1 2

 

11/01/11 For a third time the Supreme Court set aside the Nonth Circuit’s grant of a Writ of Habeas Corpus to a California grandmother who had served 10 years of a 15-to-life sentence for shaking a grandchild to death. Justices said it was for the jury to decide between medical opinions, and that a guilty verdict was reasonable. Related post

 

10/31/11 Massachusetts judges acquit over 80 percent of accused drunk drivers.  That includes one who drove the wrong way in an off-ramp, causing an accident with injuries, another who purposely ran over a man, and another who bragged after her second DUI arrest in a month that she would get off in both cases. Which she did.

 

10/31/11 One lawyer misinterpreted the law and urged his client to reject a plea deal.  He did, and instead of doing 4-7 years he was convicted and got 15-30. Another didn’t pass on an offer, costing his client nearly 3 years in prison.  Whether incompetent advice in plea deals is a 6th. Amendment violations will soon be decided by the Supreme Court.

 

10/31/11 Innocence projects will be visiting law schools, bar groups and prosecutors and judges around the U.S. in a “national tour” to highlight the problem of prosecutorial misconduct.  They will be joined by former inmates including John Thompson, who served 18 years because prosecutors withheld evidence.  Related post

 

10/31/11 Eleven NYPD officers, all present or former members of the police union, were arrested for fixing tickets in a widespread scheme that cost New York City up to $2 million and led to hundreds of officers stationed in the Bronx pleading guilty, facing internal charges and retiring. The investigation began when discussions about ticket-fixing came up on a wiretap of an officer suspected of drug dealing.  He and his wife were charged in that case as well.

 

10/28/11 Little, Brown is about to release “Truth and Consequences: Life Inside the Madoff Family.” Authored by Laurie Sandell, the book was written with the cooperation of Andrew Madoff, the surviving son of Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff, and his mother Ruth.  Bernie Madoff is in prison and his other son, Mark, committed suicide last year.

 

10/27/11 Despite protests from law enforcement groups Minnesota inmate Timothy Eling, 63, will be paroled after serving 29 years for murdering an off-duty police officer. Eling, who has repeatedly apologized for his act, now mentors other prisoners. He will remain in prison four more years because he was caught smuggling drugs in 1996.

 

10/27/11 Prisoner hunger strikes and pressures from civil rights groups are leading California corrections officials to reform the process of identifying gang members and associates who merit solitary confinement.  A new “behavior-based” system is being developed, and all prisoners presently housed in segregation will be reevaluated.  Memo

 

10/26/11 FBI agents arrested twelve New York men, including five current and three retired NYPD officers for transporting counterfeit goods, stolen property and firearms including M-16 rifles from New Jersey.  All items were furnished by undercover FBI agents.  The investigation began when an FBI informant tried to get a traffic ticket fixed.

 

10/26/11 According to the 2011 Gallup Crime Poll only 26 percent of Americans favor banning handguns. That continues a long trend, with a pro-handgun majority dating back to 1975. But a slight majority now also opposes a ban on assault rifles, a flip-flop from 2001, when 59 percent favored a ban.

 

10/26/11 A Brown University researcher concludes that guns flow from weak-law to strong-law states, particularly if they are proximate, and that more gun crimes occur in weak-law states. Florida, Georgia and Virginia are the main gun sources for New York, while Indiana is the principal supplier to Illinois.

 

10/26/11 Oakland, Calif. officers in riot gear deployed chemical agents against 400 “Occupy” protesters who tried to retake a plaza that was sealed off.  Police had earlier arrested 85 persons who camped out at the plaza for two weeks and refused to leave.  Officials said they supported free speech and tried to negotiate with protesters but to no avail.

 

10/25/11 After a three-month “cooling-off period” Orange-Osceola County Chief Judge Belvin Perry released the names of the Pinellas County, Florida jurors who served on the Casey Anthony trial.  Judge Perry had criticized media coverage of the trial, which he said “devolved into cheap, soap opera-like entertainment.” Related post

 

10/25/11 States with the highest rates of gun ownership have far higher gun death rates that states with low gun ownership according to data compiled by the Violence Policy Center.  High gun ownership states also tend to have far weaker gun laws. Full chart - all states

 

10/25/11 According to the DOJ COPS office nearly one out of four police departments sustained budget cuts during the past two years.  It is predicted that by the end of this year 12,000 officers will have been laid off and that 30,000 positions will stay vacant, marking the first national decline in the number of police officers in 25 years. Full report

 

10/24/11 Senate Democrats joined Republicans in rejecting an Administration proposal to spend $35 billion to create and preserve jobs for 400,000 teachers and “thousands” of cops and firefighters.  It would have been paid with a .5 percent surtax on persons earning more than $1,000,000 per year.

 

10/24/11 In a rare show of unanimity, the Senate voted 99-0 to insert a provision in a spending bill that forbids ATF from knowingly allowing guns to head for the Mexican cartels unless they’re controlled every step of the way.

 

10/24/11 Fifty-six law enforcement officers were feloniously killed in 2010, eight more than in 2009 and fifteen more than in 2008.  All but one were slain with firearms: 38 with handguns, two with shotguns and fifteen with rifles, same as rifle deaths in 2009 and the most since 2001, when 70 were killed but only eleven with a rifle. Related post

 

10/24/11 Over the years nearly 100 Milwaukee police officers have been disciplined and even convicted of crimes including drunk driving and spousal abuse but allowed to remain on the force.  Eighteen got deferred prosecution and other settlements. One, who served time for drunk driving last year, was assigned to the department on work-release.

 

10/24/11 Since 1978 Federal and state courts have sent back nearly a third of Pennsylvania’s death-penalty convictions for new hearings or trials because accused were poorly represented.  Experts say that inadequate state funding of defense lawyers leads to shoddy work, which in turn causes even more costly reversals.  Related post 1 2

 

10/24/11 Washington D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray signed an order forbidding police from inquiring into an arrestee’s immigration status.  If ICE places a hold it will only be honored for 48 hours.  The policy’s purpose is to encourage illegal aliens to help police. But the police union criticizes it as pandering.

 

10/24/11 Increased use of life sentences has driven up incarceration costs. Texas has almost nine-thousand doing life, at a cost of $30,000 each per year.  Of these, 391 are with no parole, an eight-fold jump from 2007. Nationally, the number of lifers quadrupled between 1984 and 2008, when it reached 140,000.  Sentencing Project report

 

10/21/11 The prosecution’s key medical witness testified that Michael Jackson’s post-mortem propofol levels indicate that a full bottle of the surgical sedative dripped into his veins, forty times more than the 25 milligrams Dr. Conrad Murray said he administered.  Dr. Steven Shafer said that Jackson could not have self-administered the drug.

 

10/20/11 More than a dozen Massachusetts probation managers face discipline for participating in a “sham” hiring program that processed masses of applicants for positions that were secretly reserved for politically well-connected applicants.  Federal indictments are soon expected of officials and legislators whose friends and relatives got jobs.

 

10/20/11 An NYCLU report accuses New York state law enforcement agencies of using Tasers inappropriately. Other than NYPD, whose policies comport with national standards, officers are delivering multiple shocks and are using the devices on non-aggressive suspects and on persons at risk, including the elderly and mentally ill. Related post

 

10/20/11 An anesthesiologist who helped develop guidelines for the use of propofol said that “virtually none of the safeguards for sedation were in place when propofol was administered to Michael Jackson.”  He called Dr. Conrad Murray’s violations of the standard of care “egregious” and “unconscionable.”  Related post

 

10/20/11 Federal civil rights charges against an NYPD officer for falsely arresting a black man whom he stopped and frisked led a state senator and retired NYPD captain to renew his request for a Federal civil rights inquiry into NYPD’s expansive stop-and-frisk program.  His call was joined by the Manhattan borough president and others.  Related post

 

10/18/11 Dean Esserman, who left as chief of Providence PD under a cloud, is the new chief in New Haven, CT, where he once served as assistant chief. Chief Esserman pledges to return to community policing, with cops walking beats, and to institute innovative strategies such as “High Point,” which calls in drug dealers to warn them off. Related post

 

10/18/11 Public crime mapping is here...sort of.  CrimeMapping.com offers free online crime maps for participating cities, a majority in California.  There are two limitations: they display only six months of data and are limited to 800 data points.

 

10/18/11 In a consolidated opinion on two Federal suits for excessive force, the Ninth Circuit considered crime severity, threat to officers and suspect resistance to conclude that officers used excessive force in Tasering a female driver who refused to exit her car, and a woman trying to defuse a confrontation in her house between police and her husband. But qualified immunity was granted because the law in such cases was not well established.   Related post

 

10/18/11 Providence police and citizens credit the unconventional “High Point” strategy with making a public housing project safe.  Low-level drug dealers are called in, shown evidence of their crimes and told they will go to jail the next time. Wilmington is now considering it.  But the Fort Wayne D.A. says it’s the wrong approach. Related post

 

10/18/11 A record 396,906 illegal aliens have been deported so far this year. In 2010 55 percent of the nearly 400,000 deportees were convicted criminals, ranging from 44,653 for drug offenses to 1,119 for homicide.  In 2000 a far fewer 116, 782 were deported; of those, 31 percent were criminals.

 

10/18/11 In “The City That Became Safe” criminologist Franklin Zimring credits the crime drop in New York City to aggressive policing of crime hot-spots and drug markets, not to mass incarceration.  He also claims that stop-and-frisk is effective.  But he doesn’t know whether NYPD’s extremely aggressive stance makes a difference worth the cost.

 

10/18/11 David Devenny, 69, pled guilty to unlicensed gun dealing in Federal court. Devenny, who bought guns at retail and resold them at gun shows, told an undercover ATF agent that a gun he sold was used to kill Seattle police officer Timothy Brenton.  He and his partner, who was wounded, were shot in an October 2009 attack. Related post

 

10/17/11 New York’s prison population has plunged 22 percent since 2000, largely due to fewer imprisoned drug offenders. At present the #1 offense for prisoners is 2nd. degree murder, with about 8,000 inmates, same as in 2000.  But in 2000 the #1 offense for prisoners was 3rd. degree sale of drugs, with 10,000 inmates. Now there are 3,000.

 

10/17/11 Thieves stole 21 H&K MP-5 submachineguns and 12 large-caliber pistols from a site where they were being temporarily housed by LAPD SWAT. Although the weapons are configured to fire blanks, they can easily be converted to use live ammunition.  Police have no leads but suspect that the storage facility was being watched.

 

10/17/11 Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca blamed commanders for keeping him in the dark about the abuse of inmates by jail deputies.  He said he had been “out of touch” with the jails and promised reforms. One would be to install 69 video cameras that had been in boxes for a year.  “The truth is I should have known.  Now I do know.”

 

10/17/11 Frustrated by the legal complications that the state’s medical marijuana law poses for physicians, the California Medical Association came out in favor of legalization.  While it calls marijuana a “folk remedy,” the CMA believes legalization would facilitate research and reduce costs associated with punishing pot users.  Related post

 

10/17/11 Kansas City Bishop Robert W. Finn and his diocese have each been indicted on one misdemeanor count of failing to report a clergyman who took pornographic pictures of children.  Finn knew of the pictures last December but did not alert police until May.  In 2008 the parish paid $10 million in a priest sex-abuse scandal.  Related post

 

10/17/11 Radio communications by Washington D.C police will soon be encrypted, making it impossible for citizens and the media to listen in as they have done for decades.  Police say it’s necessary to keep bad guys from listening in but the media is balking, saying that its inability to convey information would endanger public safety.

 

10/14/11 Three Muslim men were convicted on a 2009 indictment for plotting overseas terrorism and an assault on a U.S. military base in a plot hatched by Daniel Boyd, an American convert.  Evidence consisted of statements made to FBI informers and weapons found at Boyd’s home.  He and his two sons, who pled guilty, testified against the men.

 

10/14/11 Two years ago eight NYPD narcotics officers were arrested for planting drugs on suspects to boost their arrest figures.  One, Stephen Anderson, took a plea deal and is now testifying that he gave a former colleague drugs to plant. “I had decided to give him the drugs to help him out so that he could say he had a buy.” Related post

 

10/13/11 Stating that his conduct “reflects a virus in our business culture that needs to be eradicated,” a Federal judge sentenced Raj Rajaratnam, wealthy founder of the Galleon Group hedge fund, to eleven years.  It’s reportedly the longest prison term ever given for insider trading.  Related post

 

10/13/11 Los Angeles County’s official watchdog reports that thirty sheriff’s deputies have been disciplined in two years for abusing inmates or participating in coverups.  Incidents can be difficult to confirm because deputies can easily make excuses and justifications, and when investigations do occur they are often half-hearted.

 

10/12/11 A man angry over a child custody dispute burst into the hair salon in Seal Beach, Calif. where his ex-wife worked and opened fire, killing her and seven others.  A ninth person was left in critical condition.  Scott Dekraai, about 40, was arrested nearby without incident.  He reportedly had several rifles in his vehicle.  Related post

 

10/12/11 Mansour Arbabsiar, an Iranian-American car salesman, was arrested for plotting with a member of Iran’s Quds revolutionary force to murder the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. and ship Middle Eastern opium to Mexico. Arbabsiar paid $100K to a man he thought was a member of a Mexican cartel, actually a DEA informer.  Related post

 

10/12/11 Anthony Batts resigned after two years as police chief of crime-ridden Oakland.  Well regarded in the profession, he had clashed with council members who shrank the size of the department, limited the use of gang injunctions and other crime fighting tactics and instituted a four-day police workweek against his wishes.

 

10/12/11 At the trial of Michael Jackson’s physician, Conrad Murray, a medical examiner testified that Jackson was too drugged up to have given himself an overdose of propofol.  Most likely the error was made by Murray, who lacked a “precision dosing device.” Even if Jackson did it, the standard of care was so low that it was homicide.  Related post

 

10/11/11 In a new approach Portland police leave mentally disturbed persons alone unless they pose an immediate threat.  Some now criticize officers for not acting until a man who had twice before roamed his apartment building with a rifle pointed it out a window.  But others praise the police, and the chief says it’s a balancing act.  Related post

 

10/11/11 Eleven months after Carlos Straub was jailed for murder, eyewitnesses who tentatively picked him out from a photo lineup testified that it wasn’t him. It couldn’t be, as the killer was short and stout while Straub is 6-2. Their only resemblance?  Dreadlocks. Prosecutors asked that he be released, and a judge so ordered. Related post

 

10/11/11 It’s now illegal to openly pack an unloaded handgun in California. Governor Jerry Brown signed the measure into law at the request of police chiefs who complained that the practice created a dangerous situation for police.  (Openly carrying a loaded handgun was already illegal.) Related post

 

10/10/11 California Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a bill that would have forced police to get a search warrant to search a cellphone and look at text messages.  In January the state’s supreme court ruled in People v. Diaz that a warrant was not necessary if the search was incident to an arrest, and the Supreme Court denied certiorari.

 

10/10/11 John Jay’s Professor David Kennedy, a designer of a “call-in” strategy that brings gangsters into meetings with police, community members and social service providers, has published “Don’t Shoot.” One of his aims is to get rid of the “radicalized animosity” between street people and police that makes progress impossible.

 

10/10/11 Under a new Oklahoma law those convicted of nonviolent crimes and sentenced to 5 years or less can be released with ankle monitors after 90 days.  250-300 are set for release on 11/1.  Angry prosecutors say that will threaten public safety.  “I will absolutely adjust what I’m doing on my cases so this isn’t happening,” said one.

 

10/10/11 Facing budget cuts, the Shawnee, Kansas D.A. has stopped prosecuting misdemeanors, including domestic battery. Meanwhile the city attorney says it hasn’t the resources to do so. Police are still arresting batterers - 18 since September 8 - but all have been released without charges.  Now victim right groups are complaining.

 

10/1o/11 A former L.A. County sheriff’s deputy whom the FBI caught smuggling a cellphone into the jails has given statements about the “improper use of force” against inmates by himself and his former colleagues. Two days later Sheriff Lee Baca announces that a newly-formed task force will investigate the abuse of inmates by jail deputies.

 

10/07/11 An L.A. County jail deputy punches an allegedly unruly prisoner. Two days later the prisoner dies.  Meanwhile a rookie deputy resigns, saying that his supervisor at the jail forced him to beat up a mentally ill prisoner.  Reviewing Sheriff Baca’s record, L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez urges that the sheriff resign.  Related post

 

10/07/11 Members of the New York City Council took Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly to task for sending police intelligence officers to monitor “hot spots” where Muslims gathered. Kelly said that information was only sought if there was a “possibility of criminal activity,” but council members worried that the basis for acting was too broad.

 

10/07/11 Claiming that for-profit pot dispensaries are illegal under both state and Federal law, U.S. Attorneys in California ordered them to shutter within 45 days or face prosecution and seizure of assets. Federal agents also raided an Orange County operation that sent pot as far as New York and netted $15 million in less than one year.

 

10/06/11 A Federal appeals court panel upheld Washington D.C. laws requiring handgun registration and banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Hearings were ordered on other provisions, such as having handgun owners submit firearms for ballistics testing, to determine if they met a legitimate public safety need.

 

10/06/11 A jury awarded three experienced LAPD detectives $2.5 million after finding that superiors retaliated against them for speaking out. One had disagreed with a commander’s policy and was reassigned from supervision to a desk job; two of his supporters were transferred.  Similar complaints have cost the city $18 million in five years.

 

10/06/11 A disgruntled Northern California truck driver used a handgun and a rifle to kill three and wound six, several critically, during an early morning safety meeting at a quarry.  He then fled the scene and unsuccessfully tried to carjack a vehicle, wounding its driver. An acquaintance described the suspect, Shareed Allman, 46, as well liked.

 

10/05/11 Michael Morton served 25 years in Texas for murdering his wife.  He was released yesterday after testing confirmed that a bandanna with blood from his wife found near the crime scene home had DNA matching a suspect in a later home invasion murder.  Police and prosecutors had withheld evidence suggesting an intruder was responsible.

 

10/05/11 Last week Oakland police shot and killed an allegedly armed man. The incident was captured on video by an officer wearing a chest-mounted camera. Now in use by more that 1,000 agencies, the devices were implemented after the 2009 killing of a man by a transit cop spawned rioting and led to the officer’s conviction.  Related post

 

10/05/11 With 86 homicides so far this year an Oakland Tribune columnist is looking for answers.  One of his questions is “How can a city counter a thug culture that has infected the minds of so many of its youths?” To discuss problems Oakland officials have scheduled a public summit on violence on October 15.

 

10/05/11 ATF and FBI agents will be riding around with Cleveland police to take guns off the street, arrest armed criminals and interdict gun trafficking. Dubbed “V-GRIP,” the effort will target “the worst of the worst” with stiff Federal penalties. Police say that a similar program in Youngstown reduced violence.

 

10/05/11 Personal contacts between citizens and police continued to decline during 2007-08 according to a BJS survey.  Drivers reported being stopped approximately the same regardless of race. Once stopped, blacks were three times as likely to be searched as whites, and twice as likely as Hispanics.  Ticketing showed smaller differences. Report

 

10/04/11 Recently surfaced e-mails show that months before ATF’s “Fast and Furious” was shut down top DOJ officials were mulling over possible reactions to the operation, which let about 2,000 guns go to Mexico.  It wasn’t the only example:  between 2006-07 “Operation Wide Receiver” in Tucson had used the same strategy. Related post

 

10/04/11 A Boston neighborhood that has endured seven homicides this year is getting intensive attention, including bike patrols, surveillance cameras and more outreach to community groups.  There will also be more undercover narcotics work, like the recent effort that resulted in 17 arrests.

 

10/04/11 Several days after his arrest for threatening members of her family, a Los Angeles-area high school senior snuck into the campus and stabbed his 17-year old ex-girlfriend to death.  Prosecutors had refused to file charges against Abraham Lopez, 18, in part because they considered his text-messaged threats too unspecific.

 

10/04/11 A war of words has broken out between state officials and L.A.’s mayor and police chief, who claim that California has not provided funds to supervise the 4,200 inmates to be placed under local control by year’s end. Chief Charlie Beck will assign 150 cops to help probation officers, who are mostly unarmed, watch over their new charges.

 

10/03/11 Two years ago a Raleigh neighborhood was beset by violence.  A crackdown, intense patrols and job and educational services turned things around. A resident says more police was key. “A lot of it is because of the police. That began to bring about change.  And then, a lot of people were locked up. Some got out and got locked up again.”

 

10/03/11 Philadelphia police denied Rafiq Williams a CCW permit because of his involvement in prior shootings and possible connections with drugs. No problem.  Williams, along with 900 other Philadelphians, got a CCW permit by mail-order from easy-going Florida, with whom Pennsylvania has a reciprocal agreement to honor gun permits.

 

10/01/11 Seventeen years after his imprisonment for murder, Obie Anthony, 37, was exonerated by a Los Angeles County judge.  He and codefendant Reggie Cole, who was released earlier, were convicted solely on the testimony of John Jones, an ex-con who was seeking leniency on a new crime. But the deal had been kept secret from the defense.

 

10/01/11 California is shifting the incarceration of  non-violent, non-sex crime offenders to county jails, and their post-release supervision to county probation.  In four years counties may have 8,300 more inmates. Local officials complain that lack of space and funds will cause many to be  prematurely released, and crime will inevitably go up.

 

10/01/11 Pittsburgh’s mayor and police chief boast that crime is at historic lows.  But that’s only true if one ignores that the city’s population has declined by half since 1960.  In fact, the 2010 murder rate, 17.6/100,000 population, is nearly four times higher than in 1960, when it was 4.6.  Robberies and aggravated assaults have also gone up.

 

09/29/11 Arrests of Federal prison guards have nearly doubled in the last decade. A DOJ report identifies the major cause as as poor screening, leading to the hiring of unqualified applicants. It may be also due in part to the increased use of private prisons, whose standards may be even less stringent.

 

09/29/11 An ATF memo to Federal gun dealers advises that they cannot sell guns to medical marijuana users, as marijuana is a Schedule 1 controlled drug, thus illegal for any purpose. Users also are also prohibited by law (18 USC 922[g][3]) from possessing firearms.  That, says ATF, includes those with state-issued medical marijuana cards.

 

09/29/11 An Alabama Federal judge upheld provisions of the state’s immigration law, making it a state crime for aliens to not carry immigration documents if they are illegally in the U.S., and requiring police officers to check immigration status when they have reasonable suspicion that someone they detained is illegally in the U.S. Decision

 

09/29/11 According to the Field Poll Californians strongly favor keeping the death penalty (68 percent.)  But more favor life without parole over death for those convicted of 1st. degree murder (48 percent to 40 percent), suggesting that the preference for death may be shifting to more heinous crimes like multiple killings, cop killings and terrorism.

 

09/29/11 DOJ’s COPS office awarded grants to hire police officers to 238 agencies.  Oakland, Calif. , where 80 officers were laid off last year, won the largest grant, to hire 25 cops to work in four-block “safety zones” around four middle schools, where they will concentrate on youth violence and monitor parolees.

 

09/29/11 Police and victim groups say that the UCR’s antiquated, narrow definition of rape leaves out many cases, such as those where victims were drugged, penetrated with foreign objects or are male, and forces them to submit smaller counts of sexual assault to the FBI than what they internally record.  The FBI agreed to work on a revision.

 

09/28/11 Where is Romulus, Michigan?  It’s where a former police chief, his wife and five current cops allegedly spent more than $100,000 in forfeited drug money on alcohol, marijuana, prostitutes, trips and to buy the wife a tanning salon. Officers are also accused of obtaining duplicate expense reimbursements. All have been arrested.

 

09/28/11 An ACLU review of the L.A. County jail accuses deputies of systematically abusing inmates. Sheriff Lee Baca and his commanders are said to have ignored the problem for years and downplayed claims as exaggerations. But the latest report includes affidavits from three civilian observers who were appalled by what they saw.  Report

 

09/28/11 In its first day, the trial of Conrad Murray, Michael Jackson’s doctor, featured testimony from choreographer Kenny Ortega.  He read his e-mail to the concert promoter, calling Jackson too ill to rehearse and in need of psychological help.  Murray, who was reportedly being paid $150,000 a month, told Ortega to “butt out.”

 

09/27/11 NYPD’s response to unpermitted demonstrations on Wall Street was criticized as heavy-handed. One incident involved the pepper spraying of four women who didn’t seem to be posing a threat.  But police said that making arrests and shutting down the protests was necessary as the crowd had grown too large and unruly.

 

09/27/11 Following a recent Taser-related death Charlotte PD is buying 1600 Taser X2 models that cycle for five seconds regardless of the length of a trigger pull.  They replace X26’s that emit electricity for as long as a trigger is depressed. New Tasers can also sound a warning that officers say is an effective deterrent.

 

09/27/11 More than 700 New Jersey police officers laid off this year are still looking for work.  Trenton just laid off 105 cops, a third of its force.  Camden laid off 167 in January; Paterson laid off 125 in July.  Handfuls have been picked up by smaller agencies, but for most the prospects of returning to policing seem bleak.

 

09/27/11 A 96-year old Florida woman shot and killed her nephew while he was asleep, police say.  Amanda Stevenson was living at the home of Johnny Rice, a married father of three.  She had reportedly threatened the nephew and a neighbor, and a social worker who visited moved to hospitalize her, but without apparent effect.

 

09/27/11 An L.A. sheriff’s deputy resigned after it was revealed that he took $1,500 from an undercover FBI agent to deliver a cellphone to an inmate who was an FBI informer.  The sting was kept from sheriff’s officials, leading Sheriff Lee Baca to blast the FBI and insist that his agency, which is under a broader FBI inquiry, can police itself. (See 9/25.)

 

09/26/11 Under pressure, NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly has ordered officers to not arrest for possessing small quantities of marijuana when the only reason it comes into public view is because officers order someone to clean out their pockets. But officials warn that the move goes against improving the quality of life of neighborhoods.

 

09/26/11 NYPD’s ticket-fixing saga is coming to a head with the indictment of seventeen officers  by a Bronx grand jury on felony charges including bribery, perjury and official misconduct. It’s reported that at least some of the officers turned away the chance to plead guilty to misdemeanors because they feared possibly losing their pensions.

 

09/26/11 Over the past decades the proportion of pleas versus trials in state and federal courts has shifted dramatically in favor of the former, with as few as one in forty cases now going to trial. Experts say that the biggest reason is the jump in sentence severity, leading even the innocent to accept plea bargains rather than flip the coin.

 

09/25/11 FBI agents are investigating alleged beatings of prisoners in the L.A. County jail.  Deputies are suspected of breaking one inmate’s jaw and of beating and Tasering “the limp body” of another in an incident witnessed by an ACLU monitor. An inmate was apparently given a cellphone by the FBI to use during the inquiry, officials said.

 

09/24/11 Ten Muslim students at the University of California, Irvine were convicted of misdemeanor charges and sentenced to three years unsupervised probation  for planning to disrupt, then disrupting a speech by the Israeli ambassador, making it impossible for him to continue.  Many observers criticized the prosecution as unnecessary.

 

09/24/11 Leaks by Internal Affairs investigators to colleagues under suspicion in NYPD’s department’s ticket-fixing scandal have hampered the year-long investigation. With several IA investigators themselves under investigation it seems that integrity problems in the agency are far more entrenched than anyone suspected.

 

09/24/11 To prevent false confessions, especially by juveniles and the mentally ill, the Florida Innocence Commission, formed by the state supreme court, will recommend a statewide policy for police interrogations.  Among possible remedies are recording interrogations and subjecting those of the mentally ill to special review.

 

09/23/11 Police officers in Fullerton, Calif. must carry audio recorders and activate them during encounters. “See my fists?  They are getting ready to fuck you up,” were the “turning point” and “defining moment” that led D.A. Tony Rackauckas to charge officer Manuel Ramos with murder in the July beating death of homeless person Kelly Thomas.

 

09/23/11 Shootings of unarmed persons by L.A. County Sheriff’s deputies climbed from four in 2009 to eight in 2010  although armed violence against officers dropped sharply, says a report by the agency’s official monitor.  One response has been to reinstate sending officers from the department’s training bureau to each shooting scene.  Report

 

09/22/11 A study of California inmates serving life sentences with the possibility of parole, mostly for murder, reveals that on average they spend 20 years in prison and are highly unlikely to commit new crimes when released.  In 2010 they amounted to 32,000 inmates, one-fifth of the prison population.   Report

 

09/22/11 NYPD intelligence deployed “demographics teams” to map everyday life in Moroccan neighborhoods, hoping that the information could prevent terrorism or help identify suspects after the fact.  Data was gathered by canvassing travel agencies, hotels and shops and by visiting residents who had come to police attention.

 

09/22/11 Organized hackers cruised the streets of Seattle breaking into residential and commercial wi-fi networks.  They stole passwords and personal data, emptied bank accounts, got fraudulent credit cards, added phantom employees to payrolls, and even monitored e-mails and destroyed data to erase evidence of their intrusions.

 

09/22/11 After a decades-long legal struggle including an extraordinary 2010 evidentiary hearing ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court, Troy Davis was executed by lethal injection for the 1989 murder of Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail.  Related post

 

09/21/11 Two Fullerton, California police officers face criminal charges in the beating death of a homeless man in July.  One, officer Manuel Ramos, was charged with 2nd. degree murder and involuntary manslaughter; the other, corporal Jay Cicinelli, was charged with involuntary manslaughter and excessive force. Related post

 

09/21/11 Police in an affluent Southern California beach community suspected for a year that a registered sex offender with a long record had been assaulting female customers at his rug store. It turns out that he had, at least seven. Now citizens are questioning why cops delayed making an arrest, allowing two more women to be assaulted.

 

09/21/11 In 2008 a Philadelphia police officer was suspended for assaulting a neighbor. Now the city is paying a total of $425,000 to settle three similar claims.  The officer remains on duty while these are investigated and for possibly violating department policy by posting a suggestive photo of herself on Facebook wearing her uniform hat.

 

09/20/11 In Georgia the final decider on clemency is the parole board.  And after hearing from the victim’s survivors, the board ruled that the execution of convicted killer Troy Davis will go on.  While the NAACP says evidence of Davis’ innocence is “overwhelming,” a judge who presided over a hearing called it “smoke and mirrors.”  Related post

 

09/20/11 Preliminary findings of an experiment at four police agencies that randomly assigned simultaneous or sequential lineups to 497 eyewitness of real crimes revealed, for simultaneous lineups, significantly more misidentifications (18.1% v. 12.2%), and a much greater certainty when making rejections (80.8% no to all vs. 53.5%.)

 

09/19/11 In July 1986 Florida resident Jeremiah Fogle shot and killed a former wife with a rifle. He pled guilty to manslaughter and got ten years probation.  On September 18, 2011 he shot and killed his seventh wife.  Then, armed with a .32 caliber revolver, he went to a church and shot and critically wounded two ministers.

 

09/19/11 In 2007 Jose Padilla, a Chicago street gang member who was held in U.S. military prison three years as an enemy combatant, was convicted in Federal court with two others of conspiring to do Jihad and kill persons overseas. An appeals court has now declared his sentence of 17 years to be too short and ordered him resentenced.

 

09/19/11 Raids and arrests in Spokane, Washington have driven medical marijuana sellers underground.  Meanwhile those in Seattle, the state capital, soldier on, “creatively interpreting” state law that limits marijuana dispensing to collective gardens.  Why the difference? Perhaps outlets in Spokane marketed too aggressively.  Related post

 

09/19/11 To toughen hiring Philadelphia PD reinstated the polygraph test. More than 60 percent of applicants fail it on their first try, including some who otherwise seem highly qualified.  A critic calls the test “junk science” says it only measures anxiety, but PPD says they’ll keep at it and “fine tune” the tests if necessary.  Related post

 

09/19/11 Reported violent crime fell six percent and property crime 2.7 percent between 2009-2010 the FBI said. Murder was down 4.2 percent, rape 5.0 percent, robbery 10 percent and aggravated assault 4.1 percent.  Guns were used in 67.5 percent of murders, 41.4 percent of robberies and 20.6 percent of aggravated assaults.

 

09/17/11 More Americans now die from abusing painkillers and anxiety drugs than in car crashes. Prescription drug abuse also kills more than heroin and cocaine combined.  The most abused precription drugs are Oxycontin, Vicodin, Xanax and Soma.  Related post

 

09/17/11 A “hot spots” experiment in Sacramento, Calif. that had officers pay prolonged visits to 42 high-crime locations every two hours resulted in 25 fewer Part I crimes and eight percent fewer calls for service at those locations. It’s evidence, researchers say, that reducing the opportunity for crime is as important as making arrests.

 

09/17/11 A ticket-fixing scandal that led NYPD to tighten oversight has cops writing far fewer tickets, with numbers down more than one-third overall.  That led an NYPD chief to ask a subordinate if his men wrote 15 tickets during the month. But most commanders are far more concerned with keeping crime down than the number of tickets.

 

09/17/11 Umar Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian national who tried to detonate explosives on a United Airlines flight in 2009, wasn’t read his Miranda rights by FBI agents who interviewed him in a hospital.  A Federal judge ruled that the statements will be admitted at trial under a national security exception that allows urgent questioning. Related post

 

09/15/11 A report by a task force of police chiefs, state officials and immigrant rights advocates criticized “Secure Communities” for expanding its reach beyond dangerous criminals, thus discouraging cooperation from immigrants and damaging community policing. It recommends the program be revamped and that minor offenders be left alone.

 

09/15/11 Ninety minutes after the scheduled execution time, the Supreme Court granted a stay to condemned Texas inmate Duane Buck. Justices will decide whether a psychologist’s testimony at Buck’s penalty hearing that blacks are more likely to recidivate violated Buck’s civil rights.  At least eight other black Texas convicts may also be affected.

 

09/15/11 A New York City police officer who was implicated in the ticket-fixing scandal and was expected to testify against his colleagues survived a suicide attempt. Robert McGee, 62, a union rep, had been relieved of his gun and badge. It’s expected that a dozen officers will be prosecuted; dozens more could face internal charges and be fired.

 

09/15/11 Fresh from its debut in the documentary “The Interrupters,” Operation Ceasefire, which uses ex-cons as street workers to discourage gun violence, is being implemented in two of Philadelphia’s most violent districts. Its operatives are introducing themselves to residents and have already spoken with several shooting victims.

 

09/15/11 According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, violent crime fell 13 percent between 2009-10, led mostly by a steep fall in simple assaults. This drop was three times the average annual reduction between 2001-09.  Property crimes fell 4 percent in 2010.  The NCVS counts a much larger range of crimes than the FBI’s UCR.

 

09/14/11 Abuse of highly addictive prescription sedatives like Xanax, which are widely prescribed for anxiety disorders, is leading to many overdose deaths in Kentucky. One clinic has begun phasing out such drugs in favor of  less dangerous medications and therapy.  But one patient says she can’t get appropriate relief from lesser drugs.

 

09/14/11 Several of the 9/11 hijackers had overstayed their visas.  But a program to identify visa scofflaws by biometrically identifying persons departing the U.S. proved too costly.  So now the focus is on thoroughly vetting applicants, even after they’ve arrived, using a system that simultaneously checks persons across various databases.

 

09/14/11 DEA agents arrested two police officers and three TSA employees for helping move massive quantities of prescription painkillers from Florida, where they are cheap, to Connecticut and New York, where they fetch high prices.  About a dozen others who transported, bought and sold the drugs were also arrested. Related post

 

09/14/11 “The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against Al Qaeda,” a new book by former FBI agent Ali H. Soufan, blames a dysfunctional intelligence community for failing to prevent 9/11.  Soufan says the biggest mistake in the War on Terror was letting the CIA torture prisoners and use “brutal” interrogation techniques.

 

09/13/11 To help families, and help meet a Federal mandate to reduce overcrowding, California is releasing 2,000 mothers with less than two years remaining on their sentences. A 2010 law allows it for inmates who committed “non-serious, non-sexual” offenses and were the “primary caregivers” of children.  Males will also be considered.

 

09/12/11 On a 3-2 vote Miami City Commissioners fired chief Miguel Exposito for disobeying the city manager.  Exposito, a 37-year Miami PD veteran, had been battling the manager and mayor over control of the police.  He had refused to curtail overtime and stripped three high-ranking officers of their duties against the manager’s wishes.

 

09/12/11 In August Indianapolis officers pursued a stolen vehicle.  It crashed, killing its two occupants, one 19, the other 15.  Now the chief wants to tighten pursuit policy, perhaps to match Orlando’s, where cops can only chase violent felons.  But the police union president is opposed, saying that many cops would consider it “surrendering.”

 

09/11/11 The Labor Day weekend brought 52 shootings to New York City, killing 13 and wounding 67. While still trailing last year’s count, the toll surprised cops and made citizens wonder about the effectiveness of Mayor Bloomberg’s heralded anti-gun campaign.  But gun control advocates say the fault lies with the Federal government.

 

09/11/11 California has held nearly 400 violent gang members in solitary for a decade ore more. Their way out is to renounce their gangs and inform on others, which few do. Experts are highly critical. “We’re taking prisoners who were marginally neurotic and evolving them into people who are truly psychotic.  And then we let them out.”

 

09/11/11 After an extensive investigation DOJ accused Puerto Rico police of engaging in “a pattern and practice” of using excessive force, conducting unreasonable searches and seizures and discriminating against persons of Dominican descent. DOJ said that the violations are “pervasive and plague all levels of PRPD.”

 

09/11/11 More than 100 Chicago cops have run afoul of a special unit established under the former chief to fight abuse of sick leave. Fourteen currently face termination. Many were caught by surveillance teams who watched them leave their homes, where they were supposedly recuperating, to engage in recreational and other activities.

 

09/11/11 Twenty-three Washington D.C. police officers have been charged with crimes this year.  One is accused of murder.  Others were arrested for property offenses and sex crimes.  An academic compared the situation to New Orleans. But the chief said that was ridiculous, and that many of the cases originated from internal inquiries.

 

09/07/11 A 22-year old West Virginia man armed with a high-powered rifle, another rifle and a handgun shot and killed five persons inside a home, ran over and seriously injured an elderly motorist with whom he collided while fleeing, then critically wounded a gas station attendant before being stopped by police. He committed suicide.

 

09/07/11 A reluctant judge blasted the Government as she sentenced Laguerre Payen, the last of the alleged domestic terrorists known as the Newburgh Four to 25 years:  “The essence of what occurred here was that a government [zealously] created acts of terrorism out of [fantasies] and then made these fantasies come true.”

 

09/07/11 A hospital physician’s report lists the death of a homeless man allegedly beaten by Fullerton, California police officers as due to “brain death,” caused by “head trauma,” in turn caused by “assault.” The family’s lawyer said that three officers were primarily responsible.  Related post

 

09/06/11 A 32-year old Nevada man described as having “mental issues” opened fire with an AK-47 type rifle at a Carson City retail center and inside an IHOP restaurant, killing four innocent persons and wounding seven [updated.] He then killed himself.  Among the dead are two National Guard troops who were having a meal.  No motive is known.

 

09/06/11 California’s three-strikes law imposes a sentence of 25 to life for any third felony, even if it’s not serious or violent. Scott Hove, a persistent nonviolent offender with drug and burglary convictions got 29 to life after shoplifting inexpensive items at a Home Depot. Now some wonder whether that makes sense.  Related post 1 2

 

09/06/11 Durham, North Carolina D.A. Tracey Cline is facing allegations of withholding evidence and misleading judges while a prosecutor in at least six cases. So far one murder conviction has been thrown out, and her testimony that evidence was sent to the lab in a case that may have led to a wrongful conviction has been proven false.

 

09/06/11 A new Arizona law imposes a $25 one-time charge on adults who want to visit a state prison inmate. Although it’s billed as a “background check” fee the money is intended to supplement the prison maintenance budget.  Visitors are complaining of the burden, and the fee is being challenged in court as discriminatory.

 

09/06/11 According to the Annals of Epidemiology there is higher average use of pot by adolescents (ages 12-17) in states with medical marijuana laws (8.68% - 6.94%).  They also consider it less risky. Trends in these directions were already present in States with medical marijuana laws before the laws were passed. Related post

 

09/04/11 Three top Wisconsin juvenile corrections officials have been suspended after the arrest of three Milwaukee teens for a vicious robbery-murder.  Two had been released early from confinement for prior violent offenses.  One, now 18, served less than three years for directing a killing in which his adult codefendants got twenty years.

 

09/02/11 In a boost to the Center for Constitutional Rights’ lawsuit against NYPD’s stop-and-frisk campaign, a Federal judge ruled there was enough evidence to let a jury decide whether officers used race as a basis for their decisions and whether quotas on officer activity were a “moving force” behind suspicionless stops. Related post

 

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