By Bob Walsh
A major splash hit the local media yesterday regarding what is being presented in the media as widespread illegality at the San Joaquin County (CA) jail. It seems that 38 Correctional Officers are being investigated for felony embezzlement and another 40 or so on similar charges that do not rise to felony levels.
Allegedly what is going on is the jailers found some way to take compensated time off WITHOUT having the time deducted from their leave balances. Once this hits three days the amount of money involved exceeds the $950 floor for felony consideration.
This seems to have started with an internal complaint. Presumably somebody who wasn’t in on the scam or who was offended by it ratted the others out. After the S O began their own investigation and determined that there was something to it they turned it over to the District Attorney’s Office for further investigation.
At this stage the Correctional Officer’s union rep is blaming poor bookkeeping rather than any evil intent on the problem. Who knows, that could even be correct.
EDITOR’S NOTE For anyone who believes that union crap about this being a case of poor bookkeeping, I’ve got some beachfront property in Phoenix that I’ll sell you for a good price.
Sunday, March 06, 2016
EL CHAPO ENTERED THE U.S. TWICE WHILE ON THE RUN AFTER PRISON BREAK, DAUGHTER CLAIMS
In an exclusive interview, Rosa Isela Guzmán Ortiz says Mexican officials helped him evade US patrols and that he bankrolled the election of senior politicians
By José Luis Montenegro in Mexico City and Rory Carroll in Los Angeles
The Guardian
March 4, 2016
The drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán bankrolled the election of senior Mexico politicians and twice secretly entered the United States to visit relatives, according to his eldest daughter.
Rosa Isela Guzmán Ortiz said that shortly after an interview with Hollywood star Sean Penn last year, her father dodged a massive manhunt with the complicity of corrupt Mexican officials and evaded US border controls to sneak into California – despite being one of the world’s most wanted fugitives.
She also accused senior Mexican politicians of accepting donations from El Chapo when they ran for office, and said that in return officials turned a blind eye to his escapes from prison.
“My dad is not a criminal. The government is guilty,” she told the Guardian.
The explosive allegations made by Guzmán Ortiz could not be independently verified and are likely to be vigorously contested by Mexican and US authorities.
Guzmán Ortiz, 39, made the claims in a series of interviews which she said were given in consultation with her father.
El Chapo was recaptured in January after seven months on the run, and sent back to the Altiplano security jail near Mexico – the same prison from which he escaped in July 2015 through a tunnel which opened into his shower stall.
Earlier this week, he instructed his lawyers to drop their attempts to fight extradition to the United States in the apparent hope of negotiating a lighter sentence.
Guzmán Ortiz said the drug lord had planned to hand the reins of the Sinaloa cartel to her half-brother, Iván Archivaldo, but was betrayed by a cartel colleague, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada – and by the Mexican government, which she said had broken an agreement to protect El Chapo.
It is the first time the cartel leader’s daughter has spoken to the media. The Guardian has seen several documents confirming her identity, including her birth certificate and Mexican voting card.
Guzmán Ortiz’s identity was also confirmed by Francisco Villa Gurrola, an evangelical minister in El Chapo’s hometown of Badiraguato, who is a close friend of the drug lord’s 87-year-old mother Consuela Loera.
Her claims about El Chapo’s visits to California will raise questions about US intelligence and border security. As head of the world’s biggest and richest criminal syndicate he was the drug war’s most prized target.
Guzmán Ortiz said her father crossed the border in late 2015 to visit relatives and to view her home, a five-bedroom house with a large garden which he bought for her and her four children. She granted the interview on condition its location not be disclosed.
“My dad deposited the money in a bank account with a lawyer and a while after he came to see the house, his house. He came twice.”
She declined to specify how he criss-crossed the heavily guarded frontier, saying only: “I asked him the same, believe me.”
El Chapo has other family ties to the US: his third wife, the former beauty queen Emma Coronel, is a US citizen and in 2011 gave birth to twin daughters in southern California.
At the time, El Chapo had been on the run for a more than decade, and then president Felipe Calderón speculated that the fugitive drug kingpin could be hiding north of the border.
“He’s not in Mexican territory, and I suppose El Chapo is in US territory,” he told the New York Times.
José Reveles, the author of a string of books about the Mexican underworld, said that “nothing is impossible” for El Chapo, pointing out that Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel pioneered the use of sophisticated tunnels to smuggle drug shipments – and cartel members – into the US.
“Everything indicates that El Chapo would be able to visit the US: he’s very smart, he has well-trained operatives and he has experts in building tunnels,” said Reveles.
El Chapo’s rise from impoverished orange seller to Forbes-listed billionaire funnelling vast quantities of marijuana, cocaine and other drugs to the US has long been the subject of intense speculation.
Guzmán Ortiz’s explanation is that he bought protection at the highest official level, dispatching representatives to meetings with senior politicians and their representatives.
“All I know is that my dad told his lawyer to deliver some cheques to [a politician’s] campaign, and asked that he respect him.”
She said the family was considering releasing copies of the cheques along with names of officials and politicians who accepted his support.
Guzmán Ortiz is not the only member of El Chapo’s family to have approached the media, suggesting a concerted attempt by the capo to promote his version of events – or exert pressure on Mexican authorities.
El Chapo’s meeting with Penn was enabled by the actress Kate del Castillo, who hoped to produce a biopic of the drug lord, and his lawyers contacted at least two authors over a possible biography. In recent weeks his third wife, Emma Coronel, has granted a string of television interviews.
El Chapo earned worldwide notoriety with his dramatic jailbreaks from high-security prisons: in 2001 he reportedly left Puente Grande prison near Guadalajara hidden in a laundry basket, and in July 2015 he left Altiplano on a modified motorbike which carried him through a mile-long tunnel.
The second breakout was widely seen as an especially humiliating blow to the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto, but according to his daughter, senior officials had already given the green light for the escape.
“My dad’s escape was an agreement,” she said.
At least 34 people have been charged with helping El Chapo escape, including the former director of Altiplano prison and the head of Mexico’s federal prison system.
Towards the end of last year, the net appeared to be closing in on El Chapo after he arranged a meeting with del Castillo and Penn, who were under surveillance by intelligence agents. In October, the Mexican military launched a massive operation in the mountainous region between Sinaloa and Durango states, but failed to capture the cartel boss.
The following month, another attempt to capture El Chapo – during a planned family reunion at the home of El Chapo’s mother in the village of La Tuna, Sinaloa – was also foiled after a high-placed source in the secretariat of national defence tipped off the family, said Guzmán Ortiz.
El Chapo’s luck finally ran out in January, when he was cornered in the coastal town of Los Mochis. The daughter attributed her father’s capture to a betrayal by senior Mexican officials and politicians. “If there’s a pact, they don’t respect it. Now that they catch him they say he’s a criminal, a killer. But they didn’t say that when they asked for money for their campaigns. They’re hypocrites.”
A US citizen, Guzmán Ortiz runs a chain of small businesses in California and speaks fluent English. She compared herself to narco juniors – a Mexican term for the privileged offspring of the country’s drug lords – but said any money she received from her father was clean.
“My businesses are the result of my own efforts,” she said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Here is what Louis R. said on Borderland Beat:
Newly identified daughter, must be one of the half dozen children father by El Chapo outside his marriage. He entered into only one legal marriage, that being with his first wife, Alejandrina Salazar. His second was a common law wife named Griselda Lopez, and the most recent common law wife, Emma Coronel. So far he has fathered 10 children from these three unions.
Outside these relationships Chapo fathered 6-12 children.
The person in this article says she is the daughter of El Chapo, and she appears to have been well vetted, as you will be read about in the article. He would have been 19 when she was born.
As for the claim the Sinaloa Cartel leader would have chanced sneaking into to the U.S. while on the lam….twice, I would say highly doubtful, if not for his carelessness exhibited by him while on the run.
By José Luis Montenegro in Mexico City and Rory Carroll in Los Angeles
The Guardian
March 4, 2016
The drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán bankrolled the election of senior Mexico politicians and twice secretly entered the United States to visit relatives, according to his eldest daughter.
Rosa Isela Guzmán Ortiz said that shortly after an interview with Hollywood star Sean Penn last year, her father dodged a massive manhunt with the complicity of corrupt Mexican officials and evaded US border controls to sneak into California – despite being one of the world’s most wanted fugitives.
She also accused senior Mexican politicians of accepting donations from El Chapo when they ran for office, and said that in return officials turned a blind eye to his escapes from prison.
“My dad is not a criminal. The government is guilty,” she told the Guardian.
The explosive allegations made by Guzmán Ortiz could not be independently verified and are likely to be vigorously contested by Mexican and US authorities.
Guzmán Ortiz, 39, made the claims in a series of interviews which she said were given in consultation with her father.
El Chapo was recaptured in January after seven months on the run, and sent back to the Altiplano security jail near Mexico – the same prison from which he escaped in July 2015 through a tunnel which opened into his shower stall.
Earlier this week, he instructed his lawyers to drop their attempts to fight extradition to the United States in the apparent hope of negotiating a lighter sentence.
Guzmán Ortiz said the drug lord had planned to hand the reins of the Sinaloa cartel to her half-brother, Iván Archivaldo, but was betrayed by a cartel colleague, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada – and by the Mexican government, which she said had broken an agreement to protect El Chapo.
It is the first time the cartel leader’s daughter has spoken to the media. The Guardian has seen several documents confirming her identity, including her birth certificate and Mexican voting card.
Guzmán Ortiz’s identity was also confirmed by Francisco Villa Gurrola, an evangelical minister in El Chapo’s hometown of Badiraguato, who is a close friend of the drug lord’s 87-year-old mother Consuela Loera.
Her claims about El Chapo’s visits to California will raise questions about US intelligence and border security. As head of the world’s biggest and richest criminal syndicate he was the drug war’s most prized target.
Guzmán Ortiz said her father crossed the border in late 2015 to visit relatives and to view her home, a five-bedroom house with a large garden which he bought for her and her four children. She granted the interview on condition its location not be disclosed.
“My dad deposited the money in a bank account with a lawyer and a while after he came to see the house, his house. He came twice.”
She declined to specify how he criss-crossed the heavily guarded frontier, saying only: “I asked him the same, believe me.”
El Chapo has other family ties to the US: his third wife, the former beauty queen Emma Coronel, is a US citizen and in 2011 gave birth to twin daughters in southern California.
At the time, El Chapo had been on the run for a more than decade, and then president Felipe Calderón speculated that the fugitive drug kingpin could be hiding north of the border.
“He’s not in Mexican territory, and I suppose El Chapo is in US territory,” he told the New York Times.
José Reveles, the author of a string of books about the Mexican underworld, said that “nothing is impossible” for El Chapo, pointing out that Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel pioneered the use of sophisticated tunnels to smuggle drug shipments – and cartel members – into the US.
“Everything indicates that El Chapo would be able to visit the US: he’s very smart, he has well-trained operatives and he has experts in building tunnels,” said Reveles.
El Chapo’s rise from impoverished orange seller to Forbes-listed billionaire funnelling vast quantities of marijuana, cocaine and other drugs to the US has long been the subject of intense speculation.
Guzmán Ortiz’s explanation is that he bought protection at the highest official level, dispatching representatives to meetings with senior politicians and their representatives.
“All I know is that my dad told his lawyer to deliver some cheques to [a politician’s] campaign, and asked that he respect him.”
She said the family was considering releasing copies of the cheques along with names of officials and politicians who accepted his support.
Guzmán Ortiz is not the only member of El Chapo’s family to have approached the media, suggesting a concerted attempt by the capo to promote his version of events – or exert pressure on Mexican authorities.
El Chapo’s meeting with Penn was enabled by the actress Kate del Castillo, who hoped to produce a biopic of the drug lord, and his lawyers contacted at least two authors over a possible biography. In recent weeks his third wife, Emma Coronel, has granted a string of television interviews.
El Chapo earned worldwide notoriety with his dramatic jailbreaks from high-security prisons: in 2001 he reportedly left Puente Grande prison near Guadalajara hidden in a laundry basket, and in July 2015 he left Altiplano on a modified motorbike which carried him through a mile-long tunnel.
The second breakout was widely seen as an especially humiliating blow to the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto, but according to his daughter, senior officials had already given the green light for the escape.
“My dad’s escape was an agreement,” she said.
At least 34 people have been charged with helping El Chapo escape, including the former director of Altiplano prison and the head of Mexico’s federal prison system.
Towards the end of last year, the net appeared to be closing in on El Chapo after he arranged a meeting with del Castillo and Penn, who were under surveillance by intelligence agents. In October, the Mexican military launched a massive operation in the mountainous region between Sinaloa and Durango states, but failed to capture the cartel boss.
The following month, another attempt to capture El Chapo – during a planned family reunion at the home of El Chapo’s mother in the village of La Tuna, Sinaloa – was also foiled after a high-placed source in the secretariat of national defence tipped off the family, said Guzmán Ortiz.
El Chapo’s luck finally ran out in January, when he was cornered in the coastal town of Los Mochis. The daughter attributed her father’s capture to a betrayal by senior Mexican officials and politicians. “If there’s a pact, they don’t respect it. Now that they catch him they say he’s a criminal, a killer. But they didn’t say that when they asked for money for their campaigns. They’re hypocrites.”
A US citizen, Guzmán Ortiz runs a chain of small businesses in California and speaks fluent English. She compared herself to narco juniors – a Mexican term for the privileged offspring of the country’s drug lords – but said any money she received from her father was clean.
“My businesses are the result of my own efforts,” she said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Here is what Louis R. said on Borderland Beat:
Newly identified daughter, must be one of the half dozen children father by El Chapo outside his marriage. He entered into only one legal marriage, that being with his first wife, Alejandrina Salazar. His second was a common law wife named Griselda Lopez, and the most recent common law wife, Emma Coronel. So far he has fathered 10 children from these three unions.
Outside these relationships Chapo fathered 6-12 children.
The person in this article says she is the daughter of El Chapo, and she appears to have been well vetted, as you will be read about in the article. He would have been 19 when she was born.
As for the claim the Sinaloa Cartel leader would have chanced sneaking into to the U.S. while on the lam….twice, I would say highly doubtful, if not for his carelessness exhibited by him while on the run.
LOUIS FARRAKHAN SAID HE LIKES DONALD TRUMP BECAUSE HE’S NOT CONTROLLED BY JEWISH MONEY
VICE News
March 1, 2016
Increasingly, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump is becoming a Rorschach test of sorts for the American public, revealing all sorts of prejudice and rage as he rolls through the primaries like a wrecking ball with a toupee. Earlier this week, the focus was on former KKK leader David Duke's endorsement of Trump and the billionaire's weird reluctance to denounce white supremacists. Then, on Monday night, the Anti-Defamation League reported that Nation of Islam leader Louis Far¬rakhan praised Trump because of his lack of ties to Jewish money.
Trump "is the only mem¬ber who has stood in front of the Jew¬ish com¬mu¬nity, and said, 'I don't want your money,'" Farrakhan said. "Any time a man can say to those who con¬trol the pol¬i¬tics of Amer¬ica, 'I don't want your money,' that means you can't con¬trol me. And they can¬not afford to give up con¬trol of the pres¬i¬dents of the United States... Not that I'm for Mr. Trump, but I like what I'm look¬ing at."
As outlets including Mediaite have pointed out, that's not even a particularly anti-Semitic comment by Farrakhan's standards—the 82-year-old has in the past blamed Jews for 9/11 and referred to them as belonging to the "Synagogue of Satan."
Trump often says that he's self-funding his campaign, which isn't true, but he is independent of many of the usual moneyed interests, which has enabled him to take positions like calling for Medicare to negotiate prices with big pharmaceutical companies. But for Farrakhan—and, presumably, at least a few others who share his views—"no big money donors" translates to "no Jewish donors."
EDITOR’S NOTE:, I’ll be damned if the Minister of Hate isn’t right. With Trump as President, those damn Jews won’t be able to control our country anymore. Allah Akbar!
March 1, 2016
Increasingly, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump is becoming a Rorschach test of sorts for the American public, revealing all sorts of prejudice and rage as he rolls through the primaries like a wrecking ball with a toupee. Earlier this week, the focus was on former KKK leader David Duke's endorsement of Trump and the billionaire's weird reluctance to denounce white supremacists. Then, on Monday night, the Anti-Defamation League reported that Nation of Islam leader Louis Far¬rakhan praised Trump because of his lack of ties to Jewish money.
Trump "is the only mem¬ber who has stood in front of the Jew¬ish com¬mu¬nity, and said, 'I don't want your money,'" Farrakhan said. "Any time a man can say to those who con¬trol the pol¬i¬tics of Amer¬ica, 'I don't want your money,' that means you can't con¬trol me. And they can¬not afford to give up con¬trol of the pres¬i¬dents of the United States... Not that I'm for Mr. Trump, but I like what I'm look¬ing at."
As outlets including Mediaite have pointed out, that's not even a particularly anti-Semitic comment by Farrakhan's standards—the 82-year-old has in the past blamed Jews for 9/11 and referred to them as belonging to the "Synagogue of Satan."
Trump often says that he's self-funding his campaign, which isn't true, but he is independent of many of the usual moneyed interests, which has enabled him to take positions like calling for Medicare to negotiate prices with big pharmaceutical companies. But for Farrakhan—and, presumably, at least a few others who share his views—"no big money donors" translates to "no Jewish donors."
EDITOR’S NOTE:, I’ll be damned if the Minister of Hate isn’t right. With Trump as President, those damn Jews won’t be able to control our country anymore. Allah Akbar!
Saturday, March 05, 2016
ARE GALVESTON COUNTY COPS BEING CONNED BY MURDER SUSPECT?
Using heavy duty construction equipment for more than a week, authorities have been digging up a pasture in south Houston where Texas prison inmate and murder suspect William Reece told them the body of Jessica Cain is buried
On August 17, 1997, Jessica Cain, 17, disappeared after leaving a restaurant. Her pickup truck was found abandoned on I45 about five miles north of her home on Tiki Island, a tiny village just north of Galveston. There has been no sign of Jessica since.
In 1996, William Reece was released from an Oklahoma prison where he had been serving time for a sexual assault and kidnapping conviction. He settled down in Galveston County where soon afterwards girls began disappearing. He has been a suspect in the murders of girls found buried in the ‘Killing Fields’ in League City. Reece has been in a Texas prison since 1998 after his conviction in the kidnapping of another girl.
Reece has also been a suspect in Jessica Cain’s disappearance. And last September, Oklahoma authorities charged Reece with the 1997 murder of 19-year-old Tiffany Johnston. Because he does not want to be returned to Oklahoma, Reece notified authorities that Jessica’s body is buried in a south Houston pasture.
Reece, 56, was removed from prison and taken to be housed in a city jail in Galveston County. Every day he has been taken to the pasture to direct the search for Jessica. Every day for more than a week, heavy duty constriction equipment has been digging up the pasture. Now even an old barn on the property has been torn down and they are digging up the ground where the structure formerly stood. Still no signs of any human remains.
Call me a skeptic, but it looks like the cops are being conned by Reece. By leading the cops on a wild goose chase, Reece is on vacation from prison. I’m sure that the meals he’s now receiving are much better than the usual prison fare and he gets to spend much of his time out in the open air. And his sort-of-confession about Jessica’s disappearance will certainly delay his return to Oklahoma.
Today is the 11th day of digging. Hmmm, I wonder what the bill will come to for all that digging? Taxpayers, prepare to be shocked when the total spent on Reece’s vacation comes due.
On August 17, 1997, Jessica Cain, 17, disappeared after leaving a restaurant. Her pickup truck was found abandoned on I45 about five miles north of her home on Tiki Island, a tiny village just north of Galveston. There has been no sign of Jessica since.
In 1996, William Reece was released from an Oklahoma prison where he had been serving time for a sexual assault and kidnapping conviction. He settled down in Galveston County where soon afterwards girls began disappearing. He has been a suspect in the murders of girls found buried in the ‘Killing Fields’ in League City. Reece has been in a Texas prison since 1998 after his conviction in the kidnapping of another girl.
Reece has also been a suspect in Jessica Cain’s disappearance. And last September, Oklahoma authorities charged Reece with the 1997 murder of 19-year-old Tiffany Johnston. Because he does not want to be returned to Oklahoma, Reece notified authorities that Jessica’s body is buried in a south Houston pasture.
Reece, 56, was removed from prison and taken to be housed in a city jail in Galveston County. Every day he has been taken to the pasture to direct the search for Jessica. Every day for more than a week, heavy duty constriction equipment has been digging up the pasture. Now even an old barn on the property has been torn down and they are digging up the ground where the structure formerly stood. Still no signs of any human remains.
Call me a skeptic, but it looks like the cops are being conned by Reece. By leading the cops on a wild goose chase, Reece is on vacation from prison. I’m sure that the meals he’s now receiving are much better than the usual prison fare and he gets to spend much of his time out in the open air. And his sort-of-confession about Jessica’s disappearance will certainly delay his return to Oklahoma.
Today is the 11th day of digging. Hmmm, I wonder what the bill will come to for all that digging? Taxpayers, prepare to be shocked when the total spent on Reece’s vacation comes due.
COMMIES MANAGE TO GET RANGE SHUT DOWN
By Bob Walsh
There is a very nice firing range on Redwood Road near Lake Chabot on land owned by the East Bay Regional Park District. The range complex has been there for over 50 years. Besides excellent public access out door rifle and pistol ranges there are several smaller closed access ranges used by professional trainers, police departments and the like.
The hug-a-thug and anti-gun crowd has been trying to get this facility shut down for years. They have finally succeeded. As of next year this range will be no more, leaving a lot less access to firing ranges in the greater Bay Area.
Pretty soon if you live in the Bay Area you will have to drive two hours each way just to find a safe, legal place to site in your new deer rifle, which is exactly what the anti-gun crowd wants.
There is a very nice firing range on Redwood Road near Lake Chabot on land owned by the East Bay Regional Park District. The range complex has been there for over 50 years. Besides excellent public access out door rifle and pistol ranges there are several smaller closed access ranges used by professional trainers, police departments and the like.
The hug-a-thug and anti-gun crowd has been trying to get this facility shut down for years. They have finally succeeded. As of next year this range will be no more, leaving a lot less access to firing ranges in the greater Bay Area.
Pretty soon if you live in the Bay Area you will have to drive two hours each way just to find a safe, legal place to site in your new deer rifle, which is exactly what the anti-gun crowd wants.
NAKED WOMAN GETS SHOT FOR COMPLYING WITH ORDERS OF GARDNER, KANSAS POLICE
At first Deanne Choate refused orders to produce her gun, but when she did, the cops shot her dead
One would think this is one of those old Keystone Cops stories, except that is not funny. Here you’ve got a naked woman in bed. The cops respond to a call that she is suicidal and has a gun. They order her several times to produce the gun, but she refuses. They search the bed. Then they order her again, and when she produces a gun, they shoot her three times. Now at this point, had this been shown in a theater, the audience would be laughing their heads off. Only it wasn’t in a theater, it was for real.
POLICE SHOOT MOTHER TO DEATH IN HER BED
By Deb Hipp
Courthouse News
February 29, 2016
KANSAS CITY, Kan. -- After awakening a naked woman in her bed, Kansas police shot her to death when she complied with their order to show them where she kept her gun, her daughter claims in court.
Michele Choate sued Gardner, Kan., and its police Officers Robert Huff, Justin Mohney and Jeff Breneman for the death of her mother, Deanne Choate, in Federal Court.
Gardner, pop. 20,000, is 30 miles southwest of Kansas City.
Gardner police got a 911 call on March 26, 2015 that Deanne Choate, 54, had been drinking alcohol, was suicidal and had a gun. When police arrived they immediately handcuffed and arrested Choate's boyfriend and removed him from the home, then found Deanne Choate sleeping naked in her bed, her daughter says in the Feb. 25 complaint.
After waking her up, officers questioned her for eight minutes, repeatedly asking, "Where is the gun?"
"Deanne was obviously not carrying or concealing on her person any type of weapon," her daughter says.
"During this time, officers came and went from the room. They looked under the sheets of the bed." They stayed in the room "with the naked, 115-pound woman" and finally gave her a sweatshirt to wear, according to the complaint.
After repeatedly demanding, "Where is the gun?" and "We know you have a gun," Deanne finally "complied with officers' request and produced a handgun, stating, 'Oh, here it is.'"
Then they shot her to death.
"Deanne was not threatening in any way as she complied with officers' instructions in providing a handgun located between the mattress and headboard of the bed," her daughter says. "The gun would have easily been located by officers if they had searched and 'cleared' the room as reported."
The officers then were ordered "to turn off their video and audio recording devices to further protect officers and prevent recording of incriminating evidence," though before they killed her, Deanne had been "polite and compliant," her daughter says.
"No reasonable officer would have followed the procedures of [the defendant] officers, including shooting and killing Deanne," she adds.
After they shot her, "officers carried the dying, naked Deanne from her bed to the front door with one officer on each arm and one officer holding her legs," her daughter says.
Gardner discourages its police from using de-escalation tactics with suspects, preferring a "shoot-first-ask-questions-later" policy, Michele Choate says.
"When officers made the decision to shoot Deanne, officers had been trained and supervised by the city and understood the city's custom and practice to use deadly force regardless if there is an actual threat," according to the complaint.
Then the city erected a "veil of secrecy surrounding the shooting," according to the complaint. "The city's efforts were to cast doubt on the investigation into the shootings because there is no means of verifying or refuting findings that a use of force was supposedly reasonable."
Gardner officials did not respond to a request for comment.
Michele Choate seeks punitive damages for wrongful death, municipal liability and failure to train and supervise.
She is represented by Michael Hughes with McCormick, Gordon Bloskey & Poirier, of Overland Park.
One would think this is one of those old Keystone Cops stories, except that is not funny. Here you’ve got a naked woman in bed. The cops respond to a call that she is suicidal and has a gun. They order her several times to produce the gun, but she refuses. They search the bed. Then they order her again, and when she produces a gun, they shoot her three times. Now at this point, had this been shown in a theater, the audience would be laughing their heads off. Only it wasn’t in a theater, it was for real.
POLICE SHOOT MOTHER TO DEATH IN HER BED
By Deb Hipp
Courthouse News
February 29, 2016
KANSAS CITY, Kan. -- After awakening a naked woman in her bed, Kansas police shot her to death when she complied with their order to show them where she kept her gun, her daughter claims in court.
Michele Choate sued Gardner, Kan., and its police Officers Robert Huff, Justin Mohney and Jeff Breneman for the death of her mother, Deanne Choate, in Federal Court.
Gardner, pop. 20,000, is 30 miles southwest of Kansas City.
Gardner police got a 911 call on March 26, 2015 that Deanne Choate, 54, had been drinking alcohol, was suicidal and had a gun. When police arrived they immediately handcuffed and arrested Choate's boyfriend and removed him from the home, then found Deanne Choate sleeping naked in her bed, her daughter says in the Feb. 25 complaint.
After waking her up, officers questioned her for eight minutes, repeatedly asking, "Where is the gun?"
"Deanne was obviously not carrying or concealing on her person any type of weapon," her daughter says.
"During this time, officers came and went from the room. They looked under the sheets of the bed." They stayed in the room "with the naked, 115-pound woman" and finally gave her a sweatshirt to wear, according to the complaint.
After repeatedly demanding, "Where is the gun?" and "We know you have a gun," Deanne finally "complied with officers' request and produced a handgun, stating, 'Oh, here it is.'"
Then they shot her to death.
"Deanne was not threatening in any way as she complied with officers' instructions in providing a handgun located between the mattress and headboard of the bed," her daughter says. "The gun would have easily been located by officers if they had searched and 'cleared' the room as reported."
The officers then were ordered "to turn off their video and audio recording devices to further protect officers and prevent recording of incriminating evidence," though before they killed her, Deanne had been "polite and compliant," her daughter says.
"No reasonable officer would have followed the procedures of [the defendant] officers, including shooting and killing Deanne," she adds.
After they shot her, "officers carried the dying, naked Deanne from her bed to the front door with one officer on each arm and one officer holding her legs," her daughter says.
Gardner discourages its police from using de-escalation tactics with suspects, preferring a "shoot-first-ask-questions-later" policy, Michele Choate says.
"When officers made the decision to shoot Deanne, officers had been trained and supervised by the city and understood the city's custom and practice to use deadly force regardless if there is an actual threat," according to the complaint.
Then the city erected a "veil of secrecy surrounding the shooting," according to the complaint. "The city's efforts were to cast doubt on the investigation into the shootings because there is no means of verifying or refuting findings that a use of force was supposedly reasonable."
Gardner officials did not respond to a request for comment.
Michele Choate seeks punitive damages for wrongful death, municipal liability and failure to train and supervise.
She is represented by Michael Hughes with McCormick, Gordon Bloskey & Poirier, of Overland Park.
Friday, March 04, 2016
A PROVEN LOOSER TRAMPLES TRUMP
Mitt Romney, who ran the piss poorest possible campaign against Obama, has the nerve to paint Trump in the worst way possible
On Thursday in Utah, Mitt Romney appeared before the Hinckley Institute of Politics Forum to trample Donald Trump deep down into the muck. Romney, a proven looser who ran the piss poorest possible campaign against Obama, had the nerve to paint Trump in the worst way possible.
Here is just a little bit of what Romney said:
"Here's what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He's playing the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat."
“But wait, you say, isn't he a huge business success that knows what he's talking about? No he isn't. His bankruptcies have crushed small businesses and the men and women who worked for them. He inherited his business, he didn't create it. And what ever happened to Trump Airlines? How about Trump University? And then there's Trump Magazine and Trump Vodka and Trump Steaks, and Trump Mortgage? A business genius he is not.”
"I believe with all my heart and soul that we face another time for choosing, one that will have profound consequences for the Republican Party and more importantly, for the country. His domestic policies would lead to recession. His foreign policies would make America and the world less safe. He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president. And his personal qualities would mean that America would cease to be a shining city on a hill."
"Mr. Trump is directing our anger for less than noble purposes. He creates scapegoats of Muslims and Mexican immigrants, he calls for the use of torture and for killing the innocent children and family members of terrorists. He cheers assaults on protesters. He applauds the prospect of twisting the Constitution to limit first amendment freedom of the press. This is the very brand of anger that has led other nations into the abyss."
Hmmm, let’s see now. Romney calls Trump a phony and a fraud. But during his disastrous campaign against Obama just four years ago, he embraced and praised Trump as he eagerly accepted The Donald’s endorsement. Here is what Romney said then:
"Donald Trump has shown an extraordinary ability to show how our economy works. To create jobs for the American people. He has done it here in Nevada, he has done it across the country. He understands that our economy is facing threats from abroad."
That was the very same guy Romney is now shredding to bits. According to Romney, four years ago Trump was a successful businessman who knew how to make our economy work, but now he is a failed businessman whose economic policies would bring on a recession. Trump a phony and a fraud? Hmmm, makes me think that Romney is actually describing himself.
One would have to think that Romney is a paid member of Hillary’s campaign staff. I think Romney has left Hillary laughing all the way to the White House.
On Thursday in Utah, Mitt Romney appeared before the Hinckley Institute of Politics Forum to trample Donald Trump deep down into the muck. Romney, a proven looser who ran the piss poorest possible campaign against Obama, had the nerve to paint Trump in the worst way possible.
Here is just a little bit of what Romney said:
"Here's what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He's playing the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat."
“But wait, you say, isn't he a huge business success that knows what he's talking about? No he isn't. His bankruptcies have crushed small businesses and the men and women who worked for them. He inherited his business, he didn't create it. And what ever happened to Trump Airlines? How about Trump University? And then there's Trump Magazine and Trump Vodka and Trump Steaks, and Trump Mortgage? A business genius he is not.”
"I believe with all my heart and soul that we face another time for choosing, one that will have profound consequences for the Republican Party and more importantly, for the country. His domestic policies would lead to recession. His foreign policies would make America and the world less safe. He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president. And his personal qualities would mean that America would cease to be a shining city on a hill."
"Mr. Trump is directing our anger for less than noble purposes. He creates scapegoats of Muslims and Mexican immigrants, he calls for the use of torture and for killing the innocent children and family members of terrorists. He cheers assaults on protesters. He applauds the prospect of twisting the Constitution to limit first amendment freedom of the press. This is the very brand of anger that has led other nations into the abyss."
Hmmm, let’s see now. Romney calls Trump a phony and a fraud. But during his disastrous campaign against Obama just four years ago, he embraced and praised Trump as he eagerly accepted The Donald’s endorsement. Here is what Romney said then:
"Donald Trump has shown an extraordinary ability to show how our economy works. To create jobs for the American people. He has done it here in Nevada, he has done it across the country. He understands that our economy is facing threats from abroad."
That was the very same guy Romney is now shredding to bits. According to Romney, four years ago Trump was a successful businessman who knew how to make our economy work, but now he is a failed businessman whose economic policies would bring on a recession. Trump a phony and a fraud? Hmmm, makes me think that Romney is actually describing himself.
One would have to think that Romney is a paid member of Hillary’s campaign staff. I think Romney has left Hillary laughing all the way to the White House.
IT MIGHT ACTUALLY BE HAPPENING
By Bob Walsh
Various broadcast news outlets announced today that the FBI has granted immunity to the State Department IT guy that set up Hillary’s private server. Clearly they are doing so because they believe it will lead to bigger fish.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Hillary and Bill could finally be exposed as the racketeers and criminals that they really are? Hope clouds judgment, I admit that. Never the less it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy to think that justice might actually prevail. I am not going to get stupid about it, but I admit I am hopeful.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Dream on, Bob, dream on. It ain’t about to happen under the Obama administration.
Various broadcast news outlets announced today that the FBI has granted immunity to the State Department IT guy that set up Hillary’s private server. Clearly they are doing so because they believe it will lead to bigger fish.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Hillary and Bill could finally be exposed as the racketeers and criminals that they really are? Hope clouds judgment, I admit that. Never the less it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy to think that justice might actually prevail. I am not going to get stupid about it, but I admit I am hopeful.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Dream on, Bob, dream on. It ain’t about to happen under the Obama administration.
FOR TRUMP SUPPORTERS, A RECKONING IS AT HAND
If Trump wins the nomination or presidency, a great many people will one day say, "My God, what have I done?"
by Jonah Goldberg
National Review
March 2, 2016
Is Joe Scarborough having his Colonel Nicholson moment?
That's what I wondered Monday morning as I watched the host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" insist that Donald Trump's inability and unwillingness to simply and plainly denounce the Ku Klux Klan in a Sunday CNN interview was "disqualifying."
For those who might not have seen "The Bridge on the River Kwai," it's partly the story of British Lt. Col. Nicholson, played by Alec Guinness. Nicholson, a prisoner of war held by the Japanese, convinces himself that he and his men should help his captors build a strategically invaluable bridge over the Kwai River. Nicholson thinks that if he shows the Japanese what good British discipline is all about, he will win some kind of moral victory. Of course, if they finish the railway bridge, the Japanese military will win an actual victory.
Only at the last minute -- spoiler alert -- does Nicholson realize the error of his ways. "My God, what have I done?" he says with his last breaths as he falls on the TNT plunger, destroying the very bridge he built just seconds before a Japanese train goes over it.
Nothing so dramatic transpired on "Morning Joe," where Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski have been among Trump's most valuable boosters for nearly a year. And will likely remain that way. Indeed, it may be too late to stop the Trump train anyway.
But it would be nice to hear "My God, what have I done?" from a lot of people. A rich mixture of resentment (both misplaced and well-earned), incompetence, wishful thinking, greed and celebrity worship has led us to where we are: An intellectually and ideologically unqualified, and often unhinged, demagogue is poised to become the Republican nominee for president.
For months, GOP pooh-bahs, cable personalities (including some friends and colleagues of mine at Fox News), talk radio hosts and politicians stood by and watched -- or cheered -- as Trump built his populist cult of personality almost unopposed. Now that Trump has a personal relationship, as it were, with his followers, he can do no wrong.
Trump famously joked that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose his support. That remains to be seen, but he can play rhetorical footsie with the KKK, reveal that he thinks judges "sign bills," subscribe to vile "truther" explanations of 9/11 and the Iraq War, embrace the health-care mandate, traffic in reprehensible sectarian tribalism and vow to weaken the First Amendment so he can exact vengeance on journalists who don't kowtow to his Brobdingnagian ego -- yet not shake loose his fans.
That "success" has bred more success, as politicians jump on board the train. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie set a torch to his integrity by endorsing a man who stands against nearly everything Christie once claimed to believe, Christie has confirmed all the darker aspects of his reputation as a cynical, self-interested, spiteful bully.
Many decent and sincere Republicans, in and out of the Republican leadership, have been operating on the assumption that Trump will fade and that the gravest threat is a third-party run by the dean of Trump University. There was a time when that concern was defensible. But once it became clear that he was favored to win the nomination outright, Republicans should have realized that a third-party run was more like a best-case scenario.
Better the GOP do battle with a know-nothing bigot (and lose the presidency) than become the party of know-nothing bigots (and still lose the presidency).
That's why I embrace the Twitter hashtag #NeverTrump, initiated by conservative talk show host Erick Erickson. For too long, Trump has benefited from the assumption that the non-Trump faction of the party will be "reasonable" and support the nominee. Such thinking paves the road to power for demagogues.
Trump says he gets along with everybody and will unify the country, even as he suggests that an inconvenient judge is biased because he's Latino, vows to ban all Muslims from the country, insists his Central Intelligence Agency will torture people, and boasts that he will declare war on disloyal journalists.
When your opponent is that unreasonable, the reasonable response is not surrender.
I don't know whether Trump will win the nomination or the presidency. But I am fairly certain that if he does, a great many people will one day say, "My God, what have I done?"
by Jonah Goldberg
National Review
March 2, 2016
Is Joe Scarborough having his Colonel Nicholson moment?
That's what I wondered Monday morning as I watched the host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" insist that Donald Trump's inability and unwillingness to simply and plainly denounce the Ku Klux Klan in a Sunday CNN interview was "disqualifying."
For those who might not have seen "The Bridge on the River Kwai," it's partly the story of British Lt. Col. Nicholson, played by Alec Guinness. Nicholson, a prisoner of war held by the Japanese, convinces himself that he and his men should help his captors build a strategically invaluable bridge over the Kwai River. Nicholson thinks that if he shows the Japanese what good British discipline is all about, he will win some kind of moral victory. Of course, if they finish the railway bridge, the Japanese military will win an actual victory.
Only at the last minute -- spoiler alert -- does Nicholson realize the error of his ways. "My God, what have I done?" he says with his last breaths as he falls on the TNT plunger, destroying the very bridge he built just seconds before a Japanese train goes over it.
Nothing so dramatic transpired on "Morning Joe," where Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski have been among Trump's most valuable boosters for nearly a year. And will likely remain that way. Indeed, it may be too late to stop the Trump train anyway.
But it would be nice to hear "My God, what have I done?" from a lot of people. A rich mixture of resentment (both misplaced and well-earned), incompetence, wishful thinking, greed and celebrity worship has led us to where we are: An intellectually and ideologically unqualified, and often unhinged, demagogue is poised to become the Republican nominee for president.
For months, GOP pooh-bahs, cable personalities (including some friends and colleagues of mine at Fox News), talk radio hosts and politicians stood by and watched -- or cheered -- as Trump built his populist cult of personality almost unopposed. Now that Trump has a personal relationship, as it were, with his followers, he can do no wrong.
Trump famously joked that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose his support. That remains to be seen, but he can play rhetorical footsie with the KKK, reveal that he thinks judges "sign bills," subscribe to vile "truther" explanations of 9/11 and the Iraq War, embrace the health-care mandate, traffic in reprehensible sectarian tribalism and vow to weaken the First Amendment so he can exact vengeance on journalists who don't kowtow to his Brobdingnagian ego -- yet not shake loose his fans.
That "success" has bred more success, as politicians jump on board the train. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie set a torch to his integrity by endorsing a man who stands against nearly everything Christie once claimed to believe, Christie has confirmed all the darker aspects of his reputation as a cynical, self-interested, spiteful bully.
Many decent and sincere Republicans, in and out of the Republican leadership, have been operating on the assumption that Trump will fade and that the gravest threat is a third-party run by the dean of Trump University. There was a time when that concern was defensible. But once it became clear that he was favored to win the nomination outright, Republicans should have realized that a third-party run was more like a best-case scenario.
Better the GOP do battle with a know-nothing bigot (and lose the presidency) than become the party of know-nothing bigots (and still lose the presidency).
That's why I embrace the Twitter hashtag #NeverTrump, initiated by conservative talk show host Erick Erickson. For too long, Trump has benefited from the assumption that the non-Trump faction of the party will be "reasonable" and support the nominee. Such thinking paves the road to power for demagogues.
Trump says he gets along with everybody and will unify the country, even as he suggests that an inconvenient judge is biased because he's Latino, vows to ban all Muslims from the country, insists his Central Intelligence Agency will torture people, and boasts that he will declare war on disloyal journalists.
When your opponent is that unreasonable, the reasonable response is not surrender.
I don't know whether Trump will win the nomination or the presidency. But I am fairly certain that if he does, a great many people will one day say, "My God, what have I done?"
HOUSTON JUDGES CANNOT AGREE ON PROVIDING THE POOR WITH AN ATTORNEY AT BAIL HEARINGS
Without an attorney to represent them, the poor are unlikely to have their bail lowered and they’ll have no chance to be released on their ‘own recognizance’
Texas has a reputation for appointing piss poor lawyers for indigent defendants. But in Harris County they don’t even provide the poor with any attorneys at the bail hearings which must held within 24 hours of their arrests.
Without an attorney to represent them, the poor are unlikely to have their bail lowered and they’ll have no chance to be released on their ‘own recognizance.’
Even though the Harris County District Attorney supports a plan to provide the poor with a lawyer at their bail hearings, the county’s judges are dragging their feet on this vital matter.
COUNTY DRAGS FEET ON PLAN TO GIVE POOR PEOPLE LAWYERS AT BAIL HEARINGS
Thousands of inmates who have not been found guilty of a crime are in the Harris County jail because they can't make bail
By Meagan Flynn
Houston Press
March 2, 2016
If you're accused of a crime in Harris County, within 24 hours, you'll reach a fork in the road: a bail hearing. There, a magistrate will usually set your bail based on whatever the bail schedule says. Either that or you bondsmen or stay in jail.
The latter is usually the only option for poor people (unless they are among the lucky 6 percent of people released on a personal bond), who can actually get poorer as they sit in jail, even if it's just for one or two days. They can lose their job, get behind on rent, lose their home, lose their scholarship if they happen to be a student. Roughly 70 percent of people in Harris County are pretrial detainees. Criminal justice officials have pledged to lower the Harris County Jail by 20 percent in the next several years by diverting more people charged with low-level crimes. But Harris County Chief Public Defender Alex Bunin has for months been pushing for another key reform that would ensure that more presumed-innocent, indigent people are not needlessly detained on the taxpayer dime.
If those people had lawyers to represent them during bail hearings, Bunin has proposed, then those lawyers could advocate for their release on a personal bond, try to lower the bail to something more affordable, or divert them from jail entirely. Bunin has managed over several months to convince criminal justice officials that this is crucial — but still, despite promises, officials haven't done much.
In January, Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson, who strongly supports Bunin's plan to give poor people attorneys at their bail hearings, said that a committee tasked with implementing his proposals would have a report released on March 1. Harris County Commissioner El Franco Lee, who died earlier this year, is the one who set up that committee and set that deadline.
Bunin, who is also on the committee, said they are not much closer to releasing any official proposal.
Back in January, State District Judge Susan Brown and misdemeanor Judge Margaret Harris — the two judges on Commissioner Lee's committee — explained to the Houston Press that there were some unresolved “due process issues” stopping them from implementing Bunin's plan to give poor people attorneys at bail hearings. Before they could move forward, they said, those needed to be ironed out. (Harris couldn't be reached for comment this time, and Brown declined.)
For example, should the attorney assigned at bail hearings continue with the defendant all the way through their criminal case? Will having to assign someone counsel interfere with the magistrate's 24-hour deadline to find probable cause or else release the person on a personal bond?
Bunin says he has answered these questions, but for some reason that still hasn't satisfied judges' concerns. Bexar County, which already provides defendants counsel at bail hearings, appears to have already solved the first concern: There, all the judges signed an order where they all agreed that the bail-hearing attorney would be temporary — that way, they wouldn't have to consistently grant motions to appoint new counsel. Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan, in a long memo supporting Bunin's plans, said that this would work perfectly well here. As for the second concern, Bunin said that the lawyers could be readily available at probable cause court at all hours — just like prosecutors are for the state.
But now, though, judges are concerned that it may not be the magistrates' role to find someone indigent — that's usually the judges' job, and each judge has his or her own specific plan for how to do it. That new concern has Bunin scratching his head a bit: The Texas Fair Defense Act, which requires that every criminal court have a procedure for appointing poor people an attorney, clearly says that a magistrate can do this, and in fact in Bexar County it's the pretrial services workers who do it.
“I get to these meetings, and they have new issues, and I keep having to go back and do a much more detailed explanation to answer them,” he said. “I don't think they're saying no. I think they just don't have a really good sense of the answers to all of these questions. There's been such a time lag now that they don't even really remember what we said at the last meeting.”
To Jay Jenkins, a project attorney with the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition who has closely followed these plans, that lack of urgency is doing nothing to bolster officials' promises to reduce the jail population — especially among minorities. "We're asking taxpayers to foot the bill for a criminal justice system where [more than 70 percent] of the thousands of inmates who have not been found guilty of a crime are there because they can't make bail," he said. "And so failure to meet this March 1 deadline is just more indicative of how disconnected county officials and judges are from average Houstonians in low-income, black and brown communities."
Ryan even warned of potential lawsuits should county officials continue to drag their feet. He opened with a recent U.S. Supreme Court lawsuit, filed by a Texas man charged with being in possession of a firearm as a felon, who was unable to afford bail. He demanded an attorney while in jail, and once he finally got one, the attorney uncovered that the man was not even a felon — something that could have been handled the first time the man appeared before a magistrate.
The longer Harris County waits to offer poor people counsel at that initial hearing, Ryan said, "it is only a matter of time" before a suit like that one happens here.
Texas has a reputation for appointing piss poor lawyers for indigent defendants. But in Harris County they don’t even provide the poor with any attorneys at the bail hearings which must held within 24 hours of their arrests.
Without an attorney to represent them, the poor are unlikely to have their bail lowered and they’ll have no chance to be released on their ‘own recognizance.’
Even though the Harris County District Attorney supports a plan to provide the poor with a lawyer at their bail hearings, the county’s judges are dragging their feet on this vital matter.
COUNTY DRAGS FEET ON PLAN TO GIVE POOR PEOPLE LAWYERS AT BAIL HEARINGS
Thousands of inmates who have not been found guilty of a crime are in the Harris County jail because they can't make bail
By Meagan Flynn
Houston Press
March 2, 2016
If you're accused of a crime in Harris County, within 24 hours, you'll reach a fork in the road: a bail hearing. There, a magistrate will usually set your bail based on whatever the bail schedule says. Either that or you bondsmen or stay in jail.
The latter is usually the only option for poor people (unless they are among the lucky 6 percent of people released on a personal bond), who can actually get poorer as they sit in jail, even if it's just for one or two days. They can lose their job, get behind on rent, lose their home, lose their scholarship if they happen to be a student. Roughly 70 percent of people in Harris County are pretrial detainees. Criminal justice officials have pledged to lower the Harris County Jail by 20 percent in the next several years by diverting more people charged with low-level crimes. But Harris County Chief Public Defender Alex Bunin has for months been pushing for another key reform that would ensure that more presumed-innocent, indigent people are not needlessly detained on the taxpayer dime.
If those people had lawyers to represent them during bail hearings, Bunin has proposed, then those lawyers could advocate for their release on a personal bond, try to lower the bail to something more affordable, or divert them from jail entirely. Bunin has managed over several months to convince criminal justice officials that this is crucial — but still, despite promises, officials haven't done much.
In January, Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson, who strongly supports Bunin's plan to give poor people attorneys at their bail hearings, said that a committee tasked with implementing his proposals would have a report released on March 1. Harris County Commissioner El Franco Lee, who died earlier this year, is the one who set up that committee and set that deadline.
Bunin, who is also on the committee, said they are not much closer to releasing any official proposal.
Back in January, State District Judge Susan Brown and misdemeanor Judge Margaret Harris — the two judges on Commissioner Lee's committee — explained to the Houston Press that there were some unresolved “due process issues” stopping them from implementing Bunin's plan to give poor people attorneys at bail hearings. Before they could move forward, they said, those needed to be ironed out. (Harris couldn't be reached for comment this time, and Brown declined.)
For example, should the attorney assigned at bail hearings continue with the defendant all the way through their criminal case? Will having to assign someone counsel interfere with the magistrate's 24-hour deadline to find probable cause or else release the person on a personal bond?
Bunin says he has answered these questions, but for some reason that still hasn't satisfied judges' concerns. Bexar County, which already provides defendants counsel at bail hearings, appears to have already solved the first concern: There, all the judges signed an order where they all agreed that the bail-hearing attorney would be temporary — that way, they wouldn't have to consistently grant motions to appoint new counsel. Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan, in a long memo supporting Bunin's plans, said that this would work perfectly well here. As for the second concern, Bunin said that the lawyers could be readily available at probable cause court at all hours — just like prosecutors are for the state.
But now, though, judges are concerned that it may not be the magistrates' role to find someone indigent — that's usually the judges' job, and each judge has his or her own specific plan for how to do it. That new concern has Bunin scratching his head a bit: The Texas Fair Defense Act, which requires that every criminal court have a procedure for appointing poor people an attorney, clearly says that a magistrate can do this, and in fact in Bexar County it's the pretrial services workers who do it.
“I get to these meetings, and they have new issues, and I keep having to go back and do a much more detailed explanation to answer them,” he said. “I don't think they're saying no. I think they just don't have a really good sense of the answers to all of these questions. There's been such a time lag now that they don't even really remember what we said at the last meeting.”
To Jay Jenkins, a project attorney with the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition who has closely followed these plans, that lack of urgency is doing nothing to bolster officials' promises to reduce the jail population — especially among minorities. "We're asking taxpayers to foot the bill for a criminal justice system where [more than 70 percent] of the thousands of inmates who have not been found guilty of a crime are there because they can't make bail," he said. "And so failure to meet this March 1 deadline is just more indicative of how disconnected county officials and judges are from average Houstonians in low-income, black and brown communities."
Ryan even warned of potential lawsuits should county officials continue to drag their feet. He opened with a recent U.S. Supreme Court lawsuit, filed by a Texas man charged with being in possession of a firearm as a felon, who was unable to afford bail. He demanded an attorney while in jail, and once he finally got one, the attorney uncovered that the man was not even a felon — something that could have been handled the first time the man appeared before a magistrate.
The longer Harris County waits to offer poor people counsel at that initial hearing, Ryan said, "it is only a matter of time" before a suit like that one happens here.
Thursday, March 03, 2016
LAPD USE-OF-FORCE REPORT: 21 DEADLY SHOOTINGS, CASES STILL RELATIVELY RARE
Fourteen of the 38 people shot by LAPD officers in 2015 “had an indication of mental illness,” while half of all people that were shot were carrying a gun, but overall the 1,924 use-of-force cases in 2015 represented 0.13 percent of the 1.5 million recorded interactions between the public and the police department
CBS LA
March 1, 2016
LOS ANGELES -- Police officers in Los Angeles used force on members of the public nearly 2,000 times in 2015, including 21 who were fatally shot, according to an LAPD report released Tuesday.
The numbers were revealed in what was being billed as the most comprehensive data on use of force ever compiled by the Los Angeles Police Department.
The number of deadly fatal shootings by Los Angeles police last year outpaced the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which had 14; the Houston Police Department, which had 12; and Chicago, which had eight people die from police shootings in 2015, according to the report presented to the Police Commission.
The report shows 35 percent of people shot at by officers between 2011 and 2015 were black, while African Americans make up 9 percent of the city’s population.
In all, 38 out of 48 police shootings were cases in which people — more than one-third of whom were mentally ill — were hit, while the number of people considered to be mentally ill who were shot by police rose nearly 300 percent from the previous year, the report found.
Fourteen of the 38 people shot by police in 2015 “had an indication of mental illness,” while half of all people that were shot were carrying a gun, according to the report.
Overall, however, department officials say the use of force by LAPD officers is still relatively rare: the 1,924 use-of-force cases in 2015 represented 0.13 percent of the 1.5 million recorded interactions between the public and the police department.
Some protesters briefly disrupted Tuesday’s Police Commission meeting by chanting slogans referencing the fatal police shooting of 39-year-old Charly Keunang, who was known on Skid Row as “Africa.”
The shooting, which was captured on cell phone video, sparked protests by activists who accused officers of escalating the situation and killing an unarmed man.
A small group of protesters also staged a Skid Row-area rally to mark the date.
EDITOR'S NOTE: If enough folks here read this report, they'd protest in front of police headquarters because Houston came in third.
CBS LA
March 1, 2016
LOS ANGELES -- Police officers in Los Angeles used force on members of the public nearly 2,000 times in 2015, including 21 who were fatally shot, according to an LAPD report released Tuesday.
The numbers were revealed in what was being billed as the most comprehensive data on use of force ever compiled by the Los Angeles Police Department.
The number of deadly fatal shootings by Los Angeles police last year outpaced the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which had 14; the Houston Police Department, which had 12; and Chicago, which had eight people die from police shootings in 2015, according to the report presented to the Police Commission.
The report shows 35 percent of people shot at by officers between 2011 and 2015 were black, while African Americans make up 9 percent of the city’s population.
In all, 38 out of 48 police shootings were cases in which people — more than one-third of whom were mentally ill — were hit, while the number of people considered to be mentally ill who were shot by police rose nearly 300 percent from the previous year, the report found.
Fourteen of the 38 people shot by police in 2015 “had an indication of mental illness,” while half of all people that were shot were carrying a gun, according to the report.
Overall, however, department officials say the use of force by LAPD officers is still relatively rare: the 1,924 use-of-force cases in 2015 represented 0.13 percent of the 1.5 million recorded interactions between the public and the police department.
Some protesters briefly disrupted Tuesday’s Police Commission meeting by chanting slogans referencing the fatal police shooting of 39-year-old Charly Keunang, who was known on Skid Row as “Africa.”
The shooting, which was captured on cell phone video, sparked protests by activists who accused officers of escalating the situation and killing an unarmed man.
A small group of protesters also staged a Skid Row-area rally to mark the date.
EDITOR'S NOTE: If enough folks here read this report, they'd protest in front of police headquarters because Houston came in third.
ACTUAL ARRESTS MADE IN OAKLAND MURDER
By Bob Walsh
The cops have now arrested and charged an 8th person in the collateral damage murder of a woman killed while shielding her child from stray gunfire a year ago.
Joneri Reed, 37, was charged on Monday, adding his name to the seven other violent sleazeballs who engaged in the gunfight that killed Chyemil Pierce who was trying to get her children, ages 7 and 9, out of the line of fire when she was killed.
Also in custody are Alex Davis, 26, Michael Stills, 22, Shelton McDaniels, 30, Julian Ambrose, 17, Anthony Sims, 20, Jerry Harbin Jr. 30, and Dijon Ward, 20. The morons held onto at least one of the guns, which was recovered at her mommy’s house.
The cops have now arrested and charged an 8th person in the collateral damage murder of a woman killed while shielding her child from stray gunfire a year ago.
Joneri Reed, 37, was charged on Monday, adding his name to the seven other violent sleazeballs who engaged in the gunfight that killed Chyemil Pierce who was trying to get her children, ages 7 and 9, out of the line of fire when she was killed.
Also in custody are Alex Davis, 26, Michael Stills, 22, Shelton McDaniels, 30, Julian Ambrose, 17, Anthony Sims, 20, Jerry Harbin Jr. 30, and Dijon Ward, 20. The morons held onto at least one of the guns, which was recovered at her mommy’s house.
BITE-AND-RUN IN THE LAND OF QUIRKINESS
By Bob Walsh
The local constabulary in the quirky People’s Republic of San Francisco are asking for the help of the general public in identifying a dog and owner.
About three weeks ago the victim was bending over to retrieve the ball he had been playing with his dog with when an 80-pound pit bull ran up and grabbed onto the man’s leg, taking him to the ground. The man fought with the dog and was bitten on both arms as well. An adult female, the apparent owner of the dog, eventually managed to gain control of her animal and then beat feet.
They got a substantial partial plate on the suspect’s vehicle but for some reason or other the cops have been unable to link it to a person. The victim may have to undergo preventative rabies treatment if the dog cannot be located and it’s vaccination status established.
Readers should remember that there are many threats out there in the world that do not walk on two legs and people are killed every day in this country in dog attacks.
The local constabulary in the quirky People’s Republic of San Francisco are asking for the help of the general public in identifying a dog and owner.
About three weeks ago the victim was bending over to retrieve the ball he had been playing with his dog with when an 80-pound pit bull ran up and grabbed onto the man’s leg, taking him to the ground. The man fought with the dog and was bitten on both arms as well. An adult female, the apparent owner of the dog, eventually managed to gain control of her animal and then beat feet.
They got a substantial partial plate on the suspect’s vehicle but for some reason or other the cops have been unable to link it to a person. The victim may have to undergo preventative rabies treatment if the dog cannot be located and it’s vaccination status established.
Readers should remember that there are many threats out there in the world that do not walk on two legs and people are killed every day in this country in dog attacks.
FATAL NORTH CAROLINA POLICE SHOOTING OF BLACK MAN BY WHITE COP TRIGGERS PROTEST
Somebody in the crowd: "Yeah, they killing us.”
By Thomas McDonald
The News & Observer
March 1, 2016
RALEIGH, North Carolina -- An angry, anxious crowd gathered at the scene of a police shooting just south of downtown Monday evening, decrying police violence against African-Americans, but the gathering remained peaceful.
More than 300 people stood outside of PJ's Grill & Groceries on Bragg Street, where shortly after noon police were trying to arrest a black man on a felony drug charge when an officer shot him, said Raleigh Police Chief Cassandra Deck-Brown. Speaking at an afternoon press conference, Deck-Brown did not provide many details, saying only that the officer was chasing the man on foot when the man "was shot and killed by the officer."
After the shooting, Deck-Brown said, "a firearm was located within close proximity of the deceased suspect."
"Our thoughts and our prayers go out to all involved in today's incident," she said. "I ask everyone to please be patient while the follow-up investigations are conducted to determine the facts about what happened today."
Late Monday, Raleigh police identified the officer as Senior Officer D.C. Twiddy, 29. A police department statement said he has been employed since November 2009 and is assigned to the Field Operations Division. "In accordance with departmental policy, Officer Twiddy has been placed on administrative duty pending the completion of the investigation by the State Bureau Investigation," the statement said.
Deck-Brown did not name the suspect Twiddy shot. But Rolanda Byrd said she received a call from her cousin who told her that a police officer had shot and killed her 24-year-old son, Akiel Denkins. She said the cousin told her Denkins was shot in the back while he was running away from the officer.
Byrd said when she arrived on Bragg Street she learned that her son's body was behind PJ's Grill & Groceries. She said "four or five people" told her Denkins was unarmed and running from police when "he was shot seven times by a white officer with a bald head."
Truvalia Kearney of Zebulon said she was visiting someone in the neighborhood and was standing near Denkins in front of the store when a police car pulled up. Denkins, Kearney said, "took off running" behind the store and jumped a chain-link fence into the backyard of a house on East Street.
"The officer jumped the fence and fell down," she said in an interview. "He pulled his gun out and started shooting. He (Denkins) got shot in the back."
Kearney disputed police reports that Denkins was armed. "That's a lie because I (saw) it," she said. "If he had a gun, he didn't pull it out."
Louis Rodriguez said he was up on a ladder putting vinyl siding on a home on nearby Garner Road when he heard the commotion.
"I heard somebody say, 'Stop, stop,' then I heard, like, six shots," Rodriguez said. "Then I heard the screams. Man, it was loud."
More than 100 people gathered on East Bragg Street near the front of the store as the body was still lying on the ground. Some of the crowd members encircled Chris Jones, pastor of nearby The Ship of Zion Church, as he said a prayer for the family.
"No matter what anyone else thinks, they loved him," Jones prayed. "Lord, you know what happened out here today."
To which somebody in the crowd responded, "Yeah, they killing us."
Jones later said he didn't understand why police felt the need to shoot Denkins.
"I see him out here every day," he said. "If he ran from you today, you could have arrested him tomorrow."
Although Denkins had over a dozen arrests, he has three misdeameanor criminal convictions. Many of his arrests resulted in cases being dismissed in court.
Denkins was arrested in October and charged with possession of cocaine with intent to distribute it, according to court records. He was charged with failing to show up for court in the case on Feb. 2.
Byrd said Denkins was the father of two sons and had celebrated his birthday Feb. 8. Sean Dailey, Akiel Denkins' father, said the coroner moved his son's body at about 3:45 p.m.
"I got kids at home who I got to tell what happened to their big brother," Dailey said.
Police took down the crime tape that had circled the grocery at about 4:45 p.m. A crowd that had gathered on Bragg Street surged forward and went behind the store, clambering along the chain-link fence to see where the shooting took place.
The crowd grew by evening for a candlelight vigil in front of the grocery, which drew speakers from several churches and organizations. John Blaylock of a group called Justice Served North Carolina said the shooting was emblematic of how police view young men in the community as "urban predators." He called for a civilian police review board and for police to be equipped with body cameras, something the Raleigh department is considering.
"If the police officer was wearing a body camera, we could have seen what happened," Blaylock said.
The State Bureau of Investigation will investigate the shooting, as will the Raleigh Police Department's internal affairs office. The SBI will report its findings to the Wake County District Attorney's Office. Deck-Brown said she will provide a written report about the shooting to the City Council within five days.
Lorrin Freeman, the Wake County district attorney, said she contacted the SBI at 12:30 p.m. Monday after being informed of the fatal shooting. In a statement, she said she asked the SBI to go to the scene immediately and begin a thorough investigation and said that the Raleigh Police Department was cooperating.
"As information becomes verified and available, we will release it to the public," Freeman said. "We ask for people's patience as we work to ensure that this investigation is thorough and complete."
By Thomas McDonald
The News & Observer
March 1, 2016
RALEIGH, North Carolina -- An angry, anxious crowd gathered at the scene of a police shooting just south of downtown Monday evening, decrying police violence against African-Americans, but the gathering remained peaceful.
More than 300 people stood outside of PJ's Grill & Groceries on Bragg Street, where shortly after noon police were trying to arrest a black man on a felony drug charge when an officer shot him, said Raleigh Police Chief Cassandra Deck-Brown. Speaking at an afternoon press conference, Deck-Brown did not provide many details, saying only that the officer was chasing the man on foot when the man "was shot and killed by the officer."
After the shooting, Deck-Brown said, "a firearm was located within close proximity of the deceased suspect."
"Our thoughts and our prayers go out to all involved in today's incident," she said. "I ask everyone to please be patient while the follow-up investigations are conducted to determine the facts about what happened today."
Late Monday, Raleigh police identified the officer as Senior Officer D.C. Twiddy, 29. A police department statement said he has been employed since November 2009 and is assigned to the Field Operations Division. "In accordance with departmental policy, Officer Twiddy has been placed on administrative duty pending the completion of the investigation by the State Bureau Investigation," the statement said.
Deck-Brown did not name the suspect Twiddy shot. But Rolanda Byrd said she received a call from her cousin who told her that a police officer had shot and killed her 24-year-old son, Akiel Denkins. She said the cousin told her Denkins was shot in the back while he was running away from the officer.
Byrd said when she arrived on Bragg Street she learned that her son's body was behind PJ's Grill & Groceries. She said "four or five people" told her Denkins was unarmed and running from police when "he was shot seven times by a white officer with a bald head."
Truvalia Kearney of Zebulon said she was visiting someone in the neighborhood and was standing near Denkins in front of the store when a police car pulled up. Denkins, Kearney said, "took off running" behind the store and jumped a chain-link fence into the backyard of a house on East Street.
"The officer jumped the fence and fell down," she said in an interview. "He pulled his gun out and started shooting. He (Denkins) got shot in the back."
Kearney disputed police reports that Denkins was armed. "That's a lie because I (saw) it," she said. "If he had a gun, he didn't pull it out."
Louis Rodriguez said he was up on a ladder putting vinyl siding on a home on nearby Garner Road when he heard the commotion.
"I heard somebody say, 'Stop, stop,' then I heard, like, six shots," Rodriguez said. "Then I heard the screams. Man, it was loud."
More than 100 people gathered on East Bragg Street near the front of the store as the body was still lying on the ground. Some of the crowd members encircled Chris Jones, pastor of nearby The Ship of Zion Church, as he said a prayer for the family.
"No matter what anyone else thinks, they loved him," Jones prayed. "Lord, you know what happened out here today."
To which somebody in the crowd responded, "Yeah, they killing us."
Jones later said he didn't understand why police felt the need to shoot Denkins.
"I see him out here every day," he said. "If he ran from you today, you could have arrested him tomorrow."
Although Denkins had over a dozen arrests, he has three misdeameanor criminal convictions. Many of his arrests resulted in cases being dismissed in court.
Denkins was arrested in October and charged with possession of cocaine with intent to distribute it, according to court records. He was charged with failing to show up for court in the case on Feb. 2.
Byrd said Denkins was the father of two sons and had celebrated his birthday Feb. 8. Sean Dailey, Akiel Denkins' father, said the coroner moved his son's body at about 3:45 p.m.
"I got kids at home who I got to tell what happened to their big brother," Dailey said.
Police took down the crime tape that had circled the grocery at about 4:45 p.m. A crowd that had gathered on Bragg Street surged forward and went behind the store, clambering along the chain-link fence to see where the shooting took place.
The crowd grew by evening for a candlelight vigil in front of the grocery, which drew speakers from several churches and organizations. John Blaylock of a group called Justice Served North Carolina said the shooting was emblematic of how police view young men in the community as "urban predators." He called for a civilian police review board and for police to be equipped with body cameras, something the Raleigh department is considering.
"If the police officer was wearing a body camera, we could have seen what happened," Blaylock said.
The State Bureau of Investigation will investigate the shooting, as will the Raleigh Police Department's internal affairs office. The SBI will report its findings to the Wake County District Attorney's Office. Deck-Brown said she will provide a written report about the shooting to the City Council within five days.
Lorrin Freeman, the Wake County district attorney, said she contacted the SBI at 12:30 p.m. Monday after being informed of the fatal shooting. In a statement, she said she asked the SBI to go to the scene immediately and begin a thorough investigation and said that the Raleigh Police Department was cooperating.
"As information becomes verified and available, we will release it to the public," Freeman said. "We ask for people's patience as we work to ensure that this investigation is thorough and complete."
BLACKS WANT NO MORE WHITE COPS PATROLLING THEIR NEIGHBORHOOD AFTER WHITE COP SHOOTS ‘SUSPICIOUS’ UNARMED BLACK MAN
“I don't want them patrolling here anymore, because we're either ‘suspicious’ or if something happens, they say they were in fear of their life.”
A black Montgomery, Alabama grocer was walking home when a white cop stopped him because he looked ‘suspicious’ in a neighborhood where there had been a lot of burglaries. Some sort of a struggle ensued during which the officer shot the unarmed man to death.
Now people are in an uproar. Some are claiming the man was racially profiled and that the only thing suspicious about him was that he was black. And some do not want any white cops patrolling black communities.
In the past, I have advocated that only black officers patrol black communities because of the racially charged atmosphere that permeates and poisons this country. Then when a black officer shoots an unarmed black man, the community cannot scream racism.
Officer A. C. Smith may well have had a good reason to shoot Greg Gunn during a struggle, but the reason for the stop – that he looked ‘suspicious’ – could spell real trouble for the officer.
WHITE OFFICER SHOOTS DEAD UNARMED BLACK GROCER YARDS FROM HIS ALABAMA HOME
Officials said the officer deemed the grocer ‘suspicious’
By Kelly McLaughlin
Daily Mail
March 1, 2016
A family is seeking answers after an Alabama police officer last week shot and killed a man yards from his own front door.
Greg Gunn, 58, of Montgomery, died early Thursday morning after a police officer on patrol spotted him walking in a residential neighborhood a little before 3.20am.
Authorities on Monday identified the police officer as AC Smith, who joined the force in 2012.
Police Chief Ernest Finley said Smith deemed Gunn, a grocer, 'suspicious', left his car and approached Gunn on foot. A struggle ensued before Smith fatally shot Gunn, Finley said.
Finley confirmed Smith is white. Gunn was black.
At a Monday news conference, Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange said he couldn't specify why Smith deemed Gunn suspicious but said all patrol officers were aware of a rash of burglaries in the area lately.
Gunn was reportedly carrying a retractable painters stick, family members said according to the Washington Post, but Montgomery Police Chief Ernest Finley denied this accusation.
'He was not carrying a painter's stick,' he told The Post. 'I do know the painter's stick is a lie, and they know it's a lie.'
Neighbors said they heard commotion - one saying he heard banging on his windows - before shots were fired.
Gunn's younger brother told the Post that Gunn 'was racially profiled'.
'I know he was racially profiled,' Franklin Gunn, Gregory's younger brother, told the Post. 'He was black. That was the only thing suspicious about him.
'They thought he was a low-life nothing, walking the street,' he said. 'They didn't see a man. They didn't see a black man. They saw somebody who needed to die, and they executed him. Now they are trying to cover it up.'
Local attorney Tyrone Means, who represents the Gunn family, said Gunn attended a regular card game with friends Wednesday after he got off work.
Gunn frequently walked from his friend's house to his home a few blocks away, where he lived with his mother.
'Trayvon Martin was a black kid walking in a predominantly white neighborhood, and someone just thought he looked suspicious,' Means said. 'Greg Gunn was in a community in which he was well-known and well-loved. That's scary.'
Authorities said they are conducting a thorough investigation into what happened.
'We will get to the facts. It will be open. It will be transparent, and wherever the facts lead us, that will then tell us what our next steps will be,' said Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange on Friday, according to WSFA. 'I understand that there is frustration right now. The [state investigators] will not do a quick investigation; they will do a thorough investigation.'
Gunn and his family grew up in the west Montgomery neighborhood, Means said. After a divorce, he had returned home to care for his mother.
'All this gentleman was doing was walking home,' Means said. 'Little did the family expect that a walk this man has done all his life would end with him dying in terror.'
Family and community activists want answers from city authorities and police, specifically about possible body and patrol camera footage.
But city officials said the situation is out of their hands while the State Bureau of Investigations handles the case.
'We're not satisfied either,' Strange said Monday. 'We obviously want answers. It's out of our hands. We've done everything possible to make sure this is done correctly.'
Strange said the crime scene was immediately sealed Thursday after Gunn was declared dead around 3.35am, and no police officers reviewed any potential camera footage at the scene.
All evidence was turned over to SBI, Strange said, who arrived on scene around 4.30am.
Means said the Gunn family is concerned about their family but also 'broader implications' of Gunn's death.
'If nothing else, perhaps this will change the way law enforcement responds,' Means said. 'There has to be some manner of screening people who do not have the discernment or discretion to use a lethal weapon.'
SBI on Monday would not comment on any aspect of the investigation. Strange said he has requested SBI expedite the investigation.
Some of Gunn's family members, friends and neighbors are calling for white police to stay out of their historically black neighborhood following the incident.
'I want to see all white officers out of the black community,' Chris Miles, a close friend of the Gunn family, told The Montgomery Advertiser. 'I don't want them patrolling here anymore, because we're either "suspicious"
Or if something happens, they say they were in fear of their life. Those 'talking points' get them not indicted. We can't live under those conditions anymore.'
A black Montgomery, Alabama grocer was walking home when a white cop stopped him because he looked ‘suspicious’ in a neighborhood where there had been a lot of burglaries. Some sort of a struggle ensued during which the officer shot the unarmed man to death.
Now people are in an uproar. Some are claiming the man was racially profiled and that the only thing suspicious about him was that he was black. And some do not want any white cops patrolling black communities.
In the past, I have advocated that only black officers patrol black communities because of the racially charged atmosphere that permeates and poisons this country. Then when a black officer shoots an unarmed black man, the community cannot scream racism.
Officer A. C. Smith may well have had a good reason to shoot Greg Gunn during a struggle, but the reason for the stop – that he looked ‘suspicious’ – could spell real trouble for the officer.
WHITE OFFICER SHOOTS DEAD UNARMED BLACK GROCER YARDS FROM HIS ALABAMA HOME
Officials said the officer deemed the grocer ‘suspicious’
By Kelly McLaughlin
Daily Mail
March 1, 2016
A family is seeking answers after an Alabama police officer last week shot and killed a man yards from his own front door.
Greg Gunn, 58, of Montgomery, died early Thursday morning after a police officer on patrol spotted him walking in a residential neighborhood a little before 3.20am.
Authorities on Monday identified the police officer as AC Smith, who joined the force in 2012.
Police Chief Ernest Finley said Smith deemed Gunn, a grocer, 'suspicious', left his car and approached Gunn on foot. A struggle ensued before Smith fatally shot Gunn, Finley said.
Finley confirmed Smith is white. Gunn was black.
At a Monday news conference, Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange said he couldn't specify why Smith deemed Gunn suspicious but said all patrol officers were aware of a rash of burglaries in the area lately.
Gunn was reportedly carrying a retractable painters stick, family members said according to the Washington Post, but Montgomery Police Chief Ernest Finley denied this accusation.
'He was not carrying a painter's stick,' he told The Post. 'I do know the painter's stick is a lie, and they know it's a lie.'
Neighbors said they heard commotion - one saying he heard banging on his windows - before shots were fired.
Gunn's younger brother told the Post that Gunn 'was racially profiled'.
'I know he was racially profiled,' Franklin Gunn, Gregory's younger brother, told the Post. 'He was black. That was the only thing suspicious about him.
'They thought he was a low-life nothing, walking the street,' he said. 'They didn't see a man. They didn't see a black man. They saw somebody who needed to die, and they executed him. Now they are trying to cover it up.'
Local attorney Tyrone Means, who represents the Gunn family, said Gunn attended a regular card game with friends Wednesday after he got off work.
Gunn frequently walked from his friend's house to his home a few blocks away, where he lived with his mother.
'Trayvon Martin was a black kid walking in a predominantly white neighborhood, and someone just thought he looked suspicious,' Means said. 'Greg Gunn was in a community in which he was well-known and well-loved. That's scary.'
Authorities said they are conducting a thorough investigation into what happened.
'We will get to the facts. It will be open. It will be transparent, and wherever the facts lead us, that will then tell us what our next steps will be,' said Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange on Friday, according to WSFA. 'I understand that there is frustration right now. The [state investigators] will not do a quick investigation; they will do a thorough investigation.'
Gunn and his family grew up in the west Montgomery neighborhood, Means said. After a divorce, he had returned home to care for his mother.
'All this gentleman was doing was walking home,' Means said. 'Little did the family expect that a walk this man has done all his life would end with him dying in terror.'
Family and community activists want answers from city authorities and police, specifically about possible body and patrol camera footage.
But city officials said the situation is out of their hands while the State Bureau of Investigations handles the case.
'We're not satisfied either,' Strange said Monday. 'We obviously want answers. It's out of our hands. We've done everything possible to make sure this is done correctly.'
Strange said the crime scene was immediately sealed Thursday after Gunn was declared dead around 3.35am, and no police officers reviewed any potential camera footage at the scene.
All evidence was turned over to SBI, Strange said, who arrived on scene around 4.30am.
Means said the Gunn family is concerned about their family but also 'broader implications' of Gunn's death.
'If nothing else, perhaps this will change the way law enforcement responds,' Means said. 'There has to be some manner of screening people who do not have the discernment or discretion to use a lethal weapon.'
SBI on Monday would not comment on any aspect of the investigation. Strange said he has requested SBI expedite the investigation.
Some of Gunn's family members, friends and neighbors are calling for white police to stay out of their historically black neighborhood following the incident.
'I want to see all white officers out of the black community,' Chris Miles, a close friend of the Gunn family, told The Montgomery Advertiser. 'I don't want them patrolling here anymore, because we're either "suspicious"
Or if something happens, they say they were in fear of their life. Those 'talking points' get them not indicted. We can't live under those conditions anymore.'
SEXUAL MORALITY
Is an hour of pleasure worth a lifetime of shame?
Jenny Elliott, the Dean of Students and Residential Life at exclusive Phillips Academy Andover, was lecturing the school’s girl students on sexual morality.
“We live today in very difficult times for young people,” she said. “In moments of temptation, ask yourself just one question: Is an hour of pleasure worth a lifetime of shame?”
A young woman rose in the back of the room and said, “Excuse me Miss Elliott, but how do you make it last an hour?”
Jenny Elliott, the Dean of Students and Residential Life at exclusive Phillips Academy Andover, was lecturing the school’s girl students on sexual morality.
“We live today in very difficult times for young people,” she said. “In moments of temptation, ask yourself just one question: Is an hour of pleasure worth a lifetime of shame?”
A young woman rose in the back of the room and said, “Excuse me Miss Elliott, but how do you make it last an hour?”
Wednesday, March 02, 2016
KOFI ANNAN TURNS BLIND EYE TO SUCCESS OF WAR ON DRUGS
The former Secretary General of the UN calls the War on Drugs a failure and advocates the legalization of drugs
Kofi Annan, like other prominent War on Drugs critics, turns a blind eye to the success of that war. Annan not only calls for an end to the War on Drugs but he goes way beyond that by advocating the legalization of drugs.
For those who buy the malarkey about the war’s failure, let me say that the War on Drugs has been by and large a success, at least for the United States. Sure, huge amounts of illegal drugs continue to come into this country, but that amount would be tripled or more were it not for the efforts of American law enforcement agencies.
The fight against drugs is hampered greatly by an impotent Mexican government with its many national, state and local corrupt officials. And the insatiable hunger for illicit drugs by Americans fuels the black market in narcotics and has the drug cartels flourishing.
Annan says the war on drugs is a war on people. Horseshit! The war on drugs is a war on criminals - the manufacturers and distributors of illegal drugs and those who illegally use them.
Annan says, “Initial trends show us that where cannabis has been legalized … the size of the black market has been reduced.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Despite legalization, the black market continues to flourish in Colorado because pot heads prefer to buy their marijuana from clandestine dealers who do not charge the high tax added in legal pot shops.
While Annan says that legalized drugs must be regulated to protect the health of drug users, he conveniently overlooks the fact that the use of alcohol, which is heavily regulated, has led to serious health problems for millions of Americans. The regulation of legal drugs to protect the health of users would be no more successful than the regulation of alcohol has been. The last thing we need to do to protect the health of Americans is to legalize drugs!
Here is Kofi Annan’s op-ed from Spiegel, the weekly German news magazine:
WHY IT’S TIME TO LEGALIZE DRUGS
Drugs are dangerous, but current narcotics policies are an even bigger threat because punishment is given a greater priority than health and human rights. It's time for regulations that put lives and safety first, argues former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan
BY Kofi Annan
Spiegel Online International
February 22, 2016
In my experience, good public policy is best shaped by the dispassionate analysis of what in practice has worked, or not. Policy based on common assumptions and popular sentiments can become a recipe for mistaken prescriptions and misguided interventions.
Nowhere is this divorce between rhetoric and reality more evident than in the formulation of global drug policies, where too often emotions and ideology rather than evidence have prevailed.
Take the case of the medical use of cannabis. By looking carefully at the evidence from the United States, we now know that legalizing the use of cannabis for medical purposes has not, as opponents argued, led to an increase in its use by teenagers. By contrast, there has been a near tripling of American deaths from heroin overdoses between 2010 and 2013, even though the law and its severe punishments remain unchanged.
This year, between April 19 and 21, the United Nations General Assembly will hold a special session on drugs and the world will have a chance to change course. As we approach that event, we need to ask ourselves if we are on the right policy path. More specifically, how do we deal with what the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has called the "unintended consequences" of the policies of the last 50 years, which have helped, among other things, to create a vast, international criminal market in drugs that fuels violence, corruption and instability? Just think of the 16,000 murders in Mexico in 2013, many of which are directly linked to drug trafficking.
A War on People
Globally, the "war on drugs" has not succeeded. Some estimate that enforcing global prohibition costs at least $100 billion (€90.7 billion) a year, but as many as 300 million people now use drugs worldwide, contributing to a global illicit market with a turnover of $330 billion a year, one of the largest commodity markets in the world.
Prohibition has had little impact on the supply of or demand for drugs. When law enforcement succeeds in one area, drug production simply moves to another region or country, drug trafficking moves to another route and drug users switch to a different drug. Nor has prohibition significantly reduced use. Studies have consistently failed to establish the existence of a link between the harshness of a country's drug laws and its levels of drug use. The widespread criminalization and punishment of people who use drugs, the over-crowded prisons, mean that the war on drugs is, to a significant degree, a war on drug users -- a war on people.
Africa is sadly an example of these problems. The West Africa Commission on Drugs, which my foundation convened, reported last year that the region has now become not only a major transit point between producers in Latin America and consumers in Europe, but an area where consumption is increasing. Drug money, and the criminality associated with it, is fostering corruption and violence. The stability of countries and the region as a whole is under threat.
I believe that drugs have destroyed many lives, but wrong government policies have destroyed many more. We all want to protect our families from the potential harm of drugs. But if our children do develop a drug problem, surely we will want them cared for as patients in need of treatment and not branded as criminals.
Stop Stigmatizing and Start Helping
The tendency in many parts of the world to stigmatize and incarcerate drug users has prevented many from seeking medical treatment. In what other areas of public health do we criminalize patients in need of help? Punitive measures have sent many people to prison, where their drug use has worsened. A criminal record for a young person for a minor drug offence can be a far greater threat to their well-being than occasional drug use.
The original intent of drug policy, according to the UN Convention on Narcotic Drugs, was to protect the "health and welfare of mankind." We need to refocus international and national policy on this key objective.
This requires us to take four critical steps.
First, we must decriminalize personal drug use. The use of drugs is harmful and reducing those harms is a task for the public health system, not the courts. This must be coupled with the strengthening of treatment services, especially in middle and low-income countries.
Second, we need to accept that a drug-free world is an illusion. We must focus instead on ensuring that drugs cause the least possible harm. Harm reduction measures, such as needle exchange programs, can make a real difference. Germany adopted such measures early on and the level of HIV infections among injecting drug users is close to 5 percent, compared to over 40 percent in some countries which resist this pragmatic approach.
Third, we have to look at regulation and public education rather than the total suppression of drugs, which we know will not work. The steps taken successfully to reduce tobacco consumption (a very powerful and damaging addiction) show what can be achieved. It is regulation and education, not the threat of prison, which has cut the number of smokers in many countries. Higher taxes, restrictions on sale and effective anti-smoking campaigns have delivered the right results.
The legal sale of cannabis is a reality that started with California legalizing the sale of cannabis for medical use in 1996. Since then, 22 US states and some European countries have followed suit. Others have gone further still. A voter initiative which gained a majority at the ballot box has caused Colorado to legalize the sale of cannabis for recreational use. Last year, Colorado collected around $135 million in taxes and license fees related to legal cannabis sales. Others have taken less commercial routes. Users of Spain's cannabis social clubs can grow and buy cannabis through small non-commercial organizations. And Canada looks likely to become the first G7 country to regulate the sale of cannabis next year.
Legal Regulation Protects Health
Initial trends show us that where cannabis has been legalized, there has been no explosion in drug use or drug-related crime. The size of the black market has been reduced and thousands of young people have been spared criminal records. But a regulated market is not a free market. We need to carefully think through what needs regulating, and what does not. While most cannabis use is occasional, moderate and not associated with significant problems, it is nonetheless precisely because of its potential risks that it needs to be regulated.
And therefore, the fourth and final step is to recognize that drugs must be regulated precisely because they are risky. It is time to acknowledge that drugs are infinitely more dangerous if they are left solely in the hands of criminals who have no concerns about health and safety. Legal regulation protects health. Consumers need to be aware of what they are taking and have clear information on health risks and how to minimize them. Governments need to be able to regulate vendors and outlets according to how much harm a drug can cause. The most risky drugs should never be available "over the counter" but only via medical prescription for people registered as dependent users, as is already happening in Switzerland.
Scientific evidence and our concern for health and human rights must shape drug policy. This means making sure that fewer people die from drug overdoses and that small-time offenders do not end up in jail where their drug problems get worse. It is time for a smarter, health-based approach to drug policy.
It is time for countries, such as Germany, which have adopted better policies at home, to strongly advocate for policy change abroad. The United Nations General Assembly special session on the world drug problem would be a good place to start.
Kofi Annan, like other prominent War on Drugs critics, turns a blind eye to the success of that war. Annan not only calls for an end to the War on Drugs but he goes way beyond that by advocating the legalization of drugs.
For those who buy the malarkey about the war’s failure, let me say that the War on Drugs has been by and large a success, at least for the United States. Sure, huge amounts of illegal drugs continue to come into this country, but that amount would be tripled or more were it not for the efforts of American law enforcement agencies.
The fight against drugs is hampered greatly by an impotent Mexican government with its many national, state and local corrupt officials. And the insatiable hunger for illicit drugs by Americans fuels the black market in narcotics and has the drug cartels flourishing.
Annan says the war on drugs is a war on people. Horseshit! The war on drugs is a war on criminals - the manufacturers and distributors of illegal drugs and those who illegally use them.
Annan says, “Initial trends show us that where cannabis has been legalized … the size of the black market has been reduced.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Despite legalization, the black market continues to flourish in Colorado because pot heads prefer to buy their marijuana from clandestine dealers who do not charge the high tax added in legal pot shops.
While Annan says that legalized drugs must be regulated to protect the health of drug users, he conveniently overlooks the fact that the use of alcohol, which is heavily regulated, has led to serious health problems for millions of Americans. The regulation of legal drugs to protect the health of users would be no more successful than the regulation of alcohol has been. The last thing we need to do to protect the health of Americans is to legalize drugs!
Here is Kofi Annan’s op-ed from Spiegel, the weekly German news magazine:
WHY IT’S TIME TO LEGALIZE DRUGS
Drugs are dangerous, but current narcotics policies are an even bigger threat because punishment is given a greater priority than health and human rights. It's time for regulations that put lives and safety first, argues former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan
BY Kofi Annan
Spiegel Online International
February 22, 2016
In my experience, good public policy is best shaped by the dispassionate analysis of what in practice has worked, or not. Policy based on common assumptions and popular sentiments can become a recipe for mistaken prescriptions and misguided interventions.
Nowhere is this divorce between rhetoric and reality more evident than in the formulation of global drug policies, where too often emotions and ideology rather than evidence have prevailed.
Take the case of the medical use of cannabis. By looking carefully at the evidence from the United States, we now know that legalizing the use of cannabis for medical purposes has not, as opponents argued, led to an increase in its use by teenagers. By contrast, there has been a near tripling of American deaths from heroin overdoses between 2010 and 2013, even though the law and its severe punishments remain unchanged.
This year, between April 19 and 21, the United Nations General Assembly will hold a special session on drugs and the world will have a chance to change course. As we approach that event, we need to ask ourselves if we are on the right policy path. More specifically, how do we deal with what the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has called the "unintended consequences" of the policies of the last 50 years, which have helped, among other things, to create a vast, international criminal market in drugs that fuels violence, corruption and instability? Just think of the 16,000 murders in Mexico in 2013, many of which are directly linked to drug trafficking.
A War on People
Globally, the "war on drugs" has not succeeded. Some estimate that enforcing global prohibition costs at least $100 billion (€90.7 billion) a year, but as many as 300 million people now use drugs worldwide, contributing to a global illicit market with a turnover of $330 billion a year, one of the largest commodity markets in the world.
Prohibition has had little impact on the supply of or demand for drugs. When law enforcement succeeds in one area, drug production simply moves to another region or country, drug trafficking moves to another route and drug users switch to a different drug. Nor has prohibition significantly reduced use. Studies have consistently failed to establish the existence of a link between the harshness of a country's drug laws and its levels of drug use. The widespread criminalization and punishment of people who use drugs, the over-crowded prisons, mean that the war on drugs is, to a significant degree, a war on drug users -- a war on people.
Africa is sadly an example of these problems. The West Africa Commission on Drugs, which my foundation convened, reported last year that the region has now become not only a major transit point between producers in Latin America and consumers in Europe, but an area where consumption is increasing. Drug money, and the criminality associated with it, is fostering corruption and violence. The stability of countries and the region as a whole is under threat.
I believe that drugs have destroyed many lives, but wrong government policies have destroyed many more. We all want to protect our families from the potential harm of drugs. But if our children do develop a drug problem, surely we will want them cared for as patients in need of treatment and not branded as criminals.
Stop Stigmatizing and Start Helping
The tendency in many parts of the world to stigmatize and incarcerate drug users has prevented many from seeking medical treatment. In what other areas of public health do we criminalize patients in need of help? Punitive measures have sent many people to prison, where their drug use has worsened. A criminal record for a young person for a minor drug offence can be a far greater threat to their well-being than occasional drug use.
The original intent of drug policy, according to the UN Convention on Narcotic Drugs, was to protect the "health and welfare of mankind." We need to refocus international and national policy on this key objective.
This requires us to take four critical steps.
First, we must decriminalize personal drug use. The use of drugs is harmful and reducing those harms is a task for the public health system, not the courts. This must be coupled with the strengthening of treatment services, especially in middle and low-income countries.
Second, we need to accept that a drug-free world is an illusion. We must focus instead on ensuring that drugs cause the least possible harm. Harm reduction measures, such as needle exchange programs, can make a real difference. Germany adopted such measures early on and the level of HIV infections among injecting drug users is close to 5 percent, compared to over 40 percent in some countries which resist this pragmatic approach.
Third, we have to look at regulation and public education rather than the total suppression of drugs, which we know will not work. The steps taken successfully to reduce tobacco consumption (a very powerful and damaging addiction) show what can be achieved. It is regulation and education, not the threat of prison, which has cut the number of smokers in many countries. Higher taxes, restrictions on sale and effective anti-smoking campaigns have delivered the right results.
The legal sale of cannabis is a reality that started with California legalizing the sale of cannabis for medical use in 1996. Since then, 22 US states and some European countries have followed suit. Others have gone further still. A voter initiative which gained a majority at the ballot box has caused Colorado to legalize the sale of cannabis for recreational use. Last year, Colorado collected around $135 million in taxes and license fees related to legal cannabis sales. Others have taken less commercial routes. Users of Spain's cannabis social clubs can grow and buy cannabis through small non-commercial organizations. And Canada looks likely to become the first G7 country to regulate the sale of cannabis next year.
Legal Regulation Protects Health
Initial trends show us that where cannabis has been legalized, there has been no explosion in drug use or drug-related crime. The size of the black market has been reduced and thousands of young people have been spared criminal records. But a regulated market is not a free market. We need to carefully think through what needs regulating, and what does not. While most cannabis use is occasional, moderate and not associated with significant problems, it is nonetheless precisely because of its potential risks that it needs to be regulated.
And therefore, the fourth and final step is to recognize that drugs must be regulated precisely because they are risky. It is time to acknowledge that drugs are infinitely more dangerous if they are left solely in the hands of criminals who have no concerns about health and safety. Legal regulation protects health. Consumers need to be aware of what they are taking and have clear information on health risks and how to minimize them. Governments need to be able to regulate vendors and outlets according to how much harm a drug can cause. The most risky drugs should never be available "over the counter" but only via medical prescription for people registered as dependent users, as is already happening in Switzerland.
Scientific evidence and our concern for health and human rights must shape drug policy. This means making sure that fewer people die from drug overdoses and that small-time offenders do not end up in jail where their drug problems get worse. It is time for a smarter, health-based approach to drug policy.
It is time for countries, such as Germany, which have adopted better policies at home, to strongly advocate for policy change abroad. The United Nations General Assembly special session on the world drug problem would be a good place to start.
TEENAGER’S ARMED DRONE INVENTIONS HAVE CONNECTICUT LAWMAKERS AND THE FAA SHITTING IN THEIR PANTS
An 18-year-old invents a drone that carries and fires a semi-automatic pistol and a drone that carries and operates a flame thrower
Austin Haughwout, 18, an engineering student at Central Connecticut State University, invented a couple of drones that have Connecticut lawmakers and the FAA shitting in their pants. The teen has invented a drone that carries and fires a semi-automatic pistol and a drone that carries and operates a flame thrower.
You would think Austin is Public Enemy No. 1 by the way Connecticut lawmakers and the FAA have reacted. The lawmakers are putting together legislation banning such drones and the FAA is looking for ways to shoot them down.
I suspect the lawmakers have gotten their poopies in an uproar for fear that Austin is planning to attack the new Sandy Hook Elementary School with his pistol packing drone and then burn the building down with his flying flamethrower.
UPDATE: FAA LAUNCHES INVESTIGATION INTO TEENAGER’S GUN-WIELDING DRONE VIDEO
The FAA launched an investigation into whether any Federal Aviation Regulations were broken by the handgun-wielding drone
By Rick Stella
Digital Trends
February 22, 2016
The Federal Aviation Administration just announced it plans to launch an investigation into Austin Haughwout’s handgun drone, saying it intends to determine if the craft breaks any air safety laws or violates Federal Aviation Regulations. Jim Peters, a spokesperson for the FAA, added it will also work with local law enforcement authorities in Connecticut to verify whether or not Haughwout broke any criminal laws.
Haughwout’s father Brett maintains his son — an engineering student at Central Connecticut State University — simply custom-built a drone armed with the capability of firing a gun mid-flight and broke no laws in the process. His father also confirmed the video was shot on his property in Clinton, Connecticut, and that Austin and himself did a sizable amount of research to assure they weren’t in violation of regulations. A city of Clinton police sergeant named Jeremiah Dunn commented on the story saying if the gun is “being discharged in an area where it could legally be discharged, right now there’s no legislation prohibiting it.”
We’ll update this post again as soon as the FAA’s investigation concludes.
Original post
A teenager from Connecticut just took America’s infatuation with drones to an entirely new level — but the thing is, it isn’t exactly legal. In a recently posted video on YouTube, 18-year-old Austin Haughwout displays what appears to be a quadcopter-like drone outfitted with a semiautomatic handgun. Unlike some drone videos posted to YouTube in the past, this doesn’t look to be the work of some fancy effects either. Talk about the best way to scare the absolute hell out of your neighbors.
During the 15-second video, Haughwout shows off the quadcopter’s ability to fire the handgun while hovering, setting off a round of ammunition every three seconds. Because of the handgun’s kickback, the quadcopter flies back a few feet after each shot before re-stabilizing itself and firing again. While this is certainly a unique way to tinker with a drone, Haughwout may find himself in hot water with the law should the Federal Aviation Authority deem him the actual perpetrator in the video. However, with little to no precedent setting the foundation for a quick ruling, the debate over the legality of Haughwout’s drone figures to be a convoluted — and incredibly lengthy — conversation.
The issue of weaponized personal aircrafts came up during a 2013 industry meeting, with federal drone regulator Jim Williams saying the FAA prohibits people from attaching weapons on civil aircrafts. However, standing between Williams and his assertion serving as federal law is none other than the Second Amendment which grants people the right to bear arms. Though the Supreme Court never ruled directly on a case involving citizens arming drones, its interpretation of the 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller comes incredibly close.
In the case, the Supreme Court ruled against Washington D.C.’s handgun ban saying the Second Amendment allows people to “possess a firearm unconnected with service in the militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.” The Court also goes on to note the Second Amendment’s protection only extends to weapons which are “in common use.”
In 2013, U.S. District Court clerk Dan Terzian interpreted those quotes as potentially including drones in the near future considering advancements in technology regarding the devices. Terzian also notes that the Supreme Court may simply ban drones altogether before becoming entirely common, though with the recent influx in drone popularity the last several years, this seems a highly implausible outcome.
It seems the only thing holding the authorities back from slapping cuffs on Haughwout might be a 2008 interpretation of the Second Amendment, regardless of how much weight breaking an FAA law carries. One thing is absolutely certain however, no matter how much fun it is to mess around with drones, strapping a semiautomatic handgun to these crafts is a bit terrifying. Why can’t people just stick to making Star Wars-themed drones?
Austin Haughwout, 18, an engineering student at Central Connecticut State University, invented a couple of drones that have Connecticut lawmakers and the FAA shitting in their pants. The teen has invented a drone that carries and fires a semi-automatic pistol and a drone that carries and operates a flame thrower.
You would think Austin is Public Enemy No. 1 by the way Connecticut lawmakers and the FAA have reacted. The lawmakers are putting together legislation banning such drones and the FAA is looking for ways to shoot them down.
I suspect the lawmakers have gotten their poopies in an uproar for fear that Austin is planning to attack the new Sandy Hook Elementary School with his pistol packing drone and then burn the building down with his flying flamethrower.
UPDATE: FAA LAUNCHES INVESTIGATION INTO TEENAGER’S GUN-WIELDING DRONE VIDEO
The FAA launched an investigation into whether any Federal Aviation Regulations were broken by the handgun-wielding drone
By Rick Stella
Digital Trends
February 22, 2016
The Federal Aviation Administration just announced it plans to launch an investigation into Austin Haughwout’s handgun drone, saying it intends to determine if the craft breaks any air safety laws or violates Federal Aviation Regulations. Jim Peters, a spokesperson for the FAA, added it will also work with local law enforcement authorities in Connecticut to verify whether or not Haughwout broke any criminal laws.
Haughwout’s father Brett maintains his son — an engineering student at Central Connecticut State University — simply custom-built a drone armed with the capability of firing a gun mid-flight and broke no laws in the process. His father also confirmed the video was shot on his property in Clinton, Connecticut, and that Austin and himself did a sizable amount of research to assure they weren’t in violation of regulations. A city of Clinton police sergeant named Jeremiah Dunn commented on the story saying if the gun is “being discharged in an area where it could legally be discharged, right now there’s no legislation prohibiting it.”
We’ll update this post again as soon as the FAA’s investigation concludes.
Original post
A teenager from Connecticut just took America’s infatuation with drones to an entirely new level — but the thing is, it isn’t exactly legal. In a recently posted video on YouTube, 18-year-old Austin Haughwout displays what appears to be a quadcopter-like drone outfitted with a semiautomatic handgun. Unlike some drone videos posted to YouTube in the past, this doesn’t look to be the work of some fancy effects either. Talk about the best way to scare the absolute hell out of your neighbors.
During the 15-second video, Haughwout shows off the quadcopter’s ability to fire the handgun while hovering, setting off a round of ammunition every three seconds. Because of the handgun’s kickback, the quadcopter flies back a few feet after each shot before re-stabilizing itself and firing again. While this is certainly a unique way to tinker with a drone, Haughwout may find himself in hot water with the law should the Federal Aviation Authority deem him the actual perpetrator in the video. However, with little to no precedent setting the foundation for a quick ruling, the debate over the legality of Haughwout’s drone figures to be a convoluted — and incredibly lengthy — conversation.
The issue of weaponized personal aircrafts came up during a 2013 industry meeting, with federal drone regulator Jim Williams saying the FAA prohibits people from attaching weapons on civil aircrafts. However, standing between Williams and his assertion serving as federal law is none other than the Second Amendment which grants people the right to bear arms. Though the Supreme Court never ruled directly on a case involving citizens arming drones, its interpretation of the 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller comes incredibly close.
In the case, the Supreme Court ruled against Washington D.C.’s handgun ban saying the Second Amendment allows people to “possess a firearm unconnected with service in the militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.” The Court also goes on to note the Second Amendment’s protection only extends to weapons which are “in common use.”
In 2013, U.S. District Court clerk Dan Terzian interpreted those quotes as potentially including drones in the near future considering advancements in technology regarding the devices. Terzian also notes that the Supreme Court may simply ban drones altogether before becoming entirely common, though with the recent influx in drone popularity the last several years, this seems a highly implausible outcome.
It seems the only thing holding the authorities back from slapping cuffs on Haughwout might be a 2008 interpretation of the Second Amendment, regardless of how much weight breaking an FAA law carries. One thing is absolutely certain however, no matter how much fun it is to mess around with drones, strapping a semiautomatic handgun to these crafts is a bit terrifying. Why can’t people just stick to making Star Wars-themed drones?
BURKA-CLAD BABYSITTER SHOUTING ‘ALLAHU AKBAR’ ARRESTED AFTER PARADING CHILD’S SEVERED HEAD OUTSIDE MOSCOW SUBWAY STATION
By Nicole Hensley
New York Daily News
February 29, 2016
A heartless nanny wandered aimlessly outside a Moscow subway station Monday morning with the severed head of a toddler she was entrusted to protect before Russian police tackled the madwoman to the ground, according to local reports.
Firefighters found the young child’s headless body inside an apartment following a fire allegedly set by the woman, who was identified by authorities as Uzbekistan national Gyulchehryl Bobokulovoy, who was captured in shocking surveillance video wandering aimlessly with the head while wearing a black burqa and hijab.
The child, who is believed to be three or four years old, had been decapitated, TASS news agency reported.
In the video, witnesses at the Oktyabrskoye Pole Station watched the woman as she held a head by the hair while reportedly shouting "Allahu Akbar" in Russian.
The nanny waited until the parents left before killing the child, federal officials said. The unidentified woman then set fire to the family's home.
A statement from Pavel Astakhov, the commissioner of Russia's federal child welfare agency, makes no mention of the child's decapitation, but says there were "signs of a violent death."
He described the killing as “monstrous and inexplicable” and questioned the women's mental health.
The suspect, who was born in 1977, is undergoing a psychiatric review.
New York Daily News
February 29, 2016
A heartless nanny wandered aimlessly outside a Moscow subway station Monday morning with the severed head of a toddler she was entrusted to protect before Russian police tackled the madwoman to the ground, according to local reports.
Firefighters found the young child’s headless body inside an apartment following a fire allegedly set by the woman, who was identified by authorities as Uzbekistan national Gyulchehryl Bobokulovoy, who was captured in shocking surveillance video wandering aimlessly with the head while wearing a black burqa and hijab.
The child, who is believed to be three or four years old, had been decapitated, TASS news agency reported.
In the video, witnesses at the Oktyabrskoye Pole Station watched the woman as she held a head by the hair while reportedly shouting "Allahu Akbar" in Russian.
The nanny waited until the parents left before killing the child, federal officials said. The unidentified woman then set fire to the family's home.
A statement from Pavel Astakhov, the commissioner of Russia's federal child welfare agency, makes no mention of the child's decapitation, but says there were "signs of a violent death."
He described the killing as “monstrous and inexplicable” and questioned the women's mental health.
The suspect, who was born in 1977, is undergoing a psychiatric review.
PREDICTIVE POLICING IS HERE NOW, BUT AT WHAT COST?
“Predictive policing used to be the future,” said career cop William Bratton, “and now it is the present.”
By David Black
The Dallas Morning News
February 29, 2016
In mid-May 2015, this visionary former chief of police in Boston, New York City and Los Angeles — and currently again top cop in New York — was talking about his early days as an officer in Boston, about what worked and what didn’t, and about what can work better in the future. That future will involve predictive policing, which Bratton is bringing to New York.
Bratton helped develop predictive policing when he headed the Los Angeles Police Department during the 2000s. It seeks not just to fight crime, but to anticipate and prevent it. It uses cutting-edge technology and Big Data — some from past analysis and some that stream in real time to an on-board computer in a patrol car — to identify high-risk areas, which can then be flooded with police. The aim is not to make arrests but to deter crime before it occurs.
Predictive policing relies on community engagement — it can work only when the police are seen as part of the neighborhood, rather than as an occupying presence. At a time when police-community relations are frayed and many cities face rising violent-crime rates as well as renewed concern about terrorist threats, the approach may provide a better way forward.
Currently, about a dozen American cities — including Los Angeles as well as Santa Cruz, Calif., Atlanta, and Tacoma, Wash. — are using PredPol, a leading predictive-policing software and analytics program. Many of these cities rolled out the system over the past few years, and they are seeing positive, and sometimes dramatic, results. In Los Angeles, a nearly two-year study by UCLA crime scholars and law-enforcement officials, released this past fall, found that PredPol successfully predicted — and prevented — twice as much crime as human crime analysts did. The LAPD is now using PredPol in 14 of its 21 divisions.
“Every police department in cities of 100,000 people and up,” says criminologist Craig Uchida, “will be using some form of predictive policing in the next few years.”
Like every innovation, the method has advocates and critics.
Predictive policing strikes its detractors as potentially Orwellian law enforcement, but at its best, it aspires to something quite the opposite — a return, albeit a high-tech one, to the days of police on the beat who knew their constituents and worked with them to keep neighborhoods safe.
“The use of information to respond to crime has always been part of the history of policing, an essential part to solving crime after the fact,” Bratton explains. “When Sir Robert Peel [home secretary in early 19th-century England] created the British Metropolitan Police Force, he had nine principles of policing, which were focused on the prevention of crime.”
Before Peel created the Met in 1838, London was policed by the Bow Street Runners, six officers who constituted the city’s first professional police force and solved crimes as a civic service — not, as professional “thief-takers” previously did, for a fee. The force was founded in 1749 by Henry Fielding, author of Tom Jones. It disbanded in 1839, the year after Peel created the Met as a citizen police presence and an alternative to a military force. The Met’s authority depended on public approval. To Peel, this meant that the police — nicknamed “Bobbies,” for Peel’s first name — had to behave respectfully, succeeding not through compulsion but through the willing cooperation of citizens.
Bobbies traditionally didn’t carry firearms; when force was necessary, it was to be minimal. And the police were not the judiciary. Bobbies did not judge guilt or innocence, did not punish or avenge. “The police are the public,” Peel said, “and the public are the police.” Peel believed that the Met proved itself not by the number of criminals it caught but by the absence of crime.
In the United States, policing took shape along Peelian principles: Cops walking the city beat deterred crime by their presence. They got to know the neighbors and the neighborhoods, which were more stable than they became after World War II. For years, many cops claimed that the most realistic police show on TV was Barney Miller because it showed the everyday neighborhood problems that most officers dealt with: homicides were rare, and few cops ever had cause to pull a gun. In New York City, you drew your weapon only in life-threatening situations, and, when you did, you shot to kill. The most common response to shooting a dangerous criminal was to vomit. But Barney Miller was an exercise in nostalgia. It was produced just as the system was changing.
Bratton began his policing career in 1970.
“It was a time of great transition,” he says. “We were coming out of the 1960s, that time of social turbulence.” Police had become reactive. Instead of a benign presence, designed to prevent crime, they spent more and more time in their squad cars, responding to calls. At a time when people were attacking police, throwing bricks off roofs, using guns and Molotov cocktails, and fomenting revolution in the streets, patrol cars were seen as safer — and more efficient, as budgets became stretched. Officers could cover a greater area more quickly in a car than on foot. Random patrols and responses to calls — counterpunching — supplanted an assigned beat. It was “an ultimately damaging refocusing of the police mission and responsibility,” as Bratton puts it.
The introduction of the 911 calling system, starting in the late 1960s, reinforced the trend to reactive policing, as did a technological revolution in everything from ballistics to serology. The lab replaced the street. Suddenly, cops had a new toolbox of crime-solving techniques. “Policing was professionalized,” Bratton said. There was “better training, better education and more focus on solving crime than preventing it.”
The new methods generated new problems: Police departments found themselves swamped with the surge in calls coming in. They couldn’t keep up with the demand for their services. Making matters worse: To save money, cities began cutting back police forces around the country.Boston’s police department went from 2,800 officers to 2,000. New York City’s force shrunk from 31,698 in 1970 to 22,588 in 1980, about two-thirds the size of the force today.
The police who remained faced many new frustrations, especially with the growing legal emphasis on criminals’ civil rights. The Supreme Court’s 1964 ruling in Escobedo vs. Illinois (establishing the right of suspects to have a lawyer present during police questioning) and the 1966 ruling in Miranda vs. Arizona (requiring police to read suspects their rights before they can be questioned) transformed policing. Cops were overwhelmed, too, by the growth of trafficking in hallucinogens and the various forms of cocaine and by the increasing numbers of young people drawn into the drug culture. Things worsened during the 1980s. “We were being briefed [in Boston] on this new type of cocaine, crack, that had decimated New York,” Bratton said, “and … within a short period of time: whoosh, it was like one of these tsunamis.” Crime numbers climbed to frightening new highs.
Deinstitutionalization compounded the problem.
A flood of homeless mentally ill people ended up on the streets, degrading neighborhoods further. Every day, people were confronted with evidence of a crumbling social contract. By the end of the 1980s, Bratton observes, the reactive approach dominated police methods, which focused on improving performance in two areas: responding to 911 calls and investigating major crimes. Police neglected a third: preventing disorder.
In March 1982 came George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson’s soon-to-be-famous article “Broken Windows,” about policing that focused on quality-of-life crimes. The Broken Windows theory was reinforced by CompStat, the crime analysis and accountability system that Jack Maple created and instituted in the New York Police Department in 1994, when Bratton began his first tenure as the city’s police commissioner. CompStat, the forerunner of predictive policing, helped Bratton and the NYPD transform a city that had been overrun for decades by crime and disorder.
“We began to use intelligence-led policing to focus on the prevention of crime,” Bratton said. “And, increasingly, as we got more capacity to get that information in a timely fashion [real time], we were able to stop patterns and trends after the second, third or fourth incident rather than catching them when they’ve committed 20 or 30 or 40. We had found a way to prevent crime by stopping perpetrators after the second or third act.”
The result of the NYPD’s innovations is well-known: between 1993 and 2000, a drop of 57.26 percent took place in the seven major crime categories, from murder and rape to burglary and auto theft. Two decades after these practices first became systematized, the building blocks were in place for the next phase of the policing revolution: predictive policing.
The PredPol system works by looking at a specific geographical area.
A precinct map gets divided up into 500-by-500-foot “boxes,” each about the size of a city block. A box thought likely to be a locus of crime — because of its history, location, current activity and other factors — becomes a “hot box.” A computer analyzes what crimes have occurred there in the past, what is happening in real time and other inputs. Even the weather can be a factor: Fewer potential criminals come out when it’s below freezing, for example.
What sites in the area — schools, strip clubs, bars, malls — might serve as magnets for potential burglars? The cops look at an “intersection of risk factors,” said Megan Yerxa, a crime analyst at the Tacoma police department, which fully deployed PredPol in October 2013. They have to look at “a terrain that shows hot areas,” such as places where two cultures rub up against each other. Once the hot spots are identified, the police visit them two or three times during a tour, making their presence felt and, by doing so, deterring crime.
“PredPol doesn’t take into [account] socioeconomic factors,” Yerxa says. It avoids targeting a particular race or income group, and the statistics tend to hold true for all kinds of neighborhoods.
The evidence suggests that crime is predictable, at least statistically, because criminals follow patterns. They tend to go back to work in the same area, the same house or business, because they’re familiar with the setup — and they got away with it the first time. The nearby risk of one burglary, for instance, tends to be 600 feet from the first crime over a period of 14 to 28 days. “An offender hits a neighborhood three times,” Yerxa said — and then tends to go to the next neighborhood over. “They travel to avoid detection, but they don’t travel too far.” The questions she asks: Do the last 28 days predict the next seven days? How do they predict it? And is there a way to intervene to interrupt the repeating pattern of criminal behavior without violating someone’s civil rights?
UCLA anthropology professor Jeff Brantingham and his PredPol co-founder George Mohler of Santa Clara University thought it was possible to predict certain crimes, using a system similar to the one that forecasts earthquake aftershocks. Initial crimes are often followed by an “aftercrime” — for instance, a car theft can be followed by a robbery in which the stolen car is used. They developed an algorithm to predict future crime locations.
Departments using PredPol look at what has happened recently in a hot box — say, a series of house break-ins before dawn. The local precinct may send patrol cars and beat cops into that box. If the cops spot a known offender — someone with a record of that particular crime at that time of day — who is casing a house, that gives the officer probable cause to stop and engage the suspect and, possibly, to make an arrest.
“I’ll stop and talk to a guy,” said Los Angeles Foothill Division assistant watch commander Sgt. Scott Kennedy, “and engage him.” Kennedy tries to create a consensual, not a confrontational, encounter. This is not a dragnet, scooping up anyone who looks suspicious. It is targeted — and it’s used only when there is clear probable cause.
The police can make cities safe, but there is always a cost.
Freedom or security: It’s a balance that we weigh every day. At what point does protecting society run the danger of infringing excessively on individual rights, or, more broadly, changing the nature of our democratic republic? And are there reasonable alternatives to these choices?
There are “three potential problems with predictive policing,” according to Chris Calabrese of the American Civil Liberties Union. “First, garbage in, garbage out. If you put bad data in, you get bad results. By bad data, I mean historical inequities.” Calabrese focuses on stop-and-frisk, which he seems to equate with predictive policing, though most advocates of the latter are careful to distinguish between these approaches. The second problem, Calabrese said, “is transparency: How are these algorithms created, can you audit them, or are they a black box where the computer tells you where you focus, and there’s no accountability? Who is vetting the algorithm?”
“Third,” says Calabrese, “what types of enforcement are being used?” Are the police looking at “where crimes were reported in the last few months, [or] are they looking on Facebook pages? Are they looking at friends of people who have been targeted on Facebook?” Would the ACLU be willing to work with PredPol? I ask. Calabrese hesitates: “Our work [is] to monitor civil rights.” But “our door is always open.”
Hanni Fakhoury, an Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer, says his fear “is that these programs are creating an environment where the police can show up at anyone’s door at any time for any reason.” He cites an incident in which the Chicago police warned Robert McDaniel, 22, that he was on a “heat” list generated by an algorithm developed at the Illinois Institute of Technology to identify those most prone to violence and that the cops were watching him — though he had no violent criminal record.
“This is what civil rights activists are concerned about,” concedes Sean Malinowski, project manager for the LAPD’s predictive-policing initiative. The worry is that police will create, as one headline suggested, a “real Minority Report computer to predict crimes,” referring to the dystopian film and its concept of “pre-crime,” in which individuals are arrested based on offenses that they supposedly would commit in the future. A number of predictive-policing software and analytics systems have been developed — IBM Modeler, BairAnalytics and ESRI Mapping, among others — that do tend to focus on individuals. That could lead to constitutional or civil rights challenges in the future.
The PredPol police departments are different.
None would generate a “heat” list such as the one used in Chicago. Again, PredPol focuses on geography — “place-based policing,” as Tacoma assistant police chief Peter Crimmins describes it. “The Constitution doesn’t go away,” adds Uchida. “We made a conscious decision that we weren’t going to target individuals. PredPol has stayed away from individuals and will continue to do that.”
To prevent the new era of Big Data from becoming authoritarian — to balance security with freedom — Bratton, who is sensitive to the danger, says that “it’s also important to make sure to have good people elected and appointed to office.” He continues: “The trust on which democracy itself rests is: You have standards of oversight and the ability to attract the right people into these positions of great trust. Isn’t that the whole foundation of what democracy is based on? We give up certain freedoms to other individuals, who have the power — as in the case of the police — to control your behavior. The challenge for the police is that it be done constitutionally. Legally. Respectfully. Compassionately. That it be done consistently. By consistently, I mean not policing differently in a poor neighborhood than in a rich neighborhood.”
The best defense against misuse of the police is citizen vigilance. When we give up our duties to police our neighbors to a professional force, we are not surrendering our responsibility to monitor those who act on our behalf.
It seems inevitable that some form of predictive policing is on the way. We can’t put the technology of policing back in the bottle any more than the Luddites could stop power looms. We’ll need to decide what forms the system should take — especially with the mounting danger to cities from terrorism.
The most optimistic scenario is that the technological revolution — through systems like PredPol — re-creates the best of traditional beat-cop policing. Officers will get to know their community and will, as in the PredPol model, incorporate community outreach. Police departments will do more with tighter budgets and fewer resources while also protecting individual rights.
PredPol allows cops to reinvent Robert Peel’s preventive policing — to return to the humane principles of the 1830s with 21st-century tools. Bratton envisions more interaction among the three great police departments in New York, L.A. and London. “We’re testing both PredPol and a new system, HunchLab,” Bratton explains. “We haven’t committed to either. In the meantime, we have developed our own predictive model that we are field-testing against the other two.”
Now 68, with nearly a half-century in law enforcement behind him, Bratton remains as committed as ever. “It’s my heart, soul and passion,” he says. “The importance of policing. No one can do it better than us, but we can’t do it alone.”
By David Black
The Dallas Morning News
February 29, 2016
In mid-May 2015, this visionary former chief of police in Boston, New York City and Los Angeles — and currently again top cop in New York — was talking about his early days as an officer in Boston, about what worked and what didn’t, and about what can work better in the future. That future will involve predictive policing, which Bratton is bringing to New York.
Bratton helped develop predictive policing when he headed the Los Angeles Police Department during the 2000s. It seeks not just to fight crime, but to anticipate and prevent it. It uses cutting-edge technology and Big Data — some from past analysis and some that stream in real time to an on-board computer in a patrol car — to identify high-risk areas, which can then be flooded with police. The aim is not to make arrests but to deter crime before it occurs.
Predictive policing relies on community engagement — it can work only when the police are seen as part of the neighborhood, rather than as an occupying presence. At a time when police-community relations are frayed and many cities face rising violent-crime rates as well as renewed concern about terrorist threats, the approach may provide a better way forward.
Currently, about a dozen American cities — including Los Angeles as well as Santa Cruz, Calif., Atlanta, and Tacoma, Wash. — are using PredPol, a leading predictive-policing software and analytics program. Many of these cities rolled out the system over the past few years, and they are seeing positive, and sometimes dramatic, results. In Los Angeles, a nearly two-year study by UCLA crime scholars and law-enforcement officials, released this past fall, found that PredPol successfully predicted — and prevented — twice as much crime as human crime analysts did. The LAPD is now using PredPol in 14 of its 21 divisions.
“Every police department in cities of 100,000 people and up,” says criminologist Craig Uchida, “will be using some form of predictive policing in the next few years.”
Like every innovation, the method has advocates and critics.
Predictive policing strikes its detractors as potentially Orwellian law enforcement, but at its best, it aspires to something quite the opposite — a return, albeit a high-tech one, to the days of police on the beat who knew their constituents and worked with them to keep neighborhoods safe.
“The use of information to respond to crime has always been part of the history of policing, an essential part to solving crime after the fact,” Bratton explains. “When Sir Robert Peel [home secretary in early 19th-century England] created the British Metropolitan Police Force, he had nine principles of policing, which were focused on the prevention of crime.”
Before Peel created the Met in 1838, London was policed by the Bow Street Runners, six officers who constituted the city’s first professional police force and solved crimes as a civic service — not, as professional “thief-takers” previously did, for a fee. The force was founded in 1749 by Henry Fielding, author of Tom Jones. It disbanded in 1839, the year after Peel created the Met as a citizen police presence and an alternative to a military force. The Met’s authority depended on public approval. To Peel, this meant that the police — nicknamed “Bobbies,” for Peel’s first name — had to behave respectfully, succeeding not through compulsion but through the willing cooperation of citizens.
Bobbies traditionally didn’t carry firearms; when force was necessary, it was to be minimal. And the police were not the judiciary. Bobbies did not judge guilt or innocence, did not punish or avenge. “The police are the public,” Peel said, “and the public are the police.” Peel believed that the Met proved itself not by the number of criminals it caught but by the absence of crime.
In the United States, policing took shape along Peelian principles: Cops walking the city beat deterred crime by their presence. They got to know the neighbors and the neighborhoods, which were more stable than they became after World War II. For years, many cops claimed that the most realistic police show on TV was Barney Miller because it showed the everyday neighborhood problems that most officers dealt with: homicides were rare, and few cops ever had cause to pull a gun. In New York City, you drew your weapon only in life-threatening situations, and, when you did, you shot to kill. The most common response to shooting a dangerous criminal was to vomit. But Barney Miller was an exercise in nostalgia. It was produced just as the system was changing.
Bratton began his policing career in 1970.
“It was a time of great transition,” he says. “We were coming out of the 1960s, that time of social turbulence.” Police had become reactive. Instead of a benign presence, designed to prevent crime, they spent more and more time in their squad cars, responding to calls. At a time when people were attacking police, throwing bricks off roofs, using guns and Molotov cocktails, and fomenting revolution in the streets, patrol cars were seen as safer — and more efficient, as budgets became stretched. Officers could cover a greater area more quickly in a car than on foot. Random patrols and responses to calls — counterpunching — supplanted an assigned beat. It was “an ultimately damaging refocusing of the police mission and responsibility,” as Bratton puts it.
The introduction of the 911 calling system, starting in the late 1960s, reinforced the trend to reactive policing, as did a technological revolution in everything from ballistics to serology. The lab replaced the street. Suddenly, cops had a new toolbox of crime-solving techniques. “Policing was professionalized,” Bratton said. There was “better training, better education and more focus on solving crime than preventing it.”
The new methods generated new problems: Police departments found themselves swamped with the surge in calls coming in. They couldn’t keep up with the demand for their services. Making matters worse: To save money, cities began cutting back police forces around the country.Boston’s police department went from 2,800 officers to 2,000. New York City’s force shrunk from 31,698 in 1970 to 22,588 in 1980, about two-thirds the size of the force today.
The police who remained faced many new frustrations, especially with the growing legal emphasis on criminals’ civil rights. The Supreme Court’s 1964 ruling in Escobedo vs. Illinois (establishing the right of suspects to have a lawyer present during police questioning) and the 1966 ruling in Miranda vs. Arizona (requiring police to read suspects their rights before they can be questioned) transformed policing. Cops were overwhelmed, too, by the growth of trafficking in hallucinogens and the various forms of cocaine and by the increasing numbers of young people drawn into the drug culture. Things worsened during the 1980s. “We were being briefed [in Boston] on this new type of cocaine, crack, that had decimated New York,” Bratton said, “and … within a short period of time: whoosh, it was like one of these tsunamis.” Crime numbers climbed to frightening new highs.
Deinstitutionalization compounded the problem.
A flood of homeless mentally ill people ended up on the streets, degrading neighborhoods further. Every day, people were confronted with evidence of a crumbling social contract. By the end of the 1980s, Bratton observes, the reactive approach dominated police methods, which focused on improving performance in two areas: responding to 911 calls and investigating major crimes. Police neglected a third: preventing disorder.
In March 1982 came George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson’s soon-to-be-famous article “Broken Windows,” about policing that focused on quality-of-life crimes. The Broken Windows theory was reinforced by CompStat, the crime analysis and accountability system that Jack Maple created and instituted in the New York Police Department in 1994, when Bratton began his first tenure as the city’s police commissioner. CompStat, the forerunner of predictive policing, helped Bratton and the NYPD transform a city that had been overrun for decades by crime and disorder.
“We began to use intelligence-led policing to focus on the prevention of crime,” Bratton said. “And, increasingly, as we got more capacity to get that information in a timely fashion [real time], we were able to stop patterns and trends after the second, third or fourth incident rather than catching them when they’ve committed 20 or 30 or 40. We had found a way to prevent crime by stopping perpetrators after the second or third act.”
The result of the NYPD’s innovations is well-known: between 1993 and 2000, a drop of 57.26 percent took place in the seven major crime categories, from murder and rape to burglary and auto theft. Two decades after these practices first became systematized, the building blocks were in place for the next phase of the policing revolution: predictive policing.
The PredPol system works by looking at a specific geographical area.
A precinct map gets divided up into 500-by-500-foot “boxes,” each about the size of a city block. A box thought likely to be a locus of crime — because of its history, location, current activity and other factors — becomes a “hot box.” A computer analyzes what crimes have occurred there in the past, what is happening in real time and other inputs. Even the weather can be a factor: Fewer potential criminals come out when it’s below freezing, for example.
What sites in the area — schools, strip clubs, bars, malls — might serve as magnets for potential burglars? The cops look at an “intersection of risk factors,” said Megan Yerxa, a crime analyst at the Tacoma police department, which fully deployed PredPol in October 2013. They have to look at “a terrain that shows hot areas,” such as places where two cultures rub up against each other. Once the hot spots are identified, the police visit them two or three times during a tour, making their presence felt and, by doing so, deterring crime.
“PredPol doesn’t take into [account] socioeconomic factors,” Yerxa says. It avoids targeting a particular race or income group, and the statistics tend to hold true for all kinds of neighborhoods.
The evidence suggests that crime is predictable, at least statistically, because criminals follow patterns. They tend to go back to work in the same area, the same house or business, because they’re familiar with the setup — and they got away with it the first time. The nearby risk of one burglary, for instance, tends to be 600 feet from the first crime over a period of 14 to 28 days. “An offender hits a neighborhood three times,” Yerxa said — and then tends to go to the next neighborhood over. “They travel to avoid detection, but they don’t travel too far.” The questions she asks: Do the last 28 days predict the next seven days? How do they predict it? And is there a way to intervene to interrupt the repeating pattern of criminal behavior without violating someone’s civil rights?
UCLA anthropology professor Jeff Brantingham and his PredPol co-founder George Mohler of Santa Clara University thought it was possible to predict certain crimes, using a system similar to the one that forecasts earthquake aftershocks. Initial crimes are often followed by an “aftercrime” — for instance, a car theft can be followed by a robbery in which the stolen car is used. They developed an algorithm to predict future crime locations.
Departments using PredPol look at what has happened recently in a hot box — say, a series of house break-ins before dawn. The local precinct may send patrol cars and beat cops into that box. If the cops spot a known offender — someone with a record of that particular crime at that time of day — who is casing a house, that gives the officer probable cause to stop and engage the suspect and, possibly, to make an arrest.
“I’ll stop and talk to a guy,” said Los Angeles Foothill Division assistant watch commander Sgt. Scott Kennedy, “and engage him.” Kennedy tries to create a consensual, not a confrontational, encounter. This is not a dragnet, scooping up anyone who looks suspicious. It is targeted — and it’s used only when there is clear probable cause.
The police can make cities safe, but there is always a cost.
Freedom or security: It’s a balance that we weigh every day. At what point does protecting society run the danger of infringing excessively on individual rights, or, more broadly, changing the nature of our democratic republic? And are there reasonable alternatives to these choices?
There are “three potential problems with predictive policing,” according to Chris Calabrese of the American Civil Liberties Union. “First, garbage in, garbage out. If you put bad data in, you get bad results. By bad data, I mean historical inequities.” Calabrese focuses on stop-and-frisk, which he seems to equate with predictive policing, though most advocates of the latter are careful to distinguish between these approaches. The second problem, Calabrese said, “is transparency: How are these algorithms created, can you audit them, or are they a black box where the computer tells you where you focus, and there’s no accountability? Who is vetting the algorithm?”
“Third,” says Calabrese, “what types of enforcement are being used?” Are the police looking at “where crimes were reported in the last few months, [or] are they looking on Facebook pages? Are they looking at friends of people who have been targeted on Facebook?” Would the ACLU be willing to work with PredPol? I ask. Calabrese hesitates: “Our work [is] to monitor civil rights.” But “our door is always open.”
Hanni Fakhoury, an Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer, says his fear “is that these programs are creating an environment where the police can show up at anyone’s door at any time for any reason.” He cites an incident in which the Chicago police warned Robert McDaniel, 22, that he was on a “heat” list generated by an algorithm developed at the Illinois Institute of Technology to identify those most prone to violence and that the cops were watching him — though he had no violent criminal record.
“This is what civil rights activists are concerned about,” concedes Sean Malinowski, project manager for the LAPD’s predictive-policing initiative. The worry is that police will create, as one headline suggested, a “real Minority Report computer to predict crimes,” referring to the dystopian film and its concept of “pre-crime,” in which individuals are arrested based on offenses that they supposedly would commit in the future. A number of predictive-policing software and analytics systems have been developed — IBM Modeler, BairAnalytics and ESRI Mapping, among others — that do tend to focus on individuals. That could lead to constitutional or civil rights challenges in the future.
The PredPol police departments are different.
None would generate a “heat” list such as the one used in Chicago. Again, PredPol focuses on geography — “place-based policing,” as Tacoma assistant police chief Peter Crimmins describes it. “The Constitution doesn’t go away,” adds Uchida. “We made a conscious decision that we weren’t going to target individuals. PredPol has stayed away from individuals and will continue to do that.”
To prevent the new era of Big Data from becoming authoritarian — to balance security with freedom — Bratton, who is sensitive to the danger, says that “it’s also important to make sure to have good people elected and appointed to office.” He continues: “The trust on which democracy itself rests is: You have standards of oversight and the ability to attract the right people into these positions of great trust. Isn’t that the whole foundation of what democracy is based on? We give up certain freedoms to other individuals, who have the power — as in the case of the police — to control your behavior. The challenge for the police is that it be done constitutionally. Legally. Respectfully. Compassionately. That it be done consistently. By consistently, I mean not policing differently in a poor neighborhood than in a rich neighborhood.”
The best defense against misuse of the police is citizen vigilance. When we give up our duties to police our neighbors to a professional force, we are not surrendering our responsibility to monitor those who act on our behalf.
It seems inevitable that some form of predictive policing is on the way. We can’t put the technology of policing back in the bottle any more than the Luddites could stop power looms. We’ll need to decide what forms the system should take — especially with the mounting danger to cities from terrorism.
The most optimistic scenario is that the technological revolution — through systems like PredPol — re-creates the best of traditional beat-cop policing. Officers will get to know their community and will, as in the PredPol model, incorporate community outreach. Police departments will do more with tighter budgets and fewer resources while also protecting individual rights.
PredPol allows cops to reinvent Robert Peel’s preventive policing — to return to the humane principles of the 1830s with 21st-century tools. Bratton envisions more interaction among the three great police departments in New York, L.A. and London. “We’re testing both PredPol and a new system, HunchLab,” Bratton explains. “We haven’t committed to either. In the meantime, we have developed our own predictive model that we are field-testing against the other two.”
Now 68, with nearly a half-century in law enforcement behind him, Bratton remains as committed as ever. “It’s my heart, soul and passion,” he says. “The importance of policing. No one can do it better than us, but we can’t do it alone.”
Tuesday, March 01, 2016
TIME FOR A GOOD OLD FASHIONED SHORTARM INSPECTION
The problem with transgenders in high school sports should be solved by determining whether or not a student has a shortarm
The ruling body for Texas high school athletics is in conflict with LGBT advocates over which school teams transgenders can play on.
This brings to mind the regular shortarm inspections (for lice) we had when I was in the Army.
My solution to the transgender problem in high school athletics is quite simple. Just have the school authorities do those shortarm inspections. Or, if the parents object to their child being inspected at school, they can send a certified statement as to whether or not their child has a shortarm.
If a student has a shortarm, that student plays on the boys’ team. If a student does not have a shortarm, that student plays on the girls’ team. Same way with restrooms. Them with shortarms use the boys restroom, them without, the girls restroom. Problem solved.
TRANSGENDER ATHLETES IN TEXAS HIGH SCHOOLS COULD BE PERMANENTLY BENCHED
By Meagan Flynn
Houston Press
February 29, 2016
Starting next school year, if a transgender student wants to play a sport, the team they'll be required to try out for may conflict with their gender identity thanks to a new rule.
Last October, the University Interscholastic League, which regulates Texas's high school athletics rules, asked hundreds of superintendents to vote on an amendment to its non-discrimination policy that would require gender to be determined by birth certificates. On Thursday, the results were released: The amendment passed 586 to 32. The Texas Education Agency already approved it last November, and so it will become official policy this August.
But to many LGBT advocates, this addition to the "non-discrimination" policy openly allows schools to discriminate based on gender identity, and it will end up barring transgender students from participating in sports at all, thus violating Title IX.
“This policy will effectively prevent many trans students from playing sports in the future because it will force them to negotiate their identity in a way they may not feel is comfortable,” said Chris Mosier, a transgender triathlete who provides consulting for people who write trans-inclusive student-athlete policies. “Texas is ending the athletic careers of young trans athletes before they really have a chance to start.”
As the first known transgender person to qualify for a U.S. National team, Mosier has become a mentor for transgender athletes across the country. He started TransAthlete.com, where he tracks policies affecting transgender athletes at various levels in every state. According to Mosier, 15 states have passed trans-inclusive policies for student athletes, outwardly prohibiting the type of discrimination Texas school districts have now outwardly enabled. The NCAA also has a trans-inclusive policy. And so does the University of Texas specifically, which makes UIL's new rule all the more problematic: Given UT created UIL, UIL is not allowed to draft any amendments that conflict with any of UT's policies.
UT has a non-discrimination policy that explicitly prohibits discrimination based on gender identity.
Kate Hector, a spokeswoman for UIL, would not provide details on the rationale behind why this amendment was necessary, except to say that schools were already doing this informally and that putting it in writing would make UIL “more transparent.” In response to whether officials were concerned that this would discriminate against some kids, thus violating Title IX, Hector said that the amendment was “well vetted” and voting members made a “well informed decision.”
Meanwhile, Asaf Orr, a Trans Youth Project attorney with the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said that any policy that erects barriers keeping trans athletes off the field is often based on misconceptions. School officials may worry that a boy will want to try out for the girl's team so he can dominate, Orr said, or that a transgender girl will have far superior strength and ability if she's allowed to play with other cisgender girls.
“That just doesn't happen,” Orr said. “Rather, what we're finding is that transgender students who do compete fit right in with the size and skill of their peers. There's a lot of concern about competitive advantage, but it just doesn't pan out in reality.”
Orr also pointed out that amending birth certificates to correctly reflect a transgender person's gender identity can be a complicated and expensive process. While many transgender people may undergo hormone therapy or gender reconstruction surgery, Orr said that's often not an option for high school kids, who also may have parents who don't accept their gender identity and refuse to help them. Even as cities like Austin and Dallas have passed non-discrimination ordinances protecting gender identity, that apparently won't matter in high school sports, Orr said, where schools are only piling on that lack of acceptance.
“When these institutions are saying 'hey, look, it's not appropriate to accept or affirm this child's gender identity,' it sends a message to students and parents that there's something wrong here," Orr said. "It can lead to bullying and harassment, and it can convince parents that maybe it's 'just a stage,' which can be quite harmful.”
Last fall, when LGBT advocates started voicing their concerns about the proposed birth-certificate amendment, UIL executive director denied that it violated Title IX, writing in a letter, “The UIL makes every effort, in both rule and practice, to provide fair and equitable competition for Texas students in accordance with state and federal law.”
But according to Orr, school districts may have shot themselves in the foot on this one: The prospect of an excluded transgender student-athlete filing a Title IX lawsuit is very real. Fighting one, he said, would be a waste of money for a rule that only takes LGBT rights a step backward.
The ruling body for Texas high school athletics is in conflict with LGBT advocates over which school teams transgenders can play on.
This brings to mind the regular shortarm inspections (for lice) we had when I was in the Army.
My solution to the transgender problem in high school athletics is quite simple. Just have the school authorities do those shortarm inspections. Or, if the parents object to their child being inspected at school, they can send a certified statement as to whether or not their child has a shortarm.
If a student has a shortarm, that student plays on the boys’ team. If a student does not have a shortarm, that student plays on the girls’ team. Same way with restrooms. Them with shortarms use the boys restroom, them without, the girls restroom. Problem solved.
TRANSGENDER ATHLETES IN TEXAS HIGH SCHOOLS COULD BE PERMANENTLY BENCHED
By Meagan Flynn
Houston Press
February 29, 2016
Starting next school year, if a transgender student wants to play a sport, the team they'll be required to try out for may conflict with their gender identity thanks to a new rule.
Last October, the University Interscholastic League, which regulates Texas's high school athletics rules, asked hundreds of superintendents to vote on an amendment to its non-discrimination policy that would require gender to be determined by birth certificates. On Thursday, the results were released: The amendment passed 586 to 32. The Texas Education Agency already approved it last November, and so it will become official policy this August.
But to many LGBT advocates, this addition to the "non-discrimination" policy openly allows schools to discriminate based on gender identity, and it will end up barring transgender students from participating in sports at all, thus violating Title IX.
“This policy will effectively prevent many trans students from playing sports in the future because it will force them to negotiate their identity in a way they may not feel is comfortable,” said Chris Mosier, a transgender triathlete who provides consulting for people who write trans-inclusive student-athlete policies. “Texas is ending the athletic careers of young trans athletes before they really have a chance to start.”
As the first known transgender person to qualify for a U.S. National team, Mosier has become a mentor for transgender athletes across the country. He started TransAthlete.com, where he tracks policies affecting transgender athletes at various levels in every state. According to Mosier, 15 states have passed trans-inclusive policies for student athletes, outwardly prohibiting the type of discrimination Texas school districts have now outwardly enabled. The NCAA also has a trans-inclusive policy. And so does the University of Texas specifically, which makes UIL's new rule all the more problematic: Given UT created UIL, UIL is not allowed to draft any amendments that conflict with any of UT's policies.
UT has a non-discrimination policy that explicitly prohibits discrimination based on gender identity.
Kate Hector, a spokeswoman for UIL, would not provide details on the rationale behind why this amendment was necessary, except to say that schools were already doing this informally and that putting it in writing would make UIL “more transparent.” In response to whether officials were concerned that this would discriminate against some kids, thus violating Title IX, Hector said that the amendment was “well vetted” and voting members made a “well informed decision.”
Meanwhile, Asaf Orr, a Trans Youth Project attorney with the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said that any policy that erects barriers keeping trans athletes off the field is often based on misconceptions. School officials may worry that a boy will want to try out for the girl's team so he can dominate, Orr said, or that a transgender girl will have far superior strength and ability if she's allowed to play with other cisgender girls.
“That just doesn't happen,” Orr said. “Rather, what we're finding is that transgender students who do compete fit right in with the size and skill of their peers. There's a lot of concern about competitive advantage, but it just doesn't pan out in reality.”
Orr also pointed out that amending birth certificates to correctly reflect a transgender person's gender identity can be a complicated and expensive process. While many transgender people may undergo hormone therapy or gender reconstruction surgery, Orr said that's often not an option for high school kids, who also may have parents who don't accept their gender identity and refuse to help them. Even as cities like Austin and Dallas have passed non-discrimination ordinances protecting gender identity, that apparently won't matter in high school sports, Orr said, where schools are only piling on that lack of acceptance.
“When these institutions are saying 'hey, look, it's not appropriate to accept or affirm this child's gender identity,' it sends a message to students and parents that there's something wrong here," Orr said. "It can lead to bullying and harassment, and it can convince parents that maybe it's 'just a stage,' which can be quite harmful.”
Last fall, when LGBT advocates started voicing their concerns about the proposed birth-certificate amendment, UIL executive director denied that it violated Title IX, writing in a letter, “The UIL makes every effort, in both rule and practice, to provide fair and equitable competition for Texas students in accordance with state and federal law.”
But according to Orr, school districts may have shot themselves in the foot on this one: The prospect of an excluded transgender student-athlete filing a Title IX lawsuit is very real. Fighting one, he said, would be a waste of money for a rule that only takes LGBT rights a step backward.
BILL BY BERSERK CALIFORNIA LAWMAKER COULD BAN SEMIAUTOMATIC PISTOLS
A ban on firearms with a button that allows magazines to be easily detached, while intended for assault rifles, could also apply to semi-automatic pistols
The aftermath of the San Bernardino shootings has California lawmakers going berserk with offering more gun controls. If I read the following KQED report correctly, a proposed ban on firearms with a button that allows magazines to be easily detached, while intended for assault rifles, could also apply to semi-automatic pistols.
ASSEMBLY POISED TO TAKE UP GUN CONTROL MEASURES
By Katie Orr
KQED
February 29, 2016
Guns are once again a hot topic in Sacramento. Tuesday the Assembly Public Safety Committee will consider four bills regulating guns. Among the measures is one by Democrat Marc Levine that would expand the state’s assault weapons ban to include firearms with a button that allows magazines to be easily detached.
“This makes it very easy to change magazines,” says the San Rafael legislator. “Literally in a second (you can) go from one ten-clip magazine to another one, so that shooters can fire more bullets.”
The committee will also take up a measure that would more broadly expand the definition of an assault weapon. Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a similar bill in 2013. Levine says he believes the political climate is different in the wake of mass shootings like the one in San Bernardino. But Claremont McKenna government professor Jack Pitney is not convinced.
“On this issue public opinion tends to be pretty entrenched,” he says. “The people who support stricter regulation of firearms tend to be pretty firm, and the people who oppose stricter regulation of firearms also tend to be pretty firm.”
Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom is choosing to bypass the Legislature in his attempt to further gun control. His proposed ballot initiative would require background checks for ammunition purchases and ban possession of large-capacity magazines.
The aftermath of the San Bernardino shootings has California lawmakers going berserk with offering more gun controls. If I read the following KQED report correctly, a proposed ban on firearms with a button that allows magazines to be easily detached, while intended for assault rifles, could also apply to semi-automatic pistols.
ASSEMBLY POISED TO TAKE UP GUN CONTROL MEASURES
By Katie Orr
KQED
February 29, 2016
Guns are once again a hot topic in Sacramento. Tuesday the Assembly Public Safety Committee will consider four bills regulating guns. Among the measures is one by Democrat Marc Levine that would expand the state’s assault weapons ban to include firearms with a button that allows magazines to be easily detached.
“This makes it very easy to change magazines,” says the San Rafael legislator. “Literally in a second (you can) go from one ten-clip magazine to another one, so that shooters can fire more bullets.”
The committee will also take up a measure that would more broadly expand the definition of an assault weapon. Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a similar bill in 2013. Levine says he believes the political climate is different in the wake of mass shootings like the one in San Bernardino. But Claremont McKenna government professor Jack Pitney is not convinced.
“On this issue public opinion tends to be pretty entrenched,” he says. “The people who support stricter regulation of firearms tend to be pretty firm, and the people who oppose stricter regulation of firearms also tend to be pretty firm.”
Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom is choosing to bypass the Legislature in his attempt to further gun control. His proposed ballot initiative would require background checks for ammunition purchases and ban possession of large-capacity magazines.
EL CHAPO’S SONS HAVE BEEN AT THE HEAD OF THE SIANOLA CARTEL FOR YEARS, REPORTER SAYS
El Chapo “is now retired for years and the authorities and the FBI and Interpol and the CIA know perfectly he is not the operator of the Cartel.”
By Camilo Smith
LaVoz de Houston
February 25, 2016
A well-known Mexican journalist said in a TV interview that El Chapo’s criminal syndicate has been run by his family for a while now. “His two sons have controlled the cartel for many years, and the government knows this,” Lydia Cacho told Telemundo.
Joaquin “El Chapo” Gzuman’s sons Ivan and Alfredo have shared photos of their lavish narco lives on social media, according to reports. And when “El Chapo” was arrested in January, Ivan sent out Tweets many saw as threats to the Mexican government. “Nothing changes here, we will continue to work, as my father said, with our heads held high, ” the narco’s son posted on Twitter. Known as “El Chapito,” Ivan Archivaldo Guzman Salazar was arrested more than a decade ago on money laundering charges, but was released over judicial irregularities, reports said. His other son is known as “El Gordo,” but his real name is Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar, and he was arrested in 2012. Both sons are in their 30s.
Cacho is reportedly friends with actress Kate del Castillo, who brought fellow actor Sean Penn to meet El Chapo last year. The journalist has said that the Mexican government wants to cover up ties between narco trafficking and politicians, Telemundo reports. She said that “El Chapo” has moved beyond handling the business of the cartel and has used his laundered drug proceeds to start legitimate businesses.
“He is already beyond good and evil. He is now retired for years and the authorities and the FBI and Interpol and the CIA know perfectly he is not the operator of the Cartel.”
U.S. authorities have had their eyes on “El Chapo’s” sons since at least 2012. According to U.S. court documents Ivan is “accused of transporting multiple kilograms of cocaine and several tons of marijuana from Mexico to the U.S. border to introduce them throughout the United States for distribution,” reports Fox News Latino.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Cut off the head and the body of the snake dies. Not necessarily so with organized crime groups like the Mafia and the Mexican cartels.
By Camilo Smith
LaVoz de Houston
February 25, 2016
A well-known Mexican journalist said in a TV interview that El Chapo’s criminal syndicate has been run by his family for a while now. “His two sons have controlled the cartel for many years, and the government knows this,” Lydia Cacho told Telemundo.
Joaquin “El Chapo” Gzuman’s sons Ivan and Alfredo have shared photos of their lavish narco lives on social media, according to reports. And when “El Chapo” was arrested in January, Ivan sent out Tweets many saw as threats to the Mexican government. “Nothing changes here, we will continue to work, as my father said, with our heads held high, ” the narco’s son posted on Twitter. Known as “El Chapito,” Ivan Archivaldo Guzman Salazar was arrested more than a decade ago on money laundering charges, but was released over judicial irregularities, reports said. His other son is known as “El Gordo,” but his real name is Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar, and he was arrested in 2012. Both sons are in their 30s.
Cacho is reportedly friends with actress Kate del Castillo, who brought fellow actor Sean Penn to meet El Chapo last year. The journalist has said that the Mexican government wants to cover up ties between narco trafficking and politicians, Telemundo reports. She said that “El Chapo” has moved beyond handling the business of the cartel and has used his laundered drug proceeds to start legitimate businesses.
“He is already beyond good and evil. He is now retired for years and the authorities and the FBI and Interpol and the CIA know perfectly he is not the operator of the Cartel.”
U.S. authorities have had their eyes on “El Chapo’s” sons since at least 2012. According to U.S. court documents Ivan is “accused of transporting multiple kilograms of cocaine and several tons of marijuana from Mexico to the U.S. border to introduce them throughout the United States for distribution,” reports Fox News Latino.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Cut off the head and the body of the snake dies. Not necessarily so with organized crime groups like the Mafia and the Mexican cartels.
UNREST BREAKS OUT IN SALT LAKE CITY AFTER POLICE-INVOLVED SHOOTING
Associated Press
February 28, 2016
SALT LAKE CITY -- Unrest broke out in a Salt Lake City neighborhood on Saturday night after what appears to be a shooting involving a police officer, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.
The shooting happened about 8:15 p.m. near downtown, the paper said. Selam Mohammad told the Tribune that a police officer shot a 16-year-old boy who was his friend.
In a tweet late Saturday night, Salt Lake City police said that officers were responding to an unrelated call in area when they were told of assault in progress. The officers "tried to engage altercation," the tweet says.
Detective Greg Wilking told the Tribune that "shots were fired," but not how many or whether an officer fired them. Later Saturday, Salt Lake City police told the newspaper that one officer, and possibly a second one, were involved in the shooting,
Mohammad told the Tribune that the victim and a man were in a confrontation, and the victim was holding part of a broomstick at his side when officers ran up.
"They told him to put it down, once," Mohammad said, and "started shooting him as soon as he turned around."
The teenager was hit in the chest and stomach, Mohammad said. The victim was taken to a hospital, the Tribune reported.
City police were helped by officers from three other departments as onlookers threw rocks at officers and yelled obscenities, the Tribune said. Police have closed a light rail stop in the neighborhood.
Police detained multiple people, but Wilking could not elaborate on the reason for the detentions.
There were "a lot of hostile people upset about what had taken place," Wilking told the Tribune.
At 8:40 p.m., a line of officers moved protesters down a sidewalk, the newspaper reported.
There are a number of homeless shelters in the neighborhood, and business owners have long complained about the homeless population and drug dealing, the newspaper said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Harry Dunne says, “I visited Salt Lake City last year. Don't go downtown after dark. It is a crime infested shit hole.”
February 28, 2016
SALT LAKE CITY -- Unrest broke out in a Salt Lake City neighborhood on Saturday night after what appears to be a shooting involving a police officer, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.
The shooting happened about 8:15 p.m. near downtown, the paper said. Selam Mohammad told the Tribune that a police officer shot a 16-year-old boy who was his friend.
In a tweet late Saturday night, Salt Lake City police said that officers were responding to an unrelated call in area when they were told of assault in progress. The officers "tried to engage altercation," the tweet says.
Detective Greg Wilking told the Tribune that "shots were fired," but not how many or whether an officer fired them. Later Saturday, Salt Lake City police told the newspaper that one officer, and possibly a second one, were involved in the shooting,
Mohammad told the Tribune that the victim and a man were in a confrontation, and the victim was holding part of a broomstick at his side when officers ran up.
"They told him to put it down, once," Mohammad said, and "started shooting him as soon as he turned around."
The teenager was hit in the chest and stomach, Mohammad said. The victim was taken to a hospital, the Tribune reported.
City police were helped by officers from three other departments as onlookers threw rocks at officers and yelled obscenities, the Tribune said. Police have closed a light rail stop in the neighborhood.
Police detained multiple people, but Wilking could not elaborate on the reason for the detentions.
There were "a lot of hostile people upset about what had taken place," Wilking told the Tribune.
At 8:40 p.m., a line of officers moved protesters down a sidewalk, the newspaper reported.
There are a number of homeless shelters in the neighborhood, and business owners have long complained about the homeless population and drug dealing, the newspaper said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Harry Dunne says, “I visited Salt Lake City last year. Don't go downtown after dark. It is a crime infested shit hole.”
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