Law Enforcement Problems

Intelius and the Dubious Art of “Post-Transaction Marketing

2012-01-06T09:45:00.000-08:00

Intelius and the Dubious Art of “Post-Transaction Marketing”
A checkered success during the dot-com bubble, Naveen Jain has come charging back with a new venture—and the complaints are rolling in.
Nina Shapiro
Seattle Weekly
Mar 18 2009

It all started when Scott Bolsins found a lost schnauzer roaming around his suburban Dallas neighborhood. The dog's collar listed a cell-phone number, but when Bolsins called, no one answered. Bolsins, who once had a business selling homemade dog bones over the Internet, was perturbed. "I can't keep this dog, and I sure don't want to take him to the pound," he thought. So he went online to do a reverse lookup of the phone number in order to find the associated address.

He went to the Web site of the Bellevue company Intelius, which sells personal information obtained from public records and marketing databases, including addresses attached to cell-phone numbers. He plugged in the number, gave his credit card number to pay the small fee, and received an address in Grapevine, a neighboring city. He then delivered the schnauzer to its teary owners, who had thought their beloved pet was dead. "They're happy. We feel good. Everything's great," Bolsins recalls in a soft Texas drawl.

"Next thing I know," he continues, "I start getting these charges." Two of them, for $19.95 apiece, showed up on sequential credit-card bills beside unfamiliar names: "Privacy Matters" and "PMIdentity." Bolsins went back to the Web to investigate, and found one phone number for both names. He says he called and was told that he'd signed up for a "service" on the Intelius site. What service, and how did he sign up? It was never clear to Bolsins. All he knows is that Intelius forwarded his credit-card information to another company that ran this "service."

He got the charges reversed, but cancelled his credit card anyway to avoid any more mysterious charges. He then filed a complaint about Intelius with Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna. Almost a year later, Bolsins—himself experienced at running an online business—still seethes about what he considers a blatant "scam."

The word comes up a lot in 121 complaints, filed with McKenna's office, against Intelius, many of which detail the same kind of thing that happened to Bolsins. Even during a time when his office is getting more consumer gripes than it has in years, McKenna says, "That's a lot of complaints about one company." Intelius has drawn even more—822 to date—at the Better Business Bureau. On the BBB site, the company is currently listed as unrated, due to "one or more serious complaints" that the bureau has not yet had time to assess.

Partly because of concerns about Intelius, McKenna requested legislation this session aimed at stopping what he calls "deceptive" Internet marketing—although the resulting bills didn't succeed in getting scheduled for a vote by last Thursday's deadline. It's the second time McKenna has gone to the legislature in an attempt to curb the company's practices.

Last year, Intelius started a service in which you could input a name and for a fee receive that person's cell-phone number. (Intelius declined to tell the Weekly where it gets all that information.) In response, McKenna pushed through a billthat prohibits companies from selling people's cell-phone numbers without their permission. Faced with negative publicity, Intelius eliminated the service before the law took effect last June. The law, however, does not require people's consent to include their cell numbers in reverse directories, which Intelius continues to offer. One reason for the exception is to allow people to identify phone stalkers, the AG says.

The company's troubles don't stop with state regulators. In 2006, the Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation of Intelius for possible violation of laws regulating how credit information is disseminated. FTC spokesperson Mitch Katz says the investigation is ongoing. Intelius has also become enmeshed in litigation over fractious business relationships, and has provoked the ire of numerous people who feel the company has violated their privacy or simply provided bad information.

In the process, Intelius has become a nexus of all the appeal—and the dangers—of Internet commerce. It provides easy desktop access to information that previously might have required visits to courthouses and state government offices. But some of its practices have reinforced people's worst fears about handing over their credit-card information online. And the sometimes-questionable accuracy of its data has heightened anxieties about the ready accessibility of personal data on the Web.

Founded in 2003, Intelius employs close to 200 people. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last year in preparation for a public stock offering, Intelius said it had revenue of $88 million and a profit of $11 million in 2007. (Amazon.com, in comparison, was still losing money four years after its launch, though it had nearly twice as much revenue.) The company's site was the 111th most-visited in January, according to Media Metrix. Its success has also been fueled over the years by an array of shifting partnerships, including ones with giants Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL, all of which at one time used Intelius to provide directory searches on their own sites. Yahoo still does, as well as AT&T, Switchboard.com, and many others.

"I'm amazed," says Jon Staenberg, a Seattle venture capitalist. Staenberg was an early investor in InfoSpace, the previous start-up of Intelius founder and CEO Naveen Jain. "If the numbers are what Jain says they are, he's been able to build another large company," says Staenberg (who has not put money into Intelius). "Not many entrepreneurs can do that twice."

Remember, you still haven't gotten access to the information you paid for. To get it, you have two choices: Click on the big orange rectangle, off to the side of all these instructions, that says "YES, and show my report," or click on the small black one-line link that says "No, show my report." The YES button is what gets you monthly ValueMax fees.

Intelius also uses this technique to peddle Adaptive's identity-theft program, Privacy Matters. Last May, the business news site TechCrunch wrote a scathing pieceabout the practice. Intelius pitches its own identity-theft service as well, which purports to monitor public documents and consumer databases for suspicious activity.

The founder and CEO of Intelius: “kinetic personality.”

— Intelius Filing with the SEC

— TechCrunch on Intelius

— Iowa Attorney General Suit Against Ventrue
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Stephen Kropp of Renton says he inadvertently signed up for an Intelius identity-theft subscription last summer after purchasing a phone number from the company. Sometime later, he says, he noticed a $19.95 charge on his debit card. Looking through past statements, he realized the company had been charging him for six months, collecting a total of $120. "I just wanted a phone number," says Kropp. "The service they were offering was completely unrelated to what I was asking for" and hadn't provided him any benefits that he could see. He says Intelius initially refused to refund all but one month of the fees, but agreed to return the rest after he wrote to McKenna's office.

Like many of those complaining, Kropp is not a computer neophyte. A civil engineer, he works for an environmental consulting firm called Entrix, where he designs salmon habitat restoration projects, among other things—all using software, of course. "I'm pretty much a computer nerd," he says.

That's the thing that bothers Brenda Piampiano, a Maine attorney who was hit with $40 worth of charges for an Adaptive service she says she never intentionally signed up for. The service is called "Family Safety," and promises to allow consumers the ability to monitor sex offenders in their neighborhoods. "I'm a relatively savvy person with a law degree, and I use the computer absolutely all the time," she says. "I feel like if I can get taken into these things, anybody can."

Adaptive spokesperson George Thomas says the company's offers on the Intelius site are "perfectly clear," and that people who say they didn't realize they were signing up for Adaptive programs must have "forgotten they enrolled." Connie Zimmerman, senior manager of compliance for Adaptive, adds that consumers are sent a confirmation e-mail.

Intelius originally declined to speak to Seattle Weekly for this story, citing the "quiet period" following its filing with the SEC. Many businesses choose to say little to the media after filing to sell shares to the public in order to avoid allegations of misleading potential investors. Shortly before this story was scheduled for publication, however, the company made available its executive vice president of sales and marketing, Ed Petersen.

Petersen says his company has responded to consumer complaints by sending its own confirmation e-mails, as well as by redesigning its check-out pages to make clear all the services people are buying. About six months ago, he says, Intelius formed a "consumer advocacy committee" of employees and board members, which reviews "everything that goes out on the site."

"We've evolved," Petersen says. He maintains that the complaints represent a small part of Intelius' volume of business, and that most customers come directly to the company's site, rather than via partners' sites, because "they have heard good things" about the company. "That says we're doing something right."

The company declined requests for an interview with Jain.

Intelius is far from the only Web company to use these kinds of controversial marketing techniques. Nor is the Internet the only medium in which they flourish. McKenna recalls the record clubs from the time he was growing up: They'd draw you in with an offer of a half-dozen or more LPs for a penny, then automatically send you another record at full price every month.

More recently, McKenna and numerous other attorneys general sued Chase Bank and Trilegiant Corp. for a scheme in which consumers were offered rebates and trial periods for Trilegiant "membership" programs. The offers came attached to Chase mortgage or credit-card statements, and, unbeknownst to many consumers, resulted in monthly fees. The companies agreed to a $14.5 million settlement in 2006.

Internet transactions are especially tricky, says Alissa Cooper, chief computer scientist for the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology, because you're tempted to click through screens without close examination. And what you're agreeing to "can be buried behind a link or another page that you never thought to go to. Or they can have all these buttons and flashy graphics." Plus, she notes, the Internet allows personal information, like credit-card numbers, to be transferred electronically, smoothing the way for business partnerships that aren't necessarily apparent to consumers.

WhitePages.com, a Seattle-based competitor to Intelius, partners with a company called US Search, which employs techniques similar to those of Adaptive in order to push membership clubs and "Reservation Rewards" programs. John Lusk, marketing vice president for WhitePages.com, maintains that post-transaction marketing is "a viable business strategy. Once you've got someone on your site, you should be doing everything to cross-promote and cross-sell."

He concedes some companies don't do this in a "straightforward" way. He recalls signing up online for the Vancouver Marathon last year. When it came time to pay, he noticed all these already-checked boxes signing him up for various things, and he thought he'd unchecked them all. Sometime later, however, a $50 charge appeared on his credit card—the fee for a service that was supposed to keep him updated on similar events.

"This is bullshit," he griped when he called the company.

Last year, US Search paid $250,000 in penalties after the New York State Attorney General found the company had "illegally accessed and sold consumer data." Adaptive, too, has had trouble with state regulators. Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller launched a suit in 2006 against Adaptive's parent company Vertrue, charging unfair and deceptive practices in the sales of its membership programs. "Many consumers don't know they are members, are not aware they are being charged yearly or monthly membership fees, and make no use whatsoever of the so-called membership benefits," a press release from Miller's office reads.

Two ongoing class-action suits on behalf of consumers, in Texas and Tennessee federal courts, make similar allegations. Thomas, a spokesperson for Vertrue as well as Adaptive, says the allegations "will be shown to be without merit," and a Tennessee judge issued a favorable ruling for Vertrue last year. The case is on appeal.

McKenna, known as one of the most active attorney generals in the country on Internet fraud issues, says he can't comment on open investigations, and so won't say whether his office is contemplating similar action against Intelius or Vertrue. But he says that the large number of complaints against Intelius spurred him to push for legislation designed to ensure that consumers give their "informed consent" before they are charged for products.

"We're basically trying to slow the process down," adds Assistant Attorney General Katherine Tassi, who helped draft the failed bills.

Under the bills, companies that acquire people's credit-card numbers would be required to ask customers to re-enter at least the last four digits before charging them for additional services. Businesses would also have to notify consumers at least five days before the first charge is made, a provision especially aimed at companies that offer trial periods that quickly convert to ongoing fees.

In addition to the services it sells to consumers, Intelius provides employers and landlords with criminal histories, credit reports, Social Security verification, and employment records on potential employees and tenants. All these services are regulated by the 1970 Fair Credit Reporting Act—"the nation's oldest privacy law," according to Chris Hoofnagle, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley. The act requires companies that sell such data to ensure that their customers have a legitimate purpose for using it—something that US Search failed to do, according to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. "With the crime of identity theft running rampant across the globe, it is critical that personal data, including sensitive credit-bureau information, not be readily available to anyone with Internet access," he said at the time.

Intelius is also being investigated for possible violations of the act, according to the SEC filing. (The FTC won't discuss ongoing investigations.) These violations could be in regard to privacy or accuracy, Hoofnagle speculates.

Both issues loom large in the consumer complaints about Intelius filed with McKenna's office, most of which had to do with ordinary people searches. Some correspondents are livid that information such as their birthdate and the names of their relatives is so readily available—even if, as a McKenna staffer often writes back, such information comes from public documents that are already "available to anyone who might request them." Intelius recently hired a "chief privacy officer" to deal with such concerns and "grow the relationship" with advocacy groups, legislators, and regulators, according to Petersen.

Many other consumers object to the spotty results. As Intelius itself concedes in its SEC filing, the information it and similar companies sell is often inaccurate and out of date.

One West Virginia woman wrote to the Attorney General's office a couple of years ago to say that she paid $69.95 for a background check on a registered sex offender in her neighborhood, only to get a report saying that the man had no criminal history. Another woman in New York wrote to McKenna that she got way more information trolling free Web sites than she did by paying Intelius.

Christine Fabris of California says she ran a background report on herself, and was shocked when it listed a 1998 case number under a category called "Criminal Check." She says she had no criminal record, and so thought, "Oh my God, someone's stolen my identity." She was especially concerned since at that time she was undergoing a separate Department of Justice background check as a tutor in the California public-school system. But when she looked up the case file at the Superior Court in Pittsburg, California, she discovered it was not a criminal case at all, but a traffic ticket.

Intelius reports contain caveats that information may not be accurate. Fabris' background report, for example, warns of "false matches" that "may not provide confirmation of an individual's criminal background." At times, though, the company seems to be selling something it can't deliver. A TechCrunch reader wrote in to say that he had searched for an obviously nonexistent person with the last name "Bullshit" and the Social Security number 123-45-6789. Intelius did indeed offer to sell him a report on Mr. Bullshit—just as it did when Seattle Weekly repeated the experiment.

An Intelius people search on Naveen Jain drives home the kind of information that is and isn't offered. The report lists Jain's birthday, some relatives (including his wife Anuradha, who serves as Intelius' vice president of community affairs), and three addresses, including his home in Medina (especially impressive since property records cite a trust as owner of the home; the Jains' ownership is revealed in other documents). But it doesn't say which address is current; Jain sold one of the listed properties in 1999. And the property value that is supposed to correspond to that house is wildly incorrect. The supposed value: $279,400. The actual value: $856,000. (Jain's current Medina house, incidentally, is valued by the Assessor's office at $16.2 million.)

Aware of its PR challenges, Intelius has been stepping up its philanthropy. In January the company issued a press release touting 2008 donations of nearly $210,000 to a dozen local and national nonprofits, including the United Way, Seattle Children's Hospital, and Overlake Service Center. Jain and his wife have personally given even more.

The Jains have contributed especially generously to causes related to their East Asian heritage. They gave $250,000 to the newly rebuilt Vedic Cultural Center in Sammamish, making them the largest contributors, according to the Center's executive director Naresh Bhatt. The pink, marble-floored edifice is a gathering place for local Hare Krishnas, a number of them Indian immigrants, like the Jains, in the Eastside's tech community.

Bhatt says he and two others from the Center went to the Jains' Medina house to pitch the rebuilding effort. He brought a computer presentation that normally took about 30 minutes. But Bhatt says Jain stopped him after about 10 or 15 minutes with a generous offer, and then moved everybody into the kitchen for snacks.

Vijay Vashee, a Zimbabwean native of Indian extraction, knows Jain from the time the two worked at Microsoft. Both have since supported some of the same causes, including the Hindu Temple & Cultural Center in Bothell and an India-based charitable organization called Child Rights and You. Vashee says he and other Seattle Art Museum supporters pressed Jain for a donation to the current Seattle Asian Art Museum exhibit of paintings from Jodhpur, India, and Jain complied. He "seems to be in a mode where he's preoccupied about wanting recognition and being perceived as a leader in the community," Vashee observes.

In recognition of the Jains' philanthropy, Overlake Service League, a Bellevue nonprofit, chose the Jains to be "honorary chairs" of its annual March luncheon. "They're just out there in every conceivable way," says Trish Carpenter, Overlake's fundraising director. Not only have the Jains donated tens of thousands of dollars, but they have encouraged Intelius employees to do the same, Carpenter says.

She adds that Jain told her recently, "In tough times, if businesses like Intelius don't step in, who will?"

On the business front, though, Intelius seems to be having mixed success of late. The company has not said when it will have its long-delayed IPO. (Obviously not anytime soon, given current stock-market conditions.) But Petersen says "all sides of our business are growing gangbusters," and notes that the company is adding a new office in Bothell. In February, Intelius started providing search services for sites run by AT&T, such as YellowPages.com.

But Intelius has also lost some contracts. Last year MSN switched from Intelius to WhitePages. WhitePages' vice president of business development, Young Lee, claims his company's service drew more traffic, in large part because it offers all its information for free, including age and household members. (Intelius offered some free information on MSN, but charged for more detailed reports.) The same goes, he says, for AOL, which switched several years ago from Intelius to WhitePages.

Petersen responds that "that is a load of crap," saying the switches had to do with larger marketing agreements rather than with customer satisfaction. (Both Microsoft and AOL declined to comment.)

In a medium that famously gave rise to the idea that "information wants to be free," Intelius' fee-based model has done remarkably well, but perhaps won't for long. "It is possible that competitors employing an advertising-supported business model with free or low-price information service offerings may emerge," the company wrote in its SEC filing. "Any such development may require us to re-evaluate our business model."

Intelius already has one strategy laid out. According to the filing, it plans to increase its focus on post-transaction marketing. Seems like McKenna's office is in for more complaints. Asked whether he plans to take any further action regarding the company besides the current legislation, McKenna only hints: "We'll be talking again."

nshapiro@seattleweekly.com

How a Bad Cop Evaded Detection in San Diego

2011-12-17T18:45:00.000-08:00

How a Bad Cop Evaded Detection
December 15, 2011
by Keegan Kyle
Voice of San Diego

On a dark boulevard in Mission Valley, lined by department stores and spacious condos, the police officer spotted the suspected drunk driver. It was February 2010.

Someone had called police to report the 28-year-old woman. Officer Anthony Arevalos responded. For three years, he'd specialized in arresting drunk drivers for the San Diego Police Department. He measured up their slurred speech, dazed glares, and stumbling steps. A breath test sealed their fates.

And so it was with the woman in Mission Valley. Arevalos arrested her and put her in the back of his cruiser. They headed to the county women's jail, the Las Colinas Detention Facility.

But they didn't drive straight there, the woman later said. According to her story, Arevalos hit the brakes on another dark road, pulled over, and sexually assaulted her in the back seat, where no one could see them. Then he got back behind the wheel and took her the rest of the way to jail.

When the woman told the Police Department what happened, Arevalos was swiftly yanked from patrol. After weeks of investigation, police recommended criminal charges to prosecutors.

Arevalos, a 17-year veteran, had a reputation in the department. He targeted young, attractive female drivers. He arrested women more often than any of his colleagues. He sent lewd photos of women he stopped to fellow officers. He showed off women's driver's licenses like trophies. He had a nickname: "The Las Colinas Transport Unit."

Even Arevalos' supervisor, Sgt. Kevin Friedman, had taken note. "If someone was attractive, he would display it," Friedman would later say.

Yet nothing happened. District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis declined to press charges and the Police Department sent Arevalos back to the same job, back to San Diego's streets. There he stayed until March 2011, when another traffic stop ended his career...

Police had assigned Thornton and Arevalos to the department's traffic division. Arevalos, a married father of two, worked in a special unit patrolling for drunk drivers, a job that offered extra pay and overtime.

Arevalos also got more discretion on the streets. While most patrol officers scurry between radio calls all night, DUI officers are supposed to be proactive, choosing whom they stop, where they stop, and when they stop. They work alone unless another officer provides cover.

Thornton's account isn't the only one. Other officers have testified that Arevalos acted unprofessionally. But his behavior never got him reassigned or fi red.

Those anecdotes from fellow cops concern Samuel Walker, a national expert on police reform. He said the Arevalos case highlights systematic problems with internal oversight at the San Diego Police Department and an inappropriate tolerance for misconduct.

"If he was sending pictures to other officers, they knew about it. They should have done something," Walker said. "I think all of that tells something about the culture within the department, which is very bad."

Police misconduct typically evolves over time, Walker said. Officers start with small infractions, learn what behavior is tolerated and then elevate to larger breaches of policy without reprisal.

Police chief Bill Lansdowne blamed the misconduct spike on officers' stress, the economy, and budget cuts. But his own decisions contributed to lagging oversight, too. Rather than reduce emergency operations like patrol and homicide, Lansdowne chipped away at counseling programs, supervisors, and Internal Affairs.

Some oversight tools disappeared entirely. After Lansdowne became chief in 2003, he dismantled an investigative unit police established in the early 1990s to proactively monitor for misconduct. It conducted stings and undercover surveillance on officers. The unit had more funding and time than Internal Affairs, which got bogged down in routine citizen complaints and clerical tasks.

To some officers, disbanding the investigative unit signaled that Lansdowne thought monitoring for misconduct was a lower priority. Lansdowne defends the shift, saying it saved money and streamlined investigations. Cases of internal misconduct are now handled by specialists of the alleged crime.

Long before the scandal, police recognized a need to strengthen internal oversight. The department created a system to track how often officers use force, respond to traumatic calls, and have complaints filed against them. They wanted to recognize patterns of misbehavior. But the Arevalos case and other recent allegations have shown the $450,000 program wasn't a high priority. It was tossed between managers until it landed on the desk of Sgt. Gary Collins — after the misconduct scandal struck.

"It's one of those things that probably isn't being as utilized as it should be," Collins said in May, "but I'm confident with everything that's going on that it will be."

A Missed Opportunity
Photo by Sam Hodgson
Former San Diego police officer Anthony Arevalos patrolled the Gaslamp Quarter for drunk drivers. Seven women he stopped say he solicited sexual bribes from them.

It was September 2009. The 26-year-old woman had to close shop for the night. She slammed a few drinks with co-workers, locked the Gaslamp Quarter restaurant's doors and got in her car.

A few blocks away, though, the woman made a wrong turn down a one-way street. Arevalos was driving toward her in a marked police car. He flipped on the car's lights and pulled her over.

Arevalos suspected the woman was driving drunk and took her to police headquarters for a breath test. The woman had double the legal limit of alcohol in her system. But Arevalos didn't book her. They drove back to the woman's car.

During that trip back, the woman later said, Arevalos pushed for a sexual favor in exchange for letting her go. She didn't agree to anything, she said, but Arevalos promised to show up at her restaurant and collect his favor soon enough.

The next day, the woman talked to a cop that a friend knew. She told James Clark, a detective, that a downtown cop had wanted a favor in exchange for not arresting her. She didn't know his name or which agency he worked for. She didn't specifically say what favor he wanted, but Clark figured it was something sexual.

"I remember thinking the officer was acting unprofessional, that he was trying to pick up on her," Clark testified.

Clark suggested the woman call Internal Affairs. But he didn't himself. And he didn't tell his supervisors about the conversation. He was off-duty and later testified that the complaint didn't seem important enough to merit investigation.
From Badge to Bars: Anthony Arevalos
Click on the graphic to enlarge.

The woman didn't call Internal Affairs either. She feared she'd be charged with drunk driving in retaliation and was planning to move out of state.

In an interview assistant police chief Boyd Long said it's unclear whether Clark violated department policy by not reporting the woman's complaint. Officers should normally report any allegation, he said, but the conversation could've been confidential.

Internal Affairs didn't learn about the incident until Clark reported it more than a year later, after Arevalos' arrest.

The detective's response is a stark contrast to the officer who received the complaint that ultimately took down Arevalos. That happened in March 2011. A woman called police and complained that an officer had taken her panties in exchange for not arresting her.

The officer who got that call, Kelly Besker, immediately reported the complaint to his supervisor. The woman identified the officer who had pulled her over as "Officer Anthony."

The investigation had begun.

Jury Verdict: Guilty...

Paying for bad cops: Crowe family settles civil rights lawsuit for $7.25 million

2011-10-21T20:35:00.000-07:00

...[M]other Cheryl Crowe...told KPBS she believes the Escondido police doesn't regret the coercive interrogations, nor the arrests and jailing of their son and his two high school friends, Josh Treadway and Aaron Houser.
--Voice of San Diego

"They did it with malice. They knew what they were doing," she said. "We were ready to go to trial to prove that. And they never admitted they did anything wrong."

ESCONDIDO: Crowe family settles civil rights lawsuit for $7.25 million
By TERI FIGUEROA
October 21, 2011

Nearly 14 years after Stephanie Crowe was stabbed to death in her Escondido bedroom, her family agreed to a $7.25 million settlement with the cities of Escondido and Oceanside for what one appeals court called "psychologically abusive" interrogations of the slain child's then-teenage brother.

"There is a degree of vindication," said brother Michael Crowe, now 28 and a first-time expectant father.

The settlement, announced Friday morning, draws to a close a federal civil rights lawsuit related to a slaying investigation that grabbed national headlines ---- even spawning a made-for-TV movie ---- and split community opinion about just who killed the 12-year-old honors student in her Escondido home in January 1998.

"We are done, just done," Stephanie's mother, Cheryl Crowe, said Friday. "No amount of money will make them see their errors."

An Escondido police spokesman as well as an Escondido deputy city attorney handling the case did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The municipalities are the final defendants to reach a settlement with the Crowe family, which has long maintained it was victimized ---- and Michael mentally brutalized ---- by police so eager to make an arrest that they wrongly zeroed in on three innocent teenagers instead of a more likely suspect: a mentally ill transient who bizarrely approached their neighbors moments before the child was attacked.

With just 10 days until the trial started, the Crowes agreed to a settlement to be split with their longtime attorney Milt Silverman and then among family members. After years of fighting, fatigue took its toll, as did the family's excitement at a baby on the way.

"We wanted to go to trial so bad," Cheryl Crowe said. "The case is the strongest it has ever been, but we don't want to go anymore. We are just tired and we don't trust what could happen. We don't want to spend another 10 years of our lives with that garbage. ... I'm turning my thoughts to the new baby."

Crowe family attorney Silverman said insurer AIG will pay the settlement; no taxpayer money will be used.

"My clients are happy," Silverman said. "They thanked the courts for giving them justice."

Even though the settlement means the civil rights portion of the case is over, the matter of just who killed Stephanie remains very much alive in the criminal courts. The mentally ill transient convicted of sneaking into the home and killing the child was just this year granted a new trial. The courts are still weighing legal matters in that criminal case.

Stephanie's brother, Michael Crowe, was 14 when police suspected he and his high school freshman friends killed his popular younger sister, stabbing her to death in her bed. After hours of interrogations, the three teens made damning statements; one of them even made an outright confession. But in the years after the slaying, judges in both criminal and civil courts came to determine that the statements had been coerced by police.

The teens' lengthy interrogations were at the center of the civil rights suit the family brought against Escondido police and others, including an Oceanside police detective called in to assist during the questioning.

A federal trial judge in San Diego dismissed the bulk of the civil rights suit in 2004. But six years later, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals revived the lawsuit, finding that Escondido police violated the civil rights of Crowe and his friends during "hours of grueling, psychologically abusive interrogations."

The federal appeals court found that Crowe and his friends endured "psychological torture" during police questioning. The result was coerced confessions that led to murder charges against "innocent teenagers for a crime they did not commit," the appeals court found.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Escondido's request that it review the appeals court findings.

The settlements with a number of defendants followed.

Cheryl Crowe credited Silverman's tenacity in keeping alive a difficult and complex case that he had taken on contingency more than a decade ago.

"Without Milt, we would never have had a voice inside the court," she said. "He was ready to retire when he took this case. But he kept a promise to my mom that he would see this case to the end."

Cheryl Crowe's mother, Judith Kennedy, died in 2001. It was she who found her granddaughter's lifeless body.

Although Escondido police originally suspected Michael Crowe and his teenage buddies, DNA evidence linked a mentally ill transient to the child's slaying. The case was moved from Escondido police to a cold case detective with the San Diego County Sheriff's Department's homicide unit.

In 2004, the transient, Richard Tuite, now 42, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for sneaking into the Crowe home and killing the girl while her family slept.

But earlier this year, a federal appeals court overturned Tuite's conviction, finding that the jury should have heard more about the backgrounds of dueling crime scene analysts who offered opposing theories of the slaying.

State prosecutors have asked the federal courts to reconsider the decision to overturn Tuite's conviction. As of Friday, with the courts still weighing the criminal case, Tuite ---- who has schizophrenia ---- remained in custody at the California Medical Facility, a psychiatric institution for the state's male prisoners.

Cheryl Crowe said it scares her that Tuite's conviction was overturned, and she worries about public safety once he is released.

"The thought of Richard Tuite hurting another child is very troubling to me," she said.

Michael Crowe said he agreed to the settlement even though Escondido police do not accept liability for wrongdoing.

"There is not any price that would make what they did right," he said when reached at his home in Oregon. "But in the end, the price was just fair enough for us to accept. ... It's unfortunate, but we came to realize that the police would never admit they were wrong. And that is unfortunate for everyone who lives in that city."

Cheryl Crowe, who has also relocated to Oregon, said one settlement item was non-negotiable: The amount of the settlement had to be made public.

"We refused to settle if it remained confidential," Cheryl Crowe said. "We said, 'No, that is not acceptable.' They know they did something wrong."

U.S. widens inquiry into abuse at L.A. County jails

2011-10-18T15:20:00.000-07:00

U.S. widens inquiry into abuse at L.A. County jails
Sheriff's Department seeks to curtail the extent of subpoenas, which seek data on workers since 2009.
By Robert Faturechi and Jack Leonard
Los Angeles Times
October 15, 2011

Federal authorities have widened their misconduct investigation into the Los Angeles County jail system, demanding internal Sheriff's Department documents detailing deputies' use of force on inmates over several years, as well as other records.

Sheriff's officials balked at the size and scope of the subpoenas when they were served several weeks ago and are negotiating with federal prosecutors to reduce the number of documents they must produce.

A source familiar with the demand said it sought the names of everyone who has worked in the jails since 2009, even janitors, and whether they have been disciplined for misconduct. Federal prosecutors also sought employees' Social Security numbers, dates of birth, home addresses, phone numbers and personal email addresses.

The records demand is the first sign that federal authorities are not simply looking into several individual cases of jail brutality and other misconduct but are taking a broader look at potential wrongdoing by deputies going back years.

"I was caught completely flabbergasted," Sheriff Lee Baca said of the growing federal scrutiny of his jail system, the nation's largest. "It's like your best friend digs up your favorite rose bed."

In an interview with The Times, Baca said the subpoenaed records were so voluminous that even federal investigators "would have had difficulty ferreting through it all." Nevertheless, Baca said, the county has begun collecting the records.

Federal officials declined to comment about the subpoenas or discuss details of the investigation.

Rebecca Lonergan, a USC law professor and former federal prosecutor, said the demand for the records suggests that investigators are looking for witnesses who would be willing to cooperate as they explore whether there might be a pattern and practice of deputy misconduct in the jails.

"The question becomes whether it rises to a supervisory level," said Lonergan, who handled police misconduct cases while supervising the U.S. attorney's public corruption section in Los Angeles. "If so, it may not be just the individual deputies who are culpable. It may be supervisors all the way up to higher-ups in the Sheriff's Department."

The subpoenas come amid renewed scrutiny over the county's jail system, which has been plagued over the last decade by inmate riots, killings, the formation of a gang-like deputies clique, early release of inmates, antiquated facilities and huge legal settlements. Over the last three years, the county has paid $8.4 million to resolve claims of excessive force and failure to care for inmates, a spokeswoman for Supervisor Gloria Molina said.

Last month, The Times reported that the FBI is investigating allegations of inmate beatings and other deputy misconduct. Among the claims under review are those made by an American Civil Liberties Union jail monitor who said she witnessed deputies knock an inmate unconscious and beat him for two minutes at the Twin Towers jail...

Crowe case plaintiff Houser settles lawsuit

2011-10-12T18:19:00.000-07:00

Crowe case plaintiff Houser settles lawsuit
J. Harry Jones
SDUT
Oct. 12, 2011

DOWNTOWN SAN DIEGO — Aaron Houser, one of three teenagers wrongfully accused of murdering Stephanie Crowe in 1998, has settled a lawsuit for an undisclosed amount of money against four Escondido police officers, one Oceanside police officer and a psychologist.

Michael Crowe, the only remaining plaintiff, has not settled, and a trial in federal court is tentatively to begin Oct. 31, although a request to continue the proceeding into November has been made.

Joshua Treadway, the third teen who was arrested, opted out of the lawsuit years ago.

The notice of settlement was filed in U.S. District Court in San Diego on Tuesday.

How much money Houser will receive as a result of the settlement is confidential, lawyers for Houser, the officers, and the city of Escondido say. The San Diego Union-Tribune plans to challenge that assertion with the argument that settlements regarding public employees, represented by attorneys working for city-authorized insurance companies, should be a matter of public record.

Twelve-year old Stephanie Crowe was found stabbed to death in her Escondido home on Jan. 21, 1998. Her older brother Michael, 14 at the time, and his friends, Houser and Treadway, were arrested soon afterward. Following hours of interrogations by Escondido police and an Oceanside police officer called in to help, authorities said that Crowe and Treadway confessed. The courts later said the confessions were coerced.

About a year after the killing, on the eve of the boys’ trial, all charges against them were dropped. DNA testing showed that Stephanie’s blood was on the sweatshirt of a transient who had been in her neighborhood the night of the slaying, acting oddly and banging on doors.

That man, Richard Tuite, was eventually convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to 17 years in prison.

A lawsuit brought by all three boys claiming violation of rights against self-incrimination, false arrest and prosecution was brought soon after, but U.S. District Judge John Rhoades threw out the bulk of the case in 2004 and 2005. Rhoades ruled that while the interrogations were harsh, they could not be considered coerced because they were never used against the youths at a criminal trial.

In 2010, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S., Circuit Court of Appeals revived key portions of the lawsuit, setting the stage for the settlement and trial to come.

The Crowe case has had far reaching implications. District Attorney Paul Pfingst was defeated in 2002 while seeking a third term in office. His challenger, Bonnie Dumanis, aired television ads leading up to the election that featured a picture of Stephanie Crowe as an example of why a new county district attorney was needed.

The case was even made into a 2002 TV move called “The Interrogation of Michael Crowe,” which continues to be shown all these years later.

The collapse of American justice

2011-09-27T09:41:00.000-07:00

Sep 24, 2011
The collapse of American justice
Not long ago, we had a low incarceration rate and a system that worked. Then everything started to unravel
By William J. Stuntz

This article is an adapted excerpt from the new book "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice," from Harvard University Press.

Among the great untold stories of our time is this one: the last half of the twentieth century saw America's criminal justice system unravel. Signs of the unraveling are everywhere. The nation's record- shattering prison population has grown out of control. Still more so the African American portion of that prison population: for black males, a term in the nearest penitentiary has become an ordinary life experience, a horrifying truth that wasn't true a mere generation ago. Ordinary life experiences are poor deterrents, one reason why massive levels of criminal punishment coexist with historically high levels of urban violence.

Outside the South, most cities' murder rates are a multiple of the rates in those same cities sixty years ago -- notwithstanding a large drop in violent crime in the 1990s. Within cities, crime is low in safe neighborhoods but remains a huge problem in dangerous ones, and those dangerous neighborhoods are disproportionately poor and black. Last but not least, we have built a justice system that strikes many of its targets as wildly unjust. The feeling has some evidentiary support: criminal litigation regularly makes awful mistakes, as the frequent DNA-based exonerations of convicted defendants illustrate. Evidently, the criminal justice system is doing none of its jobs well: producing justice, avoiding discrimination, protecting those who most need the law's protection, keeping crime in check while maintaining reasonable limits on criminal punishment.

It was not always so. For much of American history -- again, outside the South -- criminal justice institutions punished sparingly, mostly avoided the worst forms of discrimination, controlled crime effectively, and, for the most part, treated those whom the system targets fairly. The justice system was always flawed, and injustices always happened. Nevertheless, one might fairly say that criminal justice worked. It doesn't anymore.

There are three keys to the system's dysfunction, each of which has deep historical roots but all of which took hold in the last sixty years. First, the rule of law collapsed. To a degree that had not been true in America's past, official discretion rather than legal doctrine or juries' judgments came to define criminal justice outcomes. Second, discrimination against both black suspects and black crime victims grew steadily worse -- oddly, in an age of rising legal protection for civil rights. Today, black drug offenders are punished in great numbers, even as white drug offenders are usually ignored. (As is usually the case with respect to American crime statistics, Latinos fall in between, but generally closer to the white population than to the black one.) At the same time, blacks victimized by violent felonies regularly see violence go unpunished; the story is different in most white neighborhoods. The third trend is the least familiar: a kind of pendulum justice took hold in the twentieth century's second half, as America's justice system first saw a sharp decline in the prison population -- in the midst of a record-setting crime wave -- then saw that population rise steeply. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the United States had one of the most lenient justice systems in the world. By century's end, that justice system was the harshest in the history of democratic government.

Illinois law enforcement raids Harvey police department and seizes untested rape kits

2011-09-24T13:14:00.000-07:00

Corrections Officer Charged In Sex Assault Of Child: DNA Evidence Found Among 200 Untested Rape Kits
Huffington Post
9/22/11

A Cook County sheriff's correctional officer has been charged with sexual assault of his 10-year-old step daughter based on DNA results from a rape kit tested ten years after the incident took place.

Robert Buchanan, 45, was interviewed by Harvey detectives in 1997 in connection with the rape of a 10-year-old girl in her home, but was released without charges, NBC Chicago reports. Sexual assault evidence was taken from the victim, but sat untested along with more than 200 rape kits for more than 10 years.

In 2007, the Cook County state's attorney's office, the sheriff's office and the Illinois State Police conducted a raid on the Harvey Police Department, recovering the untested rape kits and reopening the investigations of dozens of sexual assault crimes, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Buchanan, whose DNA was obtained by the State's Attorney's office and found to match evidence collected from the victim, is one of 14 defendants to have charges brought against them in 20 separate cases based on evidence in the recovered rape kits.

“The victims of these sexual assaults were denied justice when their attacks occurred," State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez told NBC. "But we have not forgotten about them.”

In 1997, the victim, who has since moved out of state, reported multiple incidents of sexual assault over seven months in the south suburban Harvey home she shared with Buchanan and her mother, NBC reports. In August of that year, a rape kit was administered at a hospital and submitted to the Harvey Police Department, where Alvarez says it was never tested.

“Clearly for victims of sexual assault, this has been an absolute debacle on the part of the Harvey Police Department,” Alvarez told the Sun-Times.

Buchanan is being held at the Cook County Jail on a charge of predatory criminal sexual assault of a child, according to ABC Chicago. He was ordered held Wednesday in lieu of $200,000 bond.

Buchanan was employed as a correctional officer at the time of the incident, but has been on disability leave since November 2010, Steve Patterson, a spokesman for Sheriff Tom Dart, told the Sun-Times. The sheriff's office told NBC they've begun proceedings to "take action" on Buchanan's job.

Freed West Memphis 3: Like kids at Christmas

2011-08-20T08:02:00.000-07:00

August 20, 2011
Freed West Memphis 3: Like kids at Christmas
(CBS News)

A lawyer for Damien Echols - one of the so-called West Memphis 3 freed from death row in Arkansas - said his client celebrated his first night of freedom in 18 years.

Steven Braga, the attorney for Damien Echols, told "The Early Show on Saturday Morning" that his client's first night of freedom was "unbelievable."

He described a celebration last night Echols and James Baldwin, shared with supporters in Memphis: "It was as if you could see two little 5-year-old kids at their first Christmas. They were trying food they had never seen before, they were fascinated by a cell phone, more fascinated by an iPhone and then the idea you could take pictures with an iPhone totally blew them away, so they were taking a lot of pictures."

CBS Affiliate WREG reports that the third freed man, Jesse Misskelley, opted to celebrate with family Friday.

Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley were teenagers in 1994 when they were convicted of killing three eight-year-old boys - Steve Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore.

Investigators in this rural community believed that the teenagers (who wore black and listened to heavy metal music) killed the children as part of a satanic ritual. Echols was sentenced to death; Baldwin and Misskelly both got life in prison.

Over the years doubts emerged about their guilt and several celebrities pushed to have them set free, reports "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty. DNA evidence has been recovered at the scene, none of it linking the accused to the crime.

Baldwin almost turned down the deal that freed him and the others from prison yesterday, but it wasn't just about him. The highly unusual plea agreement meant that his friend Echols - on death row for 17 years - would get his life back.

"Still very much in shock, still overwhelmed," said Echols Friday.

Their freedom comes at a high price: Under the agreement, known as an Alford plea, the men who still say they are innocent had to plead guilty to murder.

"'We'll let you go only if you admit guilt,'" Baldwin described it. "That's not justice, no matter how you look at it.

Katrina bridge shootings: five New Orleans police officers convicted

2011-08-11T17:05:00.000-07:00

Bridge shootings: Officer fretted over "weak link"
MICHAEL KUNZELMAN, Associated Press
July 18, 2011

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Months before Sgt. Robert Gisevius was charged with plotting to cover up the shootings of unarmed residents on a New Orleans bridge after Hurricane Katrina, he met a former colleague at a bar and shared his suspicion that someone was leaking information to federal investigators.

Gisevius didn't know that his companion that night, former police detective Jeffrey Lehrmann, was cooperating with the FBI and secretly taping their profanity-laden conversation in November 2009.

"What weak link could sink the ship?" Gisevius asks Lehrmann on the tape, which jurors heard Monday during the federal trial of Gisevius and four other current or former officers. The five defendants are charged in the shootings that killed two people and wounded four others on the Danziger Bridge in September 2005.

In response, Lehrmann mentioned the name of an officer who fired his gun on the bridge but wasn't accused of killing anybody. Gisevius rejected that suggestion, saying the officer's lawyer was still "in all our meetings."

"I don't think he would sink the whole crew," added Gisevius, who later speculates that "somebody in homicide" was the leak.

Police are accused of shooting unarmed, wounded residents on the bridge as they responded to an officer's distress call. Lehrmann and four other New Orleans former officers have pleaded guilty to participating in a cover-up that included a plot to plant a gun, fabricate witnesses and falsify reports to make the shootings appear justified...

August 08, 2011
Five Cops Guilty in Katrina Shootings
By SABRINA CANFIELD
Courthouse News

NEW ORLEANS (CN) - A jury on Friday found five New Orleans police officers guilty in the post-Katrina shooting deaths of two unarmed men and the wounding of four others as they tried to cross the Danziger Bridge after Hurricane Katrina. The officers were found not guilty of murder.
The verdicts were the second group of cop convictions stemming from post-Katrina shootings. The Danziger Bridge shooting was widely publicized because of the police cover-up - including planting of a gun - after the shootings - a cover-up that lasted for years.
"We have a lot of work left to do but we are moving in the right direction," U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said after the verdict.
The jury found four officers - Sgt. Kenneth Bowen, Officer Anthony Villavaso, Officer Robert Faulcon and Sgt. Robert Gisevius - all guilty of violating the civil rights of James Brisette. Their actions caused his death, but it was not murder.
The jury found Officer Robert Faulcon guilty of the shooting death of Robert Madison. But again, the jury found that the death did not constitute murder.
The fifth officer convicted was retired Sgt. Arthur "Archie" Kaufman, who was not involved in the shootings but who led the police investigation of them. The jury found Kaufman guilty of every cover-up allegation, from wrongfully accusing innocent civilians of shooting at police to inventing witnesses to planting a gun and fabricating a story about the gun.
The four officers were charged with opening fire on two families on Sept. 4, 2005, as the families fled flooded New Orleans.
One man was killed from each family group. James Brisette, 17, was killed, and four members of the Bartholomew family were wounded.
In the other group, officers shot in the back Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old mentally disabled man, killing him.
According to the indictment, the officers drove onto the east side of the bridge in a Budget rental truck after receiving a call that officers nearby had been shot at. As the officers drove onto the bridge, they opened fire on the Bartholomew family, killing 17-year-old James Brissette, a family friend, and wounding Susan Bartholomew, Leonard Bartholomew III, 17-year-old Lesha Bartholomew and 19-year-old Jose Holmes.
Then the officers drove to the east side of the bridge, where two adult brothers were crossing on foot. "An officer shot Ronald Madison in the back as Madison ran away," according to the indictment.
The indictment added that Officer Bowen, "while acting under color of law, kicked and stomped Madison while Madison was on the ground, alive but mortally wounded."
The officers then arrested Ronald Madison's brother, 49-year-old Lance Madison, and held him for three weeks on charges of attempted murder.
The grand jury indictment, unsealed in July 2010, alleged the officers had "specifically discussed using Hurricane Katrina to excuse failures in the investigation, and thereby to help make any inquiry into the shooting[s] go away."
The indictment came after a 2-year federal investigation of the New Orleans Police Department's actions after the 2005 hurricane.
Other instances of unarmed civilian deaths at the hands of police officers also have resulted in guilty verdicts, including the Sept. 2, 2005 shooting of a man in the New Orleans neighborhood of Algiers; his charred body was later found in his burned car.
Former New Orleans police Lt. Michael Lohman pleaded guilty in February 2009 to his part in the cover-up: allowing a gun to be planted at the scene and writing a series of false reports.
Without giving names, Lohman testified that he had encouraged officers to come up with a story to justify the shootings.
Lohman's confession to conspiracy and cover-up resulted in a flurry of speculation about the officers who worked closely with him.
According to the indictment, the two unnamed officers Lohman mentioned were Bowen and Gisevius.
The indictment said the officers did not collect evidence from the scene for more than a month, and that immediately after the shooting, Arthur Kaufman became the lead investigator responsible for investigation of the shootings.
Between September 2005 and May 2006 Kaufman prepared numerous reports on the shootings. The indictment stated that on Sept. 4, "and again on numerous occasions between then and January 2006, the officers involved in the Danziger Bridge shooting, led by defendants Kaufman, Bowen, and Gisevius, discussed and modified the stories they would tell about what happened on the bridge."...

Hypersensitive Cops Use Internet Stalking Law to Punish YouTube Meanie

2011-08-10T11:52:00.000-07:00

Hypersensitive Cops Use Internet Stalking Law to Punish YouTube Meanie
Aug 9, 2011
By Derek Lazzaro
Truthdig.com

In Renton, Wash., chief city prosecutor Shawn Arthur has signed a search warrant demanding that Google Inc., owner of YouTube, reveal the real name of one “Mrfuddlesticks,” a YouTube poster who allegedly committed the crime of “cyberstalking.”

The problem is that Mrfuddlesticks has done nothing wrong. What he, or she, has done is exercise the constitutionally protected right to free speech. The alleged crime was making eight cartoon videos—political parodies—that were critical of the City of Renton Police Department. It should be pointed out that the cartoons never mention any of the complainants in the search warrant by name, and that the cyberstalking law was designed to protect children and the victims of real harassment—not overzealous police officers.

The cartoons allege or parody a wide spectrum of misbehavior ranging from drunkenness, to general incompetence, to sexual harassment, to improper sexual relationships with suspects, to stealing evidence. The videos are a bit rude—offensive even. And as an apparent result, a Renton police officer swore under oath that three of his colleagues had become the victims of the new crime of cyberstalking, because, according to the warrant, there was language in the videos that was “meant to embarrass and emotionally torment the victim[s] of the comments.”

Boohoo. Cry me a river.

Since when has it been illegal to make “comments” about police officers and other public employees? Well, if you believe the police, since March 24, 2004.

In 2004 the Washington Legislature enacted RCW 9.61.260, a law that states: “A person is guilty of cyberstalking if he or she, with intent to harass, intimidate, torment, or embarrass any other person, and under circumstances not constituting telephone harassment, makes an electronic communication to such other person or a third party ... using any lewd, lascivious, indecent, or obscene words, images, or language, or suggesting the commission of any lewd or lascivious act.”

In other words, if you go online and “torment” or “embarrass” anyone with any “indecent” or “lewd” words, images or language, you could theoretically go to prison in the state of Washington.

As a lawyer, I am confident in asserting that this law clearly violates the United States Constitution. Indeed, most first-year law students could write an essay about why this law is unconstitutional—far too broad and vague to be enforceable, at least as applied to political speech...

COMMENT

Run Mr Fuddlesticks Run said...
Oct. 7, 2011

And now the Renton Police Department has shredded the very public documents that could have proved or disproved their case, rather than producing the documents to the media under public disclosure.
http://mrfuddlesticks.blogspot.com

ATF official apologizes for mistakes in gun probe

2011-07-26T12:12:00.000-07:00

ATF official apologizes for mistakes in gun probe
By PETE YOST, Associated Press
July 26, 2011

WASHINGTON (AP) — An official of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has apologized and told Congress he shares responsibility for mistakes in carrying out a controversial law enforcement operation in Arizona that resulted in high-powered weapons flowing into Mexico.

William McMahon, the head of ATF's western region, testified Tuesday that the agency had good intentions when it launched Operation Fast and Furious in 2009. But McMahon says that looking back, there are things ATF would have done differently.

McMahon, the highest-ranking ATF official to testify publicly about the operation, says he failed to keep close enough track of the investigation in Arizona. Fast and Furious focused on several Phoenix area gun shops and sought to develop cases against gunrunning ring leaders who had eluded previous tactics.

Sexual abuse lies keep man in prison; courts refuse to hold new trial

2011-07-23T22:30:00.000-07:00

Charles Farrar passed a polygraph and turned down a plea bargain, convinced he'd be acquitted at his 2002 trial. His earliest parole date is 77 years away.

Sacha Bruce, now 26, recanted her testimony shortly after Farrar's trial — and was attacked by prosecutors.

Sexual abuse lies keep man in prison; courts refuse to hold new trial
By Alan Prendergast
Denver Westword News
Jul 20 2011

They took away the children eleven years ago. They took away the family photos just the other day — 212 glossy images of kids now grown, of smiling grandchildren he's never seen or held.

Charles Farrar kept the pictures in his cell in the Sterling Correctional Facility, a collection that expanded with every letter, every precious word from his far-flung tribe. He's never made a secret of them. But men convicted of terrible crimes aren't allowed to have certain kinds of photos in their possession. So when a recent shakedown turned up a snapshot of his youngest grandson having his diaper changed, the kid just lying there exposed — well, that was the end of the pictures.

That's what happens when you're condemned to a mountain of time. Piece by piece, inch by inch, they take it all away. Your freedom. Your memories. Your ties to anything human.

But Farrar isn't a man who gives up easily. He's filed a lawsuit over the seizure of his "contraband" family album. The dispute has already cost him his clean disciplinary record, his job in the prison upholstery operation, and his place in an honor pod reserved for the best-behaved inmates in Sterling.

Farrar doesn't care. The pictures mean that much to him.

"Hope has been snatched from me so many times," he says. "They put me in here for life. Family is basically what has kept me going. The biggest reason I don't do away with myself is my kids. I want to make sure they're doing okay."

Family may be what keeps Farrar going, but it's also what put him behind bars. In 2002 an Arapahoe County jury found the former bakery worker guilty of multiple counts of sexual assault on a child after hearing the horrific story told by his oldest stepdaughter, Sacha. She testified that Farrar, often assisted by her own mother, had subjected her to more than a hundred instances of molestation, rape and sexual abuse from the age of eleven until she was fifteen. Judge John P. Leopold sentenced Farrar to 145 years to life — the kind of time usually reserved for serial killers, terrorists or Bernie Madoff.

Like many convicted sex offenders, Farrar has always maintained his innocence. Unlike most of them, he doesn't bother to hide the nature of his conviction, even though child molesters can expect brutal treatment from other prisoners. But what truly sets his case apart is the degree to which family members continue to support him, insisting that he couldn't possibly have done such a thing. And his staunchest defender for the past eight years has been the one person, other than Farrar and his co-defendant, who knows what really happened: his alleged victim.

Shortly after Farrar's trial, prosecutors dropped similar charges against Sacha's mother, Debbie, because Sacha refused to testify against her. A few months later, after Sacha turned eighteen, she went back to court and told a very different story.

She said that she'd lied, that she'd fabricated the allegations against Debbie and Charles so she could live with her grandparents in Oklahoma. That she'd made fools out of the cops, the social workers, the prosecutors, who not only swallowed her preposterous tale, but coached her on how to tell it better on the stand. And when she tried to call the whole thing off, two caseworkers and a prosecutor pressured her into sticking to her story and ignored her assertions that it wasn't true.

"I ultimately testified against my stepfather at his trial because I was scared by threats of being placed in a mental institution," she wrote in an affidavit submitted in court. "I have had trouble sleeping since I made these allegations. When I do sleep, I have nightmares about ruining innocent lives."

Sacha's explosive claims triggered a series of hearings before Judge Leopold. Prosecutors and social workers took the stand to deny any misconduct; relatives testified that they'd expressed doubts about Sacha's story to officials but had been told to keep quiet. If it had been a different sort of crime at issue, in any county other than Arapahoe — which has a formidable reputation for aggressively pursuing child sexual-assault cases — the new evidence might have made Farrar a free man. Instead, the case has become a long, tortuous gauntlet of legal wrangles and appeals, and Farrar remains in his cell.

In America's holy war on sex offenders, it's a matter of gospel to believe the children — no matter how improbable the claims, how inadequate the investigation, how suspect the credibility of the alleged victim. The children must be believed. Unless, of course, they change their story to something nobody wants to hear.

"This is a terrifying case," says attorney Mark Walta, who's worked on Farrar's appeals since 2003. "The prosecution's entire case was staked to this woman's credibility. But when you're dealing with someone who is more or less a pathological liar, you don't know where the truth starts and ends."

"It's crazy," says Craig Truman, the veteran criminal defense attorney who represented Farrar at trial. "I just find it amazing that some judge somewhere didn't say that without this girl, there's no evidence and he deserves a new trial."...

Trial: Bullets at Katrina shooting match police weapons

2011-07-13T17:49:00.000-07:00

In testimony last week, officer Michael Hunter, who has pleaded guilty to a role in the shooting, said Bowen at one point leaned over the concrete barrier and held his gun low while spraying five civilians with bullets.

Trial: Bullets at Katrina shooting match police weapons
By Kathy Finn
Jul 13, 2011
(Reuters)

Bullets taken from victims of a fatal police shooting during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and from the scene match guns used by three of the police officers involved, a ballistics expert said on Wednesday.

Patrick Lane told a New Orleans jury that his analysis showed with "reasonable scientific certainty" that at least one of the bullets removed from the body of 17-year-old James Brissette matched the rifle fired by Sergeant Kenneth Bowen.

Other bullets or shell casings taken from the scene matched guns fired by officers Robert Faulcon and Anthony Villavaso, the Louisiana State Police ballistics specialist said.

Bowen, Faulcon and Villavaso are on trial in federal court alongside Sergeant Robert Gisevius over the fatal shootings of Brissette and 40-year-old Ronald Madison days after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. Four other people were seriously wounded in the incident.

A fifth officer, Sergeant Arthur Kaufman, is charged with covering up the crimes through false reports, a planted gun and made-up witnesses.

The civilians had been walking on the Danziger Bridge in eastern New Orleans as a dozen officers responded to an alert that police were under fire in that area. When the police arrived, they began firing without warning, witnesses said.

One group of civilians took cover in a walkway behind a concrete barrier while others ran to the opposite end of the bridge.

A number of witnesses have said that police, including homicide investigator Kaufman, collected no evidence from the scene. Many, including police officers, have also testified that none of the civilians had weapons.

Lane testified that shell casings found later at the bridge matched two AK-47 rifles, a Glock .40-caliber handgun and a shotgun used by officers that day.

In later testimony, the pathologist who performed an autopsy on Brissette said several bullets had entered and exited his body, then reentered at another point. Dr. Dana Troxclair said some wounds could have come from bullets ricocheting off a hard surface, such as concrete.

She said that given the angle of the bullets, the gun would have had to be low to the ground when fired.

In testimony last week, officer Michael Hunter, who has pleaded guilty to a role in the shooting, said Bowen at one point leaned over the concrete barrier and held his gun low while spraying five civilians with bullets.

Cory Maye To Be Released From Prison

2011-07-01T12:32:00.000-07:00

Cory Maye To Be Released From Prison
Radly Balko
Huffington Post
07/1/11

MONTICELLO, Miss. -- After 10 years of incarceration, and seven years after a jury sentenced him to die, 30-year-old Cory Maye will soon be going home. Mississippi Circuit Court Judge Prentiss Harrell signed a plea agreement Friday morning in which Maye pled guilty to manslaughter for the 2001 death of Prentiss, Mississippi, police officer Ron Jones, Jr.

Per the agreement, Harrell then sentenced Maye to 10 years in prison, time he has now already served. Maye will be taken to Rankin County, Mississippi, for processing and some procedural work. He is expected to be released within days.

Maye's story, a haunting tale about race, the rural south, the excesses of the drug war, the inequities of the criminal justice system and a father's instincts to protect his daughter, caught fire across the Internet and the then-emerging blogging world when I first posted the details on my own blog in late 2006.

Shortly after midnight on December 26, 2001, Maye, then 21, was drifting off to sleep in his Prentiss duplex as the television blared in the background. Hours earlier, he had put his 18-month-old-daughter to sleep. He was soon awoken by the sounds of armed men attempting to break into his home. In the confusion, he fired three bullets from the handgun he kept in his nightstand.

As he'd later testify in court, Maye realized within seconds that he'd just shot a cop. A team of police officers from the area had received a tip from an informant -- later revealed to be a racist drug addict -- that there was a drug dealer living in the small yellow duplex on Mary Street. It now seems clear that the police were after Jamie Smith, who lived on the other side of the duplex, not Maye or his live-in girlfriend Chenteal Longino. Neither Maye nor Longino had a criminal record. Their names weren't on the search warrants.

Maye would later testify that as soon as he realized the armed men in his home were police, he surrendered and put up his hands. There were three bullets still left in his gun. But Maye had just shot a cop. And not just any cop. He shot Officer Ron Jones, Jr., the son of Prentiss Police Chief Ron Jones, Sr. Maye is black; Jones was white. And this was Jefferson Davis County, a part of Mississippi still divided by tense relations between races. Maye was arrested and charged with capital murder, the intentional killing of a police officer.

After a long series of delays, Maye was finally tried in 2004 in Marion County, Mississippi. Maye's family shied away from retaining Bob Evans, the Prentiss public defender, a decision they'd later come to regret. Instead, they pooled their money and hired Ronda Cooper, an attorney in Jackson who made a number of critical mistakes during Maye's trial. There were other problems with Maye's trial as well, including testimony from Mississippi medical examiner Steven Hayne, who performed the autopsy on Jones. I'd later report on a number of questions about Hayne's workload and credibility as an expert witness. He eventually resigned from the National Association of Medical Examiners and was barred from doing any more autopsies for Mississippi prosecutors.
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In early 2007, after reading about Hayne's case on a number of blogs, attorneys from the D.C. law firm Covington & Burling agreed to represent Maye pro bono. Maye's family also went back to public defender and defense attorney Bob Evans. (Evans would later be fired as Prentiss public defender for his decision to represent Maye.) In the fall of 2007, at a hearing in Poplarville, Mississippi, Judge Michael Eubanks threw out Maye's death sentence, finding that he had received inadequate defense counsel during the sentencing portion of his trial. Maye was to be taken off Parchman Penitentiary's Death Row. Eubanks resentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

In November 2009, the Mississippi State Court of Appeals granted Maye a new trial, finding that he should have been permitted to move his trial back to Jefferson Davis County after his attorney mistakenly asked for a change of venue. In 2010, the Mississippi State Supreme Court upheld the order for the new trial, but on the grounds that Maye should have been permitted to offer the defense that he was defending his daughter on the night of the raid.

Strauss-Kahn Is Released as Problems revealed in prosecutor's office

2011-07-01T09:19:00.000-07:00

Strauss-Kahn Case Adds to Doubts on Prosecutor
By ALAN FEUER, JOHN ELIGON and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
July 2, 2011

Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, seemed preoccupied when he sat down with two reporters last Monday. He already knew what the world wouldhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif soon learn: his marquee prosecution, the sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was falling apart. Privately, his aides had told him they had discovered grave problems with the accuser’s credibility.

As the interview began, but before Mr. Vance was asked a question, he offered an unsolicited defense — not just of the Strauss-Kahn case, but of his overall stewardship. “Ultimately,” he said, “the success of a D.A.’s office, and of a D.A., is measured not in individual cases, but over time.”

“The cases you don’t read about,” he added, “define what the job of a D.A. really is.”

But that job has grown increasingly tumultuous. Since Mr. Vance took over 18 months ago, morale in some parts of the office has begun to sag, in part because of his firing of some prosecutors. Relations with one of the office’s key partners, the Police Department, have grown tense at times, with the agencies competing over many issues, including control of anticrime initiatives, officials on both sides say.

Mr. Vance’s predecessor, Robert M. Morgenthau, who became the pre-eminent district attorney in the country while holding the post for 35 years, was once a close ally of Mr. Vance’s, providing crucial support for his election in 2009. Mr. Vance worked for Mr. Morgenthau in the 1980s.

Now, Mr. Morgenthau, 91, rarely speaks to Mr. Vance.

Mr. Morgenthau has apparently become displeased with Mr. Vance’s management style and his revamping of the staff that Mr. Morgenthau put together, according to people who know both men well.

Mr. Vance’s supporters attribute the criticism of his tenure to people who are unsettled by his efforts to reinvigorate and modernize an office that his supporters say had stagnated under Mr. Morgenthau. They pointed out that only after Mr. Vance became district attorney were prosecutors given smartphones.

Still, the second-guessing of Mr. Vance’s leadership has intensified in the wake of a string of courtroom losses that culminated in the startling events last week, when prosecutors revealed their concerns about the honesty of the hotel housekeeper who accused Mr. Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault in May.

Even a member of the finance committee for Mr. Vance’s 2009 campaign, Gerald L. Shargel, a Manhattan defense lawyer, questioned how the case had been handled.

“What’s most curious is hearing the line prosecutors saying early on that they had a strong case, a very strong case,” Mr. Shargel said. “Obviously, they hadn’t looked very hard. I have enormous respect for Cy as a prosecutor, but this is like a series of bad dreams.”

A judge in Manhattan freed Mr. Strauss-Kahn from house arrest on Friday, and the case against him appeared to be collapsing.

In the weeks before that, Mr. Vance’s office failed to win rape convictions against two New York police officers accused of sexually assaulting a drunken woman (the officers were found guilty of lesser charges). And the most significant terrorism charges were dropped against two men accused of planning attacks against synagogues in the city, though serious counts remain.

Some of the most pointed complaints about Mr. Vance are emanating from the district attorney’s office itself, according to numerous interviews with prosecutors and other officials. They spoke on the condition that their names not be used, saying they feared reprisals.

Several said they worried that cases were often pursued with an excessive focus on whether they would generate publicity. Some said Mr. Vance had taken away the discretion of midlevel prosecutors, sometimes to the detriment of cases.

Those two issues, some prosecutors said, contributed to the difficulties in the case against Mr. Strauss-Kahn, the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund who had been considered a leading contender for the French presidency.

After Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s arrest, the district attorney’s office faced the question of whether to ask a judge to keep him in custody.

To do so, the office had to obtain an indictment within five days. The alternative was to agree to a bail package so that prosecutors could take their time investigating the case before deciding whether to indict, according to four people briefed on the matter.

In the end, Mr. Vance chose a quick indictment, drawing criticism that he had moved before he knew of the accuser’s background.

Prosecutors have said in court that they decided to seek the indictment and to keep Mr. Strauss-Kahn in custody to avoid the possibility of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s fleeing the country.

The case also unfolded as a rift had already developed between Mr. Vance and the chief of the office’s sex crimes unit, Lisa Friel. She stepped down last week under circumstances that were not entirely clear. It did not appear that her decision was directly related to the Strauss-Kahn case.

Early on, Mr. Vance took the case away from the sex crimes unit and gave it to two other experienced assistant district attorneys...

Strauss-Kahn Is Released as Case Teeters
By JOHN ELIGON
New York Times
July 1, 2011

Dominique Strauss-Kahn was released from house arrest on Friday as the sexual assault case against him moved one step closer to dismissal after prosecutors told a Manhattan judge that they had serious problems with the case.

Prosecutors acknowledged that there were significant credibility issues with the hotel housekeeper who accused Mr. Strauss-Kahn of trying to rape her in May. In a brief hearing at State Supreme Court in Manhattan, prosecutors did not oppose his release; the judge then freed Mr. Strhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifauss-Kahn on his own recognizance.

The development represented a stunning reversal in a case that reshaped the French political landscape and sparked debate about morals, the treatment of women and the American justice system. The case could also alter the political fortunes of Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, who is just a year and a half into his tenure and was facing his most highly publicized case to date.

Mr. Strauss-Kahn, 62, was considered a strong contender for the French presidency before being accused of sexually assaulting the housekeeper who went to clean his luxury suite at the Sofitel New York. After his arrest, Mr. Strauss-Kahn resigned his position as managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

From Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s first court appearance on May 16, Mr. Vance’s office expressed extreme confidence in its case. At that hearing, an assistant district attorney said that “the victim provided very powerful details consistent with violent sexual assault committed by the defendant.”

At another court appearance three days later, prosecutors said the victim “offered a compelling and unwavering story” and that the proof against Mr. Strauss-Kahn was “continuing to grow every day.”

Those accounts varied greatly from what prosecutors revealed on Friday, acknowledging publicly for the first time that the case was not as strong as they initially suggested. In a letter sent to Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers and filed with Justice Michael J. Obus on Friday, prosecutors outlined some of what they had discovered about Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s accuser.

Prosecutors disclosed that the woman had admitted lying in her application for asylum from Guinea; according to the letter, she “fabricated the statement with the assistance of a male who provided her with a cassette recording” that she memorized. She also admitted that her claim that she had been the victim of a gang rape in Guinea was also a lie.

The woman also admitted to the prosecutors that she had misrepresented her income to qualify for her housing, and had declared a friend’s child — in addition to her own daughter — as a dependent on tax returns to increase her tax refund.

Questions are sure to be raised about how swiftly and vigorously prosecutors proceeded with the case, as many in France questioned whether there was a rush to judgment with Mr. Strauss-Kahn.

While prosecutors have not yet dismissed the case, Mr. Strauss-Kahn will now be able to move about the country more freely; although prosecutors will retain his passport, most of his restrictive bail conditions have been lifted. Under those conditions, he was required to stay in a Lower Manhattan town house under armed guard and wearing an ankle monitor. He could only leave for certain reasons and had to notify prosecutors when he left.

Although forensic tests found unambiguous evidence of a sexual encounter between Mr. Strauss-Kahn and the woman, prosecutors now do not believe much of what the accuser has told them about the circumstances or about herself.

Since her initial allegation on May 14, the accuser has repeatedly lied, one of the law enforcement officials said.

According to the two officials, the woman had a phone conversation with an incarcerated man within a day of her encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn in which she discussed the possible benefits of pursuing the charges against him. The conversation was recorded.

That man, the investigators learned, had been arrested on charges of possessing 400 pounds of marijuana. He is among a number of individuals who made multiple cash deposits, totaling around $100,000, into the woman’s bank account over the last two years. The deposits were made in Arizona, Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania.

The investigators also learned that she was paying hundreds of dollars every month in phone charges to five companies. The woman had insisted she had only one phone and said she knew nothing about the deposits except that they were made by a man she described as her fiancé and his friends...

Matt Flegenheimer and Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.

SDPD Urged Charging Cop, But Sent Him Back to Patrol When Bonnie Dumanis refused to charge him

2011-06-24T14:18:00.000-07:00

A woman told police in February 2010 that San Diego police officer Anthony Arevalos sexually assaulted her while transporting her to jail. Police recommended charges but prosecutors declined to pursue them in court. So police sent Arevalos back to work.

Police had acknowledged the woman’s complaint and said it had not resulted in charges. But it wasn’t publicly known that they recommended charges against one of their own and prosecutors declined to pursue them.

How police responded to the complaint raises more questions about internal oversight following the largest scandal for the San Diego Police Department under Chief Bill Lansdowne. At least five women say they were solicited for sexual favors or sexually assaulted by Arevalos after investigators dismissed the 2010 complaint.

SDPD Urged Charging Cop, But Sent Him Back to Patrol
June 23, 2011
by Keegan Kyle

Sitting in court this week, former San Diego police officer Anthony Arevalos watched woman after woman accuse him of sexually assaulting them, soliciting bribes and falsely imprisoning them.

But the woman who first complained of being sexually assaulted by Arevalos was not among them. Police investigated her complaint in February last year. They recommended prosecutors with the District Attorney's Office bring charges against one of their own.

And the case stopped there.

The District Attorney's Office declined to press charges, three SDPD sources told voiceofsandiego.org, and the Police Department sent Arevalos back to the streets where he worked as a traffic cop patrolling for drunk drivers — a post in which he arrested women more often than any of his peers...

Should filming the police get you arrested?

2011-06-23T15:54:00.000-07:00

Jun 21, 2011
Should filming the police get you arrested?
A newly released video shows a woman being taken into custody for taping cops while standing on her own property
Video
By David Sirota

Last month, I wrote a column on how police departments across the country are simultaneously employing ever-more sophisticated surveillance techniques while trying to criminalize the act of recording police officers in public spaces. This latter effort comes -- not coincidentally -- at a time when police forces are facing potential federal investigations into police brutality.

To get a sense of just how far some police departments seem willing to go to prevent citizens from exercising their civil right to record public spaces, watch this recently released video of a Rochester woman who appears to be getting arrested for video taping police from her own front lawn. (Note: The police officer in the video refers to an earlier exchange, so there may be another aspect to this story.)

For more details on the situation surrounding the Rochester arrest, go here. Needless to say, the event epitomizes the situation -- and shows how the use of police powers in this way is one major part of a larger campaign to criminalize free speech.

http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

June 21, 2011
Rochester Police Arrest Woman For Videotaping Them From Her Front Yard
By Carlos Miller

A woman was arrested for videotaping police from her front yard in Rochester, New York.

Emily Good, 28, was recording a traffic stop where police had a man handcuffed on May 12th. The video was uploaded to Blip TV today.

The cop who arrested her has been identified as Mario Masic, according to the Rochester Indy Media.

A man named Mario Masic who happens to be a police officer in western New York also runs a business called Harvest Moon Malamutes.

mariomasic.jpg

Mario Masic apparrently treats dogs better than he does camera-toting citizens

You can friend him on Facebook here. Or you can email him through his business email address at harvestmoonmalamutes@live.com.

The video, which has since gone viral, shows Masic hassling Good with absurd notions after he notices her recording.

“I don’t feel safe with you standing behind me, so I’m going to ask you to go into your house,”

“You seem very anti-police … due to what you said to me before you started taping me.”

It is not clear what Good said before she started recording, but if she said anything threatening, they would have arrested her at that moment.

She ended up getting handcuffed and taken away after she refused to walk into her house, even though she was clearly on her own property.

A friend or relative ended up taking the camera and we see her being led away.

Neighbors who witnessed the interaction confirmed she had done nothing wrong.

Meanwhile, the man they had originally handcuffed was released.

Mickey H. Osterreicher, attorney for the National Press Photographers Association, fired off a letter to Rochester Police Chief James Sheppard demanding that Good's charges be dropped.

Sheppard told Osterreicher and the Democrat and Chronicle newspaper that he has ordered an investigation, which normally is police talk for sweeping it under the carpet until the media attention dies down.

Police Illegally Trespass and Arrest Woman in Her Front Lawn for Recording Traffic Stop: An Eyewitness Report
Ryan Acuff
13 May 2011

At 9:50pm Thursday May 12, 2011 officer Mario Masic illegally trespassed and arrested a woman in her front lawn while she unobtrusively recorded a suspicious traffic stop in front of her house.
The Illegal Detention and Search of a Young Black Male

On Thursday night I was at my friend's house when at about 9:45pm my friend and I saw flashing lights in front of the house. We both went outside to see what the commotion was about and we found two police cars blocking the street as they were performing a traffic stop. Later on a third police car pulled up making a total of four officers on the scene. The person pulled over was a young black male. It was unclear why the man was originally pulled over but one of the officers interrogated the man and accused him of possessing drugs. Not satisfied with the man's answers, the police took the man out of his car, handcuffed and put him in the back of a police car. After the man was detained, the police officers searched his car and found no drugs. The officers then released the man and said he was free to go. As the man drove away about 9:55pm he didn't appear to receive a ticket.

The Illegal Trespass and Arrest Of a Woman Recording Incident

As soon my friend and I came out to observe the police activity in front of the house located in the 19th Ward my friend began to record the events with her IPhone. While the police were searching and detaining the driver of the car one of the officers noticed that my friend was recording the whole incident. He began to question her with an aggressive tone claiming he felt unsafe with her “standing behind him”. Interestingly, at no point was his back turned to us, so presumably he was upset that she was observing and taping. My friend responded that she had the right to observe. The officer responded that she did not have the right to observe from the sidewalk. My friend immediately moved back into her grass before the sidewalk. Then the officer ordered us both inside the house. The woman calmly noted that she had the right to be on her own property and the right to observe the police activity unobstructed. The officer commented that he thought she was “anti-police” and approached the woman stating “are you seriously not going to obey my order?” As the officer trespassed on to the property in a threatening manner, we began to walk toward the house. As we approached the porch, the officer said, “I'm just going to arrest you” and came onto the property to arrest the woman. She was put into a police car and taken away at about 9:55pm. According to the arrested woman, after the arrest the four police met in the parking lot of Wilson High School around the corner and had a conference for about an hour about how to deal with the case. A Sargent came over and gave them advice about how to write up the report that would minimize their wrong doing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7ZkFZkejv8ideo

Ramona teen sues sheriff's deputies for assault, battery

2011-06-18T11:24:00.000-07:00

Ramona teen sues sheriff's deputies for assault, battery
By MORGAN COOK
mcook@nctimes.com
June 17, 2011

A 17-year-old Ramona boy has filed a $1 million lawsuit in federahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifl court against San Diego County sheriff's deputies who he says beat and wrongfully arrested him in December 2009.

Ramona lawyer Julie M. Kiehne-Lamkin filed the civil suit in federal court on behalf of the teen, according to court records. Deputies were served with the lawsuit on Monday.

The lawsuit seeks damages for civil rights violations, assault and battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. It names several sheriff's deputies, the Sheriff's Department, and the county as defendants.

Lt. Julie Sutton, commander of the Ramona Sheriff's Substation, said Tuesday she was aware of the lawsuit. She declined to comment further on the matter, citing department policy against discussing personnel and legal matters.

Kiehne-Lamkin declined Wednesday to comment on the specifics of the case, and said she advised her client against speaking to the media. She said the defendants have until July 5 to respond to the complaint.

According to court records, the teen ---- who is identified in court records as J.K.G. because of federal protections for juveniles ---- was approached by Ramona sheriff's Deputy Thomas Seiver at about 8:10 p.m. Dec. 29, 2009, as he skateboarded in the 1100 block of Main Street.

Seiver stopped J.K.G. because the deputy was investigating reports of a suspicious person tampering with vehicles in the parking lot of Mi Ranchito restaurant, 1028 Main St., according to the records.

Seiver searched the young man, confiscated his cell phone, and then punched the teen in the face twice, according to the court records. The court records say Seiver then choked the teen, threw him to the ground, and "grinded (his) face onto the parking lot pavement."

A video apparently taken shortly after J.K.G. was released to his mother on Dec. 29, 2009, was available Wednesday on YouTube.com.

In the video, there are numerous cuts and abrasions on the teen's forehead and nose, and his nose, lips and one of his eyes appears swollen.

According to the records, J.K.G. did not resist Seiver, run from him, or make any attempt to hurt or threaten him.

Another deputy arrived and helped put the bleeding teenager into the back of a patrol vehicle, according to the records.

The deputies took the teen back to Mi Ranchito restaurant where they found no evidence that the young man had tampered with vehicles, according to the court records.

The teen was reportedly booked into the Ramona Sheriff's Substation then released to his mother, according to court records.

Though J.K.G. was bleeding and in pain, the deputies never offered him medical care, the records say.

The lawsuit accuses several deputies of working together to lie about the incident in their official reports.

The teenager was charged with resisting arrest and battery on a peace officer, according to the court records. A judge examined evidence and witnesses at a hearing in juvenile court on June 11, 2010, and dismissed all charges.

Kiehne-Lamkin said she filed a claim with the county that sought damages on her client's behalf, but it was rejected without investigation.

Police Quietly Disbanded Anticorruption Unit

2011-05-15T15:56:00.000-07:00

If a prostitute ever offered sexual favors to avoid arrest, officers used to consider that she might have be placed there as part of a sting by the anticorruption unit...But what's diminished over the years, several said, is the culture of self-policing that prevents misconduct altogether.

Police Quietly Disbanded Anticorruption Unit
May 13, 2011
by Keegan Kyle
Voice of San Diego

Shortly after Bill Lansdowne became police chief in 2003 he quietly disbanded an anticorruption unit assigned with proactively investigating the kind of criminal allegations that have recently stained the department's public image.

On Wednesday, police announced charging one of their own with kidnapping and raping a 34-year-old woman while on duty. The officer, Daniel Dana, 26, is no longer employed by the department and was the 10th officer accused of serious or criminal misconduct in recent months.

A decade ago, a case like Dana's would have been investigated by a seven-person anticorruption unit that specifically focused on allegations of criminal misconduct. The unit had more funding and time to investigate internal misconduct than other units, and the officers often used undercover or surveillance operations to proactively monitor their colleagues for wrongdoing.

Undercover operations involved planting money in squad cars or the pockets of suspects to check that police would properly impound it, for example. If a prostitute ever offered sexual favors to avoid arrest, officers used to consider that she might have be placed there as part of a sting by the anticorruption unit.

To maintain a level of investigative secrecy from the rest of the department, the anticorruption unit even rented its own office in Old Town for about $2,000 a month, according to City Council meeting minutes. Most special units operate out of the department's headquarters in the East Village.

Police created the team in the early 1990s with much fanfare, but after Lansdowne became chief in 2003, it disappeared without public notice. Like other specialized units and task forces that the SDPD has pulled out of under Lansdowne, the move shifted resources internally to prioritize reactive functions like patrol rather than preventive efforts.

With the anticorruption unit gone, police reassigned the job of investigating criminal misconduct to teams specialized in the alleged crimes. Because Dana's case involves an alleged rape, for example, it's now being investigated by the Sex Crimes Unit.

Paul Cooper, Lansdowne's legal and policy advisor, cited two reasons for disbanding the unit. Mainly, he said, Lansdowne felt all crimes — regardless of any affiliation with the department — should be investigated by specialists. The anticorruption unit was staffed by generalists, or investigators with a wide knowledge of many types of crimes. Lansdowne argued that specialists were more efficient.

And second, Cooper said, the move saved the cash-crunched department rent and other funding. It already had the Internal Affairs Unit to investigate violations of department policy.

"We've been under constraint financially since he got here," Cooper said of Lansdowne.

Among current and former police officers interviewed about the anticorruption unit, none said its dissolution appears to have negatively impacted the quality of investigations once serious allegations like those against Dana arise. But what's diminished over the years, several said, is the culture of self-policing that prevents misconduct altogether.

Three current officers spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing concern about possible reprisals for being critical of Lansdowne's decisions, and because they were directed from the top down to not speak with reporters unless authorized by the department's media relations staff. Questions about the anticorruption team, officially called the Professional Standards Unit, were directed by other officers to Cooper and Executive Assistant Police Chief David Ramirez, Lansdowne's No. 2.

Separately, the three officers said disbanding the anticorruption unit had signaled internally that monitoring for misconduct was a lower priority under Lansdowne and became one of numerous factors contributing to a culture that provides greater room for bad behavior to fester.

"That is what started this whole ball of actions," one officer said, referring to the spike in allegations. "They've gotten out of control."

Former Police Chief Bob Burgreen created the anticorruption unit around the time of the Rodney King incident in Los Angeles and a spur of public outcry for more oversight of law enforcement. It added investigative teeth to the Internal Affairs Unit, which had the broad responsibility of reviewing all potential violations of department policy.

The new team, officially called the Professional Standards Unit, was staffed by veteran investigators while the Internal Affairs Unit typically got newly promoted investigative officers. If any complaint was too complex for the Internal Affairs Unit to handle within its limited time constraints, the Professional Standards Unit took over.

The Internal Affairs Unit, which continues today, is also a reactive operation. While the Professional Standards Unit would seek out and monitor for police misconduct, the Internal Affairs Unit only responds to complaints. If no one complains, police don't investigate.

David Kennedy, who studies crime prevention and policy at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said anticorruption units like the one San Diego had are rare nationwide. Most law enforcement agencies only respond to complaints through internal affairs, but very few address misconduct proactively using tools like undercover agents or surveillance.

"That's a very strong impact on the culture of the organization," Kennedy said. "Culture here matters more than anything else. When the tone of an agency is we don't put up with it, you're going to have a pretty high degree of self-policing."

At the time police announced the Professional Standards Unit they said it would also provide ethics training since officers didn't receive any after the academy. But police today don't recall that ever happening. Its main focus was investigations.

On Tuesday, Lansdowne announced a plan to address the recent spike in misconduct allegations that appear unparalleled to any period after the 1990s spike that spurred the anticorruption unit. Ten officers have been accused of various crimes, including drunken driving, assault, stalking and rape. Five have been formally charged in court. Dana, the officer accused of rape, appeared in court today for the first time and pleaded not guilty.

In response to the series, Lansdowne said that the department would add three or four officers to the Internal Affairs Unit, review internal policies, create a confidential hotline and boost ethics training for lower-ranking supervisors.

In a story published by the Union-Tribune on Friday, Mayor Jerry Sanders endorsed the plan and said he continues to fully support Lansdowne as the city's police chief. He described the rash of incidents as an embarrassment and echoed Lansdowne's assertion that it was correlated to stress among officers.

"Usually you would anticipate somebody who hasn't been on very long because you don't know them as well," Sanders told the Union-Tribune. "But when you get officers with 14, 15, 17, 20 years doing stuff like this, that's very concerning."

However, Cooper said Lansdowne's decision to boost staffing for internal affairs does not signal any retraction about eliminating the anticorruption unit years ago. Despite the recent spike in serious allegations, the police chief continues to support the system he created.

If the department had felt there was a need to proactively monitor its officers like the anticorruption unit did, Cooper said, it could have still done that with other specialized units in the department. But he declined to say whether the need now exists to do those types of operations.

Cooper disagreed with sentiment that losing the anticorruption unit has contributed to more misconduct. He called the anticorruption unit's dissolution unrelated and said officers are still deterred from misconduct by the prospect of losing their jobs or going to prison.

It's not an anticorruption team that deters bad behavior, Cooper said. "It's the criminal justice system."

Still, that even some officers in the department have tied the anticorruption unit with the recent wave of serious allegations resonated with Samuel Walker, a nationally renowned expert on police accountability policies.

"It's extremely significant that officers appear to have a commitment to accountability and they want this unit and they see problems developing when it was disbanded," Walker said. "It's really almost unthinkable in most police departments that officers would want and would value that kind of a unit."

In most agencies, Walker said, police officers would perceive the unit as an operation that's simply out to get them and reject its presence.

"Things just don't happen out of the blue," Walker said. "Officers tend to slide into misconduct."

Homeless advocate awarded $4,000 in arrest case

2011-05-04T09:50:00.000-07:00

This jury obviously thought that the cop used too much force, but it didn't want to say so.

Homeless advocate awarded $4,000 in arrest case
By Kristina Davis
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
May 2, 2011

A jury on Monday found that a San Diego police officer used unreasonable force and was negligent during a 2009 sidewalk encounter that left a longtime homeless advocate injured.

The jury awarded $2,925 for medical costs to activist John David Ross, known as the “Water Man,” and another $1,000 for physical pain and emotional suffering.

The verdict read in San Diego Superior Court went in favor of Officer Daniel McLaughlin on several other points, finding that his conduct was lawful, that he didn’t assault Ross, and that he acted in good faith when he detained Ross in the East Village.

The mixed verdict seemed to please both the officer, a 12-year veteran of the force, and Ross, best known for handing out bottled water to the homeless.

“I’m very happy with the verdict,” McLaughlin said after the verdict was read. “I was found not to be at fault almost completely.”

Outside of the courtroom, Ross shook McLaughlin’s hand, to which the officer replied, “See you out there.”

Ross said later that he has no ill will toward the officer and hopes to continue to work with the Police Department on homeless issues.

“I’m elated. I’m very happy,” Ross said. “It sends a message to our city in general that we must use tolerance, justice and restraint and not ID and profile people due to circumstances. You should treat people in La Jolla and Point Loma the same as you treat people in the inner city.”

Ross, who was 74 at the time, claimed in his lawsuit that he was distributing water from the back of his vehicle on March 15, 2009, when McLaughlin pulled up and told the crowd to disperse. The officer then threw one of the homeless men, Myron Hill, against a wall, Ross testified.

When Ross asked what was happening, the officer twisted Ross’ arm and tossed him to the ground.

Ross said he suffered a concussion and exacerbated an old injury to his right shoulder.

Another man, Marvin Britton, crossed 17th Street to help Ross and was also shoved by the officer, according to the lawsuit.

The jury, which took two days to deliberate on the weeklong trial, found that McLaughlin did not use unreasonable force against Hill and Britton and that he was within his rights as a police officer to detain both.

SD City College’s Suspected Killer Remains A Fugitive Six Months Later

2011-04-12T14:13:00.000-07:00

SD City College’s Suspected Killer Remains A Fugitive Six Months Later
By Amita Sharma
March 23, 2011
KPBS

It has been more than six months since San Diego City College student Diana Gonzalez was found murdered inside a campus bathroom but investigators are no closer to catching her suspected killer.

Police believe Armando Gabriel Perez fled to Mexico shortly after he murdered Gonzalez. Despite help from Mexican authorities, Perez has remained elusive. There are published reports in Mexico that Perez is working as an assassin for the Sinaloa drug cartel. San Diego City College Professor Larissa Dorman, who has acted as an advocate for Gonzalez’s family, said the news – if true – is alarming.

“It makes it even more scary for the family, who are devastated not only for the loss of their daughter but for the loss of their lives and the likelihood of them having any kind of closure now seems like a farther-away possibility," Dorman said.

A spokesman for District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis says catching Perez is a high priority for the office. Gonzalez was killed days after the D.A.’s office declined to prosecute Perez for allegedly kidnapping and choking her.

Cop Nearly Doors Cyclist, Then Chases And Arrests Her

2011-04-08T09:40:00.000-07:00

Cop Nearly Doors Cyclist, Then Chases And Arrests Her
By John Del Signore
April 6, 2011
Gothamist

On Monday, cyclist message boards lit up with outrage over the story of a woman who was arrested after supposedly running a red light on her bicycle on Amsterdam Avenue. But it turns out the truth is actually more outrageous: Christina Thede, the cyclist in question, tells us she didn't run a red light at all. Her crime? Criticizing a plainclothes cop who nearly doored her.

Thede, a 28-year-old theater technician on the Upper West Side, tells us she was biking home on Sunday around 6 p.m. when the driver's side door of a double parked black car popped open suddenly on Amsterdam between 76th and 77th Streets. "I had to brake so abruptly that a delivery biker behind me ran into me," says Thede. "I had a verbal exchange with the driver in which I told him to watch what he was doing." Then she rode on, but soon realized that the guy had gotten back into his car and was zooming up behind her. She still had no idea this man was an officer of the law, and the situation devolved from there:

He was driving after me and I was scared. He kept slowing down alongside me, so I cut all the way over to the left lane. But he angrily skidded to a stop in front of me, pulling his car perpendicular to traffic in the left lane. Then I got off my bike and tried to walk my bike onto the sidewalk because I wasn't going to run out into traffic. That's when he grabbed the back of my bike and started pulling it.

He didn't say he was a cop and I thought, 'This guy's crazy, he's attacking me!' I screamed for help and he started restraining my arms and holding me so I couldn't move. People on the street stopped and started asking him what he was doing. I did not hear him say he was a police officer or see any indication he was a police officer, so I was terrified. Then an NYPD squad car arrived and my initial thought was that they were going to save me from this guy; I figured the bystanders had called 911.

But instead of handcuffing her assailant, they slapped the cuffs on Thede, and that's when she realized that it was a policeman who had chased her. "I asked one of the police officers who was telling me to calm down if this guy and the passenger in his car were really cops," Thede recalls. "And she confirmed that they were from the Central Park precinct. I overheard a bystander say, 'I think she ran a red light.' But that's not true. He was hotheaded and couldn't take someone telling him what he did was wrong so he needed to come after me and teach me a lesson."

Thede was charged with reckless operation of a bicycle and disorderly conduct, and spent about an hour at the local precinct station house. During that time, the cop who arrested her, one "Sgt. Santiago" according to the summons, tried to justify the arrest. Thede says, "He told me that when I went around the door of his car to continue, that that was reckless because I was going into traffic. He maintained that I wasn't allowed to swerve around. But I came to a complete stop, exchanged words with him, then rode around his still-opened door. He said he arrested me because he was concerned for his safety."

We're waiting to hear back from the NYPD on this, but Thede's lawyer believes the tickets will be dismissed, and she tells us she's considering suing the city.

Willfully ignoring entire trial record, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas reduce constitutional question to a single misdeed by a single bad actor

2011-04-05T23:57:00.000-07:00

Cruel but Not Unusual
Clarence Thomas writes one of the meanest Supreme Court decisions ever.
By Dahlia LithwickPosted
Slate
April 1, 2011

In 1985, John Thompson was convicted of murder in Louisiana. Having already been convicted in a separate armed robbery case, he opted not to testify on his own behalf in his murder trial. He was sentenced to death and spent 18 years in prison—14 of them isolated on death row—and watched as seven executions were planned for him. Several weeks before an execution scheduled for May 1999, Thompson's private investigators learned that prosecutors had failed to turn over evidence that would have cleared him at his robbery trial. This evidence included the fact that the main informant against him had received a reward from the victim's family, that the eyewitness identification done at the time described someone who looked nothing like him, and that a blood sample taken from the crime scene did not match Thompson's blood type.

In 1963, in Brady v. Maryland, the Supreme Court held that prosecutors must turn over to the defense any evidence that would tend to prove a defendant's innocence. Failure to do so is a violation of the defendant's constitutional rights. Yet the four prosecutors in Thompson's case managed to keep secret the fact that they had hidden exculpatory evidence for 20 years. Were it not for Thompson's investigators, he would have been executed for a murder he did not commit.

Both of Thompson's convictions were overturned. When he was retried on the murder charges, a jury acquitted him after 35 minutes. He sued the former Louisiana district attorney for Orleans Parish, Harry Connick Sr. (yes, his dad) for failing to train his prosecutors about their legal obligation to turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense. A jury awarded Thompson $14 million for this civil rights violation, one for every year he spent wrongfully incarcerated. The district court judge added another $1 million in attorneys' fees. A panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict. An equally divided 5th Circuit, sitting en banc, affirmed again.
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But this week, writing on behalf of the five conservatives on the Supreme Court and in his first majority opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas tossed out the verdict, finding that the district attorney can't be responsible for the single act of a lone prosecutor. The Thomas opinion is an extraordinary piece of workmanship, matched only by Justice Antonin Scalia's concurring opinion, in which he takes a few extra whacks at Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissent. (Ginsburg was so bothered by the majority decision that she read her dissent from the bench for the first time this term.) Both Thomas and Scalia have produced what can only be described as a master class in human apathy. Their disregard for the facts of Thompson's thrashed life and near-death emerges as a moral flat line. Scalia opens his concurrence with a swipe at Ginsburg's "lengthy excavation of the trial record" and states that "the question presented for our review is whether a municipality is liable for a single Brady violation by one of its prosecutors." But only by willfully ignoring that entire trial record can he and Thomas reduce the entire constitutional question to a single misdeed by a single bad actor.

Both parties to this case have long agreed that an injustice had been done. Connick himself conceded that there had been a Brady violation, yet Scalia finds none. Everyone else concedes that egregious mistakes were made. Scalia struggles to rehabilitate them all.

One of the reasons the truth came to light after 20 years is that Gerry Deegan, a junior assistant D.A. on the Thompson case, confessed as he lay dying of cancer that he had withheld the crime lab test results and removed a blood sample from the evidence room...

Justice Dept cites New Orleans police for rights violations

2011-03-17T13:55:00.000-07:00

Justice Dept cites New Orleans police for rights violations
Reporting by Kathy Finn and Corrie MacLaggan. Editing by Peter Bohan
Mar 17, 2011
Reuters

The New Orleans Police Department too often uses excessive force, conducts illegal stops and arrests, and has a pattern of discriminating on the basis of race, gender and sexual orientation, the Department of Justice said in a report on Thursday.

"For too long, the Department has been largely indifferent to widespread violations of law and policy by its officers," according to the report by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.

The report outlined problems with training, recruiting, supervision and interrogation practices.

DOJ said that the police department encourages under-investigating violence against women. It also found that officers used unjustified deadly and non-deadly force - including significant force against people with mental illness in cases in which it appeared no force was necessary.

"Instances of clearly unjustified force are routinely approved by supervisors and ratified up the chain of command, resulting in no accountability," the report said. "Officers even encourage each other to use force as retaliation."

The report recommended immediately suspending the use of dogs for apprehending suspects because the dogs were found to be so uncontrollable that they attacked their own handlers.

Federal officials also called for reforms that would improve training, foster better community collaboration and eliminate bias.

Justice Department officials joined city officials in downtown New Orleans on Thursday to announce the findings.

Two days after taking office in May 2010, Mayor Mitch Landrieu requested federal help to reform the New Orleans Police Department and stanch the persistent high incidence of violent crime.

"It is clear that nothing short of a complete transformation is necessary and essential to ensure safety for the citizens of New Orleans," Landrieu wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder at the time.

Days later, Justice Department officials announced a widespread review of the NOPD.

In December, 2010, a federal jury convicted three current and former New Orleans police officers in the shooting death and burning of a man in the chaotic days following the devastating Hurricane Katrina. In March, 2010, a former New Orleans police detective pleaded guilty to helping cover up two shooting deaths by police days after Katrina struck.

Federal prosecutors have charged 20 officers in four separate cases stemming from Katrina, according to media reports.

Five federal judges say California may be about to execute an innocent man

2010-12-10T09:23:00.000-08:00

Framed for Murder?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
New York Times
December 8, 2010

“California may be about to execute an innocent man.”

That’s the view of five federal judges in a case involving Kevin Cooper, a black man in California who faces lethal injection next year for supposedly murdering a white family. The judges argue compellingly that he was framed by police.

Mr. Cooper’s impending execution is so outrageous that it has produced a mutiny among these federal circuit court judges, distinguished jurists just one notch below the United States Supreme Court. But the judicial process has run out for Mr. Cooper. Now it’s up to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to decide whether to commute Mr. Cooper’s sentence before leaving office.

This case, an illuminating window into the pitfalls of capital punishment, dates to a horrific quadruple-murder in June 1983. Doug and Peggy Ryen were stabbed to death in their house, along with their 10-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old houseguest. The Ryens’ 8-year-old son, Josh, was left for dead but survived. They were all white.

Josh initially told investigators that the crime had been committed by three people, all white, although by the trial he suggested that he had seen just one person with an Afro. The first version made sense because the weapons included a hatchet, an ice pick and one or two knives. Could one intruder juggling several weapons overpower five victims, including a 200-pound former Marine like Doug Ryen, who also had a loaded rifle nearby?

But the police learned that Mr. Cooper had walked away from the minimum security prison where he was serving a burglary sentence and had hidden in an empty home 125 yards away from the crime scene. The police decided that he had committed the crime alone.

William A. Fletcher, a federal circuit judge, explained his view of what happens in such cases in a law school lecture at Gonzaga University, in which he added that Mr. Cooper is “probably” innocent: “The police are under heavy pressure to solve a high-profile crime. They know, or think they know, who did the crime. And they plant evidence to help their case along.”

Judge Fletcher wrote an extraordinary judicial opinion — more than 100 pages when it was released — dissenting from the refusal of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to rehear the case...

Former FBI agent on trial for murder

2010-12-09T13:54:00.000-08:00

Trial begins for ex-FBI agent accused of killing son’s girlfriend with hammer
By Dave Toplikar
Las Vegas Sun
Dec. 7, 2010

The issue is was it self defense or murder?

"This is not a who-done-it ," Chief Deputy District Attorney Giancario Pesci told a Clark County District Court jury late Tuesday afternoon in opening arguments for the murder trial of Edward A. Preciado-Nuno, a retired San Diego FBI special agent.

The 63-year-old former Marine and 25-year FBI agent has freely admitted he repeatedly struck his son's girlfriend, Kimberly Long, with a hammer in the head in a bloody fight two years ago in a Las Vegas home, Pesci told the Clark County District Court jury.

Pesci showed the jury a gruesome autopsy photo of Long's head. It showed 13 places where Preciado-Nuno had hit her with a claw hammer...

Fort Hood: Destroying Video of Shooting 'Could Be' a Crime

2010-10-18T11:20:00.000-07:00

Fort Hood: Destroying Video of Shooting 'Could Be' a Crime
By ThirdAge News Staff
October 18, 2010

Fort Hood survivors have been forced to recall the massacre that claimed 13 lives at the Texas military facility last November in a military hearing. Meanwhile, two former U.S. military officials said ordering a soldier to erase cellphone videos of the mass shooting could be a crime.

Pfc. Lance Aviles, who escaped the shooting at Fort Hood last year that left 13 dead and at least 32 injured, said during an evidentiary hearing Friday for the accused, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, that an officer and a non-commissioned officer ordered him to delete the video on the day of the shooting, reported the San Antonio Express-News.

"It could be obstruction of justice because it could be potentially destruction of important evidence," Washington attorney F. Whitten Peters told the newspaper. Peters was was the Pentagon's No. 2 lawyer from 1995 to 1997, then became the Air Force's top civilian leader...

Deaf Texan Exonerated of Child Sex Assault Freed

2010-09-29T09:56:00.000-07:00

Deaf Texan Exonerated of Child Sex Assault Freed
September 29, 2010
AP
DALLAS

A deaf man exonerated of the rape of a 5-year-old suburban Dallas girl was released Tuesday after 17 years in prison, one day after a judge determined he was innocent.

Stephen Brodie's dad was there to greet the 39-year-old north Texas man when he walked out of the Dallas County jail. Brodie said through an interpreter that he was looking forward to being able to have lunch with his dad, J. Steve Brodie, now that he was out of jail.

Brodie also received an apology from Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins, whose office had reopened the case and whose investigation ultimately led to Brodie's exoneration.

In this June 24, 2010 file photo, deaf inmate Stephen Brodie uses sign language to answer a question through an interpreter during a jailhouse interview in Dallas. A judge has set aside the 1993 conviction of Brodie, who was sent to prison for raping a 5-year-old girl despite an absence of physical evidence linking him to the attack.

Stephen Brodie was sent to prison for raping a 5-year-old girl despite an absence of physical evidence linking him to the attack. He was released Tuesday after a judge determined he was innocent.

A bureaucratic matter had kept Brodie from being released Monday, when a judge ruled Brodie had been wrongly prosecuted despite an absence of physical evidence linking him to the attack. Brodie also was serving prison time for failing to register in Lamar County as a sex offender. With the elimination of his 1993 conviction in the 1990 rape of the Richardson girl, he no longer needed to register and state prison officials signed off on his release Tuesday.

Brodie originally was arrested in 1991 for stealing quarters from a vending machine at a community swimming pool. While he was being questioned about that crime, police began asking about the unsolved rape of the 5-year-old girl a year earlier.

The case was reopened after his father wrote a letter to Watkins' office, which had started a unit dedicated to re-examining possible innocence cases.

Brodie has been deaf since childhood, but police questioned him for hours without an interpreter. He eventually confessed, but later told The Associated Press he felt scared and pressured.

Richardson police said Monday that Brodie initially declined their offer of an interpreter.

When a judge ruled the confession was admissible at trial, Brodie and his attorney figured a guilty verdict, which was punishable by up to 99 years, was all but certain. So they cut a deal - pleading guilty to assaulting the girl in exchange for a five-year sentence. After serving that sentence, Brodie served two more prison stints totaling five more years for twice failing to register as a sex offender.

Brodie was convicted even though a hair and a fingerprint that police believed came from the perpetrator were not a match. Moore said prosecutors failed to notify Brodie's trial attorney that testing showed the hair excluded Brodie as the source.

When Brodie was arrested and convicted, police knew the fingerprint, found on the window through which the perpetrator entered the victim's home, did not match their suspect or anyone living there.

A year after Brodie's conviction, police learned the fingerprint belonged to Robert Warterfield, who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl in 1994. Warterfield also was suspected by Dallas police in the dozen unsolved sexual assaults and attempted assaults of young girls in the Dallas area.

Warterfield, who is free and working for a yard service in Stephenville, according to the state sex offender registry, was never charged in the attack for which Brodie served time...

Report: Significant cheating by FBI agents on exam

2010-09-27T17:26:00.000-07:00

Report: Significant cheating by FBI agents on exam
By MARK SHERMAN (AP)
Sept. 27, 2010

WASHINGTON — A Justice Department investigation has found that FBI agents, including several supervisors, cheated on an important test covering the bureau's policies for conducting surveillance on Americans.

Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine said Monday that his limited review of allegations that agents improperly took the open-book test together or had access to an answer sheet has turned up "significant abuses and cheating."

Fine called on the bureau to discipline the agents, throw out the results and come up with a new test to see if FBI agents understand new rules allowing them to conduct surveillance and open files on Americans without evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

FBI Director Robert Mueller said that in cases in which misconduct has been determined, personnel actions were taken, and that process continues.

"We will follow up in each of the 22 cases the IG has found for disciplinary action, as appropriate, as well as any other allegations of misconduct," the FBI director said in a statement. Mueller said that when allegations of misconduct "first came to our attention, we moved quickly to investigate, bringing in the Office of Inspector General."

The troubling review of the exam on surveillance rules follows Fine's report last week on the FBI's scrutiny of domestic activist groups. That investigation found that the FBI gave inaccurate information to Congress and the public when it claimed a possible terrorism link to justify monitoring an anti-war rally in Pittsburgh in 2002. That IG report also criticized the factual basis for opening or continuing FBI domestic terrorism investigations of some other nonviolent left-leaning groups.

In the inquiry into the exam, the inspector general looked only at four FBI field offices and found enough troubling information to warrant a comprehensive review by the FBI.

In one FBI field office, four agents exploited a computer software flaw "to reveal the answers to the questions as they were taking the exam," Fine said.

Other test-takers used or circulated materials that essentially provided the test answers, he said.

Fine said that almost all of those who cheated "falsely certified" that they did the work themselves, without the help of others.

Last year, Assistant Director Joseph Persichini, the head of the FBI's Washington field office that investigates congressional wrongdoing and other crime in the nation's capital, retired amid a review of test-taking in his office.

Persichini wrote down the answers to the test while two of his most senior managers were in the room taking the exam together, the IG said. Persichini used the answers he had written down to complete the exam another day, the IG added. A legal adviser also was in the room with Persichini and the two agents discussing the questions and possible answers.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said he was "especially disheartened that several FBI supervisors cheated on this exam" and the senator called on the FBI to implement "a more trustworthy exam process going forward and hold accountable those responsible for the cheating."...

Jury finds that senior police officials violated District's whistleblower act

2010-08-28T17:14:00.000-07:00

Jury finds that senior police officials violated District's whistleblower act
D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said the department plans to challenge the verdict.
By Keith L. Alexander
The Washington Post
August 28, 2010

A D.C. Superior Court jury ruled that senior police officials, including Chief Cathy L. Lanier, violated the District's whistleblower act when they suspended a police officer in 2005 after he informed city officials that the department allegedly brokered an illegal deal to provide security for the Gallery Place entertainment area downtown.

The jury ruled Thursday that officer Sean McLaughlin was wrongly suspended after he alerted the mayor's office and the D.C. Council that the department had brokered a deal to make officers available to provide security in the area, after the department had rejected requests by McLaughlin and other officers to supply off-duty security in the same neighborhood.

Citing the District's Whistleblower Protection Act, the jury sided with McLaughlin, saying Lanier wrongly disciplined him. In 2005, the police union and nine officers filed a class-action suit against Lanier and the department, arguing that the officers were wrongfully punished for the disclosure.

Last year, Judge Judith E. Retchin dismissed the claim filed by six of the officers. But the jury found Thursday that the three remaining officers -- McLaughlin, Duane Fowler and Martin Freeman -- had alerted officials of the department's wrongdoing, constituting whistleblowing. In March 2005, Freeman was terminated and McLaughlin and Freeman were suspended...

Report: Wrong man may have been arrested in Buffalo shootings

2010-08-15T07:04:00.000-07:00

Report: Wrong man may have been arrested in Buffalo shootings
From Rick Martin, CNN
August 15, 2010

Authorities may have arrested the wrong person in a shooting spree that killed four people in Buffalo, New York, according to a local television station.

Charges against Keith Johnson, 25, could be dropped, the Erie County district attorney told CNN affiliate WGRZ-TV.

The shooting Saturday also injured four others outside the City Grill in downtown Buffalo.

District Attorney Frank Sedita said photographic evidence collected by Buffalo police late Saturday night leads them to believe the wrong person might be in custody, the affiliate said...

Minnesota judge frees man convicted in acceleration crash of Toyota

2010-08-06T09:55:00.000-07:00

Minnesota judge frees man convicted in acceleration crash of Toyota
By Jim Kavanagh and Emanuella Grinberg
CNN
August 6, 2010

A Minnesota man sent to prison after the deadly sudden-acceleration crash of his Toyota Camry has been freed by a judge, and the local prosecutor says he will not be retried.

Ramsey County, Minnesota, District Court Judge Joanne Smith on Thursday ordered Koua Fong Lee released from prison pending a new trial related to the 2006 crash that killed three people. Ramsey County Prosecutor Susan Gaertner immediately said she would drop the charges...

Outside the courtroom after the ruling, Lee, 32, said he wanted his four children, one of whom was born after he was jailed, to know what "Daddy" means..

Lee had always maintained his innocence, saying the 1996 Camry accelerated uncontrollably before it crashed into two vehicles, killing a man and his 10-year-old son and a 6-year-old girl...

In fact, the family of the victims had long ago become convinced of Lee's innocence and joined the effort to free him. They are suing Toyota...

"This never seemed right. A man with his family in the car -- his pregnant wife -- goes on a suicide mission? Then, the recalls started, and the complaints sounded just like what happened to Mr. Lee," Schafer said in March. "It sounds just like a case of unintended acceleration."

In the end, though, the conviction was vacated not only because of evidence of mechanical failure, but also because Judge Smith determined Lee's original attorney, Tracy Eichhorn-Hicks, had failed to defend him adequately at trial.

Eichhorn-Hicks had stated in court that Lee must have had his foot on the accelerator, even though Lee himself always maintained that he had pumped the brake to no avail...

Justice Department reviewing reports of FBI test cheating

2010-07-28T17:19:00.000-07:00

Justice Department reviewing reports of FBI test cheating
By Carol Cratty
CNN
July 28, 2010

The Justice Department's Office
of Inspector General has
launched an investigation into
whether large numbers of FBI
agents may have improperly
taken a test on guidelines for
agents, according to FBI Director
Robert Mueller.

During a congressional hearing
Wednesday, Mueller was asked
about reports hundreds of agents
may have cheated on the exams,
which focused on guidelines that
limit surveillance, and he
responded he did not know the
precise number and is not certain
the inspector general knows that
number.

Mueller said the inspector general
has told him about certain FBI
offices where testing problems
were "widespread, and it may be
attributable to a lack of
understanding and confusion
about procedures."

...Reports about test-taking
problems include instances where
agents finished the exams much
more quickly than would be
expected, and instances in which
agents might have taken the test
together, law enforcement officials
said...

Police officer incorrectly wrote in report that witness had mentioned race of professor trying to get into his own house

2010-06-15T17:14:00.000-07:00

July 28, 2009
Recording of police calls adds to Gates controversy
BY TOM MORONEY
BLOOMBERG NEWS

The police sergeant who arrested Harvard University's Henry Louis Gates Jr. called the professor uncooperative and asked for backup officers and a police wagon, according to a recording of police radio transmissions.

Cambridge Sgt. James Crowley can be heard telling the radio dispatcher Gates isn't cooperating and saying to "keep the cars coming," according to the recording, made public Monday by the police department. Toward the end of the 4-minute, 37-second recording, Crowley asks if the wagon has been dispatched, a reference to a vehicle police use to transport arrestees.

The recording added to the controversy that has continued for a week, featuring Gates' accusation he was arrested on a disorderly conduct charge because he's black and President Barack Obama's criticism of the police department for "acting stupidly."

Gates, returning from a trip to China, and his driver had forced their way through the front door because it was jammed. Police dropped the charge last week and Obama invited Gates and Crowley to the White House for beer.
Break-ins in the area

Police also have released a recording of a woman's 911 phone call. A police report identifies the caller as Lucia Whalen. She couldn't be reached for comment Monday.

But her attorney, Wendy Murphy, said her client never mentioned the men's race to Crowley and is upset by news reports she believes have unfairly depicted her as a racist.

Whalen works nearby at the Harvard alumni magazine, her lawyer said. "She doesn't live in the area. She is by no means the entitled white neighbor. ... That has been the theme in the blogs and the implication in some of the mainstream news media," Murphy said Monday.

In the recording, when the police dispatcher asks the woman if the men were white, black or Hispanic, she describes one as looking "kind of Hispanic" and says she didn't get a good look at the other.

Crowley wrote in his police report that Whalen told him that "she observed what appeared to be two black males with backpacks on the porch."...

Trading sex for dismissing tickets?

2010-06-08T13:47:00.000-07:00

Trading sex for dismissing tickets?
Trial begins for accused CHP officer
By Kelly Wheeler, City News Service
SDNN
June 7, 2010

A former California Highway Patrol officer who asked a judge to dismiss a speeding ticket against a female motorist, then spent the lunch hour in an Oceanside hotel room with her, should be convicted of perjury and other charges, a prosecutor said Monday.

The attorney for Abram Carabajal, however, said the 53-year-old married defendant committed no crime and simply developed a romantic relationship with the woman in the months after he wrote the ticket. In his opening statement, Deputy District Attorney Jeffrey Dort said Carabajal routinely wrote more tickets than any officer in the Oceanside CHP
office and had a history of stopping women for speeding, then giving them his phone number and offering to “work something out.”

Dort said Carabajal pulled over Shirin Zarrindej of Encino for speeding on southbound Interstate 5 near Camp Pendleton on March 12, 2008.

Zarrindej — who is also charged in the case with subordination of perjury, bribery of a witness and conspiracy to obstruct justice — had multiple tickets on her records at the time of the stop, the prosecutor said...

7-year-old girl killed in Detroit police raid

2010-05-17T10:22:00.000-07:00

A 7-Year-Old's Killing: Detroit's Latest Outrage
By Steven Gray
May. 18, 2010
Time

It often seems that even the most heinous crime fails to move Detroit, a city almost numb to violence. But a series of shooting deaths in recent days have been particularly chilling. The killings have struck across all age groups: a grandmother, a middle-aged cop, a 7-year-old child. This time, outrage is building, but what will it lead to? Is there anything more substantive the city can do to fight gun violence? Can the city afford to put more officers on the streets? The city's reputation for crime needs a turning point — and soon.

The most recent case began last Friday, May 14, when a 17-year-old high school student standing in front of a store in one of Detroit's bleakest neighborhoods was shot by a man twice his age for reasons that remain unclear. The boy, police said, stumbled across the street, collapsed and died. Then, shortly after midnight Sunday, Detroit police officers arrived at a two-story house not far away. (See Detroit kids and their dreams of the future.)

With a warrant in hand, they planned to search the house for the 34-year-old suspect. Officers say they announced their presence and then tossed a flash grenade into the front window of one side of the duplex to disorient the people inside. Then, police say, officers entered the house, where a 46-year-old grandmother in the front room allegedly struggled with an officer. Next, police say, an officer's gun discharged, fatally shooting the woman's 7-year-old granddaughter Aiyana Stanley Jones.

At a press conference Tuesday, defense attorney Geoffrey Fieger, who is representing Aiyana's family, offered this narrative: The flash grenade was thrown through the plate-glass window of the home's living room, apparently landing on Aiyana, who was sleeping with her grandmother on a sofa. Almost simultaneously, he said, a shot was fired into the house. The grandmother, Mertilla Jones, said Tuesday that as soon as the grenade shattered the window, she leaped to the floor. "I wanted to reach my granddaughter," Jones said, sobbing loudly. "I seen the light leave out her eyes, and I knew she was dead. She had blood coming out her mouth. Lord Jesus," Jones continued, "I ain't never seen nothing like that ... You can't trust Detroit police." Police officers, Fieger said, then rushed through the front door, which was unlocked. (See the death and possible life of Detroit.)

The day before, Fieger, who once represented Dr. Jack Kevorkian, claimed he had seen videotape of the incident filmed by a reality-TV crew that had accompanied the police. He alleged that police, moreover, may have raided the wrong side of the duplex, since the 34-year-old suspect was eventually arrested in another part of the building...

Detroit Girl's Death Called a 'Breaking Point' at Funeral
Ed White
AP
May 22, 2010

Civil rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton gave a rousing eulogy Saturday for a 7-year-old girl killed in a police raid, challenging the hundreds of mourners to take responsibility and help stop a spiral of violence that has swept the city...

Aiyana was shot in the neck while sleeping on a couch May 16. Police hunting for a murder suspect say an officer's gun accidentally fired inside the house after he was jostled by, or collided with, her grandmother. A stun grenade was also thrown through a window.

A lawyer for Aiyana's family, Geoffrey Fieger, is suing and claims the shot was fired from outside the house immediately after the grenade was used. A camera crew working on the A&E reality series "The First 48" accompanied police on the raid.

"Do they throw these flash grenades in everybody's neighborhood? Would you have gone in Bloomfield Hills and did what you did?" Sharpton said, referring to a wealthy Detroit suburb. "Have you ever heard of putting on a light and calling people to come out?"...

7-year-old girl killed in Detroit police raid
By the CNN Wire Staff
May 17, 2010

(CNN) -- Police in Detroit, Michigan, on Sunday expressed "profound sorrow" at the fatal shooting of a 7-year-old girl in a police raid.

Aiyana Jones was shot and killed by police executing a search warrant as part of a homicide investigation, Assistant Chief Ralph Godbee said in a statement.

"This is any parent's worst nightmare," Godbee said. "It also is any police officer's worst nightmare. And today, it is all too real."

The warrant was executed about 12:40 a.m. ET Sunday at a home on the city's east side, Godbee said. Authorities believed the suspect in the Friday shooting death of 17-year-old high school student Jarean Blake was hiding out at the home. Blake was gunned down in front of a store as his girlfriend watched, Godbee said.

Preliminary information indicates that members of the Detroit Police Special Response Team approached the house and announced themselves as police, Godbee said, citing the officers and at least one independent witness.

"As is common in these types of situations, the officers deployed a distractionary device commonly known as a flash bang," he said in the statement. "The purpose of the device is to temporarily disorient occupants of the house to make it easier for officers to safely gain control of anyone inside and secure the premise."

Upon entering the home, the officer encountered a 46-year-old female inside the front room, Godbee said. "Exactly what happened next is a matter still under investigation, but it appears the officer and the woman had some level of physical contact.

"At about this time, the officer's weapon discharged one round which, tragically, struck 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley Jones in the neck/head area."...

The NYPD Tapes: Inside Bed-Stuy's 81st Precinct

2010-05-08T19:07:00.001-07:00

The NYPD Tapes: Inside Bed-Stuy's 81st Precinct
By Graham Rayman Tuesday, May 4 2010

Two years ago, a police officer in a Brooklyn precinct became gravely concerned about how the public was being served. To document his concerns, he began carrying around a digital sound recorder, secretly recording his colleagues and superiors.
Chad Griffith

At 1.7 square miles, the 81st Precinct in Bedford-Stuyvesant is one of the smallest in the city, but the densely populated neighborhood is also a rough place to work. One cop there recently told us, “It keeps you from getting bored is about all you can say.”

He recorded precinct roll calls. He recorded his precinct commander and other supervisors. He recorded street encounters. He recorded small talk and stationhouse banter. In all, he surreptitiously collected hundreds of hours of cops talking about their jobs.

Made without the knowledge or approval of the NYPD, the tapes—made between June 1, 2008, and October 31, 2009, in the 81st Precinct in Bedford-Stuyvesant and obtained exclusively by the Voice—provide an unprecedented portrait of what it's like to work as a cop in this city.

They reveal that precinct bosses threaten street cops if they don't make their quotas of arrests and stop-and-frisks, but also tell them not to take certain robbery reports in order to manipulate crime statistics. The tapes also refer to command officers calling crime victims directly to intimidate them about their complaints.

As a result, the tapes show, the rank-and-file NYPD street cop experiences enormous pressure in a strange catch-22: He or she is expected to maintain high "activity"—including stop-and-frisks—but, paradoxically, to record fewer actual crimes.

This pressure was accompanied by paranoia—from the precinct commander to the lieutenants to the sergeants to the line officers—of violating any of the seemingly endless bureaucratic rules and regulations that would bring in outside supervision.

The tapes also reveal the locker-room environment at the precinct. On a recording made in September, the subject being discussed at roll call is stationhouse graffiti (done by the cops themselves) and something called "cocking the memo book," a practical joke in which officers draw penises in each other's daily notebooks.

"As far as the defacing of department property—all right, the shit on the side of the building . . . and on people's lockers, and drawing penises in people's memo books, and whatever else is going on—just knock it off, all right?" a Sergeant A. can be heard saying. "If the wrong person sees this stuff coming in here, then IAB [the Internal Affairs Bureau] is going to be all over this place, all right? . . . You want to draw penises, draw them in your own memo book. . . And don't actually draw on the wall." He then adds that just before an inspection, a supervisor had to walk around the stationhouse and paint over all the graffiti...

Oops! Sorry, wrong woman arrested for slealing from elderly

2010-04-13T00:15:00.000-07:00

Maybe police should be careful of cross-racial identification, especially by elderly?

I don't understand why some people can't apologize when they make a harmful mistake. It makes me wonder if the police and District Attorney think that it's okay for them to trample on people like this and then shrug it off. This isn't what we pay them to do. They get high salaries to do a thorough, professional job.

Woman wrongly arrested wants apology
By Brian Flores
FOX 5 San Diego
April 14, 2010

LA MESA, Calif. - A La Mesa woman who was mistakenly arrested for a series of crimes against senior citizens says she wants and apology from the San Diego District Attorney's Office and police.

Deidria Nicholson told Fox 5 News that she didn't know what she was being arrested for Thursday, but she knew it was a serious situation.

"I can tell you that at that moment, I did not fully understand the charges against me," Nicholson said. "But when I got outside and saw the media, I thought, somebody out here made a big mistake."

Earlier this month, police released a video surveillance photo of a woman responsible for a string of burglaries against local elderly people. Investigators received a phone tip last Thursday that led them to Nicholson. Nicholson said her La Mesa apartment was surrounded by 10 to 14 police officers that afternoon. She said the officers gathered evidence, including receipts, post cards, and some of her hair products. She said she was taken away in handcuffs.

Nicholson's son, Ellis Twine II, said his mother's arrest was bewildering to everyone who knows her.

"I was just shocked, and everybody I told about was in shock, thinking if it was an April fool's joke or something," Twine said.

Nicholson spent five days in custody. She was arraigned Monday afternoon and pleaded not guilty. She adamantly maintained that she was a victim of mistaken identity. Just hours after the arraignment, prosecutors dropped all charges and Nicholson was released. Authorities said they had arrested the wrong person...

New Info Prompts Release Of Woman In Elderly Thefts
Deirdria Nicholson, 50, Arrested Last Thursday
April 12, 2010
10 News

EL CAJON, Calif. -- Questions about the suspect's identity prompted prosecutors Monday to drop their case against a La Mesa woman accused of stealing the purses and pocketbooks of seven people after talking her way into homes in El Cajon, Lake Murray and San Diego.

Deirdria Nicholson, 50, pleaded not guilty this afternoon to charges of burglary, theft from an elder and unauthorized use of an access card and was ordered held on $150,000 bail. Nicholson left Vista Jail at about 10:30 Monday night.

During the arraignment, defense attorney Herb Weston told Judge David Szumowski that his client was adamant there had been a "complete misidentification" in the case.

Two hours later, Deputy District Attorney Dan Link said new information regarding identity had come to light, and the case against Nicholson was being dismissed...

Texas Tough

2010-03-15T21:46:00.000-07:00

A piece about the controversial ruling and subsequent reversal over the consitutionality of dealth penalty in Texas this week.

It's by Robert Perkinson, a historian and author whose new book, Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire examines the history of the penal system in Texas -The most locked-down state in the country, and first in executions. Moving from slavery to the present, he shows how Texas' prison system came to serve as the national template for criminal justice, and how incarceration today perpetuates racial disparities in similar ways as convict-leasing and segregation did in post-Civil War America.

McIntosh County Sheriff Joe Hogan under investigation

2010-02-19T18:43:00.000-08:00

McIntosh County Sheriff’s Office under investigation
Tulsa World
By RHETT MORGAN World Staff Writer
2/19/2010

EUFAULA - The embattled McIntosh County Sheriff’s Office is under investigation again. McIntosh County District Attorney Tom Guilioli has asked the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation to look into allegations of official misconduct in the sheriff’s department, OSBI spokeswoman Jessica Brown said Friday.

Sheriff Joe Hogan, who took office in June, is a former OSBI agent.

“We are going to investigate him like we do anybody else,” Brown said.

The news comes just months after the county sheriff and undersheriff were imprisoned on state and federal charges.

Former Sheriff Terry Alan Jones and ex-undersheriff Mykol Travis Brookshire pleaded guilty in state court to embezzlement and conspiraracy for taking money from a motorist. Jones and Brookshire were sentenced in November to 14 and 13 years in prison, respectively.

Both confessed to splitting $5,000 taken from a motorist during a traffic stop.

Their state prison terms are running concurrently to their 27-month federal sentences, which are related to the same crime and were handed down in September. In June, they pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Muskogee to conspiracy to interfere with interstate commerce under color of law.

Neither Guilioli nor Hogan could immediately be reached for comment Friday.

Hogan, 60, was an agent/deputy inspector with the OSBI from 1981-2007 and was a chemist-toxicologist with the Texas Department of Public Safety from 1972-81. At the time of his hiring as sheriff, he had been working since 2008 as a security guard manager at the Army Ammunition Plant in McAlester.

Wrongfully Convicted Man Wins Freedom

2009-11-21T19:03:00.000-08:00

Wrongfully Convicted Man Wins Freedom
By JENNIFER PELTZ
Nov. 21, 2009
AP

NEW YORK (Nov. 21) - A prison system official says a New York City man is free after spending nearly two decades behind bars for murder before a judge declared him innocent.
Fernando Bermudez was released from the Sing Sing prison in Ossining at about 2:10 p.m. Friday. A Manhattan judge overturned Bermudez's 1992 conviction last week, saying it stemmed from unreliable witness testimony.

Fernando Bermudez walks with his wife Crystal, left, near a New York courthouse Friday, after a Manhattan judge tossed out his 1992 murder conviction.
But Bermudez remained behind bars because he hadn't served a 27-month sentence in a federal drug case.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered that Bermudez be released at least until June 30 while his lawyers ask federal officials to credit his drug sentence as served.

It's Official: The ATF and FBI Don't Get Along

2009-10-26T12:06:00.000-07:00

It's Official: The ATF and FBI Don't Get Along
By Theo Emery
Oct. 24, 2009

In April 2005, sheriff's deputies reached a suburban Seattle home in time to prevent a firebomb from detonating. But there was nothing the sheriff's department could do to defuse another volatile situation at the site: a feud between the explosives teams that showed up including the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

The attempted arson was the apparent handiwork of the Earth Liberation Front, a designated domestic terrorist group. But trouble at the scene emerged when FBI and ATF explosives experts seemed to believe their own agencies should head the investigation, recalls Sergeant John Urquhart, a spokesman for the King County sheriff's office. "It was clear that there was something going on. There was tension between the groups of ATF agents and FBI agents," Urquhart tells TIME. (See pictures of crime in middle America.)

That fight for jurisdiction was a "low point" for federal agents in Seattle, part of a long-simmering national rivalry that has festered since Congress moved the ATF from the Treasury Department to the Department of Justice (DOJ) after Sept. 11, according to an audit of explosives investigations that was released on Friday by the DOJ's Office of the Inspector General. Acrimony between the agencies has been common knowledge for years, but the report represents the most comprehensive public accounting to date.

The audit found that the conflict has led to confusion at crime sites, arguments in front of state and local investigators, tit-for-tat recrimination and even a threat from the FBI to arrest an ATF agent. Each agency trains separately and has its own explosives database and lab. Agents race to explosions to claim the lead in investigations, and some managers are unclear about jurisdiction. According to the audit, two ambiguous memos in 2004 and 2008 failed to clarify the relationship. "These disputes can delay investigations, undermine federal and local relationships, and may project to local agency responders a disjointed federal response to explosives incidents," the report said. (See pictures of the Branch Davidian siege at Waco and other cults that went wacko.)

The impact of the bickering is more than unseemly public flare-ups, mixed signals and muddled investigations; the conflict could hamper the government's ability to effectively protect against terrorism, the report said...

D.C. Area Officers Subject of FBI Probe

2009-08-09T20:30:00.000-07:00

Did Police Take Money to Protect Gambling Ring?
By Aaron C. Davis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 19, 2009

Federal authorities are investigating whether a group of Washington area police officers took money to protect a high-stakes gambling ring frequented by some of the region's most powerful drug dealers over the past two years, according to internal police documents and law enforcement sources.

The officers include five veterans in Prince George's County, a District police official and a former D.C. Housing Authority officer. Two under investigation have been spotted on police surveillance outside gambling sites, including one providing security in tactical gear. Witnesses have alleged that others wore police uniforms and drove marked cruisers to gatherings. One was arrested in a police raid outside a game with a handgun.

Phone records, surveillance and other evidence tie most of the officers directly to the game's operators, which include known drug dealers, documents show. Authorities have not moved against most of the officers or known operators of the game, in part because they continue to investigate whether any of the officers are linked to several slayings connected to the ring, according to documents and sources. It is unclear how much money the officers might have taken to provide the protection and whether the investigation will lead to charges.
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Like other major police departments, Prince George's routinely investigates its officers, sometimes in coordination with federal authorities. But the breadth and depth of this investigation are rare. It involves more officers than any in recent years and a potentially flagrant abuse of police power. The corruption probe has also gone on longer than any that has come to light since a sting operation nearly two decades ago related to the case of notorious drug dealer Rayful Edmond III culminated in the indictment of 12 District police officers...

Cambridge cops insist they were right to arrest black scholar Henry Gates for entering his own home

2009-07-22T14:19:00.000-07:00

Photo: Henry Gates, Jr.

The situation was ludicrous from the get go: police responded to a call that two men might be breaking into a house through the front door, in broad daylight. The caller even cautioned them that the men might live in the house and might be dealing with a recalcitrant door. The police arrived to find a middle-aged man who walked with a cane, and arrested him after he provided proof that he was the owner of the house.

Then the police falsely blamed the caller for bringing race into the situation. In fact, the caller never said either man was black.

I think it's possible that the arresting officer couldn't stand being yelled at by a black man.

Certainly the police officer overreacted when an innocent man became angry and called him a racist. Crowley let his pride decide whether the targeted man would be punished for expressing anger at being questioned for entering his own home.

The police tried to shift some of the blame for their actions to the woman who made the call, saying that she brought up the issue of the men being black. In fact, a tape of her call reveals that she did not even say the men were black when she was asked if they were black. I apologize to Lucia Whalen for being one of the bloggers who blamed her in some way for the fiasco. She is blameless; she was merely assisting another woman who brought the situation to her attention.

Crowley's weakness was being too hot-headed to walk away when an innocent man became furious at having the cops question him for being in his own home.

Would Mr. Gates have been reported to police if he had been white? A black man trying to get a door open in an upscale suburb may have looked like a criminal to the elderly woman who asked Lucia Whalen to call 911.

Related:
Swim Club Under Fire For Banning Black Kids
San Diego sheriff's deputies arrest Francine Busby supporters at home fundraiser

Henry Louis Gates case: Should yelling at a cop be a crime?
Disorderly conduct charge gives police a lot of power
Chicago Tribune
By David G. Savage
Washington Bureau
July 25, 2009

WASHINGTON -- For some defense lawyers, the arrest of Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was less about racial profiling than about how people can be arrested simply for speaking angry words to a police officer.

The laws against "disorderly conduct" give the police wide power to arrest people who are said to be disturbing the peace or disrupting a neighborhood. In Massachusetts and elsewhere, the courts have said the "disorderly acts or language" must take place in public where others can be disturbed.

It is probably not a crime of disorderly conduct for a homeowner, standing in his kitchen, to speak abusively to a police officer.

According to his police report, Sgt. James Crowley said the professor was "yelling very loud" and "accusing me of being a racist."

Complaining that the "acoustics of the kitchen" made it difficult to communicate, the officer said he "told Gates that I would speak with him outside."

On the porch, the officer arrested Gates for being loud and abusive in the presence of several neighbors on the sidewalk. The charges were later dropped.

[Maura Larkins comment: What a sneaky, manipulative tactic.]

"You might think that in the United States, you have a right to state an opinion, even an offensive opinion. But prosecutors like to say you don't have a right to mouth off to the police," said Samuel Goldberg, a Boston criminal defense lawyer.

"Gates was saying, 'You are hassling me because I'm black.' I understand how that's offensive to a police officer," Goldberg said. "It's astounding to me to call it criminal."

Matt Cameron, a criminal defense lawyer in East Boston, said the state's law against "disorderly conduct" dates to the 1600s.

"It's a handy tool for the police because it is so broad and confusing," he said...

Mass. Cops Point to Favoritism in Harvard Prof Case
By MICHELE McPHEE
ABC News
July 22, 2009

Police officers from across Massachusetts are raising questions about favoritism over the handling of disorderly conduct charges that were lodged and promptly dropped against prominent Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. refutes the police account of his arrest.

The incident began when Cambridge Police Sgt. Joseph Crowley Crowley had responded to a call about someone apparently trying to break into Gates' Cambridge, Mass., home. Crowley said Gates called him a "racist cop" after he arrived at the house and asked the Harvard professor for identification.

Gates refused after saying: "No I will not." Gates then, according to Crowley, said he was being harassed because he is a "black man in America." As the confrontation escalated, Crowley was then joined by a Hispanic Cambridge police officer and a black sergeant, according to two high-ranking law enforcement officials who have been briefed on the case and Cambridge police reports.

Gates was arrested and booked on a disorderly conduct charge.

"The actions of the Cambridge Police Department, and in particular, Sergeant Joseph Crowley, were one-hundred-percent correct,'' said Hugh Cameron, president of the Massachusetts Coalition of Police. "He was responding to a report of two men breaking into a home. The police cannot just drive by the house and say, 'looks like everything is ok.'

...Jim Carnell, a union representative for the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association, said cops are "furious at the way Crowley is being vilified."...

"If Professor Gates was poor, he'd be in a jail cell."

[Maura Larkins comment: If Professor Gates were white, he'd never have been arrested. Does the police union approve of keeping poor people in jail for entering their own homes? I doubt that the DA does. I simply do not believe that the DA would prosecute such a case unless cops have some sort of ongoing understanding with the DA. If I were this cop, I'd have apologized and left, and I sure wouldn't have arrested the homeowner whose homecoming I had interrupted.]

...there are questions about the way the case was handled. David Frank, former prosecutor and a writer for Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, said it was "unusual" for a case to be "nul-processed" [charges dropped] without a court appearance. Gates was slated to be arraigned on disorderly conduct charges on Aug. 26. He is now demanding an apology from Crowley instead.

[Maura Larkins comment: I don't believe David Frank. I believe that what is unusual here is that a man was arrested as a result of entering his own house. No arraignment should have been scheduled.]

"Legally, the prosecution made the right call. The issue, though, is that if Gates were an electrician from Everett and not a well-known professor from Harvard the reality is in that in all likelihood he would have to defend himself against the charges in a courtroom," Frank said.

[Maura Larkins comment: Does Frank think it is right for a citizen, any citizen, to have to defend himself in court for entering his own home?]

..."I think what went wrong personally is that you had two human beings that were reacting to a set of circumstances, and unfortunately at the time cooler heads did not prevail," said Downes...

Gates, who according to his lawyer had been trying to force open a jammed door, was inside the house when the Cambridge police officer got there.

Asked about allegations that Gates' arrest was racially fueled, Downes said, "Our position is very firmly that race did not play any factor at all in the arrest of Mr. Gates."

[Maura Larkins comment: The next paragraph seems to contradict Downes' conclusion.]

The officers were sent to the house after a 911 call placed by a Lucia Whalen Thursday afternoon. Whalen, who works at Harvard Magazine, had reported that two "black men with backpacks" shouldered their way into a home on a tony, upscale Cambridge block – one of the leafy neighborhoods that ring the college.

Though Gates eventually identified himself, he was arrested after he allegedly came out of the house and continued yelling at police, even after he was warned that he "was becoming disorderly," according to the police report.

Gates, the director of Harvard's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, and former host of the PBS show "African American Lives," had just returned from a trip to China and found the front door of his home jammed, according to his Harvard colleague and attorney Charles Ogletree.

He entered the house through the back door, but then tried to get the front door open so he could bring his luggage in, which may have been when the woman who called 911 saw, Ogletree said.

Photo: Sgt. James Crowley
Photo by Christopher Evans Boston Herald

Cop in Scholar Arrest Is Profiling Expert
Officer Slams Obama for Saying Police 'Acted Stupidly'
By BOB SALSBERG,AP

NATICK, Mass. (July 23, 2009) -- The white police sergeant accused of racial profiling after he arrested renowned black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his home was hand-picked by a black police commissioner to teach recruits about avoiding racial profiling.

Friends and fellow officers — black and white — say Sgt. James Crowley is a principled police officer and family man who is being unfairly described as racist.

[I don't think this police officer is being accused of being racist. He's accused of overreacting when an innocent suspect became angry and called him a racist. There's a difference. Crowley let his pride decide whether the targeted man would be punished for expressing anger at being questioned for entering his own home. I think the racial profiling was done by the woman who reported a black man breaking into a house. Crowley's weakness was being too hot-headed to walk away when an innocent man became furious at having the cops question him for being in his own home.]

Cambridge (Mass.) Police Sgt. James Crowley, seen speaking to reporters Wednesday, said he followed police procedure in arresting black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. at Gates' Cambridge home. "There will be no apology," he said. On Thursday, it emerged that Crowley is a police academy expert on understanding racial profiling.

Cambridge (Mass.) Police Sgt. James Crowley, seen speaking to reporters Wednesday, said he followed police procedure in arresting Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. outside Gates' Cambridge home. "There will be no apology," he said.

"If people are looking for a guy who's abusive or arrogant, they got the wrong guy," said Andy Meyer, of Natick, who has vacationed with Crowley, coached youth sports with him and is his teammate on a men's softball team. "This is not a racist, rogue cop. This is a fine, upstanding man. And if every cop in the world were like him, it would be a better place."

Gates accused the 11-year department veteran of being an unyielding, race-baiting authoritarian after Crowley arrested and charged him with disorderly conduct last week.

Crowley confronted Gates in his home after a woman passing by summoned police for a possible burglary. The sergeant said he arrested Gates after the scholar repeatedly accused him of racism and made derogatory remarks about his mother, allegations the professor challenges. Gates has labeled Crowley a "rogue cop," demanded an apology and said he may sue the police department.

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama elevated the dispute, when he said Cambridge Police "acted stupidly" during the encounter.

Obama stepped back on Thursday, telling ABC News, "From what I can tell, the sergeant who was involved is an outstanding police officer, but my suspicion is probably that it would have been better if cooler heads had prevailed."...

Crowley's encounter with Gates was not his first with a high-profile black man, although on the prior occasion he was lauded for his response.

He was a campus cop at Brandeis University in suburban Waltham when was summoned to the school gymnasium in July 1993 after Boston Celtics player Reggie Lewis collapsed of an apparent heart attack. Crowley, also a trained emergency medical technician, not only pumped the local legend's chest, but put his mouth to Lewis' own and attempted to breathe life back into the fallen athlete...

[Maura Larkins comment: I think it's pathetic that this incident is being touted as proof that Sgt. Crowley is not a racist: he did his job even though it required helping a black man. His only other option was to stand there and do nothing while the man died. Few human beings would do nothing. This simply proves that Crowley has some basic human decency. I'm sure he's a nice guy, but he's too proud and vindictive.]

Skip Gates Speaks
The Root
By: Dayo Olopade
July 21, 2009

In an interview with The Root, Henry Louis Gates Jr. talks about his arrest and the outrage of racial profiling in America.
07/21/2009

Henry Louis Gates Jr.: I’m outraged. I can’t believe that an individual policeman on the Cambridge police force would treat any African-American male this way, and I am astonished that this happened to me; and more importantly I’m astonished that it could happen to any citizen of the United States, no matter what their race. And I’m deeply resolved to do and say the right things so that this cannot happen again.

Of course, it will happen again, but … I want to do what I can so that every police officer will think twice before engaging in this kind of behavior.

TR: Can you describe, in your own words, what went on in and outside of your home? When did you suspect you were the victim of racial profiling?

HLG: I just finished making my new documentary series for PBS called “Faces of America.” It was a glorious week in Shanghai and Ningbo and Beijing, and on my trip, I took my daughter along. After we finished working in Ningbo we went to Beijing and had three glorious days as tourists. It was great fun.

We flew back on a direct flight from Beijing to Newark. We arrived on Wednesday, and on Thursday I flew back to Cambridge. I was using my regular driver and my regular car service. And went to my home arriving at about 12:30 in the afternoon. My driver and I carried several bags up to the porch, and we fiddled with the door and it was jammed. I thought, well, maybe the door’s latched. So I walked back to the kitchen porch, unlocked the door and came into the house. And I unlatched the door, but it was still jammed.

My driver is a large black man. But from afar you and I would not have seen he was black. He has black hair and was dressed in a two-piece black suit, and I was dressed in a navy blue blazer with gray trousers and, you know, my shoes. And I love that the 911 report said that two big black men were trying to break in with backpacks on. Now that is the worst racial profiling I’ve ever heard of in my life. (Laughs.) I’m not exactly a big black man. I thought that was hilarious when I found that out, which was yesterday.

It looked like someone’s footprint was there. So it’s possible that the door had been jimmied, that someone had tried to get in while I was in China. But for whatever reason, the lock was damaged. My driver hit the door with his shoulder and the door popped open. But the lock was permanently disfigured. My home is owned by Harvard University, and so any kind of repair work that’s needed, Harvard will come and do it. I called this person, and she was, in fact, on the line while all of this was going on.

I’m saying ‘You need to send someone to fix my lock.’ All of a sudden, there was a policeman on my porch. And I thought, ‘This is strange.’ So I went over to the front porch still holding the phone, and I said ‘Officer, can I help you?’ And he said, ‘Would you step outside onto the porch.’ And the way he said it, I knew he wasn’t canvassing for the police benevolent association. All the hairs stood up on the back of my neck, and I realized that I was in danger. And I said to him no, out of instinct. I said, ‘No, I will not.’

My lawyers later told me that that was a good move and had I walked out onto the porch he could have arrested me for breaking and entering. He said ‘I’m here to investigate a 911 call for breaking and entering into this house.’ And I said ‘That’s ridiculous because this happens to be my house. And I’m a Harvard professor.’ He says ‘Can you prove that you’re a Harvard professor?’ I said yes, I turned and closed the front door to the kitchen where I’d left my wallet, and I got out my Harvard ID and my Massachusetts driver’s license which includes my address and I handed them to him. And he’s sitting there looking at them.

Now it’s clear that he had a narrative in his head: A black man was inside someone’s house, probably a white person’s house, and this black man had broken and entered, and this black man was me.

So he’s looking at my ID, he asked me another question, which I refused to answer. And I said I want your name and your badge number because I want to file a complaint because of the way he had treated me at the front door. He didn’t say, ‘Excuse me, sir, is there a disturbance here, is this your house?’—he demanded that I step out on the porch, and I don’t think he would have done that if I was a white person.

But at that point, I realized that I was in danger. And so I said to him that I want your name, and I want your badge number and I said it repeatedly.

TR: How did this escalate? What are the laws in Cambridge that govern this kind of interaction? Did you ever think you were in the wrong?

HLG: The police report says I was engaged in loud and tumultuous behavior. That’s a joke. Because I have a severe bronchial infection which I contracted in China and for which I was treated and have a doctor’s report from the Peninsula hotel in Beijing. So I couldn’t have yelled. I can’t yell even today, I’m not fully cured.

It escalated as follows: I kept saying to him, ‘What is your name, and what is your badge number?’ and he refused to respond. I asked him three times, and he refused to respond. And then I said, ‘You’re not responding because I’m a black man, and you’re a white officer.’ That’s what I said. He didn’t say anything. He turned his back to me and turned back to the porch. And I followed him. I kept saying, “I want your name, and I want your badge number.”

It looked like an ocean of police had gathered on my front porch. There were probably half a dozen police officers at this point. The mistake I made was I stepped onto the front porch and asked one of his colleagues for his name and badge number. And when I did, the same officer said, ‘Thank you for accommodating our request. You are under arrest.’ And he handcuffed me right there. It was outrageous. My hands were behind my back I said, ‘I’m handicapped. I walk with a cane. I can’t walk to the squad car like this.’ There was a huddle among the officers; there was a black man among them. They removed the cuffs from the back and put them around the front.

A crowd had gathered, and as they were handcuffing me and walking me out to the car, I said, ‘Is this how you treat a black man in America?’

TR: What was the jail experience like? Was it humiliating?

HLG: By the time I was processed at the Cambridge jail, I was booked, fingerprinted, given a mug shot and answered questions. Outrageous is the only word that I can use. The system attempts to humiliate you. They took my belt; they took my wallet, they took my keys, some change; they counted my money. And I knew that because they said, ‘We’re going to release you upon your own recognizance, and the fine is $40, and we know you can pay it because we went through your wallet.’

It’s meant to be terrifying and humiliating. And I couldn’t believe that this was happening to me. And I said I can’t wait to get out, I am eager to talk to my lawyer, and they said they had to book me first. Then I was told that Charles Ogletree was in the building, and that he was there with three other Harvard professors—my friends Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Larry Bobo and Marcelina Lee Morgan.

I was in jail for four hours. I told them that I was claustrophobic, that I couldn’t be in this cell. And a very nice police officer said here are some of your friends and I could talk to them one at a time in the interview room until the magistrate came and signed the form allowing me to leave. I was there just between 1:00 p.m. and 5:15 p.m., which is an interminable amount of time. I spent the rest of the time in another room, slightly bigger, and my friends just had to sit there and wait. And it was kind of like a Senate filibuster; we had to tell stories in the prison cell.

TR: How has this resonated within the academic community at Harvard? I know that Larry Bobo and Charles Ogletree, also black men, have expressed dismay. President Barack Obama has talked about how difficult it is to hail a cab, even as an elected official. Is there an irony to your notoriety and the incident?

HLG: There is such a level of outrage that’s been expressed to me. I’ve received thousands of e-mails and Facebook messages; the blogs are going crazy; my colleagues at Harvard are outraged. Allen Counter called me from the Nobel Institute in Stockholm to express his outrage. But really it’s not about me—it’s that anybody black can be treated this way, just arbitrarily arrested out of spite. And the man who arrested me did it out of spite, because he knew I was going to file a report because of his behavior.

He didn’t follow proper police procedure! You can’t just presume I’m guilty and arrest me. He’s supposed to ask me if I need help. He just presumed that I was guilty, and he presumed that I was guilty because I was black. There was no doubt about that.

TR: What do you make of the suspicious neighbor who called the police with an erroneous report of “two black men” trying to enter your apartment? Was this neighborhood watch gone wrong?

HLG: I don’t know this person, and I’m sure that she thought she was doing the right thing. If I was on Martha’s Vineyard like I am now and someone was trying to break into my house, I would hope that someone called the police and that they would respond. But I would hope that the police wouldn’t arrest the first black man that they saw—especially after that person gives them an ID—and not rely on some trumped-up charge, which is what this man was doing.

The good news about the Henry Louis Gates fiasco

America's most prominent black intellectual was arrested trying to get into his own house. So why am I glad?

By James Hannaham
Salon
July 22, 2009

...this event will probably make members of the Cambridge Police Department and other P.D.s think twice before they arrest another black man. Imagine the confusion it will cause the po-po -- "Uh-oh. Is this brother a professor, too? What does Cornel West look like?” Maybe some ordinary, untenured black men in the street will get some much-deserved benefit of the doubt now...

Are Police to be Feared?
By Bill Bradshaw, Mission Beach
Voice of San Diego
July 31, 2009

Did anyone else notice the similarities between the current flap involving the Cambridge police and a "distinguished Harvard professor" and the incident a few weeks ago involving a local political fund raiser? Both resulted in allegations of police overreaction and poor judgment in handling seemingly innocent situations, but let's back off and look at the two incidents.

Both started with trouble calls to the police by neighbors. In each case, the responding officer was met with indignation by the person contacted, and rapidly escalated into charges, in one case, of "racial profiling" and in the other, of "right-wing politics". The motives of the responding officer were impugned before the facts were clear. We even had the President, to his discredit, weigh in on the latest case.

There's a simpler, less sinister, explanation. One of the first things a police officer is taught is to take charge of a situation, and to require compliance with his or her instructions in order determine just what's going on. When the officer, knowing nothing of what to expect save for a brief summary from the dispatcher, encounters a "big shot", rattling on about his or her civil rights, it shouldn't surprise anyone that the officer asserts authority, and if an audience is present, bad things can happen.

Let's give the cops a break. Police officers aren't college professors or wealthy political activists, they're public servants trying to do a tough job, who deal daily with the worst of society. Next time you encounter a cop, how about a friendly greeting and cooperation, instead of a recitation of rights?

COMMENTS

I agree that society is best served when citizens are friendly and respectful to police. Police, like the rest of us, function better when receiving positive reinforcement. But I disagree that police are doing us a favor just by doing their jobs. We taxpayers pay them for their contributions. If Professor Gates should have thanked Officer Crowley for reporting to work, then Officer Crowley should likewise have thanked Gates for helping to pay his salary. I'm afraid the chances of such a conversation was pretty close to zero in the two cases mentioned since it appears that the manner in which Officer Crowley and Deputy Marshall Abbott approached the individuals they later arrested was not conducive to a friendly exchange. There are some police, however, who do deserve an extra thank you: the ones who keep their emotions out of their decisions.

Posted by Maura Larkins

What happened in San Diego and Cambridge are less about racial profiliing and right-wing conspiracies then they are about a gap between police and citizens. Does the average person know their rights when being stopped by police? I'm not sure they do. I know police officers have a tough job and can never be certain what they are walking into on a call, but they have a higher duty to de-escalate a tricky situation precisely because we give them guns and handcuffs. The officer in the Cambridge situation had no reason to arrest Gates no matter what a jerk he was being. It's not a crime to be rude to police. The San Diego case is a little trickier because of the crowd of people. But I make no apologies for second guessing police in these situations. It's the only way to deter abuse of authority.

Posted by Catherine

A light-hearted look at the situation:

JULY 31, 2009
Obama Pronounces Beer Summit "Thoughtful" Except Biden
Opensalon.com

WASHINGTON, D.C. Eager to put a major distraction behind him, President Obama today pronounced yesterday's "beer summit" with Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates and a Cambridge, Mass. policeman a "thoughtful" exchange except for the contributions of Vice President Joseph Biden, who crashed the event.

"All right--honey roasted peanuts!"

"America will never be able to have an honest and candid conversation about race until the Vice President shuts up about the freakin' Philadelphia Phillies," Obama said with ill-concealed annoyance to a White House pool reporter as he returned to the Oval Office...

Did Lowell Bruce fit in with police culture? I'll bet he did.

2009-07-15T21:09:00.000-07:00

Why was wife-killer Lowell Bruce hired by the San Diego Sheriff's department?

A Questionable Hire
By Lee Hazer, Clairemont
Voice of San Diego
July 14, 2009

Despite having the knowledge that Bruce failed the psychological test twice, and being rejected by at least eight other law enforcement agencies, he was still ultimately hired by the Sheriff's Department, and went on to fatally shoot his wife, the plaintiff's complaint said.

The lawsuit alleges the Sheriff's Department of "careless and reckless hiring policies or practices led to the issuing of a gun to Bruce, which then led to the death of Kristin."

But according to Judge Houston there is no direct link between the county's screening process for hiring purposes and the death of Kristin.

The plaintiffs did not demonstrate that the shooting was "a plainly obvious consequence of the hiring decision," a threshold that was established in 1997 by the U.S. Supreme Court, Houston said."

Um..... The Sheriff's Department handed Bruce the murder weapon.

Maura Larkins' response:

Like most workplaces, I suspect the sheriff's department looks for employees who will "fit in" with the predominant culture of the staff. Quite possibly our sheriff's department rules out people who are too smart. (A court has found this practice to be legal.) Or maybe the applicant displaced by Lowell Bruce didn't like to drink. (See below.) I suspect that the sheriff's department could benefit from hiring some "different" types of people. People with different attitudes might help change the department for the better.

Drinking to fit in at the police academy

"The results showed that recruits socialize and drink more with colleagues after entering the Academy than they did pre Academy. The way recruits drank also changed during training with a tendency towards heavier drinking sessions. Further results indicated that recruits did feel some pressure to drink to fit in and be one of the crowd." (Page 3 of Does the Police Academy Change Your Life?)

"When asked what were some of pressures to drink in the Academy, 20% of recruits said peer pressure, 10% said to be one of the boys..."(Page 7 of Does the Police Academy Change Your Life?)

http://www.defendingthetruth.com/affirmative-action-race-issues/17917-judge-rules-police-can-bar-high-i-q-scores.html
http://eprints.qut.edu.au/4503/1/4503b.pdf
http://eprints.qut.edu.au/4503/1/4503b.pdf

Court says Police can refuse to hire applicants with high IQ scores

2009-07-15T21:00:00.000-07:00

Judge Rules That Police Can Bar High I.Q. Scores
METRO NEWS BRIEFS: CONNECTICUT; Judge Rules That Police Can Bar High I.Q. Scores

A Federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by a man who was barred from the New London police force because he scored too high on an intelligence test.

In a ruling made public on Tuesday, Judge Peter C. Dorsey of the United States District Court in New Haven agreed that the plaintiff, Robert Jordan, was denied an opportunity to interview for a police job because of his high test scores. But he said that that did not mean Mr. Jordan was a victim of discrimination.
Judge Dorsey ruled that Mr. Jordan was not denied equal protection because the city of New London applied the same standard to everyone: anyone who scored too high was rejected.

Mr. Jordan, 48, who has a bachelor's degree in literature and is an officer with the State Department of Corrections, said he was considering an appeal. ''I was eliminated on the basis of my intellectual makeup,'' he said. ''It's the same as discrimination on the basis of gender or religion or race.'

http://www.defendingthetruth.com/affirmative-action-race-issues/17917-judge-rules-police-can-bar-high-i-q-scores.html

Google street scene solves Dutch crime

2009-06-21T13:10:00.000-07:00

Dutch muggers caught on Google street view camera
June 19, 2009
Reuters

Dutch twin brothers who mugged a teenager in the northern town of Groningen were arrested after being caught on camera by a car gathering images for Google's online photo map service, police said.

The pair stole the 14-year-old boy's mobile phone and 165 euros ($230) in cash last September.

"The picture was taken just a moment before the crime," a police spokesman said.

In March, the victim recognized himself and the two robbers while surfing Google Maps, which has a "Street View" feature allowing users to see images of buildings. The images are usually taken by a camera mounted on a car.

After an investigation by the police, one of the 24-year-old twins confessed to robbing the boy. ($1=.7183 Euro) (Reporting by Harro ten Wolde)

Cops made up false accusations about brothers selling cocaine in Queens: who's in jail now?

2009-06-13T21:20:00.000-07:00

Brothers Prove Cops Wrong With Video
By TOM HAYS and COLLEEN LONG
AP
June 13, 2009

When undercover detectives busted Jose and Maximo Colon last year for selling cocaine at a seedy club in Queens, there was a glaring problem: The brothers hadn't done anything wrong.

But proclaiming innocence wasn't going to be good enough. The Dominican immigrants needed proof.

The Story: Undercover police arrested two brothers for dealing cocaine at a New York night club. The officers claimed Maximo Colon, left, and his brother Jose sold two bags of cocaine to them. - The Truth: The brothers proved their innocence -- and laid the groundwork for a multimillion dollar lawsuit -- with a video from the club's security cameras.

"I sat in the jail and thought ... how could I prove this? What could I do?" Jose, 24, recalled in Spanish during a recent interview.

As he glanced around a holding cell, the answer came to him: Security cameras. Since then, a vindicating video from the club's cameras has spared the brothers a possible prison term, resulted in two officers' arrest and become the basis for a multimillion-dollar lawsuit.

The officers, who are due back in court June 26, have pleaded not guilty, and New York Police Department officials have downplayed their case.
But the drug corruption case isn't alone.

On May 13, another NYPD officer was arrested for plotting to invade a Manhattan apartment where he hoped to steal $900,000 in drug money. In another pending case, prosecutors in Brooklyn say officers were caught in a 2007 sting using seized drugs to reward a snitch for information. And in the Bronx, prosecutors have charged a detective with lying about a drug bust captured on a surveillance tape that contradicts her story.

Elsewhere, Philadelphia prosecutors dismissed more than a dozen drug and gun charges against a man last month when a narcotics officer was accused of making up information on search warrants...

LAPD detective charged 23 years after being named a suspect in slaying

2009-06-09T17:40:00.000-07:00

Nels Rasmussen says he told LAPD detectives in 1986 that a jealous ex-girlfriend had broken into his daughter's condo and told her 'If I can't have John, nobody can,' in the days before her slaying.

Detective stalked slaying victim, father says
By Andrew Blankstein and Joel Rubin
June 10, 2009

Nels Rasmussen says he vividly remembers the calls from his daughter 23 years ago when she confided her fears that a jealous LAPD officer was out to harm her. She told him the young female officer had shown up in uniform at the hospital where she worked and issued a chilling warning about her husband, "If I can't have John, nobody can."

He remembers the call when his daughter told him that she had found the officer, again in uniform, standing in the Van Nuys condo she shared with her new husband, John Ruetten. Then there was the call, days before she was beaten and shot to death in 1986, when Sherri Rasmussen said she believed the officer had been following her on city streets.

All of this, Nels Rasmussen says, he told Los Angeles Police Department detectives in the days, months and years after his daughter's slaying. His information was ignored by police until this year when cold-case detectives reopened the homicide investigation. Last week his suspicions were validated when Det. Stephanie Lazarus was arrested and charged with capital murder. Police say Lazarus, who had dated Ruetten, killed Sherri Rasmussen in a crime of passion.

On Tuesday, as Lazarus made her first court appearance, Nels Rasmussen and his wife held a news conference, calling on the LAPD to investigate their belief that detectives overlooked glaring leads that pointed to Lazarus...

LA Police Detective Charged With Murder
By RAQUEL MARIA DILLON
AP

LOS ANGELES (June 8, 2009) - A veteran detective was charged with murder Monday in the slaying of her ex-boyfriend's wife in 1986 — a crime that went unsolved for more than two decades as she rose through the Los Angeles Police Department ranks.

Detective Stephanie Lazarus, 49, could be sentenced to death if convicted of breaking into the victim's condominium on Feb. 24, 1986, and repeatedly biting, beating and shooting the woman.

Police in Los Angeles charged a veteran detective in the 1986 murder of her ex-boyfriend's wife Monday. Stephanie Lazarus, here in court Tuesday, could face the death penalty if convicted of repeatedly biting, beating and shooting the woman. Lazarus was identified as a suspect through a recent DNA match of saliva taken from bite marks on the victim's body.

Lazarus, who joined the force in 1983, was identified as a suspect through a recent DNA match of saliva taken from bite marks on Sherri Rasmussen's body, said Deputy Chief Charlie Beck.

Lazarus' husband, Scott Young, who works as a detective in the San Fernando Valley, knew nothing about the slaying, Beck said.

"None of us blames him. I don't know if he's been interviewed yet, but he will be, as will a lot of people," he said.

Lazarus was not a suspect at the time of Rasmussen's death because detectives believed that two robbers who had attacked another woman in the victim's Van Nuys neighborhood were to blame.

The case file mentioned Lazarus because she had once dated the victim's husband, John Ruetten, but investigators did not pursue her as a suspect until DNA tests recently showed the attacker was a woman...

Police allegedly stand by as man is beaten to death in Northern Ireland

2009-05-26T08:16:00.000-07:00

From The Times
May 26, 2009
Catholic man Kevin McDaid beaten to death 'by UDA gang'
David Sharrock, Ireland Correspondent

A Catholic community worker was beaten to death by men shouting that they were members of the Ulster Defence Association, his widow said today.

Evelyn McDaid, a Protestant who suffered serious head injuries when she tried to save her husband Kevin,spoke as police questioned nine men over the killing.

“UDA, they called themselves the UDA. I went across to help him and they beat me while they beat him,” she said.

“My neighbour had to step in to save me and she was pregnant and they beat her too and she shouted ‘I’m pregnant’ and they didn’t care.”

She added: “It was all to do with religion, and I’m not even a Catholic. I am a Protestant, it’s a mixed marriage, but they just seem to hate us so much.”

Mr McDaid, 49, was killed in Coleraine, Co Londonderry, on Sunday evening. Another man, Damien Fleming, 46, is in intensive care and his case is being treated by police as attempted murder.

Both men were targeted by separate gangs of up to 40 men who entered a mainly Catholic housing estate afterGlasgow Rangers won the Scottish Premier League.

Mrs McDaid appealed for the Catholic community not to respond to the attacks.

“He wouldn’t want retaliation for it,” she said.

“He wouldn’t want my sons to get hurt, he wouldn’t want this. He was trying to keep the peace, he didn’t want all this, the nonsense that’s been going on here for years and years. He wanted peace.”

Mr McDaid, a former plasterer, had three sons and a foster son. His widow said that the family’s life had been shattered.

“My life’s over,” she said. “A big part of me is missing now. He was my soulmate and now that’s finished. I have to try to go on for the wee foster boy and my other three sons. I have to try and go on but I’ve lost a very big part of me and I can never replace that, never ever.”

Celtic scarves have been tied on railings and flowers left close to the scene of the savage attack.

Ryan McDaid, one of the dead man’s sons, claimed that police stood by and did nothing during the attack. “The police sat and watched as Dad died, they never moved,” he said.

“There were four police officers in a car and they sat and watched from Pates Lane. They never moved, never came, never helped.

“Before I rang the police on my mobile I was shouting at them [the police in the waiting patrol car]. They didn’t want to know, they were 100 yards away. They saw the whole thing and did nothing.

“He died in my arms, dad was staggering up the road, he had gone out to help Damien. Damien was getting beaten and I rang the police on my mobile. Four or five times I rang 999. They said they were coming.

“When dad staggered up and he fell I was trying to bring him around again and I rang the ambulance on my mobile as he was in my arms. Police arrived in a van and ran up and gave Dad CPR but it was too little too late.”

Mr McDaid said that the family would be taking the matter to the Police Ombudsman’s Office.

A police spokesman said that all the circumstances surrounding Mr McDaid’s death were being thoroughly investigated.

San Diego's justice system has a problem: a cop who hid evidence tapes for eight years

2009-05-19T20:42:00.001-07:00

DA Reviews Cases After Taped Cop Interviews Found
May 19, 2009
Channel 8 San Diego and Associated Press

OCEANSIDE, Calif. (AP) - San Diego County prosecutors are trying to determine how many criminal cases could be affected by the discovery of a stash of taped suspect interviews going back as far as 2001.

Public Defender Steve Carroll said Tuesday that Oceanside Officer Damon Smith taped interviews for eight years but never turned them in as evidence.

Defense attorneys were unaware of the tapes' existence until they were notified earlier this month by the district attorney's office.

The tapes came to light in April when Smith was testifying in a domestic violence case.

Carroll says Smith's motive is unclear...

The discovery was originally reported by the North County Times.

Arizona police versus free speech

2009-04-14T13:48:00.000-07:00

Arizona v. Pataky
Citizen Media Legal Project
Posted April 9th, 2009 by David Ardia

Threat Type: Criminal Date: 03/09/2009
Legal Claims: Harassment; Theft

Party Issuing Legal Threat:
State of Arizona, Maricopa County

Party Receiving Legal Threat:
Jeff Pataky

Description
In March 2009, Phoenix police raided the home of Jeff Pataky, a blogger who runs Bad Phoenix Cops, a blog that has been highly critical of the Phoenix Police Department. According to The Arizona Republic, Pataky's home was raided by ten Phoenix police officers who handcuffed his girlfriend for three hours while they conducted the raid. "We have heard internally from our police sources that they purposefully did this to stop me," Pataky told the Republic. "They took my cable modem and wireless router. Anyone worth their salt knows nothing is stored in the cable modem."

The search warrant lists petty theft and computer tampering with the intent to harass as potential crimes. Pataky, who was away on a business trip when the raid occurred, says he has yet to see an affidavit that explains why they had probable cause to conduct the raid.

The search warrant provides little insight into what police believe Pataky has done. It does, however, mention repeatedly that police were to search for personal correspondence between Pataky and "Dave Barnes." According to The Arizona Republic, Barnes is a former Phoenix homicide detective who went public in 2007 with claims of mismanaged evidence at the city's crime lab. In May 2009, Barnes' home also was raided by police due to his alleged "involvement in what some officers perceived to be a connection to a blog critical of the police leaders," the Republic reported at the time.

Carlos Miller, who runs the Photography is Not a Crime Blog, is reporting that Pataky recently filed a lawsuit over the raid, which netted three computers, routers, modems, hard drives, memory cards and everything necessary to continue blogging. Pataky told Miller that he has not let the raid stop him from blogging, however, "They thought they were going to scare us into a corner but they just made us stronger."

Innocent man jailed for 11 years forgives his accuser

2009-03-14T08:45:00.001-07:00

Jennifer Thompson is a truly moral person who is bravely accepting responsibility for identifying the wrong man in a police lineup.

Mark Hansen, Forensic Science: Scoping out eyewitness Ids, 87 A.B.A.J. 39, April, 2001.

Nobody understands better than Jennifer Thompson how unreliable eyewitness evidence can be. Except maybe for Ronald Cotton.

Thompson is a North Carolina rape victim whose eyewitness identification of a suspect put the wrong man in prison for life. Twice.

Cotton is the innocent man who spent 11 years of his life in prison because of Thompson's mistake. And he might still be behind bars today if he hadn't been watching the O.J. Simpson trial on television in prison in 1995 and heard about a test for DNA.

Thompson, now the 38-year-old mother of triplets, was a 22-year-old college student in 1984 when someone broke into her apartment, put a knife to her throat and raped her.

Several days later, she went to the police station and picked Cotton's photo out of a lineup. She also picked him out of a physical lineup and identified him as her assailant at his 1985 trial.

"I was absolutely, positively, without-a-doubt certain he was the man who raped me when I got on that witness stand and testified against him," Thompson recalls now. "And nobody was going to tell me any different."

Two years later, though, Cotton won a new trial where there was testimony about another man, a fellow inmate who had reportedly told other prisoners he had committed the rape for which Cotton had been convicted.

But the man denied it on the witness stand. And Thompson testified that she had never seen the other man before in her life.

Nine years later, Cotton was watching the Simpson trial unfold on TV when he heard about a miraculous new test that could prove his innocence. So he asked to be tested.

And when the results came back, Thompson got the shock of her life. Cotton was innocent. It was his fellow inmate, the man she swore she had never seen before, who had raped her.

"I felt like my whole world had been turned upside down, like I had betrayed everybody, including myself," Thompson says.

But experts say they aren't surprised by her story. Mistaken eyewitness identification is the No. 1 cause of wrongful convictions, they say.

Cotton isn't angry. In fact, he and Thompson have since become friends. "You can't forget, but you can forgive," he says.

But he also counts his blessings every day. And thanks God for DNA. "If it weren't for that, I wouldn't be where I am today," he says.

Did police belief in discredited lie detector test cause them to let Chandra Levy's killer go free?

2009-02-21T14:34:00.000-08:00

Arrest Near in Killing of Chandra Levy, Authorities Say
New York Times
By IAN URBINA
February 21, 2009

Police officials here are close to making an arrest in the killing of Chandra Levy, the former federal government intern whose disappearance in 2001 ended Gary A. Condit’s Congressional career after his relationship with her was revealed, several law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation said on Saturday.

Law enforcement officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because charges had not been filed, identified the suspect as Ingmar Guandique, 27, a Salvadoran immigrant who has previously denied any involvement in Ms. Levy’s disappearance and killing.

Ms. Levy’s killing is one of Washington’s most sensational unsolved crimes and has brought intense pressure on the Police Department. Ms. Levy disappeared on May 1, 2001, and more than a year passed before her body was found in Rock Creek Park in Washington.

Mr. Guandique pleaded guilty to assault in September 2001 in two cases involving attacks on women in the park in May and July 2001. He is now serving a 10-year sentence at a federal prison in Adelanto, Calif., and is eligible for parole in 2011.

The police recently submitted new evidence to the United States attorney’s office after an inmate serving time with Mr. Guandique contacted them, law enforcement officials said. The inmate said Mr. Guandique told him he had killed Ms. Levy, the sources said.

In the initial investigation, Mr. Guandique told the police that he had seen Ms. Levy in the park, but that he had not harmed her. The police called Mr. Guandique a “person of interest,” but said he had passed a polygraph test...

Innocent man died in prison; real rapist is "sorry"

2009-02-07T09:47:00.000-08:00

Justice Finally Served
Harry Cabluck, AP
Feb. 7, 2009

A man who died in prison while serving time for a rape he didn't commit was cleared Friday by a judge who called the state's first posthumous DNA exoneration "the saddest case" he'd ever seen.

Calling it "the saddest case" he'd ever seen, a judge exonerates Timothy Cole, who was convicted of rape in 1985. DNA evidence helped clear Cole -- and pointed to Jerry Wayne Johnson instead. Here, Johnson walks into a Texas courtroom on Friday, past a portrait of Cole. This was the first case in Texas history where DNA cleared someone who had died in prison.

Cole was convicted of raping a Texas Tech University student in Lubbock in 1985 and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He died in 1999 at age 39 from asthma complications.

DNA tests in 2008 connected the crime to Jerry Wayne Johnson, who is serving life in prison for separate rapes. Johnson testified in court Friday that he was the rapist in Cole's case and asked the victim and Cole's family to forgive him.

"I'm responsible for all this. I'm truly sorry for my pathetic behavior and selfishness. I hope and pray you will forgive me," Johnson said.

The Innocence Project of Texas said Cole's case was the first posthumous DNA exoneration in state history...

Cole and his relatives for years claimed he was innocent, but no one believed them until evidence from the original rape kit was tested for DNA. Cole had refused to plead guilty before trial in exchange for probation, and while in prison, he refused to admit to the crime when it could have earned him release on parole.

The Innocence Project pressed for a hearing to start the process of clearing Cole's name. Cole's family now wants Gov. Rick Perry to issue a formal pardon.

Former Cop Suspected in Shootings Dies

2008-12-25T10:07:00.000-08:00

Former Cop Suspected in Shootings Dies
By DANNY ROBBINS, AP
Dec. 23, 2008

...A former Utah state trooper suspected in a series of roadway shootings earlier this week died on Christmas Eve, a hospital official said. Dallas police said they believe Brian Smith, above, killed at least one of the victims in a series of apparent random rush-hour shootings near Dallas. Smith shot and injured himself after a standoff with police.

The 37-year-old had been in critical condition on life support from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Police say he shot himself in the head after a brief standoff early Tuesday, more than six hours after the roadway shooting spree ended...

Dallas police Lt. Craig Miller said authorities were working to confirm that Smith was the gunman in separate shooting deaths minutes apart Monday on a Garland street and a Dallas interstate.

Earlier Wednesday, police shut down the freeway to re-examine the scene of one of several of the shootings.

Officials said both police departments were waiting for ballistics tests to come back for possible matches of bullet casings...

Warrants for Smith's arrest had been issued in the Fort Worth suburb of Southlake, where authorities have obtained evidence linking him to two robberies in the past eight days. Both incidents involved thefts in which purses were stolen from women in vehicles parked at businesses near where Smith lived.

Police have tied Smith to the incidents through witness identification and video of him using a credit card belonging to one of the victims, Southlake police spokesman Mike Bedrich said.

Smith moved to Keller with his wife and children last spring, just months after his conduct came under scrutiny from the Utah Highway Patrol. His peace officer certification was revoked after he went on a drinking binge and threatened to kill himself.

In Utah, where Smith's problems as a trooper are just now coming to light, he's remembered as a good father who never lost his temper and coached youth soccer and basketball.

"This is a shock for everyone who knows Brian," said Michael Peterson, Smith's former bishop in the Mormon church. "Obviously, he was struggling with some things. But the Brian Smith that everyone around here knows would never have done any of these things."

In this case, independent thinking worked better than blind obedience

2008-12-20T23:13:00.000-08:00

21 December 2008
Deaths from Mumbai 'police error'
By Adam Mynott
BBC News, Mumbai

...A prominent Mumbai gynaecologist, Dr Prashant Mangeshikar, was trapped in the Taj Mahal hotel along with hundreds of other guests as gunmen stormed into the building, firing indiscriminately.

Terrified, he and others barricaded themselves into a room and waited.

Eventually, in the early hours of the morning, police officers made it through to where they were hiding and told people it was safe to leave the hotel because the gunmen were cornered on another floor.

Some went ahead but Dr Mangeshikar held back.

"I was a little suspicious that the police were actually sending these guys down a different route where the terrorists were supposed to be," he said.

"I refused to move away and the people who ran ahead of me, about 20 or 30 of them, all of them died."

A dress designer from the city says her aunt was shot dead and her cousin seriously wounded because they followed police instructions to try to leave.

The designer, Shilpa, described the police conduct as disgraceful.

They had no right, she said, to risk people's lives...

Anthony Pellicano gets 15 years for using illegal snooping to help clients gain advantage in court

2008-12-16T14:02:00.000-08:00

Pellicano Sentenced to 15 Years in Prison
New York Times
By BROOKS BARNES
December 15, 2008

LOS ANGELES — Anthony Pellicano, a private investigator whose client list once included many Hollywood stars, was sentenced on Monday to 15 years in prison for his role in an illegal wiretapping enterprise.

The sentence, from Judge Dale S. Fischer of Federal District Court, was in line with what prosecutors had recommended. Mr. Pellicano, 64, already in custody, was found guilty in two different trials earlier this year on 78 charges, including wiretapping, racketeering and wire fraud. He and his two co-defendants were also ordered to pay a fine of $2 million...

The investigation of Mr. Pellicano began when an entertainment journalist, Anita M. Busch, was threatened in June 2002 by an associate of the private investigator after she wrote damaging articles about Michael S. Ovitz, once a prominent talent agent.

The investigation into the threat, which uncovered Mr. Pellicano’s wiretapping, seized Hollywood’s imagination with courtroom testimony revealing stars like Chris Rock as the beneficiaries of Mr. Pellicano’s illicit trade and other stars like Sylvester Stallone the victims. Ultimately, however, few industry players were charged.

Mr. Pellicano still must contend with a number of civil lawsuits that were delayed during the criminal proceedings. Those cases largely involve victims of wiretapping seeking damages for incidents in which private conversations were recorded.

Ms. Busch spoke at the sentencing, bitterly outlining the suffering that she said Mr. Pellicano caused her. “I no longer had my career, my peace of mind,” she said...

Wiretapper Anthony Pellicano gets 15 years

2008-12-15T11:42:00.000-08:00

Update: Mr. Pellicano received a 15-year sentence.

Private eye faces sentencing in wiretapping case
Victims tell judge Pellicano's actions affected their lives
ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 15, 2008

LOS ANGELES – Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano isn't the only person imprisoned as a result of his wiretaps of the rich and famous. His victims say they have never been able to free themselves from the emotional and financial fallout caused by his crimes.

A former reporter says she has nightmares about being hunted and raped. A mother copes with her daughter being mocked by other kids and their parents. An actress who once appeared in a popular television series says she has found little work since.

They are among the victims who submitted letters to the federal judge who is scheduled to sentence Pellicano today. The former private investigator is in custody after being convicted of a total of 78 counts, including wiretapping, racketeering and wire fraud, in two separate trials this year.

Federal prosecutors have recommended in court documents that Pellicano, 64, serve nearly 16 years in prison for running a criminal enterprise and becoming a “high-priced thief who fraudulently obtained prominence through the harm that he wantonly inflicted on others.”

Their letters give a glimpse into the anger, disgust and hardship his victims say they have endured since Pellicano combed through their lives.

Former Los Angeles Times reporter Anita Busch says she no longer is a journalist and has nightmares about being hunted because of the harassment she faced from Pellicano. Busch found a dead fish with a rose in its mouth on her car, along with a sign reading “stop,” in June 2002 after she wrote a series of unflattering articles about one-time superagent Michael Ovitz, a Pellicano client.

Lisa Bonder Kerkorian, the former wife of billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, said her privacy has been destroyed. Prosecutors said Pellicano and Kerkorian's attorney, Terry Christensen, bugged her phone conversations to disprove her claims that the MGM mogul was the father of her young daughter. DNA tests later showed movie producer Steve Bing was the biological father.

Christensen was convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wiretapping and sentenced to three years in prison.

Bonder Kerkorian said her daughter “has faced cruel comments, sly whispers and been openly ridiculed by students and parents at her school.”

Linda Doucett, who was a regular on “The Larry Sanders Show,” also chimed in, saying in her letter she has been unable to work as an actress and support herself and her son since taking part in a lawsuit filed by her former boyfriend, comedian Garry Shandling, against his former talent manager Brad Grey, now the head of the Paramount studio. Pellicano worked for Grey on the suit.

In late 2003, she said she received a call threatening her son's safety from someone she presumed to be Pellicano. Prosecutors never proved Pellicano or someone at his direction was the caller.

[But cops would never snoop illegally for private reasons, would they? They would. For four years Santa Barbara Sheriff Commander Sam Gross has been protecting deputy Michael Carlson for very similar activities to those of Anthony Pellicano.]

Police Chief indicted in boy's machine gun death

2008-12-04T16:25:00.000-08:00

Police Chief Indicted for Boy's Uzi Death
By STEPHANIE REITZ, AP
Associated Press
SPRINGFIELD, Mass.
Dec. 4, 2008

Three men, including a small-town police chief, were indicted Thursday on involuntary manslaughter counts in the gun-fair death of an 8-year-old who accidentally shot himself in the head with an Uzi that a prosecutor said he never should have been allowed to handle.

The club where the fair was held also was charged. The fair had promised shooters would have certified instructors in an advertisement, but District Attorney William Bennett said the child, Christopher Bizilj, was supervised by an uncertified 15-year-old boy.

As his father watched, 8-year-old Christopher Bizilj died after accidentally shooting himself with an Uzi gun at a Massachusetts gun fair in October. A police chief and the men who brought the gun to the demonstration were indicted for involuntary manslaughter and other charges on Thursday.

Christopher, of Ashford, Conn., lost control of the 9mm micro submachine gun as it recoiled while he was firing at a pumpkin Oct. 26 at the Machine Gun Shoot and Firearms Expo at the Westfield Sportsman's Club in western Massachusetts.
Pelham Police Chief Edward Fleury was charged because he owns the sponsor of the gun fair, COP Firearms & Training...

Bennett said prosecutors know of at least four children, including Christopher, who fired automatic weapons at the fair. He added that Fleury had wrongly assured Guiffre and Spano that it was legal for children to use the Uzi under Massachusetts law...

"It's all legal & fun — No permits or licenses required!!!!" reads the ad, posted on the club's Web site...

The ad also said children under 16 would be admitted free, and both adults and children were offered free .22-caliber pistol and rifle shooting.

Christopher's father was 10 feet behind him and reaching for his camera when the child fired the weapon.

Bennett said Charles Bizilj (pronounced bah-SEAL') had selected the compact weapon for his 4-foot-3, 66-pound son to fire after he was assured it was safe. He had thought the Uzi's small size made it safer, but the opposite was true, the prosecutor said.

"Although it might appear a heavier or longer weapon would be more dangerous, the small size of the weapon together with the rapid rate of fire made it more likely that an 8-year-old would lose control and the muzzle of the weapon would come close to his face, which is what happened here," he said.

The father was not charged because he was a layman and based his decision on information from others who should have known it was too dangerous, Bennett said. The 15-year-old boy who was supervising Christopher with the Uzi also will not be charged, he added...

Time to end dangerous and costly practice of regular police overtime

2008-10-26T11:31:00.000-07:00

Here's the Voice of San Diego discussion of a fatigued San Diego police officer who accidentally killed his canine partner.

Deputy who killed wife finally gets his plea deal: 15 years

2008-09-11T10:02:00.000-07:00

By Ray Huard
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
September 11, 2008

SAN DIEGO COURTS – A former sheriff's deputy who shot and killed his wife during a fight in their Alpine home with their 4-year-old son in the room was sentenced to 15 years in prison yesterday...

Lowell Bruce was given the maximum sentence allowed by law after pleading guilty in August 2007 to voluntary manslaughter for the December 2006 death of Kristin Maxwell-Bruce, San Diego Superior Court Judge Michael D. Wellington said.

It took more than a year and three judges to finally impose the sentence.

Bruce, a deputy since 1998, initially was charged with murder. But in July 2007 prosecutors and defense lawyers proposed a deal under which he would plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter and get a 15-year prison sentence.

El Cajon Superior Court Judge Herbert J. Exarhos rejected the deal, saying it raised questions about whether Bruce was getting special treatment because of his job in law enforcement.

A second judge, Allan J. Preckel, later agreed to it but then changed his mind, saying he wanted the discretion to sentence Bruce to a longer or shorter term. In June, Preckel was removed from the case for what an Orange County judge said was an appearance of bias against Bruce, and the case was assigned to Wellington.

Tom Condit and Chandra Levy: mirror images in Egypt?

2008-09-03T09:59:00.000-07:00

Could the following story happen in America? It could, but it hasn't.

By HADEEL AL-SHALCHI
AP
Sept. 2, 2008
CAIRO, Egypt
An Egyptian lawmaker and business tycoon was arrested Tuesday in the death of a Lebanese pop singer, Egypt's chief prosecutor said, accusing the man of paying a former police officer $2 million to kill her.

Hisham Talaat, a lawmaker from the ruling party of President Hosni Mubarak, is accused of ordering the death of 30-year-old Suzanne Tamim, who was found decapitated in her Dubai apartment in July, chief prosecutor Abdel-Maguid Mahmoud told The Associated Press...

Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo and his wife Trinity Tomsic were victims of a mistaken police raid last week

2008-08-09T12:33:00.000-07:00

My guess is that the police chief belonged to a different political party than Mayor Calvo. My opinion is, of course, influenced by watching San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis and her henchman Patrick O'Toole conduct political prosecutions for the past couple of years.

Police chief expresses regret over drug raid
By Gus G. Sentementes
Baltimore Sun
August 9, 2008

Prince George's County police Chief Melvin C. High said yesterday that a suburban Washington mayor and his wife were "innocent victims of drug traffickers" and expressed regret for the loss of the couple's dogs during a raid on his home last week.

Meanwhile, the FBI has opened an investigation into the actions of the county police officers who burst into the house of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo and shot the dogs. Calvo and his mother-in-law were handcuffed after the officers mistakenly suspected he was involved in shipping marijuana to his home.

Special Agent Richard Wolf, a spokesman for the FBI's Baltimore field office, said the agency has opened a civil rights investigation upon the request of Calvo...

The innocent bystander turned out to be the perpetrator

2008-08-09T12:28:00.000-07:00

Bruce Ivins was able to shift suspicions to Steven Hatfill.

In Anthrax Case, Hindsight Shifts View of Ivins Actions to Aid Probe Appear Now As Cover-Up
By ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON and SIOBHAN GORMAN
August 9, 2008

Bruce Ivins...took an overdose of painkillers and died in an apparent suicide last week. The FBI said the government scientist was close to being charged in 2001's deadly anthrax attacks.

One night in autumn 2001, as the U.S. reeled from the worst act of bioterrorism in its history, Bruce Ivins was alone in his cluttered Fort Detrick, Md., office, scrubbing phones, walls and furniture.

For colleagues, this was proof of the anthrax scientist's attention to safety. From a distance of seven years, it might be evidence of his guilt.

Like the detective in Agatha Christie's play "Mousetrap" who turned out to be the murderer, Dr. Ivins played a haunting dual role in the anthrax mystery, federal law-enforcement agents say. He was part of the team that examined the poisoned letters. Investigators say he implicated other scientists and submitted incomplete samples to throw them off-track...

20-year-old kills self after police say, "Are you a coward?"

2008-08-07T15:48:00.000-07:00

video
Oceanside police accused of negligence after man's suicide

Personality of a killer: church-going, jolly family man

2008-08-02T09:45:00.000-07:00

How can you tell who will become a killer?

The answer is surprising in the case of the man suspected of sending anthrax powder in the US mail in 2001.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/02/us/02scientist.html?em#
New York Times
By SARAH ABRUZZESE and ERIC LIPTON
August 2, 2008
FREDERICK, Md. — Bruce E. Ivins arrived last month for a group counseling session at a psychiatric center here in his hometown with a startling announcement: Facing the prospect of murder charges, he had bought a bulletproof vest and a gun as he contemplated killing his co-workers at the nearby Army research laboratory...

To some of his longtime colleagues and neighbors, it was a startling and inexplicable turn of events for a churchgoing, family-oriented germ researcher known for his jolly disposition — the guy who did a juggling act at community events and composed satiric ballads he played on guitar or piano to departing co-workers.

“He did not seem to have any particular grudges or idiosyncrasies,” said Kenneth W. Hedlund, a retired physician who once worked alongside Dr. Ivins at the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick. “He was the last person you would have suspected to be involved in something like this.”

Hatfill was innocent; suspected anthrax killer Ivins kills himself

2008-08-01T10:51:00.000-07:00

Anthrax Suspect Commits Suicide
By MATT APUZZO and LARA JAKES JORDAN, AP

Federal prosecutors investigating the 2001 anthrax attacks were planning to indict and seek the death penalty against a top Army microbiologist in connection with anthrax mailings that killed five people...

The scientist, Bruce E. Ivins...killed himself this week.

...prosecutors were closing in on Ivins, 62. They were planning an indictment that would have sought the death penalty for the attacks, which killed five people, crippled the postal system and traumatized a nation still reeling from the Sept. 11 attacks.

Authorities were investigating whether Ivins released the anthrax as a way to test his vaccine, officials said.

...Russell Byrne, a colleague who worked in the bacteriology division of the Fort Detrick research facility ...said Ivins was forcefully removed from his job by local police recently because of fears that he had become a danger to himself or others. The investigation led to Ivins being hospitalized for depression earlier this month, Byrne said.

...The Los Angeles Times, which first reported that Ivins was under suspicion, said the scientist had taken a massive dose of a prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine.
...
In late June, the government exonerated a colleague of Ivins', Steven Hatfill...

Los Angeles tried to create scapegoats in the Ramparts scandal

2008-07-14T16:00:00.000-07:00

HARPER v. CITY OF LOS ANGELES

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

No. 06-55519
D.C. No. CV-03-00959-CJC
Filed July 14, 2008
Before: Jerome Farris and Richard A. Paez, Circuit Judges,
and Frederic Block,* District Judge.
Opinion by Judge Paez

COUNSEL
Edward J. Horowitz, Office of Edward J. Horowitz, Pacific
Palisades, California; Dale B. Goldfarb, Harrington, Foxx,
Dubrow & Canter, Los Angeles, California, for the
defendants-appellants.
Jeffrey Isaac Ehrlich, The Ehrlich Law Firm, Claremont, California;
Joseph Y. Avrahamy, Law Offices of Joseph Y.
Avrahamy, Encino, California; Etan Z. Lorant, Law Offices
of Etan Z. Lorant, Encino, California, for the plaintiffsappellees.

OPINION
PAEZ, Circuit Judge:

This case arises from the Los Angeles Police Department’s
(“LAPD”) investigation and prosecution of three former
police officers, Paul Harper, Brian Liddy, and Edward Ortiz.
These officers were implicated in wrongdoing by former
LAPD officer Rafael Perez in an event that came to be known
as the “Rampart Scandal”—an event that, based on Perez’s
own unlawful conduct and his allegations of corruption at the
Rampart Division, launched an internal investigation that ultimately
implicated scores of police officers, overturned dozens
of convictions, and generated intense media scrutiny. The
criminal charges against these officers resulted in acquittals.
Harper, Liddy, and Ortiz (the “Officers”) subsequently
brought suit against a number of actors, including Perez, the
district attorneys, the City of Los Angeles, and former Chief
of Police Bernard Parks for violations of their constitutional
civil rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, contending among other
claims that the defendants had conducted an improper and
negligent investigation, and that they had been arrested without
probable cause for falsifying a police report and conspiring
to file such a report.

The Officers’ claims against the County of Los Angles,
District Attorney Gil Garcetti, Rafael Perez, and Deputy District
Attorneys Laesecke and Ingalls were dismissed on Federal
Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) motions or motions for
summary judgment, and the case proceeded to trial against the
City of Los Angeles and Chief Parks (“the City”). After an
eleven-day trial, the jury returned a special verdict in favor of
the Officers, finding that the Officers’ constitutional rights
were violated by the City and by Chief Parks in his official
capacity.1 The jury awarded each officer compensatory damages
in the amount of $5,000,001. The City thereupon filed a
number of post-judgment motions, including a renewed
motion under Rule 50(b) for judgment as a matter of law. The
district court denied the motions, and the City appealed. We
affirm. “[W]e do not lightly cast aside the solemnity of the
jury’s verdict.” Graves v. City of Coeur D’Alene, 339 F.3d
828, 844 (9th Cir. 2003). Both the jury’s verdict and the jury’s
damages award are supported by substantial evidence. We
also affirm the district court’s challenged evidentiary rulings.
Because we affirm both the verdict and the district court’s
determination on the post-judgment motions, we also affirm
the district court’s award for attorney’s fees under 42 U.S.C.
§ 1988.2

Cops get hysterical, falsely claim cookies laced with drugs

2008-07-11T18:01:00.000-07:00

An innocent 18-year-old spent a night in jail because police got the idea that the cookies he delivered were laced with drugs, then claimed that they had evidence to prove their hunch. It turned out that the deliveries were part of a court-ordered community service program.

Here is a story that was published BEFORE tests proved the cookies were clean.

July 10, 2008
By DAN X. McGRAW
The Dallas Morning News
dmcgraw@dallasnews.com

Police officers in Blue Mound didn't think much of the cookies dropped off at their station Monday night – until they got a whiff of them.

Overpowering the chocolate chips was the pungent smell of marijuana, police said. [Note: this turned out to be a figment of the police officers' imaginations.]

"It reeked of it," said Lt. Thomas Cain, a Blue Mound police spokesman. "It wasn't hard to tell. Anyone that's been around marijuana before would have known."

Christian Phillips Christian Phillips, 18, of Watauga was arrested Tuesday after authorities said he tried to deliver a batch of cookies that later tested positive for LSD to the nearby Lake Worth police station...

The cookies, which tested positive for marijuana [note: this report was later proved false], were not eaten by anyone in Blue Mound, he said...

Police arrested Mr. Phillips around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday when he attempted to drop off cookies in Lake Worth, officers said...

Did false accusations in anthrax case lead to failure to find perpetrator?

2008-06-29T07:32:00.000-07:00

One of the problems with false accusations is that they tend to stop investigations from going in the right direction.
Washington Post
June 28, 2008

Doctor Who Was Target in U.S. Anthrax Probe, Wins Multimillion Dollar Settlement

The physician and bio-researcher who the U.S. Justice department identified as a "person of interest" in the bizarre series of anthrax incidents that killed 5 people beginning in 2001 has settled his lawsuit against the government.

TheNew York Timesreports that Dr. Steven Hatfill will receive almost $3 million in cash and an additional $150,000 annually for the next 20 years to settle a lawsuit he filed in 2003, charging the FBI and U.S. Justice Department with leaking information to the news media in order to link him to the mailing of letters that contained anthrax spores.

Hatfill has consistently denied having anything to do with the anthrax incidents, in which five people died after inhaling the spore particles and another 17 were hospitalized, in 2001 and 2002.

U.S. Justice Department officials have never explained why Hatfill was such a prominent figure in the investigation, and a government statement said only that the government admitted no liability but decided settlement was "in the best interest of the United States," the newspaper reported.

Border Patrol Corruption Increasing

2008-05-27T12:56:00.000-07:00

What's the point in building a fence when our own agents allow illegal entry at the main gate?

Why didn't Biloxi jail fire violent guard Ryan Teale?

2008-04-28T16:02:00.000-07:00

Why didn't Biloxi jail fire violent guard Ryan Teale? Because prison guards were taught to cover up wrongdoing.

CNN.com
Anderson Cooper

Justice system in New Orleans: What's wrong with this system?

2008-04-28T16:00:00.000-07:00

Anderson Cooper reports on CNN regarding the soaring murder rate in New Orleans:

"Witnesses are either missing or unwilling to cooperate. Last year, nearly half the murder suspects walked free because by law, prosecutors have just 60 days to make their case before a judge. Time is simply running out.

(on camera) What's actively being done at this point to try and repair the justice system so the killing will stop?

NAGIN: Everything. Everything is being done, from more resources, more dollars, more manpower, more police officers. We've got the federal government involved.

KAYE: why then is the number of homicides going up instead of down? Who should be held accountable? Everyone is pointing fingers.

Police blame the district attorney for not prosecuting cases quickly enough. The district attorney blames police for holding onto case files and letting witnesses slip away. And the mayor, he accuses the district attorney of encouraging lawlessness and dropping charges against dangerous criminals.

(voice-over) Like this guy, Michael Anderson, who says he's innocent. District attorney Eddie Jordan just last week dropped five counts of first degree murder against him for the deaths of five teenagers. Jordan's office claimed it couldn't find a key witness. So how did police manage to the next day?

(on camera) Certainly a lot of people are pointing fingers at your office. Who do you think is at fault here?

EDDIE JORDAN, ORLEANS PARISH DISTRICT ATTORNEY: Well, let me say, first of all, that I am not going to take the blame for all the sins of the criminal justice system. Certainly, we have our shortcomings. But we're working on our shortcomings.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0707/27/acd.01.html

When the justice system befriends child molesters

2008-04-28T15:44:00.000-07:00

CNN.com
Anderson Cooper

"...You're paying for the criminal justice system. We all are. And you're counting on it to keep you safe and uphold the principles you believe in. The truth is, though, it doesn't always work that way.

Money is wasted. Bad guys go free. Decent people get hurt, and government sometimes gets away with it.

This hour is about holding people accountable.

Tonight, we will look at how a man accused of raping a child could go free, perhaps never to be tried again, because the prosecution could not find him a qualified interpreter. It only took us a few hours on the phone to find one.

And it gets worse. He might not have even needed an interpreter at all. And the evidence of that was plain to see.

We begin tonight with a story that seemed utterly surreal to us when we first learned about it, an accused molester going free because the court couldn't find him a qualified interpreter.

And, the more we investigated, the stranger it got. And the more you hear tonight, the madder you will likely get. How could an accused molester go free?

...GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is the man at the center of a legal storm, because of a bizarre technicality that is hard to believe, Mahamu Kanneh, charged with the horrifying crimes of raping and repeatedly molesting a 7-year-old girl and molesting a 1-and-a-half-year-old girl, both relatives of his.

But now the charges against the Liberian immigrant have disappeared.

JOHN MCCARTHY, MONTGOMERY COUNTY PROSECUTOR: We believe that that decision to dismiss these charges was improper.

TUCHMAN: Why were such serious charges dismissed? Because a court clerk was unable to find an interpreter fluent in the rare language known as Vai who could stay through the entire trial. A court-ordered psychiatrist told the judge an interpreter was necessary.

MCCARTHY: The bottom line is that any delays caused by an attempt to find an appropriate and qualified interpreter is not attributable to the prosecution and legally was the responsibility of the courts and should not serve as the basis for dismissing the charges against the defendant.

TUCHMAN: But Judge Katherine Savage disagreed, saying on the bench, "This is one of the most difficult decisions I have had to make in a long time." She cleared the charges because she says the long delay violated Kanneh's constitutional right to a speedy trial.

"Keeping Them Honest," we investigated what went wrong. An estimated 100,000 people in the world speak the West African tribal language of Vai.

The court office in Rockville, Maryland, says it worked hard to find someone anywhere in the country who could be with the suspect during the trial. Over two-and-a-half years, it couldn't successfully do so...

TUCHMAN (on camera): This story strikes high on the outrage meter. But what may be more outrageous involves the question over whether Kanneh needed an interpreter to begin with, because CNN has learned that Kanneh graduated from this Maryland high school back in 2005, one of the best high schools in the state, where, most certainly, you need to know more than Vai to get by.

(voice-over): At Magruder High School, a student is not allowed to get a diploma without passing four years of English. A source in the school says Kanneh did not even find it necessary to take the English-as-a-second-language course that is offered. And there's more.

JEREMY BROWN, NEIGHBOR OF MAHAMU KANNEH: It's right there, number seven.

TUCHMAN: Jeremy Brown currently lives next door to Kanneh.

(on camera): And how long have you lived here?

BROWN: About a year.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): We wanted to talk to Kanneh about his case and his language skills, but nobody was home in apartment seven. So, we asked his neighbor this.

(on camera): Does he speak English?

BROWN: Yes.

...TUCHMAN: So, on a scale of one to 10 of English proficiency, what would you say he had?

BROWN: Probably a seven or eight.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): No one, from the judge, to the court clerk, to Kanneh's public defender, would speak to us about the case, because prosecutors have filed an appeal. An appellate court would have the authority to make the charges reappear. But, if the appeal fails, Mahamu Kanneh will not ever go to trial on these charges...

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0707/27/acd.01.html

Jury finds Steve Castaneda not guilty; Patrick O'Toole promises to go after Cheryl Cox, Patrick Judd, Pamela Smith...

2008-04-24T08:02:00.000-07:00

After the jury came back with a "not guilty" verdicts yesterday in the case of Chula Vista city councilman Steve Castaneda, Prosecutor Patrick O'Toole announced that
"the obligation to tell the truth under oath is one that we're going to fight for."

At last! I filed a complaint long ago about subornation of perjury by Chula Vista Elementary School District board members. It sounds like the D.A. is finally going to do something about it.

The D.A. clearly got sidetracked from this goal when it engaged in the bizarre prosecution of a Steve Castaneda, who was accused of hiding his "intent" to buy a condo while testifying during a grand jury investigation that found no wrongdoing.

Prosecutor Patrick O'Toole said, "It was a case from our end that we thought had to be brought..." It would seem that O'Toole felt obliged to go after the political opponents of the wife of O'Toole's boss, County Supervisor Greg Cox. The problem was that Cheryl Cox herself was actually guilty of perjury crimes, while Steve Castaneda was not.

I've been waiting for a long time to hear someone in Bonnie Dumanis' office say "the obligation to tell the truth under oath is one that we're going to fight for."

I'm pleased to hear that O'Toole is finally going to do something about Chula Vista Elementary School District trustees and administrators who obstructed justice and committed or suborned perjury. The District Attorney received my complaint in 2005.

Here is the story from Fox News:

Councilman Found Not Guilty of Perjury in Condo Charges
Last Update: 4/23/2008

A Chula Vista city councilman accused of lying to the county grand jury regarding his personal interest in an apartment complex that was being converted into condominiums was acquitted Wednesday of six of 10 perjury counts.

Prosecutors will decide later whether to retry Steve Castaneda on the remaining four counts on which jurors deadlocked.

"I'm very happy that I'm vindicated. I'm very happy about the fact that I can now go on with my life," Castaneda told reporters outside the courtroom.

Defense attorney Marc Carlos said jurors gave it their best shot -- deliberating for five days after a two-week trial -- before coming to a decision.

"They've had hundreds of exhibits and thousands of pages of grand jury testimony, and that's as good as they can do and there's nothing there," Carlos told reporters. "I think (District Attorney) Bonnie Dumanis should do the right thing and step up and dismiss the remaining counts. They've spent a lot of money on this case and it's gone nowhere."

Prosecutor Patrick O'Toole said: "It was a difficult case. Everybody knew that going in. It was a case from our end that we thought had to be brought -- that the obligation to tell the truth under oath is one that we're going to fight for."

http://www.fox6.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=3866874d-c8bd-43b4-a142-5eaa4837d9c4

More than 1 in 100 U.S. adults are in prison

2008-02-28T21:04:00.000-08:00

Herald Tribune International

By Adam Liptak
February 29, 2008
Click here for original article.
For the first time in the nation's history, more than one in 100 American adults are behind bars, according to a new report.

Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million, after three decades of growth that has seen the prison population nearly triple. Another 723,000 people are in local jails.

The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.

Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 adult Hispanic men is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 adult black men is, too, as is one in nine black men ages 20 to 34.

The report, from the Pew Center on the States, also found that one in 355 white women ages 35 to 39 is behind bars, compared with one in 100 black women...

"We aren't really getting the return in public safety from this level of incarceration," said Susan Urahn, the center's managing director.

But Paul Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah and a former federal judge, said the Pew report considered only half of the cost-benefit equation and overlooked the "very tangible benefits: lower crime rates."

In the past 20 years, according the Federal Bureau of Investigation, rates of violent crimes fell by 25 percent, to 464 per 100,000 people in 2007 from 612.5 in 1987.

"While we certainly want to be smart about who we put into prisons," Professor Cassell said, "it would be a mistake to think that we can release any significant number of prisoners without increasing crime rates. One out of every 100 adults is behind bars because one out of every 100 adults has committed a serious criminal offense."

The United States imprisons more people than any other nation in the world. China is second, with 1.5 million people behind bars. The gap is even wider in percentage terms.

Germany imprisons 93 out of every 100,000 people, according to the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College in London. The comparable number for the United States is roughly eight times that, or 750 out of 100,000...

"We tend to be a country in which incarceration is an easy response to crime," she said. "Being tough on crime is an easy position to take, particularly if you have the money. And we did have the money in the '80s and '90s."

Now, with fewer resources available, the report said, "prison costs are blowing a hole in state budgets."

..."Getting tough on crime has gotten tough on taxpayers," said Adam Gelb, the director of the public safety performance project at the Pew center. "They don't want to spend $23,000 on a prison cell for a minor violation any more than they want a bridge to nowhere."

The cost of medical care is growing by 10 percent annually, the report said, and will accelerate as the prison population ages.

About one in nine state government employees works in corrections, and some states are finding it hard to fill those jobs. California spent more than $500 million on overtime alone in 2006...

Also see this analysis by Adam Liptak.

Are Oakland police aiding the murderer of Chauncey Bailey?

2008-02-26T17:51:00.001-08:00

Police arranged jail conversation, but didn't record it. They admit officer is a friend of Yusuf Bey IV.

The Murder Of Chauncey Bailey
Was A Newspaper Editor Murdered To Keep A Story Out Of Print?

60 Minutes(CBS)
Feb. 24, 2008

Shot-gunned to death in the course of reporting a story, police say newspaper editor Chauncey Bailey was probably killed to keep that story out of print.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper reports.

(CBS) This story begins with a journalist murdered this past summer in Oakland, Calif., presumably because of a story he was working on.

His name was Chauncey Bailey, and just this past week he was honored posthumously with the George Polk Award - one of journalism’s most prestigious honors - for the story that may have cost him his life.

The story Bailey was working on was about, of all things, a bakery. But not any ordinary bakery: it’s called "Your Black Muslim Bakery," and as CNN's Anderson Cooper reports, it was once a multi-million-dollar business as well as a major religious and political power in Oakland.

But the bakery's leaders were known for using tactics right out of "The Godfather." Bailey was investigating some of those tactics, which made some bakery leaders angry.

And angering the bakery was risky business, as Oakland police knew all too well.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Rumors about them killing people or, forcing them to do stuff that they didn't want to do, was rampant throughout the community," Assistant Chief Howard Jordan remembers. "People were scared to talk. People were scared to call the police."

Jordan has been an Oakland cop for 19 years. He says Your Black Muslim Bakery was on police radar for a long time.

It looks harmless enough on the outside, but at its height, the bakery employed about 200 people, many of them ex-convicts, who converted to Islam. And some of them didn't seem to spend too much time in the kitchen.

Your Black Muslim Bakery opened its doors in Oakland more than 30 years ago, selling bean pies and fish sandwiches. It was started by a man who called himself Yusuf Bey, a black Muslim who preached a philosophy of self-reliance and self-esteem.

Over the years, the bakery provided jobs and hope to hundreds of African-Americans in Oakland's inner city. But the positive outward image of the bakery never told the whole story. Inside the building, there were some very sinister things going on.

"It doesn't seem like many folks at the bakery were baking too many pies. It seemed to have just become a criminal enterprise," Cooper remarks.

"That's a fairly accurate statement," Jordan agrees. "It went from a business that was conducting legitimate business to a business interested in doing fraud, real estate fraud, assaults, robberies, vandalism, to promote a criminal cause versus a religious cause."

But in 2002, bakery founder Yusuf Bey was arrested on 27 counts of abusing and raping 12 and 13-year-old girls taken in by the bakery. He was accused of fathering children by them, and of stealing their welfare payments.

According to many reports, Bey fathered more than 40 children by different women at the bakery. As the Bey family, and its business, grew, they opened a dozen stores and owned a security company, a dry cleaner, a school, and properties in the area. In the process, the bakery became something of a law unto itself.

"A lot of Oakland cops told me that they left certain neighborhoods to the Bey family," says reporter Chris Thompson.

"Let them take care of business however they wanted?" Cooper asks.

"Yeah," Thompson says.

Thompson revealed the bakery's secrets in the East Bay Express, a weekly paper. He exposed a trail of "violence, brutality and fraud that stretches back almost a decade." Members of the bakery were furious.

After the stories were published in the paper, Thompson says somebody smashed out all their windows.

Asked if he personally received threats, Thompson tells Cooper, "Somebody would call up and say 'Mr. Thompson, we just want you to know that your days are numbered. Your time is up. You screwed up for the last time.' The creepiest thing was when they started following me home."

That's when Thompson decided to get out of town for a few months. While he was gone, the bakery's charismatic leader, Yusuf Bey, died. His funeral was attended by a thousand mourners, from all parts of Oakland.

After Yusuf Bey Sr.'s death, Howard Jordan says there was a power struggle within the organization. "There was a power struggle between the younger and the older Bey family members," he explains.

This was not your typical boardroom power struggle. Two of Bey's successors were murdered, and a third was wounded in an ambush. The last man standing was Yusuf Bey IV, the 19-year-old son of founder Yusuf Bey, and one of five sons he named after himself.

That's where reporter Chauncey Bailey picked up the story. Bailey was a veteran of Oakland newspapers and television, who worked for a weekly African-American newspaper called The Oakland Post.

In July, Bailey was tipped off to serious financial problems inside the bakery by a man named Saleem Bey.

"The story you told Chauncey Bailey, did that lead to his murder?" Cooper asks Saleem Bey.

"I believe that it led directly to his murder," he replies.

Saleem Bey is not one of Yusuf Bey Sr.'s biological children. He's one of the dozens of people Bey "spiritually adopted" who took the family name. Saleem Bey was a leader of the bakery, until he was forced out in that power struggle.

"I told Chauncey Bailey that the bakery was about to be shut down in an illegal bankruptcy," Saleem Bey explains. "This was the culmination of three years of the bakery being embezzled, and fraud and forgery, and different things that led to it being this way."

"You asked Chauncey Bailey to keep your name out of it. Why?" Cooper asks.

"I knew that it would be inflammatory, and that the people who would take it that way were dangerous," Saleem Bey explains.

Over the years, the bakery had earned a reputation for intimidation.

One incident, which they called a "show of force," was taped by San Francisco's CBS station KPIX-TV. Members of the bakery could be seen outside an Oakland tow-yard, demanding that a car be released. This was a smaller version of the close-order military drills that up to 50 bakery members would put on to intimidate the community.

Another "show of force" was caught by a security camera. Yusuf Bey IV and some of his followers were charged with trashing a neighborhood liquor store. Bey, who has pleaded not guilty, said the action was taken because alcohol was against Islamic law.

After taking over the bakery, Yusuf Bey IV went on a crime spree; he was arrested in three Oakland-area counties on five different felony charges.

"We saw a huge criminal enterprise starting to develop with the change in leadership when Yusuf Bey took over," Jordan says.

At the time reporter Chauncey Bailey was killed, Yusuf Bey IV was free on bail on all charges.

Asked if he thought Chauncey Bailey understood the risk, Saleem Bey says, "I believe that he thought it was more of a risk to myself than to himself. I don't believe that he really felt that he was in danger."

The danger was very real. While working on the bakery story, Chauncey Bailey was ambushed as he walked to his office at the Post. Witnesses told police a young black man wearing a ski-mask, pointed a shotgun at Bailey, and calmly fired three times at point-blank range. The shooter got into a white van idling nearby and sped off.

A day later, more than 200 heavily armed police raided the bakery to arrest Yusuf Bey IV and others on kidnapping and torture charges that had nothing to do with the Bailey murder.

And they arrested another man, Devaughndre Broussard, for killing Bailey. Broussard was a 20-year-old janitor at the bakery, who had converted to Islam after serving time for assault in San Francisco.

When 60 Minutes met him in county jail, Broussard told Cooper what he first told police: he didn't do it.

"I never heard about Chauncey Bailey. I never met him. I never seen him. The first time I heard about Mr. Chauncey Bailey was that night I got arrested," Broussard says.

While under arrest, Broussard continued his denials. And that's when police took an unorthodox step: they put Broussard in an interrogation room alone with his boss and spiritual leader, Yusuf Bey IV.

"He was saying like, 'You gotta help us out. You gotta take this fall.' He was saying like 'As your commanding officer, you gotta follow my orders,'" Broussard claims.

To convince him to take the fall, Broussard says Yusuf Bey IV played on his Moslem beliefs. "He was telling me how I was being tested by God," he says.

"He said that God was testing you?" Cooper asks.

"Yes, he did," Broussard says. "He was saying that, 'You gotta prove your loyalty' and what not."

"By saying you killed Chauncey Bailey, that was proving yourself to God?" Cooper asks.

"He were saying that most times, people don't realize when they being tested by God. 'I’m helping you out. I'm telling you that you being tested by God,'" Broussard says.

"But, I mean, this is a guy you trusted," Cooper remarks.

"Like they say, the people you love is the one that's going to hurt you the fastest," Broussard says.

Immediately after that conversation, Broussard confessed, telling police he was a "good soldier" who killed reporter Chauncey Bailey to protect the bakery. Did Broussard change his story because of what Yusuf Bey IV said to him? Police don't know, because they didn't listen in to that conversation or even record it.

"Mr. Broussard is saying that Yusuf Bey the IV told him, you know, 'Be a good soldier, take the fall.' Do you buy that?" Cooper asks Howard Jordan.

"No. I don't know what was said, but I don't I don't think that it's really relevant as far as what was said in that room," Jordan says.

"You don't think what was said in that room really matters?" Cooper asks.

"No, and it doesn't matter to us in terms of the end-product," Jordan says.

"But shouldn't someone have tape recorded that, or at least listened in on what they were saying?" Cooper asks.

"In a perfect world, yes, that, that should have taken place, but it didn’t," Jordan replies.

The lead investigator in the case, Sgt. Derwin Longmire, was the officer who decided to put Broussard and Bey IV together. But, in another strange twist, it turns out that Sgt. Longmire had been close to Yusuf Bey IV and the bakery for years.

Broussard realized just how close when he heard them talking at the police station.

Here's his account of what went on: "They was getting along like they really knew each other. The detective, he was saying like, 'We can't let Yusuf Bey the IV go down. He doing good in the community. He helping out black people,'" Broussard claims.

"The police said that to you?" Cooper asks.

"Police officer said that to me," Broussard says.

Chief Jordan does confirm that police knew all about Sgt Longmire's long-time relationship with Bey IV and other bakery leaders. "I don't have any problems with Sgt. Longmire's relationship with members of the bakery. I trust his integrity. I trust his credibility," Jordan says.

"It's certainly something, though, that's gonna be brought up during the trial, the fact that the lead investigator on the case turns out to be friends with Yusuf Bey the IV. It’s unusual, to say the least," Cooper says.

"It's unusual, but not unethical," Jordan says.

Today, Broussard insists he's not guilty and claims he knows who the real killer is.

Asked if he knows who did it, Broussard tells Cooper, "I'm gonna give all that info up when I go to trial."

Yusuf Bey IV, who is in jail on multiple unrelated felony charges, declined 60 Minutes' request for an interview. But he has denied any part in the Bailey murder.

"If anyone had a reason to be concerned about Chauncey Bailey writing something negative about the bakery, they would seem to be the guy who was leading the bakery," Cooper remarks.

"Correct," Jordan agrees. "That is a motive that, you know, we need to explore."

Police say the case is still open. But more than six months after Chauncey Bailey’s murder, Broussard remains the only one charged in the crime.

"Does it make sense that a low-level employee at this bakery, Devaughndre Broussard, would come up with this plan and execute it all by himself?" Cooper asks.

"It doesn't seem right. It seems highly unusual. But I don't know this young man. I don't know what he believes in," Jordan says.

"So it's possible he was following orders from somebody else?" Cooper asks.

"Oh, that's very possible. Yes," Jordan replies.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/22/60minutes/main3861939.shtml

Man killed wife, then demanded law and order

2008-02-23T21:42:00.000-08:00

LAPD make arrest in notorious '80s death

By THOMAS WATKINS
Associated Press
Feb. 23, 2008

LOS ANGELES - A Japanese businessman has been arrested on suspicion of murder more than a quarter-century after an infamous downtown shooting that left his wife dead and caused an international furor, police said.

Kazuyoshi Miura, 60, had already been convicted in Japan in 1994 of the murder of his wife, Kazumi Miura, but that verdict was overturned by the country's high courts 10 years ago.

Miura was arrested Friday while visiting Saipan, a U.S. commonwealth territory in the Pacific, after cold-case detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department worked with authorities there and in Guam, police said in a statement.

"A murder suspect who has been eluding (the) dragnet has been finally captured," the LAPD said. "Miura's extradition is pending."

Officer April Harding, a department spokeswoman, said no other details were available.

Miura's attorney, Junichiro Hironaka, told Japan's Fuji TV late Saturday that the arrest "astonished" him.

"My understanding was that the case was already closed both in Japan and the U.S., especially after their joint investigation," Hironaka said. "It's quite a surprise."

Miura and his wife were visiting Los Angeles on Nov. 18, 1981, when they were shot in a parking lot. Miura was hit in the right leg, while his 28-year-old wife was shot in the head.

His wife remained in a coma and was taken in an Air Force hospital jet to Japan, where she eventually died. Miura blamed street robbers on the attack and railed from his hospital bed against what he called a violent city.

The incident reinforced Japanese stereotypes of violence in the U.S. at a time when Los Angeles was preparing for the 1984 Olympics and was particularly sensitive about its overseas image. The LAPD vowed to find the killers.

Daryl Gates, who was police chief at the time of the killing, said Saturday that Miura was a key suspect even then.

"I remember the case well. I think he killed his wife," said Gates, who had not heard about Miura's arrest before he spoke Saturday afternoon. "We had Japanese police come over; they believed he was guilty, we believed he was guilty, but we couldn't prove it."

Miura, a clothing importer who traveled regularly to the U.S., had said he would write then-President Reagan and then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. and urge them to make the city safer.

"Many young Japanese will be coming to the U.S. with their dreams in their hearts," Miura said at the time, according to the Los Angeles Times. "I strongly hope this accident will never occur again."

In 1984, however, Miura's image as a grieving husband was tarnished by a series of news articles in Japan.

Miura reportedly collected about $1.4 million at today's exchange rate on life insurance policies he had taken out on his wife. In addition, an actress who claimed to be Miura's lover told a newspaper that Miura had hired her to kill his wife in their hotel room on a trip to L.A. three months before the shootings.

Miura was arrested in Japan in 1985 on suspicion of assaulting his wife with intent to kill her for insurance money in the hotel incident. He was convicted of attempted murder and while serving a six-year sentence was charged under Japanese law in 1988 with his wife's murder.

Miura was convicted of that charge in 1994 and sentenced to life in prison. Four years later, however, a Japanese high court overturned the sentence, throwing out a lower court's determination that Miura conspired with a friend in Los Angeles to kill his wife.

Kenji Yazawa, a Japanese consul in Saipan, said his office was informed of Miura's detention Friday but is waiting for permission from local authorities before meeting with him.

"It's been two days since he was detained, and we believe he has been given an explanation of his situation by now," Yazawa said. "I think we should probably discuss his situation now and what may come next."

Yazawa said Miura is believed to have visited Saipan previously and that he was "puzzled" by the unexpected development.

A duty official at Japan's National Police Agency said there was no notice from U.S. authorities before the arrest and that the news surprised him. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of internal policy.

News of Miura's arrest made front-page headlines in Japan.

"Why now?" asked the Mainichi newspaper.

Hideo Arai, president of Alpha Japan Promotion, an entertainment management company Miura is associated with, wrote on his blog that the arrest was "outrageous" because of the previous acquittal.

"Japan's Foreign Ministry should lodge a strong protest," Arai wrote.

After his acquittal in 2003, Miura often spoke publicly about false accusation and hounding media coverage.

He has been arrested at least twice since 2003, most recently on suspicion of stealing health supplements at a drugstore near Tokyo last year. Miura denied the charges and is free on bail. His trial is pending.

___

Associated Press Writer Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080224/ap_on_re_us/businessman_s_wife

Deputy abused disabled man

2008-02-16T10:13:00.000-08:00

Associated Press
Feb. 16, 20008
TAMPA, Fla. - A Florida sheriff's deputy who was videotaped dumping a paralyzed man out of his wheelchair onto a jailhouse floor has turned herself in.

Jail records show Charlette Marshall-Jones was booked into the Orient Road Jail early this morning.

It is the same jail where Marshall-Jones worked. She is accused of tipping 32-year-old Brian Sterner out of his wheelchair and searching him on the floor. He had been brought in on a charge of fleeing and attempting to elude a police officer after a traffic violation.

The Hillsborough County deputy has been charged with one count of felony abuse of a disabled person. She was released after posting $3,500 bail. An attorney for Marshall-Jones listed in jail records did not immediately return a phone message.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23197160/

Guards punished other guards who threatened to report them.

2008-02-12T13:36:00.000-08:00

Ex-Florida prison boss: Drunken orgies tainted system

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (CNN)

Softball, drunken orgies and a prison system run like the mafia. That's what Florida's former prison secretary says he inherited when he took over one of the nation's largest prison systems two years ago.

McDonough revealed a startling list of alleged abuses and crimes going on inside Florida's prisons:

• Top prison officials admitting to kickbacks;
• Guards importing and selling steroids in an effort to give them an edge on the softball field;
• Taxpayer funds to pay for booze and women;
• Guards who punished other guards who threatened to report them.

"Corruption had gone to an extreme," McDonough said, saying it all began at the top. "They seemed to be drunk half the time and had orgies the other half, when they weren't taking money and beating each other up." Watch a corrupted prison system »

McDonough described a bizarre prison culture among those that ran the system -- one that he says seemed obsessed with inter-department softball games and the orgies after games.

"I cannot explain how big an obsession softball had become," he said. "People were promoted on the spot after a softball game at the drunken party to high positions in the department because they were able to hit a softball out of the park a couple times."

A Brooklyn, New York, native, McDonough says he witnessed the way the mafia worked in his youth and it provided him a keen insight into how his prison predecessor, James Crosby, operated.

"It reminded me of the petty mafia I saw on the streets of Brooklyn when I was growing up in the late 1950s, early 1960s -- petty, small-minded, thugish, violent, dangerous, outside the law, and completely intolerable for a society such as ours in the United States of America," he said...

And getting rid of this "cancer" is exactly what McDonough says he did. McDonough fired 90 top prison officials -- wardens, supervisors, colonels and majors -- claiming they were corrupt or, at the very least, not to be trusted. He demoted 280 others...

Among those arrested were seven officers accused of beating inmates, including five accused of forcing a prisoner to drink toilet water. All have pleaded not guilty.

Tina Hayes...said employees who didn't attend softball games or play on the teams were "isolated" and "pushed aside."

McDonough says the majority of the prison system's 28,000 employees were honest, hard-working people who weren't corrupt at all. But he says many of the top prison officials weren't and he believes he has weeded out "an organized vein of corruption."

"They were like frat boys out of control."

Family men steal drugs--sounds like the mafia

2008-01-05T10:15:00.000-08:00

Judge says "if the men were one-tenth as concerned about the children living in the poor neighborhoods they patrolled as their own children, they never would have resold the drugs."

http://www.suntimes.com/news/727182,CST-NWS-cop05.article

Judge astounded by good cops, bad cops
'SCHIZOPHRENIC'
January 5, 2008
BY STEVE WARMBIR

A federal judge Friday had sentenced a crooked Chicago cop to nearly 10 years in prison, and the hearing was over, but the judge wasn't finished.

In an unusual move, U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Guzman commented on what he saw over the last two days after he sentenced a parade of rogue officers who robbed drug dealers for cash and cocaine.

What he saw was "almost schizophrenic," Guzman said. The cops were good family men, according to court testimony. Pastors sang their praises. They gave back to the community. One was a Desert Storm veteran. Another made more than 1,000 arrests. And they were part of a ring that sold stolen drugs to return them to the street.

The judge said he had never seen anything like it. "Good guy on one side," Guzman said. "Bad guy on the other side." Guzman sentenced former Chicago Police Officer Corey Flagg to 9½ years in prison, a significant break because of his extensive cooperation against his former fellow officers.

Three of them were sentenced Thursday, with prison terms ranging from 19 years to 40 years.

Guzman appeared exasperated at times as he sentenced the former cops, noting that if the men were one-tenth as concerned about the children living in the poor neighborhoods they patrolled as their own children, they never would have resold the drugs.

Flagg, 37, was the right-hand man of the dirty cop running the drug ring, Broderick Jones. But Flagg was also the first officer charged in the case to cooperate and for that he got a break...

Mentally unstable law enforcement officers should be steered to other employment

2008-01-02T11:40:00.000-08:00

San Diego Union Tribune
Letters, January 2, 2008

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/op-ed/letters/20080102-9999-lz1e2letters.html

Screen officers better, and make the pay better

Regarding “Lenient sentence is sought for deputy” (Our Region, Dec. 27):

Am I the only one who found it disturbing that a sheriff's deputy who was responsible for enforcing the laws and the safety of the citizens of our county now claims he was not able to handle stressful situations because of an abusive upbringing? I wonder if he provided the Sheriff's Department with this information on his job application?

I don't want a person who has trouble handling stress armed and in a position of authority. I have great respect for our law enforcement officers and the great job they do to protect us. I have long been of the opinion that these officers should be paid more than they currently receive to assure we get the best available.

At the same time we need to screen them on a regular basis to determine if they are being negatively affected by the stress and trauma of their jobs. Let's face it, how many people would want a job that starts at less than $50,000 a year knowing at any time you could have to face someone who is shooting at you with live ammunition? Better salaries, better officers.

ROBERT RICHARDSON
Pacific Beach

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2007-12-22T22:03:00.001-08:00

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Mass arrests were not necessary to protect the United States

2007-12-22T21:48:00.000-08:00

Hoover Planned Mass Jailing in 1950

New York Times
By TIM WEINER
December 23, 2007

A newly declassified document shows that J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty.

Neal N. Boenzi/The New York Times
J. Edgar Hoover was F.B.I. director from 1924 to 1972.

Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, 12 days after the Korean War began. It envisioned putting suspect Americans in military prisons.

Hoover wanted President Harry S. Truman to proclaim the mass arrests necessary to “protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage.” The F.B.I would “apprehend all individuals potentially dangerous” to national security, Hoover’s proposal said. The arrests would be carried out under “a master warrant attached to a list of names” provided by the bureau.

The names were part of an index that Hoover had been compiling for years. “The index now contains approximately twelve thousand individuals, of which approximately ninety-seven per cent are citizens of the United States,” he wrote.

“In order to make effective these apprehensions, the proclamation suspends the Writ of Habeas Corpus,” it said.

Habeas corpus, the right to seek relief from illegal detention, has been a fundamental principle of law for seven centuries. The Bush administration’s decision to hold suspects for years at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has made habeas corpus a contentious issue for Congress and the Supreme Court today.

The Constitution says habeas corpus shall not be suspended “unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.” The plan proposed by Hoover, the head of the F.B.I. from 1924 to 1972, stretched that clause to include “threatened invasion” or “attack upon United States troops in legally occupied territory.”

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush issued an order that effectively allowed the United States to hold suspects indefinitely without a hearing, a lawyer, or formal charges. In September 2006, Congress passed a law suspending habeas corpus for anyone deemed an “unlawful enemy combatant.”

But the Supreme Court has reaffirmed the right of American citizens to seek a writ of habeas corpus. This month the court heard arguments on whether about 300 foreigners held at Guantánamo Bay had the same rights. It is expected to rule by next summer.

Hoover’s plan was declassified Friday as part of a collection of cold-war documents concerning intelligence issues from 1950 to 1955. The collection makes up a new volume of “The Foreign Relations of the United States,” a series that by law has been published continuously by the State Department since the Civil War.

Hoover’s plan called for “the permanent detention” of the roughly 12,000 suspects at military bases as well as in federal prisons. The F.B.I., he said, had found that the arrests it proposed in New York and California would cause the prisons there to overflow.

So the bureau had arranged for “detention in military facilities of the individuals apprehended” in those states, he wrote.

The prisoners eventually would have had a right to a hearing under the Hoover plan. The hearing board would have been a panel made up of one judge and two citizens. But the hearings “will not be bound by the rules of evidence,” his letter noted.

The only modern precedent for Hoover’s plan was the Palmer Raids of 1920, named after the attorney general at the time. The raids, executed in large part by Hoover’s intelligence division, swept up thousands of people suspected of being communists and radicals.

Previously declassified documents show that the F.B.I.’s “security index” of suspect Americans predated the cold war. In March 1946, Hoover sought the authority to detain Americans “who might be dangerous” if the United States went to war. In August 1948, Attorney General Tom Clark gave the F.B.I. the power to make a master list of such people.

Hoover’s July 1950 letter was addressed to Sidney W. Souers, who had served as the first director of central intelligence and was then a special national-security assistant to Truman. The plan also was sent to the executive secretary of the National Security Council, whose members were the president, the secretary of defense, the secretary of state and the military chiefs.

In September 1950, Congress passed and the president signed a law authorizing the detention of “dangerous radicals” if the president declared a national emergency. Truman did declare such an emergency in December 1950, after China entered the Korean War. But no known evidence suggests he or any other president approved any part of Hoover’s proposal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/washington/23habeas.html?em&ex=1198558800&en=4eae300b9fba9c53&ei=5087%0A

Does law enforcement support Lowell Bruce?

2007-12-20T08:28:00.000-08:00

Does law enforcement support its members when they kill their wives?

San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis seems to think so.

Why else would she be intervening on behalf of a sheriff's deputy, asking that a judge not be allowed to sentence the man for killing his wife?

You might think that law enforcement would think of Bruce as a criminal. But apparently "law enforcement" is a loose term; it refers to a group of people, but not a group of people who always want the law enforced.

A lot depends on who the duty sergeant is

2007-12-17T10:51:00.000-08:00

ABC News report on Stacy Peterson's predecessor:

Nov. 15, 2007

"Kathleen Savio's Sister Said Drew Peterson Allegedly Threatened Woman at Knifepoint
Kathleen Savio, who was found dead in her bathtub in 2004, was the third wife of Bolingbrook Police Sgt. Drew Peterson. State's Attorney James Glasgow has said evidence suggests that someone killed Savio and tried to make it look like an accident. Peterson is a suspect in his fourth wife's disappearance...

"A coroner initially ruled Savio's death an accidental drowning despite the fact there was no water in the bathtub and her hair was soaked from an apparent head wound. Authorities theorized that the water had drained from the tub after her death. Drew was the duty sergeant working the night that her body was discovered..."

John Jersome White clearned of rape after 27 years: 7th Georgia convict cleared after DNA test

2007-12-12T12:16:00.000-08:00

DNA Clears Man of Rape After 27 Years
By DORIE TURNER
AOL News
2007-12-12

John Jerome White left prison Monday after DNA tests cleared him of raping a 74-year-old woman in 1979. Another man was arrested in the case.

ATLANTA (Dec. 11) - A man enjoyed freedom Tuesday after a DNA test proved he did not commit a 1979 rape.

John Jerome White, 48, left Macon State Prison on Monday evening.

"I'm just thankful that this is behind me," White said at a news conference Tuesday morning with the Georgia Innocence Project, which had worked to free him.

"When I first started out, I wondered why this happened to me," he said, breaking into tears. "I just saw it as something that had to happen because I wasn't living a moral life."

The investigation led to the arrest Tuesday of James Edward Parham, 54, of Manchester, who was on the state's Sex Offender Registry for a 1985 rape conviction, Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokesman John Bankhead said. He was being held in the Meriwether County jail on charges of rape, aggravated assault, burglary and robbery.

A sheriff's office employee declined to say whether Parham had an attorney, and there was no immediate response from the public defender's office. There was no answer on a telephone listed at the address given for Parham in a GBI news release.

White is the seventh Georgia convict to be cleared by DNA evidence, said Aimee Maxwell, director of the Atlanta-based Georgia Innocence Project. In every case, the men were wrongly convicted on eyewitness accounts.

"This case does point out the fallibility of eyewitness identification," Maxwell said.

White was convicted in 1980 of breaking into a 74-year-old woman's home and raping and robbing her. The woman has since died.

He was sentenced to life in prison, then was paroled in 1990. White was sent back to prison for 2 1/2 years on a drug violation in 1993. A 1997 robbery charge led to a conviction, a seven-year sentence and a requirement that he return to serving his life sentence for the rape conviction.

At the urging of the Georgia Innocence Project, authorities tested DNA from hairs found at the scene of the 1979 rape, using tests that weren't available at the time.

District Attorney Peter Skandalakis of the Coweta Judicial District said authorities found that the DNA matched DNA on file in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation database, leading to an investigation of a new suspect. No arrests have been made yet, the GBI says.

Maxwell said her organization is working with state lawmakers and authorities to require all law enforcement agencies to develop and follow clearly written procedures for doing an eyewitness identification with a victim, Maxwell said. The organization says 82 percent of the 355 Georgia law enforcement agencies surveyed do not have any type of written eyewitness standards.

White was joined at the news conference by his wife, three sisters and his mother, Florence White.

"When they called to tell me that he was getting out, I didn't know whether to shout, cry or holler," said his mother, who lives in Meriwether County. "I'm so glad to have him back home one more time before I leave this world."

In North Carolina, meanwhile, charges were dropped Tuesday against a Charlotte man who spent seven years on death row in the killing of a jeweler.

Jonathan Hoffman had been convicted of killing 35-year-old Danny Cook at Cook's Marshville store in 1995, but he won a new trial in 2004.

Union County District Attorney John Snyder said he dismissed charges because two witnesses have died and the prosecution's star witness, Hoffman's cousin, eventually recanted his testimony.

"What you had at the first trial is just not there," Snyder said.

Defense attorney Joseph Cheshire said it wasn't clear when Hoffman would be released.

Hoffman was in disbelief when told about the dropped charges, Cheshire said.

"He just couldn't believe it," Cheshire said. "He was surprised something so dramatic in his life could happen in such a low-key way."

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/dna-clears-man-of-rape-after-27-years/20071212090909990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

Law agencies ignore the law

2007-11-29T07:33:00.000-08:00

Audit: Access Often Denied by Law Enforcement
By WILL CARLESS Voice Staff Writer
Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2007

The vast majority of San Diego’s law enforcement agencies are still not meeting the basic requirements of California public records law, according to an audit organized by Californians Aware, an open government advocacy group.

The audit, carried out in San Diego by local journalists, found that local law enforcement agencies had reasonable or good customer-service levels, but that most of them still do not provide citizens with basic information about crimes.

The California Public Records Act requires that such information, including traffic accident reports, crime logs and an agency’s financial records be made available to the public. In theory, any citizen should be able to walk into their local police station and pick up a report on a crime that has been committed in their neighborhood...

Good cops are going after a bad cop

2007-11-10T21:23:00.000-08:00

SADLY, IT APPEARS THAT NEW INFORMATION MAKES IT NECESSARY FOR ME TO CHANGE THE TITLE OF THIS POST

This post was about bad cop Drew Peterson, who is suspected in the death of his 23-year-old wife, Stacy Peterson.

NEW TITLE:

COPS ARE GOING AFTER A BAD COP TOO LATE; THEY FAILED TO CHARGE HIM AFTER ANY OF THE EIGHTEEN CALLS TO HIS HOUSE REGARDING DOMESTIC ABUSE

I found this Associated Press story today:

Did Cops Protect Fellow Officer Peterson?
By DON BABWIN,AP
2007-11-30

BOLINGBROOK, Ill. (Nov. 29) -- Eighteen times in two years, Bolingbrook police were called to fellow officer Drew Peterson's home because of trouble between husband and wife. But Peterson's wife could never get authorities to arrest him. In fact, she was the only one ever charged.

Photo Gallery: Where Is Stacy Peterson?
Family of Stacy Peterson / AP Drew and Stacy Peterson appear together in an undated family photo. The probe into her disappearance has raised questions about whether he received preferential treatment from police because he was on the force in Bolingbrook, Ill.
1 of 7
Now residents of this Chicago suburb are wondering whether police were protecting one of their own — and whether they bear some responsibility for what happened next.

Peterson's wife at the time of the domestic disturbance calls, Kathleen Savio, was found dead in 2004 under mysterious circumstances. And now his current wife, Stacy, is missing and feared slain.

The way police dealt with Peterson "makes it kind of hard to trust cops," said Pablo Delira, a 59-year-old construction worker. He said he has no doubt he would have been led away in handcuffs if police had been called to his house 18 times.

Kim Camplin, who works in the clothing business, said Bolingbrook police should have taken the domestic disturbance calls more seriously.

"It doesn't matter if it's a fireman, a policeman or a clergyman — all it should take is one call and it should be taken seriously," she said. "What faith can we have in the system?"

Peterson, 53, was a police sergeant and 29-year veteran of the force, resigning earlier this month after he came under suspicion in his current wife's disappearance in October.

In a roughly two-year period beginning in 2002, police responded to 18 domestic disturbance calls at Peterson's house. Savio accused Peterson of beating her and threatening to kill her, but no charges were ever brought against him.

Instead, Peterson twice persuaded prosecutors to charge Savio with domestic battery. She was acquitted both times.

Police Lt. Ken Teppel said that in all 18 instances, police conducted a thorough investigation. He said a department inquiry found no indication officers did anything wrong or violated procedure.

But Teppel acknowledged the case has damaged the department's reputation.

"There is a distrust ... that this is going to be covered up," he said. "It's so hard to get over that."

Savio was found dead in her bathtub in 2004, and a coroner's jury ruled it an accidental drowning. But since Stacy Peterson's disappearance, investigators have re-examined Savio's death and exhumed her body, and said they now believe it was a homicide made to look like an accident.

Peterson has not been named a suspect in Savio's death. But authorities said he is suspected in Stacy Peterson's disappearance. Peterson has denied any wrongdoing in either case and said he believes his current wife left him for another man and is still alive.

The Bolingbrook department has handed the investigation over to the Illinois State Police — standard practice in criminal cases involving a member of the force.

Not everyone in the community of about 70,000 blames the department.

"I haven't lost one iota of trust in the police department," said Stephen DeFreeuw, a 16-year resident. "One rogue cop."

Teppel said street cops in the 122-member department are being reminded about the proper way to handle domestic calls and are being told they are expected to adhere to the rules, no matter who answers when they knock on the door.

Teppel said Police Chief Ray McGrury has made it clear: "There are no favorites."

Savio and Stacy Peterson were Peterson's third and fourth wives. He and wives No. 1 and 2 divorced.

Vicki Connolly, Peterson's second wife, has said that during their marriage, an increasingly controlling Peterson hit her and told her he could kill her and make it look like an accident.

Connolly said police sometimes came to the house when the couple were having problems, but she said the officers were friends of theirs and no reports ever were filed.

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/did-cops-protect-fellow-officer-peterson/20071130073109990001

HERE IS MY ORIGINAL POST

WBBM News Radio
09 November 2007 4:37PM

Cop Named A Suspect In Wife's Disappearance, 3rd Wife's Death Possibly Staged

BOLINGBROOK, Ill. (WBBM/AP/CBS 2) - Sgt. Drew Peterson's was named a suspect in the disappearance of his wife Stacy Friday -- Authorities also said that a review of the evidence in the death of his 3rd wife Kathleen Savio is consistent with the ``staging'' of an accident to conceal a homicide.

An Illinois State police captain said that the Stacy Peterson case had gone "from a missing persons case to a potential homicide case," and that her husband, Bolingbrook police Sgt. Drew Peterson, had "gone from being a person of interest to clearly being a suspect."

Peterson was also relived from duty by Bolingbrook Police Department hours after he was labled by investigators as "clearly a suspect"

"Effective immediately Sergeant Drew Peterson has been relieved of duty and placed on suspension without pay pending the completion of an internal affairs investigation and a hearing before the Bolingbrook Fire & Police Commission," according to a press release issued by Bolingbrook police.

Stacy Peterson has been missing since Oct. 28, and at the time of her disappearance, Drew Peterson said she had been voluntarily left.

But after Stacy's family filed a missing persons report, police conducted two separate searches at the Peterson home, on the house, the vehicles, and a trailer, Illinois State Police Capt. Carl Dobrich said at a news conference Friday.

"Subsequent to that search warrant, we went back several days later on another search warrant based on information was learned after the first search warrant," Dobrich said.

Based upon the information learned since then, police have concluded that the case had gone "from a missing persons case to a potential homicide case," Dobrich said.

"Early on, we looked at this as a missing persons case, but also believed strongly that based on the (Kathleen) Savio investigation (into the death of Drew Peterson's third wife) and the information that we were gleaning within the first 24 hours of the missing persons case with Stacy, was starting to strongly point to Drew Peterson being a person of interest," Dobrich said. "I would say that right now, Drew Peterson has gone from being a person of interest to clearly being a suspect."

A coroner's jury ruled Savio's death in 2004 was an accident, even though there was no water in the bathtub where the 40-year-old's body was found face-down, her hair soaked in blood from a head wound. Investigators theorized the water had drained.

In a petition filed Friday the Will County state's attorney lists reasons authorities want to exhume Savio's body, prosecutors and said a review of evidence in the case ``is consistent with the 'staging' of an accident to conceal a homicide.''

The chief criminal judge in Will County has approved the petition, State's Attorney James Glasgow said at a news conference Friday.

Glasgow said the possibility of a homicide is suspected.

Prosecutors said they reviewed photographs of the crime scene and autopsy, the autopsy protocol, and police reports.

``... The one-inch gash in the back of Kathleen Savio's head did not render her unconscious, which would have been necessary for her to accidentally drown in the bathtub,'' the petition stated.

Will County Circuit Court Judge Daniel J. Rozak signed the petition granting the exhumation Friday. It was not immediately clear when the body would be exhumed.

http://www.wbbm780.com/Cop-Relieved-From-Duty--Now-A-Suspect-Wife-s-Disap/1193902

I'm sure Cheryl Cox would plead guilty to a misdemeanor if she were investigated

2007-06-27T22:01:00.000-07:00

Tanya Mannes of the San Diego Union Tribune wrote on June 20, 2007:

"Patrick O'Toole, a Public Integrity Unit prosecutor, spent months investigating Jason Moore, who had been an aide to former [Chula Vista] Mayor Steve Padilla... He concluded that Moore ultimately took the two hours off. But he believed Moore lied about the timing of when he turned in a request for personal leave... Yesterday, Moore, 36, pleaded guilty to one count of contempt of court, a misdemeanor."

“People can't come into the grand jury, swear to tell the truth, and then lie,” O'Toole said.

Well, yes. And they can't obstruct justice, suborn perjury, falsify court documents, or violate the Labor Code. But that is exactly what current Chula Vista mayor Cheryl Cox has done.

Which makes it all the stranger that Bonnie Dumanis has refused to investigate Richard Werlin and other Chula Vista Elementary School District figures who have sworn to tell the truth, and then lied--about more important issues than two hours off work.

Ironically, Moore was accused of taking two hours off work to spy on Cheryl Cox and David Malcolm at a Cox fundraiser. The irony is particularly heavy in this case because Cheryl Cox herself pressured a whole slew of public employees at Chula Vista Elementary School District to commit perjury. Much of the perjury was done to cover up falsification of documents, which Cheryl Cox, Patrick Judd, Larry Cunningham, Pamela Smith and Bertha Lopez made necessary when they voted to cover up crimes by dismissing a teacher. The dismissal was itself a violation of Labor Code section 1102.5

The Chula Vista Elementary School District board chose lawyers, Parham & Rajcic, and Stutz, Artiano Shinoff & Holtz, who could be depended upon to use illegal tactics to cover up the board's wrondoing. Obstruction of justice is all in a day's work for these law firms.

The fact that Cheryl Cox has more power now than when she was a CVESD board member makes it all the more important that she be answerable for her crimes.

Cheney isn't part of the executive branch

2007-06-25T22:56:00.000-07:00

Vice President Dick Cheney claims he is not part of the executive branch, and therefore does not have to turn over documents to the agency in charge of executive branch documents.

Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel wants to take the Cheney at his word. Cheney says his office is "not an entity within the executive branch," so Emanuel wants to take away the tens of millions of dollars that are allocated to the White House to maintain it.

Tennessee tries to repair past injustices

2007-06-25T14:41:00.000-07:00

The state of Tennessee paid for a DNA test that proved that Clark McMillan, who spent 22 years in prison for a rape he did not commit, was innocent.

Early in the process, McMillan told authorities who the real rapist was, but they weren't interested. Finally, McMillan was proved right. A DNA test proved David Boyd was the rapist.

This school's lawyers were able to admit wrongdoing

2007-06-21T23:15:00.000-07:00

(CNN) -- Duke University has reached an undisclosed settlement with three former lacrosse players who were falsely accused of rape, the school announced Monday.

"This past year has been hard for many people who care about Duke -- for students, faculty, staff, alumni, families and friends -- and for the three students and their families most of all," the Duke board of trustees said in a written statement.

The three students posted a statement on Duke's Web site saying, "We hope that today's resolution will begin to bring the Duke family back together again, and we look forward to working with the university to develop and implement initiatives that will prevent similar injustices and ensure that the lessons of last year are never forgotten."

David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann were accused of sexually assaulting an escort-service dancer at a party in March 2006.

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper reviewed the case and exonerated the three men in April 2007, saying the charges never should have been brought against them.

The prosecutor who brought those charges, Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong, was disbarred Saturday by a disciplinary panel that said he violated the majority of at least 19 ethics offenses in prosecuting the case.

Shoud San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne Be Fired?

2007-06-19T10:37:00.000-07:00

From Voice of San Diego
Wednesday, May 30, 2007

"For several years, members of the San Diego City Council have complained that they were misled if not outright lied to by the city's employees. Several of them have blamed staff members for getting them into so much trouble with agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission. One of them, in fact, Councilman Brian Maienschein, regularly has avoided closed-session meetings of the council because, he says, he simply can't trust what he is told in them.

"Yet only Councilwoman Donna Frye has complained after revelations recently that Police Chief William Lansdowne has regularly made materially misleading statements about crime rates in the city of San Diego. Sometimes to the City Council itself, other times in public forums, the police chief has touted the city's crime environment with statistics and conclusions that were simply untrue. In a 2006 presentation to the City Council committee that oversees public safety efforts, Lansdowne claimed that the crime rate had gone down but that "it would be a struggle for us to do it again next year." The crime rate, in fact, had gone up.

"In the same forum the next year, the chief would claim that the city's crime rate was the lowest it had been since 1976. It wasn't.

"At that same presentation, he said that overall crime had been coming down each of the previous three years. It hadn't.

"Lansdowne said on public television that his officers were responding to the most serious of calls from residents in trouble "within the six minutes that we should." That was not true. Responses to emergency calls were taking an average of seven minutes and were getting slightly worse.

"The list goes on..."

San Diego Mayor Says You Should Know Better than to Believe the Chief of Police

2007-05-30T16:11:00.000-07:00

The editors of Voice of San Diego told their readers today:
"The mayor's explanation for his police chief's misstatements is simple: Residents just can't trust what the police chief says out loud and they should know better than to think they could."

Here are the first two paragraphs of the editorial:

"For several years, members of the San Diego City Council have complained that they were misled if not outright lied to by the city's employees. Several of them have blamed staff members for getting them into so much trouble with agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission. One of them, in fact, Councilman Brian Maienschein, regularly has avoided closed-session meetings of the council because, he says, he simply can't trust what he is told in them.

"Yet only Councilwoman Donna Frye has complained after revelations recently that Police Chief William Lansdowne has regularly made materially misleading statements about crime rates in the city of San Diego. Sometimes to the City Council itself, other times in public forums, the police chief has touted the city's crime environment with statistics and conclusions that were simply untrue. In a 2006 presentation to the City Council committee that oversees public safety efforts, Lansdowne claimed that the crime rate had gone down but that "it would be a struggle for us to do it again next year." The crime rate, in fact, had gone up."

http://voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2007/05/30/opinion/01editorial053007.txt

Perjury should be prosecuted in criminal courts, as Bonnie Dumanis well knows

2007-05-21T11:52:00.000-07:00

Dear Bonnie Dumanis:

If you are not going to prosecute perjury by officials with real power, but use the law only to prosecute workers who did not properly fill out their leave slips, you are not assuring public integrity. You are promoting lack of integrity and abuse of office. I couldn't help noticing that San Diego County's District Attorney indicted only workers and union leaders in the San Diego City pension fraud case. Not one official.

Your office's recent letter to me notes that I am pursuing my perjury claims in civil court. You know very well that my civil suit will lose because EVERY COURT IN CALIFORNIA WILL RULE that "public policy," meaning protection for lawyers, trumps the California law that allows citizens to sue for perjuy in furtherance of an act of destruction of documents. The California law that is universally ignored in California Courts is Civil Code 47 Section (b)(2).

You know that "public policy" relies on district attorneys to prosecute perjury in criminal courts, not citizens to prosecute it in civil courts.

Despite your oft-quoted claims that you will begin to prosecute perjury, you are letting all the big guys off scot-free. Cheryl Cox spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to hide crimes, and to pay lawyers to commit crimes. She knew the truth. I reported to her on December 4, 2001 that Richard Werlin was obstructing justice. Five months later, she voted to keep funding that obstruction of justice. She voted to intimdate teachers and administrators into committing perjury. Sometimes they got mixed up, and let out small bits of the truth in their depositions. Then the lawyers would step in. Kelly Angell (AKA Minnehan) of Stuz, Artiano, Shinoff & Holtz got Robin Donlan to reverse her testimony--right in front of the video camera that was recording the deposition!