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You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#143 in a series)

Thursday, February 20th, 2025

There was an interesting report in yesterday’s NYT. Because I want to be more than a Times digest service, I’ve tried to add additional context from the local news.

Hanceville is a city in Cullman County, Alabama. The 2020 census population was 3,217, and the town employs eight police officers.

Five of the police officers, including the chief, were indicted by a grand jury on Wednesday. The grand jury also recommended the complete abolition of the police department, and stated the department is “a threat to public safety”.

So what’s the backstory? It seems that, either due to malice or incompetence, the police department has trouble securing and accounting for evidence.

“One of the most concerning things that we discovered in this process was that Hanceville Police Department’s evidence room was not secure,” said [Cullman DA Champ] Crocker. “Criminal evidence must be secured in order to have that evidence for prosecution and to ensure due process. This evidence room was anything but secure.”
During the news conference, Crocker showed a photo of the evidence room, pointing out a hole in the door and a broom against the wall.
“This is someone who works there, and you can see this individual has this stick in his hand and is pushing it in the door, in the hole to jimmy open the door, and the grand jury watched a lot of videos, this is from security camera footage, showing this evidence room was routinely accessed by individuals who were not authorized to do so, going in and out using the stick through the hole in the wall,” explained Crocker.

One of the people who accessed the evidence room was a 911 dispatcher. He was found dead in his office the same day. “Evidence” was found in his office, and the autopsy showed he overdosed on “fentanyl and other drugs”.

The chief is charged with “two counts of failure to report ethics crime and tampering with evidence.” The other officers are charged with:

* “two counts of computer tampering, two counts of using office for personal gain, tampering with evidence, and two counts of solicitation to commit a controlled substance crime.”
* “two counts of computer tampering, two counts of using office for personal gain, tampering with evidence, and two counts of solicitation to commit a controlled substance crime.”
* “tampering with evidence.”
* “four counts of unlawful distribution of controlled substance and two counts conspiracy to unlawfully distribute a controlled substance.” That officer’s wife (who is not employed by the department) is also charged with “two counts of unlawful distribution of a controlled substance and two counts conspiracy to unlawfully distribute a controlled substance.”

It sounds like the officer and his wife had a thing going where they were supplying anabolic steroids to two of the other indicted officers. One of the officers used his department issued cell phone to get steroids from those two, and went to the hospital while on duty to get steroid shots from Mrs. Indicted Officer. He also allegedly misused law enforcement databases to get information on two “Does”. Another one of the officers illegally accessed law enforcement databases to get information on a murder investigation, and also got steroid shots from Mrs. Indicted Officer while on duty.

NYT coverage (by way of archive.is).

Coverage from AL.com.

Posted in Cops, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

NYPD Blues.

Monday, December 23rd, 2024

I get the feeling the paper of record was caught flatfooted by the Maddrey scandal, and is playing catch-up.

Jessica Tisch, the head of the New York Police Department, is cracking down on apparent abuse of overtime pay as the agency faces internal and external investigations into the matter.
Among at least 29 officers who were moved into new jobs over the past two days, 16 earned more than $100,000 in overtime pay in the last fiscal year.

…

Several of the employees who were moved worked under Mr. Maddrey, formerly the chief of department, and other top police officials, according to city payroll records and internal police documents obtained by The New York Times.
Two officers who worked for Mr. Maddrey collectively made $312,769 in overtime alone.
Two other officers, who together made around $289,000 in overtime, were transferred out of the operations bureau led by Kaz Daughtry. Eleven officers were moved out of the department’s public information office. Ms. Tisch last week announced that the head of that office, Tarik Sheppard, is also being replaced.

…

Even before the accusations against Mr. Maddrey, the Police Department has long attracted scrutiny for its high overtime spending. As of March, the agency had spent close to $271 million more on overtime in fiscal year 2024 than originally budgeted, the City Council speaker, Adrienne Adams, said at a public hearing in May, noting that the department routinely exceeded its overtime budget.
Word of personnel changes quickly swept through police headquarters in Manhattan over the weekend, and some officers privately praised Ms. Tisch, calling the changes long overdue. Several said they had been exasperated with officials who showed favoritism toward some subordinates and awarded them with cushy positions and bigger paychecks.
Some were also glad to see Mr. Maddrey and Mr. Iglesias go. In group text chats, the rank-and-file lauded the police commissioner, and shared a photo a with a golden halo around her head. Underneath the picture it said: “Saint Tisch. Patron saint of common sense.”

I want to be clear about this. I don’t think overtime, even a lot of overtime, is necessarily a criminal violation, or even an ethical one. That is, if the officers in question actually collected the overtime honorably: they actually worked the time, did their jobs, and had the proper approval.

If the overtime was being collected based on a quid pro quo – like sex for overtime hours, or kickbacks to supervisors, or something equally sleezy – yes, go after the people involved for the unethical and/or criminal behavior. But just accumulating lots of hours isn’t a crime by itself.

Posted in Cops, Law, NYPD | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#137 in a series)

Saturday, December 21st, 2024

Wow. Just wow.

You know, you go to church last night for the “Lessons and Carols” service (which, at my church, was a very nice service, but lightly attended). Then you go pick up your car from the repair shop (yes, Daddy spoke too soon. Fortunately, I have the reserves to cover it.)

Meanwhile, all heck breaks loose.

New York City’s second-highest-ranking police officer, who served as chief of department, abruptly resigned Friday night following allegations of sexual misconduct, according to the Police Department.
The former top chief, Jeffrey Maddrey, submitted his resignation and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch accepted it Friday night, according to a statement from the department.

The NYPost broke the story. This being the Post, they go into more explicit detail.

Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey stepped down soon after The Post contacted the NYPD about Lt. Quathisha Epps’ claims in an exclusive interview that he routinely preyed upon her, asking for sex in NYPD headquarters.

And here’s a fun fact:

Epps recently made headlines as the NYPD’s top earner, pulling in a whopping $400,000 — including roughly $204,000 in overtime alone last year for her administrative job in Maddrey’s office, payroll records show.

I am leaving a lot out of the Post story. You can go over there and read it if you want, but I warn you: the details are very explicit.

In the interest of fairness:

When she started to try to get away from Maddrey recently, Epps was outed on a list of high overtime earners in retaliation, Sanders said.
Epps was suspended for 30 days and is being investigated over the excessive overtime, police sources said.

Also in the interest of fairness:

Former Police Officer Tabitha Foster filed an unsuccessful 2016 civil suit alleging he took advantage of her by exchanging sex for job perks. A judge threw the case out and cleared Maddrey. Foster also accused Maddrey of hitting her.

In August, Edward Caban, the police commissioner at the time, dismissed internal charges against Mr. Maddrey that he had interfered with the arrest of a retired officer who had chased three boys while armed.

Updated 12/23: And over the weekend, Miguel Iglesias, the Chief of Internal Affairs, was “relieved of his command and has notified the Department of his intent to retire”. The NYPost coverage is being played like it was an open secret within the department that Maddrey was a sex predator, and nobody – including IAD – was willing to do anything about it before now.

Posted in Cops, Law, NYPD, Politics, Religion | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 20, 2024.

Friday, December 20th, 2024

Joanne Pierce Misko, historical footnote. And I say that in the kindest possible way.

She spent 10 years as a nun with the Sisters of Mercy, but she decided she wanted to marry and have kids. She was looking for something to do other than teaching.

One day an F.B.I. agent came to her school in Olean to talk about jobs in the bureau. She had already been thinking about leaving her order, and the idea of a career in the F.B.I. intrigued her.

She signed on as a researcher in 1970. Research or clerical work were the only options available to women at that time. But when Hoover died in 1972, L. Patrick Gray III allowed women to sign up as agents.

With her supervisor’s encouragement, Mrs. Misko applied, and within a few months she was being sworn in with 44 others at the F.B.I. headquarters in Washington. She and another woman, Susan Roley Malone, a former Marine, then traveled with the others to the new F.B.I. Academy in Quantico, Va., for 14 weeks of training.

They were the first two female FBI agents.

“I can remember very vividly the first case I had,” she told the Buffalo TV station WGRZ in 2022. “We went out to get the guy, and he found out that we were looking for him and he called back into the office; he was incensed that a woman was being sent out to get him, you know, that he wasn’t worthy of a guy. He had to have a woman go after him.”
Often, she found her gender could be an advantage, as suspects often let their guard down around her.
“Most people back then didn’t even realize the F.B.I. had female agents,” Mrs. Misko said on the Madame Policy podcast in 2022. “Many times a subject would simply open the door when I knocked, not expecting me to say, ‘F.B.I.’”

“Celebrating Women Special Agents: Joanne Pierce Misko” on the FBI website. One thing not mentioned there, but in the NYT obit:

She retired in 1994 and went to work for a bank. That same year, she filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice, saying she had been held back from promotion because of her gender. She settled the suit in 1996 for an undisclosed sum.

By the way, she did marry a fellow FBI agent, but the NYT does not mention children.

Posted in Cops, FBI, Law, Obits | Comments Closed

The logjam breaks…

Friday, November 29th, 2024

I’ve been in kind of a dry spell for vintage gun books. But that broke this week: I have four on the way from Callahan and Company (and I ordered them before Thanksgiving, so I can get away with this), and will be blogging those when they arrive.

In the meantime, though, I’m not working on Black Friday. I did swing by Half-Price Books and picked up two more Gun Digests I didn’t have: 1969, with an article by James E. Serven about “Captain Samuel H. Walker”, and 2022, with an article by Terry Wieland about “The Colt Walker”. I’ll tie this back at the end.

Let us get started…

(more…)

Posted in 1911, Books, Cops, Guns, Hoplobibilophilia, Kindleing, Law, Texas Rangers, Winchester | 1 Comment »

Dumber than a bag of hair watch.

Monday, September 30th, 2024

“Dumber than a bag of hair” is how I have previously described the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. They have a long history of corruption and incompetence, some of which I have documented here.

Today’s example is a criminal indictment brought to us by the FBI by way of Brian Krebs.

The whole thing is slightly confusing, and I’d recommend reading the Krebs article, but in brief: the FBI has been investigating a crooked cryptocurrency guy who founded a platform called “Zort”.

But the feds say investors in Zort soon lost their shorts, after Iza and his girlfriend began spending those investments on Lamborghinis, expensive jewelry, vacations, a $28 million home in Bel Air, even cosmetic surgery to extend the length of his legs.

But that’s not the part that jumped out at me. What jumped out at me is: crypto bro apparently had LASD deputies “on his payroll”.

The FBI later obtained a copy of a search warrant executed by LASD deputies in January 2022 for GPS location information on a phone belonging to E.Z., which shows an LASD deputy unlawfully added E.Z.’s mobile number to a list of those associated with an unrelated firearms investigation.
“Damn my guy actually filed the warrant,” Iza allegedly texted someone after the location warrant was entered. “That’s some serious shit to do for someone….risking a 24 years career. I pay him 280k a month for complete resources. They’re active-duty.”

And relevant to Lawrence’s interests: “E.Z.” is apparently a man named Enzo Zelocchi. Mr. Zelocchi is one of the two listed directors, and the star of, “Angels Apocalypse”, “once rated the absolute worst sci-fi flick on IMDB”.

1.4, Lawrence.

The FBI said that after the incident at the party, Iza had his bribed sheriff deputies to pull R.C. over and arrest him on phony drug charges. The complaint includes a photo of R.C. being handcuffed by the police, which the feds say Iza sent to R.C. in order to intimidate him even further. The drug charges were later dismissed for lack of evidence.

I’m not seeing any reports that LASD officers have been charged. Yet. Kind of makes me wonder if some of them rolled, perhaps in hopes of doing time in a white-collar resort prison.

Posted in California Über Alles, Cops, Law, Movies | Comments Closed

Bad boys, bad boys, what you gonna do…

Thursday, September 26th, 2024

Both Lawrence and I have been intermittently covering the Harding Street Raid in Houston and the fallout from it. To briefly refresh your memory, the Houston Police Department killed two people in a drug raid that turned out to be based on a falsified search warrant.

Yesterday, Gerald Goines, the (now former) HPD officer at the center of the raid, was found guilty of two counts of felony murder.

More from Reason, which has also been on this case like flies on a severed cow’s head at a Damien Hirst installation. Reason notes that Goines was also convicted of tampering with a governmental record.

The jury is considering punishment. The maximum for felony murder is life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Goines’ lies in this case were part of what Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg described as a “pattern of deceit” going back more than a decade. The Harding Street raid prompted Ogg’s office to re-examine some 1,400 drug cases involving Goines, a 34-year veteran who had a habit of framing suspects by inventing drug purchases. “The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has overturned at least 22 convictions linked to Goines,” the Associated Press reports.
[Art] Acevedo, who initially hailed Goines as a “hero,” has insisted that the Harding Street raid did not reflect “a systemic problem with the Houston Police Department.” But Ogg saw things differently. “Houston Police narcotics officers falsified documentation about drug payments to confidential informants with the support of supervisors,” she said in July 2020. “Goines and others could never have preyed on our community the way they did without the participation of their supervisors; every check and balance in place to stop this type of behavior was circumvented.”

Posted in Cops, Law | Comments Closed

Watching the hyenas…

Wednesday, September 25th, 2024

Yesterday was an interesting day for political hyenas, flaming or otherwise.

David Banks, the NYC schools chancellor. announced he’s resigning at the end of the year. This doesn’t seem to be linked to any specific allegations of corruption yet, but:

The announcement came just weeks after federal agents seized Mr. Banks’s phone as part of a bribery investigation involving his brothers and fiancée — and it promised to roil not just the nation’s largest school system but also a mayoral administration already reeling from at least four separate federal corruption inquiries.
The schools chancellor’s resignation is the fourth in less than two weeks among top officials in Mayor Eric Adams’s administration, following the resignations of the police commissioner and the city’s top lawyer and a statement from the health commissioner saying he would leave office at the end of the year.

This next one could almost be a “News of the Weird” entry:

Three members of the Liberty County Fire Marshal’s Office are out on bond following an investigation by the Texas Rangers where they have been accused of committing crimes on the job.

Fire marshals? What kind of crime could they commit on the job?

In this case, the three accused individuals responded to a crashed 18-wheeler. They are accused of siponing off diesel fuel from the truck’s tank into a “55-gallon drum in the bed of their hazmat vehicle.”

But wait, there’s more:

Additionally, the 18-wheeler carried frozen items, such as duck meat, high-end cheese, croissants, butter, and venison.
“After draining the saddle tank of the 18-wheeler, [deleted] and approximately three other members of his hazmat company proceeded to unload product from the trailer of the 18-wheeler and put it into their own vehicles to keep for personal use,” the affidavit states.

They’re also accused of stealing items from another truck crash. In addition, the indictment claims that the men were doing fire inspections, approving permits, and doing fire investigations without any licenses to do so. Also, one of the men is accused of using his fire marshal’s gear to gain “early access” to scenes for his non-profit “South Liberty County Hazardous Materials Team”.

In court records, he is also accused of using his position to convince towing services that they must pay his hazmat company a fee to operate in Liberty County.

The human resources department of the New Jersey State Police is now being run by the New Jersey Attorney General’s office.

Why? Well, turns out the NJSP has a habit of using disciplinary investigations as a weapon.

A separate review done by the attorney general’s Office of Public Integrity and Accountability highlighted two troubling episodes involving a retired lieutenant, Joseph Nitti, who had worked in the agency’s internal affairs unit.
After receiving an anonymous letter containing a complaint that a trooper had made a racist comment about a senior Black officer, Mr. Nitti “squandered police resources” trying to identify the tipster rather than investigating the accuracy of the concern, according to the attorney general’s office.
Mr. Nitti, who according to state treasury records retired last year with a $8,893 monthly pension, obtained typewriter samples and video from the area near a post office where the envelope had been mailed and evaluated fingerprints found on the letter. Against orders, he also submitted it for DNA testing. Then, at the lieutenant’s urging, the Black officer who had been the reported target of the racist comment was brought up on bogus internal affairs charges.

…

In another case, investigators found that Mr. Nitti had sent a text message to colleagues discussing the arrest of a trooper who had been charged with giving alcohol and having sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl on a school sports trip. “Can we at least see a pic of her. I’d like to see what all the hubbub is about,” he wrote, according to the attorney general’s office.

Finally, Stewart Rosenwasser died yesterday. Mr. Rosenwasser was a former judge and prosecutor in New York (I believe in Orange County). He was indicted on Monday for taking $63,000 in bribe money.

According to the 43-page indictment, Rosenwasser and millionaire businessman Mout’z Soudani conspired to build a case against Soudani’s sister and nephew and recoup the allegedly stolen cash.

…

The plot targeted Martin Soudani and his mother, Eman Soudani, who were allegedly involved in embezzling $1.6 million from Mout’z Soudani, a wealthy former restaurateur, the indictment said.
On March 8, 2023, Rosenwasser, as an Orange County assistant district attorney, charged Soudani’s kin with grand larceny for allegedly stealing the money from Mout’z Soudani and had arrest warrants issued.
When they appeared in court, defense lawyers asked that Rosenwasser recuse himself from prosecuting the case because he had represented Mout’z Soudani in the 1990s and that presented a conflict of interest.
Rosenwasser denied the claim and remained on the case.
But by June 2023 the DA’s office was getting wise and Rosewasser was replaced on the case, the indictment said.
By March 2024, the case against Soudani’s sister had been dropped and his nephew agreed to plead guilty to grand larceny in the embezzlement case in exchange for a prison sentence of one to seven years.
Martin Soudani and Eman Soudani later filed a $22.5 million lawsuit claiming the cases against them were tainted.

Mr. Rosewasser resigned earlier this year. The FBI was coming to arrest him yesterday on the charges in the indictment, and he allegedly decided to open fire on the agents. SWAT responded, and Mr. Rosewasser was found dead when the police entered his home. The FBI claims he committed suicide, but it isn’t clear to me if an official determination has been made yet.

Posted in Cops, FBI, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Smoking hyenas update.

Thursday, September 12th, 2024

I haven’t had a lot of time today, but before I turn in, I wanted to note: NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban resigned today. (Previously.)

Part of the reason I want to get this up is rumor control. The interim commissioner is not this guy:

though he does have NYPD and leadership experience. The interim commissioner is also not this guy:

though in my humble opinion, the NYPD would be vastly improved by a commissioner who carries an old-school Fitz Special.

(I’m sure you were expecting the second one, but I couldn’t pass up a chance to make a reference to the Fitz Special.)

Posted in Bagatelle, Cops, Guns, Law, NYPD | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#128 in a series)

Thursday, September 5th, 2024

This may not the five-alarm fire I thought it was at first, but it is still pretty significant to say the least.

Federal agents on Wednesday zeroed in on the highest ranks of Mayor Eric Adams’s administration, searching a home and seizing the phones of the New York City police commissioner, the first deputy mayor, the schools chancellor and others, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The police commissioner. They seized the police commissioner’s phones. Wow.

Among the other officials the federal investigators sought information from were the deputy mayor for public safety and a senior adviser to the mayor who is one of his closest confidants, the people said. Both men have had other legal challenges.
The agents also searched the home and seized the phone of a consultant who is the brother of both the schools chancellor and one of the deputy mayors, the people said.
The nature of the investigations is unclear, but it appears that one is focused on the senior City Hall officials and the other touches on the police commissioner, the people said.

…

Representatives of the City Hall officials — the first deputy mayor, Sheena Wright; her partner, Schools Chancellor David C. Banks; the deputy mayor for public safety, Philip Banks III; and a senior adviser to the mayor, Timothy Pearson — could not be reached or declined to comment.
The consultant, Terence Banks, a brother of Philip Banks and David Banks, recently opened a government and community relations firm aimed at closing a gap “between New York’s intricate infrastructure and political landscape.” He, too, could not be reached for comment.
Several of the officials had their phones seized or records of their communications subpoenaed.

…

In addition to the police commissioner, Edward A. Caban, several other department officials, including Mr. Caban’s chief of staff and two Queens precinct commanders, also had their phones taken by federal agents, two of the people said.

…

In 2013, Ms. Wright and David and Philip Banks were involved in an incident that raised ethical questions. Ms. Wright and Gregg Walker, her then husband, had a dispute that led to mutual allegations of domestic abuse and the arrest of both people. The City reported that David Banks called his brother Philip, then a high-ranking police official. The charges were dropped.
Ms. Wright has denied any wrongdoing in the case, telling The New York Times in 2022 that she “never asked anyone to make any phone calls” on her behalf and that she was released “almost immediately not because of any outside influence, but because the facts of the case were so obvious.”

…

After taking office in 2022, Mr. Adams selected Philip Banks as his top aide overseeing public safety, though Mr. Banks himself had previously been ensnared in a federal criminal investigation.
Years earlier, the same federal prosecutors’ office conducting the current investigations named him an unindicted co-conspirator in an expansive corruption case that led to prison time for Mr. Banks’s then close friend Norman Seabrook, at the time a leader of the city’s correction officers’ union, among others.
Over the course of two years, prosecutors scrutinized Mr. Banks’s acceptance of gifts in 2013 and 2014 while he was chief of department, the city’s top uniformed police official. The gifts included paid vacations to the Dominican Republic and Los Angeles, cigars and a ring worn by Muhammad Ali. He received gifts from and socialized with two businessmen who were trying to curry favor with city leaders. One later pleaded guilty to criminal charges, cooperating with prosecutors, while the other was convicted at trial.
But prosecutors did not charge Mr. Banks, concluding that they did not have sufficient evidence to prove that he had taken official action in exchange for the gifts he received, people familiar with the case have said.

Nobody will go on the record as knowing what’s going on, but there’s speculation that it is tied to that whole weird Turkish consolate thing.

Or it could be something else. It sounds like the whole Adams administration is so packed with corruption, they can’t even keep the lid screwed on. Of course, all suspects are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. And to be fair, none of the subjects of the raids have been charged with any crimes.

Yet.

Posted in Cops, Law, NYPD, Politics | 1 Comment »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#121 in a series)

Friday, June 28th, 2024

Celeste Murphy used to be the police chief in Chattanooga. (The one in Tennessee, in case you were wondering.)

She resigned on Wednesday.

She turned herself in on Thursday.

On Tuesday, the Hamilton County Grand Jury returned a 17-count indictment, charging Murphy with one count of Illegal Voter Registration, one count of False Entries on Official Registration or Election Documents, three counts of False Entries in Governmental Records, three counts of Forgery, three counts of Perjury, and six counts of Official Misconduct. This morning, Murphy surrendered to agents at the Hamilton County Jail, where authorities booked her and subsequently released her after Murphy posted an aggregate $19,000 bond.

This sounds like more of that voter fraud that never happens. Or it could be someone trying desperately to hold onto a position that requires residence in the area:

We looked into her residency information, and found that she is listed as a homeowner in Atlanta on the Fulton County Property Records website.
She is listed as having purchased a home in September 2020, and still being one of two primary homeowners.
Property tax logs show that taxes were still paid on the home.
Meanwhile, a look at Hamilton County Property Records shows that she is not listed as a homeowner in Chattanooga.

Posted in Cops, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#118 and #119 in a series)

Wednesday, May 8th, 2024

Some people might question whether these are actual “flames”, but I think they’re close enough for government work.

1. Here comes the judge?

No. There goes the judge.

Prince George’s County Circuit Court Judge April Ademilyi has been removed from her position by the state’s Supreme Court after being suspended since 2023, 7News learned Tuesday morning.

…

Investigations began into Ademiluyi on Sept. 27, 2022, after allegations arose that she bypassed the judicial nomination process and vetting, ultimately beating a previously seated judge.
Court documents noted concerns from the Commission of Judicial Disabilities with a campaign ad from Ademiluyi that detailed her personal experience as a sexual assault survivor, claiming that the ad could “reasonably be perceived as inconsistent with the independence and impartiality of judicial office.”
While in office, two of Ademiluyi’s employees told the commission that the judge would routinely “demand, demean, and belittle” them, leading to both seeking medical attention for stress and anxiety
In 2023, Ademilyi was suspended without pay and barred from a courthouse.

WP (archived):

The specifics of the alleged misconduct are unclear because the high court did not include an explanatory opinion with its brief ruling. The court broadly cited at least a dozen codes Ademiluyi allegedly violated as a Circuit Court judge, involving her behavior with jurors, her impartiality and fairness, her compliance with the law and her cooperation with disciplinary authorities, but it did not offer specific details of the purported misconduct.

…

She has alleged in complaints and court documents that her outsider status drew hostility from her judicial colleagues, creating a working environment that prompted her to file what she said was a whistleblower complaint against her supervisors in 2022.
In a statement, she asserted that her removal from the bench is retaliation for that complaint. After reporting her supervisors to the Maryland Commission on Judicial Disabilities, they responded with a complaint of their own, alleging misconduct by Ademiluyi in hundreds of pages of documents that the commission and Maryland Supreme Court deemed valid.
Her fellow judges alleged that she behaved inappropriately at the courthouse, including insubordination, unprofessionalism, tardiness and lack of participation in critical judicial training sessions.

…

Soon after Ademiluyi became a judge, tensions with her colleagues began to develop, according to court and commission documents.
But Ademiluyi took the first action before the commission, filing a complaint against Sheila Tillerson Adams, then serving as the county’s longtime chief administrative judge, and Daneeka Varner Cotton, who would soon take over for Tillerson Adams.
Ademiluyi alleged that Tillerson Adams forged her signature on a ruling and that the two had been monitoring her emails in an attempt to sabotage her, according to commission and court documents. In a letter to the commission, Cotton replied that it would be “extremely difficult to respond to the blatant falsehoods” alleged in Ademiluyi’s complaint.

…

Tillerson Adams told investigators that dealing with Ademiluyi had been a “nightmare.” The commission ultimately dismissed Ademiluyi’s complaint, ruling that there was not sufficient evidence to support her allegations.
Then came a second commission complaint from Tillerson Adams against Ademiluyi, alleging misconduct. The commission would ultimately find that, among other conclusions, she refused to talk to certain judges, instructed her law clerks to not speak to other judges and sent emails saying, “I don’t look forward to meeting you or communicating with you at anytime.” They also found that her election campaign content could have led to perceptions of her not being impartial in sexual violence cases.

…

The Maryland Supreme Court’s decision Monday went far beyond the punishment the commission had unanimously recommended in February, which included a censure and six-month unpaid suspension, with two months served immediately and four months suspended depending on her compliance with certain conditions.
Those conditions included that the Supreme Court institute a one-year probation with a monitor; an assigned mentor judge who would provide monthly reports; “a complete emotional, behavioral and prosocial assessment” followed by Ademiluyi’s cooperation and compliance with any recommended treatments; and attendance at Maryland judiciary, educational and ethics trainings.

As I understand it, she beat Jared McCarthy in the 2020 general election for the position. Mike the Musicologist, who tipped me off to this story, also sent over a tweet:

2. Troy Finner, the chief of police for the Houston Police Department, retired yesterday.

This sounds more like a “retirefiring” than an actual retirement, even though he’s been on the job for 31 years. The HPD has been under a lot of fire recently over closing 264,000 cases. The cases were “suspended” with a code indicating “lack of personnel”…

…some of which were for violent crimes and sexual assault. It means those reports were not investigated.

Former Chief Finner had said repeatedly he knew nothing about this, but an email surfaced recently in which he was told that a road rage incident had been closed with that code:

In the email response, Finner calls the lack of investigation “unacceptable” and directs officers to follow up on the case.

More from Houston’s ABC13.

And, as a special bonus for reading all the way to the end:

Posted in Cops, Firings, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 29, 2024.

Friday, March 29th, 2024

Harvey Elwood Gann (US Army – ret.). He was 103.

Mr. Gann was a flight engineer and top turret gunner with the 449th Bomb Group, 718th Squadron, on B24s. His plane was shot down during a bombing raid and he had to bail out. He was the only member of his crew to survive, but was imprisoned in a German POW camp. He escaped and was recaptured three times: his fourth escape attempt was successful.

He served as a Austin police officer for 38 years, mostly in vice and narcotics according to the online obit. He also wrote a book about his wartime experiences, Escape I Must (affiliate link).

(Hattip on this one to a source who I will leave anonymous for now. While Mr. Gann has an online obituary, my source was informed of this through other non-public channels, and I’m not sure they want to be named right now.)

Louis Gossett Jr.

200 acting credits in IMDB, with 12 more upcoming. They include five episodes of “Hap and Leonard”, “The Rockford Files”, “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”, and “Longstreet”.

NYT obit for Vernor Vinge (archived).

Jennifer Leak, actress. Other credits include the good “Hawaii Five-O”, “The Delphi Bureau”, and “Nero Wolfe” (the 1981 series with William Conrad in the title role).

Posted in 1970s, Books, Cops, Heroism, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Ketchup.

Thursday, March 7th, 2024

Apologies for the silence the past two days. I have been busy assisting the police with their inquiries.

(more…)

Posted in Admin, Cops, Law, Urine | 1 Comment »

Art (Acevedo), damn it! watch. (#AK of a series)

Tuesday, January 23rd, 2024

Art Acevedo is not taking the job in Austin. Repeat: Art Acevedo is not taking the job in Austin.

Acevedo notified Interim City Manager Jesús Garza Tuesday morning, following a firestorm about his appointment as an assistant city manager over the Austin Police Department (APD). On Tuesday afternoon, he posted a statement on X, the platform previously known as Twitter.
“It is clear that this newly created position has become a distraction from the critical work ahead for our city, the Austin Police Department, and the Austin Police Association,” Acevedo said in part, adding that he has always loved and admired the members of APD and, “as a long time member of their extended family, I will continue to support them in any way I can. Their well being has and will always [be] a priority for me, which is one of the reasons I have made this decision.”

I was actually surprised by the reaction to this, but haven’t had a chance to cover it. Many city leaders said, in essence, they felt bushwhacked by the decision and resented not being consulted.

“The biggest reaction, aside from surprise, is how does this make the Austin Police Department stronger and better,” Councilmember Ryan Alter, who represents a large portion of South Austin, told KVUE. “There were real problems that happened under his watch. To bring him back … Doesn’t honor the victims and the work that had to be done after he left.”

It was also particularly upsetting to victims of sexual assault. The city had a special apology ceremony this afternoon:

According to previous KXAN reporting, in 2016, an audit showed that APD lab technicians weren’t using proper techniques when calculating the odds of DNA results, potentially botching thousands of cases. The audit also found that evidence had been contaminated in at least one case and that lab technicians were using expired materials. The DNA lab closed in 2017.

The DNA lab problems, and the case mishandling, all took place under Chief Acevedo’s watch.

If we find out anything about what he’s doing next, we’ll post another Art Watch here. To be honest, we’re a little surprised he never got a position in the Biden administration…

Posted in Austin, Cops, Law, Politics | 3 Comments »

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