Rhonda Henderson, the Erie County forensic nurse whose flawed findings triggered a review of dozens of sexual assault cases in northwestern Pennsylvania, is being promoted for her expertise as a forensic legal consultant on a new website.
"Rhonda looks at information from an evidence perspective," regionalforensicservices.com states. "She isolates details and connects the dots in order to accurately and efficiently find the answers you need."
"Whether the client is plaintiff or defense, your profits will escalate with RFS on your side," the site states.
Henderson, a former Saint Vincent Health Center nurse, no longer serves as an expert witness for the Erie County District Attorney's Office.
In a report filed Feb. 4, Chief Deputy District Attorney Beth Hirz said medical experts had contradicted Henderson's findings in 39 Erie County sexual assault cases dating between 2000 and 2010.
Erie County District Attorney Jack Daneri's office quietly launched the review of cases involving Henderson in March 2010 after a team of doctors who are experts in child abuse told him a report Henderson prepared in an Allegheny County case was riddled with errors.
Out of all of Henderson's findings of abnormalities on the child's body, they said, only one was consistent with child abuse. That mark, however, was also consistent with the child's medical history of chronic constipation with rectal bleeding, they said.
They wrote: "Misrepresentation of medical examinations in cases of alleged sexual abuse can result in a disturbing range of consequences: altered bodily perceptions by the child and parent, psychological harm to the alleged perpetrator, caregiver separation, false conviction and incarceration of alleged perpetrators, and true convictions which may be overturned on the basis of false evidence."
They closed with a declaration:
"We, the undersigned, believe nurse Henderson's clinical behavior is unacceptable and has possibly resulted in serious, devastating consequences to many individuals in multiple counties in Pennsylvania which relied on her to provide objective medical exams."
Link:
http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110423/NEWS02/304229874/-1/NEWSSITEMAP
Favorite Quotes
Friday, April 29, 2011
Franklin, MA- Four former Dean college students have settled a lawsuit against two Franklin police officers.
Four former Dean College students have settled a lawsuit against two Franklin Police officers and the town over the allegation that police used excessive force in a 2009 traffic stop.
The four had sought $1 million in damages and a jury trial, claiming they suffered emotional distress. Their lawyer, Wilson D. Rogers III of Braintree, said the terms of the settlement prevented him from disclosing specifics about the agreement.
"I think my clients are satisfied with the outcome of the settlement that was reached," Rogers said yesterday. "They were prepared to proceed to trial, but given what they went through and what their options were, they felt a settlement was the best way to go."
The plaintiffs claimed their constitutional rights were violated when Officer Douglas Nix drew his gun and aimed it at them after pulling over their SUV on Feb. 28, 2009, for a lights violation. Nix got out of his police car and yelled, "Don't (expletive) move" as he approached the Jeep Cherokee, according to the suit.
Then, Nix held driver Ryan Adkin at gunpoint while pulling him out of the Jeep by the throat. Nix threw Adkin onto the middle of Rte. 140 and punched him in the face before arresting him, according to a civil complaint filed last year in U.S. District Court in Boston.
Adkin was charged with failing to stop for police, a lights violation and resisting arrest. Those charges were dropped during a sidebar conversation between Franklin Police prosecutor Edward Clifford and a judge before Adkin's arraignment in Wrentham District Court.
Clifford told the judge he needed to dismiss the complaint because "the police officer who made the arrest made a traffic stop into a horrible situation," according to the official court recording.
Link:
http://www.milforddailynews.com/news/police_and_fire/x730838948/Former-Dean-College-students-settle-suit-against-officers
The four had sought $1 million in damages and a jury trial, claiming they suffered emotional distress. Their lawyer, Wilson D. Rogers III of Braintree, said the terms of the settlement prevented him from disclosing specifics about the agreement.
"I think my clients are satisfied with the outcome of the settlement that was reached," Rogers said yesterday. "They were prepared to proceed to trial, but given what they went through and what their options were, they felt a settlement was the best way to go."
The plaintiffs claimed their constitutional rights were violated when Officer Douglas Nix drew his gun and aimed it at them after pulling over their SUV on Feb. 28, 2009, for a lights violation. Nix got out of his police car and yelled, "Don't (expletive) move" as he approached the Jeep Cherokee, according to the suit.
Then, Nix held driver Ryan Adkin at gunpoint while pulling him out of the Jeep by the throat. Nix threw Adkin onto the middle of Rte. 140 and punched him in the face before arresting him, according to a civil complaint filed last year in U.S. District Court in Boston.
Adkin was charged with failing to stop for police, a lights violation and resisting arrest. Those charges were dropped during a sidebar conversation between Franklin Police prosecutor Edward Clifford and a judge before Adkin's arraignment in Wrentham District Court.
Clifford told the judge he needed to dismiss the complaint because "the police officer who made the arrest made a traffic stop into a horrible situation," according to the official court recording.
Link:
http://www.milforddailynews.com/news/police_and_fire/x730838948/Former-Dean-College-students-settle-suit-against-officers
Find your stolen camera by searching web for uploaded pictures.
Stolencamerafinder.com helps you track down your stolen digital camera. Just drag and drop photos from your camera before it was stolen onto the box on the website. The site then scans scraped databases for the EXIF data embedded in the picture to locate other photos encoded with your same serial number. If there's a hit, that person might have your camera.
Every photo you take with your digital camera contains hidden information about both the image and the camera such as the make, model and date. This information, called exif data, can also include a unique serial number which identifies your camera.
Stolencamerafinder searches the internet, collecting the serial numbers of the cameras that took the pictures.
If the photos are attached to someone's profile, you can use that as the starting place to try to contact them. You can send a message through the same online service, or build a profile and use your sleuthing skills to track them down by other means.
Link: http://www.stolencamerafinder.com/
Every photo you take with your digital camera contains hidden information about both the image and the camera such as the make, model and date. This information, called exif data, can also include a unique serial number which identifies your camera.
Stolencamerafinder searches the internet, collecting the serial numbers of the cameras that took the pictures.
If the photos are attached to someone's profile, you can use that as the starting place to try to contact them. You can send a message through the same online service, or build a profile and use your sleuthing skills to track them down by other means.
Link: http://www.stolencamerafinder.com/
County jails deploy whole-body scanners, how much radiation will inmates be exposed to?
Strip searches conducted at jails and correctional facilities are being revolutionized — and the “strip” portion is being dropped altogether. In a traditional strip search, offenders remove all of their clothing and officers of the same sex verify that the person isn’t smuggling weapons or other types of contraband, like drugs, into the facility. The 21st-century search, however, uses new full-body scanning technology that detects contraband hidden inside and on an offender’s body in about seven seconds — while requiring that they remove only their shoes.
Full-body scanners have been in use for years by airports and corrections departments to search for metal concealed on individuals, but an emerging technology enhances body scans by identifying metallic and organic materials.
The RadPro SecurPass, manufactured by Canon U.S.A. Inc., uses transmission imaging to conduct a virtual body scan. The inmate stands on an automated platform that moves him or her through the machine, which scans the body with a one mm-thick radiation beam, according to Dennis Wolfe, national sales manager of security products for Virtual Imaging Inc., a Canon subsidiary.
As the beam passes through the inmate’s body, and the system measures how much density is left in the beam. The information is then processed and relayed to a computer that reconstructs the image. Officers operating the system study the rendering of the inmate to see if anything looks out of place.
“It’s like you’re looking at an X-ray,” Richards said. “You’re looking straight through their body, so if there’s something there that normally wouldn’t be in your body, that God didn’t give you, it jumps out at you.”
Richards said the system shows officers something as minute as a filling in someone’s tooth. If an officer sees something that looks suspicious, the inmate is strip-searched to determine what the object is.
Although the system scans a person’s entire body inside and out, it doesn’t show as much soft tissue detail as the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) scanners. So inmates’ privacy is protected because facial features aren’t shown.
Before operating the machine, officers in Cook and Collier counties completed instructional and field training. Richards said one section of Collier County’s training discusses the radiation part of the imaging and how it works. Questions have been raised about the amount of radiation inmates are exposed to, she said, but that it is a very small quantity — the radiation in one chest X-ray is equal to being scanned about 400 times in the SecurPass, according to the county’s website.
Link:
http://www.govtech.com/public-safety/County-Jails-Deploy-Whole-Body-Scanners.html
Full-body scanners have been in use for years by airports and corrections departments to search for metal concealed on individuals, but an emerging technology enhances body scans by identifying metallic and organic materials.
The RadPro SecurPass, manufactured by Canon U.S.A. Inc., uses transmission imaging to conduct a virtual body scan. The inmate stands on an automated platform that moves him or her through the machine, which scans the body with a one mm-thick radiation beam, according to Dennis Wolfe, national sales manager of security products for Virtual Imaging Inc., a Canon subsidiary.
As the beam passes through the inmate’s body, and the system measures how much density is left in the beam. The information is then processed and relayed to a computer that reconstructs the image. Officers operating the system study the rendering of the inmate to see if anything looks out of place.
“It’s like you’re looking at an X-ray,” Richards said. “You’re looking straight through their body, so if there’s something there that normally wouldn’t be in your body, that God didn’t give you, it jumps out at you.”
Richards said the system shows officers something as minute as a filling in someone’s tooth. If an officer sees something that looks suspicious, the inmate is strip-searched to determine what the object is.
Although the system scans a person’s entire body inside and out, it doesn’t show as much soft tissue detail as the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) scanners. So inmates’ privacy is protected because facial features aren’t shown.
Before operating the machine, officers in Cook and Collier counties completed instructional and field training. Richards said one section of Collier County’s training discusses the radiation part of the imaging and how it works. Questions have been raised about the amount of radiation inmates are exposed to, she said, but that it is a very small quantity — the radiation in one chest X-ray is equal to being scanned about 400 times in the SecurPass, according to the county’s website.
Link:
http://www.govtech.com/public-safety/County-Jails-Deploy-Whole-Body-Scanners.html
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Weare, NH- Police practices protested in front of the police station which closed during the protest.
More than 30 people gathered in front of the Weare police station Wednesday to protest the department, which has in the last 13 months arrested and charged three people with felony wiretapping for recording police activity.
Waving “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and signs reading “We Will Record,” protesters argued that the department overstepped its authority by bringing charges against people who recorded officers performing public duties.
The Weare police station, which was closed at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday. A sign on the front door asked visitors to call the department’s business line, or 911 in case of an emergency.
The protesters outside the station said police did not want to be held responsible for their actions.
“The police don’t like accountability,” said David Bodhi of Manchester, a Free State Project transplant from Indiana. “When their actions start to be closely scrutinized by the citizenry, they change their behavior.”
Despite the repeated pleas by protesters, Police Chief Gregory Begin declined to open a dialogue with his critics Wednesday.
“I can’t comment on open cases, and I’m not going to debate on statutes that may be changing, and that’s all they want to do,” Begin said in an interview before the protest. “I’m just going to let them do whatthey came here for. They have the right to demonstrate, to protest.”
http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Weare+police+practices+protested&articleId=94700844-16b3-434d-b291-443739d6f0b8
Waving “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and signs reading “We Will Record,” protesters argued that the department overstepped its authority by bringing charges against people who recorded officers performing public duties.
The Weare police station, which was closed at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday. A sign on the front door asked visitors to call the department’s business line, or 911 in case of an emergency.
The protesters outside the station said police did not want to be held responsible for their actions.
“The police don’t like accountability,” said David Bodhi of Manchester, a Free State Project transplant from Indiana. “When their actions start to be closely scrutinized by the citizenry, they change their behavior.”
Despite the repeated pleas by protesters, Police Chief Gregory Begin declined to open a dialogue with his critics Wednesday.
“I can’t comment on open cases, and I’m not going to debate on statutes that may be changing, and that’s all they want to do,” Begin said in an interview before the protest. “I’m just going to let them do whatthey came here for. They have the right to demonstrate, to protest.”
http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Weare+police+practices+protested&articleId=94700844-16b3-434d-b291-443739d6f0b8
Three Philadelphia police officers indicted for steroid distribution.
When Philadelphia Police Detective Keith Gidelson phoned the U.S. Postal Service on April 7 to complain about a missing package, he did not know that the FBI was secretly listening in.
Agents allegedly heard the 14-year veteran identify himself as a police officer and say he was expecting a delivery from eBay.
Instead, according to a federal indictment announced Wednesday, the package contained thousands of dollars worth of illegal steroids, mailed by his California connection.
Gidelson, 34, was arrested Wednesday morning, charged with operating an anabolic steroid and human-growth hormone distribution ring. He was one of 15 people named in a federal indictment that also charges his wife, Kirsten, with selling the drugs.
Also arrested were Philadelphia Police Officers Joseph McIntyre, 36, and George Sambuca, 25, who are accused of buying steroids from Gidelson and reselling them.
Link:
http://articles.philly.com/2011-04-27/news/29478768_1_distribution-ring-steroids-indictment
Agents allegedly heard the 14-year veteran identify himself as a police officer and say he was expecting a delivery from eBay.
Instead, according to a federal indictment announced Wednesday, the package contained thousands of dollars worth of illegal steroids, mailed by his California connection.
Gidelson, 34, was arrested Wednesday morning, charged with operating an anabolic steroid and human-growth hormone distribution ring. He was one of 15 people named in a federal indictment that also charges his wife, Kirsten, with selling the drugs.
Also arrested were Philadelphia Police Officers Joseph McIntyre, 36, and George Sambuca, 25, who are accused of buying steroids from Gidelson and reselling them.
Link:
http://articles.philly.com/2011-04-27/news/29478768_1_distribution-ring-steroids-indictment
The Chicago police agree to stop spying on citizens who have not committed any crimes.
The police department’s notorious Red Squad had spied on, infiltrated and harassed political groups in violation of the First Amendment. A now-dissolved 1982 consent decree that reined in police spying required the city to audit compliance and publicly disclose investigative targets.
On Tuesday, the city agreed to settle a claim filed jointly by the Quaker group and the American Civil Liberties Union that accused the police department of overstepping its bounds in a way that damaged the reputation of a group with no history of violence.
Under the agreement, the city agreed to pay $7,500 to the ACLU and $5,000 to the AFSC. The Daley administration also acknowledged that its 2002 investigation “revealed no evidence that the AFSC ... had engaged in any conduct constituting a threat to public safety ... or a violation of any criminal law.”
“This is the fall-out from no longer having a spy suit consent decree in place. Without reasonable guidelines on the collection of intelligence information, the city is free to investigate the activities of law-abiding organizations,” said ACLU legal director Harvey Grossman.
“Under the old standards, they would have needed reasonable suspicion that AFSC was involved in some sort of criminal activity. Under the present guidelines, they only need a ‘legitimate law enforcement purpose.’ That could be just about anything.”
Grossman urged Emanuel and his soon-to-be-appointed police superintendent to put “reasonable suspicion guidelines” back in place to prevent police surveillance from encroaching once again on “protected First Amendment activity.”
Link:
http://www.suntimes.com/5038595-417/aclu-wants-to-rein-in-spying-on-citizens-by-chicago-police-dept.
On Tuesday, the city agreed to settle a claim filed jointly by the Quaker group and the American Civil Liberties Union that accused the police department of overstepping its bounds in a way that damaged the reputation of a group with no history of violence.
Under the agreement, the city agreed to pay $7,500 to the ACLU and $5,000 to the AFSC. The Daley administration also acknowledged that its 2002 investigation “revealed no evidence that the AFSC ... had engaged in any conduct constituting a threat to public safety ... or a violation of any criminal law.”
“This is the fall-out from no longer having a spy suit consent decree in place. Without reasonable guidelines on the collection of intelligence information, the city is free to investigate the activities of law-abiding organizations,” said ACLU legal director Harvey Grossman.
“Under the old standards, they would have needed reasonable suspicion that AFSC was involved in some sort of criminal activity. Under the present guidelines, they only need a ‘legitimate law enforcement purpose.’ That could be just about anything.”
Grossman urged Emanuel and his soon-to-be-appointed police superintendent to put “reasonable suspicion guidelines” back in place to prevent police surveillance from encroaching once again on “protected First Amendment activity.”
Link:
http://www.suntimes.com/5038595-417/aclu-wants-to-rein-in-spying-on-citizens-by-chicago-police-dept.
Tom Tom divulges peoples driving habits so police can set up speed traps.
TomTom NV, Europe’s largest navigation device maker, went into damage control mode yesterday after it emerged that Dutch police have been using data collected from drivers who use the company’s products to set speed traps.
Earlier, TomTom had reported weak first quarter earnings in which it cut 2011 sales forecasts and said it was seeking to compensate for a decline in demand for personal navigation devices by growing service revenues including selling traffic data to governments.
National newspaper Algemeen Dagblad reported that police had obtained the information from the government and used it to set targeted speed traps, prompting angry reactions from TomTom users.
Navigation device maker TomTom has apologized for supplying driving data collected from customers to police to use in catching speeding motorists.
“We never foresaw this kind of use and many of our clients are not happy about it,” Chief Executive Harold Goddijn wrote in an email sent to customers. He went on to say that licensing agreements in the future would “prevent this type of use in the future.”
With the revelation, TomTom becomes the latest company to raise privacy concerns about location data it holds on its customers. Over the past week, questions have been raised about Apple, Google, and Microsoft and the location data stored or tracked by the iPhone, and Android and Windows Phone 7 devices, respectively.
TomTom has said that any information it shares has been anonymized, but customers shouldn't take such assurances at face value. Past claims about the anonymity of data sometimes turn out to be horribly wrong – witness the debacles involving AOL's sharing of 20 million searches and the release of Netflix users' viewing habits. It's not hard to fathom a scenario in which data supplied by TomTom could be used to figure out sensitive information about its users, such as where they live and work. What could possibly go wrong there?
Links:
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2011/04/28/tomtom_says_police_used_reports_to_set_speed_traps/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/27/tomtom_customer_data_flap/
Earlier, TomTom had reported weak first quarter earnings in which it cut 2011 sales forecasts and said it was seeking to compensate for a decline in demand for personal navigation devices by growing service revenues including selling traffic data to governments.
National newspaper Algemeen Dagblad reported that police had obtained the information from the government and used it to set targeted speed traps, prompting angry reactions from TomTom users.
Navigation device maker TomTom has apologized for supplying driving data collected from customers to police to use in catching speeding motorists.
“We never foresaw this kind of use and many of our clients are not happy about it,” Chief Executive Harold Goddijn wrote in an email sent to customers. He went on to say that licensing agreements in the future would “prevent this type of use in the future.”
With the revelation, TomTom becomes the latest company to raise privacy concerns about location data it holds on its customers. Over the past week, questions have been raised about Apple, Google, and Microsoft and the location data stored or tracked by the iPhone, and Android and Windows Phone 7 devices, respectively.
TomTom has said that any information it shares has been anonymized, but customers shouldn't take such assurances at face value. Past claims about the anonymity of data sometimes turn out to be horribly wrong – witness the debacles involving AOL's sharing of 20 million searches and the release of Netflix users' viewing habits. It's not hard to fathom a scenario in which data supplied by TomTom could be used to figure out sensitive information about its users, such as where they live and work. What could possibly go wrong there?
Links:
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2011/04/28/tomtom_says_police_used_reports_to_set_speed_traps/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/27/tomtom_customer_data_flap/
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
New study finds that 50% of those deported in MA. and other states have not committed any crimes.
A new analysis of the latest data reported by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency under the controversial Secure Communities program demonstrates persisting problems with ICE’s claim that the program’s focus is on high-level dangerous criminals.
The agency began issuing quarterly reports as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, Center for Constitutional Rights and the Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic of the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law.
Those advocates released a new analysis today of the latest data that contradicts the agency’s claim that the program pursues those convicted of dangerous crimes and prevents opportunities for racial profiling on the part of local law enforcement.
“Nationally, 1 in 4 people deported under S-Comm haven’t been convicted of any crime. That ratio jumps to over 50% in Boston, certain areas of California, and in multiple examples across the country.” Explained Bridget Kessler of Benjamin Cardozo School of Law. “Those numbers raise questions about how S-Comm may allow local police to cover up profiling and circumvent due process.”
When questioned during a recent House Appropriations Committee Hearing on March 11th, Director of ICE John Morton admitted, “we do in fact remove non-criminals through Secure Communities.”
Link:
http://uncoverthetruth.org/new-numbers-demonstrate-persisting-problems-with-ice%e2%80%99s-secure-communities-program-pr
The agency began issuing quarterly reports as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, Center for Constitutional Rights and the Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic of the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law.
Those advocates released a new analysis today of the latest data that contradicts the agency’s claim that the program pursues those convicted of dangerous crimes and prevents opportunities for racial profiling on the part of local law enforcement.
“Nationally, 1 in 4 people deported under S-Comm haven’t been convicted of any crime. That ratio jumps to over 50% in Boston, certain areas of California, and in multiple examples across the country.” Explained Bridget Kessler of Benjamin Cardozo School of Law. “Those numbers raise questions about how S-Comm may allow local police to cover up profiling and circumvent due process.”
When questioned during a recent House Appropriations Committee Hearing on March 11th, Director of ICE John Morton admitted, “we do in fact remove non-criminals through Secure Communities.”
Link:
http://uncoverthetruth.org/new-numbers-demonstrate-persisting-problems-with-ice%e2%80%99s-secure-communities-program-pr
NY- The Kings Point community will scan every license plate even if no crime has been committed.
KINGS POINT, NY – If you visit Kings Point, big brother will be watching.
The affluent community is hoping to prevent crime by going high-tech — by setting up a sophisticated network to screen every vehicle that goes in or out of town.
Kings Point is one of the wealthiest villages on the North Shore, and residents want to keep it that way with the latest security.
“I think it’s great,” one resident told CBS 2’s John Slattery.
To protect its 3.3 square miles, Kings Point plans to install 44 cameras and license plate readers at each of the 19 points of entry. The devices will take pictures of every vehicle and license plate and compare them to data bases.
“It will alert us to suspended registrations, felonies, stolen cars, order of protection, sex offenders, things like that,” Kings Point Police Commissioner Jack Miller said.
Privacy advocates call the cameras “overreaching.” The New York Civil Liberties Union said it may not be illegal, but there are privacy concerns.
“Giving up our liberty and our privacy in the name of security doesn’t always make us safer,” the NYCLU’s Samantha Fredrickson said.
Link:
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/04/26/exclusive-kings-point-plans-extensive-surveillance-network/
The affluent community is hoping to prevent crime by going high-tech — by setting up a sophisticated network to screen every vehicle that goes in or out of town.
Kings Point is one of the wealthiest villages on the North Shore, and residents want to keep it that way with the latest security.
“I think it’s great,” one resident told CBS 2’s John Slattery.
To protect its 3.3 square miles, Kings Point plans to install 44 cameras and license plate readers at each of the 19 points of entry. The devices will take pictures of every vehicle and license plate and compare them to data bases.
“It will alert us to suspended registrations, felonies, stolen cars, order of protection, sex offenders, things like that,” Kings Point Police Commissioner Jack Miller said.
Privacy advocates call the cameras “overreaching.” The New York Civil Liberties Union said it may not be illegal, but there are privacy concerns.
“Giving up our liberty and our privacy in the name of security doesn’t always make us safer,” the NYCLU’s Samantha Fredrickson said.
Link:
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/04/26/exclusive-kings-point-plans-extensive-surveillance-network/
NYC police accused of violating peoples rights, continues to stop and frisk people who haven't commited any crimes.
Police arrest 140 people every day in New York City for possessing small amounts of marijuana. It's now by far the most common misdemeanor charge in the city, and thousands of these arrests take place when police stop and frisk young men in the poorest neighborhoods. While police say these stop and frisks are a way to find guns, what they find more often is a bag of marijuana.
An investigation by WNYC suggests that some police officers may be violating people’s constitutional rights when they are making marijuana arrests. Current and former cops, defense lawyers and more than a dozen men arrested for the lowest-level marijuana possession say illegal searches take place during stop-and-frisks, which are street encounters carried out overwhelmingly on blacks and Latinos.
There is no record of how many illegal searches take place every year. In a written statement to WNYC, police spokesman Paul Browne acknowledged that illegal searches do happen, and officers get disciplined when the department finds out.
"If an officer conducted an improper search, he is instructed on how to do it properly; unless it was particularly egregious in which case he would face more severe disciplinary action," said Browne.
Under New York State law, possessing a small amount of pot becomes a crime a misdemeanor when it is smoked or displayed "open to public view." If the marijuana is concealed on the person, possession of the drug is only a violation, which is not a crime. The person receives a ticket and fine.
Link: http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2011/apr/26/marijuana-arrests/
An investigation by WNYC suggests that some police officers may be violating people’s constitutional rights when they are making marijuana arrests. Current and former cops, defense lawyers and more than a dozen men arrested for the lowest-level marijuana possession say illegal searches take place during stop-and-frisks, which are street encounters carried out overwhelmingly on blacks and Latinos.
There is no record of how many illegal searches take place every year. In a written statement to WNYC, police spokesman Paul Browne acknowledged that illegal searches do happen, and officers get disciplined when the department finds out.
"If an officer conducted an improper search, he is instructed on how to do it properly; unless it was particularly egregious in which case he would face more severe disciplinary action," said Browne.
Under New York State law, possessing a small amount of pot becomes a crime a misdemeanor when it is smoked or displayed "open to public view." If the marijuana is concealed on the person, possession of the drug is only a violation, which is not a crime. The person receives a ticket and fine.
Link: http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2011/apr/26/marijuana-arrests/
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
TALLAHASSEE- The Florida Supreme Court rejected evidence discovered by drug sniffing dogs.
TALLAHASSEE- Citing a lack of state standards for drug-sniffing dogs, the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday tossed out evidence a canine detected against a Panhandle man.
It was one of two warrantless search and seizure cases the justices decided Thursday. Both set new guidelines for such cases.
While the 5-1 drug dog decision will make it more difficult and time-consuming for prosecutors to get court approval of evidence, it shouldn’t hamper the ability of police to use the animals, said Assistant State Attorney Ted Daus, who specializes in drug cases in Broward County.
The 5-2 ruling in the second case should make it easier for police. That opinion upheld evidence that police obtained through human surveillance in a South Florida drug case.
“Because a dog cannot be cross-examined like a police officer on the scene whose observations often provide the basis for probable cause to search a vehicle, the state must introduce evidence concerning the dog’s reliability,” Justice Barbara Pariente wrote for the court.
Given the lack of statewide standards for single-purpose, drug-detecting dogs, training certificates and records aren’t enough, Pariente wrote.
Prosecutors also must present other evidence including field performance records and an explanation of each dog’s training as well as evidence concerning the experience and training of the officer handling the dog. Further, it’s the state’s responsibility to prove a dog is reliable, not the defendant’s burden to show otherwise, but Daus said that’s not really a change.
The prosecutor said the high court has not changed the standards for the dogs, but it has increased the proof needed to verify their reliability. He said it will turn what has been a 15- to 20-minute procedure into one that may take a couple of hours.
Link:
http://www.bradenton.com/2011/04/22/3135190/justices-reject-evidence-discovered.html
It was one of two warrantless search and seizure cases the justices decided Thursday. Both set new guidelines for such cases.
While the 5-1 drug dog decision will make it more difficult and time-consuming for prosecutors to get court approval of evidence, it shouldn’t hamper the ability of police to use the animals, said Assistant State Attorney Ted Daus, who specializes in drug cases in Broward County.
The 5-2 ruling in the second case should make it easier for police. That opinion upheld evidence that police obtained through human surveillance in a South Florida drug case.
“Because a dog cannot be cross-examined like a police officer on the scene whose observations often provide the basis for probable cause to search a vehicle, the state must introduce evidence concerning the dog’s reliability,” Justice Barbara Pariente wrote for the court.
Given the lack of statewide standards for single-purpose, drug-detecting dogs, training certificates and records aren’t enough, Pariente wrote.
Prosecutors also must present other evidence including field performance records and an explanation of each dog’s training as well as evidence concerning the experience and training of the officer handling the dog. Further, it’s the state’s responsibility to prove a dog is reliable, not the defendant’s burden to show otherwise, but Daus said that’s not really a change.
The prosecutor said the high court has not changed the standards for the dogs, but it has increased the proof needed to verify their reliability. He said it will turn what has been a 15- to 20-minute procedure into one that may take a couple of hours.
Link:
http://www.bradenton.com/2011/04/22/3135190/justices-reject-evidence-discovered.html
The Third Circuit allows the Government to acquire cell phone data without probable cause.
In Harvard Law Review (Volume 124 · April 2011 · Number 6):
The Stored Communications Act (SCA) articulates the standard
the government must meet to obtain electronic communications
records from phone companies. In addition to the traditional option
of obtaining a warrant by showing probable cause, § 2703(d) of the
SCA permits magistrate judges to grant court orders for acquisition of
these records if the government meets a lower standard by “offer[ing]
specific and articulable facts showing that there are reasonable
grounds to believe” that the records “are relevant and material to an
ongoing criminal investigation.” The government has often attempted,
with varying degrees of success, to use § 2703(d) to obtain
cell-site location information (CSLI), which uses a cell phone’s communication with cell towers to determine the approximate location of
an individual over time. Recently, in In re The Application of the
United States for an Order Directing a Provider of Electronic Communication
Service to Disclose Records to the Government, the Third Circuit held that § 2703(d) applies to CSLI and that magistrates may grant court orders to obtain CSLI when the government meets § 2703(d)’s “specific and articulable facts” standard. But the court also gave magistrates the power — “to be used sparingly” — to require the government to show probable cause and obtain a warrant for CSLI. The Third Circuit failed to clarify exactly how often magistrates may require a warrant and did not explain what factors magistrates should balance in order to make this determination. As a result,
In re Application provides little guidance to magistrates about how often
and in what circumstances they may deny § 2703(d) orders.
Link:
http://www.harvardlawreview.org/media/pdf/vol124_in_re_the_application.pdf
The Stored Communications Act (SCA) articulates the standard
the government must meet to obtain electronic communications
records from phone companies. In addition to the traditional option
of obtaining a warrant by showing probable cause, § 2703(d) of the
SCA permits magistrate judges to grant court orders for acquisition of
these records if the government meets a lower standard by “offer[ing]
specific and articulable facts showing that there are reasonable
grounds to believe” that the records “are relevant and material to an
ongoing criminal investigation.” The government has often attempted,
with varying degrees of success, to use § 2703(d) to obtain
cell-site location information (CSLI), which uses a cell phone’s communication with cell towers to determine the approximate location of
an individual over time. Recently, in In re The Application of the
United States for an Order Directing a Provider of Electronic Communication
Service to Disclose Records to the Government, the Third Circuit held that § 2703(d) applies to CSLI and that magistrates may grant court orders to obtain CSLI when the government meets § 2703(d)’s “specific and articulable facts” standard. But the court also gave magistrates the power — “to be used sparingly” — to require the government to show probable cause and obtain a warrant for CSLI. The Third Circuit failed to clarify exactly how often magistrates may require a warrant and did not explain what factors magistrates should balance in order to make this determination. As a result,
In re Application provides little guidance to magistrates about how often
and in what circumstances they may deny § 2703(d) orders.
Link:
http://www.harvardlawreview.org/media/pdf/vol124_in_re_the_application.pdf
The police can trace your phone in under 60 seconds.
It's a Hollywood plot device as old as the Princess phone: The good guys receive a call from the kidnapper/mad bomber/drug lord, they need to string him along for 60 seconds to trace the call, but he's wise to their time constraint and hangs up just short of the one-minute mark.
While it may have made Jack Bauer sweat bullets on "24," the old 60-second rule is strictly firing blanks today.
"In the digital age, it's immediate," says private investigator Gary Tuttle of Assured Investigations in Atlanta. "As soon as the call is placed, it can be tracked and traced to where it is being originated."
An FBI agent who spoke on condition of anonymity agrees: "If someone is calling from a landline, the carrier will know immediately. They can't hide it from the phone company. It may come up on your phone as unavailable, but the phone company knows exactly where it's coming from," she says.
These days, if you really want to give our 60-minute man Jack Bauer the runaround, give your bad guy a stolen cell phone, or better yet, a one-time-use "drop phone" available at your nearest Walmart and put him on the road.
"When the number isn't associated with the person we're looking for, we have to triangulate their position off of cell phone towers," says our FBI agent. "If they're not moving, we can be down to one house away from where they are, and when it comes down to that, we can surround a neighborhood and go door to door to find the person we're looking for."
Link:
http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/can-police-trace-60-second-phone-call-1282.php
While it may have made Jack Bauer sweat bullets on "24," the old 60-second rule is strictly firing blanks today.
"In the digital age, it's immediate," says private investigator Gary Tuttle of Assured Investigations in Atlanta. "As soon as the call is placed, it can be tracked and traced to where it is being originated."
An FBI agent who spoke on condition of anonymity agrees: "If someone is calling from a landline, the carrier will know immediately. They can't hide it from the phone company. It may come up on your phone as unavailable, but the phone company knows exactly where it's coming from," she says.
These days, if you really want to give our 60-minute man Jack Bauer the runaround, give your bad guy a stolen cell phone, or better yet, a one-time-use "drop phone" available at your nearest Walmart and put him on the road.
"When the number isn't associated with the person we're looking for, we have to triangulate their position off of cell phone towers," says our FBI agent. "If they're not moving, we can be down to one house away from where they are, and when it comes down to that, we can surround a neighborhood and go door to door to find the person we're looking for."
Link:
http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/can-police-trace-60-second-phone-call-1282.php
Title III wiretapping do the Courts look the other way when the Government crosses the line?
Wiretaps seem like a technological anachronism these days, conjuring up romantic images of agents slipping into house in the dark of night to plant bugs in telephone receivers. No need for any of that nonsense anymore. Today, it's just a flip of the switch and your call is available for their listening pleasure. But the rules of Title III remain intact. These rules require minimization, that agents limit their listening to conversations relating to the basis for the warrant and not overhear privileged communications.
It's tricky business, with agents allowed to sneak back in for a couple minutes here and there just to be sure they haven't missed anything. Then again, it's not always clear what's relevant and inculpatory, since people can talk in code and appear to be speaking about ordinary stuff, like purchasing 10 and a half pizzas, when their discussion is more ominous.
Of course, sometimes a conversation has absolutely nothing to do with criminal conduct. Sometimes husbands and wives talk, maybe argue, even fight, disclosing very personal information that was not intended for anyone else's ears and has absolutely nothing to do with any criminal conduct. It's wrong of the government to listen in, record, enjoy overhearing these conversations.
Link:http://blog.simplejustice.us/2011/04/23/deeply-troubled-and-so-what.aspx
It's tricky business, with agents allowed to sneak back in for a couple minutes here and there just to be sure they haven't missed anything. Then again, it's not always clear what's relevant and inculpatory, since people can talk in code and appear to be speaking about ordinary stuff, like purchasing 10 and a half pizzas, when their discussion is more ominous.
Of course, sometimes a conversation has absolutely nothing to do with criminal conduct. Sometimes husbands and wives talk, maybe argue, even fight, disclosing very personal information that was not intended for anyone else's ears and has absolutely nothing to do with any criminal conduct. It's wrong of the government to listen in, record, enjoy overhearing these conversations.
Link:http://blog.simplejustice.us/2011/04/23/deeply-troubled-and-so-what.aspx
Study reveals the New Orleans police department has numerous problems.
Something terrible lies at the heart of New Orleans - a rampant, widespread and apparently uncontrollable brutality on the part of its police force and its prison service. The horrors of its criminal justice system from decades before Hurricane Katrina and up to now lie somewhere between, with little exaggeration, Candide and Stalin's Gulags.
Spit on the sidewalk here, and you may be arrested - New Orleans has the highest incarceration rate of any city in the United States - and if you're poor and black and can't pay bail, you will enter a place where any protection under the American constitution and the Bill of Rights is stripped away. You will wait weeks or months to be charged, whether innocent or not, and in the meantime you will be subjected to foul, overcrowded jail conditions, prisoner-to-prisoner violence and the brutality of the deputies who guard you. God help you if you have a medical condition, or a mental-health problem, or if you're pregnant (you may deliver in leg chains - it has happened). "A minor offence in New Orleans," one civil rights attorney told me, "can get you into a hellish place."
On 17 March this year, the federal department of justice (DoJ) decided that enough was enough and it has made moves to have the New Orleans police department (NOPD) placed under the supervision of a federal judge. The New Orleans jail system will likely follow.
The department released a report covering only the past two years and ignoring several current federal investigations of police officers for murder. It says, more or less, that the NOPD is incapable on any level; that it is racist; that it systemically violates civil rights, routinely using "unnecessary and unreasonable force"; that it is "largely indifferent to widespread violations of law and policy by its police officers" and appears to have gone to great lengths to cover up its shootings of civilians. "NOPD's mishandling of officer-involved shooting investigations," the report says, "was so blatant and egregious that it appeared intentional in some respects."
The department can't even handle its sniffer dogs: "We found that NOPD's canines were uncontrollable to the point where they repeatedly attacked their own handlers."
Link:
http://www.newstatesman.com/north-america/2011/04/orleans-city-jail-police
Spit on the sidewalk here, and you may be arrested - New Orleans has the highest incarceration rate of any city in the United States - and if you're poor and black and can't pay bail, you will enter a place where any protection under the American constitution and the Bill of Rights is stripped away. You will wait weeks or months to be charged, whether innocent or not, and in the meantime you will be subjected to foul, overcrowded jail conditions, prisoner-to-prisoner violence and the brutality of the deputies who guard you. God help you if you have a medical condition, or a mental-health problem, or if you're pregnant (you may deliver in leg chains - it has happened). "A minor offence in New Orleans," one civil rights attorney told me, "can get you into a hellish place."
On 17 March this year, the federal department of justice (DoJ) decided that enough was enough and it has made moves to have the New Orleans police department (NOPD) placed under the supervision of a federal judge. The New Orleans jail system will likely follow.
The department released a report covering only the past two years and ignoring several current federal investigations of police officers for murder. It says, more or less, that the NOPD is incapable on any level; that it is racist; that it systemically violates civil rights, routinely using "unnecessary and unreasonable force"; that it is "largely indifferent to widespread violations of law and policy by its police officers" and appears to have gone to great lengths to cover up its shootings of civilians. "NOPD's mishandling of officer-involved shooting investigations," the report says, "was so blatant and egregious that it appeared intentional in some respects."
The department can't even handle its sniffer dogs: "We found that NOPD's canines were uncontrollable to the point where they repeatedly attacked their own handlers."
Link:
http://www.newstatesman.com/north-america/2011/04/orleans-city-jail-police
Monday, April 25, 2011
Las Vegas, NV- A police officer beats a citizen for videotaping him.
When Mitchell Crooks checked out of the county jail last month and checked into a Las Vegas hospital, the 36-year-old videographer knew he had a fight on his hands.
His face was bloodied and bruised. His $3,500 camera had been impounded by police, and he faced criminal charges for battery on a police officer.
One month later, things have changed for Crooks.
The Clark County district attorney's office has dropped all charges, and Crooks has retained an attorney of his own. The Metropolitan Police Department has opened an internal investigation into the Las Vegas police officer, Derek Colling, who Crooks says falsely arrested and beat him for filming police.
And his camera -- which captured the entire March 20 altercation between Crooks and Colling -- has been returned.
At Clark County Detention Center, Crooks was booked for battery on a police officer and obstruction of justice. He was released from jail the next day. On March 26, the Review-Journal reported on his case. Four days later all charges were dropped.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Christopher Laurent said he dismissed the charges because the police report was vague.
"I asked for a more definite description of the battery because battery requires a violent touching," Laurent said. Police never provided that information.
Crooks said he always believed he'd be vindicated, but after police returned his camera he knew he had proof.
"I was confident I was doing the right thing, but I was excited they (the DA's office) weren't wasting any time, and that somebody was smart enough to know I was acting within the law," he said.
Link:
http://www.lvrj.com/news/exclusive-police-beating-of-las-vegas-man-caught-on-tape-120509439.html?viewAllComments=y&c=y
His face was bloodied and bruised. His $3,500 camera had been impounded by police, and he faced criminal charges for battery on a police officer.
One month later, things have changed for Crooks.
The Clark County district attorney's office has dropped all charges, and Crooks has retained an attorney of his own. The Metropolitan Police Department has opened an internal investigation into the Las Vegas police officer, Derek Colling, who Crooks says falsely arrested and beat him for filming police.
And his camera -- which captured the entire March 20 altercation between Crooks and Colling -- has been returned.
At Clark County Detention Center, Crooks was booked for battery on a police officer and obstruction of justice. He was released from jail the next day. On March 26, the Review-Journal reported on his case. Four days later all charges were dropped.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Christopher Laurent said he dismissed the charges because the police report was vague.
"I asked for a more definite description of the battery because battery requires a violent touching," Laurent said. Police never provided that information.
Crooks said he always believed he'd be vindicated, but after police returned his camera he knew he had proof.
"I was confident I was doing the right thing, but I was excited they (the DA's office) weren't wasting any time, and that somebody was smart enough to know I was acting within the law," he said.
Link:
http://www.lvrj.com/news/exclusive-police-beating-of-las-vegas-man-caught-on-tape-120509439.html?viewAllComments=y&c=y
Apple tracks IPhone users every move, where is the public outrage?
Your iPhone has been secretly tracking and recording everywhere you go.
That's right. Apple built this feature into your iPhone and hid it from you. By doing so, Apple made it possible for anyone who gets ahold of your iPhone or Mac (or any other device synced with either) to figure out exactly where you were when.
That is absolutely outrageous.
If any other company had done this, America's privacy zealots would be demanding the CEO's resignation. There would be threats. There would be lawsuits. There would, at the very least, be incessant demands for the company to acknowledge the behavior, explain it, and apologize for it.
And yet, because the company is Apple, there have been none of those things.
Instead, Apple fans like John Gruber have suggested that the secret feature is a "bug." And there have been mainstream media stories suggesting that it must be some kind of "mistake."
Bug? Mistake?
Sorry, Steve, you owe us an explanation.
Apple built a system into your iPhone that secretly tracks and records everywhere you go. This system records your exact location and the exact time you were there--down to the second.
Anyone who gets ahold of your phone or computer can tell exactly where you were when: Police, people suing you, your husband/wife, your employer, private investigators, the government--anyone. And Apple didn't tell you that!
Link: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-secret-location-tracking-2011-4
That's right. Apple built this feature into your iPhone and hid it from you. By doing so, Apple made it possible for anyone who gets ahold of your iPhone or Mac (or any other device synced with either) to figure out exactly where you were when.
That is absolutely outrageous.
If any other company had done this, America's privacy zealots would be demanding the CEO's resignation. There would be threats. There would be lawsuits. There would, at the very least, be incessant demands for the company to acknowledge the behavior, explain it, and apologize for it.
And yet, because the company is Apple, there have been none of those things.
Instead, Apple fans like John Gruber have suggested that the secret feature is a "bug." And there have been mainstream media stories suggesting that it must be some kind of "mistake."
Bug? Mistake?
Sorry, Steve, you owe us an explanation.
Apple built a system into your iPhone that secretly tracks and records everywhere you go. This system records your exact location and the exact time you were there--down to the second.
Anyone who gets ahold of your phone or computer can tell exactly where you were when: Police, people suing you, your husband/wife, your employer, private investigators, the government--anyone. And Apple didn't tell you that!
Link: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-secret-location-tracking-2011-4
The IPhone Tracker: is an open-source application.
IPhone Tracker: This open-source application maps the information that your iPhone is recording about your movements. It displays files that are already hidden on your computer.
http://petewarden.github.com/iPhoneTracker/
http://petewarden.github.com/iPhoneTracker/
Google doesn't deny it collects users private data.
Amid rising scrutiny of their practices, Google Inc. defended the way it collects location data from Android phones, while Apple Inc. remained silent for a third day.
The companies' smartphones regularly transmit locations back to Google and Apple servers, respectively, according to data and documents analyzed by The Wall Street Journal.
Research by a security analyst this week found that an Android phone collected location data every few seconds and sent it to Google several times an hour. Apple disclosed in a letter to Congress last year that its phones "intermittently" collect location data, and the company receives it twice a day.
"We provide users with notice and control over the collection, sharing and use of location in order to provide a better mobile experience on Android devices," the Google spokesman said.
He added that "any location data that is sent back to Google location servers is anonymized and is not tied or traceable to a specific user."
Tests of the Android phone showed the transmissions included a unique ID that is tied to the phone. Google says this ID is associated with location and not with other user information. The user can change this number by performing a "factory reset" of the device, which deletes the phone's data.
Google has long defended its collection of location as helpful in providing services, such as accurate traffic maps, and its stance hasn't changed amid the recent disclosures.
Link:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703387904576279451001593760.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
The companies' smartphones regularly transmit locations back to Google and Apple servers, respectively, according to data and documents analyzed by The Wall Street Journal.
Research by a security analyst this week found that an Android phone collected location data every few seconds and sent it to Google several times an hour. Apple disclosed in a letter to Congress last year that its phones "intermittently" collect location data, and the company receives it twice a day.
"We provide users with notice and control over the collection, sharing and use of location in order to provide a better mobile experience on Android devices," the Google spokesman said.
He added that "any location data that is sent back to Google location servers is anonymized and is not tied or traceable to a specific user."
Tests of the Android phone showed the transmissions included a unique ID that is tied to the phone. Google says this ID is associated with location and not with other user information. The user can change this number by performing a "factory reset" of the device, which deletes the phone's data.
Google has long defended its collection of location as helpful in providing services, such as accurate traffic maps, and its stance hasn't changed amid the recent disclosures.
Link:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703387904576279451001593760.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Police are increasingly using businesses and minature cameras to surveil Americans.
In Austin, Police Chief Art Acevedo is confronting a different kind of problem: Officers are not waiting for “lagging” public funding to purchase their own miniature video cameras concealed in writing pens.
About 50 officers use the devices, which cost as little as $50 each, to guard against false allegations of misconduct or abuse. Acevedo supports the technology, but this month, his staff scrambled to develop guidelines for the cameras’ use to address potential privacy concerns and other issues.
“Sometimes the (public) funding stream just doesn’t catch up with the available technology,” Acevedo said.
This month, a survey of 70 large police agencies by the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington law enforcement think-tank, found that 90% planned to increase their use of various technologies, primarily aimed at deterring crime by adopting more efficient surveillance, patrol and response strategies.
“Departments are looking to technology as a force multiplier,” said Chuck Wexler, the forum’s executive director. “They are using this technology to better manage fewer resources, because just saying, ‘We don’t have enough officers’ isn’t cutting it with the public.”
The forum’s survey found that 86% of agencies used some form of social media, including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube and Nixle to monitor or follow up on leads and potential threats, despite reports that some police employees misuse the sites.
At least 57% of agencies reported dealing with some problem related to employees’ possible misuse of social media sites, according to the forum’s survey.
The abuses include posting inappropriate messages and photographs.
International Association of Chiefs of Police Center for Social Media Link:
http://www.iacpsocialmedia.org/
Link:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-04-24-police-crime-technology-facebook.htm?loc=interstitialskip
About 50 officers use the devices, which cost as little as $50 each, to guard against false allegations of misconduct or abuse. Acevedo supports the technology, but this month, his staff scrambled to develop guidelines for the cameras’ use to address potential privacy concerns and other issues.
“Sometimes the (public) funding stream just doesn’t catch up with the available technology,” Acevedo said.
This month, a survey of 70 large police agencies by the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington law enforcement think-tank, found that 90% planned to increase their use of various technologies, primarily aimed at deterring crime by adopting more efficient surveillance, patrol and response strategies.
“Departments are looking to technology as a force multiplier,” said Chuck Wexler, the forum’s executive director. “They are using this technology to better manage fewer resources, because just saying, ‘We don’t have enough officers’ isn’t cutting it with the public.”
The forum’s survey found that 86% of agencies used some form of social media, including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube and Nixle to monitor or follow up on leads and potential threats, despite reports that some police employees misuse the sites.
At least 57% of agencies reported dealing with some problem related to employees’ possible misuse of social media sites, according to the forum’s survey.
The abuses include posting inappropriate messages and photographs.
International Association of Chiefs of Police Center for Social Media Link:
http://www.iacpsocialmedia.org/
Link:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-04-24-police-crime-technology-facebook.htm?loc=interstitialskip
Boston, Ma- "The Police Complaint Assistance Project" is no longer associated with Suffolk University after the Boston Police pressure the University to end it's support.
"The Police Complaint Assistance Project" focuses on reporting Boston Police misconduct. The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union of MA) sponsors the POLICE COMPLAINT ASSISTANCE PROJECT and was in partnership with Suffolk University Law Students.
Instead of acknowledging possible police bias where investigations are conducted by "Internal Affairs", the Boston police pressured an institution to end its affiliation and called the project “cop-hate baiting at its worst,’’ and "a disservice to both police and students."
Why not offer to have independent investigators look into possible accusations of police misconduct or offer similar solutions?
The Boston Police brass and union officials are furious at a Suffolk University Law School student project that the patrolmen’s union is calling “cop-hate baiting at its worst,’’ while the university has moved to distance itself from the initiative.
Fliers for the “Police Misconduct Documentation Project” and the “Police Complaint Assistance Project” were posted at the university’s campus, asking: “Have you been abused, brutalized or mistreated by the Boston Police ... ?”
Late last week, after an inquiry by the Herald, Suffolk University ordered the fliers taken down, saying the collaboration between Suffolk Law students, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Boston Black Men’s Leadership Group should not have used the law school’s logo.
Suffolk University professor Karen Blum of the Rappaport Law Center — whose pro bono program pairs students with the ACLU to file police-abuse complaints — said the language on the fliers is “regrettable” and had them removed.
“The Police Complaint Assistance Project is not a seminar in how to sue police officers, nor is it meant to be an indictment of the Boston Police Department,’’ Blum said. “The school has removed the fliers because we certainly would not endorse the word brutalized.”
Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association President Tom Nee said, “We don’t have a problem with righteous complaints, and the department has several transparent ways to file a complaint. But this project is cop-hate baiting at its worst and the language on the flier is offensive. This is essentially ‘how to sue the BPD.’ ”
BPD Commissioner Ed Davis called the project a disservice to both police and students.
“The department thoroughly investigates legitimate criticisms and encourages community feedback. We enjoy a strong collaboration with local colleges and universities, therefore a school project intimating a widespread presence of misconduct does a disservice to both the student population and the officers,’’ Davis said.
Link:
http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1333026&position=1
Instead of acknowledging possible police bias where investigations are conducted by "Internal Affairs", the Boston police pressured an institution to end its affiliation and called the project “cop-hate baiting at its worst,’’ and "a disservice to both police and students."
Why not offer to have independent investigators look into possible accusations of police misconduct or offer similar solutions?
The Boston Police brass and union officials are furious at a Suffolk University Law School student project that the patrolmen’s union is calling “cop-hate baiting at its worst,’’ while the university has moved to distance itself from the initiative.
Fliers for the “Police Misconduct Documentation Project” and the “Police Complaint Assistance Project” were posted at the university’s campus, asking: “Have you been abused, brutalized or mistreated by the Boston Police ... ?”
Late last week, after an inquiry by the Herald, Suffolk University ordered the fliers taken down, saying the collaboration between Suffolk Law students, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Boston Black Men’s Leadership Group should not have used the law school’s logo.
Suffolk University professor Karen Blum of the Rappaport Law Center — whose pro bono program pairs students with the ACLU to file police-abuse complaints — said the language on the fliers is “regrettable” and had them removed.
“The Police Complaint Assistance Project is not a seminar in how to sue police officers, nor is it meant to be an indictment of the Boston Police Department,’’ Blum said. “The school has removed the fliers because we certainly would not endorse the word brutalized.”
Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association President Tom Nee said, “We don’t have a problem with righteous complaints, and the department has several transparent ways to file a complaint. But this project is cop-hate baiting at its worst and the language on the flier is offensive. This is essentially ‘how to sue the BPD.’ ”
BPD Commissioner Ed Davis called the project a disservice to both police and students.
“The department thoroughly investigates legitimate criticisms and encourages community feedback. We enjoy a strong collaboration with local colleges and universities, therefore a school project intimating a widespread presence of misconduct does a disservice to both the student population and the officers,’’ Davis said.
Link:
http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1333026&position=1
Glenn Greenwald Part 1: Justice for Who? Is our Justice system a two-tiered system rich vs. poor?
Is our Justice system a two-tiered system rich vs. poor?
Do the rich receive a lesser sentence or go free? Does a person accused of the same crime but can't afford representation receive a harsher sentence?
Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQm4UwNaEQU&feature=player_detailpage
Do the rich receive a lesser sentence or go free? Does a person accused of the same crime but can't afford representation receive a harsher sentence?
Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQm4UwNaEQU&feature=player_detailpage
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Charles Daum, an attorney in Washington, D.C. was charged in a seven-count indictment along with two private investigators.
Prosecutors on Thursday unsealed an indictment charging a 64-year-old criminal defense attorney in Washington for his alleged participation in a scheme to fabricate evidence to benefit a client charged in a drug trafficking case.
The attorney, Charles Daum, a solo practitioner in the District, was charged in a seven-count indictment along with two private investigators.
The indictment said Daum was part of a plan to produce evidence to convince jurors that the drugs police seized from a client actually belonged to another person. Daum was charged with, among other crimes, three counts of influencing a juror and two counts of inducing perjury.
The charges against Daum and the two investigators stem from Daum’s representation of a man named Delante White, indicted on federal drug charges in March 2008. Investigators said a search warrant turned up crack cocaine, $2,000, firearm ammunition, a digital scale and other items.
In the case against Daum, prosecutors allege the attorney enlisted the help of two private investigators to obtain duplicates of items the authorities seized during the execution of the search warrant in the 600 block of Hamlin Street in Northeast Washington in February 2008.
Prosecutors said the investigators, Daaiyah Pasha, 60, of Washington, D.C., and Iman Pasha, 31, of Springfield, Va, arranged to take a staged photograph of White’s brother with the items. The photographs would show White’s brother cutting cocaine to convince jurors the drugs the police seized did not belong to White.
The plan, according to the government, also included the creation of a false lease agreement to show that White was living in Maryland and not at the one-bedroom apartment the authorities raided. At the time of his arrest, White’s driver's license had him living at the one-bedroom apartment in Northeast.
In September 2008, Daum filed court papers in White’s drug case that his brother, if anyone, “was the sole possessor” of the drugs that were at the center of the prosecution. Daum submitted the photos as evidence in White’s trial before U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman.
Copy of the 16 page indictment:
http://legaltimes.typepad.com/files/daum-pasha-indictment.pdf
Link:
http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2011/04/dc-defense-lawyer-charged-in-scheme-to-fabricate-evidence.html
The attorney, Charles Daum, a solo practitioner in the District, was charged in a seven-count indictment along with two private investigators.
The indictment said Daum was part of a plan to produce evidence to convince jurors that the drugs police seized from a client actually belonged to another person. Daum was charged with, among other crimes, three counts of influencing a juror and two counts of inducing perjury.
The charges against Daum and the two investigators stem from Daum’s representation of a man named Delante White, indicted on federal drug charges in March 2008. Investigators said a search warrant turned up crack cocaine, $2,000, firearm ammunition, a digital scale and other items.
In the case against Daum, prosecutors allege the attorney enlisted the help of two private investigators to obtain duplicates of items the authorities seized during the execution of the search warrant in the 600 block of Hamlin Street in Northeast Washington in February 2008.
Prosecutors said the investigators, Daaiyah Pasha, 60, of Washington, D.C., and Iman Pasha, 31, of Springfield, Va, arranged to take a staged photograph of White’s brother with the items. The photographs would show White’s brother cutting cocaine to convince jurors the drugs the police seized did not belong to White.
The plan, according to the government, also included the creation of a false lease agreement to show that White was living in Maryland and not at the one-bedroom apartment the authorities raided. At the time of his arrest, White’s driver's license had him living at the one-bedroom apartment in Northeast.
In September 2008, Daum filed court papers in White’s drug case that his brother, if anyone, “was the sole possessor” of the drugs that were at the center of the prosecution. Daum submitted the photos as evidence in White’s trial before U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman.
Copy of the 16 page indictment:
http://legaltimes.typepad.com/files/daum-pasha-indictment.pdf
Link:
http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2011/04/dc-defense-lawyer-charged-in-scheme-to-fabricate-evidence.html
The TSA deploys VIPR "Gestapo" police across the country.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Hoping to keep terrorists and others off-guard Transportation Security Administration conducted what it calls a random "Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response Operation" on Thursday morning at the West Palm Beach Tri-Rail station.
TSA spokesperson Sari Koshetz said that response, known as VIPR, is a highly-visible operation to help detect and deter any suspicious or dangerous activity in various modes of transportation.
The TSA VIPR teams are designed to enhance security by working in mass transit, aviation, rail, maritime and other transportation modes alongside state and local law enforcement agencies during major events or as a random deterrent.
TSA has partnered with local law enforcement to conduct thousands of VIPR missions from coast to coast across the U.S.
There is no credible information to suggest a specific threat at this time.
Steve Watson from Infowars.com comments:
VIPR is quite obviously a 21st century Gestapo designed to indoctrinate Americans into accepting Soviet-style shake-downs, bag searches and groping of genitalia at checkpoints across the country – not just in airports.
Link:
http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/region_c_palm_beach_county/west_palm_beach/tsa-conducts-operation-at-west-palm-beach-tri-rail-station
TSA spokesperson Sari Koshetz said that response, known as VIPR, is a highly-visible operation to help detect and deter any suspicious or dangerous activity in various modes of transportation.
The TSA VIPR teams are designed to enhance security by working in mass transit, aviation, rail, maritime and other transportation modes alongside state and local law enforcement agencies during major events or as a random deterrent.
TSA has partnered with local law enforcement to conduct thousands of VIPR missions from coast to coast across the U.S.
There is no credible information to suggest a specific threat at this time.
Steve Watson from Infowars.com comments:
VIPR is quite obviously a 21st century Gestapo designed to indoctrinate Americans into accepting Soviet-style shake-downs, bag searches and groping of genitalia at checkpoints across the country – not just in airports.
Link:
http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/region_c_palm_beach_county/west_palm_beach/tsa-conducts-operation-at-west-palm-beach-tri-rail-station
Friday, April 22, 2011
FL- Kenneth city mayor Teresa Zemaitis calls sheriff on the local police department's practices.
The mayor finally had had enough.
For months, Teresa Zemaitis had been frustrated by the Kenneth City Town Council's refusal to listen to her complaints about problems in the Police Department.
So the mayor of this town of 4,980 sicced the sheriff on her own department.
The findings, contained in a 110-page report, were eye-opening. Among them:
• Police Chief Douglas Pasley used his town-owned car to visit such places as Orlando, Ellenton and the State Fair.
• Pasley and two of his officers regularly spent time on duty having breakfast at the Bob Evans restaurant across from Tyrone Square Mall in St. Petersburg. The two officers did not have their computer/GPS systems turned on when traveling to and from the restaurant even though they were on duty.
• Kenneth City police officers frequently venture out of Kenneth City on duty.
Deputies also pulled computer records on one Kenneth City officer who "spent long periods of time stationary in one location." They found he used the department computer to log onto dating sites (such as match.com), Craigslist, and nutrition and bodybuilding sites, among others.
Link:http://www.tampabay.com/news/localgovernment/article1165250.ece
For months, Teresa Zemaitis had been frustrated by the Kenneth City Town Council's refusal to listen to her complaints about problems in the Police Department.
So the mayor of this town of 4,980 sicced the sheriff on her own department.
The findings, contained in a 110-page report, were eye-opening. Among them:
• Police Chief Douglas Pasley used his town-owned car to visit such places as Orlando, Ellenton and the State Fair.
• Pasley and two of his officers regularly spent time on duty having breakfast at the Bob Evans restaurant across from Tyrone Square Mall in St. Petersburg. The two officers did not have their computer/GPS systems turned on when traveling to and from the restaurant even though they were on duty.
• Kenneth City police officers frequently venture out of Kenneth City on duty.
Deputies also pulled computer records on one Kenneth City officer who "spent long periods of time stationary in one location." They found he used the department computer to log onto dating sites (such as match.com), Craigslist, and nutrition and bodybuilding sites, among others.
Link:http://www.tampabay.com/news/localgovernment/article1165250.ece
How to win your case against the accuracy of speed trap cameras.
Will Foreman has beaten the speed cameras.
Five times and counting before three different judges, the Prince George’s County business owner has used a computer and a calculation to cast reasonable doubt on the reliability of the soulless traffic enforcers.
After a judge threw out two of his tickets Wednesday, Mr. Foreman said he is confident he has exposed systemic inaccuracies in the systems that generate millions of dollars a year for town, city and county governments.
He wasn’t the only one to employ the defense Wednesday. Two other men were found not guilty of speeding offenses before a Hyattsville District judge during the same court session using the same technique.
“You’ve produced an elegant defense and I’m sufficiently doubtful,” Judge Mark T. O’Brien said to William Adams, after hearing evidence that his Subaru was traveling below the 35-mph limit - and not 50 mph as the ticket indicated.
The method?
Mr. Foreman, the owner of Eastover Auto Supply in Oxon Hill, examined dozens of citation photos of his company’s trucks that were issued along a camera-monitored stretch of Indian Head Highway his employees frequently travel.
The camera company, Optotraffic, uses a sensor that detects any vehicle exceeding the speed limit by 12 or more mph, then takes two photos of it for identification purposes. The photos are mailed to violators, along with a $40 ticket.
For each ticket, Mr. Foreman digitally superimposed the two photos - taken 0.363 seconds apart from a stationary point, according to an Optotraffic time stamp - creating a single photo with two images of the vehicle.
Using the vehicle’s length as a frame of reference, Mr. Foreman then measured its distance traveled in the elapsed time, allowing him to calculate the vehicle’s speed. In every case, he said, the vehicle was not traveling fast enough to get a ticket.
Link:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/apr/20/business-owner-casts-reasonable-doubt-on-accuracy-/?page=all
Five times and counting before three different judges, the Prince George’s County business owner has used a computer and a calculation to cast reasonable doubt on the reliability of the soulless traffic enforcers.
After a judge threw out two of his tickets Wednesday, Mr. Foreman said he is confident he has exposed systemic inaccuracies in the systems that generate millions of dollars a year for town, city and county governments.
He wasn’t the only one to employ the defense Wednesday. Two other men were found not guilty of speeding offenses before a Hyattsville District judge during the same court session using the same technique.
“You’ve produced an elegant defense and I’m sufficiently doubtful,” Judge Mark T. O’Brien said to William Adams, after hearing evidence that his Subaru was traveling below the 35-mph limit - and not 50 mph as the ticket indicated.
The method?
Mr. Foreman, the owner of Eastover Auto Supply in Oxon Hill, examined dozens of citation photos of his company’s trucks that were issued along a camera-monitored stretch of Indian Head Highway his employees frequently travel.
The camera company, Optotraffic, uses a sensor that detects any vehicle exceeding the speed limit by 12 or more mph, then takes two photos of it for identification purposes. The photos are mailed to violators, along with a $40 ticket.
For each ticket, Mr. Foreman digitally superimposed the two photos - taken 0.363 seconds apart from a stationary point, according to an Optotraffic time stamp - creating a single photo with two images of the vehicle.
Using the vehicle’s length as a frame of reference, Mr. Foreman then measured its distance traveled in the elapsed time, allowing him to calculate the vehicle’s speed. In every case, he said, the vehicle was not traveling fast enough to get a ticket.
Link:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/apr/20/business-owner-casts-reasonable-doubt-on-accuracy-/?page=all
The Las Vegas police department is accused of corruption after shooting Treven Cole.
Las Vegas police shot a black man in the face and killed him - for trying to flush a small amount of marijuana down the toilet in his apartment, the man's family says. The family says the police squad "drank alcohol on the job during the relevant time period at issue in this lawsuit."
Trevon Cole, 21, "a vibrant young man full of life and energy," who had just moved to Las Vegas with his pregnant fiancée with the "hope of starting a new life together" and playing football at UNLV was shot to death by Det. Bryan Yant on June 11, 2010, his family says in their federal complaint.
Cole was unarmed when about 11 officers raided his small, one-bedroom apartment in East Las Vegas, according to the complaint. He was watching TV with his fiancée, Sequoia Pearce, when officers destroyed the front door and "broke through a window to raid the sparsely furnished apartment."
Cole ran to the "only bathroom in the apartment and began flushing down the toilet what little marijuana he had in his possession," the complaint states.
As Cole squatted in front of the toilet, Yant kicked in the door and shot him in the side of the face with an AR-15 assault rifle, the family says.
"Cole posed no threat to Yant at any time before he was brutally killed," the complaint states.
Cole's only crime was that he had "sold an approximate total of 1.8 ounces of marijuana, over the period of a month, to undercover Det. Christopher Cannon," according to the complaint.
After the killing, Cole's family says, the defendant Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department followed its "policy, practice and custom ... to slant all investigations of officer-involved shootings in favor of the shooting officer. The goal of the investigations is to concoct excuses for 'bad shoots' instead of investigating these matters in a neutral fashion and punishing the shooting officers when appropriate."
Link: http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/04/22/36019.htm
Trevon Cole, 21, "a vibrant young man full of life and energy," who had just moved to Las Vegas with his pregnant fiancée with the "hope of starting a new life together" and playing football at UNLV was shot to death by Det. Bryan Yant on June 11, 2010, his family says in their federal complaint.
Cole was unarmed when about 11 officers raided his small, one-bedroom apartment in East Las Vegas, according to the complaint. He was watching TV with his fiancée, Sequoia Pearce, when officers destroyed the front door and "broke through a window to raid the sparsely furnished apartment."
Cole ran to the "only bathroom in the apartment and began flushing down the toilet what little marijuana he had in his possession," the complaint states.
As Cole squatted in front of the toilet, Yant kicked in the door and shot him in the side of the face with an AR-15 assault rifle, the family says.
"Cole posed no threat to Yant at any time before he was brutally killed," the complaint states.
Cole's only crime was that he had "sold an approximate total of 1.8 ounces of marijuana, over the period of a month, to undercover Det. Christopher Cannon," according to the complaint.
After the killing, Cole's family says, the defendant Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department followed its "policy, practice and custom ... to slant all investigations of officer-involved shootings in favor of the shooting officer. The goal of the investigations is to concoct excuses for 'bad shoots' instead of investigating these matters in a neutral fashion and punishing the shooting officers when appropriate."
Link: http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/04/22/36019.htm
The Ohio Association of Chiefs of Police mismanaged and misspent almost $5 million in federal grants.
An eight-month federal Homeland Security audit has confirmed that the Ohio Association of Chiefs of Police mismanaged and misspent almost $5 million in federal grants designed to develop a statewide police network to help fight terrorism and other crime.
Questionable expenses included sending 20 Ohio police officials to Turkey and more than $800,000 in bonuses paid to the executive director of the Dublin-based association.
While the Ohio Local Law Enforcement Information Sharing Network is in operation today, and has been credited with helping statewide police agencies fight crime, its cost has been questioned.
The nonprofit association received about $21 million in Law Enforcement Terrorist Prevention Program grants from 2004 to 2006. Almost a quarter of that must now be returned to the federal government, even though it has been spent.
According to the report, released to the Ohio Department of Public Safety this week, more than $4.8 million in expenditures "were unallowable because they were unrelated to the grant activity, misclassified, outside the period of performance, or not supported by receipts or invoices."
About $227,000 was improperly used to send the Ohio police officials to Turkey to learn about terrorism. More than $180,000 was misspent on slick books and brochures about the project, award plaques and lapel pins that were not related to the grant objective. And more than $800,000 was given to the association's executive director in bonuses that were "unreasonable, unallowable, and inconsistent with grant guidance," according to the federal audit.
In addition, of 832 timesheets required to verify salaries and wages during the three grant years, only 85 were documented.
Link:
http://www.dispatchpolitics.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/04/15/copy/5-million-of-terror-grant-was-misused.html?sid=101
Questionable expenses included sending 20 Ohio police officials to Turkey and more than $800,000 in bonuses paid to the executive director of the Dublin-based association.
While the Ohio Local Law Enforcement Information Sharing Network is in operation today, and has been credited with helping statewide police agencies fight crime, its cost has been questioned.
The nonprofit association received about $21 million in Law Enforcement Terrorist Prevention Program grants from 2004 to 2006. Almost a quarter of that must now be returned to the federal government, even though it has been spent.
According to the report, released to the Ohio Department of Public Safety this week, more than $4.8 million in expenditures "were unallowable because they were unrelated to the grant activity, misclassified, outside the period of performance, or not supported by receipts or invoices."
About $227,000 was improperly used to send the Ohio police officials to Turkey to learn about terrorism. More than $180,000 was misspent on slick books and brochures about the project, award plaques and lapel pins that were not related to the grant objective. And more than $800,000 was given to the association's executive director in bonuses that were "unreasonable, unallowable, and inconsistent with grant guidance," according to the federal audit.
In addition, of 832 timesheets required to verify salaries and wages during the three grant years, only 85 were documented.
Link:
http://www.dispatchpolitics.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/04/15/copy/5-million-of-terror-grant-was-misused.html?sid=101
Thieves claiming to represent Sovereign bank are using an automated dialer and recorded message to try to steal account information.
Crooks claiming to represent Sovereign Bank are using an automated dialer and recorded message to try to steal account information — calling people so randomly that they even reached Wellesley’s police chief.
“It’s a big scam,” said Chief Terry Cunningham, who got one of the calls on his private office line. The automated dialer also tried two other Wellesley Police numbers, while dispatchers got 30 to 40 complaints from locals.
Sovereign says it began hearing about the calls yesterday from customers and non-customers alike across the Northeast.
Link:
http://bostonherald.com/business/technology/general/view.bg?articleid=1332518&srvc=business&position=4
“It’s a big scam,” said Chief Terry Cunningham, who got one of the calls on his private office line. The automated dialer also tried two other Wellesley Police numbers, while dispatchers got 30 to 40 complaints from locals.
Sovereign says it began hearing about the calls yesterday from customers and non-customers alike across the Northeast.
Link:
http://bostonherald.com/business/technology/general/view.bg?articleid=1332518&srvc=business&position=4
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Identity Fraud Survey Report: Consumer Version 2011
A new report, "Identity Fraud Survey Report: Consumer Version 2011," describes some methods criminals use to obtain another person’s personal information (identity theft) for the purpose of committing identity fraud. The researchers also identity techniques to find out and stop identity theft.
Link:
http://www.thecrimereport.org/system/storage/185/cb/6/879/1103.r_2011_identity_fraud_survey_consumer_report.pdf
Link:
http://www.thecrimereport.org/system/storage/185/cb/6/879/1103.r_2011_identity_fraud_survey_consumer_report.pdf
MA- The Supreme Judicial Court ruled marijuana odor is no longer ‘reasonable suspicion’ for police.
The odor of burnt marijuana alone is not enough for police to suspect criminal activity and order a person to get out of a car, the state’s highest court ruled Tuesday, citing a state law that decriminalizes possession of small amounts of the narcotic.
The high court said a key factor in its decision was the 2008 change in state law which made possession of one ounce or less of marijuana a civil rather than a criminal offense.
"Without at least some other additional fact to bolster a reasonable suspicion of actual criminal activity, the odor of burned marijuana alone cannot reasonably provide suspicion of criminal activity to justify an exit order," the opinion said.
The court found that the new law “provides a clear directive to police departments handling violators to treat commission of this offense as noncriminal.”
The court said that there must be additional reasons for police to suspect criminal activity to justify ordering someone to get out of a car.
Massachusetts vs. Benjamin Cruz ruling:
http://www.socialaw.com/slip.htm?cid=20604
Link:
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2011/04/20/sjc-burnt-marijuana-odor-not-enough-to-suspect-criminal-activity/
The high court said a key factor in its decision was the 2008 change in state law which made possession of one ounce or less of marijuana a civil rather than a criminal offense.
"Without at least some other additional fact to bolster a reasonable suspicion of actual criminal activity, the odor of burned marijuana alone cannot reasonably provide suspicion of criminal activity to justify an exit order," the opinion said.
The court found that the new law “provides a clear directive to police departments handling violators to treat commission of this offense as noncriminal.”
The court said that there must be additional reasons for police to suspect criminal activity to justify ordering someone to get out of a car.
Massachusetts vs. Benjamin Cruz ruling:
http://www.socialaw.com/slip.htm?cid=20604
Link:
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2011/04/20/sjc-burnt-marijuana-odor-not-enough-to-suspect-criminal-activity/
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
How the dearth of social networking privacy rights revolutionized online government surveillance.
Each month, Facebook’s half billion active users disseminate over 30 billion pieces of content. In this complex digital ecosystem, they live a parallel life that, for many, involves more frequent, fulfilling, and compelling communication than any other offline or online forum. But even though Facebook users have privacy options to control who sees what content, this Article concludes that every single one of Facebook’s 133 million active users in the United States lack a reasonable expectation of privacy from government surveillance of virtually all of their online activity.
Based on Facebook’s own interpretations of federal privacy laws, a warrant is only necessary to compel disclosure of inbox and outbox messages less than 181 days old. Everything else can be obtained with subpoenas that do not even require reasonable suspicion. Accordingly, over the last six years, government agents have worked the beat by mining the treasure trove of personal and confidential information on Facebook.
But while Facebook has been justifiably criticized for its weak and shifting privacy rules, this Article demonstrates that even if it adopted the strongest and clearest policies possible, its users would still lack reasonable expectations of privacy under federal law. First, federal courts have failed to properly adapt Fourth Amendment law to the realities of Internet architecture. Since all Facebook content has been knowingly exposed to at least one third party, the Supreme Court’s current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence does not clearly stop investigators from being allowed carte blanche to fish through the entire site for incriminating evidence. Second, Congress has failed to meaningfully revise the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) for over a quarter century. Even if the ECPA were amended to cover all Facebook content, its lack of a suppression remedy would be one of several things that would keep Facebook a permanent open book. Thus, even when the government lacks reasonable suspicion of criminal activity and the user opts for the strictest privacy controls, Facebook users still cannot expect federal law to stop their private content and communications from being used against them.
This Article seeks to bring attention to this problem and rectify it. It examines Facebook’s architecture, reveals the ways in which government agencies have investigated crimes on social networking sites, and analyzes how courts have interpreted the Fourth Amendment and the ECPA. The Article concludes with an urgent proposal to revise the ECPA and reinterpret Katz before the Facebook generation accepts the Hobson’s choice it currently faces: either live life off the grid or accept that using modern communications technologies means the possibility of unwarranted government surveillance.
92 page study:
http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1771&context=plr
Link: http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=22481
Based on Facebook’s own interpretations of federal privacy laws, a warrant is only necessary to compel disclosure of inbox and outbox messages less than 181 days old. Everything else can be obtained with subpoenas that do not even require reasonable suspicion. Accordingly, over the last six years, government agents have worked the beat by mining the treasure trove of personal and confidential information on Facebook.
But while Facebook has been justifiably criticized for its weak and shifting privacy rules, this Article demonstrates that even if it adopted the strongest and clearest policies possible, its users would still lack reasonable expectations of privacy under federal law. First, federal courts have failed to properly adapt Fourth Amendment law to the realities of Internet architecture. Since all Facebook content has been knowingly exposed to at least one third party, the Supreme Court’s current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence does not clearly stop investigators from being allowed carte blanche to fish through the entire site for incriminating evidence. Second, Congress has failed to meaningfully revise the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) for over a quarter century. Even if the ECPA were amended to cover all Facebook content, its lack of a suppression remedy would be one of several things that would keep Facebook a permanent open book. Thus, even when the government lacks reasonable suspicion of criminal activity and the user opts for the strictest privacy controls, Facebook users still cannot expect federal law to stop their private content and communications from being used against them.
This Article seeks to bring attention to this problem and rectify it. It examines Facebook’s architecture, reveals the ways in which government agencies have investigated crimes on social networking sites, and analyzes how courts have interpreted the Fourth Amendment and the ECPA. The Article concludes with an urgent proposal to revise the ECPA and reinterpret Katz before the Facebook generation accepts the Hobson’s choice it currently faces: either live life off the grid or accept that using modern communications technologies means the possibility of unwarranted government surveillance.
92 page study:
http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1771&context=plr
Link: http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=22481
Does the IPhone secretly store and track your movements?
The Guardian newspaper has stirred up major buzz on the Web today with a report that two security researchers have apparently discovered that Apple's iPhone keeps track of a user's every movement and stores it on a secret file inside the device.
Moreover, writes The Guardian's Charles Arthur, the data -- which contains latitude and longitude and timestamp -- are then copied to the owner's computer when the devices are synchronized.
He says researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden have posted details on their blogs and on a website that addresses key questions.
Meanwhile, Gizmodo's Sam Biddle used the data he found on his phone to post a map that he calls "jarringly accurate" of his travels up and down the East Coast over the past year.
Biddle writes that the phone appears to rely on tower triangulation rather than GPS pinpointing, meaning it doesn't help to switch off "location services."
Links:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/04/20/apple-iphone-ipad-secretly-tracking-your-location/
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/04/is-your-iphone-keeping-track-of-your-movements-and-storing-it-in-a-secret-file/1?loc=interstitialskip
Moreover, writes The Guardian's Charles Arthur, the data -- which contains latitude and longitude and timestamp -- are then copied to the owner's computer when the devices are synchronized.
He says researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden have posted details on their blogs and on a website that addresses key questions.
Meanwhile, Gizmodo's Sam Biddle used the data he found on his phone to post a map that he calls "jarringly accurate" of his travels up and down the East Coast over the past year.
Biddle writes that the phone appears to rely on tower triangulation rather than GPS pinpointing, meaning it doesn't help to switch off "location services."
Links:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/04/20/apple-iphone-ipad-secretly-tracking-your-location/
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/04/is-your-iphone-keeping-track-of-your-movements-and-storing-it-in-a-secret-file/1?loc=interstitialskip
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
The Law Enforcement Surveillance Reporting Gap
By Christopher Soghoian, Indiana University Bloomington - Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research:
"Third party facilitated surveillance has become a routine tool for law enforcement agencies. There are likely hundreds of thousands of such requests per year. Unfortunately there are few detailed statistics documenting the use of many modern surveillance methods. As such, the true scale of law enforcement surveillance, although widespread, remains largely shielded from public view.
Prior to the widespread adoption of the Internet and mobile phones, law enforcement agencies’ use of third party facilitated electronic surveillance was largely limited to real-time interception of communications content ("wiretapping") and non-content data (through the use of "pen register" and "trap and trace" orders). In order to increase its ability to perform effective oversight, Congress mandated that annual reports be created documenting the use of these surveillance powers. These reports are intended to enable policy makers as well as the general public to determine the extent to which such surveillance methods are used, and in the words of Senator Patrick Leahy, provide a "far more reliable basis than anecdotal evidence on which to assess law enforcement needs and make sensible policy in this area."
The existing surveillance statistics might be sufficient if law enforcement agencies’ surveillance activities were limited to wiretaps and pen registers. However, over the last decade, law enforcement agencies have enthusiastically embraced many new sources of investigative and surveillance data for which there are no mandatory reporting requirements. As a result, most modern surveillance now takes place entirely off the books and the true scale of such activities, which vastly outnumber traditional wiretaps and pen registers, remains unknown.
In this article, I examine the existing electronic surveillance reporting requirements and the reports that have been created as a result. Some of these have been released to public, but many have only come to light as a result of Freedom of Information Act requests or leaks by government insiders. I also also examine several law enforcement surveillance methods for which there are no existing legally mandated surveillance reports. Finally, I propose specific legislative reporting requirements in order to enable some reasonable degree of oversight and transparency over all forms of law enforcement electronic surveillance."
Pdf. Link: http://www.thecrimereport.org/system/storage/185/61/e/873/police_socialmedia.pdf
"Third party facilitated surveillance has become a routine tool for law enforcement agencies. There are likely hundreds of thousands of such requests per year. Unfortunately there are few detailed statistics documenting the use of many modern surveillance methods. As such, the true scale of law enforcement surveillance, although widespread, remains largely shielded from public view.
Prior to the widespread adoption of the Internet and mobile phones, law enforcement agencies’ use of third party facilitated electronic surveillance was largely limited to real-time interception of communications content ("wiretapping") and non-content data (through the use of "pen register" and "trap and trace" orders). In order to increase its ability to perform effective oversight, Congress mandated that annual reports be created documenting the use of these surveillance powers. These reports are intended to enable policy makers as well as the general public to determine the extent to which such surveillance methods are used, and in the words of Senator Patrick Leahy, provide a "far more reliable basis than anecdotal evidence on which to assess law enforcement needs and make sensible policy in this area."
The existing surveillance statistics might be sufficient if law enforcement agencies’ surveillance activities were limited to wiretaps and pen registers. However, over the last decade, law enforcement agencies have enthusiastically embraced many new sources of investigative and surveillance data for which there are no mandatory reporting requirements. As a result, most modern surveillance now takes place entirely off the books and the true scale of such activities, which vastly outnumber traditional wiretaps and pen registers, remains unknown.
In this article, I examine the existing electronic surveillance reporting requirements and the reports that have been created as a result. Some of these have been released to public, but many have only come to light as a result of Freedom of Information Act requests or leaks by government insiders. I also also examine several law enforcement surveillance methods for which there are no existing legally mandated surveillance reports. Finally, I propose specific legislative reporting requirements in order to enable some reasonable degree of oversight and transparency over all forms of law enforcement electronic surveillance."
Pdf. Link: http://www.thecrimereport.org/system/storage/185/61/e/873/police_socialmedia.pdf
Monday, April 18, 2011
NY- 400 police officers accused of fixing tickets in a widening corruption scandal.
As many as 400 cops could face disciplinary charges for fixing tickets in a widening corruption scandal, The Post has learned.
Two NYPD lawyers were recently transferred from the department's legal bureau to its advocate's office, which handles departmental trials against officers, and told to expect hundreds of cases, according to a source in the unit.
"This is huge," said the source. "That's a lot of cops all in one shot. I've never heard of something like that before, this many police officers charged in one period."
"It was a systemic thing," said another source familiar with the probe.
The department will charge cops internally in all 12 Bronx precincts -- and possibly other boroughs -- for allegedly helping out friends and family by "losing" paperwork and missing court dates. In turn, parking tickets, moving violations and quality-of-life summonses would be dismissed in court or vanish before ever getting near a judge.
Officers found guilty in department trials could get fired, lose benefits, or be reprimanded or warned.
Those who tampered with documents might face criminal charges of obstruction or filing a false instrument, while cops who took money could be hit with felonies such as bribery.
Link: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/cops_in_fix_for_nixing_tix_ZNaA0TCUSn2pazk6TypEdO
Two NYPD lawyers were recently transferred from the department's legal bureau to its advocate's office, which handles departmental trials against officers, and told to expect hundreds of cases, according to a source in the unit.
"This is huge," said the source. "That's a lot of cops all in one shot. I've never heard of something like that before, this many police officers charged in one period."
"It was a systemic thing," said another source familiar with the probe.
The department will charge cops internally in all 12 Bronx precincts -- and possibly other boroughs -- for allegedly helping out friends and family by "losing" paperwork and missing court dates. In turn, parking tickets, moving violations and quality-of-life summonses would be dismissed in court or vanish before ever getting near a judge.
Officers found guilty in department trials could get fired, lose benefits, or be reprimanded or warned.
Those who tampered with documents might face criminal charges of obstruction or filing a false instrument, while cops who took money could be hit with felonies such as bribery.
Link: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/cops_in_fix_for_nixing_tix_ZNaA0TCUSn2pazk6TypEdO
The Michigan State Police are using portable devices to extract personal information from citizens smartphones.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan urged the Michigan State Police (MSP) today to release information regarding the use of portable devices which can be used to secretly extract personal information from cell phones during routine stops.
For nearly three years, the ACLU has repeatedly asked for this information through dozens of Freedom of Information Act requests, but to date it has not been provided.
“Transparency and government accountability are the bedrocks of our democracy,” said Mark P. Fancher, ACLU of Michigan Racial Justice Project staff attorney. “Through these many requests for information we have tried to establish whether these devices are being used legally. It’s telling that Michigan State Police would rather play this stalling game than respect the public’s right to know.”
Several years ago, MSP acquired portable devices that have the potential to quickly download data from cell phones without the owner of the cellphone knowing.
The ACLU of Michigan expressed concern about the possible constitutional implications of using these devices to conduct suspicionless searches without consent or a search warrant.
In August 2008, the ACLU of Michigan filed its first FOIA request to acquire records, reports and logs of actual use.
Documents provided in response confirmed the existence of these devices, but MSP claimed that the cost of retrieving and assembling the documents that disclose how five of the devices are being used is $544,680. The ACLU was then asked to pay a $272,340 deposit before the organization could receive a single document.
According to CelleBrite, the manufacturer of at least some of the devices acquired by MSP, the product can extract a wide variety of data from cellphones including contacts, text messages, deleted text messages, call history, pictures, audio and video recordings, phone details including the phone number and complete memory file dumps on some handsets.
The firm says UFED works with 3,000 cell phone models, representing 95 percent of the handset market. Coming soon, the firm says on its website: "Additional major breakthroughs, including comprehensive iPhone physical solution; Android physical support – allowing bypassing of user lock code, (Windows Phone) support, and much more." For good measure, UFEC can extract information from GPS units in most cars.
The Michigan Police Force has denied the unlawful use of a device that can extract all your cell phone information, the same technology that is embedded in many of our cell phones.
On April 20, 2011 the police released a statement outlining how its employees are supposed to use DEDs. Police must hold a search warrant, or obtain consent from the mobile device holder, before using the DED to extract mobile data. Furthermore the DEDs can only be used by "specialty teams on criminal cases, such as crimes against children," the statement read.
"The DEDs are not being used to extract citizens' personal information during routine traffic stops."
http://www.michigan.gov/msp/0,1607,7-123-1586-254783--,00.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/zd/20110421/tc_zd/263456
Cryptome released the CellBrite Cellphone Smartphone PDA Spy Guide today, April 20, 2011 (1.6MB)
http://cryptome.org/
Links:http://www.aclumich.org/issues/privacy-and-technology/2011-04/1542
Gadget gives cops quick access to cell phone data:
http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/04/20/6503253-gadget-gives-cops-quick-access-to-cell-phone-data
For nearly three years, the ACLU has repeatedly asked for this information through dozens of Freedom of Information Act requests, but to date it has not been provided.
“Transparency and government accountability are the bedrocks of our democracy,” said Mark P. Fancher, ACLU of Michigan Racial Justice Project staff attorney. “Through these many requests for information we have tried to establish whether these devices are being used legally. It’s telling that Michigan State Police would rather play this stalling game than respect the public’s right to know.”
Several years ago, MSP acquired portable devices that have the potential to quickly download data from cell phones without the owner of the cellphone knowing.
The ACLU of Michigan expressed concern about the possible constitutional implications of using these devices to conduct suspicionless searches without consent or a search warrant.
In August 2008, the ACLU of Michigan filed its first FOIA request to acquire records, reports and logs of actual use.
Documents provided in response confirmed the existence of these devices, but MSP claimed that the cost of retrieving and assembling the documents that disclose how five of the devices are being used is $544,680. The ACLU was then asked to pay a $272,340 deposit before the organization could receive a single document.
According to CelleBrite, the manufacturer of at least some of the devices acquired by MSP, the product can extract a wide variety of data from cellphones including contacts, text messages, deleted text messages, call history, pictures, audio and video recordings, phone details including the phone number and complete memory file dumps on some handsets.
The firm says UFED works with 3,000 cell phone models, representing 95 percent of the handset market. Coming soon, the firm says on its website: "Additional major breakthroughs, including comprehensive iPhone physical solution; Android physical support – allowing bypassing of user lock code, (Windows Phone) support, and much more." For good measure, UFEC can extract information from GPS units in most cars.
The Michigan Police Force has denied the unlawful use of a device that can extract all your cell phone information, the same technology that is embedded in many of our cell phones.
On April 20, 2011 the police released a statement outlining how its employees are supposed to use DEDs. Police must hold a search warrant, or obtain consent from the mobile device holder, before using the DED to extract mobile data. Furthermore the DEDs can only be used by "specialty teams on criminal cases, such as crimes against children," the statement read.
"The DEDs are not being used to extract citizens' personal information during routine traffic stops."
http://www.michigan.gov/msp/0,1607,7-123-1586-254783--,00.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/zd/20110421/tc_zd/263456
Cryptome released the CellBrite Cellphone Smartphone PDA Spy Guide today, April 20, 2011 (1.6MB)
http://cryptome.org/
Links:http://www.aclumich.org/issues/privacy-and-technology/2011-04/1542
Gadget gives cops quick access to cell phone data:
http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/04/20/6503253-gadget-gives-cops-quick-access-to-cell-phone-data
NY- A woman receiving a monthly settlement from her ex-husband, is caught bellydancing after she brags about her activities on her blog.
A Staten Island belly dancer jiggled her way out of a sweet deal with her ex-husband after he found pictures of her shaking it on the Internet, a judge ruled last week.
Dorothy McGurk won a settlement of $850 a month for life and the couple's home by convincing a court three years ago that a 1997 car accident left her too injured to work.
The payday ended when Brian McGurk went back to court after spotting a blog where his ex-wife boasted of cutting a rug and dancing "everyday for three years."
"My belly dancing is the reason why I adore myself so much," McGurk, 43, posted on the blog, including photos of herself grooving at the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, a new age gallery in Chelsea.
"Today I decided to dedicate myself more to my dance," she wrote. "Even though I dance everyday, it's not enough. It won't be enough until I dance for you all, until you feel my euphoria.
"Today as I danced myself silly, I lifted my head and elongated my neck as I swirled around," she wrote in another post. "And then it happened, I got really, really high."
Thomas Kyle, a lawyer for Brian McGurk, said the blog posts convinced Richmond County Supreme Court Judge Catherine DiDomenico the dancer was fit enough to fend for herself.
"She told outright lies," Kyle said. "If she could blog for hours, if she could dance the day away in Manhattan, then how is it she couldn't hold down a job?"
Link:
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/04/16/2011-04-16_wife_stripped_of_settlement_money_when_exhusband_sees_bellydancing_blog_that_pro.html
Dorothy McGurk won a settlement of $850 a month for life and the couple's home by convincing a court three years ago that a 1997 car accident left her too injured to work.
The payday ended when Brian McGurk went back to court after spotting a blog where his ex-wife boasted of cutting a rug and dancing "everyday for three years."
"My belly dancing is the reason why I adore myself so much," McGurk, 43, posted on the blog, including photos of herself grooving at the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, a new age gallery in Chelsea.
"Today I decided to dedicate myself more to my dance," she wrote. "Even though I dance everyday, it's not enough. It won't be enough until I dance for you all, until you feel my euphoria.
"Today as I danced myself silly, I lifted my head and elongated my neck as I swirled around," she wrote in another post. "And then it happened, I got really, really high."
Thomas Kyle, a lawyer for Brian McGurk, said the blog posts convinced Richmond County Supreme Court Judge Catherine DiDomenico the dancer was fit enough to fend for herself.
"She told outright lies," Kyle said. "If she could blog for hours, if she could dance the day away in Manhattan, then how is it she couldn't hold down a job?"
Link:
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/04/16/2011-04-16_wife_stripped_of_settlement_money_when_exhusband_sees_bellydancing_blog_that_pro.html
The Government wants to allow police to track Americans without a warrant.
The Obama administration on Friday asked the Supreme Court to take up an important privacy case for the digital age, whether the police need a warrant before using a global positioning system device to track a suspect's movements.
The administration is appealing a lower court ruling that reversed a criminal conviction because the police did not obtain a warrant for the GPS device they secretly installed on a man's car.
The federal appeals court in Washington said that officers violated the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches. Other appeals courts have ruled that search warrants aren't necessary for GPS tracking.
The Justice Department says prompt resolution of the divergent opinions is critically important to law enforcement.
Link: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20110415/D9MKC2OG0.html
The administration is appealing a lower court ruling that reversed a criminal conviction because the police did not obtain a warrant for the GPS device they secretly installed on a man's car.
The federal appeals court in Washington said that officers violated the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches. Other appeals courts have ruled that search warrants aren't necessary for GPS tracking.
The Justice Department says prompt resolution of the divergent opinions is critically important to law enforcement.
Link: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20110415/D9MKC2OG0.html
MA.- Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley finds fault with a judge who does not always believe police testimony.
Judge Raymond G. Dougan Jr. may be the most lenient judge in Boston, a prosecutor’s nightmare whose decisions are appealed by district attorneys far more often than any other judge in the Boston Municipal Court system, court records show. Appeals courts overturn his decisions the most, too, more than once including stern warnings that he should follow the law instead of his personal feelings. The 20-year-veteran judge’s reputation is so well established that one defendant predicted to police that he would go free after he went before “Judge Let Me Go’’ Dougan, according to the police report.
A Globe review of scores of cases decided by Dougan reveals a pattern of rejecting police testimony while extending second chances to criminals whose rap sheets go on for pages.
His approach sometimes backfires. Lemon, for instance, did not show up for the alcohol treatment Dougan ordered. Likewise, Dougan released a career criminal named Eric French after he was convicted of breaking into Locke-Ober restaurant in 2009, ruling that the 18 days he served awaiting trial was punishment enough. Ten weeks later, French was arrested for breaking into Locke-Ober again. This time, another judge sentenced him to 18 months in jail.
After years of frustration, Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley is mounting an extraordinary campaign to remove Dougan from criminal trials altogether. Each day when the bushy-haired, bearded Dougan takes the bench in the Edward W. Brooke Courthouse, an assistant district attorney asks him to withdraw from the case on the grounds that he cannot be fair, and each time Dougan refuses. Meanwhile, Conley is asking the Supreme Judicial Court to bar Dougan from hearing cases involving the Suffolk district attorney.
Conley has also taken the rare step of filing a complaint against Dougan with the Judicial Conduct Commission, the same panel whose lengthy investigation prompted Judge Maria Lopez to resign in 2003. At the request of the commission, which does much of its work in secret, the SJC has already appointed a special counsel, longtime government corruption investigator J. William Codinha, to investigate the bias complaints against Dougan.
Link:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/04/17/boston_judge_known_for_leniency_faces_complaint/?page=1
A Globe review of scores of cases decided by Dougan reveals a pattern of rejecting police testimony while extending second chances to criminals whose rap sheets go on for pages.
His approach sometimes backfires. Lemon, for instance, did not show up for the alcohol treatment Dougan ordered. Likewise, Dougan released a career criminal named Eric French after he was convicted of breaking into Locke-Ober restaurant in 2009, ruling that the 18 days he served awaiting trial was punishment enough. Ten weeks later, French was arrested for breaking into Locke-Ober again. This time, another judge sentenced him to 18 months in jail.
After years of frustration, Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley is mounting an extraordinary campaign to remove Dougan from criminal trials altogether. Each day when the bushy-haired, bearded Dougan takes the bench in the Edward W. Brooke Courthouse, an assistant district attorney asks him to withdraw from the case on the grounds that he cannot be fair, and each time Dougan refuses. Meanwhile, Conley is asking the Supreme Judicial Court to bar Dougan from hearing cases involving the Suffolk district attorney.
Conley has also taken the rare step of filing a complaint against Dougan with the Judicial Conduct Commission, the same panel whose lengthy investigation prompted Judge Maria Lopez to resign in 2003. At the request of the commission, which does much of its work in secret, the SJC has already appointed a special counsel, longtime government corruption investigator J. William Codinha, to investigate the bias complaints against Dougan.
Link:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/04/17/boston_judge_known_for_leniency_faces_complaint/?page=1
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Iowa police covering up racial profiling.
A police department accused of racially profiling Latinos has reached a settlement with the Iowa Civil Rights Commission. In exchange for agreeing to several policy changes, the identity of the police force is not being made public.
According to a news release issued Wednesday by the commission, the investigation stemmed from an informal complaint alleging an officer routinely made traffic stops based on the national origin of the registered owner or driver of a car.
According to the person who made the informal complaint, the officer's actions constituted a pattern of behavior that resulted in a disproportionately higher number of stops, citations, and arrests for Hispanics. The police department denied all allegations in the complaint.
The commission identifies the police department only as being located in a town with approximately 4,000 residents in an Iowa county with a high Latino population.
"The settlement reached by the parties ensures that there will be no racial profiling in this jurisdiction and the officers will receive training regarding racial profiling to help them avoid situations that cause the public to question their objectivity," said Beth Townsend, executive director of Iowa Civil Rights Commission.
Link: http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/04/14/iowa.racial.profiling/
According to a news release issued Wednesday by the commission, the investigation stemmed from an informal complaint alleging an officer routinely made traffic stops based on the national origin of the registered owner or driver of a car.
According to the person who made the informal complaint, the officer's actions constituted a pattern of behavior that resulted in a disproportionately higher number of stops, citations, and arrests for Hispanics. The police department denied all allegations in the complaint.
The commission identifies the police department only as being located in a town with approximately 4,000 residents in an Iowa county with a high Latino population.
"The settlement reached by the parties ensures that there will be no racial profiling in this jurisdiction and the officers will receive training regarding racial profiling to help them avoid situations that cause the public to question their objectivity," said Beth Townsend, executive director of Iowa Civil Rights Commission.
Link: http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/04/14/iowa.racial.profiling/
Friday, April 15, 2011
With little oversight law enforcement requests to read peoples emails, Facebook accounts etc. is on the rise.
Law enforcement organizations are making tens of thousands of requests for private electronic information from companies such as Sprint, Facebook and AOL, but few detailed statistics are available, according to a privacy researcher.
Police and other agencies have "enthusiastically embraced" asking for e-mail, instant messages and mobile-phone location data, but there's no U.S. federal law that requires the reporting of requests for stored communications data, wrote Christopher Soghoian, a doctoral candidate at the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University, in a newly published paper.
"Unfortunately, there are no reporting requirements for the modern surveillance methods that make up the majority of law enforcement requests to service providers and telephone companies," Soghoian wrote. "As such, this surveillance largely occurs off the books, with no way for Congress or the general public to know the true scale of such activities."
That's in contrast to traditional wiretaps and "pen registers," which record non-content data around a particular communication, such as the number dialed or e-mail address that a communication was sent to. The U.S. Congress mandates that it should receive reports on these requests, which are compiled by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Soghoian wrote.
If law enforcement wants to intercept e-mail or instant messages in real-time, they are required to report it. Since 1997, federal law enforcement has requested real-time intercepts only 67 times, with state law enforcement agents obtaining 54 intercept orders.
Soghoian found through his research that law enforcement agencies requested more than 30,000 wiretaps between 1987 and 2009. But the scale of requests for stored communications appears to be much greater. Citing a New York Times story from 2006, Soghoian wrote that AOL was receiving 1,000 requests per month.
In 2009, Facebook told the news magazine Newsweek that it received 10 to 20 requests from police per day. Sprint received so many requests from law enforcement for mobile-phone location information that it overwhelmed its 110-person electronic surveillance team. It then set up a Web interface to give police direct access to users' location data, which was used more than 8 million times in one year, Soghoian wrote, citing a U.S. Court of Appeals judge.
Those sample figures indicate the real total number of requests is likely much, much higher, since U.S. law does not require reporting and companies are reluctant to voluntarily release the data.
"The reason for this widespread secrecy appears to be a fear that such information may scare users and give them reason to fear that their private information is not safe," Soghoian wrote.
Link:
http://www.techworld.com.au/article/382991/us_police_increasingly_peeping_e-mail_instant_messages/
Police and other agencies have "enthusiastically embraced" asking for e-mail, instant messages and mobile-phone location data, but there's no U.S. federal law that requires the reporting of requests for stored communications data, wrote Christopher Soghoian, a doctoral candidate at the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University, in a newly published paper.
"Unfortunately, there are no reporting requirements for the modern surveillance methods that make up the majority of law enforcement requests to service providers and telephone companies," Soghoian wrote. "As such, this surveillance largely occurs off the books, with no way for Congress or the general public to know the true scale of such activities."
That's in contrast to traditional wiretaps and "pen registers," which record non-content data around a particular communication, such as the number dialed or e-mail address that a communication was sent to. The U.S. Congress mandates that it should receive reports on these requests, which are compiled by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Soghoian wrote.
If law enforcement wants to intercept e-mail or instant messages in real-time, they are required to report it. Since 1997, federal law enforcement has requested real-time intercepts only 67 times, with state law enforcement agents obtaining 54 intercept orders.
Soghoian found through his research that law enforcement agencies requested more than 30,000 wiretaps between 1987 and 2009. But the scale of requests for stored communications appears to be much greater. Citing a New York Times story from 2006, Soghoian wrote that AOL was receiving 1,000 requests per month.
In 2009, Facebook told the news magazine Newsweek that it received 10 to 20 requests from police per day. Sprint received so many requests from law enforcement for mobile-phone location information that it overwhelmed its 110-person electronic surveillance team. It then set up a Web interface to give police direct access to users' location data, which was used more than 8 million times in one year, Soghoian wrote, citing a U.S. Court of Appeals judge.
Those sample figures indicate the real total number of requests is likely much, much higher, since U.S. law does not require reporting and companies are reluctant to voluntarily release the data.
"The reason for this widespread secrecy appears to be a fear that such information may scare users and give them reason to fear that their private information is not safe," Soghoian wrote.
Link:
http://www.techworld.com.au/article/382991/us_police_increasingly_peeping_e-mail_instant_messages/
Kentucky residents are being encouraged by Homeland Security to spy on their neighbors with the introduction of a new IPhone app.
Kentucky isn’t the first place you’d expect to see suspicious behavior, but instances of domestic terrorism such as the Oklahoma City bombing are a reminder that criminal activities aren’t confined to high-profile cities.
With vigilance in mind, the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security (KOHS) recently released an iPhone app that mirrors the “Eyes and Ears on Kentucky” website for reporting “suspicious activity.”
The KOHS worked with a team from Kentucky.gov — Kentucky’s official website — to launch the Eyes and Ears on Kentucky Web portal and app. Funding for the portal was supplied by a $10,000 state homeland security grant; the app was built for free.
Kentucky isn’t the first government to launch an app for reporting suspicious activity. In 2010, Dallas launched a smartphone app called “iWatch Dallas” for citizens to report crimes as well as suspicious behavior that could possibly be linked to terrorism.
Not everyone feels suspicious activity reporting is effective. A 2010 report from the American Civil Liberties Union claims that suspicious activity reporting (SAR) programs can lead to submissions of many common activities, such as a person who looks through binoculars, takes pictures or draws diagrams. “SAR programs increase the probability that innocent people will be stopped by police and have their personal information collected for inclusion in law enforcement and intelligence databases,” the ACLU report said.
Link:
http://www.govtech.com/public-safety/Suspicious-Activity-Reporting-Mobile-in-Kentucky.html
With vigilance in mind, the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security (KOHS) recently released an iPhone app that mirrors the “Eyes and Ears on Kentucky” website for reporting “suspicious activity.”
The KOHS worked with a team from Kentucky.gov — Kentucky’s official website — to launch the Eyes and Ears on Kentucky Web portal and app. Funding for the portal was supplied by a $10,000 state homeland security grant; the app was built for free.
Kentucky isn’t the first government to launch an app for reporting suspicious activity. In 2010, Dallas launched a smartphone app called “iWatch Dallas” for citizens to report crimes as well as suspicious behavior that could possibly be linked to terrorism.
Not everyone feels suspicious activity reporting is effective. A 2010 report from the American Civil Liberties Union claims that suspicious activity reporting (SAR) programs can lead to submissions of many common activities, such as a person who looks through binoculars, takes pictures or draws diagrams. “SAR programs increase the probability that innocent people will be stopped by police and have their personal information collected for inclusion in law enforcement and intelligence databases,” the ACLU report said.
Link:
http://www.govtech.com/public-safety/Suspicious-Activity-Reporting-Mobile-in-Kentucky.html
The founder and treasurer of the National Association of Special Police and Security Officers was charged with mail fraud.
The founder and treasurer of the National Association of Special Police and Security Officers (NASPSO) was charged on Friday with mail fraud, theft from a labor organization, obstruction of justice, criminal contempt and various record keeping offenses related to his operation of a pension plan for NASPSO members.
NASPSO is a labor union representing private security officers contracted by the General Services Administration (GSA) to be assigned to protect federal buildings in the Washington, D.C., metro area.
Caleb Gray-Burriss, 60, of Washington, D.C., will be arraigned on April 4, 2011, in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Gray-Burriss originally was charged in June 2010 with four counts of mail fraud.
According to the superseding indictment, from approximately June 2004 through February 2011, Gray-Burriss wrote numerous checks to himself or to other third parties from the checking account where he had placed funds intended for the NASPSO pension plan. The superseding indictment alleges that Gray-Burriss spent more than $100,000 of the pension plan funds in this way, while at the same time falsely maintaining that it was an operational fund that he was properly administering and that was providing benefits to the beneficiaries.
Link: http://www.examiner.com/public-safety-in-national/police-security-union-founder-indicted-washington-dc
NASPSO is a labor union representing private security officers contracted by the General Services Administration (GSA) to be assigned to protect federal buildings in the Washington, D.C., metro area.
Caleb Gray-Burriss, 60, of Washington, D.C., will be arraigned on April 4, 2011, in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Gray-Burriss originally was charged in June 2010 with four counts of mail fraud.
According to the superseding indictment, from approximately June 2004 through February 2011, Gray-Burriss wrote numerous checks to himself or to other third parties from the checking account where he had placed funds intended for the NASPSO pension plan. The superseding indictment alleges that Gray-Burriss spent more than $100,000 of the pension plan funds in this way, while at the same time falsely maintaining that it was an operational fund that he was properly administering and that was providing benefits to the beneficiaries.
Link: http://www.examiner.com/public-safety-in-national/police-security-union-founder-indicted-washington-dc
Police posting comments on Facebook etc. can be a double edged sword.
Officer Trey Economidy of the Albuquerque police now realizes that he should have thought harder before listing his occupation on his Facebook profile as “human waste disposal.”
After he was involved in a fatal on-duty shooting in February, a local television station dug up the Facebook page. Officer Economidy was placed on desk duty, and last month the Albuquerque Police Department announced a new policy to govern officers’ use of social networking sites.
Social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter can be valuable assets for law enforcement agencies, helping them alert the public, seek information about crimes and gather evidence about the backgrounds of criminal suspects. But the Internet can also get police departments into trouble.
Public gaffes like Officer Economidy’s — his cynical job description on Facebook was “extremely inappropriate and a lapse in judgment on my part,” he said last week in an e-mail — are only one of the risks. A careless posting on a networking site, law enforcement experts say, can endanger an officer’s safety, as it did in Santa Monica, Calif., last year when the Police Department went to great lengths to conceal a wounded officer’s identity and location, only to have a retired officer inadvertently reveal them on Facebook.
And defense lawyers increasingly scour social networking sites for evidence that could impeach a police officer’s testimony. In one case in New York, a jury dismissed a weapons charge against a defendant after learning that the arresting officer had listed his mood on MySpace as “devious” and wrote on Facebook that he was watching the film “Training Day” to “brush up on proper police procedure.”
In an Arkansas case, a federal appeals court cited as evidence of a police officer’s character photos he posted on MySpace showing him pointing a gun at the camera, flanked by a skull and the legend “the PUNISHER.”
The problem is serious enough that departments across the country are scrambling to develop rules to govern what officers can and cannot do online.
“This is something that all the police chiefs around the country, if you’re not dealing with it, you better deal with it,” said Mark A. Marshall, chief of police in Smithfield, Va., and the president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, which has developed its own model policy.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/us/07police.html
After he was involved in a fatal on-duty shooting in February, a local television station dug up the Facebook page. Officer Economidy was placed on desk duty, and last month the Albuquerque Police Department announced a new policy to govern officers’ use of social networking sites.
Social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter can be valuable assets for law enforcement agencies, helping them alert the public, seek information about crimes and gather evidence about the backgrounds of criminal suspects. But the Internet can also get police departments into trouble.
Public gaffes like Officer Economidy’s — his cynical job description on Facebook was “extremely inappropriate and a lapse in judgment on my part,” he said last week in an e-mail — are only one of the risks. A careless posting on a networking site, law enforcement experts say, can endanger an officer’s safety, as it did in Santa Monica, Calif., last year when the Police Department went to great lengths to conceal a wounded officer’s identity and location, only to have a retired officer inadvertently reveal them on Facebook.
And defense lawyers increasingly scour social networking sites for evidence that could impeach a police officer’s testimony. In one case in New York, a jury dismissed a weapons charge against a defendant after learning that the arresting officer had listed his mood on MySpace as “devious” and wrote on Facebook that he was watching the film “Training Day” to “brush up on proper police procedure.”
In an Arkansas case, a federal appeals court cited as evidence of a police officer’s character photos he posted on MySpace showing him pointing a gun at the camera, flanked by a skull and the legend “the PUNISHER.”
The problem is serious enough that departments across the country are scrambling to develop rules to govern what officers can and cannot do online.
“This is something that all the police chiefs around the country, if you’re not dealing with it, you better deal with it,” said Mark A. Marshall, chief of police in Smithfield, Va., and the president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, which has developed its own model policy.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/us/07police.html
Miami police chief, Miguel Exposito says his police like to hunt: “Our guys were proactively going out there, like predators.”
The video, shot with a hand-held camera, shows brawny Miami police officers breaking down doors and hauling handcuffed African-American suspects off some of the city’s toughest streets. “We hunt,” one officer says in the five-and-a-half-minute clip. “I like to hunt.”
But it was not a source of embarrassment for Miami’s police chief, Miguel A. Exposito. The video was part of a reality television pilot, “Miami’s Finest SOS,” a project with the enthusiastic backing of Chief Exposito. “Our guys were proactively going out there, like predators,” he says during his cameo in the video, which surfaced online in January.
The officer who shot Mr. McNeil is Reinaldo Goyo, a member of the city’s elite gang unit who appeared in the “Miami’s Finest SOS” video. (The TV show has since been shelved.)
Saying on the video: “I’ve got some style. I’ve got some flavor” while wearing a hoodie emblazoned with the words “The Punisher,” Detective Goyo says he and his partner inherited the nicknames Crockett and Tubbs after the lead characters in the 1980s TV show “Miami Vice.” “It’s got a nice little ring to it,” he says.
Detective Goyo would not comment, a police spokesman said. A lawyer for Detective Goyo did not respond to phone messages.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/us/23miami.html
But it was not a source of embarrassment for Miami’s police chief, Miguel A. Exposito. The video was part of a reality television pilot, “Miami’s Finest SOS,” a project with the enthusiastic backing of Chief Exposito. “Our guys were proactively going out there, like predators,” he says during his cameo in the video, which surfaced online in January.
The officer who shot Mr. McNeil is Reinaldo Goyo, a member of the city’s elite gang unit who appeared in the “Miami’s Finest SOS” video. (The TV show has since been shelved.)
Saying on the video: “I’ve got some style. I’ve got some flavor” while wearing a hoodie emblazoned with the words “The Punisher,” Detective Goyo says he and his partner inherited the nicknames Crockett and Tubbs after the lead characters in the 1980s TV show “Miami Vice.” “It’s got a nice little ring to it,” he says.
Detective Goyo would not comment, a police spokesman said. A lawyer for Detective Goyo did not respond to phone messages.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/us/23miami.html
Clerk-magistrates, with lifetime tenure and no mandatory retirement age, rule the roost in Massachusetts courthouses.
Ronald Arruda is the clerk-magistrate of the Bristol Juvenile Court, which is a little like saying he is the king of his court.
He was appointed to the job by former Gov. Edward King in 1982 and, while six governors have come and gone since then, Arruda hasn’t budged. The 66-year-old clerk-magistrate can keep earning his $110,000-a-year salary as long as he wants because the job is the only one in state government that comes with lifetime job security and no mandatory retirement age. Some of his fellow clerks work into their 80s; some even into their 90s.
Arruda’s 20-person kingdom may be small, but he has practically absolute control over it. Arruda, who has six assistants, has used that power to hire into assistant clerk positions Angelo Ligotti, the son of Hingham District Court clerk-magistrate Joseph Ligotti, and Susan Correia, the daughter of former House majority leader and Fall River mayor Robert Correia. He also hired Mark Tobin, the son of longtime Quincy District Court clerk-magistrate Arthur Tobin, who has since transferred to Norfolk Juvenile Court in his hometown of Quincy.
Arruda says it’s “just a coincidence” that he hired relatives of fellow clerks and politicians. A former probation officer himself, Arruda says there is no similarity between the situation at his office and the widespread patronage hiring at the Probation Department that has spawned numerous task forces and law enforcement investigations. “There is no problem here,” he says. “We don’t have that situation like they do in Probation.”
Yet there are remarkable similarities between the oversight of Probation and the clerk-magistrate offices across the state. At Probation, the Legislature in 2001 gave the commissioner exclusive authority to hire, fire, assign, and discipline within the Probation Department, which employs 2,000 people. Less well known is the fact that the Legislature at the same time took away from judges the power to hire assistant clerks at the court and gave that authority to the 82 clerk-magistrates. The clerk-magistrates now have the power to convey lifetime job security on their 400 assistant clerks. They also oversee thousands of other clerical staff.
“It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever,” says Linda Carlisle, a former member of the Court Management Advisory Board, which advises judges on the best way to operate the court system. “There’s virtually no way whatsoever to get them out of the office…They have, pretty much, little fiefdoms.”
The keys to these kingdoms tend to go to politically connected people. Despite an increase in the judicial powers given to clerks, there is no requirement that a clerk-magistrate or the assistants have a law degree—or any college degree, for that matter.
Link:
http://www.commonwealthmagazine.org/Investigations/Investigative-Reports/2011/Spring/Reigning-supreme.aspx
He was appointed to the job by former Gov. Edward King in 1982 and, while six governors have come and gone since then, Arruda hasn’t budged. The 66-year-old clerk-magistrate can keep earning his $110,000-a-year salary as long as he wants because the job is the only one in state government that comes with lifetime job security and no mandatory retirement age. Some of his fellow clerks work into their 80s; some even into their 90s.
Arruda’s 20-person kingdom may be small, but he has practically absolute control over it. Arruda, who has six assistants, has used that power to hire into assistant clerk positions Angelo Ligotti, the son of Hingham District Court clerk-magistrate Joseph Ligotti, and Susan Correia, the daughter of former House majority leader and Fall River mayor Robert Correia. He also hired Mark Tobin, the son of longtime Quincy District Court clerk-magistrate Arthur Tobin, who has since transferred to Norfolk Juvenile Court in his hometown of Quincy.
Arruda says it’s “just a coincidence” that he hired relatives of fellow clerks and politicians. A former probation officer himself, Arruda says there is no similarity between the situation at his office and the widespread patronage hiring at the Probation Department that has spawned numerous task forces and law enforcement investigations. “There is no problem here,” he says. “We don’t have that situation like they do in Probation.”
Yet there are remarkable similarities between the oversight of Probation and the clerk-magistrate offices across the state. At Probation, the Legislature in 2001 gave the commissioner exclusive authority to hire, fire, assign, and discipline within the Probation Department, which employs 2,000 people. Less well known is the fact that the Legislature at the same time took away from judges the power to hire assistant clerks at the court and gave that authority to the 82 clerk-magistrates. The clerk-magistrates now have the power to convey lifetime job security on their 400 assistant clerks. They also oversee thousands of other clerical staff.
“It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever,” says Linda Carlisle, a former member of the Court Management Advisory Board, which advises judges on the best way to operate the court system. “There’s virtually no way whatsoever to get them out of the office…They have, pretty much, little fiefdoms.”
The keys to these kingdoms tend to go to politically connected people. Despite an increase in the judicial powers given to clerks, there is no requirement that a clerk-magistrate or the assistants have a law degree—or any college degree, for that matter.
Link:
http://www.commonwealthmagazine.org/Investigations/Investigative-Reports/2011/Spring/Reigning-supreme.aspx
Thursday, April 14, 2011
MA. House Budget 2012 CPCS reccomendations.
Governor Patrick FY2012 House 1 Budget Recommendation:
Issues in Brief
Deval L. Patrick, Governor
Timothy P. Murray, Lt. Governor
The Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) is a judicial branch agency in the Commonwealth that is responsible for providing criminal defense, as well as certain civil defense matters pertaining to Children and Family Law, for indigent persons. Individuals who are charged with committing a crime and who are determined to not have resources available to obtain legal representation may be deemed indigent and appointed an attorney by a judge. These cases are assigned to CPCS and most cases are handled and represented by contracted attorneys called Private Bar Advocates (PBA). There are over 3,000 contracted private bar advocates who defend 90% of the Committee's annual case load and bill the Commonwealth at an hourly rate for this service. This heavy reliance on contracted employees to handle the majority of cases assigned to the Committee continues to place significant budgetary pressures on the Commonwealth.
The constitutional right to an attorney was codified into law in 1963 by United States Supreme Court ruling in Gideon V. Wainwright,requiring state courts, under the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution, to provide counsel in criminal cases for defendants who are unable to afford their own attorneys. States provide this service in a variety of ways, and while Massachusetts provides quality service to indigent persons, the system is very costly. Only 6 other states in the nation have a similar government structure, by providing this service within the judicial branch. 28 other states have executive agencies that manage the delivery of public defense services; allowing transparency and accountability to the officials who manage the indigent defense services.
Legal defense expenses for criminal and certain civil cases for indigent persons have been increasing in recent years. The fiscal year 2011 total cost is projected to be over $207 million which is a $21 million increase since fiscal year 2007 and over $100 million increase since 2003. This increase over 2007 is mainly due to the increases in the hourly billing that is done by the private bar advocates who represent 90% of the annual indigent case load. This significant increase since 2003 is also in part a result of the Lavallee ruling that determined the compensation to private advocates and public defenders was inadequate, resulting in hourly billing rate increases across the system. The cost of the current CPCS system continues to rise even while the private bar advocate's cases load declined 6.5% from fiscal year 2008 to fiscal year 2010 and the public division caseload declined slightly from fiscal year 2009-2010 by 1.7%. In addition, the disparity between the amounts of funds spent on the actual state agency versus the private bar advocates is expanding. In fiscal year 2011 the agency will spend $32 million and there is a need of over $162 million for the private bar advocates’ cost. The chart below displays the total expenditures by the Committee from fiscal year 2005 to projected fiscal year 2011:
CPCS ANNUAL FISCAL YEAR FUNDING
2010: $199,590,001
2011: $207,975,173
The Governor’s H.1 budget recommendation includes a reform proposal that will change the current CPCS system. This proposal reflects the legal defense structure comparable to that of the majority of states in the nation.
Governance Structure:
CPCS is currently governed by a 15 member board, who are all appointed by the Supreme Judicial Court. All Committee board members are lawyers and are exempted from restrictions that prevent them from billing their own agency as private bar advocates; in fact four sitting board members billed nearly $250,000 in aggregate in fiscal year 2011. Also, in fiscal year 2010 more than half of the private bar advocates billed the Committee more than the average salary of a CPCS staff attorney. This current CPCS governance structure lacks incentives to reform the system, and has not moved aggressively to adopt cost-savings reforms that proposed shifting funding from private bar advocates to the public division staff attorneys.
The Governor’s H.1 budget proposal includes language that would abolish this board, and create a new independent executive branch agency called the Department of Public Counsel Services. In addition, the director of this new agency will be appointed by the Governor.
Other states have more accountability for their public defender departments by either publicly electing their Chief Public Defender (similarly to District Attorneys) or having this position appointed by the Governor. This reform increases transparency and accountability within the department by having the manager of this department who, through an appointment, must respond to the Governor. It reflects a structure that is comparable to the majority of states that deliver indigent legal defense, either as an executive agency or by having executive influence in the appointment of the Chief Counsels or Executive Directors.
Government Structure # States
States with Judicial Branch Agencies 6 CO; CT; ID; MA; NC; OR
States with Executive Branch Agencies 17 AK; DE; HI; IW; KS; KY; MO; MT; NJ; NM; NV; NH; OK; RI; VT; WV; WI; WY
States with Executive Oversight 11 AR; CA; GA; IN; MD; ME; MN; ND; OH; SC; TX; VA; WA
States with Local/County Control 13 AL; AZ ; FL; IL; LA; MI; MS; NE; NY; PA; SD; TN; UT
Staffing Structure:
Due to the large size of the CPCS private division, oversight of billing accuracy and case management becomes increasingly challenging due to available staffing and resources. The Governor’s H.1 proposal recommends that the Commonwealth move away from a system that relies on contract private advocates and the hourly billing model to a system that is served by 100% salaried public defenders. This will require the Commonwealth to hire hundreds of salaried public defenders which will create tens of millions of dollars in savings in the system, by moving away from hourly billing costs, to known and predictable costs. However, the savings are clear and this will allow for stable budgets and eliminate the need for enhanced internal controls over a billing system that currently handles over 3,000 individuals submitting bills for thousands of different legal cases.
By using national case load standards it was determined that current CPCS staff attorneys continue, on average, to have comparatively reduced caseloads. By conservatively applying the National Legal Aid Defender Association's maximum case load standards it was determined that by eliminating all private bar advocates approximately 1,000 additional staff attorneys would be required to handle the current case load. The savings estimate also factors in other costs including state benefits, retirement, over head, such as additional management, support staff, and other costs associated with operating the agency.
Indigency Verification:
The determination of eligibility is currently being performed by the Probation department, which the Governor is proposing to transfer to a new Executive Branch agency. This process will now be managed by the new Department of Public Counsel Services which will enhance and tighten the eligibility determination process. Only those that are eligible should be receiving services from the state, and there are significant concerns about the rigor of the current eligibility determination process. By increasing the controls of the eligibility determination and re-determination process, it is expected that the department’s case load will decrease and the fee collections from people deemed "able to contribute" to the assignment of their counsel will increase.
Conclusion:
The H.1 recommendation will generate savings by moving to a CPCS structure that hires state staff public defenders to represent 100% of the indigent caseload and discontinuing, except in conflict cases, the practice of contracting with private bar advocates. In addition, this proposal will also eliminate the CPCS board and make CPCS an independent executive branch agency and will enhance the indigency eligibility determination process that is currently inadequate.
Issues in Brief
Deval L. Patrick, Governor
Timothy P. Murray, Lt. Governor
The Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) is a judicial branch agency in the Commonwealth that is responsible for providing criminal defense, as well as certain civil defense matters pertaining to Children and Family Law, for indigent persons. Individuals who are charged with committing a crime and who are determined to not have resources available to obtain legal representation may be deemed indigent and appointed an attorney by a judge. These cases are assigned to CPCS and most cases are handled and represented by contracted attorneys called Private Bar Advocates (PBA). There are over 3,000 contracted private bar advocates who defend 90% of the Committee's annual case load and bill the Commonwealth at an hourly rate for this service. This heavy reliance on contracted employees to handle the majority of cases assigned to the Committee continues to place significant budgetary pressures on the Commonwealth.
The constitutional right to an attorney was codified into law in 1963 by United States Supreme Court ruling in Gideon V. Wainwright,requiring state courts, under the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution, to provide counsel in criminal cases for defendants who are unable to afford their own attorneys. States provide this service in a variety of ways, and while Massachusetts provides quality service to indigent persons, the system is very costly. Only 6 other states in the nation have a similar government structure, by providing this service within the judicial branch. 28 other states have executive agencies that manage the delivery of public defense services; allowing transparency and accountability to the officials who manage the indigent defense services.
Legal defense expenses for criminal and certain civil cases for indigent persons have been increasing in recent years. The fiscal year 2011 total cost is projected to be over $207 million which is a $21 million increase since fiscal year 2007 and over $100 million increase since 2003. This increase over 2007 is mainly due to the increases in the hourly billing that is done by the private bar advocates who represent 90% of the annual indigent case load. This significant increase since 2003 is also in part a result of the Lavallee ruling that determined the compensation to private advocates and public defenders was inadequate, resulting in hourly billing rate increases across the system. The cost of the current CPCS system continues to rise even while the private bar advocate's cases load declined 6.5% from fiscal year 2008 to fiscal year 2010 and the public division caseload declined slightly from fiscal year 2009-2010 by 1.7%. In addition, the disparity between the amounts of funds spent on the actual state agency versus the private bar advocates is expanding. In fiscal year 2011 the agency will spend $32 million and there is a need of over $162 million for the private bar advocates’ cost. The chart below displays the total expenditures by the Committee from fiscal year 2005 to projected fiscal year 2011:
CPCS ANNUAL FISCAL YEAR FUNDING
2010: $199,590,001
2011: $207,975,173
The Governor’s H.1 budget recommendation includes a reform proposal that will change the current CPCS system. This proposal reflects the legal defense structure comparable to that of the majority of states in the nation.
Governance Structure:
CPCS is currently governed by a 15 member board, who are all appointed by the Supreme Judicial Court. All Committee board members are lawyers and are exempted from restrictions that prevent them from billing their own agency as private bar advocates; in fact four sitting board members billed nearly $250,000 in aggregate in fiscal year 2011. Also, in fiscal year 2010 more than half of the private bar advocates billed the Committee more than the average salary of a CPCS staff attorney. This current CPCS governance structure lacks incentives to reform the system, and has not moved aggressively to adopt cost-savings reforms that proposed shifting funding from private bar advocates to the public division staff attorneys.
The Governor’s H.1 budget proposal includes language that would abolish this board, and create a new independent executive branch agency called the Department of Public Counsel Services. In addition, the director of this new agency will be appointed by the Governor.
Other states have more accountability for their public defender departments by either publicly electing their Chief Public Defender (similarly to District Attorneys) or having this position appointed by the Governor. This reform increases transparency and accountability within the department by having the manager of this department who, through an appointment, must respond to the Governor. It reflects a structure that is comparable to the majority of states that deliver indigent legal defense, either as an executive agency or by having executive influence in the appointment of the Chief Counsels or Executive Directors.
Government Structure # States
States with Judicial Branch Agencies 6 CO; CT; ID; MA; NC; OR
States with Executive Branch Agencies 17 AK; DE; HI; IW; KS; KY; MO; MT; NJ; NM; NV; NH; OK; RI; VT; WV; WI; WY
States with Executive Oversight 11 AR; CA; GA; IN; MD; ME; MN; ND; OH; SC; TX; VA; WA
States with Local/County Control 13 AL; AZ ; FL; IL; LA; MI; MS; NE; NY; PA; SD; TN; UT
Staffing Structure:
Due to the large size of the CPCS private division, oversight of billing accuracy and case management becomes increasingly challenging due to available staffing and resources. The Governor’s H.1 proposal recommends that the Commonwealth move away from a system that relies on contract private advocates and the hourly billing model to a system that is served by 100% salaried public defenders. This will require the Commonwealth to hire hundreds of salaried public defenders which will create tens of millions of dollars in savings in the system, by moving away from hourly billing costs, to known and predictable costs. However, the savings are clear and this will allow for stable budgets and eliminate the need for enhanced internal controls over a billing system that currently handles over 3,000 individuals submitting bills for thousands of different legal cases.
By using national case load standards it was determined that current CPCS staff attorneys continue, on average, to have comparatively reduced caseloads. By conservatively applying the National Legal Aid Defender Association's maximum case load standards it was determined that by eliminating all private bar advocates approximately 1,000 additional staff attorneys would be required to handle the current case load. The savings estimate also factors in other costs including state benefits, retirement, over head, such as additional management, support staff, and other costs associated with operating the agency.
Indigency Verification:
The determination of eligibility is currently being performed by the Probation department, which the Governor is proposing to transfer to a new Executive Branch agency. This process will now be managed by the new Department of Public Counsel Services which will enhance and tighten the eligibility determination process. Only those that are eligible should be receiving services from the state, and there are significant concerns about the rigor of the current eligibility determination process. By increasing the controls of the eligibility determination and re-determination process, it is expected that the department’s case load will decrease and the fee collections from people deemed "able to contribute" to the assignment of their counsel will increase.
Conclusion:
The H.1 recommendation will generate savings by moving to a CPCS structure that hires state staff public defenders to represent 100% of the indigent caseload and discontinuing, except in conflict cases, the practice of contracting with private bar advocates. In addition, this proposal will also eliminate the CPCS board and make CPCS an independent executive branch agency and will enhance the indigency eligibility determination process that is currently inadequate.
TinEye is a reverse image search engine, a useful tool for searching Facebook images etc.
TinEye is a reverse image search engine. You can submit an image to TinEye to find out where it came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or to find higher resolution versions.
TinEye is the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks. It is free to use for non-commercial searching.
TinEye regularly crawls the web for new images, and we also accept contributions of complete online image collections. To date, TinEye has indexed 1,953,157,319 images from the web to help you find what you're looking for.
Our goal with TinEye is to connect images and information and to make sure that images can be attributed to their creator. If you are managing a large image collection, get in touch to have your image collection added to TinEye. This makes it easier for the original image authors to be found.
Link: http://www.tineye.com/
TinEye is the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks. It is free to use for non-commercial searching.
TinEye regularly crawls the web for new images, and we also accept contributions of complete online image collections. To date, TinEye has indexed 1,953,157,319 images from the web to help you find what you're looking for.
Our goal with TinEye is to connect images and information and to make sure that images can be attributed to their creator. If you are managing a large image collection, get in touch to have your image collection added to TinEye. This makes it easier for the original image authors to be found.
Link: http://www.tineye.com/
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
San Francisco wants to require people to show ID's if they attend a place of entertainment with a 100+ person capacity.
The San Francisco Entertainment Commission was scheduled Tuesday to consider a proposal that would mandate ID scans for every person entering a "place of entertainment" attended by more than 100 people -- a move that immediately sparked the fears of civil libertarians, who saw it as yet another encroachment of a creeping "police state" culture.
The commission said it would take up the proposal at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday evening, at their typical meeting place in San Francisco's City Hall.
The proposal before members would also mandate that cameras be placed in event halls where they can be clearly seen by attendees. The systems would also need to be freely accessible to local, state and federal law enforcement on demand.
The rules make no mention of safeguards to protect the privacy of event patrons. They would instead require that scanned IDs and video footage from the venues shall be kept for "no less than 15 days" -- meaning, they would be able to keep the information forever.
The Electronic Frontiers Foundation, a San Francisco-based privacy non-profit, warned that the rules would ultimately change the city's culture and infringe on Americans' civil liberties.
"Scanning the ID’s of all attendees at an anti-war rally, a gay night club, or a fundraiser for a civil liberties organization would have a deeply chilling effect on speech," they cautioned in a Monday advisory. "Participants might hesitate to attend such events if their attendance were noted, stored, and made available on request to government authorities.
A direct pipeline of personal information to the police also invites systemic abuses. The proposed rule would allow police to make a wholesale request for information every fifteen days, creating their own internal database of which individuals visit which particular venues and how often. The last time SFPD created an intelligence unit, a court disbanded it to stop multiple documented abuses.
"This would transform the politically and culturally tolerant environment for which San Francisco is famous into a police state."
Links:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/04/12/san-francisco-considers-requiring-id-scans-for-most-public-events/
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/04/eff-san-francisco-entertainment-commission-don-t
The commission said it would take up the proposal at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday evening, at their typical meeting place in San Francisco's City Hall.
The proposal before members would also mandate that cameras be placed in event halls where they can be clearly seen by attendees. The systems would also need to be freely accessible to local, state and federal law enforcement on demand.
The rules make no mention of safeguards to protect the privacy of event patrons. They would instead require that scanned IDs and video footage from the venues shall be kept for "no less than 15 days" -- meaning, they would be able to keep the information forever.
The Electronic Frontiers Foundation, a San Francisco-based privacy non-profit, warned that the rules would ultimately change the city's culture and infringe on Americans' civil liberties.
"Scanning the ID’s of all attendees at an anti-war rally, a gay night club, or a fundraiser for a civil liberties organization would have a deeply chilling effect on speech," they cautioned in a Monday advisory. "Participants might hesitate to attend such events if their attendance were noted, stored, and made available on request to government authorities.
A direct pipeline of personal information to the police also invites systemic abuses. The proposed rule would allow police to make a wholesale request for information every fifteen days, creating their own internal database of which individuals visit which particular venues and how often. The last time SFPD created an intelligence unit, a court disbanded it to stop multiple documented abuses.
"This would transform the politically and culturally tolerant environment for which San Francisco is famous into a police state."
Links:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/04/12/san-francisco-considers-requiring-id-scans-for-most-public-events/
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/04/eff-san-francisco-entertainment-commission-don-t
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Connecticut bill would allow citizens to videotape police without fear of arrest.
Connecticut is considering a bill that would make any police officer "who interferes with a person taking a photographic or digital still or video image" of a police officer performing his or her duties liable for damages, provided the citizen did not obstruct or hinder the police officer's performance. It appears to be the first time such a bill has been considered by a state legislature.
The bill's introduction is in response to two incidents in the state within the past few years. In March 2009, an East Haven police officer arrested a priest for taping the officer's questioning of a store owner. Last October, numerous Yale University students were threatened, and some arrested, by New Haven police for taking photographs during a club raid.
If the is passed and signed into law, Connecticut would be the first state to enact a law to explicitly recognize the rights of citizens to record police actions and make police liable for violating that right.
David McGuire, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, explained that the ACLU is interested in "memorializing people's right to record the police under the First Amendment."
McGuire noted the recent police activities that encouraged the creation of this bill. "Common sense shows it's going to continue to be an issue because of the prevalence of cell phones with cameras and their ability to upload things to the Internet quickly," he said.
The ACLU of Illinois is challenging a recent federal court ruling that the First Amendment does not guarantee a right to record police officers engaged in their public duties and, as such, use of the Illinois Eavesdropping Act to arrest citizens recording police activity is not unconstitutional. The case, ACLU v. Alvarez, has been appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago (7th Cir.) and is one of many to legally challenge the criminalization of citizen recordings of police conduct.
Connecticut Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney, D-New Haven, who introduced the bill and testified in its favor, could not be reached for comment; nor could a representative of the Connecticut Police Chiefs Association, an organization opposed to the bill.
Connecticut Bill: Link:http://www.rcfp.org/newsitems/docs/20110411_110844_conn_bill.pdf
Link: http://www.rcfp.org/newsitems/index.php?i=11815
The bill's introduction is in response to two incidents in the state within the past few years. In March 2009, an East Haven police officer arrested a priest for taping the officer's questioning of a store owner. Last October, numerous Yale University students were threatened, and some arrested, by New Haven police for taking photographs during a club raid.
If the is passed and signed into law, Connecticut would be the first state to enact a law to explicitly recognize the rights of citizens to record police actions and make police liable for violating that right.
David McGuire, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, explained that the ACLU is interested in "memorializing people's right to record the police under the First Amendment."
McGuire noted the recent police activities that encouraged the creation of this bill. "Common sense shows it's going to continue to be an issue because of the prevalence of cell phones with cameras and their ability to upload things to the Internet quickly," he said.
The ACLU of Illinois is challenging a recent federal court ruling that the First Amendment does not guarantee a right to record police officers engaged in their public duties and, as such, use of the Illinois Eavesdropping Act to arrest citizens recording police activity is not unconstitutional. The case, ACLU v. Alvarez, has been appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago (7th Cir.) and is one of many to legally challenge the criminalization of citizen recordings of police conduct.
Connecticut Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney, D-New Haven, who introduced the bill and testified in its favor, could not be reached for comment; nor could a representative of the Connecticut Police Chiefs Association, an organization opposed to the bill.
Connecticut Bill: Link:http://www.rcfp.org/newsitems/docs/20110411_110844_conn_bill.pdf
Link: http://www.rcfp.org/newsitems/index.php?i=11815
Is buying fake ID's for your "service animal" a growing trend?
Owners and trainers of service dogs are increasingly angry at pet owners who pass their animals off as service dogs by using phony credentials.
The imposters go to the Internet to buy vests, ID cards and certificates for their dogs. The deception allows their pets to live in restricted housing, accompany them into restaurants and hotels or fly free in airplane cabins rather than in cargo holds.
“I don’t want to say it’s a scam, but it is a scam,” said Nick Kutsukos, 72, who runs the Elite K9 Academy in Jupiter and has trained service dogs for 40 years.
People who fake a disability and/or pretend their pet is a service animal risk at least a fine or, in extreme cases, federal fraud charges.
Getting certification is as easy as filling out a form online, sending in your money and perhaps a photograph of your dog.
You can pay from $20 to $300. An owner gets a specially marked dog vest or collar, dog identification tags or ID cards, a certificate, training DVDs, information CDs and other official-looking items.
Link:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/10/2161121/some-pet-owners-get-fake-ids-for.html
The imposters go to the Internet to buy vests, ID cards and certificates for their dogs. The deception allows their pets to live in restricted housing, accompany them into restaurants and hotels or fly free in airplane cabins rather than in cargo holds.
“I don’t want to say it’s a scam, but it is a scam,” said Nick Kutsukos, 72, who runs the Elite K9 Academy in Jupiter and has trained service dogs for 40 years.
People who fake a disability and/or pretend their pet is a service animal risk at least a fine or, in extreme cases, federal fraud charges.
Getting certification is as easy as filling out a form online, sending in your money and perhaps a photograph of your dog.
You can pay from $20 to $300. An owner gets a specially marked dog vest or collar, dog identification tags or ID cards, a certificate, training DVDs, information CDs and other official-looking items.
Link:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/10/2161121/some-pet-owners-get-fake-ids-for.html
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