Police Quietly Disbanded Anticorruption Unit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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...