Archive for the ‘Cops’ Category

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Aiyana Stanley-Jones.

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

Who was Aiyana Stanley-Jones?

She was a seven-year-old in Detroit. A SWAT team raided her home looking for a murder suspect; in the process of that raid, the police set her and her bed on fire with a flash-bang grenade. Then they shot her.

Sucks, right? But it was an accident, right? It may be the kind of accident that happens all too often these days, but still an accident, right?

Detroit Police Officer Joseph Weekley has been arraigned on an indictment on charges of involuntary manslaughter and careless and reckless discharge of a firearm causing death in the May 2010 slaying of Aiyana Stanley-Jones during a raid.

Well, okay, involuntary manslaughter and “careless and reckless discharge of a firearm” still carry the connotation of accident, right? Sure. But when was the last time you heard of a police officer being indicted for an accidental shooting? The Oakland BART shooting, perhaps? (And note that that officer was charged with second degree murder; the jury convicted him of less serious charges.)

But that’s not the only reason I’m noting this. You see, the SWAT team was being filmed by a crew from “The First 48”, a show on the A&E network. And…

Also charged in an indictment is Allison Howard, 42, of Boston. She is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice. Wayne County prosecutors said Howard was a photographer with “The First 48,” which had a crew following the Special Response Team the night of the raid.

So they’re charging the camera person as well. And note the charges: “perjury”, and “obstruction of justice”. Makes you go “Hmmmmmm”, doesn’t it?

(Hattip: Reason‘s “Hit and Run”.)

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

The Harris County Party Van.

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

Harris County (which includes Houston) decided yesterday that they were going to get their breath testing services from the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Previously, the county had a contract with Lone Star College.

“So what?” you say. “TXDPS must have made them a better deal.”

The contract with DPS, which began Tuesday, will cost the county $330,000 in the first year, which would be $12,000 less than Lone Star’s contract. State law reimburses the county $22.50 for each DWI conviction it obtains without using DPS technicians; Harris County collected $220,000 from the state from 2008 through 2010.

If convictions were to continue at similar rates, the DPS contract could end up being pricier than the Lone Star contract.

Well, maybe TXDPS has more experience and competence than Lone Star. That’s quite possible…

Because the DPS oversees the Texas’ breath-alcohol testing program, the agency has a broader knowledge base with more experienced personnel who focus solely on breath testing, Durfee said. The district attorney’s office also has a preference for larger regional and statewide institutions in forensic science, he said.

So what’s the issue here? Well, one of the people who works for Lone Star is Amanda Culbertson. Ms. Culbertson was also the person who brought out the problems with the BAT vans. Ms. Culbertson will apparently lose her job once Lone Star’s contract ends. Of course, everyone denies that there was any retaliation involved.

I’m torn. It actually does sound to me like there are good reasons to go with DPS. But the timing is, to put it mildly, suspicious, especially since Lone Star has had the contract for 20 years.

Murray Newman (a former prosecutor) over at the excellent “Life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center” blog has some more to say on this, and he comes down pretty firmly on the “retaliation” side. Here’s the Lisa Falkenberg column he mentions.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, HCDA, Law | 1 Comment »

Things I’ve missed.

Monday, October 3rd, 2011

Terry Francona fired by the Boston Red Sox.

Former Broward County Sheriff Nick Navarro passed away on Wednesday. Former Sheriff Navarro is probably most famous for two things:

  1. Being all over the early episodes of Cops.
  2. Trying to press obscenity charges against 2 Live Crew.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Firings, Law, Obits | Comments Closed

What wine goes with an extra-long cheese coney and tots?

Tuesday, September 27th, 2011

Chain restaurants like Sonic (in one location) and Burger King (at least in their Whopper Bars) have started offering beer and wine. Unfortunately, this has turned into a great pain for little benefit:

“Candidly, they’re not utilizing those products very much at this point,” he said. “It doesn’t look like it’s a big deal to consumers — it’s clear they come to us to have an extra-long cheese coney or an all-beef hot dog.”

(Our first thought is a big mouth-filling Cabernet. Other suggestions welcome in comments.)

The LAT asks the same musical question the FAA is asking: how do you keep planes from going into the crowd at Reno?

And the FBI apparently paid a deputy in the LA County Jail $1,500 to smuggle a cellphone in to an informant. You’re telling me a government agency would do something illegal? Why, the next thing I know, you’ll be telling me that government agents used form letters from BATFE to buy guns with taxpayer money, and then provided those guns directly to the drug cartels!

(Edited to add: Fox News. Hattip: Snowflakes in Hell.)

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Food, Guns, Law, Planes | Comments Closed

Special non-sports firings watch.

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

Back in March, we noted that the Miami PD had shot a bunch of folks, and some people were upset over this.

Miami Police Chief Miguel Exposito was fired on Monday. The reason for his firing does not appear to involve shootings:

…[City Manager Johnny] Martinez suspended Exposito for disobeying an order not to demote three high-ranking police officers. The chief chose to reassign and strip the officers of their authority — though not their rank and pay — anyway.

The City Commission voted 3-2 in favor of firing Chief Exposito, and is calling for amendments to the city charter. But don’t cry for the Chief:

Exposito, who was scheduled to retire in January, leaves the city after stints in the internal affairs and sex crimes divisions. The chief, who earned $196,000 a year, will walk with close to $900,000 in banked pension pay and unused sick and vacation time. He turned 57 on Saturday. When the clock struck midnight at City Hall, he received muted happy birthday wishes.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Firings | Comments Closed

Thank you, Tam!

Thursday, September 8th, 2011

I generally try to avoid linking to stuff that’s been posted on other blogs more widely read than mine. After all, if someone like Tam’s already written about it, what more can I add?

My excuse in this case is that Tam only covered one very small part of the website in question, and there’s a lot more there that I think is fascinating.

Faded Glory: Dusty Roads of an FBI Era is devoted to the FBI agents of the early 1930s. Quoting:

This website is a tribute to the many FBI Agents of the ’30s long forgotten and to a very young FBI they so proudly served.  It is their recorded accounts of what really happened; it is their photos they left behind and it’s their letters and more revealing much of which has never seen a day of print.

In addition to Delf Bryce’s employment application, which Tam linked, there’s a lot of other great stuff here. For example:

And all of that is just a small part of what’s on the Faded Glory website. There’s weeks worth of browsing material there. Thanks to Tam for the heads-up.

Posted in Cops, Guns, Law | Comments Closed

I have an odd sense of humor.

Monday, August 29th, 2011

Sorry for the radio silence the past few days. Two reasons:

  1. There just hasn’t been that much to report. I understand there was an earthquake somewhere, and a hurricane in some other place? Other than that, I got nothing (well, except it hit 110 in Austin over the weekend).
  2. I’ve been running around Armadillocon 33 all weekend.

Content will, perhaps, resume soonish. In the meantime, here’s a picture I took Sunday morning, just because I happened to have the book with me at breakfast (I was expecting to be eating alone) and the juxtaposition amused me.

 


The book is Murder Behind the Badge: True Stories of Cops Who Kill, a book which I don’t feel I can recommend. (There may be a longer post later on this.) The dish is pigs in a blanket from the Original Pancake House. The arm belongs to the elusive Mike the Musicologist.

Posted in Books, Cops, Food, Law | Comments Closed

Police professionalism watch.

Monday, August 1st, 2011

Anthony Magsam worked for the Philadelphia Police Department in the Firearms Identification Unit. In that position, Officer Magsam had the opportunity to handle a lot of nifty guns. Officer Magsam was something of a gun buff as well:

Magsam was known by colleagues in the FIU as a gun collector, and he spoke often about knowing how to convert semiautomatic weapons into automatic weapons, according to more than a half-dozen police sources…

Unfortunately, Officer Magsam let his gun buffery get the better of him. Allegedly, he removed the trigger group from what’s described as an AR-15 with three-round burst capability, and replaced it with a semi-auto AR trigger group. He also allegedly took parts out of an M2 carbine:

“The bolt had been removed and replaced with nonautomatic parts that had been ground down and colored with a marker, so that nobody would notice,” the source said. “That started a snowball effect.”

So this is bad, m’kay? Officer Magsam was fired and criminally prosecuted, right? That’s what would happen if you or I were in illegal possession of full-auto parts, right?

Bzzzzt! Wrong! Thanks for playing! Officer Magsam was allowed by the commanding officer of the FIU to transfer out of FIU into another unit, and the theft was not reported.

When a handful of FIU members complained to [Lt. Vincent] Testa [the unit’s commanding officer – DB] that Magsam had broken the law, that the incident should have been reported, the sources said he told them: “That’s what’s going to be done. I gave an order. If you don’t like it, that’s tough s—.”

If I understand the Daily News article correctly, Internal Affairs is investigating. But IA had been investigating for over a year when the Daily News reported the story; it seems the investigation was “stalled”.

By the way, the guy who was overseeing the IA investigation used to work with Lt. Testa in the FIU. And Officer Magsam’s mother…

…Barbara Feeney, a longtime police sergeant, is married to retired police Chief Inspector Michael Feeney.

Posted in Cops, Guns, Law | Comments Closed

Police professionalism update.

Wednesday, July 6th, 2011

We previously noted the case of the LA County Sheriff’s deputies who worked in the county jail, and who were fired for thumping on fellow employees at the Christmas party.

As a followup, and in the interest of fairness, we update the story: the prosecutor’s office has decided not to file charges against the accused deputies.

According to a memo from the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, charges were not filed against eight deputies in part because one of them who was alleging he was assaulted admitted he “struck the first blow,” which would “certainly raise the defense of self-defense.”

Prosecutors also found the statements of a female deputy who alleged she was punched in the chin to be unreliable. She reported being hit, according to the memo, 10 days after the incident, and was apparently inconsistent about who she believed struck her.

According to a department spokesman quoted in the LAT, this does not affect the ongoing departmental investigation.

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

Good cop, bad cop.

Wednesday, June 29th, 2011

Good cop:

Between 1977 and 1987, six women in Northern California were killed and dumped. The cases became known as the “I-5 Strangler” killings; Roger Kibbe was convicted of one of the murders in 1987, and pled guilty to additional murders in 2008.

Unfortunately, the body of one of his victims, Lou Ellen Burleigh, was never found, even though Kibbe attempted to lead law enforcement to where he had left the body.

Earlier this year, Napa County Deputy Sheriff Michael Bartlett decided to search for the body on his own time. It took him about a month, but he eventually found a place that matched up with Kibbe’s description, and a bone.

DNA tests confirmed the bone was Burleigh’s.

At least now her people know. Well done, Officer Bartlett.

Bad cop: Houston police officer Mike Hamby.

Actually, make that “former Houston police officer”. Mr. Hamby was “relieved of duty” June 17th.

What gets you fired from HPD? In this case, former officer Hamby was accused of throwing a tear gas canister into another team’s tent during a barbecue cookoff at the Livestock Show and Rodeo earlier this year.

The powerful chemical irritant wafted over two military veterans — both of them multiple amputees — who were brought to the rodeo event in wheelchairs and were waiting for a ride home.

Former officer Hamby can appeal his firing.

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

The Mighty Quin(tana).

Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011

Former APD officer Leonardo Quintana has been acquitted of one of the domestic assault charges filed against him.

There are apparently three other charges (misdemeanor assault, criminal mischief and criminal trespass) still pending, related to an incident in 2009. (The charge Mr. Quintana was acquitted on relates to a 2008 incident.)

You may remember former officer Quintana from such hits as this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. I may be missing a few.

At this point, I’m tempted to give former officer Quintana his own (sub)category on WCD.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Law | Comments Closed

Random notes: June 21, 2011.

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011

I go out of town for a few days. I come back, and l’affair Ward is still ongoing.

Today’s update: the head of the police union is “troubled” by the dismissal of the DWI charges. And well he should be; as I noted in the previous post, there’s three possible explanations, and two of those make the cops look bad. I haven’t watched the video yet, and I’m not sure doing so would do any good. I don’t have the level of expertise needed to judge if Mr. Ward passed or failed the sobriety tests. But in any case, the union’s right on this one. The county DA owes the citizens a full and complete explanation of why the charges were dismissed, and if wrongdoing or incompetence on the part of the APD were part of the equation, Chief Acevedo needs to address those issues.

In other news from the Statesman, their editorial board would like for us to know that guns are making their way across the border illegally. The editorial is devoted to lobbying for a plan to have Texas DPS set up checkpoints to stop “illegal weapons trafficking”. There are plenty of interesting questions that this editorial ignores:

  • “The weapon used to kill U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Jorge Zapata in February made its way south to Mexico from Dallas. Though the gun was legally purchased, it was smuggled into Mexico, where legal possession of firearms is restricted.” I’m trying to dig up more information on Officer Zapata’s killing, but what I’ve found so far is that he was killed by the Zeta cartel. So is the Statesman stating that US citizens who are Zeta cartel members are legally buying weapons in Dallas? Or are they having other people buy weapons for them in Dallas? That would be an illegal “straw man” purchase. And if Officer Zapata was shot with an actual “AK-47”, as I’ve seen in some reports, it is highly improbable that was purchased in Dallas.
  • Why do we need to use scarce Texas DPS resources to set up random checkpoints for weapons near the border? Why aren’t the existing checkpoints at the border working?
  • It is curious that the Statesman manages to write an entire editorial about illegal traffic of guns to Mexico without mentioning “Operation Gunwalker“.
  • “”According to CNN … over 70 percent of the 29,284 firearms recovered from crime scenes in Mexico in 2009 and 2010 were traced to the United States.” As we’ve discussed previously, is that 70% of the total firearms, or 70% of the total firearms submitted for tracing? If you dig deeper into these reports, a large percentage of firearms recovered aren’t submitted for tracing in the first place, because they can’t be traced, because they don’t have identifying markings, because they’re coming from South America or other countries.

I’ve just started listening to this week’s Vicious Circle podcast. (Warning: Vicious Circle is frequently not safe for work. Or basic human decency.) My great and good friend Weer’d Beard, among other folks, has some excellent points. What makes more sense? Cartel members are coming across the border to Houston, Dallas, and other Texas cities, paying $600 each across the counter for truckloads of WASR-10s and other semi-automatic AK-47 clones? And then they’re smuggling those clones back across the border, where they’re converted to full-auto and supplied to the cartels? Or the cartels are using weapons diverted from the Mexican army, and the reason those weapons trace back to the US is that we sold them to the Mexican army in the first place?

As Weer’d notes, it doesn’t take a lot to get folks to defect from the Mexican army; hell, the cartels are putting up “help wanted” signs, promising potential defectors that they won’t have to eat ramen. And somehow Mexico believes that the US is responsible for their lawless society?

I haven’t heard anyone ask the key question, especially in light of “Operation Gunwalker”: why does the BATFE continue to exist? Seriously, why do we need this agency? The tax collection functions can be handled by the Treasury Department, as purely administrative issues. The law enforcement portion of BATFE’s mandate could easily be taken over by the FBI, and BATFE’s budget freed up for something more productive; perhaps providing free ukulele picks to the poor, to steal a memorable line from Roger Ebert.

Edited to add 6/22: Well, this is interesting as all get out. Dave Hardy over at “Arms and the Law” has a link to the PDF of a letter sent by Senator Grassley to acting BATFE director Melson. Nut graph:

The most noteworthy portion of the information is that nearly 78% of firearms traced in 2009 and 66% of firearms traced in 2010 were assigned to a catchall category “No Final Sale Dealer” which means the firearms did not trace back to a United States FFL.

Also interesting:

Data indicates that the top source dealer for illegal firearms traced in Mexico for 2009 was “Direccion General De Industria Milita” or the Directorate General of Military Industry in Mexico. They provided 120 firearms that were later traced back, likely after a crime. Why does this entity have a U.S. Federal Firearms License? Are sales to this and other foreign entities with U.S. FFL’s included in the numbers the ATF provided as being a gun from a “U.S. Source”. If so, why?

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

On the road again…

Thursday, June 16th, 2011

Yesterday was a travel day: I’m in an undisclosed location, doing stuff I can’t talk about right now. Blogging is uncertain; it depends on schedules and what-not.

However, I did want to note the following:

Posted in Admin, Clippings, Cops, Food, Law | Comments Closed

We’re going down the rabbit hole here, people.

Monday, June 13th, 2011

Jeff Ward hosts a popular talk show in the afternoons on one of our AM radio stations. I was a pretty regular listener to Mr. Ward’s show for a while (until the AM radio in my car stopped working).

Jeff Ward was also arrested Thursday night and charged with DWI.

Mr. Ward allegedly failed a field sobriety test. It’s not clear if he had blood drawn or was given a breath test, like the 37 people who were arrested on Friday or Saturday night during “no refusal” weekend.

But here’s what makes the story blog worthy, in my opinion. Today, the Travis County DA announced he’s dropping the charges against Jeff Ward.

“Based on their internal review, APD expressed concerns about significant weaknesses in the arrest, specifically whether probable cause existed to file a DWI charge,” Escamilla said in a statement today. “After our review of the evidence, including the officer’s in-car video, we confirmed to APD that there was not sufficient evidence to support a DWI charge. Therefore, the Travis County attorneys office will take no further action.”

Either the APD falsely arrested an innocent citizen, they arrested a citizen who was guilty but botched the arrest so badly that the DA didn’t feel like the case was prosecutable, or they dropped a DWI charge against a prominent local citizen for political reasons. There’s no way to spin this so it looks good.

Edited to add 6/14: Second day coverage in the Statesman.

Interesting points:

  • He failed a field sobriety test, but refused to take a Breathalyzer. The no-refusal weekend started Friday according to previous Statesman coverage.
  • He called Police Chief Acevedo at least twice; once during the arrest, and once from jail.
  • Mr. Ward says he had the standard “two beers” (police will tell you that everyone ever arrested for drunk driving had “two beers”) over a four hour period, and was originally stopped for doing 10 MPH over the speed limit.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Law | 2 Comments »

Cops gone wild!

Saturday, June 4th, 2011

I don’t know why, but stories about cops committing particularly horrific crimes make me even more angry than I have any rational justification for. I’ve mentioned Antoinette Frank several times before; she’s a perfect example of the kind of thing I’m talking about, and I hope they get around to sticking a needle in her arm soon. I’m hoping for the same thing for the cops involved in the Danziger Bridge shootings, too.

But let’s move away from New Orleans for a moment. Let’s move to the north, and start with the DC area.

Richmond Phillips had a problem. He was accused of fathering a child with a 20-year old woman, and was scheduled to be in court last Tuesday for a hearing on paternity and child support. Phillips worked vice for the DC police, and he already had a wife and a 12-year old daughter.

What to do, what to do? Well, if you’re Phillips, you meet your baby mama in the park the day before the hearing, shoot her in the head, hide the body, load your baby up into baby mama’s car, drive the car away, abandon it, and leave your baby inside.

When an officer found the car Thursday, after the scorching midweek heat, the baby was dead. As police awaited autopsy results Friday, they said she might have died from the extreme heat in the car. Her body showed no clear signs of trauma. The car has tinted windows, one official said, so passersby were unlikely to notice the baby inside.

Let me repeat that. He killed the mother, and left a one-year old baby to die in a hot car.

I checked. Maryland does still have the death penalty, though it appears to be used rather sparingly (five executions since 1976, and five current death row inmates). Of course, Phillips is entitled to the presumption of innocence (though it seems like they already have a strong circumstantial case against him), but let’s hope the prosecutors don’t let this chicken shit asshole plea bargain down to life without parole.

There’s another recent incident that I’ve been meaning to note. Over the Memorial Day weekend, a sheriff’s deputy in Franklin County, Virginia, shot and killed his ex-wife, then led other police officers on an hour-long chase that climaxed in a shootout on I-81. This actually would not have come to my attention except that the shootout and resulting investigation backed up traffic for miles on the interstate: Sebastian from Snowflakes in Hell got caught up in the mess and blogged about it.

In addition to the cop gone bad angle, Franklin County is in the area around Roanoke, Lynchburg, and Bedford; my family has lived in that general area from time to time, so there’s a local angle to the story for us. The other interesting aspect to this story is the role of the rogue deputy’s department in the whole affair. Here’s the original Roanoke.com story on the shooting. Jake at Curses! Foiled Again! has been linking to the followup coverage: the sheriff’s phone call to the local police, holes in the timeline, and Jake’s first post, pointing out that the shooter had previous disciplinary issues but was still on the job.

According to today’s reporting, the sheriff apparently told a dispatcher “not to mention anything” about the deputy’s threats to kill his ex-wife. It’s looking more and more like the sheriff knew his guy was rogue, but thought he could calm the situation down and avoid public embarrassment. It’s also looking more and more like the embarrassment of having one of your guys taken off the street doesn’t compare to the embarrassment of having your guy shoot several people, and having the local citizens demand your resignation.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Law | 1 Comment »

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