Apropos of nothing in particular, a musical interlude to start your day:
Musical interlude.
June 20th, 2016Adult supervision needed. Inquire within.
June 19th, 2016This one got past me earlier in the week: I was sort of avoiding media because Orlando and stupids, and the Oakland/SF papers aren’t part of my usual daily media diet anyway. And as it turns out, Peter over at Bayou Renaissance Man beat me to this as well…
So, followup, for the historical record and folks who don’t read BRM: remember the Oakland PD fired their chief, Sean Whent? So of course they appointed an interim chief.
The interim chief lasted five days.
I’m not trying to seem like Judgy McJudgerson here, but this might potentially be relevant to the mayor’s “loss of confidence”: Fairow apparently had “an affair with a consenting adult while married more than a decade ago”, according to the BART chief (who, by the way, has also “welcomed back” Fairow to the BART PD).
The interim chief was previously a deputy chief for BART. So they brought in a new interim chief, who was currently an Oakland PD assistant chief.
He lasted two days.
More from SFGate:
“a national search for a new chief”. Hmmmm. Hmmmmm. Hmmmm. Gee, is there anyone we can think of that’s from California originally, has experience running a police department that’s even larger than Oakland’s, in a city much larger than Oakland, has been going through some friction with local politicians, and might be interested in a change?
Nope. Can’t think of anyone.
(Sarcasm aside, would Art, dammit, Art even be willing to take over this dumpster fire of a department?)
Obit watch: June 19, 2016.
June 19th, 2016Anton Yelchin, Chekov in the new Star Trek movies. LAT. A/V Club. He was only 27.
Lois Duncan. YA author, perhaps most famous for I Know What You Did Last Summer. A/V Club.
I’ve mentioned this before, but one of the reasons I like linking to A/V Club obits is that they’re very good at putting people’s lives in context – explaining who this person was, and why they mattered – without snark or meanness. They’re also quicker and better about acknowledging popular culture figures than, say, the NYT.
This obit for Ron Lester is a good example of what I’m talking about. Mr. Lester was Billy Bob in “Varsity Blues” and had roles on “Freaks and Geeks” and “Popular”.
…for a time, he became the go-to actor for casting directors looking to cast large, funny young men.
But his weight was killing him, so he had gastric bypass surgery. The problem was, after he lost a whole bunch of weight, he was no longer distinctive as a large funny guy, and was just one of many interchangeable normal sized funny guys in Hollywood.
The A/V Club links to this Grantland profile of Mr. Lester from 2014, which I commend to your attention. Mr. Lester was 45.
Followups.
June 17th, 2016Lawrence’s backlink for my DNA lab post reminded me that I intended to link to this Grits For Breakfast post on the same subject.
More on MP Jo Cox: NYT. The Guardian (current live blog, historical live blog). Express.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Mr. Mair sent about $620 to the National Alliance for items from its publishing imprint, National Vanguard Books, including works that instructed readers on the chemistry of powder and explosives. Also purchased was a copy of “Ich Kampfe,” a book published by the Nazi Party in the early 1940s.
Heidi Beirich, the director of the center’s Intelligence Project, which tracks and produces reports on extremist groups, said in an interview that it had found the invoices in a database of records it maintains.
When Mr. Mair’s name surfaced on Thursday, Ms. Beirich said, the Intelligence Project matched it with invoices in its possession. She said those records were authentic because they had been leaked by members of the National Alliance. Further, she said, she was confident the records were linked to Mr. Mair because the address on the invoices matched his home address.
You know, I dislike Nazis as much as the next guy or gal, but: does this bother anyone else? The SLPC apparently has a database of people’s book orders that was “leaked” to them? And they, in turn, are providing those records to the press?
Setting aside our individual lack of love for the Nazis, isn’t it possible that there are people on that list – students of modern day extremism, university libraries with collections of extremist literature for reference purposes, etc. – that would object to having their purchases revealed to unrelated third parties?
And where does this stop? Anyone remember the Tattered Cover case?
You know what Travis County needs?
June 16th, 2016Strict dog control.
More:
I come from a family of dog owners. My mother currently owns a Corgi, and my sister owns a German Short-haired Pointer. But nobody except maybe the police and military needs these large deadly high capacity assault dogs that are capable of maiming or killing dozens of people with one bite of their jaws. No private citizen needs 20 dogs.
And do you realize that just anyone can walk into a pet store and purchase one of these deadly assault dogs with no background check?
Sensible dog control now!
Quote of the day 2.
June 16th, 2016Because it is my blog, dammit, and I can have more than one if I want. Especially if the second one is from a new Ken White post:
You know what Great Britain needs?
June 16th, 2016Oh, yeah. That’s right. Never mind.
Edited to add: more from The Express by way of Popehat on the Twitter.
“…The man pulled a gun – it was a makeshift gun, not like something you see on television.”
Edited to add: The Express is now reporting that MP Cox has succumbed to her injuries. Sincere condolences to her family and friends.
He added the weapon “was probably an old gun, a sawn-off shotgun.
Edited to add: I’m now seeing reports on Twitter that the whole “Britain first” thing is wrong. It is worth keeping in mind that this story, like so many other recent stories, is emerging, and early details may be mistaken.
Edited to add: I was trying to find something very similar to this on Popehat’s Twitter feed earlier today, but I couldn’t. Fortunately, he retweeted almost exactly what I was looking for:
@Popehat Time for a #refresher ? pic.twitter.com/EAdCFpsOni
— Stephen Kiskamp (@skiskamp) June 16, 2016
Quote of the day.
June 16th, 2016Random notes: June 13, 2016.
June 13th, 2016I was busy all day yesterday, and I have nothing profound or interesting to say about Orlando. Go look at the smarter people on my blogroll if you’re looking for that: I’d suggest Tam and Lawrence as good starting points.
In other news: there’s now an official lawsuit pending to remove Williamson Count District Attorney Jana Duty from office. And I’m thinking I need a WCDA tag.
I missed this until Lawrence sent me a link to a Daily Mail story: Sean Whent, the police chief in Oakland, resigned on Thursday.
The general belief seems to be that Whent was working to stabilize and clean up the department, but there were a whole host of recent scandals on his watch:
But the biggest issue is a messy sex scandal. Five officers have been placed on administrative leave so far.
More from the Mercury News:
Random notes: June 11, 2016.
June 11th, 2016This is shaping up to be a busy weekend, but I have a little bit of time this morning and wanted to make note of one major and one minor story.
Major story: the Austin Police Department has temporarily suspended DNA testing at their lab.
This is the same lab that RoadRich and I toured as part of our CPA class; they may have been blowing smoke, but one of the things that stood out to us was how seriously the APD lab took their certifications, and how much effort they put into getting things right.
So what’s going on? It looks like three things:
1) Unspecified concerns raised by the Texas Forensic Science Commission.
…
Officials had already scaled back lab operations in recent weeks — its staff were only screening evidence for DNA but were no longer doing analysis — and asked state forensic experts to evaluate the lab’s operation amid concerns about its operations.
Gay said Friday that he hasn’t received a formal notification from the state about the outcome of the experts’ inquiry, but that, based on phone conversations, “there are some challenges in front of us”.
2) There’s also a leadership gap. Apparently, the civilian lab supervisor (who goes unnamed in the Statesman) recently passed away, and had been out on leave for a while before that.
3) I’m a little confused by this part, and would love to find an “explain like I’m 5” piece on it: apparently, the Feds have issued new standards for doing DNA probability calculations, and a lot of labs – not just Austin – are struggling to implement them. This is something that was specifically mentioned as an issue on our tour:
FBI officials last year notified crime labs across the country that they were using outdated methods to examine samples containing genetic material from multiple people — methods that often led expert witnesses to greatly overstate the reliability of that evidence in court.
The use of outdated protocols to interpret test results means an expert witness might have told jurors that the chances are 1 in more than a billion that the genetic material in question belonged to someone other than the defendant, when those odds are more like 1 in 100.
So the lab has to go through and do a bunch of recalculation on a bunch of existing cases (around 1,300). And that apparently requires things like software updates (which I gather aren’t as simple as “download a .ZIPed EXE file and run it” when you’re dealing with forensic gear) and additional new training for the people doing the work.
All of this is going to take time: they’re speculating four to six months. In the meantime, DNA samples are going to be sent either to private labs or the Texas DPS lab for analysis.
Minor story:
What kind of “non-standard” weapons and ammo? AK-47s. Yes, WP, yes, journalist’s guide to firearm identification, but it seems like this is for real AK-47s:
This makes sense, in a way. As the article explains, we’re arming foreign troops, but giving them distinctively US-made weapons (like the M4) puts a target on their back: “Although likely more accurate than their Soviet-style counterparts, U.S. weapons can make the fighters carrying them targets for other factions.” Plus: “U.S. weapons can also be difficult to maintain,” (Really?!) “prompting Special Operations Command and the CIA to procure and supply weapons that their allies are used to fighting with, such as Kalashnikovs.”
The thing that makes me wonder about this story: I’m sure we’ve all heard (I’ve even linked to) stories about secret CIA/SOCOM warehouses filled to the rafters with captured AK-47s intended to arm foreign troops while maintaining plausible deniability. So why does SOCOM need contracts to produce new ones? Are the warehouses running low? Are the ones in the warehouses poorly made or shot to heck, and SOCOM thinks they’re better off getting new ones that are assembled to tighter tolerances? (Sort of a Smith and Wesson vs. Taurus comparison, but for AK’s? Okay, that was a cheap shot.)
Obit watch: June 10, 2016.
June 10th, 2016Wanted to get this in before another busy weekend: Gordie Howe. ESPN.
I’ve never been a huge hockey fan, but even I knew who Gordie Howe was, and kind of liked the guy.
Art (Acevedo), damn it! watch. (#Z of a series)
June 9th, 2016I was hoping to have something else to put here. Maybe that will be #AA, or #AB.
But I digress. Remember a few weeks ago, when I commented, “…in my experience so far with the Citizen’s Police Academy, the rank-and-file seem to love the guy.”
Here’s the flip side of that:
I quibble slightly with the Statesman‘s headline, “Survey: More than half of Austin police officers say morale is poor”. If memory serves, the authorized strength of the APD is just over 1,800 officers, and they told our CPA class they were about 100 officers short. They did give an exact figure: it was in the 1,700 range, but I don’t remember exactly what, and it has certainly fluctuated some since then. Point being: 883 officers is just over half of the department, and that’s just the number that responded to the survey. The actual number that described morale as “poor” – 480 – is more like 28% of the department, not half.
Continuing:
With all due respect to the fine men and women of the APD, and with the understanding that police work is different from technical support, this doesn’t sound too much different from my job. I’d prefer to have time to work on my existing cases instead of taking new phone calls. But if we’re shorthanded and there’s not enough people in the phone queue, guess what? My preferences don’t matter. And the city has some major issues right now, including a serial sexual assaulter and rock throwers on the interstate. I don’t blame the chief for wanting butts in the field.
See. Above. And yes, there probably are times when higher-ranking officers make stupid hasty decisions: I can’t think of ones from the APD, but The Onion Field is a classic example.
Note that it was the APD police union that ran the survey.
Followups.
June 9th, 2016Theresa Saldana: NYT. A/V Club.
Lawrence was kind enough to throw me a backlink and add some additional context to the Jana Duty story. Latest update: even though Duty will be out after the election, “Williamson County business leaders” are demanding that she resign now. In addition to her troubles with the State Bar, the people demanding her resignation are claiming she’s pretty much stopped showing up for work:
Justice of the Peace Bill Gravell also spoke at the news conference and said that Duty “has largely been absent from her post.”
“This makes doing my job as a judge in the community more challenging and very difficult to serve the people of Williamson County effectively,” Gravell said.
And Mike the Musicologist sent me a link to a CNN story about Rear Admiral Robert Gilbeau pleading guilty to one count of “making a false statement to investigators”.
Two things about that story:
1) Rear Admiral Gilbeau’s plea is related to the ongoing investigation into the “Fat Leonard” scandal.
2) Linked it before, I’ll link it again: “Really, seriously, just shut the fuck up.”
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#30 in a series)
June 8th, 2016I’ve written previously about the growing scandal involving New York City mayor Bill de Blasio and his fund raising.
Latest, and semi-breaking news: two more people have been arrested and charged with fraud.
One of them is a “hedge-fund financier”.
The other one? Norman Seabrook, also known as the head of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association. The COBA is the union that represents New York City’s corrections officers (about 9,000 members).
But wait! It gets better! One of the people the feds have targeted is now a cooperating witness!
More:
It amuses me enormously that they had to buy a designer bag specifically for their payoffs. Also, the Knicks tickets must have been a major clue: who’s going to pay $7,500 to watch the hapless Knickerbockers play?
Annals of law (#10 in a series)
June 8th, 2016Two sort of random notes:
1. Jana Duty, the elected district attorney of Williamson County (Williamson County is just up the road from Austin/Travis County: it covers Round Rock and Georgetown) has been placed “on probation” by the State Bar of Texas for 18 months.
Duty will still be able to practice law but will have to comply with the terms of her probation.
Why? “Professional misconduct”. Specifically, Ms. Duty was accused of withholding evidence in a murder case.
Here’s the Wilco DA’s website. I find that quote from Article 2.01 deeply ironic.
2. On Monday, a judge for the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals ruled that Sonia Cacy was innocent of murder.
Ms. Cacy was sentenced to 99 years in prison in 1993: she allegedly doused her uncle with “an accelerant” and set him on fire.
Except there were problems with the evidence.
Lots of problems:
The full court has to concur before Ms. Cacy is officially exonerated, but as the TM article notes, that almost seems to be a formality now.