Police Issues

BREAKING NEWS

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 02:35:41 GMT

* FBI informant in major artifact looting investigation is third person in case to commit suicide; first two were defendants * Georgia indicts four assisted suicide proponents who helped cancer victim suffocate himself with helium * Feds break up ring that took college exams for foreign students so they could remain in the U.S * Long-term private study suggests recidivism is worse than official statistics indicate * Apartment building owner and maintenance man caught on tape discussing how they set an insurance fire that killed seven, including four children

A COP'S DILEMMA

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:02:52 GMT

Protecting public officials may not be the primary mission of the New York State Police, but there’s no denying that the Executive Services Detail, a unit of about 200 officers who guard the Governor and his family, is the most prestigious assignment to which Troopers can aspire. With David Paterson’s picture prominently displayed on the department homepage (a photo of recently-departed Superintendent Harry Corbitt is buried two layers down) there’s little doubt as to who’s really in charge. And that may be part of the problem.

BABY STEPS AREN'T ENOUGH

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:08:24 GMT

Must someone be factually innocent to be convicted of a crime? If you’re a criminal justice major or law student, you know the answer: of course not! All that’s necessary is to convince jurors that guilt is evident beyond a reasonable doubt. Once the State meets that threshold, the rules change. In the interests of “finality” – not having to endlessly re-litigate judgments – those convicted by plea or at trial can’t simply reargue the facts. To get a second bite of the apple they must demonstrate that their Constitutional rights were severely trampled or find new facts – so-called “newly discovered evidence” – that conclusively demonstrate their innocence.

A TICKING TIME-BOMB

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 05:18:50 GMT

"I was not on duty at the time of the incident, but I recall how frustrated the members of the department were over the release of Ms. Bishop...The release of Ms. Bishop did not
sit well with the police officers and I can assure you that this would not happen in this day and age."

Braintree, Massachusetts police chief Paul Frazier, commenting on his department’s lackluster investigation, twenty-four years earlier, of the shooting death of Amy Bishop’s brother.

Chief Frazier’s thoughts were echoed by current Norfolk County D.A. William Keating. Minutes after “accidentally” killing her brother with a shotgun blast to the chest, Bishop burst into an auto body shop and at gunpoint ordered workers to give her a getaway car. They didn’t. She then refused to surrender when police arrived (an officer who snuck up behind her finally got the shotgun away.) How could his predecessors have ignored that?

LIARS FIGURE

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 06:55:11 GMT

Who would have thought? More than one-hundred retired NYPD officers with ranks of captain and above who responded to a questionnaire said that crime reports were routinely fudged to minimize the number of Part I offenses that had to be reported to the FBI. Dodges ranged from tweaking thefts so that losses fell under $1,000 to encouraging victims of violence to minimize what took place, thus holding down the number of aggravated assaults.

THE GREAT DEBATE (PART II)

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 22:56:46 GMT

“The three-strikes law sponsor is the correctional officers’ union and that is sick!”

Who said that? Here are three possibilities: (1) the ACLU president, (2) the ACLU executive director, or (3) Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, while addressing a gathering of lawyers on February 3, 2009, at Pepperdine University’s Odell McConnell Law Center, perched high on a spectacular bluff overlooking the shores of the Pacific.

Hmm...let’s see...

THE GREAT DEBATE (PART I)

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 17:57:43 GMT

On December 6, 2009 police in Culver City, a Los Angeles suburb, confronted Boneetio Washington, a transient on felony probation, on a complaint that he tried to break into a home. Officers didn’t feel there was enough evidence and let him go. His freedom didn’t last long. Two days later LAPD officers arrested Washington moments after he allegedly forced his way into an apartment and raped and murdered its occupant, a woman pregnant with twins.

TINKERING WITH THE MACHINERY OF DEATH

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:23:05 GMT

When ASC members opened their November 2009 issues of the society’s two publications, stodgy Criminology and the supposedly more real-world Criminology and Public Policy, they must have felt like Yogi Berra. In Criminology, Land, Teske and Zheng’s “The Short-Term Effects of Executions on Homicide” reported that capital punishment prevented between .5 and 2.5 homicides per execution, at least in Texas. Meanwhile, in Criminology & Public Policy, a study by Kovandzic, Vieraitis and Boots replied to the question posed by its title, “Does the Death Penalty Save Lives?” by firmly concluding that no, it didn’t.

SEE NO EVIL, SPEAK NO EVIL

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 07:28:34 GMT

“These rats deserve to die, right or wrong? . . . My war is with the rats. I'm a hunt every last one bitch that I can, and kill 'em.” (Extract from wiretap of Philadelphia drug lord Kaboni Savage, charged in 2009 with ordering seven murders.)

“If you see something, you better look the other way...Don't tell nothing unless you can take care of yourself, because the city don't have nothing in place to help you.” (Philadelphia resident Barbara Clowden commenting on the murder of her sixteen-year old son only days before he was to testify against the man who tried to burn down their home.)

IT'S NOW L.A.'S PROBLEM

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 19:55:55 GMT

In a few weeks the murder trial of former Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer Johannes Mehserle will get underway. As we reported earlier, Mehserle, who shot passenger Oscar Grant to death at an Oakland subway platform one year ago, argues that he meant to use a Taser but in the confusion pulled his pistol instead.