Archive for June, 2016
Quote of the day.
Thursday, June 16th, 2016Random notes: June 13, 2016.
Monday, June 13th, 2016I was busy all day yesterday, and I have nothing profound or interesting to say about Orlando. Go look at the smarter people on my blogroll if you’re looking for that: I’d suggest Tam and Lawrence as good starting points.
In other news: there’s now an official lawsuit pending to remove Williamson Count District Attorney Jana Duty from office. And I’m thinking I need a WCDA tag.
I missed this until Lawrence sent me a link to a Daily Mail story: Sean Whent, the police chief in Oakland, resigned on Thursday.
The general belief seems to be that Whent was working to stabilize and clean up the department, but there were a whole host of recent scandals on his watch:
But the biggest issue is a messy sex scandal. Five officers have been placed on administrative leave so far.
More from the Mercury News:
Random notes: June 11, 2016.
Saturday, June 11th, 2016This is shaping up to be a busy weekend, but I have a little bit of time this morning and wanted to make note of one major and one minor story.
Major story: the Austin Police Department has temporarily suspended DNA testing at their lab.
This is the same lab that RoadRich and I toured as part of our CPA class; they may have been blowing smoke, but one of the things that stood out to us was how seriously the APD lab took their certifications, and how much effort they put into getting things right.
So what’s going on? It looks like three things:
1) Unspecified concerns raised by the Texas Forensic Science Commission.
…
Officials had already scaled back lab operations in recent weeks — its staff were only screening evidence for DNA but were no longer doing analysis — and asked state forensic experts to evaluate the lab’s operation amid concerns about its operations.
Gay said Friday that he hasn’t received a formal notification from the state about the outcome of the experts’ inquiry, but that, based on phone conversations, “there are some challenges in front of us”.
2) There’s also a leadership gap. Apparently, the civilian lab supervisor (who goes unnamed in the Statesman) recently passed away, and had been out on leave for a while before that.
3) I’m a little confused by this part, and would love to find an “explain like I’m 5” piece on it: apparently, the Feds have issued new standards for doing DNA probability calculations, and a lot of labs – not just Austin – are struggling to implement them. This is something that was specifically mentioned as an issue on our tour:
FBI officials last year notified crime labs across the country that they were using outdated methods to examine samples containing genetic material from multiple people — methods that often led expert witnesses to greatly overstate the reliability of that evidence in court.
The use of outdated protocols to interpret test results means an expert witness might have told jurors that the chances are 1 in more than a billion that the genetic material in question belonged to someone other than the defendant, when those odds are more like 1 in 100.
So the lab has to go through and do a bunch of recalculation on a bunch of existing cases (around 1,300). And that apparently requires things like software updates (which I gather aren’t as simple as “download a .ZIPed EXE file and run it” when you’re dealing with forensic gear) and additional new training for the people doing the work.
All of this is going to take time: they’re speculating four to six months. In the meantime, DNA samples are going to be sent either to private labs or the Texas DPS lab for analysis.
Minor story:
What kind of “non-standard” weapons and ammo? AK-47s. Yes, WP, yes, journalist’s guide to firearm identification, but it seems like this is for real AK-47s:
This makes sense, in a way. As the article explains, we’re arming foreign troops, but giving them distinctively US-made weapons (like the M4) puts a target on their back: “Although likely more accurate than their Soviet-style counterparts, U.S. weapons can make the fighters carrying them targets for other factions.” Plus: “U.S. weapons can also be difficult to maintain,” (Really?!) “prompting Special Operations Command and the CIA to procure and supply weapons that their allies are used to fighting with, such as Kalashnikovs.”
The thing that makes me wonder about this story: I’m sure we’ve all heard (I’ve even linked to) stories about secret CIA/SOCOM warehouses filled to the rafters with captured AK-47s intended to arm foreign troops while maintaining plausible deniability. So why does SOCOM need contracts to produce new ones? Are the warehouses running low? Are the ones in the warehouses poorly made or shot to heck, and SOCOM thinks they’re better off getting new ones that are assembled to tighter tolerances? (Sort of a Smith and Wesson vs. Taurus comparison, but for AK’s? Okay, that was a cheap shot.)
Obit watch: June 10, 2016.
Friday, June 10th, 2016Wanted to get this in before another busy weekend: Gordie Howe. ESPN.
I’ve never been a huge hockey fan, but even I knew who Gordie Howe was, and kind of liked the guy.
Art (Acevedo), damn it! watch. (#Z of a series)
Thursday, June 9th, 2016I was hoping to have something else to put here. Maybe that will be #AA, or #AB.
But I digress. Remember a few weeks ago, when I commented, “…in my experience so far with the Citizen’s Police Academy, the rank-and-file seem to love the guy.”
Here’s the flip side of that:
I quibble slightly with the Statesman‘s headline, “Survey: More than half of Austin police officers say morale is poor”. If memory serves, the authorized strength of the APD is just over 1,800 officers, and they told our CPA class they were about 100 officers short. They did give an exact figure: it was in the 1,700 range, but I don’t remember exactly what, and it has certainly fluctuated some since then. Point being: 883 officers is just over half of the department, and that’s just the number that responded to the survey. The actual number that described morale as “poor” – 480 – is more like 28% of the department, not half.
Continuing:
With all due respect to the fine men and women of the APD, and with the understanding that police work is different from technical support, this doesn’t sound too much different from my job. I’d prefer to have time to work on my existing cases instead of taking new phone calls. But if we’re shorthanded and there’s not enough people in the phone queue, guess what? My preferences don’t matter. And the city has some major issues right now, including a serial sexual assaulter and rock throwers on the interstate. I don’t blame the chief for wanting butts in the field.
See. Above. And yes, there probably are times when higher-ranking officers make stupid hasty decisions: I can’t think of ones from the APD, but The Onion Field is a classic example.
Note that it was the APD police union that ran the survey.
Followups.
Thursday, June 9th, 2016Theresa Saldana: NYT. A/V Club.
Lawrence was kind enough to throw me a backlink and add some additional context to the Jana Duty story. Latest update: even though Duty will be out after the election, “Williamson County business leaders” are demanding that she resign now. In addition to her troubles with the State Bar, the people demanding her resignation are claiming she’s pretty much stopped showing up for work:
Justice of the Peace Bill Gravell also spoke at the news conference and said that Duty “has largely been absent from her post.”
“This makes doing my job as a judge in the community more challenging and very difficult to serve the people of Williamson County effectively,” Gravell said.
And Mike the Musicologist sent me a link to a CNN story about Rear Admiral Robert Gilbeau pleading guilty to one count of “making a false statement to investigators”.
Two things about that story:
1) Rear Admiral Gilbeau’s plea is related to the ongoing investigation into the “Fat Leonard” scandal.
2) Linked it before, I’ll link it again: “Really, seriously, just shut the fuck up.”
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#30 in a series)
Wednesday, June 8th, 2016I’ve written previously about the growing scandal involving New York City mayor Bill de Blasio and his fund raising.
Latest, and semi-breaking news: two more people have been arrested and charged with fraud.
One of them is a “hedge-fund financier”.
The other one? Norman Seabrook, also known as the head of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association. The COBA is the union that represents New York City’s corrections officers (about 9,000 members).
But wait! It gets better! One of the people the feds have targeted is now a cooperating witness!
More:
It amuses me enormously that they had to buy a designer bag specifically for their payoffs. Also, the Knicks tickets must have been a major clue: who’s going to pay $7,500 to watch the hapless Knickerbockers play?
Annals of law (#10 in a series)
Wednesday, June 8th, 2016Two sort of random notes:
1. Jana Duty, the elected district attorney of Williamson County (Williamson County is just up the road from Austin/Travis County: it covers Round Rock and Georgetown) has been placed “on probation” by the State Bar of Texas for 18 months.
Duty will still be able to practice law but will have to comply with the terms of her probation.
Why? “Professional misconduct”. Specifically, Ms. Duty was accused of withholding evidence in a murder case.
Here’s the Wilco DA’s website. I find that quote from Article 2.01 deeply ironic.
2. On Monday, a judge for the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals ruled that Sonia Cacy was innocent of murder.
Ms. Cacy was sentenced to 99 years in prison in 1993: she allegedly doused her uncle with “an accelerant” and set him on fire.
Except there were problems with the evidence.
Lots of problems:
The full court has to concur before Ms. Cacy is officially exonerated, but as the TM article notes, that almost seems to be a formality now.
Obit watch: June 8, 2016.
Wednesday, June 8th, 2016The LAT is reporting the death of actress Theresa Saldana.
She was in “Raging Bull” (which, oddly enough, I have never gotten around to watching) and the 90’s TV series “The Commish”.
It makes me feel weird to say this, but: she was perhaps best known as the victim of a vicious attack by a deranged stalker in 1982. She was stabbed 10 times before a passerby pulled the guy off her. I don’t want to say this was the first celebrity stalking attack, because I’m sure someone will prove me wrong: but it was one of the earliest I can remember, and one of the first to draw public attention. (Ms. Saldana played herself in “Victims for Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story”, the movie based on her case.)
The paper of record.
Wednesday, June 8th, 2016Two interesting bits from the NYT:
1. I noticed this yesterday, and Lawrence emailed me about it as well: Rudolph Stocker retired from the Times on May 18th at the age of 78.
Who?
When the Times went over to computer typesetting, part of their agreement with the union guaranteed job security to the existing printers (“…1,785 situation-holders and full-time substitutes, 810 of whom were at The Times”).
Did he sit on his butt after the paper phased out the Linotype?
Sounds like a hell of a guy. I hope he has a happy retirement.
Through his colleagues, he made it known that he was not interested in a valedictory interview.
2. The Times Insider talks about the process of getting Ali’s obit into the paper, including a literal “stop the presses”.
It’s always kind of nice to know these people are human, too:
Obit watch: June 6, 2016.
Monday, June 6th, 2016Peter Shaffer, noted playwright (“Equus”, “Amadeus”).
I’ve never seen “Equus”, either the play or the film; I wouldn’t mind seeing Burton, but I’m also oddly fascinated by the idea of the Nimoy version.
It’s not the bullet that kills you…
Friday, June 3rd, 2016…it’s an allergic reaction to the sulfa drugs they were giving you to manage infection, this being in the days before modern antibiotics.
At least, that’s what a medical professional of my acquaintance told me yesterday; this is not a theory I had heard previously, but I trust this person implicitly. It seems like the one thing we know about the death of the Kingfish is how little we really do know.
For example, this may not be a bullet hole at all: it may be just “an imperfection in the marble”, according to that NOLA.com article I linked yesterday. I’m not sure I agree with their police work there, Lou. It looks awfully strange to be just an imperfection in the marble. But on the other hand, it also seems to be in a strange spot for a bullet hole. If you’re facing the pillar, I’d say it is roughly at a 270 degree angle from the front, almost around to the back side. Maybe someone trying to hide could have been hit there? Maybe it is a hole, but from a bodyguard’s gun?
Context:
Expanded context:
