How bad does a police department have to get before that’s the only thing left to do?
Story #1:
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Story #2:
Edited to add: Knew I left something out. Hattips: David Codrea for the NOPD link, TJIC’s retweet of Declan McCullagh for the NYPD link.
Archive for October, 2011
Burn it to the ground and start over.
Monday, October 31st, 2011Lead of the day.
Monday, October 31st, 2011Your loser update: week 8, 2011.
Monday, October 31st, 2011Dear New Orleans Saints:
I understand wanting to celebrate Halloween, but disguising yourselves as the 2008 Detroit Lions was not a great plan.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Miami
Indianapolis
Z for Zetas.
Saturday, October 29th, 2011It seems that someone belonging to the Anonymous group has allegedly been kidnapped in Veracruz.
Anonymous, or at least someone claiming to be part of the group, thinks the Zetas drug cartel is responsible for the kidnapping.
So they’ve posted a video…
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I would say “pass the popcorn”, but this is the sort of thing you want to watch from a very safe distance. The dark side of the moon seems just about safe enough…
500 millisieverts per hour.
Friday, October 28th, 2011Or, what do you do when you find a cargo container at your port that’s emitting large amounts of ionizing radiation?
This is the kind of article I think Wired does well (see also the story of the Cougar Ace, or Neal Stephenson’s transatlantic cable story.)
Tickets, please.
Friday, October 28th, 2011Ten of the officers involved are “officials” in the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (aka the NYPD police union).
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(Hattip: TJIC on the Twitter. Though oddly enough, NYT links on his Twitter feed always come up with the NYT asking me to subscribe. That doesn’t happen with freeNYTimes or other Twitter feeds.)
Quickies.
Thursday, October 27th, 2011Robert “Ratso” Rizzo sold his house in Huntington Beach.
It went for $939,000. Ratso paid $1.13 million in 2007. (Four bedrooms, three baths, two stories, 3,250 square feet, “…a cherry-wood walk-in closet in the master bedroom, built-in cherry-wood bookshelves in the living room and a formal dining room and travertine, granite and marble surfaces throughout. There are crystal chandeliers in the bathroom.”)
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos has been asked to testify in an ongoing DWI trial.
And if you’re not reading “Life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center” already, why not?
We got the (crime) beat.
Thursday, October 27th, 2011Here’s the longer HouChron story I expected about yesterday’s decision to bar the Harris County DA from participation in a grand jury investigation that may implicate the DA’s office.
I also wanted to note another story out of Houston: Roderick Fountain was convicted of murdering his 3-year old son. What makes this story noteworthy (in my opinion) is that he was convicted even though nobody has ever found the son’s body, and mostly based on the word of jailhouse informants.
Murder convictions without a body are not unheard of, but they are certainly rare and unusual enough to be noteworthy. (As a side note, the phrase “corpus delicti” does not mean the body of the victim, but the “body of the crime”; that is, all the evidence that indicates a crime has been committed. It is entirely possible to have a “corpus delicti” without a murder.)
It does seem, though, that the murder conviction without a body is becoming more common. This is the second case I can think of in Texas in the past year or so. (Here’s a link to some press coverage of the other case.) Does this point to improvements in forensic science? Or is there something more sinister going on?
Saddle up!
Wednesday, October 26th, 2011Short piece in the HouChron: I expect a longer one in tomorrow’s paper.
The article goes on to quote the judge’s order as stating “that grand jurors are investigating ‘possible criminal conduct by members of the Harris County district attorney’s office.'”
Art, damn it, art! watch. (#25 in a series)
Wednesday, October 26th, 2011…
Whoa, Nellie.
Wednesday, October 26th, 2011Latest update from the runaway Harris County grand jury:
They’re asking for an extension of their term, and for the district judge who set up the grand jury to appoint a special prosecutor.
They’ve also issued subpoenas to at least some of the assistant DAs in the office. Wonderful thing, a subpoena.
More from the Honorable Murray Newman.
Edited to add: And more from The Hon. Mr. Newman. I do loves me a good Nixon reference.
Obit watch: October 26th, 2011.
Wednesday, October 26th, 2011I’ve been holding back on this one until I found a reliable source.
John McCarthy, influential computer scientist, passed away on Monday. NYT obit.
Dr. McCarthy may not have had the same level of fame as Dennis Ritchie or Steve Jobs, but his influence was still significant. He co-founded the legendary MIT A.I. Lab – indeed, he was one of the early pioneers of artificial intelligence in general – developed LISP, and later went on to found the Stanford AI Lab as well.
At Stanford, he influenced folks like Wozniak, Joba, and Whitfield Diffie (one of the inventors of public-key cryptography).
Dr. McCarthy was one of the unsung heroes of the early hacker culture. We seem to be losing more and more of them.
TMQ watch: October 25, 2011.
Tuesday, October 25th, 2011
Anniversaries.
Monday, October 24th, 2011A few people made note of the 10th anniversary of the iPod over the weekend.
That’s pretty nifty. But today is the 150th anniversary of the completion of the first transcontinental telegraph line, which is even more significant (in my humble opinion).
The article I linked above does a pretty good job of explaining the significance of the telegraph, especially by making an analogy with the Internet. It surprises me a little that the article doesn’t quote Tom Standage at all, however: his The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-line Pioneers
If you haven’t already read it, I enthusiastically recommend Standage’s book. He’s a good writer, and the early history of the telegraph is a fascinating subject. (For example, how much do you know about Thomas Edison, other than the standard facts? Did you ever realize Edison was basically a hacker? He was able to build Menlo Park out of the money he got for banging on early telegraph machines.)
Unintended consequences.
Monday, October 24th, 2011While we’re on the subject of the slaughter of the innocents, I wanted to throw up a link to this NYT story.
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Your loser update: week 7, 2011.
Monday, October 24th, 2011NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Miami
Indianapolis (Wow.)
St. Louis
Two short items.
Sunday, October 23rd, 2011Here’s a longer and more detailed second day story from the HouChron about l’affair BATVan and the grand jury probe.
By the way, there are eight different events going on in and around downtown Austin this weekend (according to the article).
Can I offer you a ham sandwich?
Friday, October 21st, 2011We have previously covered Harris County’s problems with their Blood Alcohol Testing (BAT) vans. Those problems can perhaps best be summed up as: they weren’t reliable.
Now comes word from the HouChron that:
- A grand jury is apparently investigating the situation, and
- The grand jury is taking testimony without prosecutors present. As a matter of fact, they’ve actually expelled the prosecutors from the grand jury proceedings.
The DA’s office is…not pleased. As Murray Newman, a former DA, puts it: “The Grand Jurors excluding the prosecutors from the testimony is kind of the equivalent of the President being booted out of a Cabinet meeting.”
The HouChron piece is short. The Hon. Mr. Newman’s piece over at his site provides more background: he has his own spin on things, but he’s also more familiar with the background and the people involved than I am. Summarizing his position, it seems like the DA was trying to get revenge on the BATVan whistle blowers by pushing for a grand jury indictment, but it looks like the grand jury is digging into the conduct of the DA’s office instead.
This could turn interesting real quick.
Paging Mike the Musicologist.
Friday, October 21st, 2011This was kind of an odd case, with a bizarre ending. Planet K, a local chain of head shops – excuse me, “adult novelty stores” – has been planning to open a location in Bee Cave, and had local artist Kerry Awn do a mural for them. The city of Bee Cave claimed the mural was an illegal sign, and went to court.
At trial, the judge issued a directed verdict – basically, ordering the jury to return a “not guilty” finding – because the city of Bee Cave failed to prove that “AusPro Enterprises”, the company being prosecuted, actually owned the property or had any connection to the Planet K chain.
In my experience, directed verdicts are rare. I can’t remember the last time I heard of one being issued around here. And it sounds like somebody in the Bee Cave DA’s office failed to do their homework.
Headline of the day.
Thursday, October 20th, 2011“After Red Sox’ Epic Collapse, Fans Are Consumed by Chicken and Beer”.
ETA: #2. “Exotic animal killings: ‘It’s always the animals that suffer'”.
#3: “Restaurant nudity to be debated in San Francisco”. (With SFW, but NSFLunch photo.)
TMQ watch: noted.
Thursday, October 20th, 2011One of the suggestions TMQ has been making for reducing concussions in football is expanded use of “anti-concussion” helmets, as well as better fitting mouth guards.
With that in mind, we wanted to point out this article in today’s LAT:
It is fair to point out that TMQ has never suggested this equipment will totally prevent concussions. However, the article indicates that the alleged benefits may have been overstated: the Riddell Revolution helmet, which TMQ has endorsed, only reduces concussions by 2.6%, not the 31% Riddell claims.
Edited to add: Also worth noting: this NYT article about the death of Ridge Barden, mentioned in this week’s TMQ.
Academic update: Fall 2011, part 1.
Wednesday, October 19th, 2011The final grades have been posted in my “Constitutional Criminal Procedure” class.
And?
Or, to put it another way, I have done made the Fourth Amendment my…well, you know what I mean. The streak is still going.
(I’m also running out of awesome, though I do have one more “Star Trek” reference in the pipeline. I may have to resort to posting Plastic Bertrand videos.)
(“20% cooler in 10 seconds flat” explained here. Sort of.)
A handful of randomness.
Wednesday, October 19th, 2011Headline: “Texas Equusearch wants Casey Anthony to answer questions under oath”.
That’s nice. I want a pony.
From the linked article: “Texas Equusearch is suing Casey to recover the more than $100,000 it says it spent on searches for Caylee Anthony in 2008.”
On what basis? Texas Equusearch is a non-profit organization that volunteered their services. They had no contractual agreement with Casey Anthony, to the best of my knowledge, so what basis do they have for filing a suit to recover costs?
She may be guilty as all get out. But the courts disagreed: only God knows, and he will pass judgment at the appropriate time. Let it go, people.
He plays that Choctaw stickball every Friday night.
Ask not for whom the bells toll at Notre-Dame: Angélique-Françoise, Antoinette-Charlotte, Hyacinthe-Jeanne and Denise-David are going to be melted down and replaced next year.
The other day, I mentioned the California rogue PI setting up ex-husbands for DWI (plus running a brothel for the cops and selling drugs for cops) case. Balko covered this as well, prompting a lively discussion in the comments.
One of the commentators posted a link to a longer article from Diablo Magazine about PI Chris Butler, which I think makes for interesting reading. The writer apparently started out expecting a standard human-interest story about PI moms; it’s fascinating to watch his skepticism develop as things start not adding up.
The first part of that statement would have raised red flags with me: I’m not aware that Glock officially sponsors private detectives (though they do sponsor competitive shooters). It seems like something that would have been easy to check with a call to Glock’s PR department; curiously, there’s no indication that the author ever did make that call.
Triton followup.
Wednesday, October 19th, 2011A long, long time ago, in the before time, back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, we noted that it was a bad idea to walk into someone’s office with a bottle of wine in one hand and an unloaded gun in the other.
That case took some strange turns. Ultimately, it seems to have marked the beginning of the end for Triton Financial, which turned out to be a huge Ponzi scheme.
But what of the gun-wielding woman?
The felony charge was for aggravated assault. She still faces a misdemeanor charge of “unlawful carrying of a weapon”.
Case brief: United States v. Aukai.
Tuesday, October 18th, 2011Last one, folks. This might be of more general interest, for reasons I outline below.
United States v. Aukai is unusual for a couple of reasons:
- Unlike all of our other case briefs, this was not a Supreme Court decision, but an en banc ruling by the notoriously flaky (with the exception of the honorable Judge Alex Kozinski, praise be unto him) Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
- This is specifically a case involving airport security and the limits of TSA’s ability to perform searches.
In Aukai’s case, he made the mistake of trying to get through airport security with a meth pipe in his pocket and meth on his person. Even dumber, he made the mistake of doing this without ID, which meant he was automatically selected for secondary screening. During the secondary screening, Aukai tried to withdraw consent and leave the secured area of the airport: TSA detained him, and eventually discovered the meth pipe and meth.
Aukai challenged his conviction for possession with intent to distribute on the grounds that once he stated he didn’t want to be searched and went to leave the secured area, the TSA had no authority to detain and continue searching him; thus, the meth pipe and meth were products of an “unreasonable” search and seizure and should be excluded as evidence against him.