Federal investigators are looking into allegations that the Secret Service deviated from normal polygraphing methods in checking into the Cartagena...
Read full entry »The Justice Department inspector genera is investigating possible misconduct by two or more Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Colombia unrelated...
Read full entry »A white Houston police officer was accused of stomping a black teen in a videotaped beating, and a jury found no laws were broken, the Houston Chronicle...
Read full entry »Two police officers in the Southern California town of Fullerton will stand trial for the death of Kelly Thomas, a mentally ill homeless man, reports NPR. Thomas died last July from injuries sustained during a violent arrest by six Fullerton officers. Officer Manual Ramos approached Thomas, then 37, while responding to a call that someone had been peering into cars at the town's bus depot.
The surveillance video at the depot was running during the incident, and officer Ramos was also recorded by a device he was wearing on his uniform. Synced together, the audio and video formed the key evidence shown in court this week during a preliminary hearing to decide whether to bring the officers to trial. For weeks last year, dozens of supporters rallied in front of Fullerton's police headquarters demanding that the officers be prosecuted. Under pressure, the chief of police took a medical leave of absence, then resigned, and three City Council members have been targeted for recall.
Read full entry »A tenth Baltimore police officer will be sent to prison this week in a scheme to divert cars damaged in traffic accidents to a body shop in return for payoffs--one of the widest police corruption scandals in the city's history, says the New York Times. Fourteen officers pleaded guilty to federal extortion charges, a trial ended in conviction, another officer pleaded guilty in state court and at least 14 suspended officers still face departmental discipline and possible state charges.
Retiring Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld, who invited the FBI to investigate the force, brought in Grayling Williams, the Department of Homeland Security’s former counternarcotics chief, to head the division charged with rooting out corruption. The previous director had been ousted for socializing with an officer indicted on a charge of heroin trafficking. Bealefeld will be remembered for reducing the city’s crime and murder rates as well as for his aggressive anticorruption efforts. He made no apologies for his efforts to change the department’s direction and shed its troubled image reinforced — unfairly, he says — by television's fictional "The Wire."
Read full entry »Chicago is seeing a rise in the number of disciplinary charges sustained against cops — partly because more of those cases are being resolved through mediation, says the Chicago Sun-Times, quoting the agency that investigates police misconduct. The Independent Police Review Authority sustained charges against officers in 70 investigations last year. In the first three months of this year, the agency has sustained charges in 33 investigations.
Charges were sustained in 42 investigations in all of 2009 and 44 in 2010. Ilana Rosenzweig, chief administrator of the authority, said her investigators pushed to complete older cases that required a lot of work. The agency started resorting to mediation more often to resolve allegations of misconduct. “It’s an opportunity for an officer to accept responsibility, to change behavior and in return, have a lower level of discipline,” Rosenzweig said. Mediation also benefits the officers because they do not have to go through a full-blown investigation and a lengthy grievance process, she said.
Read full entry »The Colorado Progressive Coalition is challenging Denver Police Chief Robert White's delay in recommending discipline for cops accused of beating a man bloody in a case the city settled for $795,000, reports the Denver Post. The case involves the 2009 arrest and beating of Alexander Landau after he was stopped for a traffic violation.
"It is important to me that I make an intelligent decision based on all the facts in front of me," White said. "I decided to get a re-enactment to get a better understanding of where people were positioned, why they made their decisions. It is just a matter of getting the officers, getting the cars in their positions to find out what people did and why they did it." The Progressive Coalition said Landau has waited nearly 40 months for a recommendation. "The decision by White contradicts both his public and private assurances that the recommendation for officer discipline would be given to the manager of safety within two weeks of receiving the investigation," the group said.
By Maurice Possley
A coalition of advocacy groups on a national tour reveals study showing prosecutorial error in 20 cases between 2004-2008.
Read full entry »The U.S. Department of Justice is stepping up its oversight of local police departments, pressuring them to limit the use of force in civilian encounters and eliminate racial profiling during traffic stops and other enforcement, says CQ Researcher. Over the past year, the Justice Department's civil rights division has criticized long-troubled police agencies in such places as New Orleans, Seattle and Maricopa County, Az. The department's power stems from a 1994 law allowing the federal government to identify a "pattern or practice" of constitutional violations and threaten court action to force police agencies to adopt changes.
Seattle officials have proposed a detailed plan to answer the government's criticisms, but negotiations are stalled in New Orleans and Maricopa County, where Sheriff Joe Arpaio is balking at the government's demand for court supervision of policy changes. Samuel Walker of the University of Nebraska, an expert on police accountability, worries that the post-9/11 emphasis on homeland security has been a setback for best police practices. He notes that the stress on community policing has been reduced, and says that, "If the economy worsens, things could be very very worse." The full article is available only to subscribers, or can be purchased for $15 at the link here.
Read full entry »Twenty years after he was beaten mercilessly by Los Angeles police officers, Rodney King has become synonymous with the abuse of power by law enforcers, says NPR. When four of the officers were charged with use of excessive force, many who'd seen the video assumed they would be convicted. But a year later, a mostly white jury in the far northwest L.A. suburb of Simi Valley acquitted the officers, and mere hours later, the city combusted into the worst riot in modern American history. Five furious days later, 53 were dead, thousands had been injured, and authorities tallied damages of a billion dollars or more.
On the third day, while vast parts of Los Angeles were still smoldering, King stood on the steps of city hall and asked, "People, can we all get along?" Today, King has come to grips with the night that fractured him physically and mentally. He's written about how that night affected him in his new memoir, "The Riot Within: My Journey From Rebellion to Redemption."
Read full entry »Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck is under fire from the city's five-member civilian Police Commission, which is troubled by his reluctance to punish officers who are found to have killed or wounded people unjustifiably, reports the L.A. Times. A lack of punishment "could undermine the entire discipline system and undermine the authority of the commission," said member Robert Saltzman, associate dean at USC law school. Since he became chief in 2009, Beck has concluded that officers used force appropriately in almost all of the 90 incidents involving officers who fired weapons or used other deadly force.
In four shootings, the commission went against the chief's recommendations and ruled the officers' use of lethal force was inappropriate. But Beck either refused to impose any punishment on the officers or gave them only a written reprimand. The chief's apparent unwillingness to suspend or demote officers, or to initiate the process to fire them, in these types of cases has worried a majority of the commission. "Sometimes the chief just needs to set a tone and, through his actions, send a message about what kind of conduct is acceptable," said commission President Richard Drooyan, an attorney.
Read full entry »For 11 days in 2003, Jeremy Alley served as the top cop in the village of Elmwood Place, Oh. Then he was branded a sex criminal, says the Cincinnati Enquirer. Alley was busted for using his police department computer to proposition someone he thought was a 15-year-old girl – but Alley was actually online chatting with a police officer pretending to be a teen.
Now Alley wants a judge to wipe away his five sex-related convictions. In a rare move, prosecutors are fighting Alley’s expungement request. The situation is unusual, says prosecutor Scott Heenan: “It’s not every day you have a police chief do this and then later try to erase it.” Heenan sees 500 to 1,000 felony expungement applications each year. He allows at least 90 percent of them to pass without a challenge. Alley, now 35, told the court that he now is employed as a paralegal and in retail sales.
Read full entry »After hearing powerful testimony from victims of New Orleans' post-Hurricane Katrina Danziger Bridge shootings and friends and relatives of the former police officers who fired at them, U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt imposed stiff sentences yesterday on the five former cops who were convicted last summer, reports the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
The four defendants convicted of participating in the shootings themselves -- which claimed the lives of two civilians, and badly injured four others -- all face prison terms of 38 years or more, while the lead investigator was sentenced to six years. Robert Faulcon Jr., 48, got the stiffest sentence: 65 years in prison. Faulcon is the only officer tied to the second of the two fatal shootings on the bridge -- that of Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old mentally challenged man. Madison was felled by a shotgun blast to the back fired by Faulcon.
Read full entry »Allegations that seven Milwaukee police officers and a sergeant may have sexually assaulted people and violated their civil rights while conducting body...
Read full entry »In 91 criminal cases in Texas since 2004, the courts decided that prosecutors committed misconduct, ranging from hiding evidence to making improper arguments to the jury, according to Innocence Project data. Yet none of those prosecutors has ever been disciplined, reports the Texas Tribune. “It paints a bleak picture about what’s going on with accountability and prosecutors,” said Cookie Ridolfi, founder of the Northern California Innocence Project, who researched misconduct data in Texas and other states.
At a symposium this week in Austin, exonerees, lawyers and legal scholars discussed the need for increased accountability for prosecutors. The symposium was part of a national accountability campaign by the New York-based Innocence Project. Prosecutorial misconduct has become a national issue in the wake of the high-profile exoneration cases, including one prosecuted by Ken Anderson in Williamson County, Texas. A man served 25 years of a life sentence before DNA results showed last year that he was innocent. His lawyers discovered that Anderson did not turn over evidence that could have led to his acquittal. A rare court of inquiry is scheduled to consider whether Anderson committed criminal misconduct.
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