Whipped Cream Difficulties

The Austin Public Safety Commission passed, on a 5-0 vote, a resolution recommending that the Austin City Council provide funding and set up a process for review of “cold” cases outside of APD. (One member abstained from voting.)

This raises some questions:

1. Who is the “Austin Public Safety Commission”? Are they the people who do the gun buybacks?

Answer: No, the gun buybacks are the “Greater Austin Crime Commission”. The “Austin Public Safety Commission” is a city organization that serves as an “advisory body to the city council on all budgetary and policy matters concerning public safety”.

2. What “cold” cases are they looking to have re-examined?

If you said “the yogurt shop murders” to start with, take two gold stars and advance to the next blue square.

3. Why do they want an external review of these cases? Do they not trust the APD? If so, isn’t that a problem that should be addressed?

Interesting question. Kim Rossmo is the vice chairman of the commission.

“Groupthink” within the Police Department has hindered progress in the investigation, Rossmo told fellow commissioners. He said that investigators had failed to take a fresh look at the case, even as poor evidence gathered from a crime scene damaged from fire and water had contributed to faulty theories against the four teenagers originally arrested in the crimes, Rossmo said.

4. Is this a good idea?

I’m not sure I can judge this. Having a fresh pair of eyes to look at complicated stuff always seems like a good idea. But the case is 20 years old now; how many people have looked at it? Not just within APD, but outside of the department? Is there really a lot of evidence for Rossmo’s theory of “groupthink”? On the other hand, did the APD really push a weak case because they were looking to close a red ball?

I’m inclined to think that the case probably can’t be solved at this point, and I’m not sure how much good another set of eyes would actually do. Color me both skeptical and happy if I’m proven wrong.

Around this time last year, we noted the police officer in Franklin County, VA, who shot his ex-wife and engaged in a wild police chase that screwed up traffic for miles.

Well, the former sheriff – the one who allegedly ignored warnings that his deputy was hunting his ex-wife – the one who allegedly told dispatchers not to put out a BOLO – has been charged with “misconduct by an elected official”. This is a “class 1” misdemeanor charge, so it isn’t like he’s going to do hard time, but..

…he’s also being sued by the dead woman’s family. And by two former deputies who were fired after an investigation in 2009 that led to charges against the sheriff of “failure to maintain adequate records”. (Those charges were dismissed.) And by another woman who claims the sheriff didn’t act on threats to kill her son until it was too late.

(This comes by way of the Cato Institute’s new “National Police Misconduct Reporting Project” which in turn is an outgrowth of work done by David Packman.)

On February 9th of this year, Officer Daniel Harmon–Wright of the Culpeper, VA police department shot and killed Patricia Cook in the parking lot of a church preschool.

Officer Harmon–Wright was responding to a call about a woman “acting suspiciously”, and claimed that Ms. Cook attempted to flee, rolling up the window in her Jeep and trapping his arm as she did so.

There are questions about Officer Harmon-Wright’s account of events. For example, Ms. Cook’s Jeep did not have power windows, which raises obvious questions about the whole “rolling up her window and trapping his arm” thing. Reason’s “Hit and Run” blog has some good coverage of the case here.

One point noted by Reason and other reporters is that Officer Harmon-Wright has several names: he’s also gone by “Daniel Wayne Sullivan” and “Dan Wayne”.

On Tuesday, Officer Harmon-Wright was charged with “murder, malicious shooting into an occupied vehicle, malicious shooting into an occupied vehicle resulting in a death and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony” by a grand jury.

This is interesting enough, but there’s another aspect to the story that I think is worth noting: Officer Harmon-Wright’s mother, who was “an administrative secretary to the chief of police” when he was hired as a police officer, has been charged with three counts of “uttering” and three counts of “forgery of public documents”. Apparently, the grand jury turned up evidence that she had altered public records to remove “negative information” from Officer Harmon-Wright’s personnel file.

Some folks go “wow” at $320 million dollar incinerators, and I can’t blame them for that. Other folks go “wow” when they’re faced with how deep the corruption seems to run sometimes.

(Hattip: Commendante Balko.)

I apologize. I think I may have missed a firing or two along the way. I plead the pressures of various things and throw myself on the mercy of the court.

Today’s APD firing is a doozy.

Det. Richard Munoz worked in the burglary division. Apparently, back in December, someone brought up concerns about how he was handing their case. In the ensuing investigation:

• “Munoz told officials he had conducted an “interrogation” of a burglary suspect over the phone, but did not record it, and did not document other steps he had taken during his investigation, the memo said.”
• Munoz didn’t return calls from victims, didn’t properly document evidence, and didn’t follow up with witnesses.
• “During this investigation, Munoz said he was “running fast and loose doing investigations,” and also provided statements to officials that proved untrue when compared to statements from other officers, witnesses and documents on record, the memo said.”

Interestingly, former Det. Munoz (who can still appeal his firing) had been suspended six times since he started with APD (in 1995) and was actually fired in 2006 “for policy violations related to his honesty, use of force and documentation of incidents”. He was reinstated by an arbitrator, and suspended in 2008 for public intoxication. After that suspension, Chief Acevedo apparently told him “one more, and you’re out”.

Also:

Munoz was a member of a unit formed last year after an Austin Public Safety Commission meeting where city leaders discussed the low rate of burglaries being solved. Acevedo said in April that the burglary unit has seen several successes, including a rise in the burglary clearance rate.