Rookie Cop Reportedly Berated, Called 'A Rat' For Arresting Off-Duty Officer
By David Schepp
AOL News
May 30th 2012
Toronto police officer Andrew Vanderburgh felt he was doing the right thing more than two years ago when he arrested an off-duty fellow officer for drunk driving.
But after the Nov. 28, 2009 arrest, Vanderburgh was "harassed and berated" by fellow officers for seemingly violating an unwritten code among officers to remain loyal to each other, the Toronto Star reports. Other officers reportedly called Vanderburgh names, including "rat."
The off-duty cop, Breton Berthiaume, was charged with impaired driving and having a blood alcohol level of more than 0.08 percent, according to an internal police disciplinary ruling.
Berthiaume reportedly had been driving erratically when Vanderburgh (pictured above) pulled him over. The arresting officer then took Berthiaume to the nearest police station where his blood alcohol level could be tested.
Some officers witnessing the arrest "took exception to a police officer being charged or investigated," prosecutor Mary-Anne Mackett told a court that heard Berthiaume's case this week.
A judge who previously ruled in the case in a pre-trial hearing said that an officer witnessing the incident "refused to assist Constable Vanderburgh in the arrest and preparation of paperwork at [the police station]."
Later that evening another officer, James Little, followed Vanderburgh as he left the station in his patrol car and pulled him over for purportedly running a red light, giving him a ticket.
The ticket was eventually dismissed and Little pleaded guilty to "discreditable conduct" and was ordered to forfeit 20 days' pay.
Two other officers, including a staff sergeant who failed to intervene during Little's retaliatory action, were also disciplined and were docked as much as 20 days' pay.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Bite mark, DNA tie LAPD detective to 1986 murder
The husband of the dead woman was strangely quiet about this case. Perhaps he felt guilt for being the cause of the killer's jealousy.
May 26, 2012
Bite mark, DNA tie LAPD detective to 1986 murder
Produced by Ira Sutow, Taigi Smith, Greg Fisher, Avi Cohen and Linda Martin
[This story originally aired on May 22, 2010.]
(CBS)
The arrest of a cop was shocking news in the City of Angels.
It wasn't just any cop. Stephanie Lazarus was a well respected, highly decorated female detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. And it wasn't just a minor crime. She was charged with the murder of Sherri Rasmussen, a young nurse, 23 years after the killing.
"A Los Angeles police officer arrested for murder is just - it's a bombshell! I mean, you just don't get those kinda cases," Andrew Blankstein said. "People were really stunned by this."
Blankstein and Joel Rubin cover the police beat for the Los Angeles Times and are consultants to "48 Hours Mystery".
"Nobody saw this coming. Nobody says she was a cop that they saw on the edge," Rubin explained. "As far as we can tell, people in the department saw her as, you know, a cop's cop, a good cop."
"She's been a longtime patrol detective," Blankstein added. "She was with the art theft detail in commercial crimes...which is theft of high-end art in L.A .And in doing those kind of investigations... it gets a lot of press, a lot of attention... If the police and prosecutors are going to be believed, she's harboring a secret about murder for 23 years!"
At first glance, Stephanie Lazarus has no obvious connection to the victim in this murder case - Sherri Rasmussen, a highly regarded nursing administrator.
Sherri came from a very close-knit family. Her parents, Nels and Loretta Rasmussen, adored their three daughters and their growing family.
"Sherri was the glue that held the family together all the time... and made everything that much better," Sherri's younger sister, Teresa, told "48 Hours Mystery" correspondent Maureen Maher.
But in February 1986, Sherri would be attacked, beaten and shot to death in her Los Angeles home.
"We were an ordinary family, you know... You never think something like this is gonna happen to you," said Teresa. She says she never could have anticipated that only just now - more than 20 years after her sister's murder - there's been arrest.
"It doesn't make the pain any less," she said. "You start the grieving process all over again, one more time."
The pain is most obvious when the family visits Sherri's grave.
"I don't believe that you can understand the grief ... a part of your life has just been taken away forever," Nels Rasmussen told Maher in an exclusive interview.
Her parents say Sherri excelled at everything she did. She became a nurse when she was only 20. At age 27, she was named director of critical care nursing at Glendale Adventist Medical Center, where she sometimes lectured.
"She liked taking care of people and making sure things were done right, that people were cared for properly," said Loretta Rasmussen.
"She said, 'I'm gonna elevate the stature of nursing in the nation,'" Nels recalled. "And she was on her way."
On top of a successful career, in early 1986, Sherri was extraordinarily happy, having just married the man she loved. Her new husband was John Ruetten, a young engineer she'd met in 1984.
As it would turn out, Ruetten was the single link to the woman accused of murdering his new bride.
That is because Stephanie Lazarus was Ruetten's ex-girlfriend. And according to Sherri's friends and family, Lazarus was not willing to give up the man she'd first met in college several years before the murder.
"Sherri was competition," Teresa said. "If she could get Sherri outta the way, then possibly John would be free to be with her again."
Ruetten is the one who discovered his wife's body.
"He was in a daze," Teresa explained. "He was sort of the deer in the headlights look, you know?"
John Ruetten had little to say publicly after his wife's murder in 1986.
He briefly addressed mourners at a hospital memorial service for Sherri, telling them, "I just want to thank you all for coming and I want you to know that Sherri was the best professional in the world - she was the best wife that anybody could ever have."
"To me, he's kind of a central character that we really know the least about," said Blankstein.
"There's a lot of questions left unanswered," added Rubin.
Questions like: what did John Ruetten know? Or suspect? He says that early on, he told detectives to talk to his ex-girlfriend - an LAPD cop.
"John is really the only person that has this connection to both women that can tell us what was going on to some extent?" Maher asked Rubin.
"You would think, yeah," he replies.
But police were off chasing other leads, and Sherri's friend, Jayne Goldberg, says that Ruetten just quietly faded out of sight, leaving her quite angry.
"I would have expected that John would have been much more involved in the investigation...and demand answers," she said.
Especially, as months - and then years - went by with no resolution to the case.
"He should have been her advocate. She would have been his," Goldberg said. "Why wasn't he camped outside the police station? I don't understand it!"...
Produced by Ira Sutow, Taigi Smith, Greg Fisher, Avi Cohen and Linda Martin
[This story originally aired on May 22, 2010.]
(CBS)
The arrest of a cop was shocking news in the City of Angels.
It wasn't just any cop. Stephanie Lazarus was a well respected, highly decorated female detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. And it wasn't just a minor crime. She was charged with the murder of Sherri Rasmussen, a young nurse, 23 years after the killing.
"A Los Angeles police officer arrested for murder is just - it's a bombshell! I mean, you just don't get those kinda cases," Andrew Blankstein said. "People were really stunned by this."
Blankstein and Joel Rubin cover the police beat for the Los Angeles Times and are consultants to "48 Hours Mystery".
"Nobody saw this coming. Nobody says she was a cop that they saw on the edge," Rubin explained. "As far as we can tell, people in the department saw her as, you know, a cop's cop, a good cop."
"She's been a longtime patrol detective," Blankstein added. "She was with the art theft detail in commercial crimes...which is theft of high-end art in L.A .And in doing those kind of investigations... it gets a lot of press, a lot of attention... If the police and prosecutors are going to be believed, she's harboring a secret about murder for 23 years!"
At first glance, Stephanie Lazarus has no obvious connection to the victim in this murder case - Sherri Rasmussen, a highly regarded nursing administrator.
Sherri came from a very close-knit family. Her parents, Nels and Loretta Rasmussen, adored their three daughters and their growing family.
"Sherri was the glue that held the family together all the time... and made everything that much better," Sherri's younger sister, Teresa, told "48 Hours Mystery" correspondent Maureen Maher.
But in February 1986, Sherri would be attacked, beaten and shot to death in her Los Angeles home.
"We were an ordinary family, you know... You never think something like this is gonna happen to you," said Teresa. She says she never could have anticipated that only just now - more than 20 years after her sister's murder - there's been arrest.
"It doesn't make the pain any less," she said. "You start the grieving process all over again, one more time."
The pain is most obvious when the family visits Sherri's grave.
"I don't believe that you can understand the grief ... a part of your life has just been taken away forever," Nels Rasmussen told Maher in an exclusive interview.
Her parents say Sherri excelled at everything she did. She became a nurse when she was only 20. At age 27, she was named director of critical care nursing at Glendale Adventist Medical Center, where she sometimes lectured.
"She liked taking care of people and making sure things were done right, that people were cared for properly," said Loretta Rasmussen.
"She said, 'I'm gonna elevate the stature of nursing in the nation,'" Nels recalled. "And she was on her way."
On top of a successful career, in early 1986, Sherri was extraordinarily happy, having just married the man she loved. Her new husband was John Ruetten, a young engineer she'd met in 1984.
As it would turn out, Ruetten was the single link to the woman accused of murdering his new bride.
That is because Stephanie Lazarus was Ruetten's ex-girlfriend. And according to Sherri's friends and family, Lazarus was not willing to give up the man she'd first met in college several years before the murder.
"Sherri was competition," Teresa said. "If she could get Sherri outta the way, then possibly John would be free to be with her again."
Ruetten is the one who discovered his wife's body.
"He was in a daze," Teresa explained. "He was sort of the deer in the headlights look, you know?"
John Ruetten had little to say publicly after his wife's murder in 1986.
He briefly addressed mourners at a hospital memorial service for Sherri, telling them, "I just want to thank you all for coming and I want you to know that Sherri was the best professional in the world - she was the best wife that anybody could ever have."
"To me, he's kind of a central character that we really know the least about," said Blankstein.
"There's a lot of questions left unanswered," added Rubin.
Questions like: what did John Ruetten know? Or suspect? He says that early on, he told detectives to talk to his ex-girlfriend - an LAPD cop.
"John is really the only person that has this connection to both women that can tell us what was going on to some extent?" Maher asked Rubin.
"You would think, yeah," he replies.
But police were off chasing other leads, and Sherri's friend, Jayne Goldberg, says that Ruetten just quietly faded out of sight, leaving her quite angry.
"I would have expected that John would have been much more involved in the investigation...and demand answers," she said.
Especially, as months - and then years - went by with no resolution to the case.
"He should have been her advocate. She would have been his," Goldberg said. "Why wasn't he camped outside the police station? I don't understand it!"...
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Tattoo in sheriff's deputy clique may have celebrated shootings, sources say
Tattoo in sheriff's deputy clique may have celebrated shootings, sources say
By Robert Faturechi
Los Angeles Times
May 9, 2012
The investigation into a secret clique within the Los Angeles County sheriff's elite gang unit has uncovered allegations that members had matching tattoos of a gun-toting skeleton, which deputies would modify to celebrate their involvement in a shooting, according to sources close to the internal probe.
One deputy, who has admitted belonging to a clique called the "Jump Out Boys," has identified about half a dozen other deputies as members, one source confirmed. Those men are expected to be summoned for interviews with internal affairs investigators, the source said.
Suspicion about the group's existence was sparked several weeks ago when a supervisor discovered a pamphlet laying out the group's creed, which promoted aggressive policing and portrayed officer shootings in a positive light.
The pamphlet was found in the vehicle used by the deputy who acknowledged his association with the clique, according to sources who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the ongoing investigation.
Days after The Times reported on the discovery of the pamphlet, the captain of the division gathered his deputies for a private briefing, during which he told them they had shamed the department by forming the group and urged those responsible to identify themselves, a source with knowledge of the unit's inner workings said.
At some point, one deputy came forward, and he has since named about six others, the source said.
Internal affairs investigators are trying to determine whether the deputies violated Sheriff's Department rules or committed serious misconduct.
The deputies under scrutiny all work on the Gang Enforcement Team, a unit divided into two platoons of relatively autonomous deputies whose job is to target neighborhoods where gang violence is high, locate armed gang members and take their guns away.
The design of the tattoo, confirmed by two sources, includes an oversize skull with a wide, toothy grimace and glowing red eyes. A bandanna wraps around the skull, imprinted with the letters "OSS" — representing Operation Safe Streets, the name of the larger unit that the Gang Enforcement Team is part of. A bony hand clasps a revolver. Investigators suspect that smoke is tattooed over the gun's barrel after a member is involved in a shooting.
To the left of the skull are two playing cards — an ace and an eight — apparently an allusion to the "dead man's" poker hand, sources said.
One source compared the notion of modifying the tattoo after a shooting to a celebratory "high five."
Celebrating shootings and sporting matching tattoos were hallmarks of anti-gang officers in the LAPD's troubled Rampart Division in the late 1990s.
A corruption scandal erupted after one disgraced officer implicated himself and others in covering up bad shootings, planting evidence, falsifying reports and perjuring themselves to rid the streets of gang members and drug dealers.
By Robert Faturechi
Los Angeles Times
May 9, 2012
The investigation into a secret clique within the Los Angeles County sheriff's elite gang unit has uncovered allegations that members had matching tattoos of a gun-toting skeleton, which deputies would modify to celebrate their involvement in a shooting, according to sources close to the internal probe.
One deputy, who has admitted belonging to a clique called the "Jump Out Boys," has identified about half a dozen other deputies as members, one source confirmed. Those men are expected to be summoned for interviews with internal affairs investigators, the source said.
Suspicion about the group's existence was sparked several weeks ago when a supervisor discovered a pamphlet laying out the group's creed, which promoted aggressive policing and portrayed officer shootings in a positive light.
The pamphlet was found in the vehicle used by the deputy who acknowledged his association with the clique, according to sources who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the ongoing investigation.
Days after The Times reported on the discovery of the pamphlet, the captain of the division gathered his deputies for a private briefing, during which he told them they had shamed the department by forming the group and urged those responsible to identify themselves, a source with knowledge of the unit's inner workings said.
At some point, one deputy came forward, and he has since named about six others, the source said.
Internal affairs investigators are trying to determine whether the deputies violated Sheriff's Department rules or committed serious misconduct.
The deputies under scrutiny all work on the Gang Enforcement Team, a unit divided into two platoons of relatively autonomous deputies whose job is to target neighborhoods where gang violence is high, locate armed gang members and take their guns away.
The design of the tattoo, confirmed by two sources, includes an oversize skull with a wide, toothy grimace and glowing red eyes. A bandanna wraps around the skull, imprinted with the letters "OSS" — representing Operation Safe Streets, the name of the larger unit that the Gang Enforcement Team is part of. A bony hand clasps a revolver. Investigators suspect that smoke is tattooed over the gun's barrel after a member is involved in a shooting.
To the left of the skull are two playing cards — an ace and an eight — apparently an allusion to the "dead man's" poker hand, sources said.
One source compared the notion of modifying the tattoo after a shooting to a celebratory "high five."
Celebrating shootings and sporting matching tattoos were hallmarks of anti-gang officers in the LAPD's troubled Rampart Division in the late 1990s.
A corruption scandal erupted after one disgraced officer implicated himself and others in covering up bad shootings, planting evidence, falsifying reports and perjuring themselves to rid the streets of gang members and drug dealers.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Convictions linked to FBI lab’s flawed forensics
"Tribble would become the 290th person cleared by post-conviction DNA testing in the United States if a D.C. Superior Court judge grants his motion under the D.C. Innocence Protection Act."
Prosecutors agree: Murder conviction of D.C. man should be overturned
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post
April 27, 2012
Video: Santae Tribble was convicted of murdering cab driver John McCormick in 1978. In 2012, DNA retesting of the evidence that was key in his conviction—hair from a stocking mask found near the scene of the murder—has proved that none of the 13 hairs recovered could have come from Tribble. D.C. public defense lawyer Sandra Levick has filed a motion seeking Tribble's exoneration.
Federal prosecutors on Friday acknowledged errors in the scientific evidence that helped send a Washington man to prison for 28 years for murder and took the extraordinary step of agreeing to have his conviction overturned.
U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. cited DNA evidence in also agreeing to drop the murder charge against Santae A. Tribble and never try him again. But even as the prosecutor said the evidence that convicted Tribble was flawed, Machen stopped short of declaring him innocent.
Investigating flaws in forensics: A Washington Post investigation reveals that Justice Department officials have known for years that flaws in forensic techniques and weak laboratory standards may have led to the convictions of innocent people across the country, raising the question: How many more are out there? Read related story.
Tribble, 51, was found guilty of murdering a District taxi driver in an early morning robbery on July 26, 1978. His case was featured in articles last week in which The Washington Post reported that Justice Department officials have known for years that flawed forensic work might have led to convictions of potentially innocent people.
In Tribble’s case, prosecutors and the FBI laboratory were incorrect in linking a hair found near the murder scene to Tribble, according to recent DNA test results.
As the U.S. attorney’s office filed court papers late Friday, three former senior FBI lab experts and a national civil liberties group joined calls for the bureau and the Justice Department to review testimony in all convictions nationwide that depended on FBI hair evidence before 1996. Such a review would determine whether the evidence should be retested using DNA.
The Post reported last week that the Justice Department never reviewed thousands of cases that relied on potentially flawed hair comparisons, resulting in men like Tribble staying in prison. In many of the cases that the agency did review and found to have problems, prosecutors never notified defendants or their lawyers of the issues uncovered.
Machen has agreed to review all District convictions obtained with hair evidence and will ask the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project to assess whether any old evidence should be retested with modern DNA techniques. Justice Department and FBI officials said they still were considering a similar review nationwide.
Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) this week urged the Justice Department to review its handling of about 250 questionable convictions identified by The Post, most of which relied on hair comparisons...
Friday, March 23, 2012
San Diego's Unique Curfew Push: Graphic
San Diego's curfew sweeps remind me of Bonnie Dumanis' Public Integrity Unit: they are targeted against people who aren't among the power elite of San Diego.
San Diego's Unique Curfew Push: Graphic
March 22, 2012
By Keegan Kyle
San Diego police have arrested hundreds of kids in recent years by conducting regular curfew sweeps in the city's urban core.
The sweeps have been widely publicized since their inception. What hasn't received much attention is the decreased use of curfew enforcement almost everywhere else. While arrests have climbed in San Diego, they've fallen substantially across the state and nation.
I discovered that contrast last month while working on an in-depth story about the impact of the sweeps on crime. Our story questioned whether sweeps are indeed related to a recent decline in crime. Police here are effectively arresting hundreds of kids on an unproven hunch.
I mentioned the statewide comparison briefly in my story but thought it deserved revisiting. The graphic above illustrates how many kids were arrested for violating curfew laws across the state and in San Diego.
In 2007, about one in every 20 kids in the state was booked in San Diego — a proportional amount to the city's population. Just three years later, the gap narrowed to about one in five.
While law enforcement agencies statewide arrested significantly fewer kids, San Diego police doubled down. This contrast helps illuminate the unique direction of San Diego's program. Police here are pushing a crime fighting tactic as many agencies are stopping or cutting back.
The program's proponents here argue the sweeps have reduced crime by removing kids from a dangerous environment. They say children are less likely to become victims or perpetrators of crime when they're not out on the streets.
But our analysis of crime trends questioned whether that's true. In the past five years, places without the sweeps have reported equal or greater drops in crime than those with them.
It's still unclear why law enforcement agencies across the state have reduced curfew arrests, though several criminologists suggested it may be related to funding. Hit by the economic decline, agencies across the state have cut their budgets or shifted resources in recent years.
But those same pressures have also stretched San Diego. Department spokeswoman Lt. Andra Brown said police once had three or four officers who specialized in juvenile crime at each police division, and now have one or two. As the department's budget shrank, other functions like patrol took priority...
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Los Angeles Sheriff's Dept. accused of purposely not providing air support
Sheriff's Dept. accused of purposely not providing air support
L.A. County Sheriff's Department examines whether calls for aircraft to respond went unanswered so it would look like funding cuts were threatening public safety. Wasteful spending is also alleged.
By Robert Faturechi
Los Angeles Times
March 17, 2012
Los Angeles County sheriff's investigators are probing allegations that supervisors from the department's Aero division purposely delayed responding to calls for emergency air support.
At least one former Aero Bureau supervisor has publicly made accusations of impropriety. In a lawsuit filed against the county, Lt. Edison Cook said deputies were instructed by their supervisors to "slow down on service calls in order to miss calls for service." One sheriff's supervisor, Cook said, instructed other supervisors to complete their quota of required special shifts during the day, not the night, when most calls for service go out.
On one occasion, the three-decade veteran said, he drew criticism from his captain when, during one shift, he assigned an aircraft to a deputy without one: "We don't want to field too many ships because then it would look like we could get along without overtime."
During the period of the alleged manipulation, Sheriff Lee Baca was regularly alerting the Board of Supervisors, which controls his budget, to the negative consequences of funding cuts, often including a detailed accounting of calls for service that the Aero Bureau had to miss.
In his lawsuit, Cook quotes a 2010 email from an Aero Bureau sergeant: "If we go short and calls are missed we need to record the missed calls and provide our executives with the proper records so they can fight the fight."
Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said the allegations of misconduct are being thoroughly investigated.
He also said the department has completed a separate internal criminal investigation into allegations that Aero Bureau officials had improper relationships with contractors. Whitmore said that probe found no wrongdoing, though the results won't be presented to prosecutors until next week.
"When all is said and done," he said, "we are confident that the department will be cleared of any wrongdoing."
Elizabeth M. Kessel, an attorney representing the county in the lawsuit, described Cook in a statement as "a disgruntled former employee. This litigation will show that his allegations are meritless, based on gossip and innuendo."
Cook said he began noticing problems soon after he was transferred from his post as a unit commander on Catalina Island to the Aero Bureau in 2009.
His lawsuit alleges that in May 2010 he learned that some deputies and sergeants were getting more overtime than others.
Cook, now retired, also alleges that division supervisors were making use of the department's air fleet when commercial flights would have been significantly cheaper. One county aircraft, he said, "was used as the personal aircraft" by some officials when attending out-of-state meetings.
In his lawsuit, he claims he took his concerns about the wasteful spending to his chief, telling him "the department will have problems if the Los Angeles Times found out."
Cook also alleged that the Board of Supervisors was misled into believing that a project to outfit helicopters would cost $12 million more than needed. He said sheriff's officials also made a contract so narrow in scope that only one avionics company could compete.
He claims he was retaliated against as a result of his complaints, and eventually received a "punitive transfer" out of Aero Bureau to a post at a sheriff's jail.
Whitmore confirmed that department investigators are probing allegations that Aero Bureau officials improperly used county aircraft.
The accusation of financial irregularities in business with contractors was referred to the county auditor, which he said found no impropriety, Whitmore added. He quoted the audit, which was not provided to The Times, stating that the dealings "followed county standards for competitive solicitation."
L.A. County Sheriff's Department examines whether calls for aircraft to respond went unanswered so it would look like funding cuts were threatening public safety. Wasteful spending is also alleged.
By Robert Faturechi
Los Angeles Times
March 17, 2012
Los Angeles County sheriff's investigators are probing allegations that supervisors from the department's Aero division purposely delayed responding to calls for emergency air support.
At least one former Aero Bureau supervisor has publicly made accusations of impropriety. In a lawsuit filed against the county, Lt. Edison Cook said deputies were instructed by their supervisors to "slow down on service calls in order to miss calls for service." One sheriff's supervisor, Cook said, instructed other supervisors to complete their quota of required special shifts during the day, not the night, when most calls for service go out.
On one occasion, the three-decade veteran said, he drew criticism from his captain when, during one shift, he assigned an aircraft to a deputy without one: "We don't want to field too many ships because then it would look like we could get along without overtime."
During the period of the alleged manipulation, Sheriff Lee Baca was regularly alerting the Board of Supervisors, which controls his budget, to the negative consequences of funding cuts, often including a detailed accounting of calls for service that the Aero Bureau had to miss.
In his lawsuit, Cook quotes a 2010 email from an Aero Bureau sergeant: "If we go short and calls are missed we need to record the missed calls and provide our executives with the proper records so they can fight the fight."
Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said the allegations of misconduct are being thoroughly investigated.
He also said the department has completed a separate internal criminal investigation into allegations that Aero Bureau officials had improper relationships with contractors. Whitmore said that probe found no wrongdoing, though the results won't be presented to prosecutors until next week.
"When all is said and done," he said, "we are confident that the department will be cleared of any wrongdoing."
Elizabeth M. Kessel, an attorney representing the county in the lawsuit, described Cook in a statement as "a disgruntled former employee. This litigation will show that his allegations are meritless, based on gossip and innuendo."
Cook said he began noticing problems soon after he was transferred from his post as a unit commander on Catalina Island to the Aero Bureau in 2009.
His lawsuit alleges that in May 2010 he learned that some deputies and sergeants were getting more overtime than others.
Cook, now retired, also alleges that division supervisors were making use of the department's air fleet when commercial flights would have been significantly cheaper. One county aircraft, he said, "was used as the personal aircraft" by some officials when attending out-of-state meetings.
In his lawsuit, he claims he took his concerns about the wasteful spending to his chief, telling him "the department will have problems if the Los Angeles Times found out."
Cook also alleged that the Board of Supervisors was misled into believing that a project to outfit helicopters would cost $12 million more than needed. He said sheriff's officials also made a contract so narrow in scope that only one avionics company could compete.
He claims he was retaliated against as a result of his complaints, and eventually received a "punitive transfer" out of Aero Bureau to a post at a sheriff's jail.
Whitmore confirmed that department investigators are probing allegations that Aero Bureau officials improperly used county aircraft.
The accusation of financial irregularities in business with contractors was referred to the county auditor, which he said found no impropriety, Whitmore added. He quoted the audit, which was not provided to The Times, stating that the dealings "followed county standards for competitive solicitation."
Friday, February 10, 2012
Washington State officials hid evidence that might have saved Joash Powell's sons
Powell had 'incestuous' images on his computer, police say
February 10, 2012
Associated Press
Before Josh Powell was going to try to win back custody of his children last week, Washington state authorities received materials from Utah police that had been discovered on a computer in Powell's home two years ago. Authorities say the images depicted "incestuous" sex and were disconcerting enough that they prompted a psychologist to recommend that Powell undergo an intensive psychosexual evaluation.
But a lawyer for Powell's in-laws, who had custody of the boys, wasn't invited to see the materials before the custody hearing - even though a Utah judge had specified in a sealed court order that he was one of the few people allowed to see them.
Had he seen the images, attorney Steve Downing said, he might have asked the court to change the terms of Powell's supervised visitation with the boys, such as by asking for the visits to be in a public place. Instead, Downing said he didn't learn until Thursday morning - four days after Powell killed himself and the boys in a house fire - that he was allowed to see them.
"That would have absolutely given me the opportunity to submit a declaration about our deep concern. I was approved ... to view those pictures and I was never notified," Downing said. "I could have gone into all the reasons why the visitation could have or should have been restricted."
Pierce County Sheriff's Detective Ed Troyer told The Associated Press on Thursday night that the images collected by investigators from Powell's home computer in Utah two years ago were realistic computer-generated depictions of "incestuous" parent-child relations.
"It's family-oriented in nature," Troyer said. "It is incestuous."
Troyer said the images couldn't be legally defined as pornography because they don't involve real people. Troyer said the judge in last week's custody hearing was apprised of the images at the proceeding.
Powell was the only person of interest in the disappearance of his wife, Susan Powell, from their home in West Valley City, Utah, in 2009. He was never arrested or charged in the case, and a month after she vanished, he moved with his boys back to his father Steve's home in Puyallup, Wash., south of Seattle.
Last year, authorities searched Steve Powell's home, computer and cars for evidence in Susan Powell's disappearance - and instead said they found thousands of voyeuristic pictures and videos, including child pornography recorded by Steve Powell. The state took custody of the boys and turned them over to Susan's parents, Chuck and Judy Cox.
Josh Powell repeatedly tried to regain custody of the boys. At one point late last year, he underwent a court-ordered psychological evaluation. The psychologist held off on finalizing his report for some time, anticipating that he would be able to review materials that West Valley City police had discovered on Josh Powell's computer, said Washington state assistant attorney general John Long, who represented the state in the custody case.
But as the Feb. 1 custody hearing neared, the materials hadn't arrived from Utah, Long said. It wasn't until after the psychologist finalized the report that the materials arrived at the Pierce County Sheriff's Department. When the psychologist saw them, he added an addendum to his report recommending the psychosexual evaluation of Josh Powell - an exam that can include a polygraph as well as more intrusive measures to determine the body's response to child pornography or other stimuli.
On Jan. 30, the sheriff's office arranged a viewing of the materials, said Sherry Hill, a spokeswoman for the Department of Social and Health Services.
Among the attendees were Long and a Child Protective Services social worker. Downing said he wasn't notified of the viewing. Long confirmed Downing had been listed as one of those allowed to see the images. However, Downing was not technically a party to the Feb. 1 hearing, which was between Powell and the state, so there was no rush to make sure Downing saw the materials beforehand.
Josh Powell's attorney, Jeffrey Bassett, also did not attend. He said in an email Thursday that there had been some "miscommunication," and he didn't learn about the viewing until after the fact. He wasn't able to immediately schedule another viewing.
Two days later, Pierce County Superior Court Judge Kathryn Nelson heard arguments from Josh Powell seeking to regain custody of his children. Long opposed that, noting only that "concerning" images from his computer had been provided by the police in Utah.
After considering Long's arguments and the recommendation for the psychosexual evaluation, Nelson denied Powell's request. She said she wouldn't consider granting Powell custody unless he underwent the exam. She didn't make any changes in the visitation schedule, which allowed Powell to see his boys, 5 and 7, at his house twice a week while supervised by a social worker.
On Sunday, the social worker brought the boys to see their dad at his rental home outside Puyallup. After the boys rushed inside, he slammed the door in her face, locking her out. He attacked the boys with a hatchet, then torched the home in a gas-fueled inferno.
Chuck Cox, Susan Powell's father, said the images were just another indicator of problems with Josh Powell. Cox said he did not know the details of the images. He believed the kids should have been fully taken away from Powell long ago and that they raised concerns about allowing him continued contact.
"How much does it take for them to figure out that he should not have the children?" he said. "It's just wrong. They needed to be taken out of that environment."
February 10, 2012
Associated Press
Before Josh Powell was going to try to win back custody of his children last week, Washington state authorities received materials from Utah police that had been discovered on a computer in Powell's home two years ago. Authorities say the images depicted "incestuous" sex and were disconcerting enough that they prompted a psychologist to recommend that Powell undergo an intensive psychosexual evaluation.
But a lawyer for Powell's in-laws, who had custody of the boys, wasn't invited to see the materials before the custody hearing - even though a Utah judge had specified in a sealed court order that he was one of the few people allowed to see them.
Had he seen the images, attorney Steve Downing said, he might have asked the court to change the terms of Powell's supervised visitation with the boys, such as by asking for the visits to be in a public place. Instead, Downing said he didn't learn until Thursday morning - four days after Powell killed himself and the boys in a house fire - that he was allowed to see them.
"That would have absolutely given me the opportunity to submit a declaration about our deep concern. I was approved ... to view those pictures and I was never notified," Downing said. "I could have gone into all the reasons why the visitation could have or should have been restricted."
Pierce County Sheriff's Detective Ed Troyer told The Associated Press on Thursday night that the images collected by investigators from Powell's home computer in Utah two years ago were realistic computer-generated depictions of "incestuous" parent-child relations.
"It's family-oriented in nature," Troyer said. "It is incestuous."
Troyer said the images couldn't be legally defined as pornography because they don't involve real people. Troyer said the judge in last week's custody hearing was apprised of the images at the proceeding.
Powell was the only person of interest in the disappearance of his wife, Susan Powell, from their home in West Valley City, Utah, in 2009. He was never arrested or charged in the case, and a month after she vanished, he moved with his boys back to his father Steve's home in Puyallup, Wash., south of Seattle.
Last year, authorities searched Steve Powell's home, computer and cars for evidence in Susan Powell's disappearance - and instead said they found thousands of voyeuristic pictures and videos, including child pornography recorded by Steve Powell. The state took custody of the boys and turned them over to Susan's parents, Chuck and Judy Cox.
Josh Powell repeatedly tried to regain custody of the boys. At one point late last year, he underwent a court-ordered psychological evaluation. The psychologist held off on finalizing his report for some time, anticipating that he would be able to review materials that West Valley City police had discovered on Josh Powell's computer, said Washington state assistant attorney general John Long, who represented the state in the custody case.
But as the Feb. 1 custody hearing neared, the materials hadn't arrived from Utah, Long said. It wasn't until after the psychologist finalized the report that the materials arrived at the Pierce County Sheriff's Department. When the psychologist saw them, he added an addendum to his report recommending the psychosexual evaluation of Josh Powell - an exam that can include a polygraph as well as more intrusive measures to determine the body's response to child pornography or other stimuli.
On Jan. 30, the sheriff's office arranged a viewing of the materials, said Sherry Hill, a spokeswoman for the Department of Social and Health Services.
Among the attendees were Long and a Child Protective Services social worker. Downing said he wasn't notified of the viewing. Long confirmed Downing had been listed as one of those allowed to see the images. However, Downing was not technically a party to the Feb. 1 hearing, which was between Powell and the state, so there was no rush to make sure Downing saw the materials beforehand.
Josh Powell's attorney, Jeffrey Bassett, also did not attend. He said in an email Thursday that there had been some "miscommunication," and he didn't learn about the viewing until after the fact. He wasn't able to immediately schedule another viewing.
Two days later, Pierce County Superior Court Judge Kathryn Nelson heard arguments from Josh Powell seeking to regain custody of his children. Long opposed that, noting only that "concerning" images from his computer had been provided by the police in Utah.
After considering Long's arguments and the recommendation for the psychosexual evaluation, Nelson denied Powell's request. She said she wouldn't consider granting Powell custody unless he underwent the exam. She didn't make any changes in the visitation schedule, which allowed Powell to see his boys, 5 and 7, at his house twice a week while supervised by a social worker.
On Sunday, the social worker brought the boys to see their dad at his rental home outside Puyallup. After the boys rushed inside, he slammed the door in her face, locking her out. He attacked the boys with a hatchet, then torched the home in a gas-fueled inferno.
Chuck Cox, Susan Powell's father, said the images were just another indicator of problems with Josh Powell. Cox said he did not know the details of the images. He believed the kids should have been fully taken away from Powell long ago and that they raised concerns about allowing him continued contact.
"How much does it take for them to figure out that he should not have the children?" he said. "It's just wrong. They needed to be taken out of that environment."
Friday, January 06, 2012
Intelius and the Dubious Art of “Post-Transaction Marketing
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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August 9, 2010
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
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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Naveen Jain: Moon Man
May 18, 2011
Naveen Jain, Now Looking to Mine the Moon, Claims "$10 Million" NASA Contract That Could Actually Be Worthless
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October 3, 2011
Internet Wizard Loses His Magic: Intelius Hit with Two Class Action Suits
October 27, 2009
CORRECTED Classmates.com Finally Surrenders to Facebook, Announces Revamped Website
August 9, 2010
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
Saturday, December 17, 2011
How a Bad Cop Evaded Detection in San Diego
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...
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...
Friday, October 21, 2011
Paying for bad cops: Crowe family settles civil rights lawsuit for $7.25 million
...[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."
--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."
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
U.S. widens inquiry into abuse at L.A. County jails
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...
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...
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Crowe case plaintiff Houser settles lawsuit
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.
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.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
The collapse of American justice
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.
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.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Illinois law enforcement raids Harvey police department and seizes untested rape kits
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.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Freed West Memphis 3: Like kids at Christmas
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.
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.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Katrina bridge shootings: five New Orleans police officers convicted
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."...
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."...
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Hypersensitive Cops Use Internet Stalking Law to Punish YouTube Meanie
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
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
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
ATF official apologizes for mistakes in gun probe
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.
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.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Sexual abuse lies keep man in prison; courts refuse to hold new trial
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."...
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."...
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