Archive for October, 2011

Burn it to the ground and start over.

Monday, October 31st, 2011

How bad does a police department have to get before that’s the only thing left to do?

Story #1:

…nearly 50 sworn officers in New Orleans have been booted from the force in the past 18 months or have resigned or retired while under investigation or awaiting punishment.

Every 10 days on average so far this year, an NOPD officer or higher-ranking cop either is fired or leaves the force while under investigation, according to records from the department’s Public Integrity Bureau.

Story #2:

As 16 police officers were arraigned at State Supreme Court in the Bronx, incensed colleagues organized by their union cursed and taunted prosecutors and investigators, chanting “Down with the D.A.” and “Ray Kelly, hypocrite.”

Members of the news media were prevented by court officers from walking down the hallway where more than 100 off-duty police officers had gathered outside the courtroom.

The assembled police officers blocked cameras from filming their colleagues, in one instance grabbing lenses and shoving television camera operators backward.

The unsealed indictments contained more than 1,600 criminal counts, the bulk of them misdemeanors having to do with making tickets disappear as favors for friends, relatives and others with clout. But they also outlined more serious crimes, related both to ticket-fixing and drugs, grand larceny and unrelated corruption. Four of the officers were charged with helping a man get away with assault.

Edited to add: Knew I left something out. Hattips: David Codrea for the NOPD link, TJIC’s retweet of Declan McCullagh for the NYPD link.

Lead of the day.

Monday, October 31st, 2011

Who among us hasn’t barbecued a raccoon in a Tennessee parking lot and then gotten caught up in a meth bust?

Your loser update: week 8, 2011.

Monday, October 31st, 2011

Dear New Orleans Saints:

I understand wanting to celebrate Halloween, but disguising yourselves as the 2008 Detroit Lions was not a great plan.

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

Miami
Indianapolis

Z for Zetas.

Saturday, October 29th, 2011

It seems that someone belonging to the Anonymous group has allegedly been kidnapped in Veracruz.

Anonymous, or at least someone claiming to be part of the group, thinks the Zetas drug cartel is responsible for the kidnapping.

So they’ve posted a video…

warning a Mexican drug cartel to release one of its members, kidnapped from a street protest, or it will publish the identities and addresses of the syndicate’s associates, from corrupt police to taxi drivers, as well as reveal the syndicates’ businesses.

We demand his release,” says the Anonymous spokesman, who is wearing a mask like the one worn by the shadowy revolutionary character in the movie V for Vendetta, which came out in 2006. “If anything happens to him, you sons of (expletive) will always remember this upcoming November 5.”

I would say “pass the popcorn”, but this is the sort of thing you want to watch from a very safe distance. The dark side of the moon seems just about safe enough…

500 millisieverts per hour.

Friday, October 28th, 2011

Or, what do you do when you find a cargo container at your port that’s emitting large amounts of ionizing radiation?

This is the kind of article I think Wired does well (see also the story of the Cougar Ace, or Neal Stephenson’s transatlantic cable story.)

Tickets, please.

Friday, October 28th, 2011

Fifteen police officers began surrendering to the authorities in the Bronx at about midnight on Thursday to face criminal charges after a long-running grand jury investigation into the widespread practice of fixing traffic tickets for colleagues, family members and friends, people with knowledge of the matter said. A 16th officer was arrested earlier Thursday night.

Ten of the officers involved are “officials” in the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (aka the NYPD police union).

About midnight Thursday, some of the accused officers began arriving at Central Booking at Bronx Criminal Court, at 215 East 161st Street. About 60 off-duty officers crowded in the main foyer to support their comrades. They formed a human wall, four-deep, between reporters and the some of the accused officers as they came out of a hallway. At three different times, when three of the accused men showed their faces, the crowd burst into applause. The accused men waved and pumped their fists in the air. An official came out of the hallway and stared down the crowd, drawing insults. A woman told the assembled officers to meet in the morning to support the accused officers at their arraignments.

On Thursday afternoon, the union sent a text message to 400 of its delegates encouraging them to fill the courtroom in the Bronx with officers in a show of support for the implicated union members. The idea was for those delegates to spread the message to rank-and-file members, the person said.

(Hattip: TJIC on the Twitter. Though oddly enough, NYT links on his Twitter feed always come up with the NYT asking me to subscribe. That doesn’t happen with freeNYTimes or other Twitter feeds.)

Quickies.

Thursday, October 27th, 2011

Robert “Ratso” Rizzo sold his house in Huntington Beach.

It went for $939,000. Ratso paid $1.13 million in 2007. (Four bedrooms, three baths, two stories, 3,250 square feet, “…a cherry-wood walk-in closet in the master bedroom, built-in cherry-wood bookshelves in the living room and a formal dining room and travertine, granite and marble surfaces throughout. There are crystal chandeliers in the bathroom.”)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos has been asked to testify in an ongoing DWI trial.

Lykos is unlikely to appear, because she is out of town.

And if you’re not reading “Life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center” already, why not?

We got the (crime) beat.

Thursday, October 27th, 2011

Here’s the longer HouChron story I expected about yesterday’s decision to bar the Harris County DA from participation in a grand jury investigation that may implicate the DA’s office.

I also wanted to note another story out of Houston: Roderick Fountain was convicted of murdering his 3-year old son. What makes this story noteworthy (in my opinion) is that he was convicted even though nobody has ever found the son’s body, and mostly based on the word of jailhouse informants.

Murder convictions without a body are not unheard of, but they are certainly rare and unusual enough to be noteworthy. (As a side note, the phrase “corpus delicti” does not mean the body of the victim, but the “body of the crime”; that is, all the evidence that indicates a crime has been committed. It is entirely possible to have a “corpus delicti” without a murder.)

It does seem, though, that the murder conviction without a body is becoming more common. This is the second case I can think of in Texas in the past year or so. (Here’s a link to some press coverage of the other case.) Does this point to improvements in forensic science? Or is there something more sinister going on?

Saddle up!

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

Short piece in the HouChron: I expect a longer one in tomorrow’s paper.

State District Judge Susan Brown on Wednesday named attorneys Stephen C. St. Martin and James Mount as temporary prosecutors to assist a grand jury apparently investigating the Houston Police Department’s troubled mobile alcohol testing program.

The article goes on to quote the judge’s order as stating “that grand jurors are investigating ‘possible criminal conduct by members of the Harris County district attorney’s office.'”

“After considering the grand jury’s request and the applicable law, the court finds the Harris County District Attorney and her office are disqualified from participating in the grand jury’s investigation,” Brown wrote.

Art, damn it, art! watch. (#25 in a series)

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

A performance artist who said giving birth is the “highest form of art” has delivered a baby boy — inside a New York City art gallery.

The entire gallery was given over to the installation. The artist even carved out space for a fully-stocked refrigerator and a portable shower with curtain pockets filled with photos from her three baby showers.

Whoa, Nellie.

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

Latest update from the runaway Harris County grand jury:

They’re asking for an extension of their term, and for the district judge who set up the grand jury to appoint a special prosecutor.

They’ve also issued subpoenas to at least some of the assistant DAs in the office. Wonderful thing, a subpoena.

More from the Honorable Murray Newman.

Edited to add: And more from The Hon. Mr. Newman. I do loves me a good Nixon reference.

Obit watch: October 26th, 2011.

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

I’ve been holding back on this one until I found a reliable source.

John McCarthy, influential computer scientist, passed away on Monday. NYT obit.

Dr. McCarthy may not have had the same level of fame as Dennis Ritchie or Steve Jobs, but his influence was still significant. He co-founded the legendary MIT A.I. Lab – indeed, he was one of the early pioneers of artificial intelligence in general – developed LISP, and later went on to found the Stanford AI Lab as well.

At Stanford, he influenced folks like Wozniak, Joba, and Whitfield Diffie (one of the inventors of public-key cryptography).

Dr. McCarthy was one of the unsung heroes of the early hacker culture. We seem to be losing more and more of them.