< 2009 News Archive

12/31/09 Concluding that the case relied on the defendants’ compelled statements to the State Department, a Federal judge dismissed manslaughter charges against five former Blackwater guards who killed 17 Iraqis and wounded 20 in an allegedly unprovoked 2007 incident.

12/30/09 A lopsided June 2009 House vote to severely limit the use of full-body scanners because of privacy concerns is complicating a new push to expand their deployment.  Security officials say such a machine would have detected a recent would-be bomber and kept him off the aircraft.

12/29/09 Lancaster, a working-class community of 150,000 in the high desert 40 miles northeast of Los Angeles is requiring all businesses to use the Federal E-Verify program to confirm that new hires are legally in the U.S. Employers who don’t risk losing their business licenses.

12/28/09 Following his father’s phone call, US officials placed would-be aircraft bomber Umar Abdulmutallab on a database of terrorism suspects but not on the no-fly list, which has been cut due to complaints. His visa was flagged for a thorough investigation should he reapply when it expired.

12/27/09 Under terms of the Rampart consent decree LAPD gang and narcotics officers must make detailed financial disclosures. Imposed over objections of the officers’ union, the requirement has  discouraged applicants to gang units, where service is limited to five years, leading to shortages.

12/26/09 A Nigerian youth tried to set off explosives taped to his body on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.  His father had alerted the US Embassy of Umar Abdulmutallab’s radical views, but the man’s two-year US visitor visa, issued in London where he had studied, was still valid.

12/25/09 New fingerprinting requirements for California registered nurses licensed before 1990, when screening became mandatory, identified “dozens” with criminal records, mostly misdemeanors, but including a handful of serious felonies, ranging from sex crimes to murder.

12/25/09 A budgetary squeeze forced low-crime Colorado Springs to give up its police helicopters. To avoid laying off cops, high-crime Oakland has grounded its fleet. Facing operating costs of $500 an hour other cities are following track. One consequence: more criminals will get away.

12/23/09 To keep judges from being beholden to campaign contributors, retired Supreme Court justice Sandra O’Connor is spearheading a national effort to make judicial offices appointive rather than elective. But getting voters and special interests to change State laws poses a major challenge.

12/23/09 An L.A. Federal Grand Jury heard testimony this week that Cardinal Roger Mahony ordered reports of sexual abuse by former priest Michael Baker be withheld from police until two years after Baker was defrocked. Baker was convicted in 2007 and is now doing ten years.

12/22/09 An audit revealed that the L.A. Sheriff’s Dept. grossly overspent its 2007-2008 overtime budget. More than 300 deputies worked six months’ overtime in one year, bringing into question their ability to do their jobs. Serious problems were also found in administering sick and bonus pay.

12/22/09 An investigation by the Chicago Sun-Times revealed that the 1,000 “non-violent, low level” prison inmates being released early to save $5 million include 40 burglars, 28 financial criminals, an attempted robber and 18 persons convicted of felony DUI.

12/22/09 Maricopa County (Ariz.) Sheriff Joe Arpaio and County Attorney Andrew Thomas have been on a self-professed campaign to clean up county government. But Yavapai County D.A. Sheila Polk, whose help they had enlisted, is now charging them with “totalitarianism.”

12/21/09 According to the FBI all categories of crime fell during the first six months of 2009 as compared to 2008. Violent crime fell 4.5 percent and property crime fell 6.1 percent.  Murder was down 10 percent, robbery was down 6.5 percent and aggravated assault was down 3.2 percent.

12/20/09 A Texas law intended to keep mentally ill juveniles from being warehoused is leading to the release of violent offenders, including teens who killed, within two years of their commitment, and with little or no followup. One out of five promptly recidivate.

12/18/09 He committed suicide more than a year ago but the legacy of a New York state crime lab worker who falsified reports for fifteen years to cover up his incompetence lives on. Not only are hundreds of his cases in doubt, but questions have arisen about the rest of the lab. Report

12/17/09 Police departments are recovering an increasing number of guns, including more assault weapons and large-caliber handguns, both of which have become significant threats to police. Chicago police recovered 7785 guns so far this year, nearly 900 more than in 2008.  PERF report

12/16/09 Three small-town Pennsylvania police officers, including the chief, were Federally indicted for obstructing an investigation into the beating death of a Mexican youth by high school students. The chief and a subordinate are also accused of taking payoffs in an earlier case.

12/15/09 Calling the case a “mockery of justice,” a Federal judge tossed the stock backdating convictions of Broadcom’s co-founders and its CFO, ruling that their acts were at most accounting errors. The Government already admitted that one of its prosecutors intimidated a witness.

12/15/09 In Dallas, getting beat with a pipe is still a crime.  But since 2007 police haven’t considered it an aggravated assault, meaning it’s not factored into yearly violent crime statistics. A  newspaper investigation reveals that fifty percent of what the FBI requires be reported, isn’t.

12/15/09 Nearly forty years ago Philadelphia took over the bail system from private firms, which were considered corrupt. While the city now collects the ten percent, it lets those who repeatedly skip out post bail, allowing dangerous persons to avoid going to trial for years, if ever.

12/15/09 Federal authorities are buying Illinois’ near-empty Thomson Correctional Center. Located in a rural area 150 miles from Chicago, the prison will house Federal convicts and up to 100 Guantanamo detainees.

12/14/09 Preliminary 2009 data reveals that while on-duty deaths of law enforcement officers from all causes declined slightly from last year (127 to 122 as of today) those caused by gunfire increased nearly a quarter, from 38 to 48, a change attributable in part to several multiple killings.

12/12/09 In an escalating series of protests over fee hikes, police arrested eight persons for pelting the on-campus residence of a UC Berkeley Chancellor and responding police vehicles with rocks and torches. Dozens of demonstrators fled.  Those taken into custody face felony charges.

12/12/09 A woman purchased the MAC-10 pistol used at Times Square on October 18 from a Virginia gun dealer, then reported it stolen from her car 10 days later.  The shooter carried business cards of several Virginia gun dealers when he was killed.

12/11/09 Billed as the largest operation of its kind, a three-day sweep by Southern California ICE agents targeting illegal aliens with criminal records, persons who had been previously deported and snuck back in, and persons ignoring deportation orders yielded about 300 arrests.

12/10/09 After a day-long wait, police arrested thirteen students who chained themselves inside a San Francisco State building and thirteen more marching outside. Students were protesting thirty-percent tuition hikes. Coming near finals week, the blockade kept many students from class.

12/09/09 Pakistani authorities arrested five young American Muslims, including a dental student, on suspicion of involvement in terrorism.  The five, who have been missing from the D.C.-Virginia area for more than a month, had left behind a video praising Jihad.

12/09/09 An investigation is underway into the inadvertent release of TSA profiling indicators for airline passengers.  The mistaken online posting of highly confidential screening procedures has led to an internal investigation and a rash of suspensions.

12/09/09 To conserve resources the Harris County (Houston) D.A.’s office will stop filing felony charges for possessing less than 1/100 gram of any drug. Those caught with crack pipes will get misdemeanor citations.  Currently 30 percent of all felony filings involve amounts that small.

12/07/09 Former NY State Senate majority leader Joseph Bruno was convicted in Federal Court on two counts of honest services fraud for taking payoffs from private firms to whom he steered State contracts and investments.  Bruno was acquitted on two counts and a fifth was mistried.

12/07/09 David Headley, a Chicago resident accused in October of plotting with another man to attack a Danish newspaper for disrespecting Islam has been charged with conducting surveillance for the November 2008 assault that killed 170 in Mumbai. He is reportedly cooperating with the FBI.

12/07/09 Oregon is looking to sentencing to save money. A new law shaves ten percent off prison terms but was written so loosely that it’s benefitted dangerous inmates. A fix is planned.  Implementation of another statute that stiffens sentences for repeat offenders has been delayed.

12/07/09 Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano reports increasing radicalization of U.S. Muslims, with a number of plots uncovered this year targeting both America and foreign countries.  Meanwhile plans to combat the threat through education and outreach lag.

12/06/09 Right wing talk-radio radio host Hal Turner is pending trial for posting Internet threats against Federal judges.  A previous FBI informer against white supremacists, he’s claiming that the threats were just for show.  But the FBI says they released him in 2007 for being uncontrollabe.

12/05/09 Supplementing their earlier report on the Virginia Tech massacre, officials conceded that  delays and errors in notification, including a premature release of students from their dorm to go to class, placed several in harm’s way and caused two to be shot dead. Addendum to report

12/04/09 A man who infiltrated the L.A. Islamic community on behalf of the FBI, leading to the arrest of a relative of Osama bin Laden, is suing the agency for allegedly reneging on promises. His cooperation already led the Feds to have his probation on theft charges terminated early.

12/03/09 Three Secret Service employees were placed on paid leave and face severe discipline for failing to exclude a couple from crashing a White House function. Neither the man nor his wife, both would-be reality-show contestants, appeared on the guest list but insist they were invited.

12/01/09 When he was Governor of Arkansas, FOX News personality Mike Huckabee’s frequent grants of clemency raised prosecutors’ ire. One of those, in 2000, was to Maurice Clemmons, a violent felon who would not have been eligible for parole until 2021.

12/01/09 Hitting hot-spots with a mobile tactical team, going after guns and increased patrol are the strategies being used by Detroit’s new police chief to tamp down violence. Things have improved, but experts warn that demographics and “entrenched poverty” limit what police can accomplish.

12/01/09 Maurice Clemmons, suspected killer of the four Lakewood officers, was shot and killed by a Seattle police officer during a confrontation next to a stolen vehicle. Clemmons, who was suffering from a stomach wound, possessed one of the Lakewood officers’ handguns.

11/29/09 Four Lakewood (Wash.) police officers about to go on duty were shot dead in a coffee shop by an armed intruder. Those killed were Sergeant Mark Renninger and officers Ronald Owens, Tina Griswold and Greg Richards.  Their alleged assailant,  Maurice Clemmons, a violent felon recently arrested for child rape and assaulting a police officer, was apparently wounded.  Photos   Related post

11/29/09 18 USC 1346 is the “honest services” provision of 18 USC 1341, the Federal mail fraud statute.  Used to prosecute corrupt public officials and corporate chiefs, it’s under attack on several fronts.  Whether it’s too vague will soon be taken up by the Supreme Court in Skilling v. U.S.

11/28/09 New York City’s walk-in centers provide support to victims of domestic violence and encourage them to testify. But dependency and fear of retribution often forces prosecutors to rely on evidence such as photographs, 911 tapes and testimony by emergency responders.

11/27/09 Aircraft designer Dick Rutan is developing a manned plane to provide high-altitude video surveillance for the high-desert Los Angeles suburb of Lancaster. Intended to fly sixteen hours a day, the craft would record footage of areas selected by the Sheriff’s Department.

11/25/09 Until now Stun guns were illegal in New Jersey, even for police. New rules allow large-city agencies to have a maximum of four, to be used only for subduing persons who are armed and  mentally disturbed. Small departments can only have one.

11/25/09 To stem the flow of guns and cash, Mexico is tightening entry checks at U.S. border crossings, scanning license plates, weighing vehicles and diverting those that arouse suspicion to secondary inspection. Naturally, the resulting delays are causing havoc for frequent crossers.

11/24/09 Within a week of taking over, LAPD chief Charlie Beck reorganized the top ranks, bumping an Assistant Chief down two levels to Commander and stripping the agency’s long-time number-two of a star, placing him in a slot where he’ll be reporting to a former subordinate.

11/24/09 At a hearing before the U.S. Sentencing Commission, U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance (N. Dist. Ala.) complained that now that Federal sentencing guidelines are advisory inconsistency has increased, with some judges imposing excessively lenient sentences for white-collar crimes.

11/24/09 Since 2007 dozens of young Minnesota Somalis, most of whom immigrated to the U.S. as children, have been lured back to fight in a Jihad intended to install an Islamic state.  So far the Feds have charged fourteen in the case, including two recruiters listed as fugitives.

11/23/09 San Francisco physicians are prescribing marijuana to treat youths as young as 14 diagnosed with ADHD. One says he has treated fifty under 18.  A terrible idea, says UC Berkeley’s psychology chair, who argues that marijuana impairs cognition, the factor affected by ADHD.

11/23/09 The National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO) announced a $10,000 educational scholarship for sworn law enforcement officers enrolled in a criminal justice degree program.  Filing deadline is April 9, 2010. Application form

11/23/09 Personnel shortages and a proliferation of specialized drug and gang units have left Atlanta patrol so short-staffed that officers arrive within five minutes at only nine percent of high-priority calls. An hour delay for a call of a man chasing and exposing himself to children was routine.

11/23/09 Rules requiring that Federal law enforcement stimulus funds be distributed to every State left Houston, which asked for 260 cops and scored a high 90.4 on a need basis empty-handed.  Meanwhile, low-scoring cities such as Boise (need basis 50.4) got everything they asked for.

11/20/09 A coalition of gun-control groups has petitioned ATF and Justice Department to ban the importation of the gun and ammunition used in the Ft. Hood massacre, the FN Herstal Five-seveN pistol and 5.7X28 mm cartridge, calling them far too lethal to be suitable for sporting purposes.

11/20/09 Calling the shooter’s contacts with a radical Muslim cleric “disturbing,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced a major, multi-faceted probe into the Ft. Hood massacre. A parallel inquiry by the Army will examine whether warning signs went unheeded.

11/19/09 Thanks to the recession, NYPD is being swamped with educated, high quality applicants. More than half the recruits now in the academy have four-year degrees.  Only problem is, the department’s shrinking, so hiring is coming to a standstill.

11/19/09 Texas quit building prisons two years ago and its inmate prison is holding steady. Why?   More in-house treatment, earlier parole and fewer violations thanks to more outpatient substance abuse treatment and short-term residential programs.  Now Florida is seeking to copy the model.

11/19/09 One day after police arrested fourteen students at a meeting of the UC Board of Regents, several dozen others barricaded themselves inside a building on the UCLA campus. Their cause: to protest a $2,500 (32 percent) cost hike, raising annual fees to $10,302.

11/18/09 To help ex-cons land jobs, a Massachusetts bill would reduce the waiting period for sealing misdemeanor records from ten years to five, and for felony records from fifteen to ten.  Questions about criminal history on initial application forms would also be prohibited.

11/17/09 Siding with the Los Angeles City Attorney, who condemned the City Council’s move to legalize cash pot sales by marijuana clinics (State law only permits distribution through nonprofit cooperatives), the L.A. County D.A. vowed to prosecute every clinic in the city.

11/16/09 How much is getting the “scoop” on the surrogate mother for a celebrity couple worth?  Apparently a lot to two small-town Ohio police chiefs, who now face separate trials for allegedly burglarizing her home with a view to selling what they found to the tabloids.

11/16/09 Rejecting the Ninth Circuit’s “fanciful” view that hearing about Fernando Belmontes’ bad childhood might have swayed jurors, the Supreme Court reinstated his death sentence, for the third time. Two prior reversals had to do with the condemned man’s conversion to Christianity.

11/15/09 Federal officials are considering Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn’s offer to sell a maximum-security prison 150 miles from Chicago.  Now nearly empty, the facility could house up to one-hundred Gitmo detainees and provide as many as 2,000 badly needed jobs for local residents.

11/14/09 Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-admitted mastermind of the WTC bombing, and four associates will be tried in Manhattan Federal court.  All are at Guantanamo.  Five others, including the alleged planner of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, will face military commissions.

11/13/09 Former Louisiana Representative William Jefferson, convicted of using his position in the House Ways & Means Committee to benefit firms that paid him bribes got 13 years in prison. When Jefferson was arrested the $90,000 he received in an FBI sting operation was found in his freezer.

11/13/09 Two computer programmers formerly employed by Madoff were arrested by the FBI and accused of knowingly creating and supporting a process that simulated legitimate trading activity in his investment accounts, thus concealing the fraud and enabling it to persist.

11/12/09 LAPD’s Inspector General criticized internal affairs investigations into alleged instances of racial, gender and sexual orientation profiling, calling many that led to an exoneration shoddy and incomplete. But police officials say that determining an officer’s motive is often impossible.

11/12/09 To the dismay of often innocent citizens who are losing or paying fees to ransom vehicles and other valuables, Michigan police are enthusiastically confiscating property allegedly connected with a crime. For agencies facing severe budget cuts the proceeds from fines and sales is a lifeline.

11/11/09 Miami PD chief John Timoney, credited for reducing the number of officer-involved shootings and improving the professionalism of the troubled agency is being replaced by newly-elected Mayor Tomas Regalado, who has criticized Timoney’s poor relations with the police union.

11/11/09 An FBI-led intelligence task force that included a Defense Dept. investigator decided that Maj. Nidal Hasan’s e-mail exchange with a radical Muslim cleric need not be shared with the Army, thus depriving both of a fuller picture of the Ft. Hood killer’s state of mind before the shootings.

11/11/09 A before-after survey of thirty-two intersections where red lights cameras were installed revealed that accidents increased in twenty and decreased in nine. Much of the increase is in rear-end collisions apparently caused by motorists slamming on the brakes as lights change.

11/10/09 A Federal jury acquitted two Bear Sterns hedge-fund managers of purposely misleading investors about the safety of their funds and of insider training. First in an expected series of cases linked to the meltdown, the verdict highlights the difficulty of proving complex financial frauds.

11/10/09 Project HOPE, a celebrated Hawaii program that disciplines errant probationers with brief jail terms has been rocked by the arrest of clients for several murders.  Some say the problem lies with a system too overwhelmed to allow the prompt arrests needed to make the program work.

11/10/09 Bucking a national trend,  Killeen (Tex.), a city of 100,000 and the home of Fort Hood is experiencing an increase in crime and violence.  Reasons given include the absence of spouses, leaving children less supervised, and the domestic stress of prolonged separations.

11/07/09 Should juveniles get life without parole for crimes if no one was killed?  Florida, which has applied this sentence to incorrigible youths who commit grievous crimes, and far more often than any other State, says yes. Now the Supreme Court will decide. Report   Case analysis

11/07/09 Federal authorities arrested more than a dozen employees of Wall Street hedge funds and law firms for passing and using insider information about forthcoming deals to time purchases and sales and make millions in unauthorized profits.  Much of the evidence was collected with wiretaps.

11/06/09 “Blueprints,” a University of Colorado initiative, reviews the effectiveness of violence-prevention programs.  Of more than eight-hundred studied only eleven meet the grade. Those criticized as ineffective include shock probation, which reportedly makes things worse.

11/05/09 An Army Major and psychiatrist opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan opened fire with two handguns, killing thirteen and wounding twenty-eight at a Ft. Hood (TX) soldier processing facility before being wounded in a gun battle with a police officer, who was also wounded.

11/05/09 Former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik pled guilty to eight felonies, including lying on a loan application, making false statements to the Feds while being vetted for chief of Homeland Security, and tax fraud. He faces about two years in Federal prison. Blog entry

11/05/09 Would prosecutors “flinch” from their duties if they lost absolute immunity from civil suits?  Some claim that would happen if the Supreme Court rules that misconduct during the investigative phase, such as coaching witnesses to lie, can open prosecutors to lawsuits by defendants.  Case Note: lawsuit settled, Supreme Court case dismissed (see 1/5/10 entry.)

11/05/09 Thanks to Supreme Court decisions (e.g., Kimbrough) that made Federal sentencing guidelines advisory rather than mandatory, Federal judges have been issuing “wildly disparate” sentences in similar cases, particularly in white-collar crimes. Kimbrough v. U.S. analysis

11/05/09 Distinguishing his style from former chief Bratton’s, who supposedly preferred to work with management, LAPD’s new police chief Charlie Beck promised that his “wheelhouse” would be the rank and file, as “the only way an organization really changes is from the roots up.”

11/04/09 Cleveland police have so far found ten decomposed bodies plus a skull in the residence of registered sex offender Anthony Sowell, whose depredations went unnoticed by authorities for years. Five counts of murder have been added to the rape charge that led to the discoveries.

11/04/09 In 2008 nearly one-quarter of Colorado’s 548 traffic deaths involved unlicensed drivers. Why? Almost 200,000 drive illegally, including three out of every four whose license was suspended or revoked.

11/04/09 Indianapolis credits drop in murder, twenty less than at this time last year, to “greater cooperation” between police and neighborhoods.  “Hard work by homicide detectives,” arrests of suspects in multiple murders and a crackdown on open-air drug markets are also mentioned.

11/03/09 Praising police and prosecutors for increased arrests and convictions, the New Orleans Crime Commission still criticizes police for spending too much time enforcing petty offenses such as “spitting on the sidewalk” and trespassing, thus distracting officers from tackling serious crime.

11/02/09 Charging that “freeway therapy” was being used to retaliate against union leaders, the L.A. County Association of Deputy D.A.’s sued D.A. Steve Cooley for unwarranted reassignments that placed well-regarded veteran prosecutors at undesirable posts far from their homes.

11/02/09 Forty-four pounds of marijuana may seem like a lot but it’s far short of the 500-pound minimum that overburdened Federal attorneys require to charge border drug runners.  That’s led to a special program where this suspect and select others are being returned to Mexico for prosecution.

11/01/09 Senators, media representatives and Administration officials have agreed on the outlines of a shield law that would offer partial protection to journalists and bloggers from being forced to disclose their sources in Federal civil and criminal cases, most terrorism matters excepted.

10/30/09 Citing evidence that crack is far more addictive and dangerous, The Washington Post has come out in opposition to pending legislation, supported by the US Justice Department, that would equalize penalties for cocaine regardless of form.  2007 Sentencing Commission Report

10/30/09 Records of 6,500 juveniles will be expunged after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that their proceedings were tainted by the conduct of judge Mark Ciavarella.  He and judge Michael Conahan await trial for taking $2.6 million in bribes from an owner of juvenile detention centers.

10/29/09 In response to an FOIA lawsuit, the FBI released guidelines allowing agents to “proactively” investigate potential security threats without specific information. Ethnicity and religion can be a factor.  Agents are prohibited from leading groups “into criminal activity that otherwise probably would not have occurred.”  FBI manual

10/28/09 A self-anointed Islamic preacher was shot and killed and a dozen associates were arrested by FBI agents investigating a years-long interstate stolen goods and gun trafficking conspiracy. Luqman Abdullah, 53 agitated for an Islamic republic within the U.S. that would follow Shariah law.

10/28/09 According to the Federal trustee, actual cash losses to victims of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme stand at $21.2 billion. Paper losses (what was supposedly in their accounts) are $65 billion.

10/28/09 Deputy US Marshal John Ambrose was sentenced to four years in Federal prison for tipping off convicted felon William Guide, an ex-Chicago cop with mob connections, that organized crime hit man Nicholas Calabrese was in the Federal witness protection program.

10/28/09 FBI agents arrested two middle-aged Chicago men with Pakistani ties for allegedly conspiring to kill a Danish cartoonist and his editor in connection with the 2005 publication of cartoons in a Danish newspaper that allegedly defamed a Muslim prophet.

10/27/09 Embroiled in an election fight, Detroit’s mayor boasts that homicides during July-September dropped from 111 last year to 96, while clearance rates jumped from 27 to 60 percent.  He attributes the gains to a new chief, invigorated policing, special squads and targeting hot spots.

10/27/09 In the past two years twenty Dallas officers ticketed 38 drivers for not speaking English, a non-existent offense. Five persons actually paid the $204 fines. Officers say they were confused by a computer menu entry relating to commercial vehicle operators that is only enforced by the Feds.

10/27/09 Three DEA special agents were among ten Americans killed in the crash of a helicopter returning from a counter-narcotics mission in Afghanistan.  DEA has eighty agents in country battling illicit opium production that helps fund the Taliban.

10/26/09 A man woke up when an intruder kicked in the door of his apartment.  When the suspect saw the resident he ran off.  Like other incidents at homes and businesses where nothing is taken Dallas police classified it as vandalism, thus reducing its burglary count.  FBI guidelines disagree.

10/24/09 Arizona is taking bids from private firms to take over nine of the State’s ten prisons, with cost savings to be split with the State.  But whether private entities, which usually supervise low and medium-security prisoners, can (or want to) handle the most dangerous inmates is much in question.

10/22/09 Thanks to an invesigation by criminal justice students two Texas men, Claude Simmons and Christopher Scott were exonerated of a drug murder after serving 12 years due to faulty witness ID.  It’s now believed that two other men were responsible; one has confessed. DNA was not used.

10/22/09 FBI agents and LAPD officers arresed dozens of members of the “Rolling 40’s” street gang in south Los Angeles on drug and gun charges.

10/22/09 In coordinated raids targeting Mexico’s “La Familia Michoacana” cartel, FBI, DEA and ATF agents swept up hundreds on charges including sales of drugs, guns, extortion and money laundering. Nearly 1,200 arrests have been made in the 3 1/2 year-long operation.

10/21/09 The FBI arrested Tarek Mehanna, 27 for conspiring with two others in a stillborn plot to attack U.S. shopping malls and American troops in Iraq.  Mehanna had been arrested in 2006 for lying about the whereabouts of a suspect in an unrelated terrorism case.

10/21/09 Jury selection is set to begin in the Federal corruption and tax fraud trial of former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik. A one-time Bush nominee to head Homeland Security, Kerik withdrew when it was revealed that he employed an illegal alien as a nanny.  Related posting

10/19/19 Los Angeles’ attempt to limit the profusion of medical marijuana clinics by enacting a moratorium on new dispensaries was rejected by a judge, who ruled that the original 45-day ban had run its course under State law and couldn’t be extended.

10/19/09 To prevent cases with unknown suspects from becoming unprosecutable because the statute of limitations runs out, authorities are charging “John Does” when evidence yields identifiable DNA profiles. This technique has proven especially useful in rapes.

10/19/09 Forty-one law enforcement officers were feloniously killed in 2008, seventeen less than in 2007 and a ten-year low. Thirty-five were killed with firearms, including 25 handguns, six rifles and four shotguns.

10/19/09 New DOJ guidelines strongly discourage local prosecutors from going after medical marijuana clinics that fully comply with State laws.  Those that don’t remain targets, particularly if they are involved in other criminal activities or sell to minors.

10/18/09 Explaining why he and his deputies had been fooled, Larimer Co. (Colo.) Sheriff Jim Alderden, who is now seeking to prosecute the balloon boy family for perpetrating a hoax, said that dramatic instruction the Heenes got from a Hollywood company helped them put on a “good show.”

10/16/09 ICE will continue allowing selected police agencies to enforce immigration laws. The program, known as “287-g”, lets trained officers detain suspected illegal immigrants.  Under new guidelines their authority will only extend to those suspected of serious crimes.

10/16/09 During the last six months, a Federal/local sweep of gangs involved in smuggling persons, drugs, guns and ID theft netted 1,785 arrests nationwide.  The nearly 300 arrested in Los Angeles include members of the MS-13, Avenues, 18th. Street and Barrio Evil 13 gangs.

10/15/09 Texas Governor Rick Perry, who was in office in 2004 when Cameron Willingham was executed, calls the man now widely thought to be innocent a “monster” deserving of death.  He’s also replaced members of a State commission investigating the case with his own appointees.

10/14/09 Victims of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme sued the Securities and Exchange Commission for admittedly failing to perform its duty to guard against fraud.  Whether the failure was sufficiently severe to overcome the doctrine of sovereign immunity will be tested in court.

10/13/09 Las Vegas PD is revamping driving policies and implementing new training after police car wrecks killed two officers and seriously injured a third.  Across the U.S. speeding and multi-tasking are being blamed for a wave of accidents that are killing officers and innocent citizens alike.

10/13/09 FBI agents corralled a fugitive believed to be in North Carolina after his old California driver license picture was run through the North Carolina driver license photo database using facial-recognition software.  An analyst made the final match from a set of most likely candidates.

10/12/09 With no reliable system to verify their departure, Homeland Security estimates that “several hundred thousand” of the 2.9 million foreign visitors in 2008 overstayed their visas.  One who did so in 2007, Hosam Smadi, was recently arrested for plotting to blow up a Dallas building.

10/8/09 By a vote of 281 to 146 the House sent forward legislation to include gender and sexual orientation in the definition of a Federal hate crime, allowing the Feds to investigate and prosecute in cases where States and localities fail to act.

10/8/09 Nearly all of the estimated 800 pot clinics in Los Angeles sell over-the-counter.  But according to a California Supreme Court decision that’s illegal, or so say the District Attorney and City Attorney, who vow to prosecute each and every dispensary not run as a nonprofit collective.

10/7/09 Despite a series of phone calls from the arresting deputy’s home to gossip website TMZ, including two on the day of the incident, prosecutors declined to charge the officer for leaking extracts from Mel Gibson’s arrest report to TMZ, as the caller’s identity could not be established.

10/7/09 Dozens of suspects in the U.S. and Egypt have been indicted for running an Internet e-mail phishing scheme that fooled computer users into giving up their bank passwords under pretext that  records needed to be updated. As one might expect, the victims’ accounts were then raided.

10/7/09 Dog scent lineups have led to convictions but are under attack as junk science.  Among the critics is the Innocence Project of Texas, which points to the case of a former cop who was wrongly accused of murder after two bloodhounds followed a scent to his front door.  NY Times story

10/6/09 Three LAPD officers who testified at a 2008 drug trial and preliminary hearing that the defendant threw away a bindle of cocaine were charged with perjury.  A security camera recorded one officer telling another to be “creative” on the report.  The drug case was dismissed.

10/6/09 To combat a wave of killings, Chicago schools will use a computer program to identify the 10,000 students most at risk based on a host of factors, then “saturate” them with programs and adult support, including a 24/7 contact. Those who participate are guaranteed a part-time job.

10/6/09 The Supreme Court declined to consider whether State juries may convict without an unanimous verdict, as allowed in Louisiana and Oregon. The case, Bowen v. Oregon, no. 08-1117, relates to a man who was convicted 10-2 for rape and sentenced to 17 years.  ABA brief

10/5/09 Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a group headed by NYC Mayor Michael Bloomerg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, released a report recommending that the Government strengthen ATF’s hand in dealer inspections, interstate gun trafficking and regulating gun shows.

10/5/09 Chinese nationals form the largest non-Hispanic ethnic group illegally entering the U.S. from Mexico.  Those who succeed must work off smugglers’ fees of as high as $70,000 in East coast sweatshops.  Ecuador is a staging area where thousands reportedly await their turn to cross.

10/4/09 Now under control of the state Attorney General, the Camden (NJ) PD is being pressed to be more proactive.  “Compstat” meetings, close supervision and a focus on accountability are said to be showing results, but resentment from line officers and the police union is clearly evident.

10/3/09 Breaking up an organized-crime ring that they said infiltrated the city Building Department, New York City prosecutors indicted twenty-nine persons, including top members of the Luchese crime family on charges ranging from corruption by building inspectors to dealing in drugs and guns.

10/2/09 North Carolina paid $3.9 million to settle with former death-row inmate Alan Gell. A sloppy investigation and unreliable witnesses led to his 1998 conviction for a murder that actually occurred while he was in jail on unrelated charges. Gell was acquitted at a retrial in 2004.

10/2/09 Knowing that the TV host had sex with female coworkers, a CBS staffer dropped a note in David Letterman’s car demanding $2 million to keep quiet.  Only problem is, Letterman went to police.  The extortioner, reportedly a “48 Hours” producer, was arrested.

10/1/09 Following up on allegations of excessive force, including misuse of Taser and pepper spray, the FBI subpoenaed records relating to a dozen Burbank (Calif.) police officers. The troubled agency also faces lawsuits by seven current and past officers for discrimination and retaliation.

10/1/09 A report by the General Accounting Office (GAO) criticizes the National Park Service for a haphazard approach to providing security at park sites and protecting them from terrorist attack.  One criticism, for example, is that the Statute of Liberty has no full-time security manager.

10/1/09 According to the New York Times, the FBI had no idea that alleged Denver/NYC terrorist plotter Najibullah Zazi was buying chemicals and trying to fashion bombs until they interviewed him and began following up leads.

9/30/09 Budget shortfalls in Alexander County (Ill) led a bank to repossess five of the Sheriff’s seven patrol cars. Five deputies remain from a peak staff of 29. Two Florida counties are donating several old cruisers; now all that’s needed are the deputies to drive them.

9/29/09 Reacting to a string of scandals, Boston Commish Edward F. Davis is pushing a new policy to fire any officer caught lying.  Praised by a policing scholar, who called it “very unusual,” the one-strike-and-out move has drawn heated opposition from police unions and is unlikely to pass.

9/28/09 Four Chicago teens were charged in the videotaped beating death of a 16-year old high school student.  The victim, who was stomped and struck in the head with a railroad tie, happened into a brawl between groups of youths from a public housing project and a nearby neighborhood.

9/27/09 In 1977 Roman Polanski fled to France fearing that his guilty plea to sex with a teen would land him in prison.  Since then the film director has won an Oscar in absentia.  But when he arrived in Zurich yesterday to get another award Swiss police snatched him on a U.S. extradition warrant.

9/26/09 In two unrelated terrorist sting operations, FBI agents arrested Hosam Smadi, 19 and Michael Finton, 29 after they parked vehicles given them that supposedly contained bombs, Smadi in the underground garage of a Dallas (Tx.) office tower, and Finton across from a Springfield (Ill.) Federal courthouse.  Both tried to remotely activate the devices. Smadi had been initially contacted by an undercover agent through an extremist Internet chatroom, Finton by an informant.

9/26/09 Daniel Boyd, an adventurer previously indicted for organizing a terrorist group that included his wife and grown sons as members was charged in a superseding indictment with plotting to attack the Marine base at Quantico. Also charged was an associate, Hysen Sherifi.

9/24/09 Najibullah Zazi, 24, charged with his father and a New York Imam for lying to FBI agents will be indicted for plotting to detonate weapons of mass destruction.  Zazi, who recently returned from Pakistan, allegedly bought materials at Denver beauty supply stores and was trying with the help of others to make devices possibly similar to those used in the Madrid train bombings.

9/24/09 Former Indianapolis drug cop Robert Long was sentenced to 25 years in Federal prison after he and two other officers fell prey to an FBI sting.  Long and detective Jason Edwards were convicted, among other things, of shaking down a pretend drug courier and stealing planted cash and marijuana. A helpmate, patrolman James Davis, pled guilty and testified for the government.

9/23/09 A Baltimore weekend with thirteen shootings, leaving twelve wounded and three dead, has police scrambling for solutions. While the number wounded, 318, is 26 percent fewer than at this time in 2008, homicides have climbed, from 157 in 2008 to 163 dead so far in 2009.

9/23/09  The US Department of Justice has ordered the New Orleans Parish prison to correct unconstitutional conditions.  These include inmates being physically harmed by guards and by other inmates, inadequate mental health care and poor sanitation. DOJ report

9/23/09 Three vans packed with more than seventy illegal aliens tried to run through the San Ysidro border station, prompting US agents to open fire.  Several persons were hurt and wounded and numerous illegals were arrested.  Police closed the border station, the busiest in the U.S.

9/22/09 LAPD and DEA arrested forty-four members of the Avenues street gang for running a major drug trafficking ring that committed murders and extortion. The inquiry was precipitated by the August 2008 killing of L.A. Sheriff’s Deputy Juan Escalante, 27, a guard in the central jail.

9/20/09 Los Angeles County deputies shot and killed three armed men in separate incidents this weekend.  One encounter, with a robbery suspect, also resulted in an officer’s wounding. Deputies have fatally shot thirteen suspects this year, eight more than in all of 2008.

9/20/09 After prolonged questioning the FBI arrested Denver residents Najibullah Zazi, 24 and his father Mohammed, 53, for lying to agents investigating a possible plot to attack New York.  The younger Zazi allegedly admitted attending Al Qaeda training, but then stopped cooperating.

9/19/09 In a civil deposition, Msgr. Richard Loomis, former vicar of the Los Angeles archdiocese, testified that in 2000 Cardinal Roger Mahony ordered him not to inform police or parishes of allegations of sexual abuse against priest Michael Baker.  Baker has since been defrocked.

9/19/09 Under Federal court orders to reduce the inmate count by 40,000 in two years, California Governor’s Schwarzenegger’s plan, as submitted, would cut the prison population by only half that and take more than twice as long to accomplish it. And only if legislators went along.

9/19/09 Seven former CIA directors implored the President to shut down probes of agents who allegedly used harsh interrogation techniques.  Among the reasons was that agents relied on legal opinions, and that foreign governments might become reluctant to cooperate on terrorism matters.

9/17/09 Over the objection of officers who resent having their arrests ignored, the Orange County (Calif.) D.A.’s office is expanding its own DNA databank by dismissing misdemeanor charges for non-violent crimes such as drug possession and petty theft if accused submit a DNA sample.

9/17/09 One day after taking DNA samples from Raymond Clark III, police arrested the Yale lab technician for murdering graduate student Annie Le, whose body was found in the building where both worked. New Haven police chief James Lewis called it a case of “workplace violence.”

9/17/09 The Justice Department is investigating whether former Interior Secretary Gale Norton violated Federal law by granting valuable leases to Royal Dutch Shell only months before she became its legal counsel.  Her prosecution has been recommended by the Interior Department.

9/16/09 With technicians unable after two hours to find a vein for use in injecting the lethal cocktail, Ohio State plans to retry executing convicted murdered Romell Broom again in a week.  This is supposedly only the second time in U.S. history that a failed execution has been rescheduled.

9/16/09 ATF and the FBI both have jurisdiction in bombings: ATF for criminal use of explosives; FBI if terrorism is involved.  Both compete to be in charge when bombings occur. Moving ATF to the Justice Department hasn’t resolved the quarrels. Time magazine article   DOJ report

9/15/09 A new Discovery Channel documentary about Oakland (Calif.) claims that the violence-ridden city has vastly underplayed its gang problem, with 10,000 gang members allegedly roaming the streets. An eight-officer anti-gang unit that appears in the film was just disbanded.

9/15/09 Former Assistant Orange County (Calif.) Sheriff George Jaramillo got 27 months in Federal prison on tax charges. His cooperation in a corruption case helped convict former Sheriff Mike Carona, but a probation deal was nixed because Jaramillo wouldn’t accept enough responsibility.

9/14/09 FBI reports that 2008 violent crime fell 1.9 percent from 2007.  Murder declined 3.9 percent and aggravated assault dropped 2.5 percent.  The property crime picture was mixed. Auto theft fell 12.7 percent while burglary increased 2 percent.  Larceny was up slightly, by 3/10 percent.

9/13/09 After an extensive search police found the body of missing Yale student Annie Le wedged inside a wall of the campus building where she was last seen. She had disappeared only days before her wedding, leaving her belongings behind.

9/11/09 San Diego police arrested more than twenty persons and shut fourteen marijuana dispensaries that authorities called fronts for illegal drug dealers.  One location allegedly made $700,000 profit in six months.  Dispensaries are legally required to be nonprofit.

9/11/09 A Ninth Circuit panel ruled that denying a college student’s bid to introduce evidence of his Asperger’s syndrome to counter a charge of aiding and abetting arson wrongly deprived him of the opportunity to argue that he could not have formed the specific intent to commit the crime. Ruling

9/10/09 If Detroit PD maintains its current clearance rates, 70 percent of its 362 murders in 2008 will go unsolved. Budget problems force homicide detectives to carry vast caseloads. Vehicle shortages, bad computers and a crime lab that was shut down for incompetence add to the chaos.

9/9/09 One of the Orange County (Calif.) jail inmates charged in the 2006 murder of prisoner Derek Chamberlain claims that two deputies ordered that Chamberlain be “touched up,” meaning beat (see 8/14/09 entry). Related post   Past OC Grand Jury report

9/9/09 Suspected Milwaukee serial killer Walter Ellis was charged in two murders after police used DNA to link him to at least nine rape/murders, mostly of prostitutes, in two decades.  Ellis, who has a lengthy record, might have been caught earlier if his 2001 DNA sample had not disappeared.

9/9/09 A report by the New York A.G. reveals that the State Police was repeatedly used to do political favors, including altering a police report of a domestic violence incident, revealing troopers’ grand jury testimony in a fund-raising probe, and assigning officers to protect unqualified persons.

9/9/09 Analysis of data from a deputy tracking system instituted by the L.A. County Sheriff’s Dept. sixteen years ago reveals that the frequency of personnel complaints, including those deemed “unfounded,” can help predict whether deputies will eventually engage in serious misconduct.

9/8/09 To “more accurately” report crime Dallas PD stopped counting burglaries from vehicles that officers thought were unfounded.  But as the Dallas Morning News determined, they also stopped counting real ones.

9/7/09 Phillip Garrido, the man caught with a sex slave, was paroled by the Feds after serving the then-minimum of ten years on a 50-year sentence. He then did seven months of a concurrent 5 year-to-life term in Nevada, a term imposed by a State judge who mistakenly thought that Garrido had to do at least two-thirds of his Federal time.  There is no longer a Federal parole system.

9/7/09 Three British Muslims were convicted in London of plotting to blow up airliners on six transatlantic routes, including four to U.S. cities, using liquid-based explosives to be assembled in airplane bathrooms.  Four alleged suicide bombers were acquitted.  No bombs were ever made.

9/5/09 Financial blues are forcing States to reduce prison populations. Kentucky released more than 3,000 inmates early, while Colorado is granting substantially more paroles.  Other tacks include increasing credit for good behavior and reclassifying felonies as misdemeanors.

9/5/09 Christian Poveda, the French filmmaker whose “La Vida Loca” documented the MS-13 gang was shot and killed in El Salvador in an apparent assassination.  Poveda recently said that a new generation of super-violent gangsters was making things hopeless. Video clip

9/5/09 Since 9/11 American Muslims have been picked up around the U.S. on “material witness” warrants and held for weeks without probable cause.  That’s cause enough, a Ninth Circuit panel decided, to allow Abdullah Al-Kidd’s lawsuit against former AG John Ashcroft to proceed.

9/4/09 Under a newly-passed law, Texas will compensate wrongfully convicted persons $80,000 for each year they were confined. They will also receive a lifetime annuity of $40-50,000 per year.  Former inmates must obtain an appeals court writ certifying their innocence or win a pardon.

9/4/09 A forensic examination of the point of origin led Federal and local investigators to declare that the 150,000-acre “Station” fire, the largest in Los Angeles County history, was most likely deliberately set. Two firefighters have been killed and sixty homes destroyed. L.A. Times coverage

9/3/09 Despite “more than ample” reasons to conduct a detailed inquiry of Madoff’s finances, including six “substantive complaints” between 1992-2008, an SEC Inspector General report charges that “a thorough and competent investigation or examination” was never done.  Report

9/2/09 Due to the economic downturn increasing numbers of jurors are seeking exemptions because their spouses lost their jobs. Employers are also less willing to reimburse workers, meaning that it’s not just the self-employed who are at risk.

9/1/09 Early release for older inmates and those at the end of their terms and downgrading some felonies to misdemeanors are among the proposals for reducing California’s prison population.  A State Assembly bill would trim the numbers by 17,000, while the Senate insists on a 27,300 cut.

9/1/09 Convicted in 1967 of a brutal kidnapping/rape, sex-slave suspect Phillip Garrido was sentenced to 50 years Federal time and, concurrently, to life in prison in Nevada. But only eleven years later he walked out a free man.  Authorities are now trying to figure out why.

8/31/09 A New Yorker piece concludes that Cameron Willingham, executed by Texas in 2004 for setting a house fire that killed his three daughters, was innocent. Evidence included the statement of a jailhouse informer and a Fire marshal’s testimony that the fire was deliberately set.  Prior post

8/31/09 Under pressure to spend billions in Federal stimulus money as quickly as possible, State and local governments fear that their ability to vet contractors and audit payments will be compromised, pouring profits into the pockets of organized crime and corrupt public officials.

8/31/09 The man arrested for holding a sex slave was one of many registered sex offenders living in a hardscrabble county island surrounded by the working-class city of Antioch. They are there because it’s cheap, anonymous and rarely patrolled by police.

8/28/09 Pleading guilty to fraud, James Davis, the CFO of accused Ponzi swindler R. Allen Stanford, said that his boss signed a “blood oath” with the chief regulator of his Antigua bank and regularly paid the man off to inflate assets and provide false information to the S.E.C.

8/28/09 Phillip Garrido, arrested for holding a kidnapped girl as a sex slave for eighteen years, was undone by U.C. Berkeley police. Suspicious of his presence on campus with two youngsters, officers ran his license plate and contacted his parole officer, who didn’t know Garrido had children.

8/27/09 L.A. County will participate in the “Secure Communities” program, a Federal initiative to screen all persons booked into jail for their immigration status. According to Immigration officials, resources dictate that only those with serious criminal records are likely to be deported.

8/26/09 Eastern European crime groups are hacking into the accounts of small and mid-size American firms, installing malware that reveals bank account passwords, then transferring money to accounts set up by cooperating “mules” in increments small enough to avoid detection.

8/26/09 Supposedly to avoid “torturing” and comply with the law, CIA directives specified detainee treatment down to the hours that they could be kept in a box and exactly how far to go when waterboarding.  Now DOJ must decide whether to prosecute agents who stepped over these lines.

8/25/09 Eighteen months after a youth’s death led New York to begin overhauling its juvenile prisons, the Justice Department issued a report warning that excessive force and inadequate programs make conditions at four facilities unconstitutional.  A Federal takeover is possible.

8/25/09 Kicking off the “Legal Rebels” project, the ABA Journal sets out to give legal progressives their time in the sun, with their very own website and manifesto “to question and, when appropriate, change the status quo.”

8/25/09 Criticizing the prosecutor for falsely telling jurors that his acts were kept secret from subordinates, the Ninth Circuit reversed the conviction of Gregory Reyes, the first corporate head to be charged in the stock option backdating scandals that have rocked Wall Street. Court opinion

8/24/09 Attorney General Eric Holder opened a preliminary investigation to determine whether CIA operatives and contractors broke Federal law while interrogating alleged terrorists.  Many abuses had been reported by the CIA but were deemed unprosecutable by the Bush administration. CIA report

8/24/09 Immensely profitable high-speed stock trading is made possible by proprietary computer programs that can take years to write. Now one master programmer is under arrest for allegedly stealing code from Goldman Sachs to take to his new job, which pays more than a million a year.

8/23/09 Budget woes are bringing the practice of melting seized guns to a screeching halt. The Colorado Springs (Col.) Sheriff’s office has been selling them to dealers since 2006. Its hand forced by local legislators, the police department now plans to follow suit. The take?  $10,000 a year.

8/21/09 Continuing a major push to counter tax evasion by wealthy Americans, a Federal grand jury indicted a Swiss banker and a lawyer for creating false paper trails that made it seem as though funds coming into the U.S. were inheritances from foreigners.  Swiss banker UBS will also release names of nearly 4,500 US residents who might be hiding money in Swiss bank accounts.

8/20/09 Federal indictments were announced against forty-three members of Mexican drug cartels, including ten top leaders already wanted in Mexico, for importing large amounts of cocaine and heroin into the East and Midwest. The charges stem from investigations in Chicago and New York.

8/20/09 A just-released investigative report accuses members of the defunct Minneapolis gang strike force of seizing valuables from suspects even when no criminal referrals were intended, then taking these items home, either outright or by “buying” them for a low price. Report

8/20/09 San Francisco’s new Chief, George Gascon, credits intensive policing and a Federal crackdown on the MS-13 gang for a 50 percent citywide drop in homicides.  Police enhanced enforcement in five problem zones and focused their efforts on select individuals.

8/19/09 A Federal judge ruled that the Treasury Dept. overstepped in summarily freezing $1 million in assets from a U.S. charity that allegedly funded Hamas.  The decision challenges the Government position that such actions are not bound by the Fourth Amendment, thus don’t require a warrant.

8/19/09 FBI has assigned 5,000 agents, about 40 percent of its force, to its number one priority, anti-terrorism.  But a look at a 21-member “threat squad” revealed that it seldom came up with anything worthwhile, and never uncovered a real plot. That seems to be the experience elsewhere.

8/18/09 Bollywood, schmollywood: Shah Rukh Khan, India’s answer to Brad Pitt, spent ninety minutes in secondary at Newark Airport while ICE agents gave him the full “Welcome to America” treatment. Khan, a Muslim, stars in a forthcoming release about the unfair treatment of Muslims.

8/18/09 After a mind-numbing four months and 72 witnesses prosecutors seem finally ready to pass the baton.  It’s the longest trial that no one’s heard of: an alleged conspiracy by a son and a former lawyer to take advantage of the late socialite Brooke Astor’s dementia and loot her estate.

8/17/09 Beginning with a tiny bit of a target individual’s DNA, or from their 13-loci profile in a law enforcement database, Israeli scientists created a faked blood sample that can fool laboratories into identifying it as originating from that person.

8/17/09 A former Secret Service informant and two Russians were indicted for running an ID theft ring billed as the “largest ever.”  In 2007 they stole 130 million credit and debit card numbers from a payment processor and four national retailers, then resold the numbers to others.

8/17/09 ICE teams that go after illegal aliens who ignore deportation orders will no longer be laboring under a quota system that encouraged them to make their “numbers” by hauling in ordinary immigration violators rather than gang members and others who commit serious crimes.

8/17/09 Cambridge PD Sgt. James Crowley, the officer who arrested Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., got a hero’s welcome at the Fraternal Order of Police convention in Long Beach (Calif.)  He thanked the delegates for their support during the incident’s aftermath.

8/16/09 Authorities say that a major brush fire in Santa Barbara County (Calif.) that’s burned 75,000-plus acres, threatened hundreds of homes and caused 2,500 to be evacuated began in the cooking area of a illegal marijuana growing encapment run by a Mexican drug cartel.

8/14/09 Are Orange County (Calif.) jail deputies out of control? U.S. DOJ is probing allegations that they routinely used excessive force and covered up misconduct.  The outcome could be a takeover similar to the DOJ’s supervision of LAPD following the Rampart scandal. Related post

8/14/09 Nine suspects were arrested and eight others remain at large in a sweep by San Diego authorities of a US-based Mexican narco gang that had been kidnapping and murdering members of the Arellano-Felix cartel as payback for killing the leader’s brother in 2002 over a business dispute.

8/13/09 A co-writer of California’s medical marijuana initiative says that the law made pot so easy to buy that it amounts to de-facto legalization.  A disgusted Federal agent calls the statute a sham. A  film and TV editor who laughed about his so-called “medical exam” would probably agree.

8/13/09 Detroit PD is targeting crime-ridden “hot spots” with large teams of officers, supplanted by other local and Federal agencies.  On the first day of a four-day crackdown they concentrated on wanted parolees, fugitives and drug houses.  There were seventy-nine arrests, eighteen for felonies.

8/12/09 According to the Southern Poverty Law Center right-wing militias, invigorated in part by the election of a black liberal president, have become a growing menace. Fed by conspiracy theorists and tax avoiders, many groups are training with guns and preparing for...what? Report

8/12/09 Although its force is shrinking, Camden (NJ) PD has been flooding “hot spots” with cops and making as many arrests as possible. Its approach is praised by politicians and some residents but questioned by others, including cops who say they’re stretched thin and overworked.

8/11/09 A riot that involved hundreds of prisoners, leaving scores injured, destroying a housing unit and forcing more than 1,000 inmates to be relocated was predicted by experts who called the 5,900 inmate Chino (Calif.) prison, crowded to nearly twice its capacity, a riot waiting to happen.

8/10/09 Lacking suitable community facilities, state justice systems swamped by mentally ill youths  are sending them to juvenile prisons, turning them into “the new asylums.” There, powerful antipsychotic and mood-calming drugs are the remedies of choice.

8/9/09 Four adults and four children were left dead and one adults was in critical condition after a car fleeing Dinuba (Calif.) police ran through a stop sign and struck a pickup truck. It turns out that the vehicle, which was being chased for a traffic violation, had been carjacked the previous evening.

8/9/09 Twenty-three years after being imprisoned for rape, Houston resident Ernest Sonnier was freed when a DNA test matched the evidence to two men, both felons known to associate with each other.  One is pending another rape trial. Sonnier was picked from a photo lineup. Houston PD analysts compounded the victim’s error by testifying that Sonnier’s blood type couldn’t be ruled out, which was inconsistent with their own reports. Innocence Project

8/9/09 Calling their convictions for a 1997 rape-murder shaky at best, Virginia Governor Kaine freed three ex-sailors but refused to exonerate them.  They and a fourth sailor who was already released confessed but later claimed they had been coerced and recanted.  A fifth man whose DNA matched the scene was separately convicted and imprisoned (see 11/11/08 entry).

8/9/09 New Jersey passes bill limiting handgun purchases to one per month, making it the fourth State to do so. The bill is intended to impede “straw” buyers, meaning those who buy gun for others or for unlicensed street dealers.  Study

8/9/09 Pittsburgh fitness center shooter George Sodini (see 8/5) had a CCW permit.  According to the Violence Policy Center, so have at least five others mass shooters since 1997.  One of them was Richard Poplawski, another Pittsburgh resident who murdered three officers in April.

8/6/09 Andrew Urdiales, a 45-year old ex-Marine imprisoned in Illinois for murdering three women between 2002-2004 has been charged with killing four Southern California women between 1984-1991 while stationed in the area and a fifth when he returned for a vacation in 1995.

8/5/09 LAPD Chief William Bratton is leaving LAPD to head an international security consulting firm that advises police departments around the world. It’s the kind of work he did before coming to L.A. His reason?  He accomplished what he set out to do and is looking for new challenges.

8/5/09 Heroin prices are way down while potency and deaths are way up as the drug’s popularity reaches levels “not seen since the 70’s.”  Most heroin being seized in the U.S. is the “black tar” variety smuggled from Mexico.

8/5/09 A middle-aged man armed with four pistols -- two 9mm., a .32 and a .45 -- entered a Pittsburgh-area fitness center dance class and opened fire, killing three women and wounding nine, including three critically, before taking his own life.  In an Internet blog the man ranted about his problems getting girlfriends and his year-long preparations for the rampage.

8/4/09 Ruling that its overcrowded conditions were unconstitutional, a three-judge Federal panel ordered California to reduce its prison population by 40,000 over two years.  An appeal to the US Supreme Court seems likely.

8/4/09 Immigration enforcement has toughened under the Obama administration.  Although there’s been a shift in emphasis on criminal aliens, workplace raids have not been completely abandoned as some would prefer, and a major initiative against employers who hire illegals is underway.

8/3/09 A ring of American and Israeli fraudsters have been arraigned in both countries for a years-long scheme that netted tens of millions in tax refunds by filing returns under the names of U.S. prisoners.  The inmates were allegedly unaware of the fraud.

8/3/09 Crime and violence are dropping most everywhere, but no one seems to know why. Common explanations such as economics, demographics, illegal drug use, incarceration policies, immigration, better policing -- each is in one way or another contradicted by data.

8/2/09 Ten years ago Mark Woodworth was convicted, on the flimsiest of evidence, for the second time of murdering his father’s farm partner and the man’s wife.  Even the new Missouri sheriff is uncertain of his guilt.  Meanwhile what seems a far better suspect remains unmolested.

8/1/09 Nearly thirty years after finding the decomposed remains of a 19-year old couple who disappeared from a Kentucky dance hall, police arrested a 76-year old man who lived in the area.  A cold-case squad matched DNA found on the woman, who had been strangled, to the suspect.

7/31/09 Shootings and seizures of assault weapons are becoming increasingly common in Boston, with four such incidents in the past three weeks. One recent shootout resulted in the wounding of a child. Police have seized nine assault rifles this year.  Four were seized last year and 18 in 2007.

7/30/09 President Obama, Vice-President Biden, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge PD Sgt. James Crowley had a beer at the White House. After the meeting Sgt. Crowley said “what you had today was two gentlemen who agreed to disagree on a particular issue.”

7/29/09 In a news conference, Lucia Whalen, the 40-year old Harvard professor who called 911 to report that two men forced their way into a home, denied she spoke of their race to Sgt. Crowley, thus directly contradicting what he wrote in his police report.

7/28/09  $1 billion in Federal stimulus money was awarded to hire or preserve police positions.  Under-policed and facing financial problems, L.A. got the max. of fifty. With a better police ratio and in better financial shape, New York City got zero. L.A. Times   Seattle Post

7/28/09 Three teens aged 18 and 19 were arrested when CBP agents with a drug-sniffing dog found a half-ton of marijuana under the deck of their boat after it docked at San Diego. They had allegedly returned from a “fishing trip” to Ensenada. Article on US teens muling for cartels

7/28/09 After many failures by court-appointed lawyers to file timely appeals for death-row inmates Texas has created a $1 million unit to monitor the process and insure that condemned prisoners aren’t prevented from exercising their legal rights because of attorney errors.

7/28/09 Seven North Carolina men led by a 39-year old adventurer who once went to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets were arrested after repeatedly trying to join up with Jihadist groups in the Middle East.  They were apparently unsuccessful.  All but one are U.S. citizens.

7/27/09 Citing an insider source, the Associated Press reported that Michael Jackson died after his physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, injected him with the powerful anesthetic propofol.

7/27/09  The Cambridge woman whose 911 call led to Gates’ arrest (see 7/20) says she didn’t mention race other than to speculate to the dispatcher than one man might be Hispanic. Her comments are confirmed by 911 tapes, contradicting the police report. NY Times Boston Globe

7/25/09 Robert Rosas, 30, a three-year Border Patrol veteran was shot and killed responding to a border intrusion at Campo, a drug smuggling hotspot.  Rosas was alone when the incident occurred. A suspect with Rosas’ gun has been arrested by Mexican police.

7/25/09 In Long Beach (Calif.) four boys and one girl, ages 14-16, were wounded by suspected gang members who walked up on them and opened fire.

7/23/09 Federal agents arrested forty-four New Jersey officials for taking bribes from an FBI informer to facilitate redevelopment decisions and a handful of rabbis for laundering money whose origin the informer said he wanted to hide.  Those charged include the mayors of Hoboken and Secaucus, a State assemblyman, the Jersey City council president and the city’s deputy mayor.

7/22/09 Jersey City (NJ) police officer Marc DiNardo, 37, succumbed to his wound.  The 10-year veteran was struck in the face with a shotgun pellet during a shootout that left four colleagues wounded, one critically, and two suspects dead (see 7/16/09 entry).

7/22/09 Following up on a successful free handgun promo, a Missouri car dealer is offering buyers vouchers for free AK-47 type semi-auto rifles. Dealer website

7/22/09 Despite NRA opposition, local laws requiring gun owners to report lost or stolen guns to police within 24 hours have been upheld in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Their goal is to discourage straw buying by keeping persons from falsely claiming that guns traced to them were stolen.

7/21/09 Provisions of California’s tentative budget deal would result in the early release of 27,000 prison inmates, giving some credit for completing  rehab programs and letting others finish serving their terms in home confinement. Fewer parolees would be returned to prison for minor violations.

7/21/09 Complaints from black officers about allegedly racist comments led Philadelphia PD to block a police website/bulletin board run by a white PPD sergeant from police computers.  Now there are demands to prohibit officers from posting such remarks whether on or off duty.

7/21/09 A Florida state investigation concluded that Miami PD’s 27 percent rate of error in classification, with many crimes reported as “information,” wasn’t necessarily purposeful. A police union disagreed, attributing the under-reporting to management pressures to look good in Compstat.

7/20/09 Thinking he might be a burglar, police confronted Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. after a passer-by saw him forcing his way into his Cambridge home. Gates, who is black, showed his ID but loudly refused to step outside. He was eventually arrested for disturbing the peace.

7/20/09  From D.C to L.A. major city homicide rates are at 40-year lows. Violence is also way down. But in Detroit homicide and violence are up.  Its new chief promises to correct the underreporting that might have undercounted violence by 20 percent.

7/20/09 Dozens of DEA agents are being sent to train Afghan anti-narcotics police and make cases against opium trafficking organizations that fund the Taliban.

7/18/09 It wasn’t the thirteenth but Friday was still a very bad day in L.A. A bullet-riddled body was found in a parked car.  In a separate incident a man was beaten and shot dead at a party.     Two more were shot dead in Compton.  So far there have been two arrests.

7/18/09 Approving a “transitional plan” that turns over monitoring of several lingering issues to the civilian L.A. Police Commission, a Federal judge ended the consent decree that placed LAPD under supervision of a civilian monitor since the Rampart scandal.

7/16/09 Georgetown constitutional law professor Louis Seidman blasted Judge Sotomayor’s narrow definition of a judge’s role as an ideological “fairy tale” that misleads Americans “about what courts actually do and what constitutional law consists of.” More blasts

7/16/09 Following up on a part-time task force that arrested seventy Latin American gang members in Charlotte (N.C.) since last October, ICE will set up a permanent anti-gang squad to work with local police.  Among the targeted gangs are the M.S. and Latin Kings.

7/16/09 A shootout in Jersey City between police and two suspects of a “major crime” left both suspects dead and five officers wounded, including two critically. Some of the injuries occurred when SWAT teams storming an apartment were met with shotgun blasts fired through walls.

7/15/09 In Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts the Supreme Court ruled that the confrontation clause requires that analysts testify about the results of drug tests.  That presents major cost and manpower dilemmas for D.C. and the 42 States where introducing certificates was previously enough.

7/15/09 To keep patrols at current staffing the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors will redirect $10 million to the Sheriff’s department, thus saving 70 deputy positions. Pink slips will now go to “only” 132 deputies instead of 202.

7/15/09   Schaumburg (Ill.) installed a red-light camera, supposedly for safety’s sake. It spit out $1 million in tickets in 2 1/2 months, mostly for rolling right turns and left-arrow violations. Citizens went ballistic. Schaumburg pulled the camera.  The accident rate didn’t change.

7/14/09 LAPD reports 137 murders between January-July 2009, 30 percent less than the 197 for the same period in 2008 when homicide spiked. Violent crime fell 6 percent; property crime, 7 percent (but in a few divisions they rose sharply.)  Other SoCal cities also reported declines.

7/14/09 Portland Police recruits waiting for a slot in the State academy spend four weeks in a local pre-academy, then go on patrol with experienced officers. Others work in social service agencies and on community projects.  State Police have a similar program.

7/14/09 Two Minnesota men were indicted on charges of assisting foreign terrorism for recruiting up to twenty other U.S. residents of Somali descent to fight on the side of insurgents in Somalia.  At least four have died since October.

7/13/09 The US Court of Appeals ruled that the anti-crime checkpoints set up by Washington DC police last summer to control access to a high-crime neighborhood were unconstitutional.

7/13/09 While hospital records indicated that victim rape exam requests climbed, New Orleans PD reported that rapes fell nearly fifty percent during 2007-2008.  Officers routinely downgrade alleged sex assaults to noncriminal “complaints,” supposedly because victims won’t follow through.

7/11/09 A Congressionally-mandated Government investigation revealed that a program authorizing warrantless interception of international communications was justified with exaggerations and proved far less useful in the fight against terrorism than its proponents claim. Report

7/11/09 In Prospect Heights, Illinois, a town of 17,000, layoffs that forced the chief and commanders to go on patrol have so short-staffed the department that its police station is closing to the public altogether.

7/9/09 “Operation Falcon,” a month-long Federal-local sweep of fugitives in Southern California netted 1,005 arrests, clearing 1369 warrants, including 21 for murder and 122 for sex crimes.  US Marshals regularly coordinate similar events throughout the U.S.

7/9/09 With counties balking at holding State inmates and a lack of prison space, California is screening revoked parolees and authorizing early releases. Strict enforcement of parole conditions has been a major cause of prison and jail overcrowding in the financially beleaguered state.

7/8/09 So far this year twelve States have tried and failed to pass laws allowing students with CCW permits to carry concealed weapons on campus. Only Utah currently prohibits colleges from regulating student gun carry.

7/8/09 The woman who allegedly shot and killed former football player Steve McNair, then committed suicide, was 20, too young to buy the gun at a store. Instead she bought it from another private person only two days before the shooting.

7/8/09 Internal investigators believe that an imprisoned Customs and Border Protection agent and two others recently arrested for helping run drug loads through their posts had been specifically recruited to join CBP by the Cartels.

7/7/09 New Mexico requires convicted drunk drivers to install ignition interlocks.  These devices, into which drivers blow to prove they’re sober, have reportedly reduced the state’s alcohol-related traffic deaths. Still, 70 percent of drunks who kill have never been previously convicted of DUI.

7/6/09 North Carolina police officers responding to an early morning residential burglary call shot and killed Patrick Burris, a recent parolee suspected of murdering five South Carolina residents in late June and early July. One officer was wounded in the foot.

7/6/09 In two states -- Oregon and Louisiana -- only ten jurors need agree to reach a verdict.  Whether that’s permissible is the subject of an appeal to the Supreme Court, which has been asked to review the 10-2 conviction of an Oregon man serving 17 years for sexually abusing his daughter.

7/6/09 In the wake of a homicide under-reporting scandal Detroit fires police chief James Barren, a 31-year veteran in office only eight months, replacing him with Warren Evans, formerly Wayne County Sheriff.   Evans pledges to encourage citizens to report crime and to drive down homicides.

7/5/09 Demography (46:2, May 2009) reports that one in four black children born in 1990 had a parent in prison. For white children it’s one in 25. For those born in 1978 the figures are one in seven and one in forty.  Proportions are much worse for the poor and the poorly educated.

7/5/09 Reversing a prior decision (see 6/20) Detroit PD added 33 homicides it labeled as justifiable, two stabbing deaths previously classified as undetermined and an incorrectly labeled suicide to its 2008 homicide total, raising it to 375.

7/4/09 Discovery of large quantities of prescription drugs at Neverland, including a powerful hospital-use-only anesthetic, has spurred a probe by LAPD, the California Attorney General and DEA.  Many bottles also lacked labels, while others bore Michael Jackson’s pseudonyms.

7/2/09 Worried that Federal law had been misapplied, a Federal judge announced his intention to set aside the conviction of Lori Drew, whose MySpace hoax precipitated the suicide of a troubled teen girl who was supposedly defaming her daughter. Prior posting

7/2/09 Closing its investigation, a panel of judges admonished Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski for embarrassing the judiciary and potentially compromising a criminal obscenity trial over which he was presiding by storing sexually offensive materials on a home server whose files were open to downloading over the Internet.  Order   Prior Posting

7/2/09 Mandated to fully staff courtrooms and jails, the Sacramento Sheriff’s office plans to make up a huge budget deficit by slashing patrol 74 percent and eliminating helicopters and specialized units. Things would be even worse if the deputies’ union had not agreed to a partial salary freeze.

7/1/09 A serious wreck is spurring Dallas County to reexamine its policy of allowing officers to pursue fleeing traffic violators. That’s not allowed in the city: since 2006 its cops have only been permitted to chase violent felons.

7/1/09 Ruling in Friedman v. Boucher, the Ninth Circuit held that a warrantless, forcible intrusion into a body cavity (the mouth) to collect DNA from a pre-trial detainee violates the Fourth Amendment.

6/30/09 Seven Detroit teens, ages 14-17, were shot near a school, leaving three critical.  At least one was struck multiple times.  Their assailants, with whom some of the victims may have fought on a previous day, drove off in a minivan.

6/30/09 Battling to close hundreds of pot dispensaries that sprang up while an unenforced moratorium was in effect, the Los Angeles City Council voted to deny the first batch an exemption. Outraged owners, lawyers and activists promised to continue the fight.

6/30/09 Bloodhounds have been used to associate suspects with crime scenes based on scents supposedly left behind on objects. But recent and past examples where innocent persons were arrested and even convicted based in part on scent evidence has brought its accuracy into doubt.

6/29/09 Only one out of sixteen Ninth Circuit decisions reviewed during this Supreme Court term survived unscathed. While the Court normally overturns 76% of appeals court decisions, the Ninth’s batting average is consistently among the worst.  Why?  Liberal justices, for one.

6/29/09 Memphis says its crime stats only look bad because, unlike many other cities, it adheres to the most stringent FBI standards, counting multiple crimes that take place during a single incident and reporting thefts under $1,000, which New York City doesn’t.

6/29/09 Confessed swindler Bernard Madoff, responsible for the largest Ponzi scheme in history, got the maximum sentence of 150 years in Federal prison. His lawyers had asked for 12; Federal probation, which completed a pre-sentence investigation, 50.

6/28/09 A shooting outside an east Los Angeles pizza parlor where bikers were having a party left three persons dead and seven wounded. The motive is unknown.

6/28/09 Two-hundred persons, many openly carrying guns, attended a Louisville church service that advocated an armed citizenry. Among those present were some members of a citizen militia.  But some religious leaders objected, criticizing the pastor for celebrating guns.

6/25/09 To celebrate the right to openly carry firearms Louisville (Ky.) Pastor Ken Pagano has asked his flock to bring a gun to church on Saturday, June 27th.  Deputies will be on hand, but only to make sure that weapons are unloaded and handled safely.

6/25/09 Fifty-three persons, including doctors and owners of medical clinics, were arrested for billing Medicare for treatments that were never performed.  Their alleged “patients,” actually ordinary citizens, were paid for allowing their ID numbers to be used.

6/25/09 The “categorically extreme intrusiveness” of a strip search requires that school authorities have reasonable suspicion that a student secreted contraband in their underwear before looking, the Supreme Court ruled.  Decision

6/24/09 Police and federal agents arrested a Los Angeles photo shop owner for helping make and sell forged ID documents. His business, “Joy Photo,” is located in a central-city area notorious for the open and blatant sales of forged driver licenses, green cards and social security cards.

6/24/09 Twenty-four Los Angeles-area members of the MS-13 gang, including the director of a city-funded anti-gang group, were hit with a Federal racketeering indictment.  They are charged with seven murders and eight murder conspiracies, including plans to kill an LAPD anti-gang detective.

6/23/09 Cartels are recruiting teenagers in American border towns to carry out assassinations. Two  youths serving life terms in Texas for multiple murders are profiled in the New York Times.

6/23/09 DEA pilots complain that they are being illegally forced to go to Afghanistan on pain of losing their flight status.  A lack of safety equipment is also an issue.  DEA replies that pilots get adequate gear and that those who don’t want to go are free to revert to land-based jobs.

6/23/09 A funding shortage has forced the L.A. County Sheriff to suspend attempts to catch up on a backlog of several thousand untested rape kits. Meanwhile the California State lab faces potential cutbacks that could nearly shut down its DNA testing services altogether.

6/22/09 “Shaken baby syndrome”, a diagnosis that has sent many to prison, may be fundamentally flawed. In one example, Audrey Edmonds, 45, served eleven years for murdering a 7-year old. She was freed in 2008 after a former advocate of the syndrome testified that he was “embarrassed” to have ever claimed that shaking would produce a unique medical signature.

6/22/09 Lancaster, PA, a town of 55,000 best known for its Amish neighbors will soon be blanketed with 165 surveillance cameras centrally manned by citizen volunteers. Cameras already in place have been credited with a number arrests, mostly for minor offenses.

6/22/09 San Francisco D.A. Kamala Harris oversaw a program that trained drug felons, including illegal aliens, for jobs.  Those who did well could have their records expunged. Then an illegal nearly killed someone. Now the D.A., who wants to run for Attorney General, must explain why.

6/21/09 A wanted person hit by a vehicle-mounted automated license plate reader led Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies to Oklahoma murder fugitive Liza Gonzales, recently profiled in “America’s Most Wanted.”

6/20/09 Texas financier R. Allen Stanford, three employees and the Antiguan regulator he allegedly bribed were indicted for stealing $7 billion from investors who bought high-yield, supposedly ultra-secure CD’s from Stanford’s Antiguan bank. But the CD’s were mostly backed by thin air.

6/20/09 Rejecting the FBI’s definition of “homicide” as a purposeful killing, Detroit PD insists on leaving out 22 deaths it classified as self-defense in 2008 from its homicide totals. Several cases were also downgraded by the medical examiner, from homicide to suicide and “undetermined.”

6/19/09 National homicide data show that killings peak during the summer, especially on weekend nights.  According to a SUNY criminologist, the reason comes from social routines: that’s when people are most likely to go out to drink, do drugs and party.

6/18/09 Nearly half (23) the State Attorneys General signed a letter addressed to US Attorney General Eric Holder stating that an assault weapons ban would needlessly infringe on citizen rights

6/18/09 To combat straw purchase Pennsylvania cities are passing ordinances that require prompt reporting of gun thefts and keep persons who don’t from claiming that’s what happened when guns they bought are used in crimes. Naturally, the NRA is livid.

6/18/09 According to a study by the Violence Policy Center, States with high rates of gun ownership and weak gun laws have the highest gun death rates.

6/18/09 Baltimore PD is accused of fudging crime stat’s, counting shootings with multiple victims as a single crime and minimizing the value of stolen property to keep offenses under the felony threshold. Fingers are also pointed at the coroner for classifying homicides as “undetermined.”

6/18/09 In a 5-4 decision the Supreme Court held that there is no Federal Constitutional right to have police send in evidence for post-conviction DNA testing, even if the defendant pays. Opinion

6/18/09 A GAO study concludes that virtually all guns used in Mexican drug violence originate from the U.S.  Report

6/13/09 Proud to be a sanctuary, San Francisco wasn’t reporting illegal aliens who committed serious crimes to Immigration. Pressures from citizens and the Feds changed that. But now there’s a move to only report those who are convicted of felonies, not simply arrested.

6/12/09 Cities and counties are strongly protesting plans to eliminate a Federal program that provides reimbursements for housing illegal immigrants who are arrested for local crimes. On the chopping block through four budget cycles, these grants might finally be doomed.

6/10/09 Wielding a rifle, white supremacist James W. von Brunn, 88 (right), self-styled guru of the “Holy Western Empire” burst into the D.C. Holocaust Museum and shot and killed a guard.  Von Brunn was critically wounded. In the 80’s he served six and a half years for trying to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve. HWE homepage   Biography

6/10/09 Chastizing Federal prosecutors for their belated discovery of exculpatory evidence, a judge released imprisoned Los Angeles supermarket mogul George Torres.  Key racketeering charges were dropped when interview tapes surfaced suggesting that a detective had coached witnesses.

6/10/09 Driving drunk, a 66-year old Colorado man with 18 DUI arrests crashed his vehicle, killing his ex-wife.  Colorado lacks felony laws for DUI repeaters.  The man, who had served brief prison terms for drug possession and driving while revoked got 48 years for vehicular homicide.

6/10/09 Jeffrey Deskovic, exonerated by DNA after serving 16 years for a rape/murder he didn’t commit, is still angry at Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, who as an appeals judge helped reject his habeas application because it was filed four days late.

6/9/09 Ahmed Ghailani, a one-time inmate at secret CIA prisons who wound up at Guantanamo pled not guilty in Manhattan Federal court to participating in a conspiracy to bomb American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.  He was captured in 2004.

6/9/09 A matched-pairs evaluation of Chicago’s Project Ceasefire, which uses street caseworkers to interact directly with gang members, demonstrated significantly greater declines in violence in a majority of program versus non-program comparison areas.

6/9/09 With nonfatal shootings up nearly fifty percent, Boston probation and police dusted off a strategy from the 90’s, bringing together scores of gang members from across the city to warn them to behave or risk long prison terms.

6/8/09 Alabama has no public defenders and pays appointed counsel “a pittance.” One consequence -- unqualified lawyers handling death penalty cases -- is at the heart of Wood v. Allen (Supreme Court, no. 08-9156, cert. granted 5/18/09).

6/8/09 Two top Baltimore PD commanders were relieved of duty after a stormy Compstat meeting in which a Deputy Commissioner criticized their precinct’s inept response to street crime, including classifying a strong-arm robbery as a non-criminal incident.

6/7/09 LAPD has started enforcing a massive injunction against six gangs that have terrorized South Los Angeles.  While many citizens favor the approach, some, including some local activists, complain that with violence already falling the heavy-handedness is counterproductive.

6/7/09 E-mails and memos prepared by DOJ lawyers during the Bush administration indicate that even those who warned against using waterboarding and other extreme techniques rendered opinions agreeing that the measures were legal.

6/6/09 Binding over a transit cop for trial on murder charges, a judge said that he didn’t believe the officer’s claim that he mistakenly shot an allegedly unruly passenger with his pistol instead of a Taser. Related posting

6/6/09 After surreptitiously gathering DNA evidence, LAPD cold-case homicide detectives arrested a veteran LAPD art-theft detective for the 1986 murder of her former lover’s wife

6/5/09 Requesting their release from prison, the DOJ announced that the Federal convictions of former Alaska State legislators Pete Kott and Vic Kohring had been tainted by the same misconduct -- failure to disclose exculpatory evidence -- that caused the collapse of the Ted Stevens case.

6/4/09 With more than thirty years on the job Cuyahoga County Sheriff Gerald McFaul didn’t resign because he wanted to. He left because a local reporter exposed his alleged misdeeds, ranging from working one day a week to giving donors rich contracts.  State agents are now investigating.

6/4/09 According to the Wayne County prosecutor, Detroit had 100 more murders in 2008 than it reported to the FBI. Agreeing there was an undercount, although of a lesser magnitude, Police Chief James Barren said it was due to failure to reclassify incidents that began as woundings.

6/3/09 Upholding a Chicago law that bans handguns, the 7th. Circuit held that the Second Amendment only constrains Federal regulation (the Supreme Court ruling that extends an individual right to guns was in a D.C., hence Federal case.)

6/3/09 Awaiting a “long shot” petition to the Supreme Court, Troy Davis faces execution for the 1989 killing of a police officer.  His appeal rests on witness recantations, an approach that a Federal appeals court rejected.  Now it’s up to a newly elected D.A. to decide whether to reopen the case.

6/2/09 Chicago police officer Alejandro Valadez was shot and killed by rounds fired from a passing car as he and his partner, both working plainclothes, were investigating the location where rival gang members had traded gunfire.

6/1/09 FBI data indicates that except for a slight uptick in property crime in the Northeast, crime fell throughout the U.S in 2008. Nationwide violent crime decreased 2.5% and property crime fell 1.6%. Violent crime in Los Angeles fell 4.5% and murders 2.8%, from 395 to 384. In New York City violent crime decreased 4% but murders increased 5.4%, from 496 to 523. Data tables

5/31/09 Looking to solve a 30-year old string of rape/murders in south Los Angeles, detectives took a mouth swab from John Thomas, 72, one of the many sex registrants whose DNA profile was not in the State database. Thomas, it turns out, didn’t match that case. But he did match another long-unsolved string of sex killings in West L.A.

5/30/09 Thanks to aggressive marketing by Mexican cartels, often with the aid of illegal immigrants, an expanding supply of the drug is making its way beyond the inner cities into Middle America, bringing with it its lethal consequences.

5/29/09 Phil Spector was sentenced to nineteen years to life for murdering actress Lana Clarkson nearly six years ago. Evidence at both trials (the first jury hung) demonstrated that he had repeatedly threatened women with guns.

5/29/09 Gun in hand, chasing a man who broke into his parked car, an off-duty NYPD officer is confronted by other cops.  As he turns towards them one opens fire, shooting him dead.

5/28/09 While violence is generally down in Chicago, gang violence is besetting its public schools, with thirty-six students murdered thus far this year, mostly with guns.  “Scores” more have been wounded, and there are fears that the toll will rise precipitously during the summer months.

5/28/09 In a major switch from the CIA/rendition/black ops approach to fighting overseas terrorists, the Obama administration intends to send FBI agents to take charge of investigations and collect evidence legally, with a view to prosecuting defendants in Federal court.

5/28/09 After chasing off an armed robber and shooting the robber’s unarmed companion in the head, an Oklahoma City pharmacist got another gun, went to where the shot man lay and emptied the weapon into his chest, killing him.  Arguing that only the first shot was justified, prosecutors charged the pharmacist with murder. Graphic video

5/27/09 To help plug a $24 billion shortfall California Governor Schwarzenegger is moving to end all prison substance abuse, educational and training programs and release inmates doing time for nonviolent sentences one year early.  The savings?  Nearly $1 billion.

5/27/09 Raised in public housing in the Bronx, Sonia Sotomayor, Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court, originally intended to go into law enforcement. Sidetracked by diabetes, she got a law degree and joined the D.A.’s office, then served at a private firm.  Sotomayor was appointed a Federal trial judge in 1992 and was elevated to the Federal appeals bench in New York six years later.

5/26/09 Reversing precedent, the Supreme Court ruled that police may question persons who are represented by counsel as long as they comply with Miranda and related decisions. Decision

5/25/09 A Baltimore SWAT officer serving as a National Guard Captain in Afghanistan is himself under investigation for urging the release of a suspected militant whom he believes was mistakenly identified and is wrongly imprisoned.

5/22/09 More than a year after the event, five Birmingham (Ala.) police officers were fired for kicking and beating a suspect with a club and fists after a 22-minute pursuit. Their actions, which were originally covered up, are the subject of local and Federal investigations. Dashcam video

5/22/09 President Obama outlined an approach to close Gitmo and give detainees a measure of due process. Some would be released to other countries.  Some would be tried in U.S. courts, others in military tribunals where credible hearsay could be used. Those who can’t be tried because evidence was tainted but are too dangerous to release would be held indefinitely but receive periodic reviews.

5/22/09 Following a four-year investigation prompted by the murder of a Sheriff’s deputy, a Federal racketeering indictment, reportedly the largest of its kind in history, charged 147 members of the South Los Angeles County Varrios street gang with running a criminal enterprise that trafficked in narcotics and guns and tried to drive out black residents.

5/21/09 Skyrocketing pension costs, including the need to make up for investment losses, are forcing Los Angeles to the brink, warns ex-police chief, now council member Bernard Parks.  Only problem is, his pension ($265,090) tops the list, and it’s on top of his present $178,789 salary.  Nearly six-hundred retired city officials make over $100,000 for not showing up, records say.

5/21/09 In a plot a federal agent described as “aspirational” four New York men were arrested for planting dud bombs at two Jewish synagogues.  The explosives, which they thought were live, were provided by an FBI informer who said the men also wanted to shoot down aircraft.

5/20/09 A study commissioned by the LAPD indicates that most residents feel officers are doing a good job. Car stops, field interviews and arrests have also increased while the department has been under DOJ supervision, laying to rest fears that the opposite would prove true.

5/20/09 Facing a $90 million deficit Los Angeles County’s Superior Courts will immediately start furloughing employees one day each month.  Unless finances improve, as many as twenty-five percent of its workers could wind up out of a job.

5/19/09 Democratic support for a resurgent gun rights movement has apparently tipped the scales in favor of a bill that would authorize private citizens to carry concealed and/or loaded firearms into a national park as long as they can legally do so in the State(s) where the park is located.

5/19/09 As it prepares to institute involuntary furloughs and fire 1,200 employees, Los Angeles has put aside the goal of a 10,000 officer force.  However, 480 cops who are expected to leave in the coming year will be replaced.

5/18/09 Do State laws that allow pot to be prescribed for medical use conflict with Federal law? With the Supreme Court refusing to hear two counties’ challenge to California’s medical marijuana laws, a definitive answer will have to wait.

5/18/09 Rejecting a deportee’s lawsuit, the Supreme Court ruled that a disparate impact on Muslim men is insufficient to show that former Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller intended to discriminate when they ordered roundups of possible terrorists after 9/11.

5/17/09 The New York Times reports that many prosecutors routinely try to prevent post-conviction DNA testing, even if a convicted person is willing to pay, and even in jurisdictions that have passed laws that explicitly provide for the tests.

5/17/09 Attorney generals from a dozen States claim that major investment firms got large chunks of money from State pension funds by passing bribes to Government officials through shadowy  “placement agents” who insulated themselves with intermediaries and shell companies.

5/15/09 Police are “confident” they will identify the killer(s) who buried the bodies of twelve women and a fetus on a mesa outside Albuquerque.  Authorities have identified seven adult victims, each a prostitute or drug addict whom family members reported missing between 2001 and 2006.

5/14/09 In a blow for State’s rights, a new Montana law explicitly rejects Federal authority over gun manufacturers that make and sell firearms only within the State. A battle with ATF and eventual Supreme Court ruling are anticipated. But first, a gun maker will have to set up shop.

5/13/09 Orange County (Calif.) D.A. Tony Rackauckas accused deputies of lying by “softening” their accounts between their Grand Jury appearances and their testimony at a colleague’s trial for misusing a Taser, leading to an 11-1 (for acquittal) hung jury.  Rackauckas said there wasn’t enough evidence to charge the deputies but urged that those who lied be fired.

5/13/09 FBI preliminary statistics indicate that forty-one law enforcement officers were violently murdered in 2008, a 29 percent drop from 2007 when fifty-eight were killed.  Thirty-five (85%) were slain with firearms. The number of officers killed in accidents also fell, from 83 to 67.

5/12/09 After two hung juries, five men accused of plotting to blow up Chicago’s Sears Tower and Florida FBI facilities were convicted of terrorism conspiracy in Miami Federal court.  A sixth was acquitted.  Critics charged that the case had been manufactured by well-paid FBI informers.

5/12/09 To help counter gun trafficking, President Obama’s 2010 budget reinstates the ability of police to access information about the origins of recovered guns other than those being traced. However, other restrictive provisions of the Tiahrt Amendment remain in place.

5/11/09 A multi-billion dollar budget shortfall is forcing California to consider releasing 38,000 nonviolent inmates six months early and redirecting persons sentenced to prison on “wobblers” (crimes that can be charged either as misdemeanors or felonies) to county jail.

5/10/09 Far from being the relatively benign technique that the Government claims, sleep deprivation, as applied by the C.I.A., was unbearably brutal, second in harshness only to the dreaded waterboarding.

5/8/09 Only two days after an angry Federal judge told jurors to take everything that the Government’s key witness said with a grain of salt it took them only two days to come back with judgments of acquittal. It seems that prosecutors had held back a number of possibly exculpatory secrets, including the fact that the man had been promised immunity.

5/7/09 In a move that could cost Los Angeles millions in back pay, a Federal judge ruled that officers must be compensated for the 15 minutes they spend before each shift putting on their uniforms. “This is a huge deal,” said the president of the L.A. Protective League, the police union.

5/6/09 A Justice Department report says that more than a third of those on the terror watch list don’t belong there, while many bonafide terrorism suspects are missing.  With more than a million names, keeping the list accurate presents a major challenge.

5/6/09 Following the murder of a female erotic services provider in a Boston hotel, attorneys general from South Carolina and Connecticut are threatening to prosecute Craig’s List CEO Jim Buckmaster for obscenity and prostitution unless he promptly shuts down ads that in their opinion amount to “online brothels.”

5/6/09 Noting that only 24 percent of felony arrests lead to a felony conviction, and a measly 13 percent of arrests for violent felonies lead to an equivalent conviction, the New Orleans Crime Commission recommends that NOPD redirect its attention from making minor arrests to collecting evidence of serious crime.

5/5/09 Plans to use a computerized risk-assessment tool to thin the ranks of California’s parolees has drawn objections from a high-ranking LAPD officer and police union officials, who fear that the approach is much more motivated by budgetary concerns than public safety.

5/4/09 In a case with wide applicability to illegal immigrants, the Supreme Court ruled that using another person’s social security number cannot be charged as a Federal felony unless there is proof that the accused knew that the number belonged to someone else.

5/4/09 For six months two rural Pennsylvania sisters, ages 65 and 70, had been dealing $10,000 worth of heroin each week at the trailer park where they lived.  They were arrested along with their supplier when he showed up to collect $27,000 for a prior delivery.

5/2/09 Claims by police chief Bratton and Mayor Villaraigosa that Los Angeles is as safe as it has been since the 1950’s are drawing flak. Former mayoral candidate Walter Moore finds the claim simply incredible, while a renowned USC professor and gang-crime expert calls it silly.  “You’re not listening to a chief of police,” he says, “you’re listening to a politician.”

5/1/09 The chief justice of New York’s top court, The Court of Appeals, is impaneling a permanent commission to study the causes of wrongful conviction and recommend corrective measures. The commission, which will base its work on exonerations in New York and elsewhere, will be led by a jurist and a district attorney.

5/1/09 Baltimore’s Chief insists patrol is fully staffed. But hidden shortages due to training, special assignments, injuries and military service routinely reduce actual coverage by as much as one-third, forcing officers to provide only the barest service as they rush from call to call.

4/31/09 Former California prison inmate Kevin James, recently sentenced to sixteen years on his plea to Federal terrorism conspiracy charges, went on camera with an independent investigative journalist. A small portion of the interview is available on You Tube.

4/30/09 A young Georgian man armed with a pistol roamed an Azerbaijan campus and shot and killed twelve persons, including a guard, students and workers before turning the gun on himself.  At least another dozen were wounded. Witnesses say he aimed at the head.

4/30/09 LAPD says that DNA matches a 72-year old L.A. man to four rape murders in 1975-76 and one in 1986. The suspect, who was recently charged in two of these killings, has been twice convicted of sexual assault.  He is being investigated for up to 25 other rape/murders that occurred in two strings a decade apart.

4/29/09 Slamming the Maywood Police Department for hiring unqualified cops, using excessive force and detaining citizens without cause, California Attorney General Jerry Brown presented a list of needed reforms and said he would apply for a court order to enforce his demands.  Report

4/29/09 A jailhouse informer got a defendant represented by a lawyer to confess. The Supreme Court held that his statements, while not admissible to prove the crime, could be used to impeach his testimony on the stand.

4/29/09 Ruling that Alameda County could ban gun shows on county property, the Ninth Circuit held that Heller, which made gun possession an individual right, was intended to allow having guns in homes for self-protection, while public property fell within Heller’s “sensitive place” exception.

4/28/09 In the criminal trial of mining executives who allegedly allowed a town to be contaminated by asbestos, a Federal judge accused prosecutors of withholding evidence favorable to the defense, including making a promise of immunity to their star witness in exchange for his cooperation.

4/28/09 Stung by a judge’s dismissal of homicide charges against a bail jumper who lived openly for twenty years but was not actively pursued, the Harris County (Tex.) D.A.’s office is reviewing four decade’s worth of murder cases. Six-hundred suspects are still at large, most of whom were never arrested because they left the area and no one bothered to look for them.

4/27/09 As an FBI informer Craig Monteilh lured Orange County (Calif.) Muslim men to gyms where he tried to get them to talk about terrorism.  Within a year his behavior raised red flags in the Islamic community and he was dropped by the FBI.  Now he’s suing for not getting $100,000 and being placed in a witness protection program, like he was supposedly promised.

4/27/09 After reading aloud from a book entitled “The Importance of Being Honest,” Federal Judge Andrew Guilford sentenced ex-Orange County (Calif.) sheriff Mike Carona to 5 1/2 years in Federal prison for witness tampering.  He also levied a $125,000 fine. Carona had previously rejoiced over not being found guilty on the more serious charges of conspiracy and mail fraud.

4/27/09 In the midst of a recession and with fewer officers to boot, crime in New York City has dropped to its lowest level in forty years.  First-quarter stat’s show an overall decline of 13.5 percent, with homicides falling from 116 to 89.  Police credit “working smarter,” closely tracking crime patterns and pouring officers into high-crime areas.

4/26/09 The author of a just-released study of the Columbine massacre said that there is no such thing as a school shooter “profile.” Harris and Klebold were not, as was widely reported, either loners or socially inept, and the timing of their rampage had nothing to do with Hitler’s birthday. But like most shooters, they had talked about their plans in advance. Only thing is, no one listened.

4/24/09 David Kofoed, the highly-regarded chief of Omaha’s county CSI unit was charged with a State felony for allegedly planting a blood drop in a 2006 double murder, leading to the jailing of two innocent men. Kofoed’s lawyer expects that his client will soon be indicted by the Feds.

4/24/09 An L.A. Sheriff’s deputy said he detained a man and found cocaine after a license plate check turned up warrants at the registration address.  But the defense lawyer (herself a former deputy) used dispatch records to prove the plate was run much later.  The deputy has been relieved of duty and charged with felony perjury.

4/24/09 “We're deeply concerned. The numbers are disturbing.”  So says Customs and Border Protection as it reports that fourteen border officers have been arrested so far this year for taking bribes. For 2008 the total was twenty-one.

4/24/09 In 2005 Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), a member of the House Intelligence committee, was caught on an NSA wiretap promising an Israeli spy that she would intervene on behalf of two Israeli lobbyists charged with espionage. The C.I.A. and D.O.J. differed on what to do.  What happened?

4/22/09 Security cameras led to 1,700 arrests in two years according to Dallas police. But with 82 downtown, 14 in an urban park and more on the way, costs are high. Monitoring a bank of 25 runs $250,000 per year, and police ask that neighborhoods that want their own shoulder the costs.

4/21/09 Rejecting a search incident to an arrest for driving on a suspended license, the Supreme Court ruled that police may search a vehicle’s passenger compartment only if the person arrested might access it during the search, or if officers reasonably believe it contains evidence of the crime underlying the arrest.  (Arizona v. Gant, no. 07-542, 4/21/09).

4/20/09 Official documents reveal that the C.I.A. waterboarded a suspected Al Qaeda operative 83 times in August 2002, and another 183 times in March 2003. By 2007 one of the men had undergone so much “harsh” interrogation that his handlers worried they might have overstepped.

4/20/09 Philadelphia PD’s most prolific narcotics informer, whose work has led to scores of convictions, says that drug buys he made in support of dozens of search warrants didn’t happen, and that police knew it.  Twelve officers are implicated; the FBI is investigating.

4/18/09 According to the SEC, Steven Rattner, the man Obama appointed to rescue the car industry, authorized his private equity firm to pay more than $1 million to a shadowy company that figures in a scheme by top New York state officials to direct investments from their State’s incredibly rich pension fund to firms willing to make payoffs.

4/18/09 NYC mayoral aides wanted an illegal gun dealer to speak at Congressional hearings. They found David Winfield, out on bail after ATF caught him bringing loads of guns into the city. The Feds refused to help, but Winfield testified anyway and did a nice job. When his sentencing rolled around the city lobbied the judge for leniency. Winfield got probation; the Feds got furious.

4/17/09 Speaking from Mexico, President Obama encouraged Congress to ratify an international weapons trafficking treaty.  He also pressed for better enforcement of existing gun laws, saying that while he supported reinstating the assault weapons ban, doing so wouldn’t be easy.

4/17/09 DOJ released explicit memos drafted in 2002 and 2005 by its Office of Legal Counsel that authorized the C.I.A. to use harsh interrogation techniques including physical strikes, sleep deprivation and waterboarding on terrorism suspects.  Through complex legal gymnastics none were found to violate the law or the Geneva conventions.

4/17/09 Packing two guns, a joke-cracking 50-year old pharmacy technician known as “the sweetest guy” inexplicably shot and killed two supervisors at a Long Beach (Calif.) medical center and then took his own life. Although there were rumors of coming layoffs there was no indication that his job was imperiled. He was married, with four children.

4/16/09 Thousands of cities applied for funds from the Federal stimulus program, some to expand police forces, others to avoid layoffs. Although many communities will get their wish, they must commit to keep officers on for at least four years, while the funding is only for three.

4/16/09 Laws limit warrantless eavesdropping to international communications where the target is outside the U.S.  But DOJ admits that due in part to technical issues, massive grabs of communications within the U.S. have continued. Another rumored abuse was a scheme to intercept a congressman’s communications while the legislator was on an official overseas trip.

4/16/09 According to an oversight body seventy civilian and sworn employees of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department were arrested for off-duty incidents in 2008, mostly alcohol-related. Several drunk deputies displayed firearms; one accidentally shot a relative.  Meanwhile the deputies’ union is contesting the Sheriff’s move to prohibit deputies under the influence from carrying firearms.

4/15/09 Although a disproportionate number of blacks are in prison for drug offenses, between 1999-2005 their numbers fell 22 percent, while imprisoned whites increased 43 percent. Some of the change might be due to a reduced use of crack cocaine and increased use of methamphetamine.

4/15/09 Why did the jury hang during Spector’s first trial?  A “persnickety” foreman, according to prosecutors.  Both sides agree that this time jurors were a real team.  “I don't think these people were willing to fight each other,” Spector’s lawyer said. “They wanted to come to a consensus.”

4/14/09 Defense lawyers claim that prosecutors who accused ex-astronaut Lisa Nowak with assaulting and trying to kidnap a romantic competitor failed to disclose that the alleged victim denied being pepper sprayed as the charges allege.

4/14/09 A county judge ruled that Colorado authorities had insufficient probable cause to seize 5,000 files from a tax preparer’s office while searching for evidence of identity theft.  More than 1,300 suspected illegal immigrants were allegedly found to be using another person’s social security number.

4/13/09 Skipping over manslaughter, which was not an option in the first trial, a Los Angeles jury convicted music producer Phil Spector, 69 of second-degree murder in the February 2003 shooting death of actress Lana Clarkson.  He faces a minimum of fifteen to life, plus three for using a gun.

4/12/09 A Bellaire (Tex.) police officer was charged with aggravated assault by a public servant for shooting and killing a man whose vehicle police mistakenly thought was stolen.  The victim, who had been ordered to the ground, was shot when he got up to protest the treatment of his mother.

4/11/09 A former Alabama medical examiner’s work in 100 murder cases is being reviewed after a panel of experts testified that a baby whose death led to the mother’s prosecution was stillborn and did not die, as a botched autopsy suggested, from suffocation. The examiner now serves as a chief medical examiner in another State.

4/11/09 Police arrested Tracy (Calif.) resident Melissa Huckaby, 28, a Sunday school teacher, after her suitcase was found in an irrigation pond. Inside was the body of eight-year old Sandra Cantu, whose disappearance two weeks earlier had sparked a widespread search.

4/9/09 Bemoaning that more emphasis was placed on spoiled pistachios than gun violence, the executive director of the National Conference of Mayors announced that mass shootings would be a focus of their forthcoming meeting. The NRA countered that now wasn’t the time for debate but “for the families and communities to grieve.”

4/7/09 Their budgets pinched by a weak economy, State courts are turning to fees and fines to stay in business. Florida sends those who don’t pay to jail, even if they say they’re too poor to spare the change.  How does it get around the Constitution? Not paying a fine violates a court order.

4/7/09 When a distraught woman called to have her grandson ejected from her apartment, a rookie 911 dispatcher asked if he had weapons. “Yes,” the woman replied, “they’re all legal.” But that information was never relayed to patrol.  Minutes later three Pittsburgh officers lay dead.

4/7/09 An extensive investigation by the International Red Cross concluded that U.S. medical personnel “grossly” violated ethical rules by helping the C.I.A. torture fourteen alleged terrorists who later wound up at Guantanamo. Related article

4/6/09 While terrified survivors huddled in the basement Binghamton police waited 45 minutes before entering the scene of last Friday’s massacre. As criticism mounts, medical examiners say that the 13 who were fatally wounded would have died even if promptly rescued.  Critical video

4/6/09 Among the duties of the additional 360 U.S. agents assigned to the southern border is something new: inspecting outbound traffic for guns and ammunition being smuggled to the cartels. Already intercepted: a load of grenades, gun parts and ammunition stolen from the U.S. military.

4/5/09 Trying to help police develop leads on hundreds of unsolved murders of women whose bodies were dumped along Interstate routes, FBI profilers are taking a close look at truckers.  A special database that helps connect geographically dispersed killings has already had some success.

4/5/09 Distraught over a failing marriage, a Washington father shot and killed his five children, ages 7 to 16, then took his own life.

4/4/09 Three Pittsburgh police officers were shot dead and at least two more were wounded responding to a reported domestic disturbance.  Numerous rounds of gunfire were exchanged.  The shooter, a local resident in his early twenties, was reportedly armed with an assault rifle and a pistol. He eventually surrendered.

4/3/09 A gunman wearing body armor and armed with .45 caliber and 9mm pistols opened fire inside an immigrant services clinic in Binghamton (NY), killing thirteen and wounding several others.  He shot himself dead. The shooter, a 42-year old Vietnamese immigrant, was reportedly despondent over losing his job and his poor language skills.  Both guns were registered in his name.

4/3/09 Rod Blagojevich, his brother and four others were Federally indicted for using the Governor’s office as a cash cow. Among the accusations was trying to sell the Senate seat vacated by President Obama, demanding that those wishing to do business with the State hire Blagojevich’s wife, a real-estate broker, and forcing elected officials, including now-White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to hold fund-raisers on pain of not having their projects funded.

4/2/09 Five months after an LAPD canine handler settled a sexual harassment lawsuit for $2.25 million, a Federal court jury awarded a female officer $2.3 million for retaliation after complaining of sexual harassment in 1996. An earlier verdict that resulted in no cash award was overturned because of juror misconduct.

4/1/09 Admitting that prosecutors had withheld exculpatory materials from the defense, Federal authorities asked a judge to void the convictions of former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, found guilty in 2008 of seven counts of corruption for not reporting goods and services he received from constituents. He will not be retried.

3/31/09   Olmedo Hidalgo, a New York City man wrongfully imprisoned for nearly 14 years in the infamous Palladium nightclub case, was awarded a settlement of $2.6 million.  His freeing was largely the work of a former prosecutor, Daniel Bibb, who had been brought in to review the case.

3/31/09 According to the Los Angeles Times Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano has decided to minimize workplace raids and concentrate immigration enforcement efforts on employers and criminal aliens.

3/30/09 Newsweek reports that President Obama’s ambition to reinstate the Federal assault weapons ban has been set aside in favor of a new, mutually beneficial partnership between Democratic legislators and the NRA, with the Dems avoiding flak from pro-gunners while raking in donations that are normally bestowed on the GOP.

3/30/09 Gunfire claimed the lives of six, including three children, and left a seventh person clinging to life in a Santa Clara (Calif.) home. Family violence is suspected.  Two handguns were recovered.

3/29/09 A 45-year old man armed with multiple weapons burst into a small-town North Carolina nursing home and opened fire, killing seven elderly patients and a nurse and wounding three others, including a police officer. The gunman was also shot.

3/28/09 Hundreds of Pennsylvania juveniles are having their records expunged as two corrupt judges who pocketed millions in kickbacks from a private developer in a years-long scheme to pack his detention centers with kids prepare to report to prison.

3/27/09 A year and a day.  That’s what famous Atlanta rapper T.I. got for sending his bodyguard to buy machineguns to add to his already illegal gun stash (he’s a convicted drug peddler.) After spending 1,000 hours speaking about the evils of drugs and guns and getting endorsements from famous people, a year is what Federal prosecutors said he deserved.  Some apparently don’t agree.

3/26/09 Even as FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledged that shifting half the FBI’s resources to antiterrorism, a move that many criticize as overkill, has affected the Bureau’s general criminal work, both he and Attorney General Eric Holder emphasized that their first priority is and will continue to be preventing another terrorist attack.

3/26/09 As New York prepares to repeal Rockefeller-era drug laws that set mandatory prison terms for hard drug use, some worry that any gains that resulted will be lost. Passed during a heroin epidemic, the laws stripped judges of discretion to impose treatment in lieu of imprisonment, an option that will now return.

3/25/09 Speaking in Mexico, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized U.S. failure to curb drug demand and curtail the weapons smuggling that “causes the deaths of [Mexican] police officers, soldiers and civilians.  She promised America would step up law enforcement efforts and furnish equipment including helicopters and night-vision goggles to Mexican police and the military.

3/25/09 Facing severe budgetary shortfalls, States across the U.S. are closing prisons, liberalizing release and parole policies and rethinking laws that imprison drug users and nonviolent offenders.

3/24/09 Stinging from criticism that it’s not doing enough to quell cartel-associated violence, the White House announced an initiative to combat gun smuggling to Mexico and drug importation into the U.S. by boosting the number of ATF, Customs and DEA agents assigned to the Mexican border.

3/23/09 A court criticized a Texas lawyer for twice missing deadlines to file Federal writs of habeas corpus on behalf of condemned inmates, thus depriving them of their last chance to appeal.  One client, Johnnie Johnson, was executed last month; the other, Keith Thurmond, is awaiting his turn. Other lawyers have made similar goofs, although none more than once.

3/23/09 An epidemic of home invasion in Tucson (Ariz.) reflects the infiltration of Mexican drug cartels into American cities, where they use guns and violence to settle disputes and expand their reach. Although a Texas request for National Guard troops to secure the border is unlikely to be approved, more agents and gun-detection equipment are being rushed in.

3/21/09 Four Oakland (Calif.) police officers were gunned down during two encounters with a wanted parolee. The incident began at a traffic stop, where the suspect reportedly used a handgun to fatally wound Sgt. Mark Dunakin and Officer John Hege, and ended in a residence, where the subject allegedly fired an assault rifle through a closet door at SWAT team Sergeants Daniel Sakai and Ervin Romans, mortally wounding both.  The assailant was also killed.

3/20/09 After a week of trial a Phoenix judge freed a gun dealer charged with selling guns to intermediaries knowing they would go to a Mexican cartel. Since the purchasers were legally qualified to buy guns, and there was no proof that those who wound up with them weren’t, the buyers’ statements affirming that the guns were for their own use weren’t a sufficiently “material” falsehood to establish a crime for which the dealer could be charged under State law.

3/19/09 German police investigating a huge jewelry robbery found DNA and fingerprints. Only problem is, they match identical male twins.  Lacking proof of which brother was involved, both were released.

3/19/09 Responding to criticism that the Feds are interfering with State medical marijuana laws, Attorney General Eric Holder said that DOJ will only go after dispensaries that act as a front for non-medical pot sales, thus violating both Federal and State laws.

3/19/09 “Faced with the reality that our system for imposing the death penalty can never be perfect, my conscience compels me to replace the death penalty with a solution that keeps society safe.” So said New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson as he signed a measure making New Mexico the fifteenth State to replace executions with life without parole.  Signing statement

3/18/09 David Friehling, an obscure accountant operating from a tiny office in rural New York was charged with helping Madoff fool investors by falsely certifying on audit reports that the cheat’s books were in order.

3/18/09 Ex-FBI man Jody Weis, Chicago’s embattled police superintendent, came out on the short end of a no-confidence vote by the officers’ union, which called for a chief who is respected by his subordinates and understands the city’s needs.

3/18/09 Mistrials are popping up all over as jurors hooked on Google and Twitter discuss cases with others and ignore instructions to confine their search for evidence to the courtroom.

3/17/09 Bills just signed in South Dakota and Mississippi requiring preservation of DNA evidence and post-conviction testing leave just four States --  Alabama, Alaska, Massachusetts and Oklahoma -- lacking such laws altogether.

3/17/09 A former Sheriff of Montague County (Texas), nine guards and four inmates were indicted for turning a jail into an “animal house” of drugs and sex. Ex-Sheriff Bill Keating already faces ten years in prison after pleading guilty for extorting sex from a local citizen by threatening her with jail.

3/16/09 Hundreds of felony cases were dismissed in Louisville last year because cops failed to attend court hearings.  Many missed their appearances on purpose; few were disciplined.

3/15/09 Yesterday’s torching of two adjacent homes, which left panicked residents fleeing, marks the twentieth deliberately-set fire this year and the sixty-eighth since February 2008 in Coatesville (Penn.), a town of 12,000 residents forty-six miles west of Philadelphia.  The string of arsons, which includes the burning of fifteen row homes in January, has so far led to six arrests.

3/14/09 “This case is nothing,” said a sheriff’s detective after he and a partner spent two days looking for a shooting victim and her sister. “The addresses and phone numbers of the victim were incorrect.”  Two USC student reporters who had already spoken with the victim pointed to cell phone numbers on the crime report.  One lent the cop a cell phone. Soon the police were in touch.

3/12/09 With recent indictments and convictions in six States, financial fraud, including Ponzi schemes and fraudulent home loans are the hot new areas of State and Federal law enforcement.  Plans are already afoot to significantly boost the S.E.C.’s budget and increase the number of FBI white-collar crime investigators.

3/12/09 Neither Madoff’s guilty plea to eleven counts of fraud, which will probably send him to prison for the rest of his life, nor his jailing (the judge revoked his bail) accomplish anything tangible for his victims, whose cumulative loss -- now estimated at $64.8 billion -- can’t even begin to be covered by the $1 billion thus far recovered by authorities.

3/11/09 Bursting into the high school near Stuttgart, Germany from which he graduated last year, a “normal” teen opened fire and killed nine students and three teachers. He ran off and killed three more before committing suicide.  Two police officers were among the wounded.  The shooter used a single weapon, a Beretta 9mm pistol registered to his father.

3/11/09 Tenaha, Texas is on a highway that leads to Louisiana gambling destinations. Civil rights attorneys pressing a lawsuit say that’s why town police like to stop black citizens driving through.  Hundreds have signed over their cash and valuables to the local D.A. on pain of being prosecuted on put-up charges of money laundering, or worse.

3/10/09 A gunman armed with Bushmaster and SKS rifles, a handgun and shotgun went on a shooting spree in southern Alabama, killing his mother and torching her house, then murdering nine others, reportedly including seven relatives, in a nearby town. Several others were wounded, including two police officers with whom he exchanged gunfire. He eventually committed suicide.

3/9/09 Seven top Bush administration lawyers, including former White House counsel, later A.G. Alberto Gonzales and successive chiefs of the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel face congressional and possible bar inquiries for promoting views that some say placed the President above the law.

3/7/09 Taking no position on the underlying constitutional question, the Supreme Court set aside a Federal appeals court ruling that allowed the indefinite detention of a legal U.S. resident in a military brig as an enemy combatant. Order

3/6/09 The $787 billion economic recovery package just signed into law includes $2 billion for State and local law enforcement. Some of that will be spent to keep newly hired police recruits from being laid off even before they can put on a badge.

3/5/09 Daniel Bibb, a Manhattan prosecutor who resigned after secretly helping defense lawyers prove that their clients had been wrongly convicted of murder was cleared by the New York State Bar, which found no cause to go after his law license. Some legal experts had criticized his actions; others found his commitment to justice courageous.  Prior post

3/4/09 In a just-released report, the GAO criticized Homeland Security for not assuring that police agencies which participate in the “287-g” program, empowering specially trained officers to arrest illegal immigrants, use it as intended: to get criminals and gangsters off the street, not for round-ups.

3/4/09 Concluding that the defense lawyer was incompetent and that physical and other evidence used to convict Bruce Lisker of murdering his mother in 1983 are indicative of innocence, a US Magistrate-Judge scolded authorities for prolonging his incarceration.  The original prosecutor now concedes there is “reasonable doubt” of guilt.

3/3/09 Memos now being released by the Justice Department reveal that the former Administration’s top legal minds endorsed the President’s constitutional authority to violate Federal detention, interrogation and surveillance laws in the name of national security.

3/3/09 The January 6 shooting death of gang unit officer Norman Smith has prompted Dallas PD to institute special training for officers who serve felony arrest warrants.  Wearing vests, carrying shields and using standard “knock and announce” procedures will be required; employing ruses to get suspects to answer the door will be prohibited.

3/2/09 The FBI is investigating allegations that the Washington Nationals and other teams paid kick-backs to shady Dominican recruiters and silently stood by as underage, steroid-addled prospects from one of the world’s poorest countries joined the ranks of American baseball.

3/1/09 An Orange County (Calif.) man revealed that the FBI paid him to infiltrate Orange County (Calif.) mosques in 2006 and 2007 and secretly record thousands of hours of audiotapes.  His work, which was condemned by the Muslim community, led to the recent arrest of Ahmadullah Niazi for immigration fraud and lying about his association with Al Qaeda.

2/27/09 After decades of frustration D.C. inched closer to being granted a vote in the House.  The only catch: a Senate demand that the nation’s capital repeal most of its gun laws, a step that the violence-ridden District is loath to take.

2/27/09 Ali  Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a Peoria (Ill.) resident arrested in 2001 as an Al Qaeda “sleeper agent” and held without charges in a military brig, was indicted and will be tried in Federal court. The move avoids forcing the Supreme Court to decide if legal American residents can be held indefinitely as enemy combatants.  Indictment

2/26/09 A gun dealer who moved to Phoenix to escape California’s tougher sales restrictions is being prosecuted for knowingly selling hundreds of guns to straw buyers working for Mexican drug cartels.

2/26/09 A Glendale (Calif.) man jailed for eight months on murder charges was awarded $1.3 million by Federal jurors who found that police, who arrested him based on eyewitness identification, ignored compelling evidence that he could not have been present when the crime occurred.

2/25/09 A two-year investigation of the violent Sinaloa drug cartel by American, Mexican and Canadian agents led to the arrest of nearly 800 suspects, including 48 in California, Arizona and Maryland, and the seizure of more than twenty tons of drugs.

2/25/09 Maryland, Montana and New Mexico are three of a handful of States that are seriously considering doing away with the death penalty not because it’s immoral but because the costs of administering it in cash-strapped times are just too high.

2/24/09 L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca’s proposal to shutter Men’s Central Jail and another facility if his $2.5 billion budget is cut by $62 million angered the Board of Supervisors, which pointed out that his administration and patrol budgets have increased more than 100 percent in the last decade.

2/23/09 Smarting from an officer’s confession that he and his partner planted evidence and stole money from a drug dealer, the St. Louis D.A. dropped 47 cases and is reviewing 986 convictions.

2/23/09 In a sharply worded editorial the Los Angeles Times strongly criticized Chief Bratton’s endorsements of Mayor Villaraigosa and City Attorney candidate Jack Weiss as running counter to warnings by the reformist Christopher Commission that police chiefs should steer clear of politics.

2/20/09 With the Court-appointed trustee unable to find evidence that Madoff actually purchased securities with his clients’ money and less than $1 billion recovered so far, a big question remains: where did the other $49 billion go?

2/20/09 According to ATF, most guns recovered in Mexican drug violence were originally bought at U.S. gun stores, often in states (such as Arizona and New Mexico) that place no limits on the number of handguns that can be purchased at one time.

2/19/09 Against the wishes of his mother, who believes that he is innocent, a nine-year old Arizona boy pled guilty to the rifle slayings of his father and his father’s friend last November, when he was eight. His plea to negligent homicide could result in probation, counseling and, possibly, a period of detention in a local institution.

2/18/09 Calling the adversarial process an inadequate gatekeeper, the National Academies issued a report that strongly criticized the state of forensic science. It recommended, among other things, making labs independent of the police and establishing a “National Academy of Forensic Science” that would promote research, set standards and certify experts. NAS Report

2/17/09 Stanford Financial, a large Texas firm that sold high-yield, uninsured CD’s issued by its own offshore bank was locked down by the S.E.C. after auditors couldn’t find $8 billion in assets the company claimed to possess.

2/16/09 Newsweek magazine claims that the former Administration held up releasing a report that severely criticized former DOJ lawyers who authorized waterboarding and other extreme interrogation techniques. The document’s current status is unknown.

2/15/09 Complaints that prosecutors are purposely excluding black jurors brought the trial of six Muslim men accused of plotting to blow up Chicago’s Sears Tower to a halt.  (There have been two mistrials, with a seventh defendant being acquitted early on.)

2/15/09 The killing of officer John Pawlowski, 25, a decorated cop shot by a career criminal last Friday marks Philadelphia PD’s eighth violent on-duty death in three years. Other officers who succumbed in the past six months include Timothy Simpson, killed by a drunk driver in November, and Sgt. Patrick McDonald, shot in September.

2/14/09 Consciousness-altering botanicals, some concentrated to yield intense hallucinogenic effects are readily available for purchase online. All are unregulated by the Feds. Salvia, which can reportedly produce LSD-type highs has been made illegal in a handful of States.

2/13/09 Hawthorne (Calif.), a working-class community of 86,000 paid $1 million to settle a claim that cops beat a man three years ago for interfering during the investigation of a noise complaint. Only problem is, city officials never interviewed the officers.  One was the Chief’s son.

2/13/09 Two Pennsylvania judges pled guilty in Federal court for a years-long arrangement in which they secretly received kickbacks for sending youths, many for exceedingly minor infractions, to two private prisons. As many as 5,000 sentencings will have to be re-examined.

2/12/09 Thanks to disputes between drug traffickers and its proximity to the border, Phoenix suffers from more kidnappings than anywhere else in America: nearly one reported snatch for ransom each day, with perhaps twice as many going unreported.

2/12/09 Despite protests that reality shows might mislead the public and distort what his officers do, L.A. County Sheriff Baca has just negotiated for his sixth, “Tech Force USA.”  Meanwhile the agency’s supposedly independent inspector general, who (along with this blog) strongly criticized “The Academy,” is keeping mum.

2/11/09 A New Orleans police team, one of several deployed to the city’s “hot spots”, is enduring stiff criticism after killing a man who supposedly fired first, for no apparent reason.  Meanwhile a noted John Jay police researcher criticizes using plainclothes officers to suppress crime.

2/11/09 DNA exonerations have become routine, but what if biological material is absent? That’s the focus of a new effort by private and University-affiliated clinics that plan to specialize in cases where bad evidence may have led to a wrongful conviction.

2/10/09 In a tentative ruling, a Federal three-judge panel ruled that to comply with Constitutional healthcare requirements California must reduce its prison population by 37,000 to 58,000 inmates, a process that may take several years.

2/9/09 With crime down 20 percent in targeted areas, and unchanged elsewhere, Lowell (Mass.) police credit the difference on a “Broken Windows” strategy of securing abandoned buildings, cleaning up junk and graffiti and discouraging loitering.  Increasing arrests was also helpful, but providing more social services was not.

2/7/09 Fifteen years into a 25-year term for kidnapping, New York inmate Everton Wagstaffe, who maintains his innocence, has refused a conditional release because it requires that he register as a sex offender. Although Wagstaffe’s claim is supported by DNA tests, the D.A. refuses to budge.

2/7/09 Shepard Fairey, the Los Angeles-based “street artist” who created the famous Obama poster was arrested by Boston cops on graffiti warrants while on his way to celebrate an exhibit showcasing his work. Fairey, a graphic designer and political activist, has been criticized by some for promoting vandalism.

2/6/09 Two suspected L.A. gang members are dead and another is in critical condition after their shooting by occupants of a vehicle that drove past a street memorial for a gang member shot and killed a few days earlier.

2/5/09 A soon-to-be-released report from the National Academy of Sciences will severely criticize the accuracy and question the validity of commonly used forensic techniques, including fingerprint, ballistics, handwriting, bite marks, blood splatter and hair analysis.

2/4/09 In 2006 immigration teams that were publicly organized to go after criminal illegal aliens and those with outstanding deportation orders had their arrest quotas raised and their missions quietly changed.  In 2007 only nine percent of illegals taken in had criminal records while forty percent were undocumented aliens “picked up by chance”.  Note: Quotas ended (see 8/17/09)

2/3/09 In response to subpoenas from State attorney generals MySpace reported and removed 90,000 registered sex offenders from the site in the last two years. Facebook is also under orders to turn over information but has not yet complied.

2/2/09 Border Patrol agents in Riverside (Calif.) complain that on pain of receiving less desirable days off they were ordered to arrest at least 150 illegals last month, with at least two to result in prosecution.  The Border Patrol denies it.

2/2/09 Tim Cole served more than a decade in a Texas prison for a rape that DNA -- and the real rapist -- say he didn’t commit.  Soon there will be a hearing to review the grounds for exoneration. It would be the first granted posthumously, as Cole died in prison after serving nearly fifteen years.

2/1/09 Several LAPD officers involved in a 2007 drug case face an FBI civil rights investigation after discrepancies between their testimony and a security camera videotape led a trial judge to declare the defendant factually innocent. One officer was also allegedly recorded telling another to be “creative” on the arrest report.

1/30/09 A 14-year old Chicago boy with a prior impersonation arrest donned a police uniform, snuck into the station, checked out a radio and got assigned to a two-officer traffic car. He worked the beat for five hours, wrote tickets and even drove a man to the precinct in the police vehicle.  No word on whether he’s in line for a promotion.

1/29/09 More than two years after their triumph in civil court, two current and two former LAPD officers once accused of planting evidence will be sharing a payout of $20.5 million for being wrongfully prosecuted on the word of former officer Rafael Perez, the cocaine thief whose allegations kicked off the Rampart scandal.

1/29/09 The Los Angeles Times reported that a Federal Grand Jury is investigating allegations that Cardinal Roger Mahony violated his duty to provide “honest services” to parishioners by using the mails to help conceal sexual crimes committed by his priests.

1/28/09 According to L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca, a backlog of nearly 5,000 DNA samples includes more than 800 rapes in which suspects are unidentified but detectives didn’t request testing, perhaps because victim issues make prosecution unlikely.  Procedures installed in November 2008 now require that all DNA be analyzed.

1/27/09 After he and his wife were fired by the hospital where they worked, a distraught husband shot and killed his spouse, their five children, ages two to eight, and himself.

1/27/09 A third trial begins this week for six Muslim men charged with conspiring to blow up Chicago’s Sears Tower and commit other terrorist acts. A seventh was acquitted at the first trial in 2007, while the others have gone through two mistrials.

1/26/09 Overturning a decision by the Ninth Circuit, the Supreme Court ruled that prosecutorial absolute immunity encompasses all processes and functions within a prosecutor's office that affect trial preparation, including information systems, supervision and training.

1/25/09 In a challenge to the Federal government’s principal tool for bringing cases of local corruption under its jurisdiction, the Supreme Court is being asked to decide whether the “honest services” provision of the mail fraud statute is unconstitutionally vague.

1/23/09 In what observers call the first example of its kind, a Kentucky high school football coach was indicted for negligent homicide in connection with the August 2008 heat stroke death of a 15-year old student player.

1/21/09 A Federal law intended to prevent children from being exposed to Internet pornography died when the Supreme Court refused to consider its reinstatement. The statute, which was challenged by the ACLU when passed more than a decade ago, had never taken effect.

1/19/09 As he finishes his first full year as Chicago’s police chief, ex-FBI executive Jody Weis is taking flak for a management style that some say demoralized officers, leading to a 15 percent increase in homicides and an equivalent decrease in felony arrests.

1/17/09 A Federal jury convicted former Orange County (Calif.) Sheriff Mike Carona of one count of jury tampering but acquitted him on the more serious charges of conspiracy and mail fraud.  Jurors said they disbelieved the prosecution’s main witness, former Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl, who testified that he gave Carona cash payoffs, but decided that a secretly taped conversation between the two was enough to convict Carona for trying to get Haidl to lie to the Grand Jury.

1/15/09 False fingerprint matches that led to at least two mistaken arrests have discredited the work of several LAPD fingerprint examiners and led to a review of nearly 1,000 cases in which they were involved, including two dozen pending trial. Prior post

1/14/09 A BART police officer caught on a cellphone video shooting a man was charged with murder.  Johannes Mehserle, 27, and other officers detained the victim after a disturbance on January 1. For unknown reasons Mehserle drew his gun and fired while the man was laying on his stomach. Disturbances and demonstrations have since rocked Oakland.

1/14/09 Deciding a case where police searched incident to arrest on a warrant mistakenly listed as active, the Supreme Court allowed the evidence in, ruling that absent recklessness, “non-systemic”, non-purposeful errors don’t trigger the exclusionary rule. Herring v. U.S.

1/14/09 A former DOJ official in charge of enforcing civil rights laws was accused in a DOJ report of violating law and policy during a three year period in which he purposely passed over “commies” for attorney positions in favor of applicants with Republican ties. DOJ Report

1/13/09 According to the FBI, reports of violent crime in metropolitan areas fell 3.5 percent and homicide 4.4 percent during the first half of 2008, as compared to the first half of 2007.  However, smaller cities and rural areas posted slight to moderate increases.

1/12/09 Jim Simone, 60, a legendary Cleveland cop whose five career kills, most recently of an unarmed bank robber, have sparked controversy, jumped into an icy river to rescue a drowning, hypothermic woman.  She later came by his hospital bed to thank him personally.  Prior post

1/12/09 Prosecutions for illegal entry, a Bush administration priority, is overwhelming Federal judicial resources in border States, causing prosecutors to refer serious drug and gun cases to ill-equipped local authorities. TRAC website

1/11/09 Five students wounded in a gang-related drive-by shooting outside a Chicago high school two days ago are making good progress and are expected to recover.  According to the Chicago Tribune, each has a juvenile record or gang affiliation.  No suspects have been arrested.

1/10/09 Taking advantage of a law that let him keep what he didn’t spend, an Alabama sheriff pocketed $212,000 of prisoner meal funds in two years.  At one point all he fed inmates were corn dogs picked up on the cheap.  But after a Federal judge locked him up overnight for starving prisoners he promised to reform.

1/8/09 Residents mounted a solemn vigil in South Los Angeles for the victims of an unidentified male tied through DNA and ballistics to twelve murders between 1986 and 2007.  Police say that he shoots prostitutes with a small-caliber handgun, abuses them and dumps their bodies.

1/7/09 Five Blackwater guards pled not guilty in Federal Court to manslaughter charges for a 2007 shooting that killed seventeen Iraqi civilians at a Baghdad intersection.  A sixth who previously admitted guilt will reportedly testify against his former colleagues.

1/7/09 A Los Angeles Times investigation suggests that LAPD exerted undue pressure and used bad science in a quest to prove that a toddler held hostage by her barricaded father was struck and killed by his fire rather than, as the coroner determined, by a bullet fired by SWAT officers.

1/6/09 Citing family reasons, Edward G. Hargis, Camden’s latest police chief, accepted a chief’s job in Portsmouth, Virginia.  Hargis, whose appointment in 2007 made him the fifth chief in six years, is leaving a community overwhelmed by crime and violence. There were 55 killings in Camden in 2008, a 22-percent increase from 45 murders in 2007. Previous NYT article

1/5/09 Milwaukee reported 71 homicides in 2008, a 32 percent drop from 2007 when 105 killings took place. In all, more cities improved than not. In Los Angeles homicides fell six percent, from 400 to 376.  Meanwhile homicide rose 5.2 percent in New York, from 496 to 522; 15 percent in Chicago, from 442 to 508, and a staggering 37 percent in Columbus, Ohio, from 79 to 108.

1/3/09 Only two days before his arrest, Madoff notified his latest victim that their recent $10 million transfer had been received. Those trying to disentangle the mess say that Madoff was just trying to accumulate money for a final distribution to his friends.

1/2/09 Boston’s budget shortfall means that police will have to trim their ranks. Just how many isn’t known, but a cut as large as 200 is possible. Officers now in the academy and those who graduated in the last class are most at risk.

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