Archive for the ‘Cops’ Category

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Banana republicans watch: February 27, 2014.

Thursday, February 27th, 2014

Somebody has been looking very closely at California police departments.

Five San Francisco police officers and a former officer have been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges including extortion, dealing drugs, stealing computers and other property from suspects and searching residential hotels without legal justification.

The criminal indictments appear to be a result of this series of events:

Officers Arshad Razzak, 41, Richard Yick, 36, and Raul Eric Elias, 44, all formerly assigned to the Southern police station at the city’s Hall of Justice, are accused of conspiring to threaten and intimidate residents of single-room occupancy hotel rooms by entering them without legal justification by using a master key.

Razzak and Yick are also accused of falsifying incident reports.

Sgt. Ian Furminger, 47, Officer Edmond Robles, 46, and former Officer Reynaldo Vargas, 45, of Palm Desert, engaged in “multiple criminal conspiracies,” including dealing marijuana, stealing money, a $500 Apple gift card, and other items from suspects, and stealing money, drugs and other valuable items that were seized on behalf of the city, the indictment said.

Other high points:

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

You come at the King (City), you best not miss.

Wednesday, February 26th, 2014

The LAT has a second-day story on the King City PD arrests, noted in this space yesterday.

There are several interesting new aspects to the story:

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Cops, Guns, Law, Media | Comments Closed

Banana republicans watch: February 25, 2014.

Tuesday, February 25th, 2014

A top Monterey County prosecutor confirmed Tuesday that a group of former and current King City police officials — including the longtime former chief and acting chief — have been arrested in connection with a district attorney’s investigation.

Former chief Chief Nick Baldiviez is being charged with embezzlement. Bruce Miller, who was serving as the acting chief, is charged with bribery. Bobby Carrillo, who was a sergeant with the King City PD, is charged with “conspiracy to commit a crime and bribery by a public officer”. Officer Mario Mottu Sr. is charged with “embezzlement by a public official”. Officer Jaime Andrade was also charged, but the charges against him are not stated, and it is unclear if he has been arrested. There are also claims that a sixth officer, who has not been named, is also charged. The King City PD, according to the LAT, has 17 officers.

I’m trying to find information from sources closer to King City, but neither of the San Francisco newspapers seem to have anything. (King City is a little south of Salinas, putting it closer to SF than LA.)

However, I did turn up this story that I’d previously missed: Stephen Tanabe is going to serve 15 months of federal time. Tanabe was a deputy with the Contra Costa Sheriff’s Department: he was convicted of “multiple felonies including conspiracy and extortion” in the “Dirty DUI” case, which I have written about previously.

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

And another bulletin from Bizarro world.

Sunday, February 23rd, 2014

Missed this until the NYT picked it up today: Steven Mandell was convicted on Friday of one set of charges relating to a kidnapping plot.

Specifically, Mandell was convicted of plotting to

…kidnap a Riverside, Ill., businessman, and then torture and extort money from him. He planned to kill and dismember him in an office that Mr. Mandell and an accomplice had equipped with saws and a sink in which to drain their victim’s blood, the authorities said.

Apparently, Mandell and his accomplice wanted the businessman to turn over ownership of 25 buildings to them.

What’s so odd about this? Well…

1. Mandell was actually acquitted on a second set of charges; the claim was that he intended to kill another businessman, along with that guy’s wife, so he could get control of their strip club. The strip club was reportedly “mob connected”.
2. Keeping with our theme for the day, Mandell’s supposed accomplice killed himself in jail before the trial.
3. Mandell was a former officer with the Chicago Police Department. No, really, I am not making this up. He served for 10 years and left the force in 1983.
4. So why am I not making “only ones” jokes or suggesting the CPD needs adult supervision? (It does, but not because of Mandell.) Because Mandell’s history since 1983 has been “colorful”.

Formerly known as Steven Manning, he was convicted in 1992 for his role in the 1984 kidnapping of two reputed Kansas City drug traffickers and was sentenced to two life terms plus 100 years. He was cleared of those charges on appeal, and in 2005, he was awarded more than $6.5 million in damages by a federal jury that determined that two F.B.I. agents had framed him. A federal judge threw out the award in 2006.

Framed by the F.B.I. But wait, the story gets even better!

In 1993, Mandell was convicted of murdering Jimmy Pellegrino in 1990. Pellegrino owned a trucking company, and was allegedly murdered by Mandell as part of a drug deal, according to an informant with Mafia ties.

Mandell spent eight years on death row. And I bet you know what happened next: that’s right, the conviction was overturned on appeal, and Mandell walked in that case as well. (That KansasCity.com link has some more background on why both of these convictions were thrown out. And Mandell’s supposed accomplice in the current case? The one who killed himself in jail? He was also convicted in the KC kidnapping, and also had his conviction overturned on appeal, based in large part on the evidence Mandell collected in his civil case.)

So I’m avoiding cop snark in general here, and CPD snark in particular, because I don’t know what to make of this. It seems like there’s two possibilities: Mandell is a really bad guy who got lucky twice in having his convictions thrown out. Or somebody in law enforcement has a real problem with Mandell, has gone after him three times, lost twice (“Jurors also found that the investigators encouraged perjury, fabricated evidence, and concealed those facts from Clay County prosecutors.“), and now they have at least a temporary victory. It’ll be interesting to see if this holds up.

(I suppose there is a third possibility: why not both? But if Mandell really is such a bad guy, why did law enforcement need to fabricate evidence against him?)

It will also be interesting to read the true-crime book that I’m sure someone is writing about this case.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Law | Comments Closed

My humps, my humps…

Friday, February 14th, 2014

A camel that escaped from a Palmdale property and began charging people and cars is now in the custody of animal control officials.

Thoughts:

1. I admit I’ve written some bad Perl code. But I don’t recall writing any that ran away. SQL queries, yes, but not Perl code.
2. “Runaway Camel” sort of sounds like a stunt organized by those truth jackasses.
3. I have a “primates” tag; do I need a “mammals” tag?

Edited to add: I think I do need a “mammals” tag, and an associated “camels” tag. But even though primates are mammals, I don’t feel right moving the “primates” tag under the “mammals” tag, so I’m keeping them separate for now.

Posted in California Über Alles, Camels, Clippings, Cops, Geek, Law, Mammals, Perl, Programming Languages | 1 Comment »

The LAPD eight.

Thursday, February 6th, 2014

A brief followup:

Eight Los Angeles police officers who violated department policy when they mistakenly opened fire on two women during the hunt for Christopher Dorner will be retrained and returned to the field, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said in a department-wide message Wednesday.

More:

“While I understand supervisors and officers were required to make split-second decisions regarding the perceived threat presented before them I found it to be very concerning that officers fired before adequately identifying a threat; fired without adequately identifying a target and not adequately evaluating cross fire situations,” Beck said.

And:

If Beck does discipline the officers, the penalties are expected to be warnings, written admonishments or similarly light punishments, the sources said.

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

From the files of Captain Obvious.

Tuesday, February 4th, 2014

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck has found that eight officers who opened fire on two women in a pickup truck during a search for Christopher Dorner violated the department’s policy on using deadly force, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the case.

You do remember the pickup truck story, don’t you?

As the vehicle approached the house, officers opened fire, unloading a barrage of bullets into the truck. When the shooting stopped, they realized their mistake. The truck was a different make and model. The color wasn’t gray, as Dorner’s was, but blue. And it wasn’t Dorner inside the truck, but a woman and her mother delivering copies of the Los Angeles Times.

And, of course, the unarmed women never fired on the cops or displayed a weapon…

This is priceless:

A panel of high-ranking police officials that reviewed the shooting urged Beck to clear the officers of wrongdoing, said the sources, who spoke on the condition that their names not be used because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the case.

They shot up a pickup truck with two unarmed women in it, and “high-ranking police officials” wanted them cleared?

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

Quickie followup.

Saturday, January 25th, 2014

A while back, I wrote about the strange case of Brian Mulligan, who may (or may not) have been high on “bath salts” and may (or may not) have been assaulted by the LAPD, but was definitely suing the department.

Well, the case went to trial, and…

…the jury found for the LAPD.

Not sure I have any feelings about this one way or the other; I was pretty skeptical about both sides and their respective stories. But I did want to make note of the verdict if, for no other reason, than the historical record.

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

Kelly Thomas.

Tuesday, January 14th, 2014

Since I’ve started thinking seriously (as a grown-up adult, not a child) about criminal justice issues, I’ve maintained certain positions.

One of those positions is that the verdict of a jury deserves a certain amount of deference. Yes, I may disagree with the verdict the jury returns. But: they were there in the courtroom. I was not. They watched all the testimony in person. I did not. They were able to see subtle cues of tone and inflection. I was not. At best, what I am basing my judgment on is what I read in the newspaper or saw on TV. These things are subject to conscious and unconscious bias, as well as errors and omissions. How can I question the verdict a jury returns without all the information they had access to? George Zimmerman or OJ Simpson, I’ve always thought the jury should be respected.

But I’m having trouble reconciling that with the acquittals of Manuel Ramos and Jay Cicinelli in the beating death of Kelly Thomas. (Previously. Also previously and graphic image warning.)

How does a jury return a verdict that says hitting a man in the face twenty times with a Taser is okay? How does a jury return a verdict that says telling a man “See these fists? They’re getting ready to [expletive] you up.” and then beating him until he can’t breathe and his blood is pooling on the sidewalk is not, at the very least, involuntary manslaughter? What evidence did they see that we did not?

And is it a compromise of my principles that I’m hoping the Justice Department indicts Ramos and Cicinelli?

Fiat justitia ruat caelum. But what is justice in this case?

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Cops, Law, Rage | Comments Closed

Random notes: January 8, 2014.

Wednesday, January 8th, 2014

Jeff Ireland out as general manager in Miami, on the heels of the Mike Sherman firing. This is being spun as “by mutual agreement”:

A club source said Ireland was going to lose much, if not all, of his decision-making power. Owner Stephen Ross intended to hire an executive with personnel authority over Ireland, a situation that was not acceptable to Ireland.

106 individuals charged in a massive, multi-decade long Social Security disability fraud scheme. Included in the indictments are 72 former NYC police officers and eight former NYC firefighters.

More to come. I’m getting a slow start this morning, but I do plan a gun show post as soon as I’m able to get one up. Assuming Lawrence doesn’t beat me to it.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Firings, Law, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Random notes: December 28, 2013.

Saturday, December 28th, 2013

Desert Hot Springs, California is in trouble.

Turn north, and you make your way up an arid stretch of road to a battered city where empty storefronts outnumber shops, the Fire Department has been closed, City Hall is on a four-day week and the dwindling coffers may be empty by spring.

Why? I’ll give you one guess.

Here, under the budget enacted last spring, about $7 million of the city’s $10.6 million annual payroll went to the 39-member police force. The situation was so dire that an audit, compiled weeks before municipal elections in November but not made public until later, showed that Desert Hot Springs was $4 million short for the year and would run out of money as early as April 2014.

Last week, the city cut all municipal salaries, including those of the police, by 22 percent. The city also capped “incentive pay” and cut back on holiday and vacation days. Naturally, the police officer’s association is stating these cuts are illegal.

Police officers here, as in many California cities, can retire as young as 50 with 30 years of service and receive 90 percent of their final salary every year — drawing those pensions for decades. Police unions say the fault lies with state and local politicians who failed to adequately fund the pension system over the years, and inflated benefits during boom years. Others wonder whether such salaries and pensions were ever affordable, particularly in cities as small and struggling as this. In Desert Hot Springs, for example, for every dollar that the city pays its police officers, another 36 cents must be sent to Calpers to fund their pensions.

Desert Hot Springs has a current population of around 27,000.

The average pay and benefits package for a police officer here had been worth $177,203 per year, in a city where the median household income was $31,356 in 2011, according to the Census Bureau. All of this had gone largely unnoticed until becoming the center of debate during the recent municipal election.

Oh, and by the way: Desert Hot Springs filed for bankruptcy in 2001, and is still making payments on a $10 million civil judgment against the city.

But, you know, the police aren’t the only people who get large salaries.

An examination of tax records, contracts and other documents by The New York Times found that hefty stagehand salaries at many New York nonprofit performance institutions are more widespread than was previously known.

You don’t say.

At nine top such institutions that have contracts with Local 1, stagehands make up 36 of the 98 most highly compensated employees, or about 37 percent. The average annual total salary and benefits of those highest-paid stagehands, at places from the Metropolitan Opera to the Roundabout Theater Company, is nearly $310,000, according to the nonprofits’ most recent tax filings.

That’s good money. I wonder when they can put in for retirement.

Backstage workers can earn more than the onstage talent. Five stagehands at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center were each paid more in total compensation in 2011 than the highest-paid dancer at New York City Ballet, filings showed. And, in 2010, “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” paid its stagehands a total of $138,000 a week, while the principals and members of the ensemble earned slightly less than $100,000 put together, according to documents submitted to the state attorney general’s office.

The paper of record seems to want readers to be shocked and appalled at how much stagehands are paid. Personally, I’m glad to hear that they’re making big money; I think they have every right to negotiate lucrative contracts with their employers, and I don’t see any reason to be indignant that “the four top stagehands at the Metropolitan Opera earned more than $500,000 each in total compensation (including retirement and other benefits), tax filings showed.“

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Cops, Law, Theatre | 1 Comment »

The story you are about to hear is true.

Monday, December 23rd, 2013

The names have not been changed to protect the innocent.

One night in 1962, a young police officer was working Vice out of Wilshire Division.

We were trying to bust after-hours drinking spots engaging in illegal alcohol sales, prostitution and drug activity. I had been the undercover operator on a recent takedown, and on this particular night our sergeant and one vice team were trying the same tactic on a second persistent offender, this time in a residential area. My partner and I, along with another vice team, were providing backup, out of sight but on the tactical radio frequency.

The vice cops pulled over a cab that had two men in it.

One of the men was Lenny Bruce. The other man was a then unknown actor named Peter O’Toole. And the vice cop was Joseph Wambaugh. Click through for the whole story.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Law | Comments Closed

New metaphor needed. Apply within.

Monday, December 16th, 2013

Last week, I asked the musical question:

Does LACSD make it a practice to hire and promote deputies who are dumber than a bag of hair?

Apparently, “dumber than a bag of hair” does not even begin to cover it.

Two Los Angeles County sheriff’s sergeants accused of lying to federal investigators by threatening to arrest an FBI agent secretly recorded the confrontation outside the agent’s home, a federal prosecutor said in court Monday.

Yes. Not only did they try to intimidate an FBI agent, they recorded themselves doing it. And the prosecution has those recordings now.

(I did give some thought, for just a moment, to the idea that this might have been an ass-covering measure. But on second thought, that doesn’t make much sense; you want to cover your butt on something like this, you record the supervisor giving the illegal order. You don’t record yourself committing the crime.)

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

This is intended to enrage you. (#6 in a series)

Friday, December 13th, 2013

Wednesday’s verdict in particular seemed to line up with what many of the officers on trial have argued: that these were unique events under extreme circumstances rather than, as the Justice Department and even some city officials have insisted, symptoms of a much deeper and broader dysfunction within the police force.

These “unique events under extreme circumstances” include shooting an unarmed man, beating and handcuffing three other men who drove the shooting victim to a police station, driving their car to a levee, and setting the car on fire with the shooting victim inside.

These “unique events under extreme circumstances” also include shooting even more unarmed people and covering those shootings up as well.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Law, Rage | Comments Closed

Random notes: December 10, 2013.

Tuesday, December 10th, 2013

One bright and lovely morning in September, on the first day of school, three traffic lanes that went from the streets of Fort Lee, New Jersey, to the George Washington bridge were suddenly shut down:

Cars backed up, the town turned into a parking lot, half-hour bridge commutes stretched into four hours, buses and children were late for school, and emergency workers could not respond quickly to the day’s events, which included a missing toddler, a cardiac arrest and a car driving into a building.

The lanes were ostensibly closed for a “traffic study”:

But the workers testified that the Port Authority already collected data on how many cars traveled in each lane, so such a traffic study would have been unnecessary.
The director of the bridge, Robert Durando, testified that in 35 years at the Port Authority, he had never heard of lanes being closed down for a traffic study.

The lanes were shut down for a total of four days. The Port Authority controls the bridge, and gave the order to shut down the lanes. And the members of the Port Authority are appointed by Chris Christie.

The mayor of Fort Lee, a Democrat, complained in a letter in September that the lane closings were “punitive” — Mr. Christie, a Republican, was leaning heavily on Democratic mayors to endorse him for re-election so he could present himself as a presidential candidate with bipartisan appeal, but the mayor was not going along.

So now the New Jersey legislature is holding hearings, and it sounds like there’s very little paperwork documenting exactly why the Port Authority decided to hold a traffic study on one of the busiest days of the year. It also sounds like there’s a lot of…obfuscation, shall we say?

On the one hand, I want to give this the “NYT covers a Republican politician” discount. On the other hand, there seems to be no dispute that three access lanes to the busiest bridge in the United States were closed for four days, and not for emergency repairs. That to me is simply inexcusable; in a case like this, I would support individuals taking it upon themselves to reopen the “closed” lanes, as well as the liberal application of tar and feathers.

Speaking of tar and feathers, here are some excerpts from yesterday’s testimony in the Kelly Thomas trial that are designed to enrage you:

“That would not be good proper police procedure,” [John A. ] Wilson [testifying as a “use of force expert” – DB], a 26-year FBI veteran, said when asked hypothetically about a suspect being hit on the head. Such a blow “is going to cause serious bodily injuries.”

Prosecutors maintain that Thomas was struck repeatedly in the face with the front of [Jay] Cicinelli’s Taser and that the injuries contributed to his death. Audio from the night captures Cicinelli saying he hit Thomas 20 times in the face with his stun gun.

Wilson also testified that when the video captures [Manuel] Ramos putting on latex gloves and threatening to punch Thomas, it was a show of force by Ramos: “It indicates there’s going to be contact made, or blood or some body fluid may be exposed as a result of a violent contact.”

In the video, Ramos puts on the gloves and tells Thomas, “See these fists? They’re getting ready to [expletive] you up.”

Wilson said officers should have stopped hitting Thomas after he started complaining that he couldn’t breathe and a pool of blood started forming on the concrete.

Morning coverage of the Spaccia conviction:

Spaccia probably faces a sentence similar to the 10 years to 12 years in prison that her former boss, Robert Rizzo, is expected to receive, prosecutors said. Rizzo pleaded no contest to 69 corruption charges in October.

I promised more coverage of the LA County Sheriff’s Department indictments, but I’d be doing it anyway. There is a lot of “Wow” going on here.

The indictments allege two assaults on inmates and three on people who visited the jail. They also include claims that deputies wrote false reports to justify using force and conducted illegal arrests and searches of jail visitors.
A sergeant who supervised deputies in the visiting area of Men’s Central Jail was accused of encouraging violence and reprimanding employees “for not using force on visitors … if the visitors had supposedly ‘disrespected'” jail deputies, according to an indictment.

Remember, these aren’t inmates (not that it would be any better if they were): these are visitors. But wait, it gets better:

In one case, prosecutors say, an Austrian consul official trying to visit an Austrian inmate was arrested and handcuffed even though she had committed no crime and would have been immune from prosecution, the indictment said.

There’s even more. A crooked jailer smuggled a cell phone in for an inmate who was an FBI informant.

After the discovery, sheriff’s officials moved the inmate — identified only as “AB” in the indictment — and changed his name. They then altered the department’s internal inmate database to falsely say he had been released, prosecutors allege. Deputies continued to isolate the inmate even after federal authorities had told sheriff’s officials that a judge had ordered the inmate’s appearance before a grand jury, the indictment states.

Can you say, “obstruction of justice”? I knew you could. But it gets even better:

Stephen Leavins, a lieutenant in the unit that handles allegations of criminal misconduct against sheriff’s employees, was accused of directing two sergeants to confront an FBI agent working on the investigation outside her home. The sergeants — Scott Craig and Maricella Long — falsely told the agent that a warrant was being prepared for her arrest, prosecutors said in court records.

They tried to intimidate an FBI agent? Does LACSD make it a practice to hire and promote deputies who are dumber than a bag of hair?

For a while now, I’ve felt like the HouChron is trying to become more like BuzzFeed; if you look at their website, there’s a huge emphasis on slideshows and listicles. I generally don’t like linking to that crap (though the slide shows of fair food are often interesting) but here’s an exception: historical photos of Bonnie and Clyde. The HouChron isn’t kidding around with the “graphic photos” warning, either; there are a couple of photos of Bonnie and Clyde after the shootout. (There’s also some nice photos of a couple of their guns, if you’re into that sort of thing.)

(Yeah, it is tied to the mini-series, which I didn’t watch, but the photos are still interesting on their own.)

Edited to add: Grammar question. “A FBI agent” or “An FBI agent”? “A FBI informant” or “An FBI informant”?

Posted in Bridges, California Über Alles, Clippings, Cops, Guns, History, Law, Politics, Rage, Roads | Comments Closed

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