Shameless British police arrest people who blew the whistle on them

Three whistleblowers have been arrested after details of chauffeur- driven journeys taken by a newly-elected police tsar were leaked to the Press.

Cumbria Police’s decision to launch a probe into the exposure of the £700 trips – made by its Police and Crime Commissioner Richard Rhodes – has provoked a major political row.

Last night two police staff and another man were arrested as part of the inquiry into ‘disclosure of personal information’. Another police worker was suspended after agreeing to a voluntary interview.

The investigation began after Mr Rhodes’ office responded to the publishing of his expenses bill for two trips in a Mercedes by ‘raising concerns’ with police.

Last night MPs queued up to protest that the arrests stifled freedom of speech and set a ‘dangerous precedent’.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said the police had been ‘heavy-handed’ and that whistleblowers should be protected.

South Lakes MP Tim Farron added: ‘It is wrong to seek to silence whistleblowers in this case. Details of the expenses of public officials ought to be publicly available anyway, we shouldn’t have to rely on leaks to find these things out.

‘This information was in the public interest. Most councils publish this information on a regular basis so why not the police commissioner? To arrest these staff members is high-handed, a threat to free speech and a very dangerous precedent.’

The row over Mr Rhodes’ expenses began last week when the Cumberland and Westmorland Herald published details of the trips made by him in a hired Mercedes with a driver.

In one, Mr Rhodes and his wife travelled 25 miles for a dinner with the Archbishop of York at a hotel. Mr Rhodes, a churchwarden, billed the public £313 for the journey, which was not listed among his official engagements.

The second journey from his office in Penrith to another hotel, the Pheasant Inn at Bassenthwaite Lake, covered 28 miles in each direction and cost taxpayers £385.

The retired headmaster – who is paid £65,000 as commissioner – paid back the money after the newspaper exposed his expenses.

His staff also said he had used a car and driver for ‘personal safety reasons’ because of his long hours and the practice had now ceased.

However Cumbria Police then visited the newspaper’s editor, Colin Maughan, to ask for information and documents. He declined to pass either to officers, and yesterday said he thought officers had been on a ‘fishing expedition’.

On Wednesday it was revealed that police had been arresting suspected whistleblowers. A 47-year-old man and a woman, 50, were arrested on April 10. Yesterday a 54-year-old man who is not a police employee was arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice.

Another police staff member, a 59-year-old man, was suspended after a voluntary interview. Mr Rhodes confirmed yesterday that his office had made a complaint to police about the leak.

The veteran local magistrate, who won his post as Tory candidate in November’s elections, said: ‘Nothing more than concerns were raised by my office to the constabulary and a criminal investigation was not requested.’

He added that he had now asked for an investigation into the ‘scale and nature’ of the probe.

The affair raises a number of questions over freedom of speech and disclosure of information that have become sensitive in the wake of Lord Justice Leveson’s recommendations for Press regulation.

Barrow and Furness Labour MP John Woodcock said: ‘The public rightly demand full transparency on the expenses of elected officials and will be alarmed to hear about these arrests.

‘To maintain public trust, Richard Rhodes needs to make clear he had no conversations whatsoever with officers about the handling of this issue and explain why these claims apparently had to be brought to light by a whistleblower.’

Cumbria police said last night: ‘These arrests form part of an ongoing investigation which was launched after police received concerns that confidential information was leaked to the media relating to the Police and Crime Commissioner.

‘Initial concerns were raised by a member of staff within the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner after a member of the local media approached the OPCC for a comment on a story.

‘Cumbria Constabulary has internal whistleblowing policies and processes that support officers and staff who want to raise legitimate issues or concerns in a lawful and appropriate way.’

The affair is the second row in a week over attempts by police to put pressure on local papers.

Sergeant Paul Beale of Hampshire Police phoned staff at the New Milton Advertiser to say that 80-year-old councillor Goff Beck was ‘not happy’ with a story.

Days later he visited the newsroom and said the councillor was dissatisfied that the paper had ‘raked over previous stuff’. His actions were condemned by MPs and freedom of speech campaigners.

Original report here




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TX: DNA testing bill hopes to end wrongful conviction

DNA testing of defendants prior to trial may soon be required if Senate bill 1292 gets passed.

SB 1292 was recently written and introduced by Democratic Senator Rodney Ellis (TX, District 13). SB 1292 requires the DNA testing of defendants who are accused of committing certain capital cases prior to being tried, in an attempt to avoid wrongful conviction.

Currently, the bill has support from both parties—written by a democrat and approved by the republican attorney general.

According to the Director of the Sam Houston State University Student Legal & Mediation Services, Ralph Roberts Jr., support from both ends of the spectrum gives the bill a good chance of becoming a law.

“The fundamental purpose of our criminal justice system is to seek justice,” Roberts said. “If this bill provides prosecutors and defense attorneys with a tool that can be used to make sure that justice is being served—that is, only the guilty are convicted—then I cannot think of a reason why this bill should not be passed, especially given the bipartisan support it is recieving.”

According to Roberts, this bill is not just an option, but it is a vital necessity to upholding the integrity of the United States criminal justice system.

“The death penalty is the only punishment that, if a mistake is made, nothing can be done to make the wrongfully accused whole,” he said. “That’s why the attorneys in death penalty-eligible cases have to meet stringent criteria and why the court system makes every effort to review these convictions in the appellate process. The sponsors of the bill say that it will help to make sure that those who are guilty of crimes are convicted and that the innocent are not subject to deprivation of their liberty.”

According to Roberts, although the passage of this bill will affect the entire country, it will also present the community of Huntsville, as well as SHSU, with a unique opportunity to continue its leadership in the Texas criminal justice system.

“If this bill becomes law, I suspect that we will need individuals who are uniquely trained to test and make conclusions about DNA and other biological evidence,” Roberts said. “The state will need these individuals, as will defense counsel. I believe that Sam Houston will continue to lead the state in training individuals who will have the education, training and insight to make sure that our criminal justice system not only seeks justice, but is just.”

Assistant Professor of the philosophy dept. Diana Buccafurni-Huber said she is still undecided about her vote on this bill due to some vagueness it holds.

“This bill seems to be motivated by good intentions,” she said. “Conviction of the innocent is certainly something we want to avoid. However, it is not clear that the crimes for which the bill is proposed are the kinds of crimes for which DNA ought to be required—such as forgery. But, if conviction of the innocent is something we want to avoid, then I suppose it can be the case that DNA samples are justified.”

Although she agrees that DNA testing is a reliable resource, Buccafurni-Huber said she is not so keen to claim its applicability to all crimes.

“I think requiring DNA evidence is certainly required for criminal homicide like capital murder,” Buccafurni-Huber said. “I think such evidence is better in terms of quality versus some of the other evidence that is called upon—evidence that has shown to be unreliable such as false confessions and mistaken eyewitness testimonies. Expanding the scope of crimes for which DNA is required, though, I am not yet convinced is justified.”

Thirty-five of the 50 states allow capital punishment with Texas being the leader in death penalty executions with 492. According to The Bureau of Justice Statistics, a total of 1,226 executions have occurred in the U.S. since 1976. Additionally, 130 people have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence.

Roberts said with the advances in science and technology today, the justice system has an obligation to its citizens to use these tools to their full-advantage.

“We now have the technology to test biological samples that are found at crime scenes, and just as fingerprints were once new science, but generally speaking widely accepted today, I think that DNA testing will be widely accepted, if it’s not already,” Roberts said.

Not only will the bill help in preserving the innocence of those who truly are guilt-free, but according to Roberts, if passed, it may also save time and money, the average cost of a death penalty case is $2.4 million according to the Bureau of Justice.

“This bill may also help save the court system from costly and time-consuming appeals because DNA testing will take place early in the justice process and not as an appeal point later in the process,” he said. “But most importantly, it can help to increase the likelihood that the guilty are punished and the innocent are free.”

However perfect this bill may seem, Roberts said there are also a few concerns it raises.

“One item that needs to be carefully examined is the quality and integrity of the DNA testing labs,” Roberts said. “Unfortunately, we’ve heard several stories recently of labs where tests were either falsified or not undertaken. We need to make sure that processes are in place so that Texas doesn’t experience what’s recently happened in Massachusetts.”

Original report here




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Australia: Victoria police hiding behind secrecy to cover up their failings

TRIPLE-0 emergency call data used to help expose under-reporting of violent crimes by Victoria Police is now being hidden from the public.

The Herald Sun revealed last year that police were sent to 25,000 more assaults in Melbourne and Geelong by triple-0 dispatchers in 2010-11 than were recorded in Victoria Police crime figures.

When fresh data was sought by the Herald Sun, the Emergency Services Telecommunication Authority, which operates the system, said information on incidents that police were sent to, including assaults, brawls, domestic arguments and neighbourhood disputes, could no longer be released.

Police Minister Kim Wells promised new laws to end the secrecy after being contacted by the Herald Sun.

The State Ombudsman had repeatedly urged the force to make greater use of triple-0 data since finding in 2009 that police had abused recording procedures to improve crime clearance rates.

CEO Ken Shymanski said ESTA recognised the legitimacy of the public interest in the information and "would prefer to have a capacity to share generalised information about call-taking and dispatch", but had been advised this was no longer possible.

Mr Shymanski said ESTA had sought legal guidance as to its obligations late last year following an information request from a member of the public. He said that advice cast doubt on the legality of past releases.

"In short, ESTA must not publicly release 'any information' relating to calls received or messages communicated by the authority in the course of providing emergency services."

ESTA declined to release the legal advice.

Mr Wells said the secrecy was an unintended consequence of strict privacy provisions included in the ESTA Act when it was introduced by the former Labor government in 2004. "We will amend the legislation to strike a better balance between the public's right to know how the service is performing and the need to protect the privacy of Victorians who have used the ESTA service."

In February, Victoria Police said it would launch an external review of the way it collected data on assaults after the Herald Sun revealed the Australian Bureau of Statistics' victim survey had put the number of assaults in Victoria in 2011-12 at 588,600 - 14 times the 42,076 recorded by police.

Original report here. (Via Australian police news)




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British cop who tried to intimidate local paper for criticising a councillor

A police sergeant has been accused of attempting to censor stories in a local newspaper about a ‘controversial’ town councillor.

Paul Beale challenged the weekly paper over its ‘editorial policy’ after the councillor was upset by a critical article. The officer telephoned the newspaper and later visited its offices where he spoke to an editor about its style of reporting.

Bob Satchwell, executive director of the Society of Editors, said the incident was a direct consequence of the Leveson Inquiry into Press standards.

He said: ‘It’s outrageous that a police sergeant should think it is part of his role to question the editorial policy of a newspaper. But is not surprising given the attitude of some politicians and police to the Press. Since the Leveson Inquiry, people think it is fair game to try to interfere with legitimate reporting by newspapers.’

The New Milton Advertiser described Tory councillor Goff Beck as ‘controversial’ and revealed he had been accused of making homophobic remarks to an openly gay colleague. It also said he had been reprimanded for bullying a female councillor.

Mr Beale, of Hampshire Police, initially telephoned staff at the newspaper to say Mr Beck, 80, was ‘not happy’ with the article, adding: ‘To be fair, he has got a point.’

Days later he visited the newsroom and said the councillor was dissatisfied that the story had ‘raked over previous stuff’.

Mr Beale told the newspaper he did not want to be made out as a ‘guardian’ to Councillor Beck but added: ‘He feels his credibility as a person of good standing is being undermined.’

But the actions of the police officer were condemned last night.

Conservative MP Conor Burns, a member of the Commons culture select committee, said: ‘It’s not the role of the police to take it upon themselves to question editors of newspapers about any particular line they take in a story. To do so steps way beyond the legitimate role of the police.’

Padraig Reidy, of the freedom of speech campaign group Index on Censorship, said: ‘It’s not the sort of thing that should happen in any democratic country. It’s political policing.’ Mr Satchwell added: ‘Hopefully, before it’s too late, people at the top of politics and policing will wake up to what is happening in what is supposed to be one of the most revered democratic countries in the world.’

The New Milton Advertiser ran the article about Mr Beck, who was also a member of the Hampshire Police and Crime Panel, last October. It didn’t complain about the approach by Mr Beale at the time but a resident subsequently raised the issue with the police.

John Caine, 53, a software engineer from New Milton, has been involved in a dispute with Mr Beck over a planning issue. He said: ‘You don’t expect the police to get involved in what appears in newspapers. It is more akin to a fascist or communist regime.’

Hampshire Police said Mr Beale has since been given ‘suitable advice’ by a senior officer for his ‘poorly judged comments’ and ‘perceived lack of neutrality’. A spokesman for the New Milton Advertiser and Lymington Times said: ‘Clearly the police must be seen to be independent and free from any suggestions of favourable treatment for certain people.’

Mr Beck has since stood down from his role as chairman of New Milton Town Council’s amenities committee. It came after half of the 18-strong Tory council signed a motion in a bid to force him to resign from the authority. They claim his previous behaviour had brought the council into disrepute

Original report here




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Another powder-puff cop in Brtitain

A policewoman sued her own force for nearly £5,000 after cutting her thumb while cleaning up a cannabis factory.

Kerry Ann Taylor, 34, won £4,837 by successfully arguing Hampshire Police breached its duty as an employer by exposing her to fumes and failing to provide thick gloves. The WPC injured herself when she tried to open a window and put her hand through it.

Fumes from cannabis plants in the property had made her feel ill and she wanted to let in some fresh air.

It cost the force £145,000 in legal costs to take the case to London’s Court of Appeal this week in a battle to ­overturn the ruling, the Sunday Mirror reported today.

WPC Taylor’s lawyer Andrew Roy, urged the court to uphold the 2008 verdict because the flat-turned-drug factory in Southsea, Hampshire, was 'dangerous premises' with a foreseeable risk of injury. He told the appeal judges: 'The only protective equipment provided was thin latex gloves.

'There was limited ventilation and her case, accepted by the judge, was she was suffering the effects of inhaling ­cannabis fumes. 'There was cannabis drying out and the place was a nest of wires.'

Geoffrey Weddell, for the police force, told the judges: 'WPC Taylor had simply not been ­allocated any task that required the provision of thick gloves.

'It is absurd to suggest the Chief Constable ought to have provided such gloves.'

And Lord Justice Elias said: 'She was pulling out cannabis plants. There were no sharp edges involved at that time. There is no obligation on the Chief Constable (to provide thick gloves) at that point.'

Mr Roy argued that Hampshire Police’s own guidance at the time said officers entering cannabis factories should in fact be ­provided with body armour.

But Judge Elias said officers 'don’t need body armour' for going in to clean up a cannabis factory.

Judge David Blunt QC made the original ruling against then Chief Constable Alex Marshall at ­Winchester Crown Court in 2008.

The court reserved judgement until a later date in the case of WPC Taylor who is still with Hampshire Police.

A Police Federation spokeswoman told MailOnline: 'I can confirm that the matter is with the Court of Appeal. 'Whilst we await the judgement it would not be appropriate to comment further.'

The appeal came as it was revealed last week that a police officer was paid £10,000 compensation after falling off a chair on London Underground premises.

Details of the award to the British Transport Police officer were released after it emerged Norfolk Police officer Kelly Jones is suing a petrol station owner for £50,000 because she allegedly tripped while responding to a 999 call.

Original report here




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Married British cop 'had sex with girlfriend in police van and used national database to track women he wanted to chase'

A married police constable had sex with his girlfriend in a police van and used the police national computer to track three women to chase, a jury heard today.

Twice-married Pc Matthew Fisher, 37, allegedly spent four years coaxing sexual favours from five different women through his role as a police officer, sometimes refusing to take no for an answer, Hull Crown Court heard.

He would make flirting remarks, grab their hands and place them on his genitals, and try to look down their top while on pay from North Yorkshire Police, it is alleged.

He met two women by offering them lifts home in a police van.

Prosecutors claim he looked up the mobile numbers on police databases for three women when he had no professional reason to do so.

Fisher, of Selby, is accused of four charges of sexual assault, one charge of attempted rape and a charge of misconduct in public office by accessing the police national computer and using a police radio for personal communication. He denies the charges.

He has admitted two charges of misconduct in public office.

One relates to having sexual contact in a police van outside of Selby Bus Station.

The other relates to having consensual sexual contact with woman he met in while she was on a night out and he gave her a lift home in a police van.

Crown barrister Simon Waley told the jury the allegations arose from his work as a police officer in the Selby area and had spiraled from two to four complaints when girls read he had been charged, but some of the sexual contact was consensual.

Mr Waley said Fisher would meet the women as victims of crime or patrolling and befriend them before beginning to flirt and offer his sexual services - usually in their own homes.

'He has targeted women he wished to have sexual contact with and in some instances has tracked down their personal details using police information systems,' said Mr Waley.

With others he forced his sexual intentions on them, confident in the belief that they wouldn't bring themselves to report him - for example that they had been the victim of an offence that he was there to assist them with or that they had criminal records which made them think that they would never be believed over a police officer or simply that they were drunk, the court heard.

'In each instance he was content to take advantage of those vulnerabilities.'

Mr Waley said the first woman would tell the jury she was dependent on heroin and Pc Fisher had gone to a shared flat where she had been drinking to ask her to turn down music.

She said he took her home, drunk in his police car and when they reached her address he started some flirtatious conversation

He grabbed her hand to his manhood the woman said she swore at him pulled her hand away and made to get out the car.

'He asked her not to tell anyone and that he was getting engaged soon,' said Mr Waley.

The second woman called him to help her after being assaulted by her partner. She said he asked her to demonstrate how she was assaulted.

She said Fisher had said: 'You're not wearing any knickers.' She commented she did not think that was very professional.

She said he make an excuse to use her toilet and came out into her bedroom with his trousers undone.

She told police he grabbed her, pushing her on to a bed, trying to kiss her.

'She was asking him what he was doing and telling him to stop,' said Mr Waley.

He told the court Fisher tried to make her perform a sex act after taking off his protective vest.

Eventually he gave up and said to her: 'I know things about you, so you're not going to tell on me are you?'

Mr Waley said the third woman they would hear from needed police help, after her son was involved in an incident.

He made repeated home visits on duty. 'He often made sexual comments to her and she describes him pulling at her top and looking down at her breasts on more than one occasion,' said Mr Waley.

'She said on one occasion Pc Fisher gave her a lift home in a police van and sat of her sofa before unzipping his trousers. She asked him what he was doing as there were children in the house.'

She said on a further occasion he had arrived at her home when she was putting make up on ready to go out when he backed her into a kitchen corner.

'He put one hand onto her upper body and with his other hand he took hers and placed it on his groin,' said Mr Waley.

'She pulled her hand away but she had foundation on her hand which left a mark on his trousers.'

Mr Waley said the fourth complainant met Fisher on a night out in Selby when he when he pulled up in a police van and offered her a lift home.

She was happy to go along with it and gave him her phone number and when they got to her house he kissed her. He used his police radio to call her and Mr Waley said the pair had consensual sexual contact one or two weeks later.

'You should not he has pleaded guilty to misconduct in public office to reflect the fact in the course of his duties he called on this lady to have sexual contact.'

Mr Waley said in total Pc Fisher made 52 attempts to contact her using both is police radio and personal mobile.

Mr Waley said in March last year Fisher was interviewed about the allegations made by two women and in prepared statement denied he assaulted them in anyway.

Enquires were made into Pc Fisher's use of police systems and his personal contacts. Mr Waley said Fisher accessed a police data base for three women - obtaining their personal mobiles and then calling them.

'One has given a statement in which she says that Pc Fisher had admitted he had 'taken the liberty of looking her up' with respect to her number and car details.

Mr Waley said Fisher first struck up a relationship with this fifth women he met in a supermarket and had consensual sexual contact with her in a police van outside Selby Bus Station.

He said: 'Matthew Fisher has entered a guilty plea to misconduct in public office with having sex in a police van.'

Mr Waley said in interview Pc Fisher accepted he had carried out checks, but could not recall details of those checks.

When interviewed about the other two women he accepted knowing one as a victim of crime and attended her house on police business, but denied any sexual remarks or misconduct

Instead he said she behaved flirtatiously to him exposing herself and asking him when they would have sexual relations.

Original report here




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Scotland Yard sergeant resigns in disgrace over Thatcher tweets in which he hoped her death was 'degrading and painful'

A serving police officer who sent a series of sickening tweets about the death of Margaret Thatcher has today resigned from his job at Scotland Yard.

Sergeant Jeremy Scott said he hoped the former prime minister’s death at the age of 87 was ‘painful and degrading’.

The 52-year-old Metropolitan Police officer also suggested the world would be a ‘better place’ if David Cameron, too, were dead.

Scotland Yard said today: 'The officer concerned, today submitted his resignation and it was accepted with immediate effect.'

However a spokesman said he would be 'receiving his full pension at an appropriate time' but refused to give further details of the amount involved.

Met Commander Allan Gibson added: 'This officer's behaviour was completely unacceptable and it is right that he has resigned.'

Writing on Twitter, Sgt Scott questioned whether a flypast would ‘bomb’ Lady Thatcher’s coffin and said her passing was ‘87 years too late’.

He said: ‘Goodnight Twitter. The world is a better place today now that c*** is dead. Now for Cameron, May and Osborne.’

The comments of the police officer, sworn to uphold the law, mark a new low in the bitter hate campaign ahead of Lady Thatcher’s funeral.

Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe had been under growing pressure to suspend the officer last night, but it appears Scott quit before he was sacked.

Tory MP Iain Stewart, who represents Sgt Scott’s constituency of Milton Keynes South, said he was ‘absolutely disgusted’ by the comments.

He said: ‘I will be writing to Sir Bernard and asking him to investigate this further.’

The Met has shown no mercy to other staff caught abusing social networking sites, with seven sacked in the past five years. A further eight resigned or retired after complaints.

Sgt Scott, who earns up to £45,000 in a back office role, sparked an internal inquiry when he contacted senior officers within hours of being confronted by the Daily Mail.

However, asked at his £300,000 home in Milton Keynes if he regretted his comments, he did not apologise. Instead he said: ‘I have about as much remorse as she did.’

A Mail investigation identified Sgt Scott as being responsible for an outspoken anonymous Twitter account called ‘ThinBlueSpeck’.

He used the site to fuel dissent against government reforms of the police service and criticise his superiors.

He advertised his comments as mainly about ‘punk, sex, bad politics and good policing’, adding they are ‘very sweary at times so be ****ing warned’.

A short time after the announcement of Lady Thatcher’s death, he commented: ‘I hope it was painful and degrading’ before labelling her the ‘architect of the hole that is Britain today’.

After lawless outbursts across Britain, the next day he wrote: ‘Marvellous stuff! Margaret Thatcher’s death greeted with street parties in Brixton and Glasgow.’

He later added: ‘Not sure why we should show respect for someone who showed utter contempt for the vast majority of this country.’

He signed off that message with the word ‘dingdong’, a reference to the campaign to make the song Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead number one in the music charts.

In a further disturbing twist, we can reveal that Sgt Scott is also responsible for a second Twitter account called ‘GovernmentThug’. On it, he described himself as a ‘pleb and proud’ – a reference to the Andrew Mitchell affair.

In one series of messages about Home Secretary Theresa May, he described strangling her, digging out her heart with a dagger and sexually assaulting her.

He added: ‘After all she’s screwing us and giving nothing back so it’s only fair I do the same.’

At his home, he smiled when confronted with the evidence of his online messages. Wearing a rock band T-shirt and jeans, he refused to answer further questions, adding: ‘I really don’t want to talk about it.’

On his MySpace page, Sgt Scott lists his status as ‘swinger’ and occupation as ‘pig’. Under interests, he wrote: ‘Sex, music, wine and sex. Preferably together, usually apart.’

Original report here




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Dual Personalities Emerge in Wrongful Conviction Cases

Jonathan "Flip" Moore had already served almost a dozen years for murder when he suddenly got help from an unexpected source. Two cops with the same department that had arrested Moore began re-investigating his case in 2011 based on a tip from a confidential informant. Moore was innocent, the informant told detectives John Munn and Darrell Moore from Aurora, a blue collar town about 40 miles southwest of Chicago.

The Woodward and Bernstein of law enforcement relentlessly pursued "Deep Throat's" lead, interviewing old witnesses and finding new ones. The Aurora PD eventually involved the Kane County State's Attorney's Office, and together they reached a painful conclusion: fellow police and prosecutors had convicted the wrong man.

On March 6, 2012, Moore was brought to a Kane County courtroom in shackles, clueless about why he was there, only to hear State's Attorney Joseph McMahon move to vacate his conviction. A couple of hours later, the 30-year-old Moore was enjoying pizza with his lawyers and an uncle. Thanks to law enforcement, his nightmare was over.

Amid the ensuing fanfare, Officers Munn and Moore were named the Aurora Police Department's 2012 Co-Employees of the Year. "Your actions were courageous and heroic," Police Chief Greg Thomas said at a ceremony honoring the officers. "Innocent individuals serving time in prison is wrong. You took it upon yourselves to correct the situation," Thomas added.

But the feel-good story had a brief shelf life that ended when a man named Jonathan Grayson presented a distinctly different picture of the Aurora PD. In a federal civil rights lawsuit filed last month, Grayson accused eight Aurora cops of pinning a murder on him by coercing witnesses and concealing evidence. The cops allegedly had let the actual killers slip through their fingers by interviewing them near the scene, but failed to pursue the lead. These actions were part of "a routine practice of the Aurora Police Department to pursue wrongful convictions through profoundly flawed investigations and coerced evidence," Grayson's suit claimed.

A spokesperson for the Department declined to comment on the lawsuit, but it's not hard to guess what the cops were saying privately: No good deed goes unpunished. You see, Jonathan Grayson was the inmate formerly known as Jonathan Moore. (Despite changing his surname, Grayson retained "Flip," a nickname given by his mother.)

Grayson's attorney, Jon Loevy, cushioned the legal blow by noting that the detectives who'd locked up Moore were different than the duo that freed Grayson. "By no means are we condemning the entire Police Department." Loevy insisted.

If you're confused by the dual personalities and role reversals in the Moore/Grayson controversy, better get used to it. Law enforcement agencies across the country are increasingly reviewing old cases and proudly reporting their mistakes. Prosecutors have launched conviction integrity units in San Jose, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Lake County (IL), Manhattan and Brooklyn.

The Brooklyn unit was responsible for the high-profile exoneration last month of David Ranta in the rabbi slaying case, noteworthy also because the prosecutor who initiated the review was personally involved in Ranta's unjust conviction. In Dallas, reform-minded DA Craig Watkins exonerated 19 prisoners between 2007 and 2011, more than doubling the county's entire total for the previous two decades.

In 2012, law enforcement was actively involved in 34 exonerations, according to a recently updated report by researchers at the University of Michigan and Northwestern University. For the first time since the researchers began tracking exonerations in 1989, a majority (54 percent) of the innocent prisoners cleared last year benefited from the active cooperation of police and prosecutors. That compares to an average of 20-30 percent in most of the preceding 24 years.

This trend "may reflect a change in climate, a growing recognition by prosecutors and other law enforcement officers that false convictions are a serious problem that they need to address," the researchers concluded.

Of course, as in Jonathan Grayson's case, admitting mistakes can trigger collateral consequences. A number of exonerations have led to federal civil rights suits against law enforcement, and questions have been raised about the motives behind "Do-Over Squads". In the Brooklyn case, for example, some have alleged that D.A. Charles Hynes freed Ranta for political reasons, while in Cook County, State's Attorney Anita Alvarez has been accused of running a unit that is purely window dressing.

But State's Attorney Joseph McMahon cut to the heart of the issue when he decided to free Grayson. "It's about justice, not a conviction," said Kane County's top lawman.

As for Grayson's future, he returned to Aurora after his release, but trouble seems to follow him. Shortly before he filed suit, he was arrested by Aurora cops (not Munn and Moore) and charged with two counts of felony aggravated battery.

Did he do it? Perhaps the justice system will get it right the first time around.

Original report here




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Gulf War hero traces wife's stolen iPhone... but British police are 'too busy' to arrest thief

Useless yet again. Speech crimes are all they are interested in

Gulf War hostage John Nichol has condemned police for failing to confront the thief who stole his wife's iPhone – despite being told exactly where it is.

The £500 phone's tracking software instantly revealed its location and the former RAF Tornado navigator passed the information to detectives.

But they were apparently 'too busy' to retrieve the phone. Instead, they bombarded Mr Nichol and his wife with phone calls asking them to fill in forms and offering victim support.

Yesterday Mr Nichol, 48, who was shot down during the 1991 Gulf War, held prisoner and paraded on Iraqi TV, was incredulous at their response to the disappearance of the phone, as his wife attended a meeting at her London office. 'My wife lost – I'm going to use the word lost because we don't know what happened to it – her iPhone in a meeting last week and reported it to police,' he said.

'The thing about this is you can put a tracker on it. So we watched my wife's iPhone getting out of the meeting, going along the road, getting on the Tube, getting out at Clapham Junction and making its way to a house in Clapham. 'It has been bleeping merrily to say, “I'm here”.'

Speaking on LBC Radio, he said police had been 'too busy' to follow up the information. They can't chase down a stolen – sorry missing – iPhone,' he said.

'What they can do is phone you at least ten times by different people, filling in reports, asking for crime numbers, asking for the personal number for the phone in case they find it in six months' time.

'Meanwhile, it has stayed in the same house in Clapham telling us where it is.

The phone was taken while Mr Nichol's wife Suzannah, a businesswoman awarded an MBE in 2005, attended a meeting last week.

She is the chief executive of an organisation that represents skilled building contractors.

Mr Nichol, of Ware, Hertfordshire, said he was appalled when police officers failed to act, despite being handed such detailed information about the phone's location. Many smartphones now have built-in tracking devices designed to help the owner if they lose it. Users can log in to their tracking account using a computer or an app on another device such as an iPad and view its location, transmitted by satellite, on a map.

Mr Nichol said police seemed more interested in form-filling than crime solving.

'Every time we have been contacted by the police, we have had a crime officer, we have had somebody asking us if we are bothered about crime, we have had someone who needs to fill in a report,' he said.

Last night a Met spokesman said officers hoped to reach a 'positive conclusion' in the case soon. He said the loss of the phone was reported on April 3.

He said phones with tracking devices had more chance of being recovered but added: 'GPS positioning is not always 100 per cent accurate – as it can usually only pinpoint location to a certain degree. For example in the case of a street, the location might include several houses or buildings.'

Thefts of mobile phones are rocketing, with more than 900 handsets stolen in the UK every day. Smartphones are the biggest target because they can fetch hundreds of pounds on the black market.

Original report here




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'Secret arrests' fear as police seek ban on naming suspects: Plan threatens to turn Britain into a 'banana republic'

Fears were growing last night that a draconian crackdown on the public’s right to know who the police are arresting was close to being finalised.

Police chiefs are looking to ban the Press and public from being told the identity of a crime suspect who has been arrested.

The Association of Chief Police Officers is drawing up the plans as it considers implementing a recommendation by Lord Justice Leveson in which all police forces would be banned from confirming the names of suspects to journalists.

Critics yesterday called the plan an assault on open justice and said it threatened to turn Britain into a ‘banana republic’.

They suggested that such a move could, in theory, lead to people being arrested and locked up in secret as is the case in brutal totalitarian regimes.

The plan for ‘secret arrests’ is being opposed by the Law Commission, the Government’s own adviser on law reform. It believes that it is in the interests of justice that the police release the names of everyone who is arrested, except in very exceptional circumstances.

It argues that there are cases of clear public interest in which arrests should be reported, and it opposes a blanket ban on releasing names.

Trevor Sterling, the lawyer representing Jimmy Savile’s victims, said the publication of a suspect’s name helps to encourage other potential victims to come forward. ‘It is difficult to strike a balance, but if someone like Savile’s name is not published, victims of sexual abuse would not have the confidence to come forward,’ he said.

Padraig Reidy, of Index On Censorship, a civil liberties organisation, said: ‘You can very quickly find yourself in a situation where you have secret arrests. We have a concept of open justice.

‘What is being proposed is very scary because if you do not know who has been arrested or why, people can be taken off the streets without anyone knowing and the police would not be accountable or properly scrutinised.

‘This sort of thing happens in other countries. People are arrested, they disappear and no one ever knows why.’ Under current arrangements, police release basic details of a person arrested. In some cases police will confirm a name to journalists, but this practice varies from force to force.

Some forces have effectively introduced the new practice in the aftermath of Lord Justice Leveson’s recommendations.

It has led to a situation where a well-known celebrity arrested as part of Operation Yewtree, the investigation into the Savile scandal, cannot be named by the media, although he has been widely identified on the internet.

The 83-year-old was arrested on March 28 in Berkshire on suspicion of sexual offences, but the Metropolitan Police refused to release his name to the Press.

By contrast, the names of other suspects accused of historical sexual offences have been published in the Press after their names were confirmed by other forces or by lawyers.

Members of the Law Commission and ACPO will meet in the coming weeks in an attempt to find common ground.

Yesterday Law Commissioner David Ormerod, QC, said: ‘It is imperative that we have confidence that our legal process is transparent.

‘In drafting our provisional proposals, we considered freedom of expression under the Human Rights Act, which covers the Press’s right to report and the public’s right to know.

‘Clearly this has to be balanced with an individual’s right to privacy. But it is not hard to imagine cases of clear public interest in which arrests should be reported.’

Andy Trotter, chief constable of British Transport Police and the lead officer on media policy for ACPO, disagrees with the Law Commission’s position because it does not take account of the circumstances of a suspect whose reputation was damaged by identification but who was later found to be innocent.

He said: ‘It is not correct to say police are looking to keep arrests secret, but rather protect the public in line with Lord Justice Leveson’s recommendations.

‘A member of the public could be arrested and then have no further action taken against them. ‘An arrest does not mean someone is guilty and their release might not achieve the same publicity.

‘There will most likely be exceptions to this in the interests of justice and to prevent and detect crime. We are still in the process of drafting guidance and we are still talking to a range of parties and any decision will have to be approved with the College of Policing.’

Original report here




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Grandmother handcuffed and escorted from British doctor's surgery by police after demanding to see her medical notes

A grandmother was handcuffed and led away from her doctor’s surgery by police after a row over her demand to see her medical notes.

Mary Kerswell, 67, asked for a copy of her GP records after she was called in for a urine test for a kidney condition she did not have.

When the mother of two was shown a brief summary of her medical history she was shocked to see that as well as being wrongly listed as having chronic kidney disease, it said she was a heavy smoker with Alzheimer’s.

The incorrect summary of her notes also said the healthy pensioner had undergone a hysterectomy and a double hip replacement.

Concerned about the errors, Mrs Kerswell demanded a copy of her full 43-page medical notes – as patients are entitled to do – and was told it would take a week. But when the retired scientist returned to the surgery a week later after paying a £10 fee, she was told the notes were not ready.

Frustrated, Mrs Kerswell staged a sit-in and refused to leave until the receptionist printed the records and addressed the errors. But the surgery called the police and a community support officer attended, before calling for back up.

Mrs Kerswell was then handcuffed and spoken to in a police car. The pensioner, from Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, yesterday told the Mail that she could not believe the reaction to what she claims was a ‘peaceful protest’.

She said: ‘When I went back they were not ready. The receptionist insisted they could not print the records for me. ‘I was going to see my cousin the next day and then be away and I wanted to get the records sorted.

'So I said I would wait. Anyone else would have just left me sat there until I gave up. They told me if I did not leave they would call the police. But I wasn’t doing anything wrong. It was a peaceful protest. I just sat there and sat there wishing I had my Kindle with me.

‘A PCSO came and called for reinforcements and then a policeman handcuffed me and led me outside. I just had to laugh. I could not believe what was going on. All because the receptionist wouldn’t press “print”.’

Yesterday, Bedfordshire Police apologised to Mrs Kerswell after admitting that the incident, in December, could have been dealt with ‘in a less intrusive manner’.

Chief Inspector Mark Upex said: ‘I have spoken with Mrs Kerswell on two occasions and while she does not wish to make a formal complaint, she did raise some concerns about the actions taken by the officers.

‘The officers involved have been spoken to and advised about their future conduct. Mrs Kerswell was satisfied with this outcome.’

Mrs Kerswell said she was called by Biggleswade Health Centre just two days after the incident and told she had been taken off their patient list. She has since had to find a new GP. She has complained about the inaccuracies in her medical records.

A spokesman for NHS Midlands and East said: ‘The investigation into this complaint is still on-going and therefore we are unable comment.’ The GP surgery was unavailable for comment.

Original report here




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The United Police States of America

Willie James Sauls is unlikely to see the outside of a prison. Last fall a court in the state of Texas sentenced this 37-year-old man to 45 years in jail. His crime: he snatched the purse from an old woman.

In Norway, meanwhile, a court sentenced Anders Behring Breivik, a right-wing racist who slaughtered 77 people, mostly teenagers, and injured several hundred, to 21 years in prison -- less than half that time -- with an option for that detention to be extended by five-year increments if he is determined to be still dangerous. Otherwise, the 32-year-old, if considered rehabilitated, could be released at the age of 53.

In the 1970s and ‘80s, Germany was rocked by killings committed by a radical left group called the Red Army Faction. Its members killed over 30 people, including the nation's attorney general and leading industrialists. Eventually its leaders were caught and convicted, but by 2007, almost a decade after the Red Army Faction had announced its own dissolution, those still in prison were pardoned by the country’s president.

It is beyond inconceivable to imagine a US president, governor or even a judge, releasing a prisoner from a US jail who had committed the kind of offenses committed by either Breivik or members of Germany’s Red Army Faction. It is, for that matter, hard to imagine any political leader in the US pardoning even purse-snatcher Willie James Sauls.

This is, after all, a country that just recently hounded a 26-year-old internet activist, Aaron Swartz, into committing suicide, after a federal prosecutor threatened him with 35 years in jail -- this for the heinous crime of stealing income from a company that was collecting revenue for making available academic papers for which the authors get not a penny (in a protest action he had publicly hacked an MIT server and downloaded hundreds of academic papers which the private contractor was charging for!). This is a country that routinely convicts the wrong people and locks them up for decades and doesn't even apologize if they manage to eventually prove their innocence and win release. It's a country that is holding people as "terrorists" at Guantanamo, without trial, for over a decade.

Right-wing Americans love to call the US a “nanny state,” claiming that the federal government is always trying to pass laws regulating people’s lives. What the US really is, though, is a “puni-state” -- a nation that thrives on vengeance and retribution, and that rejects the whole notion of rehabilitation or character change (even while euphemistically calling its prisons "corrections" facilities).

How else to explain the prosecutorial passion for charging absurdly youthful offenders as adults?

In 2011, a Pennsylvania judge agreed with a prosecutor’s request to try Jordan Brown, an 11-year old boy, as an adult, because ahead of the trial, he “refused to admit his guilt” in the shooting death of his father’s pregnant fiancee. While Brown became the youngest kid in the world to be facing a potential sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole, he would not be unusual in the state of Pennsylvania, which leads the US (itself a country that leads the world in such prosecutions of children as adults) in having an astonishing 450 people serving life terms in prison with no opportunity for parole who were sentenced as adults for acts they committed as children.

Say what?

One of the fundamental realities about children is that they grow up, and generally, if given a modicum of love and attention, they grow up to be more mature than they were as kids.

That doesn’t compute in the US, where what you did is all that matters to the average citizen, apparently. Some 40 of the 50 states allow children to be tried as adults in the United States, making it a pariah among nations in its brutishness and barbarism.

Politicians -- Democrat and Republican -- campaign on “get-tough-on-crime" platforms which have also made the US the most locked-up society in the world, outstripping even police states like China, which despite being almost four times the population of the US, has fewer people behind bars.

In the US, 2.3 million people are in prison, but another 4.9 million are out of jail but still on parole or probation, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, meaning they’ve been in prison already, and are still under the control of prison and police authorities. That’s over 3 percent of the US population, counting kids and old people. We lock people up at six times the rate, relative to population, of the average for all industrialized nations. Our lock-up rate is five times Britain’s, nine times Germany’s and 12 times Japan’s, yet we have crime rates far in excess of those more enlightened countries.

America has turned everything in to a crime. We get locked up for actions that rarely lead to prison in other modern societies -- things like writing bad checks or using recreational drugs...or purse snatching. And US prison sentences are much longer than sentences for the same crimes in other more enlightened countries. Take burglaries. In the US, the average sentence for a burglary is 16 months -- almost a year and a half. In Canada, it’s five months, and in England, seven months. Of course, we stand out too as having one of the busiest execution assembly lines in the world, trumped only by China and Iran, two countries that are not particularly laudable for the quality of their justice systems.

Of course, the US justice system, if it can even be called that these days, is also rife with racism. The BJS reports that although blacks do not commit crimes at a rate significantly different from whites, they account for 39.4% of the US prison population, while accounting for only 13.1% of the general population. Hispanics, who account for 20.6% of the prison population nationally, represent only 16.3% of the population. Another way of looking at things: In 2010 black non-Hispanic males were incarcerated at the rate of 4,347 inmates per 100,000 in the US. White males were incarcerated at the rate of 678 inmates per 100,000. Hispanic males were incarcerated at the rate of 1,755 inmates per 100,000 U.S.

The system is also rigged against the poor of whatever race, many of whom are actually or for all practical purposes denied the Constitutional right to a lawyer.

We’ve all heard it: Every time someone does something and it makes the news, the response you hear in conversation is “They should lock ‘em up!” or worse, "They should fry 'em!" Rarely, among most Americans, does the notion creep in that a criminal suspect is sick, needs psychiatric help or needs addiction treatment. Nor is poverty ever mentioned as a cause for some crime. In America, we are supposed to hunker down and endure our fate if we have no job, even if that means we, or our kids, have nothing to eat.

In Mississippi, a news story recently reported that a young boy had been sent to reform school because he came to school with his sneakers painted black instead of wearing required black school uniform shoes. It didn’t matter that his mother came in and explained that they had no money for the mandated leather shoes, so she had tried to conform by painting his sneakers.

In 1997, a homeless man in California named Gregory Taylor was sentenced to 25 years to life(!) for breaking into a church kitchen and trying to steal a loaf of bread. After 13 years behind bars, a judge (maybe after reading Victor Hugo?), reduced his sentence to time served and let him out. The initial outlandish sentence, and the outrageous amount of time he did serve until his release, was the result of that state’s “three strikes and you’re out” law, which says if you commit a third offense after already having been convicted twice of crimes, you get the 25-to-life sentence, regardless of the crimes involved. Judges are allowed no discretion in states that have this law. In Taylor’s case, his first crime had been stealing a woman’s purse, and his second had been attempted robbery. Neither of those prior crimes had reportedly involved any violence. No matter. It was his third “strike.”

The nation’s criminal code keeps getting bigger each year, too, as the charlatans in elected office at the local, state and federal level keep piling on new crimes to punish.

Louisiana State University Law Professor John S Baker, Jr., writing in 2004 in a publication called The Federalist Society, noted that as of 2003, there were 4000 criminal offenses carrying criminal penalties listed in the US Criminal Code. That, he said, represented an increase of more than 1300 offenses over 1980 -- about 33%. (Baker notes that many more crimes are typically added to the list in election years than in non-election years.) The Heritage Foundation reports than the number of federal crimes had grown by another 450 to a total of 4450 by 2007 -- again with most of these added during election years.

Federal prosecutors often don’t even need to prove intent to commit a crime in order to prosecute someone, or to win a conviction. Thus, for example, US Attorneys have argued, with some success, that a person can be convicted of aiding and supporting terrorism under the post-9/11 anti-terrorism laws, for innocently donating to a charitable organization that, while itself not involved in funding terrorism, might have sent some of its funds onward to some second organization (with the transaction totally unknown to the initial donor), if that second organization later on did contribute to a terrorist organization.

Incredible, you say? Well, how about the father and son who went on an innocent hunt on federal land to look for Indian arrowheads -- something that used to be considered a fun hobby --and who were arrested in Idaho by federal authorities under a new law that made it a felony to dig on what was an unmarked archeological site. The 68-year-old Eddie Anderson, a retired logger and high school science teacher, and his son, ended up pleading guilty and getting slapped with a one-year probation sentence and a $1500 fine each. The joke is that the National Park souvenir stores generally sell arrowheads, all of which, if they are real, were “dug” from what by definition would be archeological sites.

At some point -- and we passed it a long, long time ago -- this punitive obsession in America has made the US not a “land of the free,” but a land of the intimidated.

Every time I’m driving and I see a police car behind me, I expect to be pulled over. Not because I’m doing anything wrong, but because increasingly, that’s what police do. Recently, I was going shopping and saw two cops outside of a squad car talking to a couple of kids by their car, in what clearly was some kind of incident. I wanted to park in a space two cars away but decided against it, realizing I might have felt compelled to say something, which could have gotten me busted.

And remember, as you think about all this, the the top law enforcement official in the country, Attorney General Eric Holder, just told Congress that he had no intention of seeking criminal indictments against the nation’s top bankers, despite a wide-spread conviction that they are all guilty of the most massive fraud and theft in the history of the country, because he says such prosecutions could “destabilize” the nation’s financial system. So the banksters who toppled the global economy and stole hundreds of billions of dollars skate while Willie James Sauls rots in prison the rest of his life for snatching a pocketbook.

Welcome to the United Police States of America.

Original report here




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Police Union Director Jokes on Facebook About Two Women Being Sexually Assaulted by a Police Officer

A Texas state trooper charged with sexually assaulting two women during a traffic stop was providing them with "customer service," says Dale Roberts, the executive director of the Columbia Police Officers Association (CPOA) and a professor at the University of Missouri. (The CPOA is a part of the Fraternal Order of Police, one of the country's largest police unions.)

"It's called Customer Service!" Roberts wrote in a March 27 Facebook post about the indictment of Texas State Trooper Kelly Helleson, who was charged with two counts of sexual assault after conducting an illegal roadside strip search of two women. "We just did it so they wouldn't have to make the trip all the way down to the station," he added. A screenshot of Roberts' post was taken by Keep Columbia Free, a civil liberties blog run by Mark Flakne.

Keep Columbia FreeAngel Dobbs and her niece Ashley Dobbs definitely didn't see it as customer service. The two women were pulled over last year by Helleson and fellow trooper David Farrell in Irving, Texas, after throwing a cigarette butt out the window of their car. Farrell came up to the car and claimed he smelled marijuana. When a search of the vehicle didn't turn up any pot, he instructed Helleson to conduct a cavity search on the women, who Farrell said were "acting weird." That's when Helleson, in plain view of passing cars on Highway 161 (and the dashboard camera in her cruiser), stuck her hand down the back and front of both women's pants, searching their genitals. To make matters worse, Helleson conducted both searches without changing her latex gloves. In short order, the Dobbs filed suit and video of the stop was posted on Youtube. As Reason's Brian Doherty noted, Helleson and Farrell were charged last week.

In addition to cracking jokes about the Dobbs' assault (including, in the comment section of his own Facebook post, "Evidently, the [sic] searched them downtown without going downtown"), Roberts recently came under fire for a racist joke he posted last month on CPOA's Facebook page.

Keep Columbia Free"If CPD rolled up in the new Mercedes 6x16, you KNOW all the boys in the hood would come running out the house," Roberts wrote on the CPOA Facebook page. The post was in regards to the Columbia Police Department's campaign to get the city to buy it a Mercedes 6x16, which is an armored personnel carrier used by the military. After Columbia's mayor called the Facebook post racist, Roberts apologized, saying it was "intended to be satirical in nature."

While Dale Roberts is not a police officer, he is the head of the Columbia chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Missouri, and an instructor at the University of Missouri's Law Enforcement Training Institute. You'd think he'd have better judgement.

Original report here




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Feds seize property; tell owner “prove it’s yours!”

Eight years ago this week, on a sunny, clear, but windy and hence cold day, near a wide spot in the road called Garryowen on the vast prairie of southern Montana an hour north of the Wyoming border, vans full of armed, SWAT-geared federal agents sped down I-80. Garryowen is a private town owned by Christopher Kortlander that features, among other structures, a gas station, a convenience store, a fast-food outlet, an arts and crafts store (“The Trading Post”), and the Custer Battlefield Museum. The vans skidded to a stop before the museum and the agents leaped out as they drew weapons, surrounded and stormed into the museum, and held its employees at gun point.

The agents were there to serve a warrant and collect evidence as to Mr. Kortlander’s alleged illegal sale, on eBay, of a cavalry uniform button. Mr. Kortlander said he recovered the button on private land, which is legal; however, a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) agent asserted that, working undercover, he sold Mr. Kortlander the button, which contained a government “microdot” tag secreted on the back. Mr. Kortlander responded that the button was exactly like numerous others in his collection and that he had shipped the tainted button by mistake. He maintains that none of the buttons in his collection was recovered from public or Indian lands; sale or traffic in archeological resources from such lands is illegal.

The federal agents were unrepentant. Three years and six months later, almost to the day, they stormed the museum again. The agent who filed the 2005 affidavit swore out a new affidavit asserting that, while he was in the museum, he saw items containing bald and golden eagle feathers, the sale of which is illegal, and that, based on the testimony of confidential informants, Mr. Kortlander planned to sell these items. More artifacts were seized, including an American Indian war bonnet, headdress, medicine bundle, and shield.

Over a period of four and a half years, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Billings, Montana, repeatedly threatened to file criminal charges against Mr. Kortlander, threats sweetened with offers of various plea bargain options. Mr. Kortlander hired a criminal defense lawyer and fought back as best he could, but the years took a terrible toll financially and emotionally. He feared he would be indicted, suffer through a lengthy criminal trial, and be sentenced to years in federal prison. Courageously, Mr. Kortlander maintained he was innocent and refused to agree to any deal. Incredibly, days later, in August 2009, the Assistant U.S. Attorney wrote that the federal government will “not be seeking prosecution in this case.”

In the same letter, the federal government said it was “reviewing” the items seized by the BLM agents to determine “whether they can be legally possessed by [Mr. Kortlander and the museum].” Over time, all but twenty items—those with bald and golden eagle feathers—were returned. The retained items, claims the federal government, were contraband per se because the possession of items containing such feathers is illegal under federal law and neither Mr. Kortlander nor the museum had the requisite federal permit. Not so argued Mr. Kortlander and the museum, the feathers contained in the artifacts pre-date the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

No matter, the United States refuses to return the artifacts. It asserts that, because Mr. Kortlander has no documentary evidence proving from whom or when he acquired the items—despite his compliance with federal law as to how long he must keep such records—it need not return them. Moreover, the United States maintains that it is not its obligation to prove the artifacts are illegally in the museum’s possession, but—relying in part on an affidavit from a convicted felon—the duty of Mr. Kortlander and the museum to prove their rightful ownership. Might, argues the federal government in federal court in Montana, makes right.

Original report here




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Corrupt British detective who stole more than £1m of seized drugs and sold it back on the street to fund 'champagne lifestyle' with TWO women is jailed for 23 years

A corrupt detective who sold drugs seized by police so he could lavish gifts on another woman behind his wife’s back has been jailed for 23 years.

Nicholas McFadden splashed out on treats for his ex-fiancee after making £600,000 selling class A drugs confiscated from criminals.

He had helped himself to more than £1million of heroin, cocaine and cannabis by exploiting ‘slack’ police procedures.

The detective constable, who is married with a child, had an affair with fellow officer Tanya Strangeway, 34, in 2007.

After they became ‘close again’ in 2011, he used money from drug dealing to shower her with gifts including £10,000 in cash and a new Audi.

He also refurbished his family home in Castleford, West Yorkshire, installing a new kitchen and building an orangery.

McFadden, 38, and his brother Simon, 41, raided drugs earmarked for destruction at West Yorkshire Police.

The pair spent the proceeds on luxury lifestyles of lavish holidays, designer clothes and champagne.

Simon, a debt collector, also bought pricy paintings and indulged a bizarre passion for ‘expensive sausages’.

Yesterday the pair were jailed at Leeds Crown Court after being convicted of drug dealing and money laundering.

Judge Tom Bayliss said: ‘We as a community are entitled to expect the very highest standards from our police officers. ‘Without that ability to trust our police, society cannot function properly. You undermined that trust.’ He added: ‘Your motive was simple greed.’

During the five-week trial, the court heard that Nicholas McFadden, who worked for the specialist Organised Crime Group, ‘spent heavily’.

When colleagues noticed he had begun to wear designer clothes and expensive watches, he lied and said his wife Clair, an assistant headmistress, had received an insurance pay-out after being ill with cancer. He travelled first-class to London and Egypt and bought a private number plate for Clair, 38, who had no idea of his crimes.

She told the court: ‘He told me the money came from the overtime he was doing and said he’d remortgaged his property. ‘I accepted what he said because he was my husband and a police officer. He thanked me and said it was all down to me organising him.’

He also lavished gifts on Miss Strangeway, his former fiancee, who he had been seeing behind his wife’s back before she became pregnant in 2007.

She told the court they had become ‘close’ again in 2011 when he texted her to say he wanted to give her a present.

The court heard police first became aware of Nicholas McFadden’s suspicious activity in the middle of 2011 when his bank alerted them to the fact he had deposited a total of £30,000 in small payments into cash machines over three months. When they raided his home, they found banknotes stuffed into sacks in his garage and more hidden around his house and car.

At Simon’s home, they found mobile phones containing messages about drug deals.

Simon and his wife Karen, a medical secretary, had spent money on extravagant shopping trips, splashing out £11,000 in Harvey Nichols and over £2,000 in Vivienne Westwood.

In total, Nicholas McFadden had £430,000 and Simon McFadden had a further £160,000 which could not be traced to any legitimate source.

The court heard Nicholas McFadden had taken the drugs from a hold which contained those recovered from three major police operations.

Nicholas McFadden was convicted of three counts of theft, two counts of conspiracy to supply class A drugs heroin and cocaine and one of conspiracy to supply class B drug cannabis. He had already admitted money laundering.

Detective Chief Inspector Nick Wallen, of West Yorkshire Police, said: ‘Some police officers, Nicholas McFadden’s former colleagues, had risked their lives to take drugs off the streets and he, along with his brother, was putting them back there. ‘He has betrayed his friends and his former colleagues.’

Original report here




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Advances in Science of Fire Free a Convict After 42 Years

Louis C. Taylor was facing arson charges 42 years ago, and he left court convicted on multiple felony murder counts for sparking a hotel fire that claimed 29 lives. He has always professed his innocence, and on Tuesday, advances in the science of fire investigations finally set him free.

He was serving 28 life sentences for starting the deadliest fire in Arizona history.

Mr. Taylor’s release offered him only a small measure of redemption. Under an agreement with prosecutors in Pima County, he entered a no-contest plea during an hourlong court hearing, which set aside his original conviction and gave him credit for the time he had spent behind bars. The arrangement means that he did not admit guilt, but because he did not contest the charges, he is effectively barred from suing anyone who had a role in his conviction.

As the hearing came to a close, Judge Richard S. Fields of Pima County Superior Court said, “Welcome back, Mr. Taylor.”

Four hours later, Mr. Taylor, wearing a light blue shirt, emerged from a state prison here to cheers from his lawyers, who had been waiting to greet him.

“It’s two tragedies,” he said during a brief stop by the prison’s gates. “The Pioneer Hotel fire, and me being convicted.”

Mr. Taylor, 58, who did not even know how to drive when he went to prison at the age of 16, is facing a bleak future in an entirely unfamiliar world. His case is among several in recent years to call into question some of the scientific principles that once guided fire investigations — including the idea that multiple and independent points of a fire’s origin were proof of arson, a decisive element of Mr. Taylor’s prosecution.

Last year, a committee in Texas began a review of arson convictions after a report revealed that a man executed in 2004 for setting a blaze that killed his three children may not have been guilty. The committee concluded that evidence that the fire was intentionally set had been based on faulty science.

Just last week, Texas’s highest criminal court ordered a new trial for another man convicted of starting the fire that killed his stepsons, over similar doubts.

“What we’re going after, more than anything else, is a pervasive prosecuting practice, not some isolated mistake that happened in the past,” said Jeff Blackburn, founder and chief counsel to the Innocence Project of Texas, the legal advocacy organization that is helping forensic scientists and the Texas fire marshal’s office carry out the review.

Debunking junk science in arson and other criminal convictions, Mr. Blackburn said, “is really the next wave of innocence work.”

A few years ago, the National Academy of Sciences turned its attention to the misuse of science in courtrooms, saying that pseudoscientific theories had been used to convict people of crimes they may not have committed. By then, a small group of fire engineers had already begun to discredit many of the assumptions employed in fire investigations, like the practice of using the amount of heat radiated by a fire to assess if an accelerant had been used.

Unlike DNA evidence, which can exonerate one person and sometimes incriminate another, the evidence collected in some arson investigations does not yield precise results. Often much of the evidence has been lost or destroyed. In the case of the hotel fire here, all that is left are photographs, reports and chemical analysis, all of them assembled to prove arson.

As a result, “we can’t definitely say what really caused the fire,” said John J. Lentini, a veteran fire investigator who wrote a report on Mr. Taylor’s case. “But what we can do is discredit the evidence” used to support the charge.

Race and questionable investigative practices may have also played a role in Mr. Taylor’s conviction. He was a black man convicted by an all-white jury at a time of racial strife in Tucson; four years later, a lawsuit would force the city to confront segregation in the largest of its school districts.

After Mr. Taylor’s arrest, Cyrillis W. Holmes Jr., a fire investigator hired by the state, offered a profile suggesting that the arsonist was a young black man. (Mr. Holmes reaffirmed his theory during a deposition five months ago, saying that “blacks, at that point, their background was the use of fire for beneficial purposes.”)

During the trial, another investigator testified that an accelerant had been used to ignite the flames, a finding not backed by laboratory tests on debris from the hotel, which Mr. Taylor’s lawyers did not know existed.

The fire at the downtown hotel, the Pioneer International, broke out just after midnight on Dec. 20, 1970, as an aircraft company was holding a holiday party for 350 people. Rooms were full of guests, many of them Mexican tourists visiting Tucson to do Christmas shopping.

By his admission, Mr. Taylor went to the Pioneer to try to get free drinks. After the fire began, he was found knocking on doors, rousing guests, escorting them outside and helping the injured onto stretchers.

On the upper floors, some people fashioned ropes out of bedsheets, while others jumped out of windows in a desperate bid to escape. Firefighters’ ladders were too short to reach them.

Prosecutors, in filings and at Tuesday’s hearing, said they still believed Mr. Taylor was guilty, but chose to accept the agreement because they would not have been able to pursue a new trial. The evidence is too old and scarce, and there are not enough living witnesses, they said.

Mr. Taylor was represented by the Arizona Justice Project, which helps inmates believed to have been wrongfully accused. In court, Edward F. Novak, who led the legal team, told Judge Fields, “Mr. Taylor does maintain his innocence, and the no-contest plea allows him to do that.”

Original report here




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'Jump over the counter? I can barely limp up the road!' Disabled man cleared of armed robbery after being held by police for two weeks

A disabled man with a severe limp was wrongly arrested and jailed for over two weeks after he was accused of robbing a betting shop - and running off.

Mark Hynes - who also wears a catheter - told police his disability made it impossible to clamber onto the counter and make a quick getaway.

But he says it took bungling officers over a fortnight to check CCTV footage, which proved they had the wrong man.

In that time, Mr Hynes, 37, had been hauled before a court and even remanded in custody for two and a half weeks at HMP Winchester.

He was accused of threatening staff with a knife at Corals in Leigh Park, Havant, Hampshire.

He is now demanding an apology and compensation from the police, saying people living near his Leigh Park home have 'turned on him'.

Officers have since arrested another suspect.

Mr Hynes was at home when officers came round to search his premises following the robbery.

He was wrongly identified as the culprit and - after appearing at Portsmouth Magistrates' Court - was sent to prison while officers investigated further.

He said prison exacerbated his ill health and has caused problems with his catheter. He added: 'It's affected my life. Everyone in Leigh Park thinks I'm an armed robber.

He has demanded compensation because he claims people living near his Leigh Park home have 'turned on him'

'I've got a catheter because I've got urine problems. I limp up the road. 'I couldn't have carried out a robbery but one of the police officers said it was me.'

Mr Hynes claims it took police officers two weeks to check the CCTV properly. It was then that it became clear Mr Hynes was not a suspect.

He added: 'My arrest came out of the blue - it was the last thing I expected. 'I've lost two and a half weeks of my life because of this.'

A Hampshire Constabulary spokesman said at the time of Mr Hynes arrest: 'A man entered the premises and showed a knife to a member of staff before asking him to put money in a bag. 'The suspect then climbed onto the counter and took the money himself. 'He left the scene in the direction of Havant town centre.'

A spokesman for the force today said: 'Police can confirm a 37-year-old man from Havant was arrested on suspicion of robbery.

'He was charged with one count of robbery on a 29-year-old man at a betting shop in Havant on January 30, 2013. 'The charge was later withdrawn. 'An investigation is continuing into the robbery.

'A 28-year-old man from Havant was arrested in London. He is now on police bail pending further enquiries.

'Hampshire Constabulary received a formal complaint from the 37-year-old man initially arrested and charged with robbery. 'The circumstances surrounding the complaint are the subject of a separate investigation by the force.'

Original report here




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Cops vs. burgers

How L.A. regulated a burger stand out of existence

Located on the corner of Figueroa and 101st Street in South Central Los Angeles, Tam’s Burgers has been a part of the neighborhood for almost 30 years, serving burgers and fries through multiple recessions and even the 1992 L.A. riots. “When the markets were burned down, liquor stores were burned down, everything was burned down, people had nowhere to go, they came to us,” says Nick Benetatos, who took over the restaurant in 1989 after his father retired.

But in 2012 the city declared Tam’s a “public nuisance,” claiming the late-night joint was a haven for criminals. Benetatos says he is simply located in a high-crime area and has tried to work with the Los Angeles Police Department, honoring its requests that he remove pay phones on the property and tables for outdoor seating, which he says resulted in a 15 percent decline in revenues.

The city’s zoning board then ordered Benetatos to comply with 22 separate conditions, such as hiring a full-time security guard, fencing in the entire property, and installing a security camera that links directly to the LAPD’s electronic surveillance system. After losing a December zoning appeal, Benetatos says he is close to throwing in the napkin and closing up shop.

“I don’t feel that they should be able to tell a business how to run their operations,” he says. “It’s hard enough being in business and staying in business, especially in this economy.”

Original report here




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Call the British police and they sue YOU: WPC demands £50,000 from petrol station owner after tripping over a kerb while investigating a break-in

A policewoman who answered a midnight call to a suspected burglary is suing the man who dialled 999 – because she tripped over a kerbstone.

WPC Kelly Jones is seeking a potential five-figure payout after claiming the owner of a petrol [gasoline] station failed to keep her safe as she investigated the possible break-in.

Her claim that the 999 call exposed her to ‘an unnecessary risk of injury’ raises new questions about the extent of Britain’s compensation culture, and has wide-reaching implications for anyone who calls the emergency services to their property.

WPC Jones, 33, has hired a top firm of London solicitors specialising in personal injury lawsuits – but her health-and-safety claim has shocked MPs, who have branded the lawsuit ‘bizarre’.

Petrol station owner Steve Jones is enraged by the WPC’s action against him, saying: ‘I am incredulous that I am being sued by a police officer whose duty is to protect the public. ‘How can anyone feel safe calling the cops if they size you up for compensation while they’re fighting crime?

'Surely policing has elements of both public service and risk. Isn’t that what officers sign up for when they put on the uniform – chasing villains and keeping us safe?’

He said: ‘I thought nothing of it – other than she must have been a bit embarrassed – and I helped her up. Then we carried on with the search.’

Mr Jones, 50, had called 999 after the alarm went off at Nuns’ Bridges Service Station on August 25 last year. He had put the incident out of his mind – until he received a three-page letter from WPC Jones’s lawyers Pattinson Brewer last week.

The document made a total of 11 allegations against him – including that he failed to turn the lights on or warn her of the kerb.

She says she injured her left leg and her right wrist in the fall – although she was well enough to continue the search of the garage at the time.

Mr Jones is accused of ‘failing to ensure [WPC Jones] was reasonably safe in using the premises for which she was permitted/invited by you to be there’ and of a ‘failure to carry out any and/or adequate risk assessment’.

The letter concludes the 999 call-out ‘exposed our client to an unnecessary risk of injury’.

Keith Vaz, chairman of the powerful Home Affairs Committee, is now demanding urgent Home Office guidelines on the issue. He said: ‘This civil claim will have huge implications for every citizen if they call police out to their premises to help them in an emergency.

‘It is in the public interest to know where exactly people stand in circumstances like this. If there are going to be cases like this, then people will feel reluctant to call the police in case they are sued.

‘I do not think in such circumstances the public would feel they had a responsibility for health and safety issues, in the middle of the night while apparently facing danger. 'It’s a bizarre case and we need some urgent guidelines from the Home Office.’

Norfolk MP Norman Lamb added that any successful lawsuit would ‘set an extraordinary precedent’. He added: ‘I think most people would regard it as quite bizarre that an officer acting in the course of their duties would pursue a claim against a member of the public who has legitimately called them out.

'It is preposterous to imagine that it is appropriate; it is the police doing the job they are employed to do.’

His thoughts were, understandably, echoed by garage owner Mr Jones, whose business had previously been targeted by a professional gang of thieves. He said: ‘If an officer can now sue you because they’ve tripped over on your property what does that mean for the average homeowner?

‘If you hear a burglar downstairs, do you have to nail down your stair carpet, close the windows and put the lights on before you dial 999?

'This is the health and safety culture at work, the fallacy that someone is to blame for any and every accident and that compensation is free.’

When The Mail on Sunday traced WPC Jones to her semi-detached home in Thetford, she declined to answer questions about the case.

The mother of two appeared in good health, carrying bags of shopping from her 4x4 into her house and laughing and joking.

She took the legal action without the knowledge of her employers at Norfolk Constabulary, who knew nothing about it until alerted by this paper on Friday.

The force declined to say if WPC Jones had finished her shift on the night in question or if she had gone on sick leave and if so, whether she had returned to duty.

A spokeswoman said: ‘Norfolk Constabulary was unaware of this litigation and as it appears to be a private matter the officer has chosen to undertake, it would be inappropriate for us to comment further.’

The precise nature and extent of WPC’s Jones’s injuries are not known, although her claim states she went to West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds for treatment. It does not specify if the treatment is ongoing.

Pattinson Brewer said the case was instigated by employees’ body, the Police Federation.

Spokesman Chris Theobald said: ‘In response to a recent request from the Police Federation we are representing their woman police officer member Kelly Jones.

‘The officer was attending a 999 call and she subsequently made certain allegations against the proprietors of a service station which have now been detailed to them in writing.

'The basis of any future claim will be determined by a court and a judge, who will make an independent determination of culpability and the award of any damages based solely on the evidence supplied by both parties.’

Pattinson Brewer’s website says compensation for a serious wrist injury can be as high as £30,500, with payouts for more minor injuries approaching £3,000.

Compensation for a leg injury could reach £16,000 for a bad fracture, with a simple break being valued at £5,000.

Paul Ridgway, chairman of the Norfolk Police Federation, told The Mail on Sunday last night: ‘If officers get injured in an incident, it’s going to be for a court to decide whether someone is at fault or not, whether it be a health and safety issue or otherwise.’

Original report here




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