Ongoing Computer Problems Prevent Virginia Residents From Obtaining Or Renewing Drivers Licenses And ID Cards

VIRGINIA – Drivers are growing frustrated with no end in sight for the computer fiasco at Virginia’s Department of Motor Vehicles. Thousands of people haven’t been able to get a license, since a computer outage began last Wednesday. The agency now says it won’t be back online Wednesday and could be out for the rest of the week.

At the Tysons Corner DMV it’s unusually quiet. Normally almost every seat is full but since the outage no one can get a driver’s license or permit and identification card.

“I said you’re not going to believe this,” said Nick Filbert, an 18-year-old who went back to get a new permit.

Filbert got his permit just a month ago and lost it. He needs a new one not just to drive but for work.

“I don’t think I can get paid until I have that. Because they have to verify my information and all that,” said the teen.

Ironically, he says the first time around there was an outage too. The DMV says a nationwide computer system used by the agency went down on August 9th and was unrelated to this one.

About 6500 people statewide get their licenses in person each day, between renewals, identification cards, permits and drivers licenses. That’s 39,000 people since the problem started, nearly enough to fill Nationals Park.

“Everyday I come here, they say system is down we cannot help you,” said Mehrdad Adibpour. He’s helping his brother who just moved her from Iran. Adibpour’s brother can take the test but will have to come back for a license.

“I have to take him everywhere,” Adibpour said. “He needs a car and a license to go to school,” Adibpour said.

The malfunction in the government data storage system has been repaired but the DMV’s large and complicated database must still be verified.

“The DMV will not be able to process drivers licenses or ID’s on Wednesday September 1. So yes, the outage continues,” said Melanie Stokes, spokesperson for Virginia’s DMV.

Governor Bob McDonnell (R-VA) has called for an independent investigation into the massive failure and whether the state’s computer contractor, Northrop Grumman, should reimburse the state for lost business and productivity.

Initially the outage affected 30 state agencies. As of Tuesday, the DMV, the state’s department of taxation and the board of elections remain out. It’s prevented people from filing tax returns or making payments, but the agency says it will not assess penalties or interest for those late because of the computer problems.

The voter registration database is also unavailable at the Board of Elections because of the computer problems too. State officials say Northrop will be hit with a financial penalty of at least $100,000 and possibly more.

The DMV is urging people who are eligible to renew their license online. Drivers will be able to print out a 30-day temporary license until the new license arrives in the mail. The online system is still working, because it doesn’t require a new picture. The problem at the DMV is the cameras can’t take new picture and save them in the system. In Virginia, people can renew online as long as they didn’t do it last time.

Those whose license expired during the outage will have to go to a DMV office and provide proof of citizenship or legal residency.

The problem has created a backlog of thousands who need their license renewed. Clearing that backlog will take time. Today Virginia State Police told troopers not to write tickets for drivers with an expired license between August 25, 2010 and September 30, 2010. The Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police also advised local law enforcement to do the same.

Once the system is fixed, all those people could create a crush at the DMV.

“If we do reach capacity, we anticipate some customers will have to wait outside,” said Stokes, which could be a problem in the extreme heat.

DMV is planning to put officers at its service centers to help with crowd control. It’s also sending additional staff and part time workers, so the centers will have extra manpower to handle the volume of people.

Taraneh Rafati plans to be first in line. She moved her from Israel, passed the driver’s test but left empty handed because of the computer problem. “I want to beat the crowd. So I will come early, quite early,’ said Rafati.

The DMV doesn’t know when the system will be fully restored. Wednesday is already out and Thursday and Friday are no guarantee.

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Dogs Kill Mobile Alabama Police Department’s Mini Ponies – Tax Dollars Funding Tiny Ponies???

MOBILE, ALAMABA - Two miniature ponies owned by the Mobile Police Department were mauled and killed by dogs, police said today.

Around 1:50 a.m. Tuesday morning, an officer on patrol heard dogs yelping and found at least six dogs attacking the ponies, Woggie and Little Joe, at the department’s stable at 1251 Virginia Street, according to spokesman Christopher Levy.

The ponies were taken to a veterinarian’s office, where they later died, Levy said. Police caught three of the dogs, and set traps to catch the others.

Levy said the dogs had killed at least eight cats at the stable in recent months, and officers who worked there regularly tried to keep the dogs away from the stable.

Police believe that someone owns the dogs, but the owners, who could face criminal charges, had not yet been traced.

“These dogs have been running around for a long time,” Levy said. “It’s unacceptable that absolutely no effort was made to keep up these dogs.”

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Veteran Muscatine Iowa Police Officer, School Resource Officer, And Drug Task Force Member Scott Burk Arrested, Suspended, And Fired For Dealing Cocaine

MUSCATINE, IOWA — City officials late this morning fired Muscatine police officer Scott Burk, who remains in custody at the Muscatine County Jail, after initially suspending him with pay.

Burk, 47, was arrested about 3:30 p.m. Saturday at 3016 Lucas St. and charged with having 1.5 ounces of cocaine. His bond has been set at $25,000, according a spokesman at the jail. The spokesman said Burk would have to post $2,500 in order to be released.

Burk — a Muscatine police officer for 14 years who last year was paid $62,456, according to city records — was charged with possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, which is a class C felony. He also was charged with a drug-tax stamp violation, which is a class D felony.

If convicted, he could receive maximum sentences of up to 10 years and a $50,000 fine and up to five years and a $7,500 fine on the respective charges.

Details about the investigation, which is being conducted by the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, were not immediately available.

“These situations are always sad and extremely difficult to deal with, but the reality is that they do happen from time to time. Police officers are human beings and are not immune from suffering the same shortcomings as everyone else,” Muscatine Police Chief Gary Coderoni said this morning in a statement.

“Public trust is difficult to obtain, and easy to lose, which is why we collaborate with an outside agency to make sure that the investigation is conducted fairly and impartially.“

Since November, Burk had been assigned to the overnight shift of the police department’s patrol division, working from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. Previously, he had been the department’s resource officer at Muscatine High School from 2004-08. From November 2008 until his reassignment last year, Burk had been an officer on the Muscatine County Drug Task Force.

The task force is comprised of two detectives from both the Muscatine Police Department and Muscatine County Sheriff’s Office, a secretary provided by the Iowa Division of Narcotics Enforcement and state narcotics agents as needed.

In July, the office of state Auditor David Vaudt released a report that said at least $8,810 in cash and money orders held by the task force during a five-year period could not be accounted for after an audit was requested by the state DCI.

Officials have not linked Burk to the missing funds, and no charges were filed at the time because there was insufficient evidence, according to a spokeswoman for the DCI.

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US Offers Spy Satellites For Misuse By Local Law Enforcement Agencies

Video Catches Tory New York Police Beating Student – Police Charge Man Who Recorded Incident For Drinking And Failing To “Disperse” From His Own Property

TROY, NEW YORK - A disturbance on 15th Street early Sunday ended with what eyewitnesses called the beating of a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute student by police — an incident now making the rounds on the video website YouTube.

The fuzzy video purports to depict an altercation between Troy police officers and Luis M. Lluberes, 21, who was subsequently arrested for disorderly conduct, harassment and resisting arrest. Police reports indicate Lluberes was among a group of men in a fight that police were attempting to break up around midnight when Lluberes allegedly pushed Officer Brandon Cipperly with two hands, triggering an altercation with police that ended with his arrest.

The incident was witnessed by members of an RPI fraternity who claim they saw an officer strike Lluberes in the head repeatedly with a baton.

Police Chief John Tedesco said accusations of brutality are baseless and noted the poor quality of the video, which he said he reviewed along with all related police reports.

“I can’t make out anything in the video. I can’t even tell that they’re Troy police officers,” he said. “At this point, we are standing behind the actions of the officers.”

No complaint has been filed with the department, and while Tedesco said he is personally looking into the incident, no official investigation is under way.

Lluberes, a native of Guilford, Conn., who resides at 22 Detroit Ave., declined to discuss the specifics of what happened on the night on question.

“At this time I feel I can’t make comments regarding what happened Saturday night. I am very upset about the whole ordeal and hope that what happened that night does not get skewed as more people start hearing the story,” he wrote in response to an inquiry made through the social networking site Facebook.

He said he would be seeking legal advice and is embarrassed about the whole ordeal.

“I am trying my hardest to keep this event low-key so that the outcome is a fair and just one,” Lluberes wrote.

The video was filmed by Nicholas Nigro, an RPI student and a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon. At the conclusion of the 94-second video, a police officer approaches the camera and appears to close a door on Nigro, who protests and says he is standing inside his own house.

“Get in your house. Goodbye,” the officer can be heard saying.

Nigro, 25, was subsequently arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and possessing an open container, which are both violations that resulted in a ticket being issued. Tedesco said the disorderly conduct count was for “failure to disperse” as ordered by an officer.

Dillon Mysliwiec, a member of Nigro’s fraternity, said the officers were beating Lluberes with their batons — including several strikes to the back of the head — and left a trail of blood on the sidewalk they later washed up.

Lluberes, however, declined medical treatment once taken to the Troy police station, according to reports filed by the officers on the scene.

Sgt. Terry Buchanan, the police department’s spokes-man, said procedure calls for using a baton to achieve “the minimum force necessary to affect an arrest” or to protect the safety of officers or bystanders.

Officers are required to file separate reports when force is used, Tedesco said, and upon review of those reports he concluded that the officers acted appropriately in dealing with a person he said was intoxicated and violent.

“The officer appropriately defended himself,” Tedesco said.

He said it took at least three officers to subdue Lluberes, who he said “put up quite a fight” and attempted to take a baton from an officer. He would not name the officers involved, but the arrest report for Lluberes indicates the arrest was made by officers Cipperly, Charles Castle, William Fitch and Justin Ashe.

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Veteran Bloomington Illinois Serial Rapist Police Officer Sgt. Jeff Pelo Sentenced To 400 Years in Prison

BLOOMINGTON, ILLINOIS – It was nothing short of a nightmare — a man obsessively tracking women,
sneaking into their homes, assaulting them, and forcing them to perform
a bizarre “cleansing” ritual that washed away any hint of evidence from
their bodies.

Bloomington, Ill., Police Detective Clay Wheeler spent two years pursuing the first serial rapist in his town’s memory.

“I’ve seen more brutal things, more violent things, but some of the
things that happened and what he would say and tell these girls as he’s
assaulting them, and I mean, I get chills. It just disgusts me,” he
said.

Rapist’s Victims Awakened by Masked Intruder

The rapist’s first victim was then 25-year-old Kristi Mills, who awoke to a masked intruder standing in her doorway in April 2003.

“I was in shock, absolute shock. I looked at the door and saw the light
there, and something just didn’t seem right. And that’s when I saw him,”
she said. “The next thing I remember is he was on top of me in the
bed.”

Mills said the intruder told her he was there to burglarize her, and
that he didn’t want to hurt her, but if she made noise, he would shoot
her.

Wearing a ski mask and gloves, he seemed oddly calm and methodical as he
bound her with zip ties and duct tape, she said. Then he slipped a
pillowcase over her head and sexually assaulted Mills for 45 minutes.

“He seemed very assertive when he talked and not like somebody who’s,
you know, panicking. He seemed like he knew what he was doing,” Mills
said.

Still blindfolded, he forced her into the bathroom where she heard water
running. “I started to panic and I thought he was going to shoot me in
the bathtub,” she said. “Just over a month from my 26th birthday, and I
was going to die.”

Mills was forced to take a long bath and told to wash carefully, while
her rapist calmly walked about her apartment cleaning up after himself.

Then he was gone, taking with him all the evidence, including the bed sheets.

She was so upset and scared that when she got out of the bathtub,
removed the pillowcase, and ripped the tape from off her eyes, she
actually tore out chunks of hair. Though she said she wanted to run and
hide, she decided to call 911 and report it.

Rapist Left Next Victim Shaking in Tub

Two years later, the rapist found his fourth victim, 28-year-old
restaurant manager Sarah Kalmes-Gliege, who also awoke to someone coming
into her room in the middle of the night. She was just six weeks away
from her wedding.

“It was gun to my head, knife to my throat,” said Kalmes-Gliege.

He made it clear he had been stalking her, and he threatened her loved
ones. “He knew everything about me,” she said. “What my sister looks
like to what car my [finance] drove, my work schedule. He knew where I
worked out. Pretty much everything.”

The intruder sexually assaulted and attacked Kalmes-Gliege for almost
three hours. As with Mills, he was careful. He bound her hands and
covered her head with a pillowcase.

“The majority of the assault was spent just humiliating and demeaning
and terrorizing me. I mean, it wasn’t at all about anything to do with
sex. Just devastation is what, how I felt.”

Before leaving, as he had with Mills and his other victims, the attacker
forced Kalmes-Gliege into the bathroom for a long soak to wash away the
evidence.

“All I could think about was, ‘I can’t have someone call my family, my
fiancé, my parents, my siblings and tell them that I have been killed
six weeks before I get married,’” she said.

He left her alone, shaking in her tub and waiting hours until sunrise to flee.

Although she considered telling no one, she thought, “If I don’t tell
the police, this person is going to rape yet another person.” So she
called the cops.

Even through her trauma, Kalmes-Gliege had memorized details of her
attacker, from his gait to the haunting eyes behind his mask.

“He had a very distinct way of walking,” she said. “Kind of cumbersome.
He had very distinct bright blue eyes. I knew I would be able to pick
them out as soon as I saw that person.”

Mills also remembered his eyes. “When you’re staring into those eyes and
that’s the only thing you can see and the only thing you can focus on,
they stick with you.”

Police Hunt for Model Citizen

Detective Wheeler and his partner Matthew Dick realized this was a
special kind of rapist; he was a stalker, a man seemingly obsessed with
his victims who gathered intimate details about them.

“He’s actually engaging in conversation rather than just the quick act
of violence,” Dick said. The victims described how he would talk almost
lovingly to them, as if he was their boyfriend, before getting angry
and violent.

And he knew how to cover his tracks. “It was very obvious to us that
this was a sophisticated criminal and knew what he was doing,” Dick
said.

When the police turned to the FBI for help, they were told the rapist might be a seemingly model citizen.

“The one thing they did tell us that I’ll never forget is that this
would be some guy that everybody works with. They’ll say, ‘Naw. He
couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t do that,’ you know. And it’d be somebody
that would be maybe a respected member of the community,” Wheeler said.

The police had no prime suspect, until he stalked then 29-year-old
Jonelle Galuska. She said she knew she was being watched, so when she
was awoken one night by her startled dog, she immediately called the
police.

At 1 a.m., Bloomington police officer Dave Zeamer arrived to find a man
standing against the house, and in the glare of his flashlight, saw a
man turn and walk away.

“I yell, ‘Police. Stop, police!’” Zeamer said.

To his shock, he knew the man who turned around. It was one of his own … fellow Bloomington police officer Jeff Pelo, his former supervisor.

Pelo was a 17-year veteran of the Bloomington police, a former policeman of the year and married father of three.

“You got that relief of, ‘Oh, it’s Pelo.’ But then you are like, ‘Wait a
minute, it’s Pelo. What’s he doing out here?’” Zeamer said.

Once a trusted cop, now Pelo was a suspected serial rapist. “As soon as
I heard that Jeff Pelo was stopped outside that house, that connection
had been drawn in my mind,” said Dick.

Mounting Evidence Points to Police Sergeant

Mounting evidence revealed how Pelo may have used his police training and access to commit the crimes and cover his tracks.

Detectives found that Pelo’s police computer had been used to run
license plate searches on three of the victims. Pelo claimed that
someone else must have been using his computer terminal.

“Victims described how [the rapist] would pull some of the items around
from his belt. You know, the gloves that they described were consistent
with what police officers or security officers commonly wear,” Wheeler
remembered. It made sense that the rapist might be a cop, he said.

During a tense interrogation, Pelo denied “prowling” around Galuska’s
home and said he was only looking at the nearby lake. He was
house-hunting, he said, rubbing his head and eyebrows nervously.

Then, a search of Pelo’s home turned up a jacket and a ski mask made of
fibers that matched the kind found on the duct tape used to bind Mills.

“Fiber evidence was what I think was the most important,” Dick said.
“About the only actual physical evidence to tie Jeff Pelo to these
crimes.”

The victims were brought in to see if they could identify him, first
through a voice line-up. “The third victim, when she heard his voice,
she literally curled up into the fetal position and pulled herself into
the wall of the interview room,” Dick said.

“If you spend two hours listening to that person threatening, degrade
you, it doesn’t take very much to recognize it,” said Kalmes-Gliege.

Three victims also picked Pelo out of a photo line-up, even though the
rapist had worn a mask during the attacks. But it was those clear blue
eyes both Kalmes-Gliege and Mills said they remembered so vividly.

Believing Pelo was the rapist, Dick and Wheeler said he had betrayed the badge they held dear.

“To go to the victims and have to tell them that ‘This was one of my own
that did this to you,’” Dick said. “It was pretty devastating.”

Family Stands By Pelo

Pelo’s family — his wife of 20 years, Rickie, and their three kids –
stood by him. Rickie Pelo said the police jumped to conclusions.

“He was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she said. “He’s explained
to me. He’s never given me any reason not to believe him. So I do
believe him.”

Pelo’s home life was exemplary, according to his family. He seemed to be
a devoted family man who volunteered at his kids’ schools. He coached
his daughter’s softball team and was present at all sporting events.

Rickie Pelo describes her husband as being her kids’ biggest fan. “In
fact, my oldest daughter’s friends would always joke around. They knew
when her dad was in the audience because they could hear him,” she said.

At Pelo’s trial in May 2008, the most damaging testimony came from his victims.

“The women that were his victims, the women that survived his attacks,
were all women that were willing to stand up,” Mills said. “We took
control back. And I think that’s what really led to his downfall.”

After six weeks the jury returned a damning verdict: guilty on 35
counts of rape, kidnapping and stalking. He was sentenced to 440 years,
one of the longest sentences in Illinois history. Pelo is currently
appealing, asking a judge to overturn his conviction.

“I just felt it was important to have him be accountable to me, to my
family, to the public for the things that he did. I have no doubt that
the person sitting in jail right now, Mr. Pelo, is who is responsible
for every single one of these attacks,” said Kalmes-Gliege.

But Pelo’s family says the jury got it wrong. “I don’t think he did it,” Rickie Pelo said.

“There wasn’t DNA that said it was him. There wasn’t any hard proof to
say it was him, so I just don’t understand how so many people have come
to the conclusion that he’s a bad person,” said daughter Shayla Pelo.

Rickie said she tries to shut out the present, fondly remembering the
Jeff Pelo that she knew, the man she fell in love with when she was just
18.

“He had such a great sense of humor,” she said. “Such a loving, caring
heart. Actually, the first thing that I fell in love with are his eyes.
His eyes were just beautiful, and I could just lose myself in them.”

They’re the same eyes that will stare at four walls in a small cell for
the rest of his life, the eyes his victims say they cannot forget.

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Douchebag Baltimore Maryland Police Officer Salvatore Rivieri Finally Fired – Three Years After Videotaped Verbal And Physical Attack On A Child – Feels Blindsided :)

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – The Baltimore police officer fired three years after a rant toward a teenage skateboarder spoke out Saturday morning, saying he feels devastated and blindsided by the firing.

Officer Salvatore Rivieri, a 19-year veteran, is no longer with the department, officials said in confirming the dismissal.

A video posted on YouTube, apparently shot in the summer of 2007, shows Rivieri putting a youth, Eric Bush, into a headlock and pushing him to the ground. Bush was 14 at the time. The clip received millions of views on YouTube and was picked up by national news channels.

On Saturday morning’s Kendel Ehrlich Show on WBAL 1090 AM, Rivieri said of the 2007 confrontation the he warned the boy and his friends that skateboarding at the Inner Harbor is illegal.

Bush has said he did not hear an order that the officer gave him about skateboarding at the Inner Harbor. Rivieri repeatedly got upset at being called “dude” in the video.

“I’m not ‘man.’ I’m not ‘dude,’ I am Officer Rivieri,” he told the teen. “The sooner you learn that, the longer you are going to live in this world. Because you go around doing this kind of stuff and somebody is going to kill you.”

On Saturday, Rivieri said the video does not show him and Bush shaking hands after the confrontation.

Rivieri was suspended and sent back on the streets in November 2008. Earlier this month, the city police trial board dismissed the most serious charges against him but found him guilty of failure to submit a police report and recommended a six-day suspension without pay; however, days later, Police Commissioner Fred Bealefeld overruled that decision and fired him.

Rivieri is appealing the case. Bob Cherry, head of the Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police, said Wednesday that the union is outraged by the firing. Cherry said the officers in the FOP have supported Rivieri’s actions.

The Police Department has declined comment citing a personnel matter.

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Offical Blames Old Computers Instead Of Lazy Morons For Georgia’s Error Filled And Incomplete Sex Offender Registry

ATLANTA, GEORGIA – Georgia’s Sexual Offender Registry is supposed to give worried
parents or residents a clear picture of what creeps might be living
nearby and how creepy they might actually be.

But it doesn’t, a new state investigation has found.

The
registry, a Web-based database that shows where convicted sex offenders
are living and what they look like, was created to help concerned
citizens track convicted sex criminals in their community. The state
Legislature required all 159 counties to set up websites listing
up-to-date, complete information so residents can know who is in their
area. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is required by law to maintain
a statewide registry. It is not required to offer that information to
the public through its website, although it has for many years. The
registry is one of the most visited of the state government’s many
websites.

A new state audit has found that the state registry is flawed with error-ridden, out-of-date and incomplete information.

In
a 53-page report, auditors faulted outdated computers, underfunding,
understaffing and poor communication between government agencies. The
report raises so many concerns that House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue
Ridge, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution he plans to call in a
committee to review the report and draw up recommendations before next
year’s legislative session.

Kurt Fieldhaus is a husband and father
in Waterbury Cove, a subdivision in Lawrenceville. The 43-year-old
chairs the local Community Oriented Policing Services board that
coordinates with local law enforcement and looks to improve public
safety. He said he has tried to use the registry to keep up with changes
in his neighborhood and he’s noticed problems.

“At first, I
thought, this is impressive,” he said. “A few months later, as I was
looking at it … well, you can create the most perfect database, but if
it’s a dynamic database and you don’t put in the resources for updating
it, it becomes a less and less valuable tool over time.”

Fieldhaus
said he warns people to consider the database as highlighting potential
problems, not definite ones. He said his community has an offender who
was supposedly living in their area, but the database information was
cursory and later proved inaccurate. The convicted offender had moved
away.

Victim advocacy groups say they rarely use the registry in part because it’s not timely.

“I
almost feel like it’s a false sense of security,” said Sally Sheppard,
executive director of the Cottage Sexual Assault Center and Child
Advocacy Center in Athens.

Auditors wrote that “errors in the
database and the incomplete information on the state website may
misinform the public about the number of offenders and the threat posed
by offenders in their community.”

The audit found:

●
The GBI, which maintains the state registry “has not established
adequate management controls over [registry] program operations.” One
example: If an offender moves from out of state, a sheriff sends
paperwork to the GBI to add them to the Georgia registry. The audit
stated the GBI takes too long to add the information, allowing cases to
pile up and only working on them “intermittingly.” Meanwhile, the
offenders are not listed for months.

● In-state offenders also aren’t being listed in a timely fashion, and the registry isn’t keeping up with them when they move.

●
The registry’s database isn’t listing all the information about
offenders that state law requires. In some cases, the software doesn’t
even allow the information to be entered. In other cases, it was easy
for police or state data entry workers to add errors into the data.

● Physical descriptions and photographs of offenders are not being updated frequently enough.

●
A special state review board, set up to rank offenders by their danger
to the community, is so understaffed and backlogged that it has not
classified thousands of offenders. The report found that only 6 percent
of the state’s almost 20,000 offenders have been classified by the
board, which due to budget cuts has only four full-time and four
part-time staffers.

As a result, Georgians don’t know who
is living near them. A sex offender may be classified low risk, medium
risk or a “predator” — if the board ever gets around to reviewing the
offender’s case.

The review board did not return calls seeking comment for this article.

The
system is deeply fragmented. Financially strapped counties are required
to gather and keep up-to-date information on sex offenders. Some do it
themselves, some have privatized the operation and some don’t comply at
all. The state registry is compiled from a hodgepodge of sources —
county information, what the state can gather, the prisons and other
states when offenders move here.

J. Terry Norris, executive vice
president at the Georgia Sheriffs’ Association, has complained about the
registry for years, especially the legal requirements placed on
sheriffs, the lack of state funding and weak coordination among
agencies.

A recent check of the registry by the AJC confirmed
various problems. Many offenders are identified improperly, with names
misspelled. Others have their identifying marks listed inaccurately.

For
example, Richard Mundell, convicted of aggravated sexual assault of a
child in Texas, now lives in Haralson County. The database lists him as
having no tattoos. In fact, as his photograph on the database shows, he
has a large tattoo on his neck.

Some offenders are listed as
“homeless,” even though their addresses are listed in the database as
verified. Some sex crimes are not described at all, being listed as
“9999 Other crime,” with no explanation. Many are listed as
“absconders,” meaning they did not report to local police as required by
law.

Metro Atlanta parents who are familiar with the registry said they weren’t surprised to hear about the audit’s findings.

Christina
Barnette, 40, an Atlanta mother of three young children, said that she
checked the sex offender website in the past — and didn’t find it very
helpful. “All it told me was there’s a lot of sex offenders and it
doesn’t matter where you live,” she said

Beth Ely, 44, a mother of
two, said she checked the registry about a year ago when her family
moved to a neighborhood in Chamblee. She found it incomplete. “It’s a
pretty sloppy system,” she said.

Though state agencies and local sheriffs all told the AJC that the registry has big problems, the GBI criticized the audit.

GBI
spokesman John Bankhead said the two-person office running the registry
at the GBI is doing the best it can, and the GBI is well aware of what
it needs to fix. The issue is funding, he said. He said the registry
started in 1996 with one staffer and 300 offenders. Today the office has
two staffers — and almost 20,000 offenders.

Bankhead also charged
that the audit was guided by a private company, Offender Watch of
Louisiana, gunning for a state contract. Offender Watch has its own
database and software to track criminals, including sexual offenders.

“That is just a direct conflict of interest,” he said.

In
fact, state staff launched and conducted the entire audit, said Leslie
McGuire, performance audit division director of the state Department of
Audits and Accounts.

She said auditors did their own work,
including interviewing state and local officials. They also spoke with
officials at Offender Watch, because they work with many sheriffs’
departments in the state. Offender Watch was not compensated in any way
and there is no proposal for Offender Watch to get state business. But
it made sense to talk to the company, McGuire said.

“It would have been irresponsible not to look at other options that were available,” she said.

Joe
Gauthier of Offender Watch in Georgia said he was surprised to hear the
GBI was angry over the audit and the fact that he spoke with state
auditors.

“I didn’t take [the report] as a slam on the GBI, as it was on the outdated technology,” he said.

Gauthier
told the AJC that this year he started talking to Georgia officials
about setting up a statewide system like ones that the company operates
in nearby states. He guessed such a plan would cost the state about
$400,000 a year.

The state audit predicted the registry’s problems
will only get worse in coming years as the registered sex offender
population in the state rises. The number of registered sex offenders
has risen to about 20,000 this year and is expected to reach 34,000 in
the next decade. The population is expected to rise because offenders,
once on the list, take a long time to be removed, if ever, and more are
added every year.

The registry has been controversial for years,
with many challenging fairness and accuracy of such a list. Others have
strongly supported the concept, arguing it keeps an eye on potential
repeat offenders. Legislators have passed laws repeatedly to bolster the
registry as well as residency restrictions for offenders.

Legislative
leaders say the audit has sparked them to review the registry. Ralston,
who was the lead sponsor on the last major piece of legislation
expanding offender residency restrictions, said he plans to call a
special pre-session meeting of the House Judicial Non-Civil Committee to
review the audit this fall. He said he is willing to consider more
funding.

“I’m open to any reasonable solution,” he said.

For
sheriffs across the state, the unfunded requirement that they set up
registry websites had been a burden. Most try to run their own and still
others simply link to the GBI’s site or to some commercial version of
that information. Gene Pope, sheriff of Butts County, between Atlanta
and Macon, said he assigned two officers to watch about 50 convicted sex
offenders in his county. Some of their time now has to go to
maintaining the registry website.

“It’s a drain on my resources,” he said.

About
40 sheriffs have hired Offender Watch to maintain their sex offender
databases. Many of them are strong supporters. Carroll County, west of
Atlanta, has been using the system for three years to keep track of
about 250 offenders. The program costs the county about $7,000 annually.

Terry
Welch, training director and adviser for the sheriffs’ association Sex
Offender Registry Task Force, said the biggest problem preventing an
accurate, complete registry is technology: The computers that the GBI is
using are just too old and don’t have the power necessary to handle
the workload.

“Funding is the No. 1 problem to deal with regarding what this law mandates,” she said. “The way it is now, it’s all confused.”

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Chicago Police And Federal Prosecutors Try To Scare City’s Gang Leaders

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – Chicago police and other law enforcement agencies have embarked on a pilot effort to stem the gang-related violence rattling through city neighborhoods by applying direct pressure on top gang leaders, officials said Saturday.

Earlier this month, police Superintendent Jody Weis and federal prosecutors secretly met with a group of West Side gang leaders at the Garfield Park Conservatory, informing them over snacks and beverages that they would be held directly accountable for shootings and other violent crimes committed by their gangs.

If a crime gets traced back to a member of a particular gang, Weis said during a Saturday news conference, investigators will “come down with every bit of firepower we have, every prosecutive trick we know.”

Investigators tried to make it “a very congenial meeting” with the gang leaders, who were mainly from the Traveling Vice Lords, Weis said. But “they got up and walked out.”
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Before that happened, he said, federal prosecutors told the gang members that they will use federal racketeering statutes to go after houses and other assets owned by them, other members or their families.

Parolees could also be checked for violations; cars could be towed if there are outstanding violations; and law enforcement agencies in general will keep a close eye on the gang leaders, police said.

“They did not like the idea at all, because they realized something one of their colleagues may do could lead to a lot of pressure on them,” Weis said. “That’s what we tried to emphasize: This is group responsibility, group accountability. So you’re a leader, you’d better influence your guys to behave.”

Weis, who appeared with Mayor Richard Daley at a Saturday back-to-school rally in Pilsen, said investigators asked several gang leaders to meet them “and some of them did.”

He insisted the meeting did not constitute an effort to negotiate with street gangs.

“It’s not like, ‘If you don’t kill someone we’ll give you a pass to your drug-dealing activities,’ ” Weis said. The program is modeled on initiatives that have had success in Boston and other cities, he said.

People whose family members were killed because of gang violence also attended, to urge the gangs to stop the shootings. Daley said giving the criminals the victims’ perspective is important, because gang members live in the neighborhoods where shootings occur.

“It’s the idea that you have to show from the victims’ side, that’s what they were showing,” Daley said. “It’s the families who come up and say ‘That’s my son or daughter. Remember? They lived down the block. You know our families. You know our children.’ “

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6 Year Old Dismissed Charge For $5 Worth Of Marijuana Makes Man Unfit To Join U.S. Military

CALIFORNIA – All the running and weight-training honed Martin Gilbert’s wiry 120-pound, 5-foot-9 frame into peak condition.

He fully expected to be in Army boot camp by September. He wanted to be ready.

Joining the Army, Gilbert says is something he counted on since he was 8 years old and first got an eyeful of military equipment in a Texas surplus store.

His desire comes from a mix of “love of country,” a deep respect for the military and hearing his politically conservative father express regrets, over the years, at not having served himself.

“I think I have the determination, the will and the work ethic,”

Gilbert said Friday in a Marina home where he rents a room.

At 25, Gilbert has two years of community college, a B-plus grade-average, a resume that contains a mix of retail electronics, construction labor and coffeehouse jobs. He has been out of work a few months — living off savings, selling his beloved camera equipment and getting no response to many job applications. Gilbert figures it was time to make the dream come true.

“I knew I was going into the military,” he said.

But that hope came crashing down Wednesday when an Army recruiter informed him that a minor marijuana case stemming from his senior year at Carmel Valley High School in 2004 has made him morally unfit for today’s Army.

“I had tried it one or two times and got caught with about $5 worth at school,” he said. A random check by sheriff’s deputies with drug-sniffing dogs snared him and another kid. Gilbert had just turned 18.

The misdemeanor marijuana possession charge was dismissed after Gilbert paid a fine and attended drug education sessions. “They told me it would drop off my record,” he said.

But the military burrows into juvenile and adult court records — even those that are sealed, expunged or dismissed — in making background checks on recruits. And current Army rules disqualify anyone with a case involving illegal drugs on his record — dismissed or not.

“They have tightened it up,” said Mark Howell, spokesman for the Army Recruiting Command at Fort Knox, Ky.

The 6-year-old case slipped Gilbert’s mind when he first started talking with an Army recruiter in Seaside. But he said he brought it up just to make sure that he couldn’t be accused of hiding anything.

This week, the recruiter told him he couldn’t go in the Army.

“I was devastated,” Gilbert said. “It felt like my life passed before my eyes.”

Gilbert grew up in Big Sur and Marin County, living off and on with parents who divorced when he was 8. He figures he has used marijuana about five to 10 times in his life, and the last time was about two years ago.

Gilbert understands the Army rule, and he knows the military invests a lot of money in each recruit.

But in a country where tens of millions of people have used marijuana and talk of legalizing the drug is common — as with Proposition 19 on California’s November ballot — Gilbert views the Army’s current rules as misguided.

“Their screening process seems flawed … a misdemeanor marijuana charge when I was in high school, it just shocks me,” he said.

Sgt. Richard Teunis, an Army recruiter in Seaside, said he could not talk about Gilbert’s case because of privacy rules. But he confirmed that a case like his would automatically disqualify a recruit in today’s Army.

“The Army considers any adverse disposition just like a guilty plea,” he said. “It’s a discussion we have had many time with the juvenile courts.”

Teunis has seen other young people in Gilbert’s situation. “They are disappointed,” he said. “It’s unfortunate but this is a federal job, and we have to go by those regulations.”

Things are different with military recruiting today — as high unemployment, the allure of job training and benefits, and help with college costs are making many eager to enlist, Howell said.

“It’s a common misperception that the Army is your last resort,” he said. “That was the viewpoint in the 1970s, but it’s not really the case anymore.

“So many people want to join that it’s making it more difficult to get in,” Howell said.

The Army already has enlisted about 61,000 of it 74,500-recruit goal for the year, and basic training for some recruits is being delayed up to 14 months.

“We’re meeting our goals, and at the same time our quality numbers are going up,” Howell said.

It’s not just young men and women coming from high school or junior colleges, but the Army is recruiting more people with four-year college and graduate degrees, Howell said.

Gilbert doesn’t want to abandon his dream. He’s hoping for a waiver, or, perhaps, a change in policy. “I don’t want to give up hope,” he said.

He admits he made a mistake, but a lot of people make mistakes — many of them far more serious than having a tiny amount of marijuana.

“I don’t hold it against them. I just think they are going about it the wrong way,” he said.

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Omaha Nebraska Police Officer Brian Miller Tried To Kill Shoplifter At Mall

OMAHA, NEBRASKA – An Omaha, Neb., police officer opens fire trying to stop a shoplifting at a mall, hitting one of the suspects as she drove away.

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Kamloops Canada RCMP Officers And Others Watched Jail Cell HIV Infected Lesbian Sex On Security Cameras And Did Nothing – Country’s Federal Prisons Make Available Condoms And Lube To Inmates

KAMLOOPS, CANADA – The RCMP has launched a criminal investigation into the conduct of four officers and three civilians working at the force’s Kamloops, B.C., detachment who allegedly looked on as two female inmates — one of whom may be HIV-positive, according to media reports — engaged in sexual activity.

The women were placed in the same holding cell on Aug. 18, during which time they began a sexual encounter that lasted close to an hour, according to an inside source cited by Global News.

The source alleged that the officers and municipal staff on duty that day watched the encounter through cameras mounted inside the cell block for up to seven minutes without intervening.

The RCMP has confirmed that both criminal and internal code of conduct investigations have been launched into the “actions or inactions” of four RCMP members and three City of Kamloops staff.

Staff Sergeant Garry Kerr, acting officer in charge of the Kamloops Detachment, said in a release late on Friday that another criminal investigation is also underway that focuses on the actions of one of the female inmates in the cell. Police are required to investigate allegations involving people with HIV engaging in sexual activity with others without disclosing their condition.

“The only thing I can say right now is they’re all under Criminal Code investigation, obviously for criminal offences, and the RCMP members are also under investigation for what we refer to as code of conduct, which is like an internal system,” he said, noting that guards have an obligation to stop any sort of sexual activity among detainees.

“There are no guidelines just in effect to that, but if a guard sees that there is inappropriate behaviour going on, considering where they are, obviously they would be in obligation to do something,” Sgt. Kerr said.

Kamloops Mayor Peter Milobar has asked residents to remain patient while the investigations are ongoing, and is making assurances that the truth about what happened will eventually be made public. The city employees provide clerical support at the detachment, he said.

“We need to let the details get fully investigated and then steps will fall into place from there,” Mr. Milobar said.

While sexual contact between inmates in both provincial and federal detention centres is discouraged, it is not listed as a disciplinary offence in the federal Corrections and Conditional Release Act. Most federal institutions have house rules prohibiting sex between inmates, but many prison workers operate under a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, says Claudia Medina of the Prisoners’ HIV/AIDS Support Action Network.

“Using substances, needles and having sex, those things are still going to happen when prisoners are not being supervised,” said Ms. Medina, who visits federal prisons to educate inmates on safe-sex practices.

Recognizing that sexual activity will occur among inmates, in 2004 Correctional Services Canada implemented a policy making condoms, dental dams and lubricants easily available in every federal prison.

A CSC study released in March reported that 17% of male federal inmates and 31% of female inmates surveyed said they had engaged in either oral, vaginal or anal sex while in prison within the last six months. Almost all of them reported engaging in at least one instance of unprotected oral, vaginal or anal sex while in prison.

The same study found that the rate of HIV infection in federal prisons is 4.6%, about 15 times greater than that in the general population. In addition, the rate of infection of hepatitis C in federal prisons was found to be 31%, a rate 39 times greater than that in society as a whole.

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Swedish Government, Police, And Others Target Wikileaks Website Founder With Bogus Allegations And Criminal Charges

SWEDEN – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been interrogated by police in Sweden, where he is facing molestation allegations, his lawyer said Tuesday, adding he expected the charges to be dropped.

Leif Silbersky, one of Sweden’s top defence attorneys, said police had questioned his client in his presence for about an hour Monday evening and that the interrogation went “very well.”

“I expect the prosecutor will drop the whole thing,” he told AFP.

A Swedish duty prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for Assange on the evening of Friday, August 20 over an allegation of rape but chief prosecutor Eva Finne abruptly withdrew it the next day, saying new information had come to light.

Then last week, Finne said there was no reason to believe a crime had been committed in that case, but said she had enough evidence to continue probing a molestation allegation from another woman against the 39-year-old Australian.

“The whole story is very bizarre,” Silbersky lamented Tuesday, pointing out that his client had faced “different prosecutors and different charges that have now basically boiled down to nothing.”

The lawyer of the two women who have made the accusations against Assange meanwhile said last Friday he had appealed the prosecutor’s decision not to open a rape probe.

Assange himself has said the allegations against him are part of a “smear campaign” aimed at discrediting his whistleblowing website, which is locked in a row with the Pentagon over the release of secret US documents about the war in Afghanistan.

WikiLeaks published nearly 77,000 classified US military documents on the war in Afghanistan on July 23 and has said it will publish another 15,000 within the next week or so.

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First Military Tribunal Case At Bush’s Torture Prison Is Child That U.S. Interogator Threated With Gang Prison Rape

WASHINGTON, DC - After working for a year to redeem the international reputation of military commissions, Obama administration officials are alarmed by the first case to go to trial under revamped rules: the prosecution of a former child soldier whom an American interrogator implicitly threatened with gang rape.

The defendant, Omar Khadr, was 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan and accused of throwing a grenade that killed an American soldier. Senior officials say his trial is undermining their broader effort to showcase reforms that they say have made military commissions fair and just.

“Optically, this has been a terrible case to begin the commissions with,” said Matthew Waxman, who was the Pentagon’s top detainee affairs official during the Bush administration. “There is a great deal of international skepticism and hostility toward military commissions, and this is a very tough case with which to push back against that skepticism and hostility.”

Senior officials at the White House, the Justice Department and the Pentagon have agreed privately that it would be better to reach a plea bargain in the Khadr case so that a less problematic one would be the inaugural trial, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former officials. But the administration has not pushed to do so because officials fear, for legal and political reasons, that it would be seen as improper interference.

Mr. Khadr’s trial at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay started earlier in August but was put on a monthlong hiatus because a lawyer got sick and collapsed in court. The pause has allowed the administration to consider the negative images the trial has already generated.

Chief among them are persistent questions about the propriety of prosecuting a child soldier. Moreover, in a blow to establishing an image of openness, the Pentagon sought to ban journalists who wrote about publicly known information that it decreed should be treated as secret.

The judge declined to suppress statements Mr. Khadr made after an Army interrogator sought to frighten him with a fabricated story about an Afghan youth who disappointed interrogators and was sent to an American prison where he died after a gang rape. In a pretrial hearing, the interrogator confirmed making that implicit threat, but the judge ruled it did not taint Mr. Khadr’s later confessions.

And prosecutors disqualified an officer from the jury because he said he agreed with President Obama that Guantánamo had compromised America’s values and international reputation.

Administration officials would speak only anonymously about their deliberations on whether to try to abort the trial. But their view about the need improve the system’s perceived credibility — so allies will cooperate by providing evidence or extraditing defendants — was echoed by Kenneth L. Wainstein, assistant attorney general for national security in the Bush administration.

“It is important for the government to be able to proceed through a trial, to do so in a transparent way, and have the world see that this is a fair process with strong safeguards and full due process,” he said. “The sooner that happens, the better.”

No one intended the Khadr case to be the first trial under the revamped system.

He had already been charged when President Obama froze the tribunals in January 2009. In November, after Congress overhauled commission rules, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. included Mr. Khadr in an initial batch of five detainees who would remain in the military system.

At the time, officials say, it was assumed that other referrals would quickly follow. But controversy over Mr. Holder’s decision to move five other detainees to the regular court system for a trial in New York over the Sept. 11 attacks shut down the process, and military prosecutors resumed Mr. Khadr’s case.

Mr. Khadr, who was born in Toronto and comes from a Qaeda-linked family, was a teenager in 2002 when he was found, heavily wounded, at a compound in Afghanistan after a firefight with United States troops. A grenade blast in that battle killed an Army sergeant, Christopher Speer.

Investigators concluded that Mr. Khadr threw the grenade — a theory defense lawyers reject. A videotape found at the compound was said to show Mr. Khadr helping to make and plant roadside bombs. But the centerpiece of five charges against him is Sergeant Speer’s killing.

Earlier this summer, prosecutors and retired Vice Adm. Bruce MacDonald, the commission “convening authority” who must approve any sentence, apparently raised the possibility of a deal that would allow Mr. Khadr to serve only a few years, rather than a potential life sentence, if he pleaded guilty.

But Mr. Khadr, now 23, reacted by firing two defense lawyers. He told the court he was offended by what he saw as an attempt to “legitimize the sham process” by dangling “the least sentence possible” to coerce a confession.

Still, Dennis Edney, a Canadian lawyer assisting the Khadr family, said a deal involving a lesser charge, like conspiracy to support terrorism, remained possible.

“I would strongly recommend a reasonable deal to Omar if the murder charge was off the table,” Mr. Edney said.

Sergeant Speer’s wife, Tabitha Speer, might object to that outcome. She attended the opening of the trial and has written of her husband’s death, “The pain now carried by both myself and our children will last a lifetime.”

Administration officials have discussed whether senior civilian leaders at the Pentagon or elsewhere could get involved, helping to revive plea negotiations or even directing Admiral MacDonald to offer a more attractive offer. (Admiral MacDonald did not respond to an interview request.)

A similar high-level intervention would clearly be allowed in the regular court system, where the attorney general supervises prosecutions. But tribunal rules insulate commission officials.

A provision in the Military Commissions Act prohibits “unlawful command influence,” defined as attempting “to coerce, or, by any unauthorized means, influence” the judgment or actions of prosecutors or the convening authority. Officials are debating what that means.

The provision’s wording was suggested to lawmakers in 2006 by Col. Morris D. Davis, then the chief commissions prosecutor, who complained that Bush appointees had inappropriately pressured him to take aggressive steps like using evidence he considered tainted by torture.

Now retired, Colonel Davis said he believes the provision was not meant to bar pressure to sweeten a plea offer: “It’s clearly not ‘command influence’ to do something favorable to the accused,” he said. “The whole concept was the opposite of that.”

Still, the statute makes no such distinction. And officials do not want to risk intervening, lest it become partisan ammunition for conservatives who might accuse them of using political interference to coddle a terrorist.

Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military law at Yale Law School, said there was “ no clear answer” to how far administration officials may intrude. But given the risks, he said, “they are right to be cautious.”

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Manhattan New York Criminal Court Judge And Former Prosecutor James Gibbons Quits In Disgrace After Fathering Child With Young Legal Aid Lawyer And Collection Of Porn Is Discovered On His Office Computer

MANHATTAN, NEW YORK – A cleavage-crazed criminal court judge – who fathered a son with a young Legal Aid lawyer – quit after officials found a massive porn stash on his work computer, sources said Thursday.

Disgraced Manhattan jurist James Gibbons, a whip-smart ex-prosecutor who once convicted rapists and killers, fired off a terse resignation letter last week after the nasty cache was uncovered.

“There was a lot of porn on his computer – all young women,” an investigator told the Daily News. “Lots of crotch and cleavage shots.”

The Manhattan district attorney’s office is scouring the vile files to determine if criminal charges are warranted – and are checking whether any of the women are underage.

Gibbons, 47, already had raised eyebrows with his ethics-skirting romance with Legal Aid lawyer Jeanne Emhoff, 31, who he fathered a son with weeks ago.

Emhoff’s Facebook page, which was pulled down Thursday, featured a photo of a man with a boy on his shoulder.

The porn revelation staggered the baby’s grandparents.

“This is going to break her heart,” Emhoff’s stepdad said of his wife. “She thinks the world of Jim. … This will destroy my wife.”

Gibbons – who was not arrested – was caught when a computer-monitoring system in the courthouse red-flagged his courthouse terminal, a law enforcement source said.

He was on paternity leave when the images were discovered and the computer seized.

During the 14 years he worked in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Gibbons was well-known for his efficient handling of street crimes.

He also enjoyed a good reputation on the bench after his December 2001 appointment by departing Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

“He was a very careful judge on the law,” lawyer Adam Freedman said. “If he was using his state-issued computer for illegal activities, it would be uncharacteristic, considering how careful he is on the law.”

Despite the possible conflicts of interest between Gibbons and Emhoff, a source close to the case said, their affair was unrelated to the investigation.

“There is absolutely no link between the judge’s relationship with Jeanne Emhoff and any alleged criminal activity,” the source said. “One has nothing to do with the other.”

It was unclear when the porn was found on the disgraced judge’s computer, but sources said its discovery was just routine.

“In government agencies, and in many private sector firms, employers are able to monitor employee computer usage,” a source said.

Gibbons quit his position with a simple three-paragraph letter that offered no clues to his sudden nightmare.

“It has been a privilege to serve as a judge of the Criminal Court of the City of New York,” he wrote. “Please accept this letter as a statement of my resignation of that office effective today.”

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Las Vegas Nevada Police Officer Bryan Yant Under Investigation For Drugs He Didn’t Seize In Police Raid That Never Took Place – Lied To Justify Shooting Man In June

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – Las Vegas police Detective Bryan Yant is under investigation for apparently lying about drugs he didn’t seize and actions he didn’t take during a 2009 police raid that never happened, the Las Vegas Review-Journal has learned.

Yant, a 10-year veteran of the department who remains on paid leave, last week was cleared by a coroner’s inquest in the fatal shooting of Trevon Cole, 21, while serving a drug warrant in June. In seeking the search warrant, Yant made gross misstatements about Cole’s criminal history.

The department’s internal affairs unit is investigating that case and is questioning Yant’s actions in at least one other drug probe.

In January, Yant and fellow officer David Goris said they sat in a car outside a northwest valley home while a confidential informant bought drugs from a man they identified as William Sigler. That alleged drug buy was used to justify a nighttime search of Sigler’s home 12 days later. Police arrested Sigler and his girlfriend and seized prescription drugs, marijuana and cocaine from the home.

But Sigler’s attorneys and prosecutors now agree that the informant did not buy drugs from Sigler, who was dealing cards at a poker tournament in the Bahamas in January.

Justice of the Peace Joe Bonaventure threw out the case last week. Clark County District Attorney David Roger still can seek an indictment by a grand jury, but he said Wednesday he has not decided whether he will do so.

Investigators also question why Yant tore up and left three documents at Sigler’s home during the January raid. In those documents, obtained by the Review-Journal, Yant describes a different raid of Sigler’s home, one that never took place.

Yant, in a “declaration of arrest” form, describes detaining suspects and photographing evidence at the Sigler home. The form is dated December 2009, but the day of the month is left blank. He also filled out and signed a “preliminary field test checklist” affirming that evidence seized in that nonexistent raid was positive for cocaine but did not list an amount or the specific date.

It’s unclear why Yant filled out paperwork describing events that never happened.

Deputy Chief Joseph Lombardo, who oversees the department’s narcotics section, said the documents pertain to a prior case that went nowhere.

Yant in December said he used department money to buy drugs from Sigler and obtained a search warrant for Sigler’s home, Lombardo said. But Lombardo confirmed that no search was conducted in December, and it’s unclear why the search warrant signed by Justice of the Peace Eric Goodman was never executed.

No December drug buy plays any role in any case against Sigler.

Yant never should have completed paperwork in advance of an anticipated raid, Lombardo said, and leaving those papers in Sigler’s home a month later was “inappropriate.”

Yant’s certification that he had seized cocaine before a raid that never even happened raises “serious questions,” said Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada.

He said Yant’s completion of the form without having the drugs in his possession in particular went “beyond mere laziness and sloppiness. It goes to a process that is totally phony.”

Sigler’s attorneys, John Wright and Jason Weiner, said their client found the torn-up papers in his home after the January raid and pieced them back together. They said that when they asked prosecutors for copies of the department’s marked bills and inventory of drugs bought in January, they inexplicably received only Yant’s paperwork from December.

Weiner said that if the informant really did buy drugs in January, there should be a paper trail. Roger said that his office never received that information from detectives and that his case is based only on the evidence allegedly seized in the January raid.

Sigler’s attorneys challenged that evidence, saying it was obtained through a flawed warrant.

“The money had to go out of Metro and the drugs had to come in, and there is no record of that happening by Metro despite our repeated requests,” Weiner said, adding that, “The bottom line is, our guy was in the Bahamas.”

Lombardo said the department does have records of drugs bought in January. It’s unclear why the records were never given to prosecutors or the defense.

In the Trevon Cole case, Yant in a search warrant affidavit confused Cole, a small-time marijuana dealer, with a man by the same name who had a long history of drug arrests in Houston and California though that man is described as seven years older, at least 3 inches shorter and 100 pounds lighter. Yant and his supervisor, Sgt. John Harney, who is also on paid leave, are under investigation for the way that search warrant was carried out. Goris’ duty status was unclear Wednesday.

The investigations are part of the fallout from police work that district attorneys at last week’s inquest described as “sloppy.”

After the Cole shooting, Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie ordered narcotics detectives to stop serving their own forced-entry search warrants, leaving them for SWAT officers. After the inquest, he extended that order to cover all raids pending a departmental policy review.

In what officials call an unrelated move, the captain overseeing narcotics, Capt. Brett Zimmerman, was recently transferred to the crimes against youth and family bureau, and that bureau’s Capt. Vincent Cannito was sent to narcotics.

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Orem Utah Cop Wannabe Caught Selling Drugs To Pay For Police Academy

OREM, UTAH – While police officers arrest pot dealers fairly frequently, Orem police officers heard a pretty unusual reason for the illegal activity during an arrest this weekend.

The 20-year-old man said he was dealing the drugs to save up for the police academy.

“It’s probably not the first time this has happened, but this is the first time I’ve heard of someone admitting it,” said Orem Sgt. Craig Martinez. “Most drug dealers wouldn’t say they were trying to save up to become a cop.”

The man was arrested after Orem police were told he was dealing drugs and obtained a search warrant for his home. He was arrested on suspicion of possession of marijuana with intent to sell, possession of a stolen firearm, possession of a controlled substance for pills he had and possession of drug paraphernalia.

He is in the Utah County Jail on an $1,850 bond.

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Broke Police Departments Stop Responding To Certain Calls

TULSA, OKLAHOMA – Budget cuts are forcing police around the country to stop responding to fraud, burglary and theft calls as officers focus limited resources on violent crime.

Cutbacks in such places as Oakland, Tulsa and Norton, Mass. have forced police to tell residents to file their own reports — online or in writing — for break-ins and other lesser crimes.

“If you come home to find your house burglarized and you call, we’re not coming,” said Oakland Police spokeswoman Holly Joshi. The city laid off 80 officers from its force of 687 last month and the department can’t respond to burglary, vandalism, and identity theft. “It’s amazing. It’s a big change for us.”

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US Government Tracking US Citizens Via. GPS Without Warrants

WASHINGTON, DC – Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre — and scary — rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants — with no need for a search warrant. (See a TIME photoessay on Cannabis Culture.)

It is a dangerous decision — one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.

This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle’s underside.

After Pineda-Moreno challenged the DEA’s actions, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in January that it was all perfectly legal. More disturbingly, a larger group of judges on the circuit, who were subsequently asked to reconsider the ruling, decided this month to let it stand. (Pineda-Moreno has pleaded guilty conditionally to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and manufacturing marijuana while appealing the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained with the help of GPS.)

In fact, the government violated Pineda-Moreno’s privacy rights in two different ways. For starters, the invasion of his driveway was wrong. The courts have long held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes and in the “curtilage,” a fancy legal term for the area around the home. The government’s intrusion on property just a few feet away was clearly in this zone of privacy.

The judges veered into offensiveness when they explained why Pineda-Moreno’s driveway was not private. It was open to strangers, they said, such as delivery people and neighborhood children, who could wander across it uninvited. (See the misadventures of the CIA.)

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month’s decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people’s. The court’s ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.

Judge Kozinski is a leading conservative, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, but in his dissent he came across as a raging liberal. “There’s been much talk about diversity on the bench, but there’s one kind of diversity that doesn’t exist,” he wrote. “No truly poor people are appointed as federal judges, or as state judges for that matter.” The judges in the majority, he charged, were guilty of “cultural elitism.” (Read about one man’s efforts to escape the surveillance state.)

The court went on to make a second terrible decision about privacy: that once a GPS device has been planted, the government is free to use it to track people without getting a warrant. There is a major battle under way in the federal and state courts over this issue, and the stakes are high. After all, if government agents can track people with secretly planted GPS devices virtually anytime they want, without having to go to a court for a warrant, we are one step closer to a classic police state — with technology taking on the role of the KGB or the East German Stasi.

Fortunately, other courts are coming to a different conclusion from the Ninth Circuit’s — including the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That court ruled, also this month, that tracking for an extended period of time with GPS is an invasion of privacy that requires a warrant. The issue is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.

In these highly partisan times, GPS monitoring is a subject that has both conservatives and liberals worried. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s pro-privacy ruling was unanimous — decided by judges appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. (Comment on this story.)

Plenty of liberals have objected to this kind of spying, but it is the conservative Chief Judge Kozinski who has done so most passionately. “1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it’s here at last,” he lamented in his dissent. And invoking Orwell’s totalitarian dystopia where privacy is essentially nonexistent, he warned: “Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we’re living in Oceania.”

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Department Of Homeland Security Giving Up On Thousands Of Immigration Deportations – Back Door Amnesty For Illegals

WASHINGTON, DC – The Department of Homeland Security is systematically reviewing thousands of pending immigration cases and moving to dismiss those filed against suspected illegal immigrants who have no serious criminal records, according to several sources familiar with the efforts.

Culling the immigration court system dockets of noncriminals started in earnest in Houston about a month ago and has stunned local immigration attorneys, who have reported coming to court anticipating clients’ deportations only to learn that the government was dismissing their cases.

Richard Rocha, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman, said Tuesday that the review is part of the agency’s broader, nationwide strategy to prioritize the deportations of illegal immigrants who pose a threat to national security and public safety. Rocha declined to provide further details.

Critics assailed the plan as another sign that the Obama administration is trying to create a kind of backdoor “amnesty” program.

Raed Gonzalez, an immigration attorney who was briefed on the effort by Homeland Security’s deputy chief counsel in Houston, said DHS confirmed that it’s reviewing cases nationwide, though not yet to the pace of the local office. He said the others are expected to follow suit soon.

Gonzalez, the liaison between the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which administers the immigration court system, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said DHS now has five attorneys assigned full time to reviewing all active cases in Houston’s immigration court.

Gonzalez said DHS attorneys are conducting the reviews on a case-by-case basis. However, he said they are following general guidelines that allow for the dismissal of cases for defendants who have been in the country for two or more years and have no felony convictions.

In some instances, defendants can have one misdemeanor conviction, but it cannot involve a DWI, family violence or sexual crime, Gonzalez said.
Massive backlog of cases

Opponents of illegal immigration were critical of the dismissals.

“They’ve made clear that they have no interest in enforcing immigration laws against people who are not convicted criminals,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for strict controls.

“This situation is just another side effect of President Obama’s failure to deliver on his campaign promise to make immigration reform a priority in his first year,” said U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. “Until he does, state and local authorities are left with no choice but to pick up the slack for prosecuting and detaining criminal aliens.”

Gonzalez called the dismissals a necessary step in unclogging a massive backlog in the immigration court system. In June, there were more than 248,000 cases pending in immigration courts across the country, including about 23,000 in Texas, according to data compiled by researchers at Syracuse University.
‘Absolutely fantastic’

Gonzalez said he went into immigration court downtown on Monday and was given a court date in October 2011 for one client. But, he said, the government’s attorney requested the dismissal of that case and those of two more of his clients, and the cases were dispatched by the judge.

The court “was terminating all of the cases that came up,” Gonzalez said. “It was absolutely fantastic.”

“We’re all calling each other saying, ‘Can you believe this?’ ” said John Nechman, another Houston immigration attorney, who had two cases dismissed.

Attorney Elizabeth Mendoza Macias, who has practiced in Houston for 17 years, said she had cases for several clients dismissed during the past month and eventually called DHS to find out what was going on. She said she was told by a DHS trial attorney that 2,500 cases were under review in Houston.

“I had five (dismissed) in one week, and two more that I just received,” Mendoza said. “And I am expecting many more, many more, in the next month.”

Her clients, all previously charged with being in the country illegally, included:

An El Salvadoran man married to a U.S. citizen who has two U.S.-born children. The client had a pending asylum case in the court system, but the case was not particularly strong. Now that his case is terminated, he will be eligible to obtain permanent residency through his wife, Mendoza said.

A woman from Cameroon, who was in removal proceedings after being caught by the U.S. Border Patrol, had her case terminated by the government. She meets the criteria of a trafficking victim, Mendoza said, and can now apply for a visa.
Memo outlines priorities

Immigrants who have had their cases terminated are frequently left in limbo, immigration attorneys said, and are not granted any form of legal status.

“It’s very, very key to understand that these aliens are not being granted anything in court. They are still here illegally. They don’t have work permits. They don’t have Social Security numbers,” Mendoza said. “ICE is just saying, ‘At this particular moment, we are not going to proceed with trying to remove you from the United States.’ ”

In a June 30 memo, ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton outlined the agency’s priorities, saying it had the capacity to remove about 400,000 illegal immigrants annually — about 4 percent of the estimated illegal immigrant population in the country. The memo outlines priorities for the detention and removal system, putting criminals and threats to national security at the top of the list.
Up to 17,000 cases

On Tuesday, ICE officials provided a copy of a new policy memo from Morton dated Aug. 20 that instructs government attorneys to review the court cases of people with pending applications to adjust status based on their relation to a U.S. citizen. Morton estimates in the memo that the effort could affect up to 17,000 cases.

Tre Rebsock, the ICE union representative in Houston, said even if the efforts involve only a fraction of the pending immigration cases, “that’s going to make our officers feel even more powerless to enforce the laws.”

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Innocent Maryland Car Crash Victim Beaten By Prince George’s Hospital Security Guards After Being Misidentified As Cancer Patient And Refusing Chest Surgery They’d Scheduled For Woman Patient

UPPER MARLBORO, MARYLAND – A man who was hurt in a car crash but was misidentified as a cancer patient claims security guards at Prince George’s Hospital beat him up when he tried to leave the hospital to avoid chest surgery he didn’t need – “to have a potentially cancerous mass removed from his chest.” He adds that one guard repeatedly called him “bitch” as he roughed him up.
Joseph Wheeler says a June 23 car accident put him in the hospital, which is owned by Dimensions Health Corporation. When he woke up hungry on June 24 and asked a nurse for food, she told him he couldn’t eat because he was scheduled for surgery, Wheeler claims in Prince George’s County Court.
Wheeler says the nurse checked his identification bracelet and told him the surgery was “to have a potentially cancerous mass removed from his chest.”
Wheeler says his ID bracelet “contained a name that was different from Mr. Wheeler’s, appeared to be that of a woman, and had a birth date that was 13 years prior to his own.”
The complaint continues: “Mr. Wheeler, still in serious pain from the car accident and subsequent treatment from injuries sustained, was starting to fear for his safety as the hospital had misidentified him and he was being prepped to go into a surgery that he knew nothing about.
“At this point, Mr. Wheeler’s wife, Felicia Ann Wheeler, came into the room to see her husband. Mr. Wheeler immediately told Mrs. Wheeler about what was taking place. The Wheelers decided that it was in their best interest to leave Prince George’s Hospital Center and seek medical care for Mr. Wheeler elsewhere.”
Mrs. Wheeler confirmed with nurses outside her husband’s room that he was scheduled for cancer surgery, and when she told the nurses that she and her husband were leaving, “an argument ensued.”
According to the increasingly bizarre complaint, Mr. Wheeler, “hearing the argument, took out his I/V, got out of the hospital bed, put his clothes on, and started to walk out of the room. He was bleeding from the spot on his hand where that I/V had been connected.
“Mrs. Wheeler and the nurse met Mr. Wheeler at the door. The nurse told Mr. Wheeler that he was not allowed to leave. She put a bandage on Mr. Wheeler’s hand to stop the bleeding from the I/V spot, and then yelled for security.
“Mr. Wheeler, now bandaged and clothed, began to walk toward the exit of the floor while his wife gathered the rest of his belongings. As he moved toward the exit, two large men in security uniforms moved quickly toward Mr. Wheeler.”
These men, defendants William Reese and Donovan Scott, worked for the hospital and/or defendant Broadway Services, according to the complaint. The Wheelers say the two security guards were “immediately hostile.”
“Defendant Scott harshly asked, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Mr. Wheeler told both Reese and Scott that his business was finished at the hospital and that he was on his way out,” the complaint states.
“In the moments immediately following this exchange, defendant Scott began to appear angry and upset with Mr. Wheeler. He began to use profanity directed at Mr. Wheeler about getting back to Wheeler’s ‘damn room.’
“At this point the two officers put on black padded gloves in front of Mr. Wheeler and defendant Scott started to hit his fist against his own hand and moved closer in proximity to Wheeler’s face. Defendant Scott appeared angry and agitated.”
Wheeler, “in fear for his safety,” tried to reason with the guards.
“He told the officers that he had been in a serious car accident and suffered from multiple injuries to the torso and shoulders. Wheeler also told the officers that he was retired from the St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Office and that he knew that the security officers had no right or authority to detain him. Wheeler stated that he wanted to leave.”
At that point, Wheeler says, Scott grabbed him and shoved him “hard from behind into the adjacent wall and metal railing,” hurting his ribs.
The complaint continues: “Mr. Wheeler, in serious pain and feeling like he was going to black out, fell to floor. Defendant Scott stood over him and yelled, ‘Get off the floor bitch! This game is over!’
“Defendant Scott continued, ‘I don’t care who you think you are, this is my camp, you listen to what I got to say!’ The vocal officer then grabbed Mr. Wheeler and pulled him up off of the ground as Wheeler pleaded with the officer to stop hurting him.
“At this point the defendant Reese said to the vocal officer, ‘Man, ease up on him. He might really be hurt.’ Defendant Scott replied, ‘Hell no, he don’t come up in here and be telling us what the fuck to do!’”
As the two guards “escorted” him back to his room, “Scott accused Wheeler of attempting to push the second officer down a flight of stairs,” and “continued to shout expletives at Wheeler,” according to the complaint.
Wheeler says the men took him to the hospital security office, where an unidentified lieutenant questioned him.
“After Mr. Wheeler explained what had happened, the lieutenant looked at Wheeler’s hospital-provided identification bracelet and acknowledged that Wheeler had been misidentified,” Wheeler says.
But that was not the end of the conflict. Wheeler says the lieutenant became agitated when he would not return the incorrect bracelet, and ordered the security guards to stop him from leaving.
He says a plainclothes hospital employee, a woman he identifies as an “administrator … intervened in the conversation” and after he explained the situation, said she would make sure he “would have his own private room and any type of drug he wanted, just to name the pain killer.”
Wheeler says he and his wife chose to leave the hospital, but when he tried to leave with the incorrect ID bracelet, one of the security guards “charged Wheeler, again calling Wheeler ‘bitch,’ and shoved him against the wall.”
“Mr. Wheeler spent the next three days at St. Mary’s Hospital and was diagnosed with four broken ribs, a sprained shoulder, a ruptured spleen, and a concussion,” he says.
The Wheelers seek $3.2 million in compensatory damages and $9.5 million in punitive damages for assault and battery, false imprisonment and infliction of emotional distress.

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Arizona District Court Judge Bob Schwartz Facing Suspension After “Intense Romantic Fling” With Asst. Public Defender

ARIZONA – An “intense romantic fling” with an assistant public defender who had pending cases before state District Judge Bob Schwartz may cost the colorful judge — known for his wit and wisecracks — a 60-day unpaid suspension, according to court documents unsealed this week.
The New Mexico Judicial Standards Commission is recommending Schwartz be suspended without pay for 60 days, receive a formal public reprimand, complete a course on sexual harassment and leave the bench during future medication transitions.
The recommendation will go before the state Supreme Court, which will make the final decision, on Oct. 12, said Paul Kennedy, Schwartz’s attorney.
According to the commission’s findings, Schwartz, a former district attorney and governor’s crime adviser, is accused of failing to uphold the integrity and independence of the judiciary; failing to avoid impropriety; failing to recuse himself from the pending cases involving the defender; and of not conducting “extra-judicial activities as to minimize the risk of conflict with judicial obligations.”

The allegations stem from Schwartz’s self-reporting to the commission last August that his judicial conduct fell below his own standards as a result of switching medications for a chronic illness in spring 2009. Schwartz, 60, called it a “very difficult time in my life”.
A months-long investigation followed, and the commission made the disciplinary recommendations in a petition this month.
“We think the punishment is disproportionate to the allegations, and we are confident of a full and fair review by the Supreme Court,” Kennedy said.
Schwartz did not return a call seeking comment.
Among the alleged improprieties is a short-lived romantic relationship with a 29-year-old assistant public defender, who has since left that job.
According to the petition, the woman had represented defendants in Schwartz’s court from November 2008 to late July 2009.
In early July 2009, Schwartz invited the defender to lunch on a workday. On what would be their first date, the judge gave the woman what he called a “gag gift”: a book titled “The One Hour Orgasm,” with an official picture of himself in his judicial robe pasted over the picture of the book’s author. He also gave her a pair of purple latex gloves.
The next day, Schwartz took the woman to a concert in Santa Fe, according to the petition. After the concert, he told the woman he would recuse himself from her cases because he couldn’t be fair. The couple went on to a bar called Anodyne in Downtown Albuquerque.
But Schwartz, who has never been accused of sexual harassment, failed to recuse himself from the cases in a timely manner, according to the petition.
He took action in two cases she was involved in on July 14, 2009, the petition states. In one of those cases, he publicly questioned his own prior decision to deny the woman’s motion to dismiss. He withdrew his denial to dismiss and recused himself from that case, offering an ambiguous explanation.
“This I’m sure happens to every judge at some point, but this is for me, a definite moment of indecisiveness. I don’t know what the right call is in this case, I really don’t, and so I shall not be allowed in this case and let another judge take a look,” Schwartz said at the time.
Schwartz eventually recused himself from all the cases the woman was involved in. She ended the romantic relationship because of the way he handled the recusals, according to the petition.
Schwartz and his attorney fought rigorously to keep the commission’s proceedings and findings sealed, but documents were unsealed this week.
According to the documents, Chief Judge Ted Baca speaks highly of Schwartz. He described Schwartz as “well-suited to sit as a judge,” and calls him a “very valuable member of the court.”

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Portsmouth New Hampshire Judge Stops Criminal Trial And Blasts City Prosecutor For Defective Complaint Again Man

PORTSMOUTH, NEW HAMPSHIRE – An hour-long trial when Justin Hunt, 24, was accused of stealing a $10.99 bottle of vodka ended Tuesday with Judge Sawako Gardner scolding the city’s police prosecutor for filing “defective” legal complaints with the court.

Hunt, of Portsmouth, was on trial for a charge alleging he went into the state liquor store on Islington Street, slipped a bottle of vodka into his sleeve and walked past the cash registers before being stopped by employees. Store manager Robert Coleman testified that Hunt stole the liquor on May 19, “ran off and we grabbed him.”

“He never left the store?” Hunt’s attorney Joe Malfitani asked.

“No, we wouldn’t let him,” said Coleman.

A second liquor store employee, Daniel Wiseman, said Hunt pushed him and was restrained after he pulled the vodka bottle from his sleeve “right in front of me.”

After the witnesses testified, Malfitani told the court the charge alleging Hunt committed the crime of wilful concealment should be dismissed because police filed the complaint with language alleging he committed a theft. Prosecutor Karl Durand told the court that the complaint had been filed properly, while the judge disagreed.

“Why doesn’t the state look at the complaints before you go to trial,” she said. “It’s so simple. The complaint is obviously defective, witnesses took time out of their day to be here and this is not the first time a complaint has been defective.”

The judge said Hunt’s charge was “so defective” she believed she would have to dismiss it in spite of evidence that Hunt was guilty of a crime. Instead, the judge gave both sides 10 days to file further motions.

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Zoning Board Won’t Let Man Build On His Land – So He Opens A “Nature Park” For The Homeless

SKOWHEGAN, MAINE – Neighbors in a central Maine town are upset that a landowner who can’t build on his quarter-acre parcel has opened up his land as a “nature park” for the homeless.

An 84-year-old homeless man and his Rottweiler have set up camp on the property on Coburn Avenue in Skowhegan, a quiet residential street near downtown. A banner says, “Nature Park, Nature Trails for the Homeless People of Somerset County.”

Neighbors tell the Morning Sentinel the neighborhood is inappropriate for a homeless encampment. They say landowner Bruce Obert, of Norridgewock, is miffed that zoning laws bar him from building on the land.

Obert says since he can’t build, he decided to turn his property into a park for the homeless, complete with a picnic table and portable toilet.

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New Jersey Department Of Corrections Holds “Family Day” At Sex Offender Prison – Where Of Course A Little Girl Was Molested By A Prisoner…

TRENTON, NEW JERSEY – The Department of Corrections is overhauling prison family programs in response to accusations a sex offender was able to inappropriately touch a 9-year-old girl during an event behind prison walls.

In addition, at least one corrections officer is facing disciplinary charges in connection with the incident, according to two state officials with knowledge of the case.

Family events were previously held like picnics where inmates and visiting relatives were able to mingle. But future programs will be heavily regimented and better supervised, Corrections spokesman Matt Schuman said.

“It won’t be as loosely run as it might have been,” he said.

However, Schuman said children will still be allowed to attend, sparking another round of criticism from a prison union leader.

The department launched its internal review of family programs following a Star-Ledger inquiry into the June 16 “family day” event at the Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center, a specialized prison for sex offenders in Avenel.

The annual program was attended by 210 inmates and 534 relatives, 116 of them children. Corrections officials said 30 officers provided supervision. During the event, convicted sex offender Claudio Gonzalez, 23, allegedly touched the 9-year-old niece of another inmate, documents obtained by The Star-Ledger show.

Gonzalez later told investigators he only “accidentally brushed” her breast while walking with the girl.

Investigators filed disciplinary charges of unauthorized physical contact and assault against Gonzalez, documents show. He is currently incarcerated at Northern State Prison, and one state official said he’s being held in administrative segregation for bad behavior.

The Middlesex County prosecutor’s office did not respond to questions on whether Gonzalez, who pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl in 2006, is facing criminal charges.

During family day Gonzalez did not have any visitors but was allowed to attend, according to a disciplinary report. That’s a violation of Corrections rules, Schuman said.

The department’s internal inquiry has led to disciplinary charges against at least one officer at the prison, according to two officials who were not authorized to discuss the investigation on the record.

Trent Norman, president of Policemen’s Benevolent Association Local 105, which represents prison officers, said the union is planning to appeal the charges. Schuman declined to discuss disciplinary matters.

Corrections officials said family days help inmates stay connected with relatives, increasing their chance of success once they’re released. But they said events need to be re-focused on programmed activities geared toward preparing inmates to return to society.

At future events, Schuman said, staff members will show videos and answer questions about programs available to help inmates reintegrate into society. He also said security will be tighter.

“They want to restrict movements and keep everything in front of custody staff,” he said.

Children will still be able to attend, although Schuman said visitors will be asked to always keep their children close.

“If it’s going to be family day, they want to have children there,” he said. “But they want to make sure there’s adult supervision at all times.”

Jim McGonigal, president of the New Jersey Law Enforcement Supervisors Association, which represents sergeants, said the changes are good but insufficient.

“As a parent, I cannot fathom bringing a child into that atmosphere,” he said.

Schuman said family days are currently scheduled at East Jersey State Prison, also in Avenel, for September and October. More are planned at Southern State Prison in Bridgeton but dates have not been set.

The Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center is still allowed to have family events but none have been scheduled, Schuman said.

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Former Top Maine Drug Prosecutor James M. Cameron Found Guilty Of 13 Counts Of Child Pornography

PORTLAND, MAINE - Three years ago, James M. Cameron held a position of power and trust as the top drug prosecutor for the Maine Attorney General’s Office.

His stunning fall from that post began in December 2007, when state and federal agents showed up at his Hallowell home with search warrants for the four computers inside.

The fall ended Monday, when a federal judge convicted Cameron on 13 of 15 counts of sending, receiving and possessing child pornography over the Internet.

Cameron, 48, showed no emotion as Judge John Woodcock Jr. read the verdicts that capped the six-day bench trial.

Cameron was handcuffed immediately and put into federal custody after the ruling. The former state prosecutor, who opted not to testify in his own defense, faces a minimum of five years and a maximum of 20 years in prison when he is sentenced later this year.

The Maine State Police Computer Crimes Unit began investigating Cameron in 2007, after Yahoo reported finding child pornography in the photos of an account holder later identified as Cameron’s wife. The Yahoo reports were made to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Alexandria, Va., an organization that works with local, state and federal investigators.

Investigators ultimately tied 17 user profiles on Yahoo — many of which had sexually explicit names — to three Internet Protocol addresses assigned to computers at the Cameron household. Prosecutors used data from the computers, including log-in names and times, to determine that it was Cameron alone who was responsible for the illegal activity. Besides images of child pornography uploaded to Yahoo file servers, investigators found explicit images, e-mails, chats and other evidence on the four computers seized from Cameron’s home.

Cameron engaged in some of the illegal activity from his home computers on days when he was working, prosecutors said. His former secretary testified that Cameron was often away from his office, and those unexplained absences prompted a running joke at the Attorney General’s Office, in which someone would ask: “Where in the world is Jim Cameron?”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald Clark referred to that joke several times during his closing argument Monday.

“Where in the world is Jim Cameron? We know the answer. He was at home, on his computer, trading child pornography,” Clark said.

Clark said Cameron had advanced computer knowledge, and he stored pornographic materials in photo folders on Yahoo, so that he could then delete the files from his home computers using a software program called Wash n’ Go. However, Cameron was apparently unaware that traces of the child pornography, including images and chats on the now-defunct service Google Hello, remained on the hard drives of the computers and were found by investigators, Clark said.

In his closing argument, defense attorney Michael A. Cunniff said the government failed to prove that it was Cameron who sent, received or possessed any illegal photographs or videos. Cunniff said if Cameron inadvertently received illegal images, he deleted them because he was not looking for child pornography. Erotic chat and fantasies are not crimes and are protected by the right to free speech, Cunniff said.

“If a person wants to collect child pornography, they save it. They don’t destroy it,” Cunniff said.

Cunniff also said the investigation of Cameron was flawed from the start because agents believed him to be guilty and they did not pursue any other possibilities, such as the theory that someone had pirated the open wireless signal at Cameron’s home. Cunniff noted that one state police detective used the term “stringing evidence around Jim Cameron’s neck.”

“No meaningful search for exculpatory evidence was made,” Cunniff told Woodcock.

A federal grand jury indicted Cameron in February 2009. He waived his right to a jury, putting his fate solely in the hands of Woodcock, the chief federal judge for the District of Maine.

Much of the testimony during the trial was slow going, as government lawyers and Cunniff argued about rules, procedural matters and the admissibility of almost every piece of evidence.

“The persistence and vigor that I displayed were manifestations of my respect for the law, not disrespect for the court,” Cunniff told Woodcock at the outset of his closing argument. Cunniff lodged repeated objections based on his argument that Yahoo does not have the right to browse through images posted by users in password-protected folders. Woodcock said the images qualify as business records and Yahoo has the right to inspect them.

Cameron is now divorced from his wife, but they have been working together to raise their 15-year-old autistic son, Cunniff said. Cameron had been free on $75,000 bail before Monday’s verdicts.

Woodcock found Cameron guilty on eight counts of sending, four counts of receiving and one count of possessing child pornography. The judge found Cameron not guilty on two counts of sending child pornography.

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Empty Apartment Surrenders To Boston Police SWAT Team And K-9 Units After 4 Hour Stand-Off

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS – A Boston Police Department special operations team and dozens of police units stood outside a Mission Hill apartment for four tense hours last night thinking they were engaged in a standoff with armed robbery suspects. But when they finally went into the multifamily last night, no one was inside.

Police responded to a Fenwood Road building around 5:15 p.m. yesterday after a man flagged down a patrol car and said two men had just robbed him at gunpoint inside an apartment there.

Special operations officers responded and surrounded the house. Police received a search warrant before finally entering the home around 9:30 p.m. No one was inside.

“It was just an allegation of a robbery. The suspect was supposedly inside this location. We secured it. SWAT came down, made an entry, the suspects made good with their escape, and it’s under investigation by the detectives,’’ said Police Lieutenant Trent Holland at the scene.

Residents close to the scene were evacuated from their homes.

Jimmy Sledge, 52, said he lives in the house where the suspect or suspects were allegedly barricaded.

“The police came in and they said something was wrong, and get out,’’ Sledge said last night, clutching a blanket while sitting in a wheelchair a block away from his home. “It scared me.’’

Two Boston police K-9 dogs, one of them trained to detect firearms, were seen entering after officers stormed the house.

Holland said the intense police response was standard procedure.

“Anytime there’s an allegation of an armed person within an apartment someplace, we have to mobilize the Emergency Services Unit,’’ he said.

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Los Angeles County California Gets Free Laser Based Weapon To Use On Jail Imates

CASTAIC, CALIFORNIA – Guards at the Los Angeles County jail complex in Castaic will start using a newfangled weapon that produces a deep burning sensation — which is not to be confused with a “warm fuzzy feeling” — in whomever it is aimed at.

The 7 1/2-foot-tall “Assault Intervention Device,” which sheriff’s deputies demonstrated Friday at the Pitchess Detention Center, emits an invisible beam that causes an unbearable sensation, reported the Daily News.

The device will be mounted near the ceiling in a unit housing about 65 inmates, sheriff’s Cmdr. Bob Osborne of the sheriff’ Technology Exploration Program told the newspaper.

“We hope that this type of technology will either cause an inmate to stop an assault or lessen the severity of an assault by them being distracted by the pain as a result of the beam,” said Osborne. “So that we have fewer injuries, fewer assaults, those kinds of things.”

Deputies have tested the device on themselves and say the invisible beam is painful — especially when it’s not expected.

“I equate it to opening an oven door and feeling that blast of hot air, except instead of being all over me, it’s more focused,” said Osborne.

The pain stops when you move out of the beam’s path, which people do instinctively.

The device, developed by Raytheon, is controlled by a joystick and computer monitor and emits a beam about the size of a CD up to distances of about 100 feet.

The energy traveling at the speed of light penetrates the skin up to 1/64 of an inch deep. No one can stand being in the beam’s path for more than about three seconds, Mike Booen of Raytheon told the Daily News.

The device is being evaluated for a period of six months by the National Institute of Justice for use in jails nationwide.

Sheriff’s deputies are getting to try it out for free.

About 3,700 inmates are housed at Pitchess, where 257 inmate-on-inmate assaults occurred in the first half of the year.

Do you think this is a controversial weapon with the potential for major misuse and abuse, or is it just another way to restore order in our prisons?

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Taxdollars To Fund Ebonics Experts For US Justice Department

WASHINGTON, DC – The Department of Justice is seeking to hire linguists fluent in Ebonics to help monitor, translate, and transcribe the secretly recorded conversations of subjects of narcotics investigations, according to federal records.

A maximum of nine Ebonics experts will work with the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Atlanta field division, where the linguists, after obtaining a “DEA Sensitive” security clearance, will help investigators decipher the results of “telephonic monitoring of court ordered nonconsensual intercepts, consensual listening devices, and other media”

The DEA’s need for full-time linguists specializing in Ebonics is detailed in bid documents related to the agency’s mid-May issuance of a request for proposal (RFP) covering the provision of as many as 2100 linguists for the drug agency’s various field offices. Answers to the proposal were due from contractors on July 29.

In contract documents, which are excerpted here, Ebonics is listed among 114 languages for which prospective contractors must be able to provide linguists. The 114 languages are divided between “common languages” and “exotic languages.” Ebonics is listed as a “common language” spoken solely in the United States.

Ebonics has widely been described as a nonstandard variant of English spoken largely by African Americans. John R. Rickford, a Stanford University professor of linguistics, has described it as “Black English” and noted that “Ebonics pronunciation includes features like the omission of the final consonant in words like ‘past’ (pas’ ) and ‘hand’ (han’), the pronunciation of the th in ‘bath’ as t (bat) or f (baf), and the pronunciation of the vowel in words like ‘my’ and ‘ride’ as a long ah (mah, rahd).”

Detractors reject the notion that Ebonics is a dialect, instead considering it a bastardization of the English language.

The Department of Justice RFP does not, of course, address questions of vernacular, dialect, or linguistic merit. It simply sought proposals covering the award of separate linguist contracts for seven DEA regions. The agency spends about $70 million annually on linguistic service programs, according to contract records.

In addition to the nine Ebonics experts, the DEA’s Atlanta office also requires linguists for eight other languages, including Spanish (144 linguists needed); Vietnamese (12); Korean (9); Farsi (9); and Jamaican patois (4). The Atlanta field division, one of the DEA’s busiest, is the only office seeking linguists well-versed in Ebonics. Overall, the “majority of DEA’s language requirements will be for Spanish originating in Central and South America and the Caribbean,” according to one contract document.

The Department of Justice RFP includes a detailed description of the crucial role a linguist can play in narcotics investigations. They are responsible for listening to “oral intercepts in English and foreign languages,” from which they provide verbal and typed summaries. “Subsequently, all pertinent calls identified by the supervising law enforcement officer will be transcribed verbatim in the required federal or state format,” the RFP notes.

Additionally, while “technology plays a major role in the DEA’s efforts, much of its success is increasingly dependent upon rapid and meticulous understanding of foreign languages used in conversations by speakers of languages other than English and in the translation, transcription and preparation of written documents.”

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Unlawful Arrest Of 7 “Zombies” Accompanied By Bogus Claims Of Weapons Of Mass Destruction By Minneapolis Minnesota Police Costs Taxpayers $165,000

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA – The Minneapolis city attorney’s office has decided to pay seven zombies and their attorney $165,000.

The payout, approved by the City Council on Friday, settles a federal lawsuit the seven filed after they were arrested and jailed for two days for dressing up like zombies in downtown Minneapolis on July 22, 2006, to protest “mindless” consumerism.

When arrested at the intersection of Hennepin Avenue and 6th Street N., most of them had thick white powder and fake blood on their faces and dark makeup around their eyes. They were walking in a stiff, lurching fashion and carrying four bags of sound equipment to amplify music from an iPod when they were arrested by police who said they were carrying equipment that simulated “weapons of mass destruction.”

However, they were never charged with any crime.

Although U.S. District Judge Joan Ericksen had dismissed the zombies’ lawsuit, it was resurrected in February by a three-judge panel of the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which concluded that police lacked probable cause to arrest the seven, a decision setting the stage for a federal trial this fall. The settlement means there will be no trial.

“I feel great that the city is being held accountable for the actions of their police,” said Raphi Rechitsky, 27, of Minneapolis, one of the seven zombies, who said he and his friends were performing street theater when they were arrested. He is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Minnesota.

Minneapolis City Attorney Susan L. Segal said it was in the best interests of the city to settle. “We believe the police acted reasonably, but you never know what a jury is going to do with a case,” she said.

If a jury had concluded that the seven plaintiffs’ constitutional rights had been violated and awarded $50,000 to each, plus defense attorney’s fees, “it could have been quite substantial,” Segal said.

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Crazed Philidelphia Pennsylvania Tax Collectors Go After Internet Bloggers – Demand They Pay $300 For A Business License

It looks like cash hungry local governments are getting awfully rapacious these days:

Between her blog and infrequent contributions to ehow.com, over the last few years she says she’s made about $50. To [Marilyn] Bess, her website is a hobby. To the city of Philadelphia, it’s a potential moneymaker, and the city wants its cut.

In May, the city sent Bess a letter demanding that she pay $300, the price of a business privilege license.

“The real kick in the pants is that I don’t even have a full-time job, so for the city to tell me to pony up $300 for a business privilege license, pay wage tax, business privilege tax, net profits tax on a handful of money is outrageous,” Bess says.

It would be one thing if Bess’ website were, well, an actual business, or if the amount of money the city wanted didn’t outpace her earnings six-fold. Sure, the city has its rules; and yes, cash-strapped cities can’t very well ignore potential sources of income. But at the same time, there must be some room for discretion and common sense.

When Bess pressed her case to officials with the city’s now-closed tax amnesty program, she says, “I was told to hire an accountant.”

She’s not alone. After dutifully reporting even the smallest profits on their tax filings this year, a number — though no one knows exactly what that number is — of Philadelphia bloggers were dispatched letters informing them that they owe $300 for a privilege license, plus taxes on any profits they made.

Even if, as with Sean Barry, that profit is $11 over two years.

To say that these kinds of draconian measures are detrimental to the public discourse would be an understatement.

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New Mexico State Police Officer Tickets Careful Driver For 34 In 40 MPH Zone

BELEN, NEW MEXICO - A Valencia County woman who was pulled over for driving too slow said state police went too far.

Jeanette Sedillo said was driving on Reinken Road in Belen, N.M., after 10 p.m. Wednesday when a state police officer pulled beside her and told her to get off the road.

Sedillo pulled into a parking lot, questioning what she did wrong.

Apparently, going too fast was not the problem: the officer wrote her a ticket for driving 6 mph under the speed limit.

“He said, ‘You were going 34 in a 40,’” said Sedillo.

The citation said she violated the statute for minimum speed. Now, she has to pay a $70 fine for what she thought was careful driving.

Sedillo said there was little traffic in the area at the time and that she wasn’t putting drivers in danger. She said state police went too far with the citation and that officers should be going after more serious offenders.

“They’re just out to get anybody,” said Sedillo.

Sedillo is planning to fight the citation in court.

State police wouldn’t give specific information pertaining to the incident, but a spokesperson said every agency can ticket drivers for going under the speed limit, which is impeding traffic.

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Criminal Charges Disappear After Indianapolis Indiana Police Officer David Bisard Killed One And Injured Two Others In Drunken Patrol Car Wreck

INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA – Questions about how Indianapolis police have handled a fatal drunken-driving investigation of one of their own officers became that much more pointed Thursday.

Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi announced he would drop the most serious charges against officer David Bisard. Why? Because Bisard’s fellow police officers had botched the case.

The reaction was swift — and far-reaching.

An embarrassed Public Safety Director Frank Straub announced that the FBI will be brought in on the case. He also removed a lieutenant from his positions as commander of the department’s hit-and-run unit and coordinator of the multiagency Fatal Alcohol Crash Team.

One victim’s family called the dismissal a “travesty.” A legal expert said the police ineptness leaves the public with little choice but to wonder whether the bungled case was more than an accident. And Mayor Greg Ballard has become increasingly frustrated as he seeks answers, as well.

“The people in the city are not the only ones wondering what happened at the scene,” Ballard said. “I am, too.”

Straub and Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Chief Paul Ciesielski repeated their insistence Thursday that Bisard received “absolutely no deference” from fellow officers Aug. 6 after he crashed his cruiser into two motorcycles that were stopped at a light.

The impact of the crash — which occurred while Bisard, 36, was responding to a request for help serving a warrant, with his cruiser’s lights and siren activated — killed Eric Wells, 30, and seriously injured two other riders.

Bisard surrendered after prosecutors learned a blood test had shown his blood-alcohol level was 0.19 — more than twice the level at which an Indiana driver is considered intoxicated.

But that arrest didn’t come until five days after the crash because of the lag in test results. The delay in arresting Bisard drew scrutiny from some — as did the fact that no officers conducted field-sobriety or breath tests of Bisard at the scene.

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Phoenix Arizona Hero Sentenced To 22 Years In Prison After Killing Speed Camera Operator

PHOENIX, ARIZONA – A judge sentenced a man who shot and killed the operator of a speed-camera van on a Phoenix freeway to 22 years in prison on Friday after an emotional hearing during which family members of both victim and assailant wept as they spoke of the consequences of the crime that made national headlines.

Thomas Patrick Destories, 69, received the sentence Friday as part of a plea deal. He had faced a charge of first-degree murder but pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of second-degree murder under the deal. He got credit for 487 days already served.

“Taking innocent life is never justified even for great causes, and this was over photo radar,” Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Michael Kemp said just before sentencing Destories. “I think Mr. Destories was trying to make a political statement.”

Destories was convicted in the April 19, 2009, fatal shooting of 51-year-old Doug Georgianni, who was operating a speed-enforcement van on a Phoenix freeway.

Authorities never said what they believe the motive for the killing was, but Destories and Georgianni had never met. Many concluded at the time that the killing was the most extreme backlash against the state’s speed-enforcement program, which began in September 2008 and ended July 16 after Gov. Jan Brewer said the cameras were intrusive, leading the state Department of Public Safety to end the program.

Destories says he didn’t know anyone was manning the speed-camera van when he fired at it.

Georgianni’s mother, father, siblings and wife spoke in court, all of them weeping and visibly shaking as they talked of a big-grinned, cookie-crazed man who loved baseball, golf, and above all, his family.

“The worst nightmare a parent can have is to lose a child,” said June Dorcheus, Georgianni’s mother, who had a stroke when she heard her son was dead. “There’s a hole in my heart.”

Georgianni’s father, who now has clinical depression, spoke of how he talked to his son every day before he went out to man a speed-camera van and after his shift ended at 9 p.m.

“I was waiting for the usual call at 9 o’clock that night. It never came,” Michael Georgianni said. “Now the phone doesn’t ring anymore at 9.”

Georgianni’s wife of three years, Jean Georgianni, was barely audible as she spoke of her husband and the “deepest love I’ve ever known.”

“He used to say we were like an old pair of shoes — we just fit together,” she said. “Each day ended with I love you.’”

Destories loudly wept at times as Georgianni’s loved ones spoke. Later he stood and faced Georgianni’s family and spoke directly to them.

“I would like to express my deepest sympathy,” he said through tears. “No words can convey such a loss or heal the terrible grief you are suffering … I never intended to harm anyone. Please forgive me.”

His three daughters also addressed the court, apologizing to Georgianni’s family and saying their dad was a good man who made the biggest mistake of his life when he shot at the speed-camera van.

Georgianni had worked for three months for RedFlex Traffic Systems Inc., which operated the photo radar system, and had just a few days left on the job before he was to leave to sell insurance. He was sitting in the van doing paperwork with an interior light turned on when he was shot three times in the chest.

He called his wife, who called 911, and he died soon after at a hospital. That was the last time the couple spoke; they were about to celebrate their wedding anniversary.

The killing highlighted the controversy over the state’s speed-enforcement system. Arizonans used sticky notes, Silly String and even a pickax to sabotage the cameras.

Former Gov. Jan Napolitano had cited traffic safety considerations when she directed the DPS to launch the first-of-its-kind program, but critics said her later inclusion of a $90 million revenue estimate in a budget proposal revealed that money was the real motivation.

But profits from the program fell far below expectations, with many drivers who received tickets in the mail ignoring them because they knew they had a good shot at getting away with it; a ticket became invalid if a violator who ignored it wasn’t served in person within three months.

The cameras remain on freeways throughout the state even though the program was ended, but they should be removed by Labor Day.

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Jersey City New Jersey Court Administrator Sentenced To 3 Years In Prison For Ticket Fixing Scam That Included 4 Judges

JERSEY CITY, NEW JERSEY – A former New Jersey court administrator has been sentenced to three years in prison for fixing more than 200 parking tickets.

Virginia Pagan pleaded guilty in June to official misconduct.

The 55-year-old resigned in September 2007 as the administrator of Jersey City Municipal Court.

Pagan admitted using her position to access court computer records and dismiss 215 tickets received by her and her daughter. The tickets were worth about $5,000 in fines.

Four municipal judges also were implicated in the ticket scandal.

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Austin Texas Police Officer Albert Aguinaga Indicted After Exposing Himself At Strip Bar

AUSTIN, TEXAS – A Travis County grand jury today indicted an Austin police officer who authorities say exposed himself during a lap dance at a South Austin club.

According to the indictment, Albert Aguinaga was visiting Expose Gentlemen’s Club on July 15 and was “reckless about whether another person was present who would be offended and alarmed by such acts.”

Aguinaga is charged with indecent exposure, a Class B misdemeanors for which he faces up to 180 days in jail.

Grand jurors declined to indict Aguinaga on charges of public lewdness and sexual assault.

Police Chief Art Acevedo said in a statement that Aguinaga has been placed on administrative leave without pay.

“Anytime an officer violates the law, it is disappointing to all the men and women of the Austin Police Department and contrary to the ethical standards subscribed by members of the department,” Acevedo said.

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Crazed Philadelphia Pennsylvania TSA Agents Go Through Woman’s Checkbook, Call Husband Thinking She Was Clearing Out Bank Account

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA – At what point does an airport search step over the line?

How about when they start going through your checks, and the police call your husband, suspicious you were clearing out the bank account?

That’s the complaint leveled by Kathy Parker, a 43-year-old Elkton, Md., woman, who was flying out of Philadelphia International Airport on Aug. 8.

She says she was heading to Charlotte, N.C., for work that Sunday night – she’s a business support manager for a large bank – and was selected for a more in-depth search after she passed through the metal detectors at Gate B around 5:15 p.m.

A female Transportation Security Administration officer wanded her and patted her down, she says. Then she was walked over to where other TSA officers were searching her bags.

“Everything in my purse was out, including my wallet and my checkbook. I had two prescriptions in there. One was diet pills. This was embarrassing. A TSA officer said, ‘Hey, I’ve always been curious about these. Do they work?’

“I was just so taken aback, I said, ‘Yeah.’ “

What happened next, she says, was more than embarrassing. It was infuriating.

That same screener started emptying her wallet. “He was taking out the receipts and looking at them,” she said.

“I understand that TSA is tasked with strengthening national security but [it] surely does not need to know what I purchased at Kohl’s or Wal-Mart,” she wrote in her complaint, which she sent me last week.

She says she asked what he was looking for and he replied, “Razor blades.” She wondered, “Wouldn’t that have shown up on the metal detector?”

In a side pocket she had tucked a deposit slip and seven checks made out to her and her husband, worth about $8,000.

Her thought: “Oh, my God, this is none of his business.”

Two Philadelphia police officers joined at least four TSA officers who had gathered around her. After conferring with the TSA screeners, one of the Philadelphia officers told her he was there because her checks were numbered sequentially, which she says they were not.

“It’s an indication you’ve embezzled these checks,” she says the police officer told her. He also told her she appeared nervous. She hadn’t before that moment, she says.

She protested when the officer started to walk away with the checks. “That’s my money,” she remembers saying. The officer’s reply? “It’s not your money.”

At this point she told the officers that she had a good explanation for the checks, but questioned whether she had to tell them.

“The police officer said if you don’t tell me, you can tell the D.A.”

So she explained that she and her husband had been on vacation, that they’d accumulated some hefty checks, and that she was headed to her bank’s headquarters, where she intended to deposit them.

She gave police her husband’s cell-phone number – he was at her mother’s with their children and missed their call.

Thirty minutes after the police became involved, they decided to let her collect her belongings and board her plane.

“I was shaking,” she says. “I was almost in tears.”

When she got home, her husband of 20 years, John Parker, a self-employed plastics broker, said the police had called and told him that they’d suspected “a divorce situation” and that Kathy Parker was trying to empty their bank account. He set them straight.

“I was so humiliated,” she said.

What happened sounds to me like a violation of a TSA policy that went into effect Sept. 1, after the American Civil Liberties Union sued the agency on behalf of the former campaign treasurer of presidential candidate Ron Paul.

In that case, Steven Bierfeldt was detained after screeners at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport discovered he was carrying about $4,700 in cash. He challenged their request that he explain where his money came from.

The new TSA directive reads: “Screening may not be conducted to detect evidence of crimes unrelated to transportation security.” If evidence of a crime is discovered, then TSA agents are instructed to contact the appropriate law enforcement agency.

So just what evidence made them treat Kathy Parker like a criminal?

Lt. Frank Vanore, a Philadelphia police spokesman, said that TSA personnel had called his officers, who found the checks to be “almost sequential.” They were “just checking to make sure there was nothing fraudulent,” he said. “They were wondering what the story was. The officer got it cleared up.”

TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis said the reason Parker was selected for in-depth screening was that her actions at the airport had aroused the suspicion of a behavior detection officer, and that she continued to act “as if she feared discovery.”

“We need to ascertain whether fear of discovery is due to the fact a person is concealing a threatening item, be it a dangerous weapon or some kind of explosive,” Davis said. “If the search is complete, and shows individuals not to be a threat to the aircraft or fellow passengers, they are free to go.”

But why call police? Davis said, “Because her behavior escalated.”

When Parker first told me her story, she didn’t know the initial TSA officer was a behavior specialist. She told me he peppered her with questions about her trip as she knelt to consolidate three bags into two, and suddenly realized that her shirt was revealing too much for her comfort. When the man then volunteered to examine her belongings, she felt “it was just strange.”

“When they decided to search me, there was nothing wrong with my behavior,” she said. “I was trying to keep a positive demeanor about everything. My behavior didn’t escalate. I did ask questions.”

Vic Walczak, legal director of the Pennsylvania ACLU, called what happened to Parker “preposterous” and a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable searches.

“I think they clearly crossed the line,” he said, adding that no one had probable cause to examine her checks.

“None of this makes any sense except as a fishing expedition, which under the U.S. Constitution is not allowed. They can’t rummage through her personal life. I’m not surprised this woman is outraged. She should be.”

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Denver Colorado Police Officers Brutally Beat Man Walking His Dogs – Caught On Video

DENVER, COLORADO – What started as a walk to the park with his dogs ended with a trip to the hospital for a Denver dog owner. 32-year-old Mark Ashford says he was beaten black and blue by two Denver Police officers.

“They punched him and pinned him up against the fence and forced his head into the concrete.” Ashford’s attorney, Will Hart, said the beating that was caught on camera is a clear case of Excessive Force. “This happened when he was walking his dogs, he has a conversation with another citizen that the police officer doesn’t like and as a result, he ends up in the hospital,” said Hart.

Hart says Mark Ashford was walking his dogs near 20th and Little Raven in LoDo, when he saw police pull over a driver for failing to stop at a stop sign. Ashford told the driver he saw him stop and would be willing to testify in court. Hart says the officer overheard him and “wasn’t very happy.”

That’s when Ashford says the Denver police officers demanded his I.D. and detained him. Ashford tried to take a picture of the officers to document the incident, and a few second later he was on the ground.

Police charged Ashford with interference and resisting arrest. Hart says, the charges were later dropped because the officers violated Ashford’s 4th amendment rights, “they had no reason to stop him, take his ID or detain him.”

An Excessive Force complaint was filed against both officers involved. A Denver police spokesperson says the internal affairs department has completed its investigation, but they are now turning the case over to the independent police monitor. Police won’t say if the officers were disciplined in any way until the investigation is complete.

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Boston Massachusetts Police And Bomb Squad Waste Time And Money After Finding Parked Junk Car

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS – A man living in Los Angeles said his beat-up car, which he left parked at a Boston airport’s economy lot, was at the center of a bomb scare.

Lawrence “Alex” Reed, 24, said police may have been suspicious of his 2004 Grand Marquis at Logan International Airport early Monday due to a broken window, a wire running into the vehicle to power the cigarette lighter, Oklahoma license plates, damage to the rear from a collision with a semi truck and other less-than-mint-condition features, the Boston Herald reported Tuesday.

“The condition of the car and of the items attached to it raised numerous red flags and we consider the investigation ongoing,” Massachusetts State Police spokesman David Procopio said.

Reed, who parked the car in the lot Aug. 6, said it was also lacking a ticket because the machine was broken.

“My car is a piece of junk,” Reed said.

Police bomb squads used a pair of robots to search the vehicle and blasted open the trunk with a water cannon. Several streets and a nearby elderly housing complex were evacuated during the search.

“I’m just a random college student who left his car at the economy lot,” Reed said. “I don’t want to end up on a terrorist watch list.”

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Cypress California Police And Bomb Squad Investigate Old 45 Record

CYPRESS, CALIFORNIA – Police in California said a suspicious package delivered to the Cypress Police Department turned out to contain a record by 1970s band The Carpenters.

The police department said the Orange County Sheriff’s Department bomb squad was called in to examine the package, which arrived at around noon Monday morning in unusual packaging with no return address and no postmark, The Orange County Register reported Tuesday.

Investigators said the package was taken to the police department parking lot for examination and was found to contain a 45 rpm single by The Carpenters with an attached note asking police to locate the record’s original owner.

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Federal Court Of Appeals Rules Against State Of Utah And Highway Patrol Association’s Roadside Crosses

UTAH – Memorial crosses erected along Utah public roads to honor fallen state highway troopers have been found unconstitutional by a federal appeals court.

A three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that the 14 large crosses would be viewed by most passing motorists as “government’s endorsement of Christianity.”

“We hold that these memorials have the impermissible effect of conveying to the reasonable observer the message that the state prefers or otherwise endorses a certain religion,” concluded the Denver, Colorado-based court. The state of Utah and a private trooper association have the option of appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A Texas-based group, American Atheists, successfully sued five years ago to have the nonprofit memorial project scrapped, and the crosses removed from public property.

At issue was whether the crosses violated the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, by having the government endorsing the Christian symbols, even if indirectly.

Although the suit went against the memorial project, the crosses were allowed to remain pending appeals in the case. They are still in place.

The Utah Highway Patrol Association in 1998 began erecting the monuments, which contain the fallen trooper’s name, rank, and badge number. A picture of the officer and some biographical information is included on a separate plaque placed where the two bars of the cross meet. The state insignia is also included, which the judges in particular raised with constitutional concerns.

The service group said their main message was not religious in nature, but among other things, to serve as “a lasting reminder to UHPA members and Utah highway patrol troopers that a fellow trooper gave his life in service to this state” and to “encourage safe conduct on the highways.”

While placed on public land and with the state’s permission, the crosses themselves are privately owned and maintained. The state expressly noted it “neither approves or disapproves of the memorial marker.”

In rejecting the crosses, the appeals court made several arguments, such as the large size and location of the crosses — on busy public highways where motorists cannot help but notice. Other similar memorial crosses have been erected on public land such as Arlington National Cemetery to honor fallen war dead. But the judges noted those markers are generally accessible or visible only to those who expressly choose to visit them, unlike roads where citizens cannot help but see them.

The Supreme Court has in recent years taken a case-by-case approach to Establishment Clause cases. The justices in 1947 said the government needed to be “neutral” but “not an adversary” toward religion. The court has upheld legislative chaplaincies, tax exemptions for churches, and the mention of “God” on U.S. currency and in oaths of office.

At the same time, government-sponsored school prayer is banned, and limits imposed on aid to parochial schools.

The court’s record on religious displays on public land is more mixed, with “context” a key criteria. The justices last year decided on free-speech grounds a small religious group could not erect a granite monument in a Utah park next to an existing Ten Commandments display, which for the time being was allowed to stay.

And this past June, the conservative majority of the court concluded a cross designed as war memorial in lonely stretch of national parkland in the California desert did not violate the constitutional separation of church and state.

In 2005, a Ten Commandments monument on the Texas statehouse grounds was allowed to stand, since it was surrounded by historical markers. But the same day Ten Commandment parchments in two Kentucky county courthouses were ruled unconstitutional, with the high court majority calling them “a governmental effort substantially to promote religion, not simply an effort primarily to reflect, historically, the secular impact of a religiously inspired document.”

And some nativity scenes and menorahs placed in public parks during December have been allowed to stand, while some were ordered removed.

The 10th Circuit rejected arguments from the UHPA that many roads contain crosses or other religious symbols placed by private individuals honoring a dead relative killed in car accidents.

“The mere fact that the cross is a common symbol used in roadside memorials does not mean it is a secular symbol,” said the panel. “The massive size of the crosses displayed on Utah’s rights-of-way and public property unmistakably conveys a message of endorsement, proselytization, and aggrandizement of religion that is far different from the more humble spirit of small roadside crosses.”

The judges also disregarded suggestions that since most of the deceased troopers were Mormon, where the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints does not uses the cross as a religious symbol, the highway memorials were merely symbols of death and did not promote a a particular faith.

There was no immediate reaction to the opinion from American Atheists or the UHPA.

The case is American Atheists v. Duncan (08-4061).

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Crazed Indianapolis Indiana Police Harass And Arrest Man On Private Property For Having Sagging Pants

INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA – An Indiana man was arrested last night after cops spotted him with his pants “pulled down to his knees” and his boxer shorts exposed.

Demetrius Russ, 21, was sitting on top of an electrical box talking on his phone when approached by cop Daniel Green. According to an Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department report, after Russ ignored Green’s repeated requests to provide ID, he announced, “You can’t ask me for shit.” Green reported telling Russ that he was “sitting on private property with his pants pulled down on top of an electrical box.”

Russ’s perch can be seen in this Google Street View photo.

When Green asked why his pants were so droopy, Russ noted that he “was just swagging.” The officer replied that, “swagging did not involve exposing your genitals through your boxers because your pants were pulled down all the way.” The term “swagging” generally refers to getting your drink on.

During his interaction with Green, a “belligerent” Russ allegedly cursed frequently and called the cop “nigga and muthafucker on several occasions.” While police contended that Russ appeared drunk, he claimed to have only consumed “one 40 ounce.”

Russ, pictured in the above mug shot, was charged with public intoxication and disorderly conduct, since Indiana’s criminal codes apparently have yet to codify the offense of having one’s pants on the ground. (2 pages)

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Crazed Fairfax County Virginia Fire Investigators And Police File Bogus Charges Against Bartenders – Each Face 45 Years In Prison For Decade Old Tradition

HERNDON, VIRGINIA – Two fire-breathing bartenders face up to 45 years in prison each for performing flaming bar tricks.

Jimmy’s Old Town Tavern owner Jimmy Cirrito said his bartenders have been entertaining his customers — by juggling bottles of alcohol and spitting out streams of flames using matchbooks and lighters — for more than a decade and no one’s complained. But shortly after midnight on July 24, two of his longtime employees were hauled out of the Herndon bar in handcuffs and charged with three felonies each plus other misdemeanors

“They were being treated as if they were terrorists, charged as if they intentionally tried to burn down the tavern,” Cirrito said.

Fairfax County fire investigators charged Tegee Rogers, 33, of Herndon, and Justin Fedorchak, 39, of Manassas, with manufacturing an explosive device, setting a fire capable of spreading, and burning or destroying a meeting house. They also were charged with several state fire code misdemeanors.

Both men have worked at the tavern nearly since it opened. They both recently became fathers and are very anxious about facing serious criminal charges, Cirrito said.

Jimmy’s Old Town Tavern bartenders have performed the fire-breathing act for 13 years, at first doing the tricks on special occasions like birthdays or to honor a fallen fireman, police officer or soldier, Cirrito said. By 1999, the fire-breathing bartenders had become a Friday midnight tradition, he said. The bar uses the fire-breathing bartenders on its advertisements.

Cirrito said an investigator told him that the marshals received a letter in the mail with a photo taken of a previous performance at the bar.

Cirrito said he has never received a warning from the fire marshals, and he would have stopped if marshals had given him a warning.

“But I don’t think we’ve done anything wrong,” he said. “There’s a lot of fire in restaurants. I’ve been served flaming desserts, I’ve roasted marshmallows on tables, I’ve seen 75 candles and sparklers on cakes, and I’ve seen bartenders perform the tricks coast-to-coast and no one’s been arrested.”

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Oak Harbor Washington Police Officer Patrick Horn Admits He Is Full Of Shit, Returns To Work After Year Of Paid Leave

OAK HARBOR, WASHINGTON – An investigation by the Washington State Auditor’s Office into an Oak Harbor police officer’s inaccurate time sheets concludes that the exact amount of public funds lost is impossible to determine.

The report of the auditor’s special investigation was made public last week and likely spells the end to a controversy that has cost the city many tens of thousands of dollars. The auditor started the investigation in November of 2008 after learning that Oak Harbor Police Officer Patrick Horn was accused of providing false information on his time cards.

Horn was charged in Island County Superior Court with first-degree theft in connection with the timesheet inaccuracies, but the charge was later dismissed. Horn eventually returned to work after more than a year of paid leave under an agreement in which he admitted he falsified his time card, took 30 days’ leave without pay and agreed to be assigned away from patrol.

Also under the agreement, Horn was supposed to reimburse the city based on the investigation by the State Auditor’s Office. But the investigation concluded that auditors couldn’t determine the amount of the loss “because internal controls at the Police Department were not in place or were not being followed.”

“The auditor’s report really wasn’t helpful, from my point of view. But I understand their problem,” Oak Harbor Police Chief Rick Wallace said.

Without a number from the auditor, Wallace said the city prosecutor will have to negotiate with Horn’s attorney to decide the exact restitution amount. An investigator at the Island County Sheriff’s Office found that Horn was paid for 117 hours, totaling $3,443, for work that there was no evidence he performed.

The special investigation by the State Auditor’s Office concludes that Horn submitted time records that “did not reflect actual time worked from January 1, 2005, through August 12, 2008.”

The investigation finds that Horn recorded hours worked on time sheets when records show he had taken a day or partial day off; that he recorded vacation time on days he actually worked; that he did not always submit leave requests for time off; and that he did not comply with the overtime policy.

In addition, the auditors found that police supervisors did not enforce policies and procedures regarding payroll reporting and approval.

“Supervisors kept leave records that did not match the time sheets,” the investigation states. “They also approved timesheets for payment even when they noted discrepancies.”

Furthermore, the report states that the city, under state law, should have notified the State Auditor’s Office immediately after learning about any suspected loss of public funds.

The city’s response states that the city has implemented new internal controls over the payroll tracking process used at the police department. In addition, the police department staff received additional training about time sheets and leave requests.

According to Wallace, Horn was assigned to the jail after returning to work and has done a good job.

“He’s working his way back into a position of trust with the officers in the office,” Wallace said. “Time will tell.”

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Dumbass Buffalo New York Police Admit Man They Arrested For Restaurant Murders Is Innocent – Police Are Finally Looking For Witnesses

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Charges were dropped in Buffalo City Court Sunday morning against a Buffalo man who was charged with murder following the shooting outside a downtown Buffalo restaurant early Saturday morning that killed four people and injured four others.

Buffalo Police admitted on Sunday the man they arrested, Keith Johnson, 25, was not the man who shot the victims. Buffalo Police Commissioner Daniel Derenda said he “apologized” for the mistake but added Johnson was “less than truthful” when interviewed by police on Saturday.

Erie County District Attorney Frank Sedita said photographic evidence collected by Buffalo Police late Saturday night has led them to believe the wrong person may be in custody.

Sedita said new information came to light following Saturday’s press conferences and requests that witnesses come forward.

In court Sunday morning, which was closed to cameras, Erie County District Attorney Frank Sedita said “the suspect’s information was developed matching this individual [Johnson]. Police put information in the computer which generated a photo which a witness identified as the defendant [Johnson].”

Sedita also said, “within hours of yesterday’s press conference, calls came into the Buffalo Police Department indicating Johnson was not the shooter.”

The District Attorney concluded by saying, “I’m not going to prosecute someone unless I’m absolutely sure he did it and I’m not sure he did it.”

Johnson, who sat in court this morning wearing an orange jumpsuit, is still in police custody on a parole violation. Because Johnson was recently released from prison less than two weeks ago, he was not allowed to be in a bar, which police say he was on Saturday.

Buffalo Police Commissioner Daniel Derenda say they have had witnesses come forward and are pursing leads to find the shooter.

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Video Catches Denver Colorado Police Officer Devin Sparks Brutally Beating Innocent Man Who Was Talking On Cell Phone

DENVER, COLORADO – Denver officials are deeply divided over the proper level of punishment for a police officer who was seen on video tackling and beating a 23-year-old man who was doing nothing but talking on a telephone outside a LoDo nightclub.

The video of Officer Devin Sparks repeatedly hitting Michael DeHerrera of Denver with a department-issued piece of metal wrapped in leather, picking him up roughly and slamming a car door on his ankle has prompted Independent Monitor Richard Rosenthal to push for the firing of Sparks and Corporal Randy Murr.

Rosenthal, who monitors police internal investigations, maintains Sparks and Murr are unfit for the force because they didn’t tell the truth about the April 4, 2009 incident. Rosenthal also believes the use of force by Sparks was excessive. The Denver City Council earlier this year agreed to pay $17,500 to settle a federal lawsuit brought by DeHerrera alleging excessive force.

DeHerrera, in interviews, has described police as beating him unconscious. He said he woke up in a hospital bed, with stitches in his head, and a swollen head. He said he later was diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome.

“The video was so important because it showed everything that happened, regardless of reports or what’s filled out,” DeHerrera said in an interview. “The video speaks more than any of those words can.”

He added: “I don’t swing. I don’t blade. I’m on the phone. The only thing I hold onto is my phone. When I go down, I’m out, and that’s when he continues to ‘get my compliance.’”

The incident was filmed by the police department’s own High Activity Location Observation video surveillance system. Video released to the news media by the department shows DeHerrera doing nothing but talking on his phone with his father, a sheriff’s deputy in Pueblo.

Rosenthal, in a report to be released on Monday, labels as “pure fiction” the police report from Sparks that describes his force as justified because DeHerrera “spun to his left attempting to strike me in the face with a closed right fist.”

Safety Manager Ron Perea, who oversees the police department and has final say on discipline, has rejected Rosenthal’s argument that the officers should be fired. He suspended Murr without pay for three days for submitting an “inaccurate report.” Sparks also lost three days pay.

“The video, when viewed in isolation, seems to portray the subject officers as overly aggressive for the situation,” Perea said. “There is no audio and it appears that there is a man on the phone ignoring but not being overtly aggressive towards the officer when the officer takes him down. The video, however, does not tell the entire story.”

Perea said a witness said DeHerrera pushed another officer moments earlier and that Sparks feared DeHerrera was about to strike him. Other witnesses disputed that DeHerrera had pushed anyone.

“While it is clear from the HALO camera that he is on the phone and does not appear ready to hit the officer, from the officer’s position he was confronting someone already known to have assaulted one officer who then pulled his arm back at the shoulder with a closed fit,” Perea wrote.

DeHerrera was talking on the phone with his father at 12:14 a.m., when the incident occurred. The police had taken into custody DeHerrera’s friend, Shawn Johnson, then 24, after he used a women’s restroom and was ejected from a nightclub. DeHerrera said he feared for his friend’s safety and was asking for advice from his father, a Pueblo sheriff’s deputy.

Both Johnson and DeHerrera were charged by police with interference and resisting arrest. Assistant City Attorney Vince DiCroce moved to dismiss the charges after reviewing the video “because there is no likelihood of conviction.”

The clash between Rosenthal and Perea follows Perea’s hiring in June to replace the former safety manager, Al LaCabe. LaCabe and Rosenthal took a similar approach to discipline decisions and rarely disagreed on how to handle an officer’s actions.

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Former U.S. District Court Judge Samuel B. Kent Doesn’t Like Prisons, Guards, And Inmates – Wants His Sentence Vacated Due To Inhumane Treatment

TEXAS – As a prisoner, former U.S. District Judge Samuel B. Kent has been shunted into solitary confinement, forced to hear the screams of another inmate being raped and ordered by a “cruel” sergeant in the Florida prison system to do calisthenics in the nude, according to allegations in a federal court memorandum filed Tuesday.

Kent has requested that his 33-month sentence be vacated and adjusted based on his allegations of inhumane and unfair treatment.

The former Galveston-based federal judge was impeached by Congress and resigned in June 2009 after being convicted of obstruction of justice. He admitted in a related plea deal that he lied about having repeated unwelcome sexual contact with two female court employees.

In legal action this week, Kent argues he has been unjustly labeled a sex offender by the federal Bureau of Prisons and wrongly excluded from a substance abuse treatment program that could have reduced his sentence by as much as a year. The court filings argue that U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson, a senior judge from Florida, also believed Kent would be treated more fairly and would qualify for the program at the time of sentencing.

Instead, Kent says he has been transferred from prison to prison without explanation, at times prevented from communicating his whereabouts with his wife or his attorney and forced to spend long stints in solitary — once for 43 consecutive days. He’s now assigned to an unnamed maximum security facility in the Florida state prison system, where the alleged mistreatment only worsened, Kent’s attorney Dick DeGuerin said. The BOP inmate website doesn’t disclose Kent’s current location.

DeGuerin likened Kent’s treatment to “torture.”

Attorneys for both of Kent’s victims had no immediate comment on the judge’s request for reconsideration of his sentence.
Says cell was cold, filthy

In the criminal prosecution and in congressional testimony, Kent was accused of repeatedly groping his former case manager both on and under her clothing and once attempting to force her to perform oral sex. He also was accused of forcing caresses on his secretary and of performing unwanted digital and oral sex on her.

In court papers, Kent alleges his mistreatment as a prisoner began in June 2009 – the very day he resigned as a judge. At that time, Kent was assigned to the Deven Federal Prison, a medical evaluation facility in the U.S. Bureau of Prisons system in Massachusetts.

Kent resigned days after becoming the 14th judge in U.S. history to be impeached by a vote of the U.S. House of Representatives. The resignation allowed him to avoid removal from the bench through a full U.S. Senate trial.

That day, BOP staff locked Kent “wearing only a smock and carrying only a single sheet in a filthy … completely empty cell where the temperature was kept at 60 degrees. The only bed in the room was a raised concrete slab with no mattress and the light was kept on constantly,” Kent’s motion to vacate his sentence says.

After being evaluated at Deven, Kent had expected to be transferred to a facility where he could receive treatment for alcohol abuse and depression, documents say.

Instead, he ended up at the Lake Butler Reception Center in Florida’s Department of Corrections. There, an unidentified sergeant forced Kent to “strip naked and perform a painful and repetitive series of humiliating exercises. Once Sam Kent was too tired and in too much pain to perform the exercises any more, the sergeant confiscated Sam Kent’s wedding ring and used it to ridicule him,” the records say.
Calls conditions ‘abusive’

Kent spent the next 16 days in solitary, where he claims the first night he helplessly listened to the “continuous screams of a man being violently raped in the next cell” and “was horrified to observe that the guards ignored the man’s screams and only came to remove the man from the cell after the attack had finally ended.”

Kent has participated in alcohol treatment in the Florida state prison, court papers say. But such “abusive psychological and physical conditions” have “jeopardized his ongoing recovery from severe depression and alcoholism.” DeGuerin said Kent decided to appeal to the federal courts for relief after other informal complaints brought no real improvement.

DeGuerin said Tuesday he hopes Judge Vinson will grant a hearing to review evidence to support Kent’s motion for the reconsideration of his sentence.

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