Archive for the ‘Cops’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Christmas gun crankery.

Tuesday, December 25th, 2018

The NYT apparently decided they were going to use the run-up to Christmas to be cranky about guns.

I didn’t link to that Andrew Ross Sorkin piece the other day about using credit card purchases to (supposedly) flag possible mass shooters (and I won’t link it here) because:

  1. Busy.
  2. I felt like it got pretty thoroughly discussed and discredited on Twitter before I had a chance. Here’s one good example. The only thing I’d add that I really haven’t seen metioned elsewhere is: if you want to weaponize the financial system, don’t be surprised when the weapon is turned on you, Mr. Marijuana Dispensary Owner or Ms. Sex Worker.

In other gun news from the paper of record, they (and supposedly a congressional committee and “federal agencies”) seem to have it in for CZ USA. Why?

Three years ago, Sandy McDonald began finding the rifles, left behind by poachers, scattered near the dead rhinos he found in the game reserve he owns in Mozambique, just across the border from South Africa.
Mr. McDonald immediately recognized the weapons. They were .375-caliber Safari Classics, made by CZUB or just CZ, a firearms manufacturer based in the Czech Republic. Upon closer inspection, Mr. McDonald noticed something else on the rifles. Carved into the metal were the words “CZ-USA, Kansas City, KS,” suggesting that the weapons were from the American subsidiary of the arms company.

Yes: CZ rifles are supposedly ending up in the hands of poachers.

“Coming from a firearms background I recognized that these were rifles that are quite common in the U.S.,” Mr. McDonald said. “It left me wondering how they got out of the U.S. and into the hands of Mozambican poaching syndicates.”

How many CZ Safari Classics have you seen at the gun shop lately? “Quite common”? But I agree with Mr. McDonald: where are these rifles coming from, in such quantity that poachers appear to be just throwing them away? Are rhinos really so valuable that the rifles (which, remember, are imported) are basically disposable?

Neither CZ nor its American subsidiary has been accused of a crime by federal authorities.

…

But CZ officials said the guns that were found at poaching scenes were manufactured in the Czech Republic, not the United States. The company denied that any of the rifles came from its subsidiary in the United States — or that it had done anything wrong. And company officials said the weapons were legally sold to suppliers in Mozambique.
“Although the firearms were marked ‘CZ-USA,’ the U.S. entity CZ-USA had nothing to do with the rifles,” Petr Kallus, a company executive, wrote in a response to questions from The New York Times. “Rather, the marking ‘CZ-USA’ was applied to the rifles by CZUB as an international brand name only.”

You know, I don’t do a lot of hunting or poaching, especially of African game. However, I had the distinct impression from what I’ve read that many poachers are using surplus military weapons, like AK-47s, to do their dirty work. Not sporting rifles imported from the Czech Republic. Any poaching experts out there that can confirm this?

Next up: a few weeks ago, a guy held up two men in a New York City building, firing a shot during the holdup, and fled the scene. As he was running away, he ran into two NYPD officers. One of them gave chase. The suspect fired on the police officer, and the officer shot back.

And shot. And shot. And shot. All told, he expended 27 rounds and reloaded his Glock once. The officer eventually hit the suspect twice (in the neck and foot) disabling him.

The officer also hit five parked cars and one woman in the belly. A 12 year old girl was also hit by bullet fragments.

Unlike the two stories above, I think this is actually a fairly thoughtful and reasonable story: among other things, it talks about how difficult it is to shoot well under stress, especially with someone shooting back at you, and it doesn’t suggest the gentleman in question was a choir boy. (He was found with the gun and two kilos of coke.)

I don’t want to throw stones at the NYPD officer in question. I’m not sure my performance would have been much better in the same situation. On the other hand, I like to think I wouldn’t have been spraying shots on a crowded street, either.

John C. Cerar, a former deputy inspector who commanded the New York Police Department’s firearms and tactics section, said the way Officer Gomez shot while running was an anomaly in New York City, where officers are trained to control their fire.
“We tried to get police officers to be realistic that you’re better off firing from cover,” he said. “Less shots have to be fired if you’re in a good position. Shot placement is so much more important than the amount of shots fired.”

Two more things:

[The officer] had never fired his weapon in five years on the force, the police said.

Never? Not even in qualification?

The officers did not activate their body cameras during the incident.

Posted in Christmas, Cops, Guns, Law, NYPD | Comments Closed

Things I have been neglecting.

Friday, December 21st, 2018

I really haven’t been doing a good job of keeping up with APD firings.

It isn’t that I’m in the tank for the police department now that I’m doing the Citizen’s Police Academy stuff: I don’t feel like I am, and updating you on firings and other disciplinary actions is a good way to show that the department takes these things seriously.

The problem is more that I’m busier now, both personally and professionally, than I have been in quite a while. I’m not complaining, but it does cut into my blogging time. Heck, as you can see, I’m having trouble even keeping up with obits.

But: when someone in a command rank at a major metropolitan police department gets fired, I kind of feel like I have to take note of this.

Here’s the story from the Statesman.

Here’s the official memo from the chief.

I’m not going into details here because the story has a lot of salacious elements: if that’s your bag, you’re welcome to read the less detailed Statesman article or the much much more detailed disciplinary memo.

The gentleman in question plans to appeal, and his legal representative accuses the chief of “inserting himself into the private life and figuratively the bed” of the officer. I can sort of maybe see that point: there’s a lot of stuff in the memo about whether his behavior, even if there was consent involved, is a violation of the law.

BUT: it seems pretty clear to me from the memo that the gentleman in question also tried to hide information (left his cell phone at another person’s house, deleted videos) knowing he was under investigation. That’s a huge violation of department policy, and (in my humble opinion) justifies a firing by itself.

Posted in Austin, Cops, Law | Comments Closed

Update from the legal beat.

Tuesday, November 6th, 2018

I don’t have much to say about this, partly because I’m still busy as all get out, and partly because I don’t know what there is to say.

But: Terry Thompson, the guy who was married to a sheriff’s deputy and choked a man to death outside a Denny’s, was convicted of murder yesterday. (Previously.)

Posted in Cops, HCDA, Law | Comments Closed

Can’t we just let the investigation get along?

Saturday, September 22nd, 2018

(This is a guest post from FOtB RoadRich, speaking only in his private capacity as a citizen, and not representing the opinion of any organization. I’ve made a few minor edits, but no major changes. -DB)

I listen to local talk radio station KLBJ, and enjoy Jeff Ward and Ed Clements’ banter. I really enjoy them though on occasion I mildly disagree with one or the other.

Today I heard something that seemed really irresponsible – Jeff was incensed that the Dallas police chief had not fired Amber Guyger for the horrible and very very avoidable shooting death of Botham Jean. He said that Acevedo didn’t waste any time and fired Geoffrey Freeman for the shooting death of ‘teen running naked’ David Joseph. Jeff said that the Dallas chief said he didn’t want to interfere with the investigation and that excuse was bogus – it didn’t stop Art.

I know a little about internal investigations. I’m no cop. I’m no lawyer. But I did JUST hear a presentation by Austin’s Internal Affairs which reminded me of a key point.

So, I looked up an article on the local paper on my phone. I confirmed my thought – that former Austin Police Chief / current Houston Police Chief / lightning rod for use or misuse of a microphone did in fact fire Freeman… AFTER the internal investigation was over. That’s the key point.

*I* know that if you have an officer involved shooting you have two investigations, the internal one and the criminal one. The criminal one is different from the internal one in that you are COMPELLED TO SUBMIT INFORMATION in the internal one as a condition of your employment. You quit or are fired, and that investigation STOPS.

I didn’t know, but I suspected, that far less time had passed for the Dallas case compared to the Austin one.

I called the caller line, which I haven’t done in over a year. I spoke with the screener, said my peace, and went back about my business. I didn’t get on the radio, which I don’t have any need to do. I haven’t heard the topic come back around so I can only hope that the information was relayed.

Statesman article. Guardian.

Once in front of the computer I pursued my other thought – how long did it take to investigate Freeman, and how long has passed since the flood of bad decisions and poor luck caused some guy watching a football game in the supposed safety of his own home… to be killed by a cop.

You can find any number of articles on this, but I found this one.

From here, I did the math. It was simple. February 8, 2016 APD Officer Freeman is rushed by a naked teenager that was reported to be acting ‘erratically’. Freeman goes on the defensive and David Joseph is shot dead. March 21, 2016 fAPC/cHPC/lr4mum Art Acevedo fires Officer Freeman after the investigation, 42 days after the shooting. September 6, 2018 DPD Officer Guyger ends a long shift, thinks she’s parked on the right level, thinks she’s at her apartment, overlooks the red mat outside and goes on the offensive and Botham Jean is shot dead. Today is September 21 and it’s only been fifteen days, one third of the time that was taken for the Freeman investigation, which was pushed full
throttle, and some think ‘rushed’, others think not.

The overarching problem is that we think we know more (by ‘we’, I mean ‘them’ of course – naturally I think myself and my friends are well and above reproach)… and we are weaned on hour-long cop shows and think that random people showed up to the building they call the police department and JUST started working that day. (Born yesterday anyone?)

There’s a procedure for everything from investigating an officer ‘stealing a cup of coffee’ to one who takes the life of another citizen. The guys in the building learned the job, learned the processes, and are applying them. We… ok, THEY who are outside of this process think they get to make policy on social media — and broadcast media — and then get outraged because they weren’t proven to be a better judge of procedure, than policy manuals that reach nearly 1000 pages over decades of legal precedent.

It’ll get investigated. No one has more hatred for a bad cop than all the good cops.

Posted in Cops, Guest, Law | 1 Comment »

Oh, noes, Llano.

Wednesday, August 29th, 2018

Back in February, I touched on problems with the Llano Police Department. I had not seen an update on this until yesterday, when Reason‘s “Hit and Run” blog, of all places, ran a story covering the latest developments.

Summarizing:

Chief Kevin Ratliff is now ex-Chief Kevin Ratliff. He was fired July 26th…after being convicted of two counts of official oppression and one count of tampering with a governmental record.

He was sentenced last week to six months in jail, but will instead serve a year of probation. If he breaks those terms, he will have to go to jail.

These were all class A misdemeanors. I can’t tell if conviction on these charges requires Ratliff to surrender his peace officer’s license. It doesn’t look like the other indicted officers have gone to trial yet. (Former officer Harden is set for trial in October.)

But wait, there’s more! There was another incident that resulted in another Llano officer and a sheriff’s deputy also being indicted on official oppression charges!

Basically, the two officers responded to a domestic dispute. The male party wouldn’t open the door to the responding officers: so first they tried to pick the lock, then they kicked the door in.

“You’re going to jail,” Roberts told Holley as he stood over him. The officers held Holley in the back of a patrol unit for nearly an hour, then later took the handcuffs off and let him go.
Holley was never charged with a crime.

And apparently, there’s body camera footage of this whole affair as well.

When asked if there was a climate of corruption at the police department, [City Manager Scott] Edmonson said, “Uh, no.”
When asked if Edmonson could be certain of that given the city’s done nothing to investigate that angle, Edmonson replied, “Can we be sure of anything?”

Existential philosophy in Llano. Who’d thunk it?

The sheriff’s deputy is currently suspended:

The sheriff disciplined Roberts the Monday after the incident and stripped him of his police powers and put Roberts on paid administrative leave when the indictment came down. Blackburn didn’t allow Roberts to sit at home to earn his pay, he put his deputy to work in the county jail until the criminal charges are resolved.
“I think for the citizens of the county, if he’s going to be on paid leave, he should be working for it,” Blackburn said.

The Llano PD officer resigned.

Posted in Cops, Law | Comments Closed

DEFCON 26/Black Hat 2018 preliminary notes.

Sunday, August 5th, 2018

DEFCON 26 and Black Hat 2018 start up later this week. Again, I’m not going, but I do feel like I’m inching closer to making a return. Full-timers from my group have been sent to Black Hat in the past, so who knows what’s going to happen next year?

What would I do if I was there? A quick skim of the Black Hat briefings schedule doesn’t show a whole lot that really jumps out at me. I’d probably just be hitting targets of opportunity, with a few exceptions:

What about DEFCON 26? After the jump…

(more…)

Posted in Bluetooth, Christmas, Cops, DEFCON, DEFCON 26, Law, Radio, SDR, WiFi | Comments Closed

I have to do this.

Sunday, July 15th, 2018

I’m sorry.

A federal judge on Saturday ordered the Los Angeles Times to remove information from an article that described a plea agreement between prosecutors and a Glendale police detective accused of working with the Mexican Mafia, a move the newspaper decried as highly unusual and unconstitutional.

More seriously, there seems to be a long recent string of judges deciding that they can just disregard the Supreme Court and order newspapers to do whatever the judge wants. Just once before I die, I would love to see an editor or publisher say to one of those judges:

“Your order is illegal and unconstitutional, and we believe that you are fully aware of these facts. We will not obey your order. We will also not initiate violence. But if this court attempts to enforce its illegal order, we will treat that as the initiation of violence against our staff, and we will defend ourselves with whatever level of force is necessary to stop said violent acts.”

Edited to add 7/16: Ken White over at Popehat:

This is not a close call. Judge Walter’s order is not plausibly lawful. It is patently unconstitutional, and the sort of order that is only issued when a judge deliberately defies First Amendment law or is asleep at the switch. This is utterly unacceptable. The Los Angeles Times will be challenging the order, and I expect them to win, and look forward to all of the briefing — and the original article — becoming available.

Posted in California Über Alles, Cops, Law | Comments Closed

Headline of the day

Saturday, July 14th, 2018

Kicking, screaming, biting Kansas councilwoman finally taken down with Taser, arrested, police say

It’s not quite “You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena!” but it’s close enough for government work.

Bonus points:

A few days later, on July 2, Fowler refused to cooperate with jail workers as they tried to complete the booking process.
When officers were forced to remove jewelry and personal items from her, Fowler bit one of them on the thumb hard enough to break the bone.

The original charges against her were failure to appear on a public drunkeness and interferring with law enforcement charge from last year. Now she’s managed to escalate that into at least two, probably three counts of battery on a law enforcement officer. Plus interference with a law enforcement officer times two. Plus the drunkenness charge.

I wouldn’t expect her at a council meeting in the near or far future.

Posted in Cops, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Quick update from the police beat.

Friday, June 29th, 2018

Remember the fentanyl laced flyers from earlier this week?

Turns out it wasn’t fentanyl after all:

More than a dozen flyers placed on Harris County Sheriff’s Office vehicles have tested negative for fentanyl after a sergeant was hospitalized earlier this week from touching a paper originally believed to be laced with the sometimes-deadly opioid.
The Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences tested 13 flyers, as well as clothing items and blood and urine samples from the sergeant who had symptoms related to drug-exposure. Those tests were all negative.

Apparently the initial positive was from a field test. This raises some questions that I just don’t have time to discuss right now, but which I sort of alluded to in the first post, and which I’d like to come back to later.

Edited to add: Well well well. Since I posted this update, the HouChron article has itself been updated with quotes from the sheriff’s office about the field test kits.

The Houston Chronicle reported in July 2016 that 298 people had been convicted of drug possession, even though complete lab tests later found no controlled substances in the samples tested at the scene.
All 298 people pleaded guilty to felony and misdemeanors before the field samples had been tested in the county’s forensic laboratory. Many of those people pleaded guilty based on the initial testing kits indicated the substance recovered at the scene was positive for drugs. Those test kits cannot be used in trial as evidence under Texas law.

Posted in Cops, Law | Comments Closed

Memo from the police beat.

Tuesday, June 26th, 2018

Oddly, this one is mostly Houston based this time, though there is an APD connection that I’ll mention at the end.

Somebody put flyers on some Harris County Sheriff’s cars parked outside of one of their buildings.

The flyers promoted the organization Targeted Individuals, an organization which believes that the “Deep State” targets certain individuals.
The group believes the FBI and CIA purposefully inflict mental, physical and emotional stress on enemies of the “Deep State,” in part, by shooting microwave technology at their heads in order to cause brain damage, according to the group’s website.

I think this is their website. At least this is the one linked in the HouChron article. There’s another site called “Targeted Individuals” which seems to cover similar ground. I haven’t had time to dig deeply into either of these sites yet, though I’m generally familiar with the whole beaming microwaves/gangstalking/etc. theory.

But that’s not what makes this story weird. A deputy with HCSO went out, found one of the flyers on her car window, and removed it.

Apparently, the flyer was laced with fentanyl.

She initially did not think anything of it but soon started to feel light-headed and showed other fentanyl-related symptoms.
She was rushed to the hospital and is expected to survive as authorities investigate the flyers’ origination. She was released around 4:30 p.m., authorities said.

My first thought was: “How do they know?” Could it just have been heat-related stress or some other condition, and everyone jumped to the conclusion it was fentanyl? According to the HouChron, at least one flyer (I assume it was the one the deputy handled) “tested positive” for fentanyl, and the remaining flyers are being analyzed by the county forensic lab. No idea if the positive test was a field test, or something more sophisticated.

If someone is actually putting drug-laced flyers on cars in an effort to hurt or kill police officers, that’s a pretty serious escalation. I’m hoping it isn’t true, but in the meantime: paranoia and gloves are your friends.

A while back, I wrote about the cases of Terry Thompson and his wife. Briefly: Terry Thompson confronted a man for public urination at a Denny’s and pinned him to the ground. His wife, a HCSO officer at the time, helped him hold the man down. (The wife has since been fired.) The man passed out and died three days later. Mr. Thompson and his wife were charged with murder.

Terry Thompson’s trial was last week. It ended in a mistrial. The Harris County DA announced yesterday that they plan to retry the case. But:

Although all the jurors agreed deadly force was justified under the circumstances, [Scot] Courtney [Thompson’s attorney – DB] said, one refused to find him not guilty of the murder charge.
“One of the jurors said that he could not, he would not vote not guilty – and he hung up the jury for a day,” Courtney said. “It’s disappointing that a juror was seated and swore an oath to follow the law and then ultimately didn’t.”
On the lesser charge of manslaughter, 10 jurors voted not guilty and on the count of criminally negligent homicide eight voted not guilty, Courtney said.

And finally, noted for the record and without much comment, because I just don’t know what to make of it:

A lawsuit has named Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, the City of Austin and Travis County as defendants in a class action complaint accusing them of failing women who were sexually assaulted.

…

Others named in the lawsuit include Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore, former Travis County DA Rosemary Lehmberg, Austin Police Chief Brian Manley, and Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez.

Posted in Cops, HCDA, Law, Politics, Texas, Travis County | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 18, 2018.

Monday, June 18th, 2018

A large handful of interesting obits showed up over the weekend. I decided I’d save them and do a round-up today.

Officer Norberto Ramon of the Houston Police Department passed away on Friday. He had been undergoing treatment for colon cancer, but was told it had spread and was incurable. He intended to seek medical treatment in Oklahoma, but, as it turned out, this was right before Harvey hit Houston…

Prior to the storm, Ramon had been assigned desk duty. Flooding prevented him from getting to the office, so he went to the nearest station, the Lake Patrol, to help while the storm raged.
At Lake Patrol, he filled in for an officer of the seven-man squad. He worked nonstop for three days, seeing adults, seniors and mostly children to safety.

The HPD estimates he rescued 1,500 people during the storm. Officer Ramon was 55 years old, and had been with HPD for 25 years.

Reinhard Hardegen, German submarine commander who sank two ships off Long Island in 1942.

Yvette Horner, noted French accordion player.

…her considerable legend was rooted in the years she spent as a distinctive part of the grand caravan that accompanies the Tour de France, the sprawling French bicycle race. For more than a decade in the 1950s and ’60s she played for the crowds from atop one vehicle or another as the caravan made its way along the tour route ahead of the cyclists.

William Reese, rare book dealer. I was previously unaware of Mr. Reese or his shop, but after reading his obit, I want a copy of Six Score: The 120 Best Books on the Range Cattle Industry. Stuff like that is already up my alley anyway.

Stephen Reid, bank robber and author.

Along with Patrick Mitchell, who was known as Paddy, and Lionel Wright, Mr. Reid was a member of a group of well-dressed bandits who came to be known as the The Stop Watch Gang. The name appeared to have come from F.B.I. investigators who noticed that at least one gang member, usually Mr. Reid, wore a stopwatch around his neck to keep holdups within the group’s self-imposed two-minute time limit.
While there is no precise accounting of their crimes, the police have estimated that the gang participated in at least 100 holdups during the 1970s and ′80s, getting away with about $15 million.

Matt “Guitar” Murphy, Blues Brother and noted sideman.

Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post has published an obit for Gardner Dozois, as best as I can tell.

Posted in Books, Cops, History, Law, Movies, Music, Nazis, Obits | Comments Closed

Short memo from the police beat.

Thursday, June 14th, 2018

After 18 months, countless hours of debate, and several public meetings (one of which interfered with the Austin Citizen’s Police Academy graduation, not that I’m BITTER or anything), the Austin Police Department finally has a non-interim chief…

…Punch Rockgroin! Brian Manley.

As I’ve said before, he seems to me to be a good guy with a truly macho name and a good leader with local ties. We’ll have to see how his tenure plays out, but I am cautiously optimistic.

In other news, the felony perjury and misdemeanor official misconduct charges against Joel Abelove, the district attorney of Rensselaer County (in upstate New York) have been dropped.

I would have sworn I wrote about this at the time, but apparently I didn’t. It’s rare to see a sitting DA charged with a crime, and the backstory is interesting.

In April of 2016, a man named Edson Thevenin was stopped by police in Troy on “suspicion of drunk driving”. The stop escalated, there was a “brief chase”, and somewhere in there a police officer became pinned between his cruiser and Mr. Thevenin’s car: Mr. Thevenin was shot eight times and killed.

After the shooting, Mr. Abelove, a Republican, quickly convened a grand jury, something that the attorney general’s office believed was intentionally meant to ensure that the officer, Sgt. Randall French, did not get charged in the killing. Mr. Abelove had also conferred immunity on Sergeant French before the grand jury voted, Mr. Schneiderman’s office said, and was alleged to have lied to a separate grand jury about another immunity case.

I can see two ways of spinning this: former AG and known abuser Schneiderman was peeved that the state couldn’t go after a cop who was involved in a shooting, and tried to take it out on the DA instead. Or: Abelove was trying to manipulate the grand jury system and cover for a cop in a bad shooting.

Mr. Schneiderman, a Democrat who resigned in disgrace last month after allegations that he had physically abused romantic partners, was empowered to investigate Mr. Abelove under a 2015 executive order from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. The order allowed the state attorney general to serve as a special prosecutor for investigations into the deaths of “unarmed civilians caused by law enforcement officers.”
In the case of Mr. Thevenin, Mr. Cuomo issued a second executive order that allowed Mr. Schneiderman to specifically examine Mr. Abelove’s handling of the investigation, including “its grand jury presentation.”

What led to the decision to drop the charges?

Justice Jonathan D. Nichols questioned the scope of the authority included in the Thevenin executive order and ruled that the attorney general’s office “was without jurisdiction and hence unauthorized to appear in front of the grand jury,” in relation to the perjury charge.
“The court finds the integrity of the grand jury was impaired in this case,” Justice Nichols wrote. “And impaired to the extent that prejudice to the defendant is clearly possible.”

Posted in Austin, Cops, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »