Massachusetts open records or freedom of information guide.

The Open Government Guide is a compendium of information on MA open records and open meetings laws.

As of July 1, 2010 a new open meetings law became effective in Massachusetts. An update to the open meetings materials below is forthcoming.

Link:http://www.rcfp.org/ogg/index.php?op=browse&state=MA

The Open Government Guide is a complete compendium of information on every state's open records and open meetings laws.

The Open Government Guide is a complete compendium of information on every state's open records and open meetings laws. Each state's section is arranged according to a standard outline, making it easy to compare laws in various states. If you're a new user of this guide, be sure to read the Introductory Note and User's Guide.


Link:http://www.rcfp.org/ogg/index.php

Suspicious activity reporting programs or SAR will have a negative affect on private investigators and the U. S. public.

Are you a terrorist? Do you associate with terrorists? If the answer to those questions is no — which it undoubtedly is for the overwhelming majority of Americans — collecting detailed information about your personal behavior for the sake of “intelligence gathering” would violate your rights and waste the government’s resources, but not make you any safer. Yet that’s exactly what’s happening with the government’s growing number of Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) programs.

SAR programs are based on the theory that collecting information about a multitude of “suspicious” behaviors will help law enforcement and intelligence agencies find criminals and terrorists. The problem, however, is that many of the behaviors these SAR programs identify as precursors to terrorism include innocuous and commonplace activities that ordinary people engage in every day.

For this reason, SAR programs not only pose civil liberties threats, but they also subvert counterterrorism efforts, as the extraneous information collected only pollutes the intelligence system and makes it less useful and reliable for law enforcement.

The civil liberties dangers posed by SAR programs are significant. Under SAR programs, engaging in everyday activities like taking photographs, drawing diagrams or taking notes or measurements could result in a policemen, FBI or Department of Homeland Security agent stopping you, demanding ID and detaining or arresting you.

After that, your information could be entered into a database of “suspicious” potential terrorists — despite the fact that you’ve done nothing wrong —simply because the government has determined that a small number of terrorists might also engage in these same ubiquitous activities.

Some SAR programs request public participation, with hyperbolic public service announcements that suggest reporting your neighbor’s photography might stop the next 9/11. Think about the implications for the average tourist shooting a photo of the Brooklyn Bridge, or the art student fascinated by the structure of the subway.

Under SAR programs, artists and journalists have been systematically harassed or detained by federal, state and local law enforcement and, in some instances, the ensuing confrontation with police escalated to the point where photographers were arrested and their photos erased or cameras confiscated with no reasonable indication that criminal activity was involved.


Link:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/10/26/102551/commentary-how-to-spot-a-law-abiding.html

Android App. called "Secret SMS Applicator" forwards private text messages, without the owners knowledge.

If you own an Android phone and are cheating on a significant other by arranging secret trysts through text messages, you might want to think twice about your infidelities — or at least about arranging them via texts.

A new Android application released Wednesday, Secret SMS Replicator, when secretly installed on a cellphone, will forward all text messages to any other phone without the owner’s knowledge.

Zak Tanjeloff, chief executive of the app’s creator, DLP Mobile, said in a news release: “This app is certainly controversial, but can be helpful to people in relationships where this type of monitoring can be useful.”

DLP Mobile also boasts about the clandestine nature of the application: “The app is unique because there is no visible icon or shortcut to access it, so once it’s installed, it will continue to monitor without revealing itself.”

Link:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/android-app-forwards-private-text-messages/?hp

Qik.com is a new website that private investigators will find useful, when recording video with a cell phone. Users can stream live video or have instant online backup.

Why use Qik?

Your video is automatically saved as you record.

• Before you finish recording, your Qiks are already saved to your online Video Gallery, ready for safe-keeping or sharing. What could be easier than that?

•Live. Share your Qiks live (right as you are recording them)!

•Later. If friends and family aren’t available to watch live, they can see your Qiks anytime later that’s convenient.



Link: http://qik.com/

Mobile x-ray vans can peer through clothing and into homes.

The Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. military and even local law enforcement agencies are buying and deploying mobile X-ray vans that can see into the interior of vehicles around them.

Like airport scanners, the ZBVs use Z Backscatter technology to detect materials that contain low atomic numbers. This allows them to detect organic matter that doesn't show up well in traditional X-ray images -- including explosives and plastic weapons – in addition to metal and other materials.

The technology also works in such a way that the X-Ray mechanism has no need for a detector on the far side of an object, allowing it to be extremely mobile, versatile and capable of being into a commercially available van.

Once equipped, the van -- which looks like a standard delivery van -- takes less than 15 seconds to scan a vehicle; it can be operated remotely from more than 1,500 feet and can be equipped with optional technology to identify radioactivity as well.

But according to the AS&E website, ZBVs also can peer through clothing and into "lightly constructed" buildings, raising serious concerns among privacy advocates.

"A van that can drive down the street and look through people's clothes, look into vehicles and even peer into your home? I think that's an invasion of privacy and not what we should be doing," Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz told FoxNews.com.

FoxNews.com asked police departments in the Department of Homeland Security's five highest-ranked terror risk areas -- New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Chicago -- if they use ZBVs. The New York Police Department confirmed it does but wouldn't say how.

"Yes, we do utilize this technology; however, we're unable to divulge any specifics of the use due to confidentiality concerns," Det. Cheryl Crispin of the NYPD told FoxNews.com.

San Francisco PD said they do not use the vans. The other departments did not respond.



Video link:
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4385839/
Link:
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/10/19/x-ray-vans-security-measure-invasion-privacy/

Study finds street stops by N.Y. police unjustified in tens of thousands of stops over six years.

Tens of thousands of times over six years, the police stopped and questioned people on New York City streets without the legal justification for doing so, a new study says.

And in hundreds of thousands of more cases, city officers failed to include essential details on required police forms to show whether the stops were justified, according to the study written by Prof. Jeffrey A. Fagan of Columbia Law School.

The study was conducted on behalf of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is suing the New York Police Department for what the center says is a widespread pattern of unprovoked and unnecessary stops and racial profiling in the department’s stop-question-and-frisk policy. The department denies the charges.

The study examined police data cataloging the 2.8 million times from 2004 through 2009 that officers stopped people on the streets to question and sometimes frisk them, a crime-fighting strategy the department has put more emphasis on over the years.

Professor Fagan found that in more than 30 percent of stops, officers either lacked the kind of suspicion necessary to make a stop constitutional or did not include sufficient detail on police forms to determine if the stops were legally justified. The study also found that even accounting for crime patterns in the city’s various neighborhoods, officers stopped minorities at disproportionate rates.

Nearly 150,000 of the stops — 6.7 percent of all cases in which an officer made a stop based on his own discretion, rather than while responding to a radio call in which some information had already been gathered — lacked legal sufficiency, the study concluded.

Stops were considered unjustified if officers provided no primary reason articulating a reasonable suspicion for the stop.

For example, if an officer conducted a stop solely because a person was in a high-crime area — without listing a primary reason, like the person “fits a description” of a crime suspect or appeared to be “casing” a store — the stop was considered unjustified.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/nyregion/27frisk.html?_r=3&hp

Hawaii: Police accused of falsifying police reports and manipulating DUI cases.

In July, sources told KITV the sergeants who oversaw police DUI checkpoints were being investigated for claiming overtime when they were not on the job.

Sources also said officers who worked under the sergeants were suspected of falsifying police reports by claiming the sergeants were at DUI checkpoints when they were not

Police Chief Louis Kealoha was out of town Monday and unavailable for comment.

But in July, Kealoha made a brief comment on the investigation.

“We don’t want this investigation to taint the good work that our police officers are doing out there. It’s a concern to us, but it’s not going to severely impact our ability to find DUIs,” Kealoha said.

The prosecutor's office has so far dismissed at least 12 DUI cases that were being handled by the officers charged in the overtime case.

HPD said the seven officers are still on the job, although they have been reassigned and their police powers are restricted.

If convicted of the misdemeanors, the officers face up to 30 days in prison and a fine of up to $1,000



Link: http://www.kitv.com/r/25510709/detail.html

Understanding the world of cellular telephones: Part 1

Most users today have cell phones that rely upon Third Generation (3G) digital technology. Unlike 2G phones which could only transmit voice data (phone calls), 3G technology is capable of transferring all types of data including e-mails, text, and instant messages. 3G technology also supports WIFI and Internet access.

Manufacturers are currently going forward with plans to develop a Fourth Generation (4G) technology for cell phones. Developers are building upon and expanding the current technologies to provide faster information and data transfer and faster access to the Internet.

As we enter the realm of 4G, cell phone technologies and access schemes remain fairly constant as does the associated terminology or acronyms. A brief discussion of both is provided in this article.
The subjects covered are as follows...

Cell Phone Technology and Access Schemes:

Cell Phone Identification Numbers:

Other Common Acronyms:


Link:
http://www.forensicmag.com/article/understanding-world-cellular-telephones-part-1

A clash between prosecutors and forensic scientists in Minnesota bares a long-standing ethical dispute.

The case against Minnesota high school student Nicole Beecroft two years ago was horrid in itself. Beecroft, then 17, was charged with stabbing her newborn daughter to death after secretly giving birth in the laundry room of her mother’s home.

The case was front-page news and Beecroft was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to a life term.

But for Dr. Susan Roe, an assistant medical examiner for eight Minnesota counties, the gruesome details were only a part of what troubled her. “It was an awful, horrible experience,” she says of her involvement in the trial as a medical expert for the defense. “It’s not worth it.”

In retaliation for her testimony in the case, Roe says, prosecutors threatened to file a complaint against her with the state agency that licenses and disciplines doctors and to prevent her from teaching another class at the state crime lab where she has taught regularly for years.

During the Beecroft trial, Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom—head prosecutor in one of the eight counties for which Roe works—admitted sending an e-mail to Dr. Lindsey Thomas, Roe’s boss at the Minnesota Regional Medical Examin er’s Office in Hastings. Backstrom told Thomas she could lose her county job if she or her assistants continued to do defense work against his wishes and the county sheriff’s wishes.

The email so unnerved her, Roe says, that she abruptly withdrew from the case, hired a lawyer and left the state until the trial was over.

To many medical examiners, the Beecroft case and Roe’s trepidation sound familiar. They say they’ve been called names behind their backs and had their professional reputations besmirched. They say they have been subjected to intimidation tactics—subtle and overt—and threatened with the loss of their appointed public positions. Their tormenters, they say, are police and prosecutors who criticize them for doing consulting work for the defense.

The episode helped expose a deep—and apparently long standing philosophical rift between some prosecutors and law enforcement officials, on the one side, and much of the forensic science community on the other.

Some police and prosecutors tend to view government-employed forensic scientists, including medical examiners, not as independent experts but as members of the prosecution’s “team.” Medical examiners, for the most part, view themselves first and foremost as scientists, beholden not to one side or the other but only to the truth.

Incidents like this are the reason the National Association of Medical Examiners has a standard that calls for death investigations to be conducted independently of law enforcement officials and prosecutors. Such a policy, it says, “promotes neutral and objective medical assessment of the cause and manner of death.”


Link: http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/csi_breakdown/

No discipline for New Orleans cop in 15 shooting incidents, 50 complaints!

The disciplinary file on the New Orleans Police Department's Lt. Dwayne Scheuermann is inches thick -- as thick as any on the police force.

The lieutenant has weathered more than 50 separate complaints, ranging from accusations of brutality and rape to improper searches and seizures. But none of the allegations ever stuck, although two complaints are still pending. Every time, Scheuermann was cleared and sent back onto the streets.

He has also fired his gun in at least 15 different incidents, wounding at least four people. Experts on police practices say the number is unusual most officers never fire their weapons.

Today, Scheuermann, 49, is preparing to stand trial on some of the most disturbing charges ever filed against a New Orleans police officer. Federal prosecutors accuse Scheuermann and a colleague of setting fire to a car containing the body of Henry Glover, who had been shot by a different police officer in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.


Link:http://www.propublica.org/nola/story/no-discipline-for-new-orleans-cop/

MA: Bristol County Sheriff race leaves many questions.

It’s great to be a judge’s son – just ask Rep. John Quinn, the Democrat running for sheriff of Bristol County.

Quinn’s father the judge retired in 1986 and has since been collecting a pension of $46,639.44 a year. Now the judge’s son, the solon, admits to the local paper that he was “arrested twice during the 1980s, once for operating under the influence and once for disturbing the peace and disorderly conduct, but pointed out the charges were later dismissed.”

It must be great to be a judge’s son. Did I mention Quinn’s brother currently works for the Bristol County district attorney’s office and makes $120,000 a year? Other Quinn hacks are likewise doing well in the hackerama, I am reliably informed, but Quinn refused to return multiple phone calls to discuss his family’s decades-long chowdown at the public trough.

Now, he is running for sheriff and that $123,209 sheriff’s salary would set him up for an even bigger pension than his daddy the judge gets.


Link:
http://bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1291052&srvc=news&position=4

MA: Representative Thomas Petrolati, a legislative leader with huge sway over probation department.

The 26 year old woman said state Representative Thomas M. Petrolati had pestered her for weeks with phone calls at work, “asking me out and refusing to take no for an answer.’’ A few weeks later, when Jill Gagne was fired, she protested to the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination that it was because she had complained about Petrolati’s advances.

Petrolati, a married man who had just begun his ascent of the Beacon Hill power structure when the complaint was filed in 1996, said he only wanted to enlist Gagne as a campaign volunteer — in an election for which he faced no opposition. Her employer, the Ludlow Boys & Girls Club, said Gagne was dismissed for unrelated professional lapses, and the MCAD ultimately agreed, drawing no conclusions about Petrolati’s behavior.

But Petrolati did not wait passively for a ruling that could determine his political fate, according to recent testimony given to the special counsel investigating rigged hiring practices at the state Probation Department. Instead, he allegedly used his influence at Probation in an attempt to pressure a key witness in the case.

On the same day that club executive director James G. Moriarty was questioned by an MCAD investigator, his wife received an unexpected call from a Westfield District Court employee inviting her to interview for a Probation opening, Moriarty told special counsel Paul F. Ware Jr., according to a source with direct knowledge of the testimony. Months earlier, a Petrolati aide had told Moriarty that his wife was no longer in the running for a job.

Moriarty told investigators that he believes Petrolati was behind the sudden reversal, and he saw it as a clear attempt to influence his testimony.

Petrolati, a top deputy to the last three speakers of the House, has emerged as a major figure of interest in Ware’s investigation, marking the third time in four years that Petrolati’s conduct has been under scrutiny by state or federal investigators. Petrolati has more influence than any other politician over the Probation Department, where his wife and more than 100 financial backers now work, and where his contributors run 19 of the 25 probation offices between Worcester and the New York border. He is regarded by many members of the Western Massachusetts delegation as the “king of patronage.’’


Link:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/10/24/hard_questions_loom_for_patronage_king/

Florida: Hillsborough deputy under investigation over Facebook pictures.

The photos of veteran Deputy Lisa Latimer, posted to Facebook by her estranged husband, are shocking -- sitting in her uniform in a cruiser with a gun to her mouth, then a shot of her smoking what looks like a marijuana cigarette.

"Even as a joke, there's things you do and you don't do," Todd Latimer told FOX 13. "To do that, to allow yourself to be photographed, I can't even come up with a reason why someone would do that".

Latimer and his wife have had a difficult divorce featuring a domestic violence restraining order and Internal Affairs investigations over the discharge of Deputy Latimer's stun gun.

Lisa Latimer is on vacation, according to the sheriff's office, and she did not return FOX 13's calls for comment.


Link:
http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/dpp/news/local/hillsborough/facebook-photos-deputy-investigation-102210

MA: Jeffrey Asher fired as Springfield cop for beating of Melvin Jones III

Police commissioner William J. Fitchet on Thursday announced he has fired officer Jeffrey Asher for the November beating of a drug suspect during a traffic stop on Rifle Street, and handed down suspensions without pay of two other patrolmen and a supervisor who were at the scene.

A statement issued by Fitchet announced that in addition to terminating Asher’s employment, he imposed suspensions of Lt. John Bobianski and officer Michael Sedergren for 45 days and officer Theodore Truoiolo for 15 days.

Link: http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/10/jeffrey_asher_fired_as_springf.html

A Peek Inside the State Department’s FOIA Procedures.

When a journalist or citizen appeals a FOIA request that has been denied by the State Department, the case goes to a three-member panel that draws from a rotating group of retired ambassadors.

The State Department uses retired Foreign Service officers to help determine what internal documents and memos can be released for Freedom of Information Act requests, according to a new watchdog report that gives a peek into how the department handles FOIA issues.

The department is notorious among journalists for its slow responses to FOIA requests. Earlier this month, the Center for Public Integrity received a response to a FOIA request it submitted 10 years ago to the State Department.

State had 138 full-time employees devoted to FOIA in 2009, the department inspector general said in the report. After initial reviewers of a FOIA request locate information to released, retired Foreign Service officers carry out a “two-tiered, often line-by-line review” to spot sensitive information that should be reconsidered, the report said. “The reviewers consult regularly with bureaus and offices on current sensitivities that may affect redaction decisions, but elements requesting redactions bear the burden of showing the necessity of those redactions while reviewers assume final authority over the outcome of their reviews,” it added.

Link: http://www.publicintegrity.org/daily_watchdog/entry/2561/

The Center for Public Integrity is dedicated to producing original investigative journalism about significant public issues to make institutional power more transparent and accountable.

The mission of the Center for Public Integrity is to produce original investigative journalism about significant public issues to make institutional power more transparent and accountable. To pursue its mission, the Center:

■ Generates high-quality, accessible investigative reports, databases, and contextual analysis on issues of public importance.
■ Disseminates work to journalists, policymakers, scholars, and citizens using a combination of digital, electronic, and print media.
■ Educates, engages, and empowers citizens with the tools and skills they need to hold governments and other institutions accountable.
■ Organizes and supports investigative journalists around the world who apply the Center’s values, mission, and standards to cross-border projects.
■ Remains independent by building a strong and sustainable financial base of support, including a community of committed individuals and foundations.


Link: http://www.publicintegrity.org/

Free thinkers, non conformists, those that question authority can be labeled mentally ill by psychiatrists.

It is now confirmed by USWGO News that the DSM-IV-TR Manual labels free thinkers, non conformers, civil disobedient advocates, those that question authority, and people considered hostile toward the government (aka Oath keepers and local militias) as mentally ill with the illness titled “oppositional defiant disorder” or ODD.

It was reported on October 8 2010 from OffTheGrid News that anybody who is disobedient, defiant, a free thinker, or even considered hostile toward authority was to be labeled by psychiatrists as ‘mentally I'll’.

Now as I search up the keywords “oppositional defiant disorder” on adobe reader I found exactly what Off The Grid News was talking about. So it is now confirmed basically that anyone who disobeys authority or even questions authority is now considered mentally ill and can be thrown in a prison-like mental institution under tax payers dollars.

So now according to the ebook it states that:

The essential feature of Oppositional Defiant Disorder is a recurrent pattern of negativistic,defiant, disobedient. and hostile behavior toward authority figures that persists for at least 6 months.

The American Psychiatric Association is putting in their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV series that free thinkers, civil disobedient advocates, and Oath keepers are all mentally ill that are anti-social and may cause behavior problems in our modern society

Link:
http://uswgo.com/confirmed-psychiatric-manual-dsm-iv-tr-labels-free-thinkers-non-conformers-as-mentally-ill.htm

Police in Florida using tracking devices and GPS locators in cell phones to track suspects.

The same technologies we use every day — cell phones, social networking, GPS — also are used by law enforcement to investigate, track and arrest criminals. The problem, critics say, is when these technologies are used without oversight — and to erode privacy.

A judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently called out his fellow judges on both counts.

His rebuke came after the court ruled that federal agents could not only plant a GPS tracking device on a vehicle without getting a warrant, but they could go onto private property to do so.

That was too much for Chief Judge Alex Kozinski.

"The needs of law enforcement, to which my colleagues seem inclined to refuse nothing, are quickly making personal privacy a distant memory," he wrote in a widely read dissent.

How GPS tracking is used in Florida depends on which agency is using it. Local, state and federal officers follow different rules.

According to Florida law, local and state agencies need a judge's approval to use GPS tracking. But the standard they have to meet isn't as high as the standard for obtaining a search warrant.

To search someone's home or business, officers must have a reasonable belief that the person committed a crime.

To use GPS tracking, they simply must convince a judge that it's "relevant" to their investigation, said University of Florida law professor Michael L. Seigel.

"It's a much lower standard," he said. "It's not requiring them to show any suspicion about an individual's guilt."

There's also an easy way around state law. Local agencies could just ask the federal government for help. Federal agents don't need a warrant to use GPS tracking devices in Florida, Seigel said.

"Everybody's working in a joint task force these days," said Escobar. "They can ask the federal government to do things they can't do in the state system."


Link: http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/article1128724.ece

Judicial independence, should judges be held accountable?

Most people go to court looking for a fair shake. But some special interest groups think they have a better idea: ensuring they'll win in court by spending big money to elect judges who agree with them and to oust those who don't.

Over the past decade, special interests have chipped away at that ideal. State Supreme Court races have often degenerated into nasty battles with corporate interests on one side and trial lawyers on the other. Such groups have pushed spending on what once were low profile elections from $83 million in the 1990s to nearly $207 million in the past decade. Scurrilous attacks and nasty ad campaigns are now routine in judicial races. Judges themselves raise money from lawyers, doctors, union chiefs and business executives who then appear in their courts, an obvious conflict of interest.

A few methods exist to lessen special interest influence in judicial races. Iowa is one of about two dozen states that use "merit selection," where judges are appointed then run for retention. North Carolina and New Mexico use public financing, which can help insulate judges from special interest money. But these latest campaigns challenge even those safeguards.

This year in Iowa, three judges on the state Supreme Court come before voters in a judicial retention election. Many Iowans oppose their retention because these judges against all precedent, all reason -imposed same-sex marriage on the state of Iowa.

Not surprisingly, the ruling elite is now criticizing groups such as the National Organization for Marriage for "hijacking" the process of "merit selection" by running TV ads and other communications in an effort to encourage a "no" vote on these judges.

USA TODAY claims that it is not against judicial retention elections, but against "outside groups" (we have more than 50,000 supporters in Iowa, so we hardly fit this bill) running advertising campaigns opposing judges based on a single decision. This position is essentially the same as opposing judicial elections completely.

Why? Because put simply, an election is an election. Elections will have people and groups standing on both sides of the aisle communicating with voters on why they should vote yes or no. You cannot constitutionally have an election and then limit the participation of key groups or determine that citizens can only vote against the judges if there is more than one issue at stake.


Links:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2010-10-19-editorial19_ST_N.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2010-10-19-editorial19_ST1_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

Is the vehicle your driving mean you're more likely to be cited for a traffic violation?

Quality Planning (QPC), a Verisk Analytics company that validates policyholder information for auto insurers, has released updated findings from its original study, published in 2009, that explored the relationship between the cars people drive and how people drive them. Newly expanded to include available statistics, the study examines various vehicle makes and models and quantifies the propensity of each to be ticketed by law enforcement based on the number of moving violations per 100,000 miles driven.

Quality Planning found that the origins of vehicles in the "Spirited Vehicles" category were predominantly those of foreign manufacturers but not necessarily of German or Italian heritage. Drivers of the Mercedes-Benz SL-Class roadster topped the list, with four times the number of violations compared with the average. But, not surprisingly, the car Toyota designed expressly for Gen 'Y'ers, the Scion, had not one but two entries in the top ten. The big Hummers and the Pontiac Grand Prix rounded out this category. Consistent with the findings of last year's study, SUVs and hatchbacks showed lower violations on average than traditional two- and four-door vehicles.


Link:
http://www.verisk.com/Press-Releases/2010/Auto-Insurance-Analysis-Does-What-We-Drive-Affect-How-We-Drive.html?loc=interstitialskip

Vermont: ACLU concerned over cell phone tracking of people in criminal and civil cases.

A Vermont judge heard arguments but didn’t rule yesterday on a lawsuit aimed at forcing the state to reveal whether and how its criminal investigators use cellphone tracking technology to keep tabs on people.

The ACLU of Vermont sued the state in March after filing public records requests that sought information on the state attorney general’s use of data from cellphone service providers to pinpoint the locations of people.

The requests, which spanned four days last January, had to do with an Orleans County case or cases, but the parties to them weren’t named in the document, nor was it clear whether they were criminal or civil.

“So we know something we didn’t know six months ago when we filed this case, and that is that yes, the attorney general is asking for information from cell companies about data that shows where any of us is at any one time if we had our cellphones on,’’ said Allen Gilbert, executive director of the ACLU’s Vermont chapter.

“The next question, probably, is how widespread a practice is this? We only asked the AG. We only asked for a limited amount of time. We could ask the same question of police agencies or state’s attorneys around the state,’’ Gilbert said.


Link:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/vermont/articles/2010/10/19/vt_judge_urged_to_shed_light_on_use_of_cellphone_tracking_data/

ProPublica: Searchable database allows you to input your doctors name and see if your doctor received drug company money.

Drug companies have long kept secret details of the payments they make to doctors for promoting their drugs. But seven companies have begun posting names and compensation on the Web, some as the result of legal settlements. ProPublica compiled these disclosures, totaling $258 million, into a single database that allows patients to search for their doctor. Receiving payments isn’t necessarily wrong, but it does raise ethical issues.

Drug companies say the millions of dollars they pay physicians for speaking and consulting justly compensates them for the laudable work of educating their colleagues.

But a series of lawsuits brought by former employees of those companies allege the money often was used for illegal purposes financially
rewarding doctors for prescribing their brand name medications.

In several instances, the ex-employees say, the physicians were told to push “off label” uses of the drugs those not approved by the U.S. regulators a marketing tactic banned by federal law.

Allegations in other whistleblower lawsuits provide a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the drug marketers:

Allergan, the maker of Botox, created faux advisory boards solely “to reward hundreds of its top injectors,” federal prosecutors charged this month. More than 200 doctors, for example, were put up at an oceanfront resort in Newport Beach, Calif., in 2005 and 2006 and paid $1,500 to listen to presentations, according to their sentencing memorandum.


Links: http://projects.propublica.org/docdollars/
http://www.propublica.org/article/lawsuits-say-pharma-illegally-paid-doctors-to-push-their-drugs

Minneapolis, Minnesota: Police strip search a man in public!

The video shows Recardo Meeks leaving his car and getting patted down and then handcuffed. It appears an officer looked inside Meeks' car. A short time later, an officer pushed Meeks' head down toward the trunk of the squad car and both officers pulled down Meeks' pants and underpants. After searching the garments, an officer grabbed latex gloves from the squad's trunk and removed tissue and a small amount of marijuana from Meeks' buttocks.

Officers deny wrongdoing.

Meeks filed a complaint with the city's Civilian Review Authority, which investigates police misconduct allegations. The case has been referred to Dolan for a disciplinary decision. The city's response to Meeks' lawsuit denies the officers did anything unconstitutional.

"It appears these officers violated the Fourth Amendment prohibiting unreasonable search and seizure," said Barry Feld, a law professor who teaches criminal procedure at the University of Minnesota, after hearing a description of the video. "There has to be a reasonable balance of the government's need to investigate in a particular way to the degree of intrusiveness. Body and cavity searches are as maximally intrusive as police can search."

Andrew Muller, one of Meeks' attorneys, said that wasn't the issue here.

"No one in this country should ever have to endure being seized, stripped, searched and violated by the police in public," said Muller. "Especially so when there is no arrest, no weapons and no reason for the search."


Link:http://www.startribune.com/templates/Print_This_Story?sid=105081359

How accurate are the "most dangerous city or neighborhood" rankings?

Last year, a company called Neighborhood Scout put out a report that called an area of St. Louis near 14th Street and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Drive the “14th most dangerous” neighborhood in the country.

In fact, it’s not even a “neighborhood.” As someone who has covered crime for several years at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, I can confirm that it does not appear as such on any of the crime data reports for police districts and city neighborhoods published regularly by the city. The area spotlighted by Neighborhood Scout would be better described as a census tract.

We ignored the report because we had better stories to write. The 2009 rankings, however published first on AOL’s personal finance site WalletPop got wide attention across the country. That may be one reason the site seems to be planning to make them an annual event. This month, WalletPop published the 2010 “figures” from Neighborhood Scout. St. Louis wasn’t even on the list.

The WalletPop story claims that the neighborhood crime rankings were compiled from “exclusive data” developed by Schiller’s team “based on FBI data from all 17,000 local law enforcement agencies.”

The story goes on to say, tellingly, that the rankings represent “the top 25 most dangerous neighborhoods with the highest predicted rates of violent crime in America".

Neighborhood Scout isn’t the only self-appointed expert in crime rankings. Another company, for instance, annually uses repackaged data from the FBI’s annual crime report, Crime in the United States, to come up with “Most Dangerous City rankings.”

Such rankings are “bad science,” says Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and current president of the American Society of Criminology.

Rosenfeld, an expert on crime statistics, says the methodology for establishing rankings should be transparent and the fact that companies won’t explain how they arrive at their conclusions should alert anyone who is tempted to take them seriously. Rosenfeld added that Neighborhood Scout researchers should have asked cities for real neighborhood crime data to test whether their predictive models were accurate but said there is no evidence they did so. If they had, “I think they’d be in much less trouble with police departments.”


Link:http://thecrimereport.org/2010/10/17/mean-streets/#more-48134

Drug Recognition Experts how accurate are they?

As illegal prescription drug use soars, the number of cases of driving under the influence in which the substance is a prescription drug rather than alcohol is rising steadily, authorities say.
But prosecuting and obtaining convictions against suspects charged with DUI involving prescription drugs can be a challenge.

Many states, including Florida, do not require a test to quantify the amount of drugs in a person's body in a DUI case, and impairment is difficult to prove.

"What we and other states have run into historically is that there is a well developed system to quantify the amount of alcohol in the human body," said Rob Parker, a Brevard County, Fla., prosecutor.

However, "when you have oxycodone or an opiate, we do not have a well-developed way to quantify the amount of drugs so that a jury can then compare that value to a standard established as an unlawful when operating an automobile."

Law enforcement has limited means to prove impairment. Field sobriety tests are one tool. The state also sometimes relies on drug recognition experts (DREs), police officers who have completed specialized training in detecting impairment due to drugs.

Michelle Perlman, misdemeanor division chief for the Brevard State Attorney's office, said her office recommends law enforcement agencies get a DRE to the scene as soon as possible if a suspected DUI involves drugs.

"This cannot usually be conclusively diagnosed by the average police officer," she said.

There are about a dozen DREs in Brevard, where more than 2,000 people were charged with operating a vehicle under the influence in 2009. As is common around the country, Brevard does not separately track DUIs involving drugs.

Defense Attorney Steve Casanova, who handles scores of local DUI cases, said traces of some drugs can stay in a person's system for as long as 30 days.

"How do you prove it was affecting him at the time of the arrest?" Casanova said.

In other cases, the suspect may have been prescribed the drug legally.


Link:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-10-17-dui-drugs_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

A Columbia University professor sues the Philadelphia police department over a questionable traffic stop.

Around half past midnight one Saturday in June, Marc Lamont Hill was dropping off a childhood friend in the Logan section of the city when a police car pulled up behind his black BMW.

One of the two officers in it, Richard DeCoatsworth - hailed as a hero when he survived a gunshot blast to the face in 2007 - motioned for Hill to move his car, which was stopped at 11th Street and Lindley Avenue.

Hill, 31, a Columbia University professor, author, and noted hip-hop intellectual, pointed to his friend's home, signaling that he was dropping him off, and the officers drove away.

In a federal civil rights lawsuit filed Tuesday, Hill claims the June 12 encounter didn't end there. It says DeCoatsworth and his unnamed partner later pulled Hill over and searched him and his car without a warrant, violating several constitutional rights.

Hill claims DeCoatsworth searched his pockets without a warrant, then pulled him out of the car by his left arm.

DeCoatsworth pushed Hill into his car, according to the lawsuit, and told him not to move or "he was going to jail." DeCoatsworth then pressed his left fist into Hill's back, causing him pain, the suit alleges. DeCoatsworth asked Hill whether he could afford the BMW and then went through Hill's checkbook, the suit alleges. Hill claims DeCoatsworth then questioned him about his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania while the other officer searched his car.

During the stop, according to the suit, that officer told Hill he was being stopped for "illegal discharge of a passenger and blocking the street."

The lawsuit was filed against the City of Philadelphia, DeCoatsworth, his partner, and the sergeant and captain of the 35th District, in which the stop occurred.

"It's a constitutional violation of an American's right to travel peacefully," Leonard Hill, a managing partner of Hill & Associates, said of the traffic stop. "He was stopped illegally. He was frisked illegally. He was stripped of his dignity. To ask him how he could afford his car, to look at his checkbook, and to ask him to explain what's a Ph.D. is just ridiculous."


Link:
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/home_region/20101015_Columbia_professor_sues_Philadelphia_and_decorated_officer_over_traffic_stop.html

A company makes the first ever shoot through bag for private investigators and photographers.

A company named Cloakbags has designed a camera bag that they say would allow today's private investigator's to remain almost inconspicious.

Link: http://www.cloakbags.com/

Private investigator, Diop Kamau videotapes police abuse across the country.

TALLAHASSEE — Diop Kamau's home in a leafy, gated community just north of town is not easy to find — for good reason. For more than two decades, the 52-year-old former Hawthorne, Calif., police officer has made a living embarrassing cops with a video camera. "Our staff are students, researchers, attorneys, former police officers and licensed private investigators."

Starting with the grainy images first broadcast by Kamau and other pioneer citizen watchdogs — notably the 1991 beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, shot by a nearby resident— the public surveillance of cops has exploded to potentially include anyone with a cellphone.

The videos are so ubiquitous that analysts and police debate whether they are serving the public interest — or undermining public trust in law enforcement and even putting officers' lives in jeopardy. The videos are subjecting officers' actions in public places to new scrutiny and changing the way accusations against cops play out in court. In some communities, police are fighting back by enforcing laws that limit such recordings. Other departments are seeking new training for officers to prepare for the ever-present surveillance on the street.

Just about every day, it seems, there is fresh video of cops engaged in controversial actions: Police slamming an unarmed man to the street in Denver. A college student thrashed by officers with batons during a University Maryland basketball victory celebration. An Oakland transit officer fatally shooting an unarmed man on a train platform.

In Illinois, Maryland and Massachusetts, some police have responded by trying to limit such recordings when they believe those recordings interfere with police actions.

In Maryland, motorcyclist Anthony Graber was charged with felony violations of Maryland's wiretapping law for recording a March 5th. encounter with a gun-brandishing state trooper during a traffic stop. The law requires both parties to consent to the recording of a private conversation. Graber faced a maximum 16-year prison sentence if convicted until Horford County Circuit Court Judge Emory Pitt threw out the case Sept. 27, saying, "Those of us who are public officials and are entrusted with the power of the state are ultimately accountable to the public."

Some departments have sought training for officers to prepare them for increased surveillance of police activity.

The lesson was delivered about three years ago by Kamau. While working for his private investigative firm policeabuse.com and a client, the former cop walked into one of the agency's reception areas with a hidden camera and found immediate problems with the way officers and employees dealt with the public. Kamau says police routinely provided incorrect information to people or couldn't answer basic questions about department policy, such as how to file a complaint against police.

Kamau, who helps clients resolve their grievances with police, says he counsels many of them to arm themselves with cameras to support their cases.

Links:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-10-15-1Avideocops15_CV_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip
http://www.policeabuse.com/

New Jersey: Questions arise about K-9 certification, what are the requirements for police departments across the country?

A New Jersey trooper won $240,000 Tuesday and could get more in punitive damages Wednesday for being relegated to the state police museum after he blew the whistle, charging state police were using uncertified handlers to train K-9 dogs.

A Mercer County trial jury deliberated two days after a week-long trial before returning the unanimous verdict in favor of Sgt. Michael Daniele against New Jersey State Police in the Conscientous Employee Protection Act case. He’ll get $240,000 in compensatory damages.

His lawyer, George T. Daggett, said Sgt. Daniele had been training coordinator for the NJSP K9 Unit at Fort Dix in January 2006 when he complained to his superiors that non-certified trainers were being used to train the dogs.

Link:
http://www.trentonian.com/articles/2010/10/12/news/doc4cb5396cee05f722509418.txt

Mortgage experience not necessary to work for financial institutions who would foreclose on properties.

In an effort to rush through thousands of home foreclosures since 2007, financial institutions and their mortgage servicing departments hired hair stylists, Walmart floor workers and people who had worked on assembly lines and installed them in "foreclosure expert" jobs with no formal training, a Florida lawyer says.

In depositions released Tuesday, many of those workers testified that
they barely knew what a mortgage was. Some couldn't define the word "affidavit." Others didn't know what a complaint was, or even what was meant by personal property. Most troubling, several said they knew they were lying when they signed the foreclosure affidavits and that they agreed with the defense lawyers' accusations about document fraud.

"The mortgage servicers hired people who would never question authority," said Peter Ticktin, a Deerfield Beach, Fla., lawyer who is defending 3,000 homeowners in foreclosure cases. As part of his work, Ticktin gathered 150 depositions from bank employees who say they signed foreclosure affidavits without reviewing the documents or ever laying eyes on them — earning them the name "robo-signers."

The deposed employees worked for the mortgage service divisions of banks such as Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase, as well as for mortgage servicers like Litton Loan Servicing, a division of Goldman Sachs.

"This was an industrywide scheme designed to defraud homeowners," Ticktin said.



Link:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101013/ap_on_bi_ge/us_foreclosure_robosigners

Detroit: A Judge and two police officers accused of commiting perjury.

Detroit 36th District Court Judge David S. Robinson Jr. said the law told Waterstone that “the fundamental part of our job” was making sure perjury does not get to the jury.

“We do not condone, we do not permit, we do not conceal perjury,” Robinson said, in ordering Waterstone to stand trial on four counts of misconduct in office.

Earlier this morning, Robinson ordered former Inkster Police Officer Robert McArthur to stand trial on charges of conspiracy, perjury and misconduct in office.

The charges come on an effort by former Wayne County chief drug prosecutor Karen Plants to hide the role of the key witness as the secret paid informant in a 47-kilo cocaine bust.

The last defendant in the case, former Inkster Police Sgt. Scott Rechtzigel, was also ordered to stand trial on perjury and conspiracy charges carrying a potential life sentence.

Chad Povish, the paid informant who says police and Wayne County's top drug prosecutor told him to lie in court, testified Monday that he was ready to sue when he wasn't fully paid after helping engineer a 47-kilo cocaine bust.

Povish said he met with former federal prosecutor-turned-high-profile defense lawyer Richard Convertino when he didn't get his expected 10-20% cut of the value of dope and property seized in the 2005 arrest of Alexander Aceval in the scandal-tainted drug case


Links:
http://www.freep.com/article/20101013/NEWS02/101013031/1320/Ex-judge-cops-ordered-to-stand-trial#ixzz12GoowHvt
http://www.freep.com/article/20101012/NEWS01/10120356/-1/NEWS0301/Witness-Police-prosecutor-coached-me

Private investigators and attorneys requesting public records? Threats work best.

David Cuillier, an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Arizona ran two expirements:

In the first experiment, in October 2007, Cuillier mailed public records requests on behalf of the journalist to the 104 city and county police agencies in Arizona. Half got a friendly worded letter and the other half received a terse, legalistic letter that threatened litigation for noncompliance. The threatening letter is provided online by the Student Press Law Center and is used by thousands of journalists.

The student journalist, who gathered the records for a story, recorded whether each agency responded as required by law, how soon the agency responded, whether the agency provided the records, how much the agency charged for photocopies as well as other details.

Of the agencies that received the friendly letter, half responded. Of the agencies that received the threatening letter, two-thirds responded. The threatening letter also resulted in a faster response, more compliance with the request and lower copy fees.

Overall, 42 percent of the police agencies didn't respond to either letter, a violation of public records law.

In a second study, in March 2008, another journalism student working on a story requested school superintendent contracts and high-school football coach contracts from all school districts in the state. Cuillier mailed the same friendly letter to a third of the districts, a neutral letter to a third, and the same threatening letter to a third of the districts, randomly assigned.

While we would like to think that laws work, the reality is that the public records process is arbitrary and broken, based on the whims of record custodians and officials who may or may not adhere to the law or respond in a timely fashion. At the state and local level, on average police agencies will illegally deny a valid records request for incident reports 71 percent of the time. Florida court clerks interviewed for a study said they deny valid records requests if they feel the person doesn’t deserve it. This behavior exists at the federal level, as well. A study of records requests in Canada show that requests from journalists and politically sensitive requesters are more likely to be denied and delayed than requests from other people. The FOIA process causes a wall of paranoia and mistrust between requester and agency, sometimes resulting in a contest of wills and psychological warfare. This is not beneficial to agencies or requesters.


Links: http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2010/031810cuillier.pdf
http://uanews.org/node/34334

When police are accused of misconduct who conducts the investigation? If it's in Saxonburg, PA it could be the very officer accused of making the harassing phone calls etc.

BUTLER, PA. The police officer in charge of Saxonburg used legal documents to get information he used to sexually harass a woman with late-night phone calls and obscene text messages, including "don't want relationship, just want laid," the woman claims in Butler County Court. When she complained, she says, the town had the officer investigate himself, and he continued harassing her.

Carolyn Oravitz sued the Borough of Saxonburg for sexual harassment. She claims that Officer Erik Bergstrom, the police officer in charge of the town, obtained information about her when she called the police station "to obtain a proof of service for some legal papers."

Six days later, she says, "Officer Erik Bergstrom used the information Mrs. Oravitz gave him to begin a campaign of sexual harassment which included a series of late night telephone calls, obscene text messages. The text message was, 'don't want relationship, just want laid.' Officer Bergstrom's other messages and phone calls were equally graphic in nature, and highly offensive."

She says she complained to the borough, but Bergstrom continued calling to sexually harass her, including a call at 3:12 a.m. She says the borough asked Bergstrom to investigate himself, and that "Bergstrom's investigation of his own misconduct ... consisted of intimidating Mrs. Oravitz by stalking her by driving past her house. It was intended to intimidate the plaintiff and did intimidate the plaintiff."

When she filed a second complaint of sexual harassment, the borough turned it over to Bergstrom again, she says. "Officer Bergstrom used his authority to investigate as a tool to continue the sexual harassment," according to the complaint.

"Officer Bergstrom's investigation of his own misconduct consisted of intimidating Mrs. Oravitz by interviewing her husband's employer to get her husband suspended. After the interview her husband was suspended," she says.

When she complained of Bergstrom's sexual harassment a third time, she says, the borough referred it to Bergstrom again, and he returned to talk with her husband's boss, who came to their home "in an attempt to stop plaintiff from proceeding any further with her claims to the Saxonburg Borough." Two days later, her husband was fired, she says.

She says Bergstrom eventually resigned, but Saxonburg gave him a favorable recommendation and he got a job in Fawn Township - where she lives. She seeks damages and an injunction. She is represented by Daniel Ernsberger of Pittsburgh.

Link: http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/10/12/SexCop.pdf

Massachusetts: Eli Damon who was arrested on wiretapping charges for videotaping a policeman during a traffic stop had his charges dropped last month.

On 09/14/2010, Eli Damon received an email from his lawyer regarding the hearing that had been held on 09/08/2010. It included this page from Judge John Payne, indicating that he was allowing the motion to dismiss the criminal charges:
http://cycles.eli-damon.info/files/7/8/5/7/3/247248-237587/John_Payne_motion_decision.pdf

The charges of disorderly conduct and unlawful wiretapping have been dismissed. The judge did not dismiss the traffic ticket. However, the traffic ticket was dismissed at a hearing on 10/05/2010 before a Clerk Magistrate.

Link: http://cycles.eli-damon.info/2010/10/05/charges-dismissed.aspx

Civilian investigators are taking over police duties across the country.

Police agencies across the country are recruiting thousands of civilians for a growing number of duties previously performed by uniformed cops, in an unusual concession to local budget cuts.
The positions — some paid and others volunteer — are transforming every-day citizens into crime-scene investigators, evidence gatherers and photographers in what some analysts suggest is a striking new trend in American policing.

"It's all being driven by the economy and we should expect to see more of it," says University of Pittsburgh law professor David Harris, who analyzes law enforcement practices. "As budgets are squeezed, an increasing number of duties are going to be moved off officers' plates."

The chief opponents of the movement are police union leaders who believe cash-strapped agencies are lowering standards and undermining professionalism in the ranks. In some cases, the civilian positions circumvent pay and benefit obligations outlined in hard-fought labor contracts, says Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations.

Link:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-10-11-1Acitizenpolice11_ST_N.htm

Legal advice isn't a liability shield for police.

A Pennsylvania police officer's reliance on legal advice when he arrested a man for videotaping a traffic stop does not automatically shield him from Fourth Amendment liability, the 3rd Circuit ruled.

Officer David Rogers of the Carlisle Borough Police Department relied on an assistant district attorney's advice when he arrested Brian Kelly in 2007 for violating the Pennsylvania Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act by recording the stop.

A federal judge ruled that Rogers was entitled to qualified immunity, because he had acted on legal advice. The federal appeals court in Philadelphia said this wasn't always the case.

It pointed out that the lower court had "relied upon the mere existence of legal advice without considering the relative clarity or obscurity of the Pennsylvania Wiretap Act and the cases interpreting it."

The 3rd Circuit found ample state precedent, which the district court failed to consider, that "covertly recording police officers was not a violation of the Act."

"At the time of Kelly's arrest, it was clearly established that a reasonable expectation of privacy was a prerequisite for a Wiretap Act violation," Judge Thomas Hardiman wrote. "Even more to the point, two Pennsylvania Supreme Court cases -- one almost 20 years old at the time of Kelly's arrest -- had held that covertly recording police officers was not a violation of the Act."

The court vacated summary judgment for the officer "insofar as it granted qualified immunity to Officer Rogers on Kelly's Fourth Amendment claims" and remanded the case for further hearings.

On Kelly's First Amendment claim, however, the court upheld the ruling for Rogers, saying a reasonable officer would not necessarily know that seizing a camera or arresting someone for videotaping police was a First Amendment violation.

The appeal raised the question of whether a police officer's reliance on legal advice "cloaks him with qualified immunity" -- an issue of first impression for the 3rd Circuit. Rogers claimed his conversation with the assistant district attorney "shielded him from liability." The appellate panel agreed, but cautioned that officers still must exercise discretion.

"In our view, encouraging police to seek legal advice serves such a salutary purpose as to constitute a 'thumb on the scale' in favor of qualified immunity," Hardiman wrote. "Accordingly, we hold that a police officer who relies in good faith on a prosecutor's legal opinion that the arrest is warranted under the law is presumptively entitled to qualified immunity from Fourth Amendment claims premised on a lack of probable cause."

But Hardiman warned that the advice must be "objectively reasonable ... because 'a wave of the prosecutor's wand cannot magically transform an unreasonable probable cause determination into a reasonable one,'" and "a plaintiff may rebut this presumption by showing that ... a reasonable officer would not have relied on the prosecutor's advice." The panel also affirmed dismissal of Kelly's claim against Carlisle Borough, because he failed to establish municipal liability.




Link: http://www.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/092644p.pdf

Prosecutors at the District Court level have no public accountability and even less punishment by state bars.

The simple fact is that prosecutors hold extraordinary power to ruin people's lives and, inevitably, the least ethical prosecutors will abuse that power, out of laziness, incompetence, ambition, whatever — not because the institution that employs them is corrupt but because inadequate vigilance enables them.

Since lives are ruined one at a time, the acceptable level of prosecutorial abuse is zero. But Justice appears not to see it that way.

Misconduct is certainly not confined to federal prosecutions. If anything, it's more common in state courts, where local prosecutors often have heavier caseloads and less supervision. The most notorious recent example of a runaway prosecutor involved the three Duke University students who were indicted on rape charges in 2006, despite a lack of credible evidence. A savvy defense team and the public spotlight vindicated them, and Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong was disbarred and removed from office.

Compounding the problem of prosecutors whose actions make a mockery of justice is a legal system that tends to coddle them. There's little public accountability and even less punishment by state bars, which have the authority to investigate and sanction the lawyers they license. In some cases, even appellate courts have tried to provide cover by omitting prosecutors' names when citing them for misconduct.


Link:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2010-10-08-editorial08_ST_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

Austin, Texas is working to create "Driving While Ability Impaired", the newest way to raise revenue.

A campaign to create a new category of driving while intoxicated is being promoted in Texas as one way to curb growing problems in the system of punishing drunken drivers, says the Austin American-Statesman. Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo said the idea behind a new offense of “driving while ability impaired” — DWAI — would cover drivers whose blood-alcohol content is between 0.05 and 0.07. That would be less than the 0.08 level required before police can charge a motorist with drunken driving.

“The new offense would give prosecutors and judges and juries another tool to use” in thwarting impaired drivers across the state, Acevedo said. DWI arrests in Austin have dropped from 6,963 in 2008 to 6,166 in 2009 amid ramped-up enforcement efforts. They include a no-refusal program to require blood or breath tests periodically from all DWI suspects, added DWI enforcement funded through a Texas Department of Transportation grant, and a mobile breath-testing unit to expedite testing and jail booking. Austin police officials acknowledge, though, that drunken driving remains a problem in Austin, a sentiment echoed by police chiefs across the state. While enforcement is generally up over just a few years ago, police and prosecutors have increasingly complained that Texas’ system of punishing drunken drivers is overloaded — perhaps even broken. The reason is that thousands of drivers arrested for DWI are being allowed to plead guilty to lesser crimes such as reckless driving or obstructing a roadway
Link:
http://www.statesman.com/news/texas-politics/austin-chief-pushes-for-new-drunk-driving-charge-958125.html

Are incarcerated kids turned into drug addicts by the state?

Though the use of antipsychotic drugs on children is believed to carry significant risks even when used properly to treat bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, it’s not uncommon in some states for juveniles in detention to be prescribed antipsychotics simply to counter mood disorders or aggressive behavior, according to an investigation by Youth Today, which covers the juvenile justice system and youth services.

Data on antipsychotic expenditures and individual diagnoses show that for juvenile detention facilities in Connecticut, Louisiana, New York, Texas and West Virginia, 70 percent of prescriptions were filled for conditions other than bipolar disorder and schizophrenia the disorders for which these drugs generally are FDA-approved. Doctors can still prescribe the drugs for off-label uses or to treat conditions for which they have not been approved.

Most states, when surveyed, either could not or would not demonstrate that they were even monitoring the use of these drugs on incarcerated juveniles, Youth Today reported. Of the 34 states that provided no answers when queried, 16 refused to answer.


Link:
http://www.propublica.org/blog/item/in-some-states-incarcerated-kids-get-drugged-to-alter-behavior-despite-risk

Bureau of Justice: Gang units in large local law enforcement agencies.

Presents data from the first nationwide study of specialized police units dedicated solely to addressing gang activity. The report details the operations of gang units, including intelligence gathering approaches, investigational tactics, gang suppression techniques, law enforcement agency support work, and gang prevention activities. Other topics include the characteristics of gang unit officers, officer training and gang unit selection requirements, intelligence sharing, and gang unit collaboration with other criminal justice agencies. The report also provides information on the types of gangs and gang activities handled by gang units, and the characteristics of jurisdictions served by gang units.

Link: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/gulllea07.pdf

Prosecutorial immunity in the news, will a change finally happen?

Americans can sue almost anyone for almost anything. But they can't sue prosecutors.

Not when prosecutors hide evidence that could prove someone's innocence. Not when they violate basic rules designed to make sure trials are fair. Not even when those abuses put innocent people in prison.

Nearly 35 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors cannot face civil lawsuits over how they handle criminal cases in court, no matter how serious or obvious the abuses. Since then, courts have further limited the circumstances under which prosecutors or their bosses can be sued for civil rights violations.

Today, in a case involving a New Orleans man who came within a month of being executed for a murder he didn't commit, the Supreme Court is scheduled to consider another aspect of prosecutorial immunity: whether people who were wrongly convicted can take local prosecutors' offices to court. The court's answer could determine the extent to which prosecutors' employers are also shielded if they fail to make sure attorneys comply with their constitutional responsibilities.

"Prosecutorial misconduct is a serious problem, and nothing is being done to adequately address it," said Kathleen Ridolfi, director of the Northern California Innocence Project, which released a study Monday that found hundreds of instances of misconduct by state and federal attorneys. "Prosecutors know they can commit misconduct with impunity."


Link:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/judicial/2010-10-05-federal-prosecutor-immunity_N.htm

Nearly 70% of police agencies cut back or eliminated training programs this year.

Nearly 70% of police agencies cut back or eliminated training programs this year as part of local government budget reductions, according to a survey this fall of 608 agencies by the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based think tank.

The cuts include a wide range of programs, from ethics and basic legal training to instruction on the proper use of force.

Harvey Hedden, executive director of the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association, says the cuts are "alarming."


Link:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-10-04-cop-training_N.htm

Massachusetts: State medical examiner's credentials called into question.

The state medical examiner’s office, which has been rocked by repeated controversies, now faces another embarrassing mess: One of the agency’s former top officials is accusing the current chief medical examiner of having falsified credentials.

Dr. Stanton C. Kessler, who for a time was the acting chief medical examiner for the state, alleged in court documents filed yesterday that Dr. Henry M. Nields, now the chief medical examiner, never finished a fellowship program that Nields has cited as one of his credentials. In fact, Kessler said in an affidavit, Nields left the fellowship program after demonstrating “anger management issues,’’ pursuing an “inappropriate and unwanted relationship’’ with a female subordinate, and precipitating a violent fight in the morgue as doctors performed autopsies.

Kessler alleged that his signature had been forged on documents Nields submitted to the American Board of Pathology to prove that he had completed the fellowship.


Link:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/10/06/medical_examiners_credentials_are_challenged_by_predecessor/

Knock-and-talk interviews by police happen daily across the country. Civil libertarians and some lawyers criticize the use of these controversial doorstep encounters.

What is a knock-and-talk?

Law-enforcement officers seek permission to search homes when they don't have enough evidence for a search warrant. Lawyers say the "requests" often sound like orders. The law does not require police to advise residents of their right to refuse. Simply opening a door to officers' knocks gives them grounds to make an arrest based on anything illegal they see or smell inside.

Though knock-and-talks happen daily across Central Florida, civil libertarians and some lawyers criticize the use of these controversial doorstep encounters — especially if they occur after dark.

"You have to wonder if it's a wise policy. … Going to the house at that time of the morning is inherently dangerous for the officers and the residents," said Doug Ward, director of a police-leadership program at Johns Hopkins University who served 27 years with the Maryland State Police. "It's very lucky that that turned out as well as it did."

More people might decline these searches if cops had to inform them of the right to refuse, said Florida State University College of Law Associate Dean Wayne Logan. "Unlike Miranda, police don't have to advise homeowners of their Fourth Amendment rights," he said.

And once residents let officers in, they have little recourse if police ransack their homes or violate their rights, said Orlando defense attorney Donald A. Lykkebak. "The smart thing to do is insist they get a warrant."


Link:
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/crime/os-knock-and-talk-procedures-20100922,0,7238973.story

Massachusetts property lines, links.

Search for Parcels in MA includes some towns:

http://csc-ma.us/PROPAPP/Opening.do?subAction=NewSearch&town=AllCommunities

Here you'll find interactive GIS maps showing parcel lines, building footprints, aerial photos, lot dimensions, parcel IDs and more!

Link: http://www.mainstreetmaps.com/

Can you be forced to turn over your social network passwords in a civil case?

Let’s say you’re the plaintiff in a civil case against a neighbor, an employer, or a company you’ve done business with. And let’s say that you have a Facebook account. The other side believes that some of your Facebook communications might be relevant to the case, so they specifically request access to your account. You refuse, and the issue goes to the court to sort out. How should the court rule? Specifically, what should the court order you to do? Do you have to give the password for your account over to a party that, to put it mildly, you are probably not on the best of terms with?

Surprisingly, at least one court has said yes, and I believe similar requests are being made in courts all around the country. I believe this is a deeply disturbing development and is the result of either a failure to understand social networking technology, the rules of civil procedure, or both.

The case is Romano v. Steelcase Inc., 2010 N.Y. Slip Op. 20388 (Sept. 21, 2010). (H/T NY Law Journal, via Kashmir Hill, via Dan Solove.) In Romano, the plaintiff, Kathleen Romano, is suing Steelcase, the manufacturer of her office desk chair, for injuries she received as a result of alleged defects in the chair. Steelcase requested access to her Facebook and MySpace accounts, the public portions of which they claimed “reveal[ ] that she has an active lifestyle and can travel and apparently engages in many other physical activities inconsistent with her claims in this litigation.” The court — properly, in my view — held that the requested information was relevant and rejected the plaintiff’s privacy arguments that she should not have to produce any information at all from her Facebook and Myspace accounts.

Link:
http://madisonian.net/2010/09/29/can-you-be-forced-to-turn-over-your-social-network-passwords-in-a-civil-case/#more-4683

What is the real cost of incacerating people in the U. S.

Over the past 30 years, the United States has experienced explosive growth in its incarcerated population. The Pew Center on the States reported in 2008 that more than 1 in 100 adults is now behind bars in America, by far the highest rate of any nation.1 The direct cost of this imprisonment boom, in dollars, has been staggering: state correctional costs quadrupled over the past two decades and now top $50 billion a year, consuming 1 in every 15 general fund dollars.

The findings in this report should give policy makers reason to reflect. The price of prisons in state and federal budgets represents just a fraction of the overall cost of incarcerating such a large segment of our society. The collateral consequences are tremendous and far-reaching, and as this report illuminates with fresh data and analysis, they include substantial and lifelong damage to the ability of former inmates, their families and their children to earn a living wage, move up the
income ladder and pursue the American Dream.

Collateral Costs: Incarceration’s Effect on Economic Mobility is a collaborative effort between Pew’s Economic Mobility Project and its Public Safety Performance Project. The report examines the impact of incarceration on the economic opportunity and mobility of former inmates and their families. In addition, Collateral Costs examines the prison population by race/ethnicity and educational levels. It finds that incarceration reduces former inmates’ earnings by 40 percent and limits their future economic mobility and that one in every 28 children in America has a parent behind bars, up from one in 125 just 25 years ago.

Link:
http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Economic_Mobility/Collateral%20Costs%20FINAL.pdf

Report by the U. S. Department of Justice regarding DNA backlogs.

States continue to fall behind in analyzing DNA evidence in criminal cases as they require more genetic samples to be collected but don’t pay for the analysis, says Mark Nelson of the National Institute of Justice, the U.S. Justice Department’s research arm. Federal aid between 2005 and 2009 helped analyze 1.6 million samples but could not keep up with the demand, Nelson told representatives of criminal justice groups meeting Wednesday in Washington, D.C.

About 1.7 million new DNA samples were collected by law enforcement last year, Nelson said, but the maximum capacity for analysis is only about 1 million, partly because of public agency budget limitations. Michael Volkov, a Washington lawyer representing a private crime laboratory, argues that the failure of governments to process the DNA samples means that “repeat offenders aren’t being taken off the street.” Volkov, who has served as a congressional staff member on the Republican side, asserted that his party, if it gains in the November elections, would deal with the DNA testing backlog more aggressively. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, this week introduced a bill to expand DNA testing capacities nationally, but it is unlikely to make much progress so late in the congressional session.


Link: http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/230183.pdf