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Obit watch: June 10, 2019.

Monday, June 10th, 2019

Nicky Barnes, the other (after Frank Lucas) legendary NYC heroin dealer of the late 1960s and 1970s.

I would use the “bad week for dope dealers” joke, but Mr. Barnes actually died in 2012: his death was not reported until late last week.

Mr. Barnes estimated that he had earned at least $5 million selling heroin in the several years before his 1977 conviction — income he had augmented by investing in travel agencies, gas stations, a chain of automated carwashes and housing projects in Cleveland and Pontiac, Mich. He also marketed something called a flake-burger, made from remnants of butchered beef.
By the time he audaciously agreed to be photographed for the cover of The Times Magazine and an article inside, he had a record of 13 arrests as an adult and no convictions.

Unfortunately, being profiled in the Times Magazine and called “Mister Untouchable” caused a certain amount of tsuris on the part of Jimmy Carter, who ordered the Justice Department to go all out after Mr. Barnes. In 1977, he was convicted and sentenced to life without parole.

While he was imprisoned, though, his wife and former business parters took over his herion empire and began running it into the ground. Mr. Barnes ended up agreeing to testify against all of them, and was released from prison because of his cooperation in 1998.

After his release, Mr. Barnes entered the Witness Protection Program.

He told neighbors and colleagues, if they asked, that he was a bankrupt businessman, worked at a Walmart and dreamed of opening a Krispy Kreme franchise. He drove to work in a used car, lived in a mostly white neighborhood and put in a 40-hour workweek.

Because he was in witness protection, his death was not reported at the time. Apparently, it only came to light now because various people got to wondering what had happened to Mr. Barnes after Mr. Lucas died: Mr. Barnes’s daughters and anonymous sources confirmed his death.

David Bergland, 1984 Libertarian Party presidential candidate.

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

Obit watch: June 3, 2019.

Monday, June 3rd, 2019

Leah Chase, New Orleans restaurateur.

I haven’t managed to eat at Dooky Chase yet, though I have heard of it (probably by way of Calvin Trillin). As much as I prefer to link to local obits, I like the way the NYT puts it:

Mrs. Chase possessed a mix of intellectual curiosity, deep religious conviction and a will always to lift others up, which would make her a central cultural figure in both the politics of New Orleans and the national struggle for civil rights. “She is of a generation of African-American women who set their faces against the wind without looking back,” said Jessica B. Harris, who is an author and expert on food of the African diaspora and who said Mrs. Chase treated her like another daughter. “It’s a work ethic, yes, but it’s also seeing how you want things to be and then being relentless about getting there.”

…

Mrs. Chase was as compassionate as she was strict, always adhering to a code shaped in large part by her Catholic beliefs. She held up Gen. George S. Patton of World War II fame as a hero and was a fan of baseball, which she often used as a metaphor.
“I just think that God pitches us a low, slow curve, but he doesn’t want us to strike out,” she said in a New York Times interview. “I think everything he throws at you is testing your strength, and you don’t cry about it, and you go on.”

…

Mrs. Chase believed in corporal punishment, opposed abortion and believed women should dress modestly. But she was always a champion of women, especially young women coming up in the kitchens of America’s restaurants. Her frequent advice to them was, “You have to look like a girl, act like a lady, think like a man and work like a dog.”

I love this, too:

During that period, Mrs. Chase started catering the openings of fledgling artists so they could offer hospitality to people who had come to admire – and, perhaps, buy – their creations. She helped them pay their bills, and she hung their works in the restaurant.
This love of art, born when she studied art in high school, led to service on the boards of the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Arts Council of New Orleans. Mrs. Chase also sat on the boards of the Louisiana Children’s Museum, the Urban League of Greater New Orleans and the Greater New Orleans Foundation.

…

Mrs. Chase regularly provided food for nonprofit organizations’ fundraisers and refused to submit bills, said Morial, the widow of one New Orleans mayor and the mother of another.
“She provided food for the Amistad Research Center and would not take money. That was her contribution,” said Morial, an Amistad board member. “We’d tell her this was a fundraiser. She said, ‘I know, and you need all the money you can raise.’”

My feelings about baseball are well known, but I thought this was an interesting obituary: Marc Okkonen.

Mr. Okkonen, a commercial artist and baseball aficionado with an appreciation for vintage apparel, spotted flaws in the purported uniforms of the Pittsburgh Pirates and Chicago Cubs and wondered why they were not precise replicas of the originals from 1939, when the movie takes place. Given how thoroughly documented baseball’s history is, he thought, accurate details would not have been too difficult to uncover.
But, to Mr. Okkonen’s surprise, he could find no single volume containing images of historic uniforms, so he set out to fill that void. He spent the next five years poring through books, microfilms and archives, including those at the Library of Congress and the Baseball Hall of Fame, to find images of every home and road uniform worn by all major league teams, starting in 1900.

And then he wrote that book: Baseball Uniforms of the 20th Century: The Official Major League Baseball Guide. This is the kind of obsessive historical study that I find admirable, in the same way that (for example) some people document the minute details of Smith and Wesson history…

(Eight days and a wake-up in country, and then I’m off to the S&WCA symposium.)

Roky Erickson, noted psychedelic musician with the 13th Floor Elevators. I wish I had more to say about this, but I pretty much missed the psychedelic era. Also, the treatment of Roky Erickson (and Daniel Johnston) locally seemed, to me, to be kind of “let’s point and laugh at the weirdo”. Not everyone was that way: I’m sure there were some people who were motivated by compassion and love of the music, but I felt like that was an undercurrent running through the scene. Perhaps some of my musician readers will have more to say on the subject.

(Edited to add 6/4: NYT obit for Mr. Erickson.)

Last and least: infamous heroin dealer Frank Lucas, whose life was adapted into “American Gangster”.

Richard M. Roberts, who led the prosecution of Mr. Lucas in New Jersey, had befriended him in recent years but was under no illusions about what he did long ago. “In truth,” Mr. Roberts told The New York Times in 2007, “Frank Lucas has probably destroyed more black lives than the K.K.K. could ever dream of.”

Posted in Books, Clothing, Cops, Food, Law, Movies, Music, NYPD, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 25, 2019.

Thursday, April 25th, 2019

Wow. Lots going on.

This is breaking news: Lawrence beat me to it (because I had to wait for my lunch hour to post).

Former Williamson County DA Jana Duty was found dead in a South Texas condo yesterday.

I have a WCDA tag for reasons: if you go back and look, or read Lawrence’s post, you’ll see that former DA Duty was controversial and apparently had some issues during her tenure. But this is still a sad and awful thing.

Mark Medoff, playwright. He was best known for “Children of a Lesser God”, which won multiple Tony awards and was the basis for the Oscar winning Marlee Matlin movie.

This one is for Mike the Musicologist: Heather Harper, soprano.

An unanticipated performance in 1962 brought Ms. Harper international attention when, on 10 days’ notice, she substituted for Galina Vishnevskaya in the premiere of Britten’s “War Requiem.” The work was written to dedicate the new Coventry Cathedral in England, the original 14th-century structure having been bombed into ruin during World War II.
As a gesture of reconciliation, Britten, a pacifist, had intended the soloists to be the tenor Peter Pears (an Englishman), the baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (a German) and Ms. Vishnevskaya (a Russian). But the Soviet government refused to allow Ms. Vishnevskaya to travel to Coventry for the premiere. Ms. Harper, just turned 32, took her place and triumphed.

She did a lot of work with Britten (including Ellen in the 1969 BBC production of “Peter Grimes”) but she had a larger repertoire, including singing “Lohengrin” at Bayreuth.

Fay McKenzie, actress. Her story is interesting:

Ms. McKenzie made her screen debut in 1918, when she was 10 weeks old, cradled in Gloria Swanson’s arms in “Station Content,” a five-reel silent romance. Her last role was a cameo appearance with her son, Tom Waldman Jr., in “Kill a Better Mousetrap,” a comedy, based on a play by Scott K. Ratner, that was filmed last summer and has yet to be released.

She was also in five Blake Edwards movies and five Gene Autry movies. Ms. McKenzie was 101 when she passed.

Ken Kercheval. He did a lot of TV work (no “Mannix”, though) and was probably most famous as Cliff Barnes on “Dallas”. (He was also in “Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell“, which I’d kind of like to watch. Lawrence, however, does not seem to care much for movies involving demonic dogs.)

Finally, Grand Duke Jean of Luxembourg. Noted:

As the crown prince, he fled Luxembourg with the grand ducal family after Germany invaded the country in May 1940 and found refuge in France, Portugal, the United States and Canada before moving to Britain to join the Irish Guards, a regiment of the British Army, as a private in 1942.
He participated in the Allies’ invasion of Normandy in 1944 and fought in the Battle for Caen there. Three months later he took part in the liberation of Brussels.
Among other honors, he received a Silver Star from the United States, a War Medal from Britain and the French Croix de Guerre. He was promoted to colonel in the Irish Guards in 1984 and was made an honorary general of the British Army in 1995.

Posted in 1970s, Cops, Movies, Music, Obits, Theatre, TV, Wagner, WCDA | 2 Comments »

Brief notes from the legal beat.

Thursday, April 4th, 2019

Following up on a few things:

The Waco biker trials turned into a huge nothingburger.

All charges have been dropped against Chauna Thompson. You may remember her as the Harris County Sheriff’s deputy who was fired and indicted after her husband choked a man to death during an altercation outside a Denny’s. Her husband has been sentenced to 25 years. (Previously. Previously. Previously.)

From the Department of Well, That Will Show Them: The Texas Department of Corrections has banned all chaplains, regardless of religion, from the death chamber. (Previously. More from Reason.)

Posted in Cops, Law | Comments Closed

Bad cop! No doughnut!

Friday, March 29th, 2019

Lawrence emailed me about this yesterday: while I think some other people have picked up on this, it still seems to be worth covering.

Paterson, New Jersey police officer (in uniform) slaps the s–t out of a hospital patient lying in a bed. The same officer also previously punched the same man while he was in a wheelchair.

Ruben McAusland was sentenced Wednesday to more than five years in prison for drug dealing and assaulting a hospital patient. McAusland was on duty and in uniform during the March 18, 2018 incident.

How do we know this happened? One of his fellow officers took cell phone video.

Police officer Roger Then recorded video of the assault with his cell phone. Then has pleaded guilty in the hospital assault.

Earlier this month, the Columbus (Ohio) police department disbanded their vice unit. This is the same vice unit that arrested Stormy Daniels, an arrest that Internal Affairs deemed “improper”.

Three out of ten officers in the unit had been suspended, and one – Andrew Mitchell – is under indictment:

…on federal charges of abusing his role as a law enforcement officer, obstructing justice, witness tampering, and making false statements to investigators. According to the indictment, he had kidnapped multiple women and coerced them into sex in exchange for their release from his custody.

Last August, Mitchell shot and killed a woman during a prostitution arrest. He was already being investigated by the department.

On the side, former officer Mitchell (he retired after the indictment) is a landlord. Arguably, he’s a slumlord:

The former tenants interviewed by The Appeal described their buildings as neglected and pest-ridden (the city has filed 37 violations on his properties since 2015 for problems like housing code violations and environmental issues). Mitchell also was known for frequent evictions—381 since 1996, according to county records.

Mitchell is said to own fifteen properties. Assuming he’s owned all of those since 1996, that’s over one eviction per year per property. That seems rather high to me, but this might explain it:

Mitchell apparently was in the practice of renting to desperate women who didn’t have much money, pressuring them to have sex with him in exchange for free or discounted rent, and evicting the ones who wouldn’t.

Sometimes, I just don’t know what to say.

Unrelated to bad police side note that I don’t have anyplace else for: the Supreme Court granted Patrick Murphy a stay of execution.

The State may not carry out Murphy’s execution pending the timely filing and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari unless the State permits Murphy’s Buddhist spiritual advisor or another Buddhist reverend of the State’s choosing to accompany Murphy in the execution chamber during the execution.

Posted in Cops, Law | Comments Closed

Random notes: March 28, 2019.

Thursday, March 28th, 2019

Chron Eye For The Killer Guy:

Raised by a single mother who avoided taking care of him, [Patrick] Murphy was beaten and abused as a child, according to court records. His grandmother taught him to shoplift at a young age, and by 17 he’d run away and moved into a homeless shelter.

What did Mr. Murphy do? He’s one of the Texas 7, who broke out of prison in December of 2000, went on the run, and killed Irving Police Officer Aubrey Hawkins while stealing guns from an Oshman’s.

When it was over, Hawkins lay dead in the parking lot, shot 11 times and run over by an SUV as the men fled.

Part of the argument is that Mr. Murphy didn’t actually pull a trigger: he was just a lookout, and it was five other guys who shot Officer Hawkins. But he was still convicted and sentenced to death based on…yes, the law of parties. (Still want to do that podcast some day.)

Even though Murphy went along the day of the killing, his lawyers say he didn’t want to take part in the crime, pointing out that he left as soon as he told the others of the officer’s arrival. Now, they say, executing him would be cruel and unusual punishment.

Pull the other one, guys: it has bells.

(The execution is currently delayed while the Supreme Court evaluates Mr. Murphy’s claim that he’s entitled to a Buddhist spiritual advisor in the death chamber.)

On a much happier note: up yours, Andrew Cuomo. Up yours, Bill de Blasio.

A federal judge ruled today that New York’s notoriously nonsensical law criminalizing “gravity knives”—which groups have said for years is used by New York City to selectively prosecute people, especially the working class and minorities, for carrying common folding knives—is unconstitutionally vague.

Posted in Cops, IANAL, Knives, Law | Comments Closed

Notes from the legal blotter.

Tuesday, March 19th, 2019

Mildly interesting, though the Statesman is short on details (perhaps because law enforcement is not giving those out):

State officials cancelled liquor permits for Club Casino, 5500 South Congress Ave., and Zota’s Night Club, 4700 Burleson Road, on March 8., TABC officials said.

The bars were shut down “after a months-long investigation into human trafficking, narcotics and drink solicitation” involving both TABC and the Travis County Sheriff’s Office.

More interesting: APD fired officers Donald Petraitis and Robert Pfaff yesterday.

Why? February of last year, the two officers arrested a man named Quentin Perkins:

Petraitis and Pfaff filed reports that said Perkins had tried to walk away from them and glanced back as if he were planning to run. However, video footage from the incident presented during the officers’ trial showed that Pfaff used a stun gun on Perkins despite Perkins being on his knees with his hands raised.
Parts of the officers’ reports are “simply not true,” Police Chief Brian Manley wrote in their disciplinary memos, which were released Monday.

…

Manley also accused Pfaff and Petraitis of coordinating a false story.
“I find it improbable that both officers came up with a similar version of events, which included things that did not happen … as well as not recalling what actually did happen. … I have serious concerns that Officer Pfaff and Petraitis got their stories straight before they spoke with (a supervisor) and prepared their reports and the probable cause affidavit,” he wrote.

…

The disciplinary memos also say a police academy supervisor told the Austin police internal affairs unit that the stun gun use under these circumstances was unreasonable.

Even more interesting: the two officers were charged criminally as a result of this incident…and were acquitted of all the charges. Which is an additional illustration of something they tell the students in our Citizen’s Police Academy classes: you can do everything within the bounds of the law…and still get fired for violating APD policy, if that’s the way the chief wants to go. (And if you actually violated policy. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to tell the Taser story.)

Edited to add: I was going to include a link to the chief’s memo, but the city of Austin has reorganized the website and made the disciplinary memos extremely hard to find. DuckDuckGo to the rescue, but: the most recent one posted is from January 10th.

Edited to add 2: How bad does a jail have to be before even the people who run it quit? This bad.

In addition to the carbon monoxide issue, Barnett cited exposed electrical wiring, mold, bad plumbing, and an instance where a snake fell on an inmate’s head.

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

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#52 in a series)

Tuesday, January 8th, 2019

I don’t mean to seem lazy, but I can’t put it much better than Reason‘s “Hit and Run” did:

Chicago Alderman and Notorious Nanny-Stater Ed Burke Charged in Federal Corruption Scheme

I know: a corrupt Chicago alderman? Who’d thunk it? From the Tribune:

A federal criminal complaint unsealed Thursday charged Burke with attempted extortion for allegedly using his position as alderman to try to steer business to his private law firm from a company seeking to renovate a fast-food restaurant in his ward. The charge carries a maximum of 20 years in prison on conviction.
The complaint also alleged Burke asked one of the company’s executives in December 2017 to attend an upcoming political fundraiser for “another politician.” Sources identified the politician as Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who is running for Chicago mayor.

I missed this story, but there was an FBI raid on Burke’s office a few weeks ago:

Prosecutors revealed during the 10-minute hearing that the FBI found 23 guns in the raids on Burke’s City Hall and ward offices in November. As a condition of his bond, Burke, a former Chicago police officer, was ordered to surrender the firearms and any others he may own within 48 hours of his release.

This is amusing: I can’t tell if Burke was a member of Crooked Mayors Against Self-Defense (or if he was even eligable, being an alderman) but he was a big time gun grabber:

But while he was trying to deny residents of one of America’s most violent cities the right to defend themselves and their property, he was protected day-and-night by a team of four Chicago police officers. Having personal bodyguards is not a typical perk of a city alderman, but it’s one Burke has enjoyed for decades, at taxpayer expense, due to threats made against him in the early 1980s.

Of course, innocent until proven guilty, yadda yadda, but: they caught him on the wire. I’m looking forward to Alderman Burke going to prison for a long, long time.

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

Christmas gun crankery.

Tuesday, December 25th, 2018

The NYT apparently decided they were going to use the run-up to Christmas to be cranky about guns.

I didn’t link to that Andrew Ross Sorkin piece the other day about using credit card purchases to (supposedly) flag possible mass shooters (and I won’t link it here) because:

  1. Busy.
  2. I felt like it got pretty thoroughly discussed and discredited on Twitter before I had a chance. Here’s one good example. The only thing I’d add that I really haven’t seen metioned elsewhere is: if you want to weaponize the financial system, don’t be surprised when the weapon is turned on you, Mr. Marijuana Dispensary Owner or Ms. Sex Worker.

In other gun news from the paper of record, they (and supposedly a congressional committee and “federal agencies”) seem to have it in for CZ USA. Why?

Three years ago, Sandy McDonald began finding the rifles, left behind by poachers, scattered near the dead rhinos he found in the game reserve he owns in Mozambique, just across the border from South Africa.
Mr. McDonald immediately recognized the weapons. They were .375-caliber Safari Classics, made by CZUB or just CZ, a firearms manufacturer based in the Czech Republic. Upon closer inspection, Mr. McDonald noticed something else on the rifles. Carved into the metal were the words “CZ-USA, Kansas City, KS,” suggesting that the weapons were from the American subsidiary of the arms company.

Yes: CZ rifles are supposedly ending up in the hands of poachers.

“Coming from a firearms background I recognized that these were rifles that are quite common in the U.S.,” Mr. McDonald said. “It left me wondering how they got out of the U.S. and into the hands of Mozambican poaching syndicates.”

How many CZ Safari Classics have you seen at the gun shop lately? “Quite common”? But I agree with Mr. McDonald: where are these rifles coming from, in such quantity that poachers appear to be just throwing them away? Are rhinos really so valuable that the rifles (which, remember, are imported) are basically disposable?

Neither CZ nor its American subsidiary has been accused of a crime by federal authorities.

…

But CZ officials said the guns that were found at poaching scenes were manufactured in the Czech Republic, not the United States. The company denied that any of the rifles came from its subsidiary in the United States — or that it had done anything wrong. And company officials said the weapons were legally sold to suppliers in Mozambique.
“Although the firearms were marked ‘CZ-USA,’ the U.S. entity CZ-USA had nothing to do with the rifles,” Petr Kallus, a company executive, wrote in a response to questions from The New York Times. “Rather, the marking ‘CZ-USA’ was applied to the rifles by CZUB as an international brand name only.”

You know, I don’t do a lot of hunting or poaching, especially of African game. However, I had the distinct impression from what I’ve read that many poachers are using surplus military weapons, like AK-47s, to do their dirty work. Not sporting rifles imported from the Czech Republic. Any poaching experts out there that can confirm this?

Next up: a few weeks ago, a guy held up two men in a New York City building, firing a shot during the holdup, and fled the scene. As he was running away, he ran into two NYPD officers. One of them gave chase. The suspect fired on the police officer, and the officer shot back.

And shot. And shot. And shot. All told, he expended 27 rounds and reloaded his Glock once. The officer eventually hit the suspect twice (in the neck and foot) disabling him.

The officer also hit five parked cars and one woman in the belly. A 12 year old girl was also hit by bullet fragments.

Unlike the two stories above, I think this is actually a fairly thoughtful and reasonable story: among other things, it talks about how difficult it is to shoot well under stress, especially with someone shooting back at you, and it doesn’t suggest the gentleman in question was a choir boy. (He was found with the gun and two kilos of coke.)

I don’t want to throw stones at the NYPD officer in question. I’m not sure my performance would have been much better in the same situation. On the other hand, I like to think I wouldn’t have been spraying shots on a crowded street, either.

John C. Cerar, a former deputy inspector who commanded the New York Police Department’s firearms and tactics section, said the way Officer Gomez shot while running was an anomaly in New York City, where officers are trained to control their fire.
“We tried to get police officers to be realistic that you’re better off firing from cover,” he said. “Less shots have to be fired if you’re in a good position. Shot placement is so much more important than the amount of shots fired.”

Two more things:

[The officer] had never fired his weapon in five years on the force, the police said.

Never? Not even in qualification?

The officers did not activate their body cameras during the incident.

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

Things I have been neglecting.

Friday, December 21st, 2018

I really haven’t been doing a good job of keeping up with APD firings.

It isn’t that I’m in the tank for the police department now that I’m doing the Citizen’s Police Academy stuff: I don’t feel like I am, and updating you on firings and other disciplinary actions is a good way to show that the department takes these things seriously.

The problem is more that I’m busier now, both personally and professionally, than I have been in quite a while. I’m not complaining, but it does cut into my blogging time. Heck, as you can see, I’m having trouble even keeping up with obits.

But: when someone in a command rank at a major metropolitan police department gets fired, I kind of feel like I have to take note of this.

Here’s the story from the Statesman.

Here’s the official memo from the chief.

I’m not going into details here because the story has a lot of salacious elements: if that’s your bag, you’re welcome to read the less detailed Statesman article or the much much more detailed disciplinary memo.

The gentleman in question plans to appeal, and his legal representative accuses the chief of “inserting himself into the private life and figuratively the bed” of the officer. I can sort of maybe see that point: there’s a lot of stuff in the memo about whether his behavior, even if there was consent involved, is a violation of the law.

BUT: it seems pretty clear to me from the memo that the gentleman in question also tried to hide information (left his cell phone at another person’s house, deleted videos) knowing he was under investigation. That’s a huge violation of department policy, and (in my humble opinion) justifies a firing by itself.

Posted in Austin, Cops, Law | Comments Closed

Update from the legal beat.

Tuesday, November 6th, 2018

I don’t have much to say about this, partly because I’m still busy as all get out, and partly because I don’t know what there is to say.

But: Terry Thompson, the guy who was married to a sheriff’s deputy and choked a man to death outside a Denny’s, was convicted of murder yesterday. (Previously.)

Posted in Cops, HCDA, Law | Comments Closed

Can’t we just let the investigation get along?

Saturday, September 22nd, 2018

(This is a guest post from FOtB RoadRich, speaking only in his private capacity as a citizen, and not representing the opinion of any organization. I’ve made a few minor edits, but no major changes. -DB)

I listen to local talk radio station KLBJ, and enjoy Jeff Ward and Ed Clements’ banter. I really enjoy them though on occasion I mildly disagree with one or the other.

Today I heard something that seemed really irresponsible – Jeff was incensed that the Dallas police chief had not fired Amber Guyger for the horrible and very very avoidable shooting death of Botham Jean. He said that Acevedo didn’t waste any time and fired Geoffrey Freeman for the shooting death of ‘teen running naked’ David Joseph. Jeff said that the Dallas chief said he didn’t want to interfere with the investigation and that excuse was bogus – it didn’t stop Art.

I know a little about internal investigations. I’m no cop. I’m no lawyer. But I did JUST hear a presentation by Austin’s Internal Affairs which reminded me of a key point.

So, I looked up an article on the local paper on my phone. I confirmed my thought – that former Austin Police Chief / current Houston Police Chief / lightning rod for use or misuse of a microphone did in fact fire Freeman… AFTER the internal investigation was over. That’s the key point.

*I* know that if you have an officer involved shooting you have two investigations, the internal one and the criminal one. The criminal one is different from the internal one in that you are COMPELLED TO SUBMIT INFORMATION in the internal one as a condition of your employment. You quit or are fired, and that investigation STOPS.

I didn’t know, but I suspected, that far less time had passed for the Dallas case compared to the Austin one.

I called the caller line, which I haven’t done in over a year. I spoke with the screener, said my peace, and went back about my business. I didn’t get on the radio, which I don’t have any need to do. I haven’t heard the topic come back around so I can only hope that the information was relayed.

Statesman article. Guardian.

Once in front of the computer I pursued my other thought – how long did it take to investigate Freeman, and how long has passed since the flood of bad decisions and poor luck caused some guy watching a football game in the supposed safety of his own home… to be killed by a cop.

You can find any number of articles on this, but I found this one.

From here, I did the math. It was simple. February 8, 2016 APD Officer Freeman is rushed by a naked teenager that was reported to be acting ‘erratically’. Freeman goes on the defensive and David Joseph is shot dead. March 21, 2016 fAPC/cHPC/lr4mum Art Acevedo fires Officer Freeman after the investigation, 42 days after the shooting. September 6, 2018 DPD Officer Guyger ends a long shift, thinks she’s parked on the right level, thinks she’s at her apartment, overlooks the red mat outside and goes on the offensive and Botham Jean is shot dead. Today is September 21 and it’s only been fifteen days, one third of the time that was taken for the Freeman investigation, which was pushed full
throttle, and some think ‘rushed’, others think not.

The overarching problem is that we think we know more (by ‘we’, I mean ‘them’ of course – naturally I think myself and my friends are well and above reproach)… and we are weaned on hour-long cop shows and think that random people showed up to the building they call the police department and JUST started working that day. (Born yesterday anyone?)

There’s a procedure for everything from investigating an officer ‘stealing a cup of coffee’ to one who takes the life of another citizen. The guys in the building learned the job, learned the processes, and are applying them. We… ok, THEY who are outside of this process think they get to make policy on social media — and broadcast media — and then get outraged because they weren’t proven to be a better judge of procedure, than policy manuals that reach nearly 1000 pages over decades of legal precedent.

It’ll get investigated. No one has more hatred for a bad cop than all the good cops.

Posted in Cops, Guest, Law | 1 Comment »

Oh, noes, Llano.

Wednesday, August 29th, 2018

Back in February, I touched on problems with the Llano Police Department. I had not seen an update on this until yesterday, when Reason‘s “Hit and Run” blog, of all places, ran a story covering the latest developments.

Summarizing:

Chief Kevin Ratliff is now ex-Chief Kevin Ratliff. He was fired July 26th…after being convicted of two counts of official oppression and one count of tampering with a governmental record.

He was sentenced last week to six months in jail, but will instead serve a year of probation. If he breaks those terms, he will have to go to jail.

These were all class A misdemeanors. I can’t tell if conviction on these charges requires Ratliff to surrender his peace officer’s license. It doesn’t look like the other indicted officers have gone to trial yet. (Former officer Harden is set for trial in October.)

But wait, there’s more! There was another incident that resulted in another Llano officer and a sheriff’s deputy also being indicted on official oppression charges!

Basically, the two officers responded to a domestic dispute. The male party wouldn’t open the door to the responding officers: so first they tried to pick the lock, then they kicked the door in.

“You’re going to jail,” Roberts told Holley as he stood over him. The officers held Holley in the back of a patrol unit for nearly an hour, then later took the handcuffs off and let him go.
Holley was never charged with a crime.

And apparently, there’s body camera footage of this whole affair as well.

When asked if there was a climate of corruption at the police department, [City Manager Scott] Edmonson said, “Uh, no.”
When asked if Edmonson could be certain of that given the city’s done nothing to investigate that angle, Edmonson replied, “Can we be sure of anything?”

Existential philosophy in Llano. Who’d thunk it?

The sheriff’s deputy is currently suspended:

The sheriff disciplined Roberts the Monday after the incident and stripped him of his police powers and put Roberts on paid administrative leave when the indictment came down. Blackburn didn’t allow Roberts to sit at home to earn his pay, he put his deputy to work in the county jail until the criminal charges are resolved.
“I think for the citizens of the county, if he’s going to be on paid leave, he should be working for it,” Blackburn said.

The Llano PD officer resigned.

Posted in Cops, Law | Comments Closed

DEFCON 26/Black Hat 2018 preliminary notes.

Sunday, August 5th, 2018

DEFCON 26 and Black Hat 2018 start up later this week. Again, I’m not going, but I do feel like I’m inching closer to making a return. Full-timers from my group have been sent to Black Hat in the past, so who knows what’s going to happen next year?

What would I do if I was there? A quick skim of the Black Hat briefings schedule doesn’t show a whole lot that really jumps out at me. I’d probably just be hitting targets of opportunity, with a few exceptions:

What about DEFCON 26? After the jump…

(more…)

Posted in Bluetooth, Christmas, Cops, DEFCON, DEFCON 26, Law, Radio, SDR, WiFi | Comments Closed

I have to do this.

Sunday, July 15th, 2018

I’m sorry.

A federal judge on Saturday ordered the Los Angeles Times to remove information from an article that described a plea agreement between prosecutors and a Glendale police detective accused of working with the Mexican Mafia, a move the newspaper decried as highly unusual and unconstitutional.

More seriously, there seems to be a long recent string of judges deciding that they can just disregard the Supreme Court and order newspapers to do whatever the judge wants. Just once before I die, I would love to see an editor or publisher say to one of those judges:

“Your order is illegal and unconstitutional, and we believe that you are fully aware of these facts. We will not obey your order. We will also not initiate violence. But if this court attempts to enforce its illegal order, we will treat that as the initiation of violence against our staff, and we will defend ourselves with whatever level of force is necessary to stop said violent acts.”

Edited to add 7/16: Ken White over at Popehat:

This is not a close call. Judge Walter’s order is not plausibly lawful. It is patently unconstitutional, and the sort of order that is only issued when a judge deliberately defies First Amendment law or is asleep at the switch. This is utterly unacceptable. The Los Angeles Times will be challenging the order, and I expect them to win, and look forward to all of the briefing — and the original article — becoming available.

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

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