Wednesday, May 29th, 2013 — Good Afternoon, Stay Safe
- - - - -
NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly Won't Rule Out Mayoral Run
Kelly would only say he has "no plans" for elective office
By Shimon Prokupecz — Tuesday, May 28th, 2013; 3:45 p.m. ‘NBC News 4 New York’ / New York, NY
NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly would not rule out running for mayor this year when asked Tuesday about a recent telephone poll that posed questions about him as a candidate.
Kelly told reporters "I'm not aware of who's behind the polling," and added that he's focused on his job as commissioner and has no plans to run for office.
When pressed on whether he was ruling it out, Kelly would only say: "no plans."
Last week, reports surfaced that a polling firm has been surveying voters about the job Kelly is doing, and also asks whether respondents are satisfied with the current candidates for mayor.
Capital New York reported that a reader said the caller asked about "the best reasons to vote for Ray Kelly."
Rumors about a Kelly candidacy for the Republican nomination have swirled for years, including in previous mayoral races. He has served as Mayor Bloomberg's commissioner since 2002.
_______________________________________________________________________
NYPD's Unsettled Police Officer Contractual Bargaining
UFT, PBA bosses say billions owed in back pay for union members
Experts say it would hurt New Yorkers if the exorbitant amount of back pay were factored into the city budget. 'You would have to get taxes up to a stratospheric level,' says one policy analyst.
By Glenn Blain — Wednesday, May 29th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’
(Edited for brevity and NYPD pertinence)
Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association chief Patrick Lynch has been crunching the numbers.
He believes his 23,000 members deserve raises higher than the rate of inflation since their contract expired in 2010. Using his figures, a five-year veteran would now make some $5,000 more than the present salary of $76,444. And the PBA’s cumulative bill to the taxpayers would be $530 million.
When the next mayor takes office Jan. 1, the unions will present the bill to the city.
Yet having to shell out a sum remotely of that order would force the next mayor to make deep service cuts, including to public safety and schools, or hike taxes — or do both, according to fiscal experts.
“You would need to cut all over the place, including in places that people hold sacred, like education,” said Maria Doulis, director of New York City Studies for the Citizens Budget Commission.
Added E.J. McMahon, senior fellow at the Empire Center for New York State Policy, a taxpayer watchdog group: “You would have to get taxes up to a stratospheric level to pay for something like even half that on an ongoing basis.”
Despite the threat that fewer cops will patrol the streets and classrooms will be more crowded, the mayoral hopefuls have largely been silent about a challenge that will likely define the next mayor’s first year in office, and perhaps his or her entire first term.
And there is no question this challenge is coming. The labor bosses already are looking past Mayor Bloomberg in the hope his successor will be more willing to meet their needs.
“While our sympathy goes out to the next mayor, we will still be glad to be rid of this guy once and for all,” the city teachers union prez Michael Mulgrew said after Bloomberg released a final budget proposal that included zero for raises.
The labor leaders say the nearly 300,000 union workers on the city payroll are right to expect salary increases and back pay.
Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives’ Endowment Association, described Bloomberg's insistence on ruling out pay hikes as “a hard bargaining position to accept, not to mention being unfair.”
On the front lines, the workers feel the same way.
Union leaders also argue that the city has a record of making dire fiscal projections that evaporate with time. Finally, their members are in no mood to settle without back pay.
“I think any uniformed union leader would have to have a death wish to tell their members we are giving up 32 months of retroactive raises because the mayor asked us to,” said labor expert Richard Steier, editor of The Chief-Leader, a newspaper that closely covers municipal labor.
Bloomberg has countered that “New York City is not obligated to pay its employees retroactive increases.” He said Tuesday that “the money is just not there,” adding, “The fact is the city can’t afford retroactive raises without a massive tax increase that would devastate our economy.”
The unions have done well compared with inflation since 2000. As the cost of living rose 29%, the PBA enjoyed pay boosts totaling 56%.
The mayor has offered raises only if the unions grant money-saving contract concessions, most likely by having workers contribute to health care. More than 90% of the workforce pays nothing for coverage, but DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts said givebacks in that area are “not even a conversation.”
City labor leaders last agreed to contracts with zero raises in 1995 and 1996. On the state level, Gov. Cuomo used the threat of layoffs to secure contracts that froze salaries for two years and then paid only modest increases. He also persuaded the state unions to increase health care contributions.
While Bloomberg would like to follow that pattern, the unions will try to override it.
It would also move all the unions closer to claiming billions of additional dollars from the next mayor, money that he or she does not now have — and is not talking about today.
_______________________________________________________________________
Mayor Bloomberg: I'm not budging on back pay for unions
Bloomberg says the unions are trying to leverage their political power over the next mayor to insist on billions of dollars in back pay for their members.
By Jennifer Fermino — Wednesday, May 29th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’
Mayor Bloomberg on Tuesday brushed aside demands by municipal union leaders who say their members are owed billions of dollars in back pay because the unions have gone years without contracts.
“What they’re doing is, waiting to see if they can use their political leverage ... over the next mayor to fund retroactive raises, which this administration, we’re not irresponsible, we’re not going to do,” Bloomberg said.
The mayor launched a nearly seven-minute defense of his budget policies following a Daily News report on the financial problems awaiting the next mayor, chiefly a demand by the unions for as much as $7.8 billion in back pay.
“I don’t know any of our taxpayers who get retroactive raises,” Bloomberg said.
He said that while the employees have not gotten raises, none have been laid off.
“If we had instead used our savings to fund raises, many people would have lost their jobs. That’s a little secret that the unions don’t want to talk about.”
_______________________________________________________________________
NYPD Stop, Question and Frisk Search
Watching the Detectives
By Rob Fischer — Tuesday, May 28th, 2013 ‘The New Yorker Magazine’
Last Monday, Judge Shira Scheindlin of the Southern District of New York, the subject of Jeffrey Toobin’s piece in last week’s issue, heard closing arguments in Floyd v. City of New York, a landmark challenge to the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policies. Scheindlin is expected to rule in favor of the plaintiffs—led by David Floyd, a medical student in the Bronx who was searched twice—who argue the N.Y.P.D. has infringed their constitutional rights with a program reliant on racial profiling and warrantless stops. “A lot of people are being frisked or searched on suspicion of having a gun and nobody has a gun,” Judge Scheindlin said at the hearing. “The suspicion turns out to be wrong in most of the cases.” Scheindlin’s decision, which she could issue as early as next month, may include a controversial remedy: the plaintiffs have requested the creation of an independent monitor for the N.Y.P.D., most likely in the form of a team of law-enforcement experts with authority to make sure that the department’s tactics respect constitutional protections.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, and the new department chief, Philip Banks III, all oppose the idea, calling federal oversight a bureaucratic measure that would be, in Bloomberg’s words, “disastrous for public safety.” But there is little evidence that such monitoring undermines crime-fighting; quite the opposite.
Over the past fifteen years, the Department of Justice has accused police departments in two dozen jurisdictions, including New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Detroit, Oakland, and Seattle, of offenses ranging from corruption and racial profiling to pervasive brutality. Each of those departments accepted a settlement agreement, also known as a consent decree, under which it was assigned, for a period of five to seven years, an independent monitor to institute new guidelines, review civilian complaints, and audit uses of force. If the department being monitored is uncooperative, a federal judge can hold it in contempt. Only two of the seventeen jurisdictions that have served out their full consent decrees failed to meet their benchmarks within seven years. (One of those is the state of New Jersey, which decided to retain its independent monitor indefinitely.) “Any success these departments have had is owed to the role the independent monitor played,” Joshua Chanin, a professor of public administration and criminal justice at San Diego State University, said. “It’s much more likely that a department will not adhere to the spirit of reform without someone overseeing the process.”
One of the best-known examples of a monitor’s impact involves the man who once implemented New York’s stop-and-frisk policy, the former N.Y.P.D. commissioner William Bratton, and the Los Angeles force he went on to lead.
In the nineties, the L.A.P.D. was in a state of crisis. In 1991, a videotape captured three officers beating Rodney King, and in 1992, riots followed the officers’ acquittal. Seven years later, seventy L.A.P.D. officers, many of them members of the city’s hard-hitting anti-gang unit, were implicated in the Rampart scandal, which included allegations of stealing and selling seized drugs, planting false evidence, and, in one case, robbing a bank.
The L.A.P.D.’s relationship with many neighborhoods seemed irreconcilably shattered. Still, in 2000, when the Department of Justice threatened to sue the city unless it signed a consent decree that would allow the D.O.J. to appoint an independent monitor, Mayor Richard Riordan said the L.A.P.D. should be fixed internally. The police chief, Bernard C. Parks, was reportedly furious. The police union filed its own lawsuit against the city in a last ditch attempt to block it. The decree was approved anyway, and Kroll, the private security firm, was brought in to act as monitor. (William Finnegan wrote about Kroll for The New Yorker in 2009.)
One member of the Kroll team was the former New York City police commissioner William Bratton. After his two-year stint in New York had ended abruptly over personal differences with the then-Mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, he reluctantly drifted into the private-sector world of security consulting. In L.A., with the chief’s post open (Parks had departed), Bratton had a perfect opportunity to rebuild his legacy.
Bratton got the job—and the consent decree that came with it. Over the next seven years, his officers collected and made public detailed information about use of force, officer-related shootings, and racial profiling. It was an intense, and at times contentious, period. “No city wants to have federal oversight,” Bratton told me. “It’s an incredible encumbrance on the operations of the department.” Bratton said that the L.A.P.D. had to devote significant resources to new paperwork, but many of the reforms were successful. “Some elements of the decree were absolutely essential,” Bratton said. “The Department really did need to change its use-of-force policies and procedures, and it needed to change many of its accountability systems.” (Bratton, who is now running his own consulting firm, expressed some interest in returning to his old post in New York someday—“but at this stage of the game, that would be very, very speculative.”)
Shortly before he resigned, in 2009, Bratton commissioned a report from a team of criminal-justice professors at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. The researchers found that both community relations and public safety had improved. Violent crime in L.A. had dropped by almost fifty per cent; an unprecedented eighty-three per cent of residents approved of the job the L.A.P.D. was doing, and a majority believed the police treated all races and ethnicities fairly. Even more surprising, anonymous interviews revealed that morale on the force had improved. Officers expressed greater pride and were less afraid of being punished for honest mistakes, suggesting that transparency had led to a greater sense of fairness within the L.A.P.D.
In 2001, New York avoided a consent decree after the D.O.J. declined to sue the police department for the wrongful death of Amadou Diallo, the unarmed man shot forty-one times by officers in the Bronx. As a result, a handful of civil-liberties groups filed Daniels v. City of New York, the first class-action suit challenging the city’s stop-and-frisk policies. It emerged in Daniels that for every sixteen African-Americans stopped by the N.Y.P.D. only one was arrested. As Toobin recounts in his piece, Scheindlin presided in the Daniels case, too, but, before she reached any decision, the two sides agreed to a settlement. The N.Y.P.D. agreed to track every encounter based on “reasonable suspicion,” and to use public outreach to teach young people about their legal rights.
The plaintiffs in Floyd argue that the N.Y.P.D. has become diligent in its paperwork but far more liberal in its use of stop-and-frisks—the official tally has risen from ninety-seven thousand, in 2002, to six hundred and eighty-five thousand, in 2011. In a survey conducted by Baruch College last year, views of the N.Y.P.D. depended on race and ethnicity, educational attainment, and income. Only fifty per cent of blacks gave the N.Y.P.D. positive marks. Almost seventy per cent of New Yorkers reported believing the N.Y.P.D. to engage in racial profiling, but only groups likely to be profiled seem to care. About two-thirds of whites and Asians, and about sixty per cent of Hispanics, supported stop-and-frisk; more than half of black respondents opposed it. Two-thirds of white respondents believed police use good judgment in the stops; an equal share of black respondents said they did not.
These numbers are a reflection of why the city may lose in Floyd. But if it does, Los Angeles’s experience suggests that the police have less to fear than they may think if and when a monitor steps in. So would the people they protect. In the Harvard study, researchers asked members of the L.A.P.D. if patrol officers were treating people better while the force was being monitored. “Yeah, they have to,” one officer responded. “When I came on the job, some cops treated people like shit. Now they can’t.”
_______________________________________________________________________
Proposed City Council “Biased-Based Profiling” Bill
Anti-frisk is pro-gang: Mike
By SALLY GOLDENBERG and DAVID SEIFMAN — Wednesday, May 29th, 2013 ‘The New York Post’
Even gang members would be able to sue the NYPD under a controversial bill to rein in its stop-and-frisk, tactics the Bloomberg administration charged yesterday.
“Under this bill, the gang members could go to court and claim that the strategy has a disparate impact based upon age or gender or housing status,” said Bloomberg counsel Michael Best.“And they could ask a judge to shut down the whole [stop-and-frisk] strategy.”
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly warned the potential fallout could be devastating.
“Whoever put the bill together didn’t significantly think it through, and the consequence could be catastrophic,” Kelly said.
The legislation allows anyone who is stopped and frisked to sue — if that person’s demographic is targeted at a disproportionately high rate — and to win NYPD reforms. If victorious, the person could demand seeping NYPD policy changes such as an end to stop and frisk.
Mayor Bloomberg warned that if the bill passes, “Start looking over your shoulder very quickly.”
The bill’s intent, supporters say, is to ensure people are not being profiled unfairly.
And gang prosecutions won’t be hurt, they insist.
The fight against gang activity would not be compromised, supporters of the bill insisted.
Council Speaker Christine Quinn has said she will allow the legislation to be passed into law, even though she won’t vote for it herself.
_______________________________________________________________________
PBBX
Murders down 43 percent in the Bronx so far this year, largest dip in New York City
There have been 20 murders recorded between January and May 12, according to NYPD statistics. The citywide numbers are down 23 percent so far in 2013
By Denis Slattery — Wednesday, May 29th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’
Murders are at a historic low in the Bronx, down a dramatic 43% in 2013 compared with the same period in 2012.
With only 20 homicides recorded from January until May 12, the Boogie Down has seen the biggest drop in the city so far this year.
Overall, there has been a 23% decrease in murders across the five boroughs in 2013, from 138 to 105, over the same time period, according to the latest NYPD reports.
Community leaders across Soundview, Castle Hill and Parkchester have been applauding newly appointed Deputy Inspector Russell Green for the 63% drop in homicides in the 43rd Precinct so far in 2013.
The precinct had the highest number of murders in the city in 2012 with 18.
It also recorded the city’s first homicide of 2013 when Elzina Brown, 59, an NYPD school crossing guard, was shot by her daughter’s ex-boyfriend in Soundview’s Monroe Houses in January.
But the area has calmed down in the ensuing months; there have been only three murders so far this year, compared with eight during the same time period last year.
“The area has a lot of trouble spots and I commend the (commanding officer) for really stepping up to the plate,” a police source said of Green.
“We couldn’t be happier with the work that the police are doing, especially in the (43rd Precinct),” said William Rivera, the chairman of the Community Board 9 public service committee. “Inspector Green is a real hands-on type of leader. He works in the trenches and rolls his sleeves up, and it’s making a difference.”
Green won accolades in the past for his work in the 45th Precinct in Throgs Neck. The east Bronx neighborhood saw an 11% reduction in overall crime under his command in 2011.
Two Bronx precincts, the 50th in Kingsbridge and the 41st in Hunts Point, have yet to see a killing this year.
Captain Philip Rivera, the commanding officer of the 41st precinct, cautioned that with warm weather approaching, police and residents should stay vigilant against the possibility that crime could spike in the summer months.
“We definitely know that we’ve got to step our game up. With the warm weather, generally speaking, people are out on the streets a little bit later,” Rivera said at a recent meeting with Community Board 2.
The 41st Precinct, which had three deaths by this time last year, has not recorded a homicide in 2013.
Rivera said, “Everyone has to keep working as hard as ever. The police, the community, the elected officials all have to work together to keep this trend going.”
During 2012, the Bronx saw a record low of 113 murders, 32 less than the previous year.
Only two Bronx precincts have seen increases in murders so far in 2013 — the 42nd in Melrose, from two to three, and the 52nd in Norwood, from zero to three.
_______________________________________________________________________
Aviation Unit / Unusual (Crab Poaching) Collars Handed-Off to U.S. Parks Police
NYPD testing night vision goggles
By Carolina Leid — Wednesday, May 29th, 2013 ‘WABC Eyewitness News’ / New York, NY
NEW YORK (WABC) -- The latest crime fighting equipment for the NYPD is high tech night vision goggles.
The NYPD is now testing them in the field and they are already proving to be invaluable.
Monday night, two officers in a helicopter spotted crab poachers on the beach in Queens.
They're the eyes in the sky for the NYPD, using this advantage to catch criminals.
Monday night, Officer Lester Sanabria and his partner Chris Maher were doing their regular training exercises, when they spotted something strange along Jamaica Bay.
"We saw two boats beached off an uninhabited island so we circled around to see what they were doing. So, we went closer and saw they were taking horseshoe crabs in an area that it's illegal," said Officer Christopher Maher, NYPD.
They lowered their helicopter from about 500 feet off the ground to 200 and used their high-tech night vision goggles.
"It was pitch black. They could hear the helicopter but they had no idea we saw everything with these night vision goggles," said Officer Lester Sanabria, NYPD.
"What we do is we fold this down. They sense any light, no matter what. It comes like a green picture like a TV screen," Maher said.
Sure enough, after their 40 minute chase they found the men had 200 crabs on board.
The officers say without these goggles they would not have been able to catch these men, but clearly they were on their game.
In case you are wondering why someone would steal crabs, the pharmaceutical industry uses their blood to sanitize medical equipment. One quart can cost a whopping $15,000.
These officers admit they had no idea, but what they do know a lot about is great police work.
_______________________________________________________________________
Crab-poach pinch
By KIRSTAN CONLEY — Wednesday, May 29th, 2013 ‘The New York Post’
Two cops testing night-vision goggles from an NYPD helicopter during a routine training exercise stumbled on a crab-poaching operation, police said yesterday.
Officer Lester Sanabria was piloting a helicopter about 500 feet off the ground around 9:45 p.m., when he and partner Chris Maher spotted several men loading two vessels with horseshoe crabs on an abandoned beach in Jamaica Bay Monday night, cops said.
They hovered lower down to about 200 feet off the ground and their high-tech eyewear revealed Robert Wolter, 28, and Joseph Knauer, 33, were caught following a chase past Marine Park and into Sheepshead Bayallegedly loading two vessels with endangered horseshoe crabs, Maher said.
Occupants of a second boat managed to flee.
Both men are charged with violating a federal wildlife protection measure that prohibits taking wildlife from a National Park. They will appear in Brooklyn Federal Court and face fines up to $500. Federal regulations also allow for six months in jail but law enforcement sources said that’s unlikely in this case.
The crabs fuel a $60 million-a-year market for pharmaceutical companies that process their copper-based blood to sanitize medical equipment. One quart of the blood can fetch up to $15,000, according to experts. The crabs are also used for fertilizer and fishing bait.“It’s illegally taking wildlife from a National Park,” said Lt. David Buckley of the U.S. Parks Police. “It’s pretty common here and it’s a lucrative business.”
“From a biological point of view, they’re worth their weight in gold,” said Marine biologist Martin P. Schreibman. “They’re prehistoric animals that play a very important role for bird migration and the pharmaceutical industry. Their value is immeasurable.”
Both men are charged with violating a federal wildlife protection measure that prohibits taking wildlife from a National Park. They will appear in Brooklyn Federal Court and face fines up to $500. Federal regulations also allow for six months in jail but law enforcement sources said that’s unlikely in this case.
_______________________________________________________________________
It’s Dark, but We See You: Release the Horseshoe Crabs
By J. DAVID GOODMAN — Wednesday, May 29th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’
A police helicopter thundered over a darkened Jamaica Bay in fast pursuit of a boat with no lights and a load of ill-gotten quarry.
As the craft ducked and dodged across the water, the airborne officers used night vision goggles to follow its spectral path.
The 30-minute pursuit on Monday night ended at a dock in Sheepshead Bay, where, the police said, two men tried to unload their haul: 200 horseshoe crabs.
“They tried to lose us,” Officer Chris Maher, who was in the helicopter, said, but officers and federal police officials intercepted the men on land.
What began as a routine flight by officers from the New York Police Department’s aviation unit on Monday night ended with federal criminal charges that the two men in the boat had illegally taken the animals, which can be sold as bait for up to $5 each.
Each spring, in May and June, horseshoe crabs crawl onto beaches up and down the East Coast to lay their eggs. Huge groupings of the sharp-edged arthropods attract shore birds that feed on the eggs — as well as people motivated by profit to take the whole animal.
The poachers have become a problem in New York in recent years, said Marin Hawk, who deals with the management of horseshoe crabs at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. Since New Jersey instated a moratorium on taking the animals in 2008, she said, demand has increased in other states where they can be taken, but only inside of strict quotas and with proper licenses. Such licenses were not found on the men in Jamaica Bay, the authorities said.
The first clue that the men were not properly authorized may have been the hour they chose to work: after 9 p.m. on Memorial Day, under cover of darkness. The police said that the two men, along with two others, used no lights as they scooped the animals out of the shallow waters and tossed them into two boats.
Officer Maher said that during a flight the previous night he had witnessed a boat at the same spot — known as Ruffle Bar — and the behavior struck him as suspicious. He later learned that it violated federal regulations.
The next night, Officer Maher and his partner, Officer Lester Sanabria, again scanned the bay and, from 500 feet above, caught sight of men along the bar, he said.
They piloted down to catch a better look through the night vision goggles. “They definitely looked at us,” he said.
No lights on the boat, no flood lights from the helicopter 200 feet above. Just a long, dark moment. “They stared at us,” he said, “and then they jumped in the boats and sped off in different directions.”
The men were identified by the police as Robert Wolter, 28, and Joseph Knauer, 33. Both live in Bergen Beach, Brooklyn, the police said, a stone’s throw from the bay. Each could face a $500 fine or up to six months in federal prison if convicted, said Lt. David Buckley of the United States Park Police.
The two men who fled in the other boat are still at large.
The horseshoe crabs were rescued alive and returned to the water, Lieutenant Buckley said.
As for Mr. Wolter and Mr. Knauer, he added, “they were cited and released.”
_______________________________________________________________________
Horseshoe crabbers busted in Jamaica Bay poaching: cops
Two Brooklyn men — Robert Wolter, 28 and Joseph Knauer, 33 — have been charged with fishing for the protected bottom-dwelling arthropod.
By Thomas Tracy — Wednesday, May 29th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’
These guys are criminals with a tough shell.
Cops cuffed two men they say were stealing 200 horseshoe crabs from a Jamaica Bay island Monday night.
An NYPD helicopter crew conducting night-vision exercises spotted four men taking the sword-tailed creatures from the shoreline of a small island known as the Ruffle Bar and throwing them into two 35-foot motor boats anchored nearby about 10 p.m.
For the next 40 minutes, cops trailed one of the Carolina skiffs to Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.
They caught suspects Robert Wolter, 28, and Joseph Knauer, 33, both of Brooklyn, loading the crabs into a large plastic tub on Emmons Ave., police said.
Cops handed Wolter and Knauer over to the U.S. Parks Police, who charged them with taking wildlife without a permit and disturbing wildlife breeding practices.
The two men in the second boat were still at large Tuesday.
It was unclear why Wolter and Knauer were collecting the creatures, which can reach 2 feet in length and weigh up to 10 pounds.
_______________________________________________________________________
Former P.C. and Known Embarrassment Bernard Kerik
Former New York police commissioner freed from prison
By Jonathan Allen (Reuters) — Tuesday, May 28th, 2013; 6:58 p.m. EDT
(Reuters) - Bernard Kerik, a former New York police commissioner and nominee to head the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was released from federal prison on Tuesday after serving three years for tax evasion and lying to White House officials, a Bureau of Prisons spokesman said.
Kerik, 57, rose to prominence during the administration of New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Once Giuliani's driver, he became the head of the city prison system and then police commissioner.
His career unraveled when he tried to cover up renovations worth $255,000 on his New York City apartment that was paid for by a contractor blacklisted by the city for suspected ties to organized crime. Kerik admitted to making calls on the contractor's behalf to city regulators.
In 2009, Kerik pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to hiding the renovations from the Internal Revenue Service and to lying about the work to White House officials who interviewed him after President George W. Bush nominated him to lead the Department of Homeland Security.
The scandal proved an embarrassment to Giuliani during his unsuccessful 2008 bid to become the Republican candidate for president.
Kerik began a four-year prison sentence in May 2010, and his release after three years was based on good behavior.
He was the first former New York police commissioner to go to jail, according to Thomas A. Reppetto, who co-wrote a history of the city's police department.
COMMENT: Not so! Reppetto is wrong once again. Former NYPD Police Commissioner Mathew T. Brennan went to jail and served time for springing Tammany Boss William Tweed from the Ludlow Street Jail. - Mike Bosak
Authorities did not disclose whether Kerik went to a halfway house or to his home in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey. He will spend the next five months under home confinement or at a halfway house and then be on supervised release for three years.
_______________________________________________________________________
Kerik Released >From Prison
Former NYPD Commissioner Will Try To Pick Up Where He Left Off
By Tamer El-Ghobashy — Wednesday, May 29th, 2013 ‘The Wall Street Journal’ / New York, NY
Former New York Police Department Commissioner Bernard Kerik is out of prison. Now he needs to get on with his life, and picking up where he left off won't be easy.
The 57-year-old was released from a federal prison in Maryland on Tuesday and returned to his New Jersey home, where he will be under strict supervision while he completes a four-year sentence for tax fraud and lying to federal officials while being considered for a cabinet post.
The homecoming, marked by hugs from family and friends, came three years after a promising career was shattered by felony charges. In May 2010, Mr. Kerik turned himself into the medium-security Federal Correctional Institute in Cumberland, Md., after pleading guilty to eight felony counts, including tax fraud and multiple counts of lying to federal officials.
Mr. Kerik served as police commissioner from August 2000 to December 2001. He won national recognition for managing the NYPD in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and was tapped by President George W. Bush to head the Department of Homeland Security in 2004.
He withdrew under pressure during the background check process. The federal indictments followed.
He was sentenced to 48 months in prison, but became eligible for early release during the last six months of his prison sentence, Federal Bureau of Prisons officials said. A spokesman, Chris Burke, declined to say if Mr. Kerik would be released to a halfway house or into home confinement.
But Mr. Kerik left no doubt about his destination when he arrived at his large, two-story home in Franklin Lakes, N.J., at about 1:45 p.m. Tuesday. He was greeted by family and friends and briefly waved at gathered news media.
He appeared trim and no longer has his trademark mustache.
Later, a Brownstone House truck arrived and delivered more than a dozen trays of food from the Paterson, N.J., restaurant owned by Albert Manzo, who frequently appears on the "Real Housewives of New Jersey." Mr. Manzo followed in his car.
Reached by telephone at their home, Mr. Kerik's wife, Hala, said the former commissioner wouldn't be making any public comments and that the family would "appreciate privacy."
According to Mr. Burke, Mr. Kerik will be subject to federal supervision by prison and probation authorities until the end of his sentence in October. Speaking generally, Mr. Burke said inmates under such arrangements could be subject to Global Position System monitoring, unannounced home visits and drug testing.
Mr. Kerik must prove he is actively looking for employment or has gotten a job in order to maintain his early release, Mr. Burke said.
For the majority of people entering society with a criminal record, finding a meaningful job often proves to be the greatest challenge, experts said.
Mr. Kerik may do better, said Glenn E. Martin of the Fortune Society, a group that helps such people with education, finding work and housing.
"He won't be able to totally get away from the stigma of a criminal record, but I'm sure over the years he's built relationships and I would assume some people in what's left of his network believe in second chances, as we all should," he said.
Still, Mr. Martin said, Mr. Kerik should prepare himself for work far below what he once did.
"He's going to be forced to quickly identify an opportunity, since seeking meaningful employment is one of the stipulations of his release," said Mr. Martin.
—Alison Fox contributed to this article.
_______________________________________________________________________
Former NYPD boss Bernard Kerik released from federal prison, heads home to N.J.
The former top cop was sentenced to four years in 2010. He may serve out the rest of his sentence under an unusual home-confinement arrangement.
By Barry Paddock , Greg B. Smith AND Larry McShane — Wednesday, May 29th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’
The ex-commissioner is now an ex-inmate.
Disgraced former NYPD head Bernard Kerik arrived home Tuesday afternoon for a joyous family reunion after serving more than three years of a four-year federal jail term.
Kerik — wearing blue jeans and a gray striped sweater — emerged from a gray SUV outside his Franklin Lakes, N.J. home about five hours after his release from the Cumberland, Md., lockup.
Laughter was audible as the 57-year-old Kerik hugged his wife, Hala, and three children outside the front door. Each received a separate squeeze before they slipped indoors without addressing the media horde outside.
Kerik — the guest of honor at a feast expected later in the day — offered no comment on his past, present or future after arriving back home in a driving rainstorm.
Al Manzo, a Kerik pal and owner of The Brownstone restaurant in Paterson, said the former cop’s wife, other family members and close friends were gathering for a robust “Welcome Home” meal.
“Bernie’s looking for some of the good food he hasn’t been able to get for the last three years,” Manzo told the Daily News. “I’m his friend — I’m there for him.
“He loves fresh mozzarella, shrimp scampi, beef short ribs.”
Kerik, 57, will likely serve out the rest of his term for eight felony convictions under home confinement.
Kerik was sentenced to four years in prison in February 2010 after a federal judge blasted him for using his high-profile part in the city’s 9/11 response to make money.
Kerik’s guilty plea in a November 2009 plea deal including admissions that he lied to the White House, filed false tax returns and lied about $255,000 in work done by a mob-linked contractor.
Last October, a humiliated Kerik wept on the witness stand while testifying against the two brothers accused of covering up the free remodeling of the ex-commissioner’s Riverdale apartment.
Kerik took the stand wearing the same red tie that he once wore while standing on the White House lawn with President George W. Bush.
“He did his time like a man,” said Manzo, adding that the once-beefy Kerik’s weight was down to 175 pounds. “I think he deserves a chance to get his life back on track.”
The ex-top cop surrendered on May 17, 2010, but earned time off for good behavior that cleared him to leave the Cumberland, Md., facility and actually begin home confinement on May 23, prison officials said.
Kerik is technically in Bureau of Prisons custody through Oct. 15, but his home confinement deal will give him plenty of time outdoors.
He'll be required either find or hold a job, and can leave his Franklin Lakes, N.J. McMansion for tasks related to his re-entry into society, said BOP spokesman Chris Burke.
That includes getting a driver’s license, attending religious services, seeing a doctor or dentist, and “connecting with family.”
Once he's released in the fall, Kerik begins three years of reporting to federal probation officials.
Kerik's home-confinement deal is unusual for federal inmates — only 3,012 of the bureau's 218,000 inmates are now serving time at home.
And most inmates must spend some time in a halfway house first, which makes Kerik's arrangement even more unusual.
“Typically it's more common that they go to a halfway house first, then transition to home confinement,” said Burke.
Prosecutors charged Kerik with lying while trying to land a cabinet post with the Bush administration, and with hiding profits and royalties from his post-9/11 autobiography “The Lost Son.”
The former Rudy Giuliani protégé headed the nation’s largest police force for 16 months in 2001-02. He was considered at one point to serve as secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
But it was later revealed that Kerik carried on a secret affair with his book publisher, Judith Regan, inside a Battery Park City apartment in the weeks after the September 2001 terrorist attack.
_______________________________________________________________________
NYPD: 1,192 Pedestrians and Cyclists Injured, 11 Killed in Traffic in April
By Brad Aaron — Tuesday, May 28th, 2013 ‘Streetsblog New York.Org’ / New York, NY
Fifteen people were killed in New York City traffic in April, and 4,409 were injured, according to the latest NYPD crash data report [PDF].
As of the end of April, 56 pedestrians and cyclists have been killed by city motorists this year, and 4,793 injured, compared to 42 deaths and 4,769 injuries for the same period in 2012.
Citywide, at least 11 pedestrians were fatally struck by drivers: three in Manhattan; two in the Bronx; four in Brooklyn; and two in Queens. Among the victims were Rodrigo Galeana, Javier Ines-Flores, Irvin Gitlitz, Taja Johnson, Kaman Drummond, and four victims whose names were not immediately released: two women in Brooklyn and two men in Queens. At least two seniors were killed by motorists in April: Irvin Gitlitz, 83, and an unidentified woman in Bay Ridge.
NYPD reported no cyclist deaths in April.
Across the city, 904 pedestrians and 288 cyclists were reported hurt in collisions with motor vehicles. Per NYPD policy, few of these crashes were investigated by trained officers.
Of nine fatal crashes reported by Streetsblog and other outlets, one motorist was known to have been charged for causing a death. Dunasha Payne was charged with murder for allegedly running over Kaman Drummond intentionally. Boubacar Bathily was charged for leaving the scene of the crash that killed Taja Johnson, but was not charged for Johnson’s death. Rodrigo Galeana and Javier Ines-Flores were killed by a hit-and-run driver who was not immediately caught or identified. Historically, nearly half of motorists who kill a New York City pedestrian or cyclist do not receive so much as a citation for careless driving.
There were 16,412 motor vehicle crashes in the city last month.
Download April NYPD summons data here. Crash and summons data from prior months is available in multiple formats here.
After the jump: contributing factors for crashes resulting in injury and death.
To download the reports named in this article go to: http://www.streetsblog.org/2013/05/28/nypd-1192-pedestrians-and-cyclists-injured-11-killed-in-traffic-in-april/ and click on links.
_______________________________________________________________________
Sgt. Kevin Brennan and P.O. Michael Burbridge Collar Up
NYPD Sgt. Kevin Brennan arrests two in return to scene where he was shot in 2012
Kevin Brennan, 29, and his former partner, Officer Michael Burbridge, arrested two men wanted for a home invasion robbery as they accompanied prosecutors on a walk-through at location in Bushwick Houses where Brennan was shot in the head in January 2012
By Joe Kemp , Shane Dixon Kavanaugh AND Oren Yaniv — Wednesday, May 29th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’
Once a hero cop, always a hero cop.
NYPD Sgt. Kevin Brennan, who survived being shot in the head in 2012 and now works the intelligence beat, showed Tuesday he hasn’t lost any of his street toughness by helping to collar two wanted men, one of whom was packing heat.
“It was like old times again,” Brennan said, noting he made the arrests in Bushwick by joining forces with Officer Michael Burbridge, his old partner. “Mike and I used to work together before I got hurt. It was fun.”
Brennan, 29, was part of an anti-crime unit on Jan. 31, 2012 when he responded to a call for shots fired in the Bushwick Houses. He chased an armed man whom he spotted fleeing from a building on Humboldt St., and was shot in the head while wrestling the man to the ground.
On Tuesday, Brennan, had returned with Burbridge to the scene where he was shot. They were there to assist prosecutors in preparing for the trial of his alleged shooter, Luis (Baby) Ortiz, a Latin King whose point-blank round tore through the back of the Brennan’s skull. Brennan suffered vision damage and injury to his spinal cord, leading to a long and arduous recovery. His new posting in the Intelligence Division is more about more doing investigative work by analyzing files at a desk than making regular, rough-and-tumble patrols.
“We drove past the kid,” Brennan said in recounting Tuesday’s collars, explaining that Burbridge spotted the young man on Humboldt. St. and a person who was with him as suspects in an unsolved home invasion robbery.
The partners, together again, jumped into action.
“We pulled up. We jumped out,” Brennan recalled. “The juices were flowing for the first time in a while.”
Brennan drew on the street instincts that allowed him to make nearly 100 gun arrests in 8 years on the force.
He had one of the suspects hemmed in along a fence.
“He tried to shield his body against a fence, and I knew he was hiding something,” Brennan said.
Brennan added that he quickly reached for the waistband of Joseph Roman, 17 and “felt the butt end of the gun.”
Brennan said he gained the upper hand by putting Roman in a full-nelson hold.
Roman, of Bushwick, was carrying a loaded Hi-Point .9-mm pistol, police said. Tyrrell Woods, 23, of Staten Island, was also pinched.
Brooklyn Assistant District Attorneys Lewis Lieberman and Melissa Carvajal, who had both waited in the car, supplied handcuffs, and the suspects were soon on their way to get booked in connection with the home invasion.
Police sources said both suspects are Latin Kings, like Brennan’s shooter. Ortiz, 23, is charged with the murder of Shannon McKinney on New Year’s Day 2012 and with the attempted murder for the incident involving Brennan a month later.
Brennan gave his former partner credit for the collars.
“It was all Mike,” he said. “He’s a good eye. If he didn’t see it, we would have been gone.”
_______________________________________________________________________
Officer Shot in Head in 2012 Makes an Arrest Near the Same Spot
By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN — Wednesday, May 29th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’
For Police Sgt. Kevin Brennan, his visit to the Bushwick Houses on Tuesday was supposed to be uneventful. He was there to familiarize himself with where he had been on the night of Jan. 31, 2012, when he was shot in the head. The trial of the man charged with trying to murder him is approaching, and Sergeant Brennan needed to prepare.
So there he was, with his old partner and two assistant district attorneys in tow.
And then police work intervened. As they were driving away from the Bushwick Houses, a hulking public-housing complex on the Williamsburg-Bushwick border in Brooklyn, Sergeant Brennan’s partner, Officer Michael Burbridge, recognized two men who were suspects in a recent home-invasion robbery.
As the excited prosecutors watched, the two policemen ordered the men up against a fence, Sergeant Brennan said. The one Sergeant Brennan approached seemed to be standing unnaturally, keeping part of his body as far away as possible from the officer as Sergeant Brennan frisked him.
“I felt the butt end of a firearm on his waistband,” Sergeant Brennan said. He immobilized the man’s arms as Officer Burbridge assisted him with the arrest.
The two suspects, Tyrrell Woods, 23, and Joseph Roman, 17, were arrested on robbery and weapons charges, the police said.
Sergeant Brennan said that he returned to police work a few months ago and was working in the department’s secretive Intelligence Division. He said he continued to have some vision problems and nerve damage to his spinal cord.
Sergeant Brennan said that as he made the arrest, he was focused on the job at hand; his mind did not drift back to the night last year when a man he was grappling with shot him at point-blank range behind his right ear.
“Today happened so fast, I wasn’t thinking of anything,” he said. “When Mike said they were wanted, we went to grab them and it was like old times again, when me and Mike used to work before I was hurt.”
_______________________________________________________________________
Schumer, Kelly call for change in planned Statue of Liberty visitor screenings
By Judy L. Randall — Wednesday, May 29th, 2013 ‘The Staten Island Advance’ / Staten Island
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Visitors to the iconic Lady in the Harbor will be at risk if new security screenings are put in play, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly charged Tuesday.
Under a plan devised by the National Park Service, which oversees the Statue of Liberty site, visitors would be screened at facilities on Ellis Island and Liberty Island.
Previously, the NPS conducted security screenings at Battery Park before passengers boarded ferries.
Schumer and Kelly believe the change leaves open the potential for a devastating attack -- such as someone bringing explosives on board a ferry -- leading to deadly and catastrophic damage in New York Harbor.
The Statue of Liberty, damaged during Hurricane Sandy, is set to reopen July 4.
An estimated four million visitors go to the site each year.
NPS has said it will go ahead with the new screening plan, despite the objection of the NYPD.
"The NYPD and the Park Service have differences over how to best protect visitors from a potential terrorist attack," said Kelly. "I've written to Secretary of the Interior (Sally) Jewel and asked that she have the Park Service reconsider its decision to eliminate screening at the Battery."
Schumer said the Statue of Liberty was an obvious target for terrorists.
"This change leaves the millions of Americans who visit this national treasure every year more open to attack," said Schumer (D-N.Y.). "The Statute of Liberty is a national symbol and a natural target for those who wish to do us harm, and we shouldn't make it easier for them. I know the NPS cares deeply about the monument and its visitors, but in this case I think they've made a mistake and should rethink this policy change."
In a letter to NPS director Jonathan Jarvis, Schumer urged the agency "to re-examine its security procedures and re-establish a pre-boarding screening at Battery Park."
_______________________________________________________________________
Wednesday, May 29th, 2013 ‘The New York Daily News’ Editorial:
Ray Kelly takes DC to task for foolish security move
Not screening Statue of Liberty ferry riders is a dangerous idea
The National Park Service is dead set on eliminating security screening for the ferries that will take visitors to Liberty and Ellis islands when post-Hurricane Sandy service resumes July 4.
This is insanity. With the approval of Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, the agency is moving toward the city’s first reduction in anti-terror security since 9/11. Did she not pay attention to the Boston Marathon bombing ? Did the London machete attack escape her attention?
Incredibly, Jewell has simply brushed off Police Commissioner Ray Kelly’s warning that her underlings are on the verge of endangering the lives and safety of thousands of people.
On May 3, Kelly wrote to Jewell urging her to maintain preboarding security at the foot of Manhattan. “Al Qaeda and those who share its violent jihadist ideology repeatedly call for attacks on America, and they have long shown an interest in targets that represent our country,” he noted.
Jewell never responded. Instead, on May 8, the park service announced that tickets were going on sale for the ride to Ellis and Liberty islands, with security screening to be located on Ellis.
The U.S. began airport-style screening in tents at the Battery in December 2001. After Sandy wiped out the facilities, the agency looked elsewhere, no doubt pressed by some locals and park activists. That led to shifting security to Ellis.
There’ll be less crowding in parks at the Battery. Who the hell knows what will happen on the ferries? As Sen. Chuck Schumer said, “It’s like screening people after they get off airplanes.”
New York remains the world’s top terrorist magnet. The police cannot secure every place where there are large crowds — for example, all subway trains — but authorities must lock down every high-value target that can be locked down. Like the ferries to the Statue of Liberty.
_______________________________________________________________________
Westchester
New Rochelle commissioner: Cruz was trying to stab cop; shooting justified
By Will David — Wednesday, May 29th, 2013 ‘The Journal News’ / White Plains, NY
NEW ROCHELLE — A 48-year-old emotionally disturbed artist was trying to stab a police officer when the officer fatally shot him Sunday afternoon, Police Commissioner Patrick Carroll said.
Carroll, speaking about the shooting for the first time Tuesday, told The Journal News that four officers went to Samuel Cruz’s Hickory Street apartment to take the painter to a hospital for psychiatric help. A routine incident became deadly when he brandished a 6-inch folding knife and tried to attack one of the officers, Carroll said.
“When the knife came into play, you are bringing in deadly physical force,” Carroll said, adding that he was “comfortable” that the shooting was justified.
After police twice used a Taser to subdue him, Cruz attempted to stab Officer Steven Geertgens of the department’s Critical Incident Unit, the commissioner said. Geertgens shot Cruz once in the chest, Carroll said.
Cruz was pronounced dead at Sound Shore Medical Center in New Rochelle.
“I spoke to (Geertgens) this morning,” Carroll said. “It is something that will stick with him for the rest of his life.”
Geertgens, who was later treated for trauma at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, has been assigned to modified duty until two investigations — one being conducted the New Rochelle police Internal Affairs Unit and another by the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office — are completed.
Carroll said the case might go before a grand jury for a review because it involved a police officer.
“It’s a homicide investigation because he (Cruz) was killed,” said Lucian Chalfen, a spokesman for District Attorney Janet DiFiore.
Cruz’s family said he had a bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, had stopped taking his medication and his behavior changed, police said. The commissioner said Cruz could be violent.
The county’s Department of Community Mental Health has launched its own investigation into the shooting. Commissioner Grant Mitchell said it appears Cruz had no affiliation with any county-run mental-health programs. He said his department would spend the next few weeks piecing together Cruz’s treatment history.
“We try to look at these tragedies as something we can learn from,” Mitchell said.
Democratic legislators have asked Mitchell to appear before the legislature next week; Mitchell said he would do so.
“I think there needs to be a review of what’s done in these types of cases,” Legislator Alfreda Williams said.
On Thursday, Cruz told someone he had killed his own sister. That unidentified man called the New Rochelle police, who probed the well-being of Cruz’s sister and learned she was not dead. Cruz “slapped her around” but she declined to file charges, Carroll said.
Cruz’s estranged wife called police Sunday after she went to his third-floor apartment on 18 Hickory St. to check on him. He would not let her in.
At 1:30 p.m. Sunday, four officers, including Geertgens and Sgt. Kevin Perri, the CIU supervisor, arrived to escort Cruz to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.
The officers knocked on Cruz’s door, but he would not open it. The officers had a lengthy discussion with Cruz through the door, during which he told them he had no clothing and asked police to buy him something to wear, Carroll said.
Eventually, police forced Cruz’s door. Inside, he met them in a narrow area of the apartment by the kitchen when they were about 3 feet inside, Carroll said. When officers saw Cruz brandishing a knife, Carroll said, they deployed a Taser.
Geertgens was holding a police shield to keep Cruz at bay. The artist tried to stab him over the shield and the officer shot him, Carroll said. The officers gave Cruz first aid and used a defibrillator to revive him, he said.
Carroll said the officers appeared to have handled the situation correctly.
“If you are Monday morning quarterbacking, you could wait for 10 hours,” Carroll said. “It is not something we are happy about. My officers are saddened that it had to happen this way.”
Geertgens, 36, a 12-year police veteran, has an “exemplary record,” Caroll said. The highly decorated officer has been trained to deal with emotionally disturbed persons.
Detective Ray Andolina, the New Rochelle police union president, said he could not speak in detail about the shooting because it is an active investigation, but added, “We are in support of our officer.”
In 20 years, the New Rochelle CIU has handled thousands of dangerous situations, Carroll said. There have been two police shootings and this was the first fatal incident.
_______________________________________________________________________
New York State
N.Y. Court of Appeals to consider warrantless GPS tracking
By Daniel Wiessner — Tuesday, May 28th, 2013 ‘Thomson Reuters News & Insight’
ALBANY, N.Y. (Reuters) - The New York Court of Appeals on Wednesday will hear claims that New York's warrantless GPS tracking of a former state worker's personal car violated the state constitution, a case that could affect the privacy rights of more than 200,000 public workers.
In 2008, Michael Cunningham, a state Labor Department employee, was fired after investigators secretly attached a GPS device to his personal car and used the evidence during disciplinary hearings to show that he had falsified travel records and time sheets.
Cunningham sued to overturn his termination, claiming the warrantless use of the GPS device amounted to an unreasonable search and seizure. The Appellate Division, Third Department, in 2011 upheld the Labor Department's decision in a divided ruling.
According to court filings, Cunningham's car was tracked 24 hours a day for the 30 days that the GPS device was attached.
The state maintained that investigators only reviewed records from regular work hours. It also said it was forced to use the GPS because less intrusive means, including hiring a private investigator, did not produce the evidence the Labor Department needed.
Cunningham is seeking a new disciplinary hearing without the GPS records.
The case appears to be the first time a state's high court will consider GPS tracking in a civil matter, according to Cunningham's attorney, Corey Stoughton, and five other law professors and attorneys who are not involved in the case.
The central question is whether the state Inspector General's office, which investigates misconduct by state workers, must obtain a warrant to use GPS devices in civil cases. The Court of Appeals and U.S. Supreme Court have held in separate cases that a warrant is required before GPS can be used in a criminal investigation.
The court's decision could impact the way the state handles investigations of a workforce of more than 200,000 state and municipal employees, said Stoughton, of the New York Civil Liberties Union. The Inspector General's office declined to comment on the case or its use of GPS tracking.
Law professors and outside attorneys said the case could have broader implications, as a decision in the state's favor could give it a legal foundation to justify warrantless GPS tracking in other contexts.
TRACKING 'OVERLY INTRUSIVE'
There is little state or federal case law on the government's use of GPS tracking in civil cases, according to Kit Walsh, an attorney at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.
A decision upholding the use of the GPS device in Cunningham's case could be used as a basis for expanding warrantless GPS tracking from state employees to private citizens, he said.
For example, "if the court says (Cunningham) had a limited expectation of privacy in his own car, that's going to have consequences" for private citizens, at least in New York, Walsh said.
The dissent in the 3-2 Third Department ruling found the GPS tracking overly intrusive, particularly because it recorded the location of Cunningham and his family on weekends and during a week-long vacation.
The state claims it did not need a warrant to track Cunningham because it was investigating workplace misdeeds and not criminal activity. Requiring the Inspector General to obtain a warrant to use a tracking device "would impose intolerable burdens" and delay the agency's investigations, the state's attorneys said in its appellate brief.
The case is Michael Cunningham v. New York State Department of Labor, New York State Court of Appeals, No. 123.
For Cunningham: Corey Stoughton of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
For the state: Assistant Solicitor General Kate Nepveu.
_______________________________________________________________________
New Jersey
N.J. State Police trooper claims to be latest victim of retaliation against whistleblowers
By Christopher Baxter — Wednesday, May 29th, 2013 ‘The Newark Star-Ledger’ / Newark, NJ
TRENTON — In January, State Police Sgt. 1st Class Frank Chiofalo claimed in a lawsuit that his boss, Maj. Robert Cuomo, had falsified payroll to show he had worked on days he had taken off, and had covered up a letter lauding a trooper for last year’s high-speed escort to Atlantic City.
After confronting Cuomo, Chiofalo said, he was transferred and effectively demoted.
The claims prompted an investigation by internal affairs. But last month, the focus of that investigation turned to Chiofalo, a new court filing alleges, when he was told he could not retire and would be prosecuted on internal disciplinary charges for failing to report Cuomo’s wrongdoing.
"He went to his boss and his boss gave him orders," Chiofalo’s attorney, George Daggett, said. "What’s he supposed to do, go down to the superintendent’s office and tell him what’s going on? Not in this organization. Their history is, when you report something, you wind up in trouble."
The State Police and Attorney General’s Office declined comment on the case.
The developments, included in an amended complaint filed April 18 in state Superior Court in Mercer County, were the latest example of how troopers believe they will be shunned and punished if they break the chain of command and speak up about misconduct. A Star-Ledger analysis of lawsuits last year found claims of retaliation continue to cost taxpayers millions of dollars.
Law enforcement experts said the problem was cause for serious concern because it breeds morale problems and creates a chilling effect, discouraging troopers from blowing the whistle on misconduct to avoid getting in trouble themselves and hurting their chances at promotion.
"They’re embarrassed, so they’re going after the guy who embarrassed them," Daggett said.
The Attorney General’s Office has denied that retaliation within the ranks is prevalent. Internal State Police e-mails obtained by The Star-Ledger show Chiofalo, a 25-year veteran of the force, was approved by Fuentes’ office in March to retire effective June 1 of this year.
On April 15, Chiofalo was interviewed by internal affairs regarding the allegations he leveled in his lawsuit, according to the e-mails, prompting additional charges to be pursued against him. A day later, on April 16, Fuentes’ office reversed course and denied his retirement request.
An e-mail said Chiofalo had been placed on a "retirement hold" pending the outcome of the internal affairs investigation into his allegations.
Chiofalo originally sued in January, claiming top brass at the State Police had signed off on a memo applauding a trooper for a job well-done in an unauthorized, high-speed escort of sports cars, and then tried to cover it up.
On March 30, 2012, two troopers led dozens of sports cars at speeds in excess of 100 mph along state highways to Atlantic City. The troopers, Nadir Nassry and Joseph Ventrella, have since forfeited their jobs and settled criminal charges against them.
Court documents allege the memo was sent by Superintendent Col. Rick Fuentes’ office to Maj. Ed Cetnar, then deputy branch commander of field operations, more than two weeks after the escort and after State Police had received at least two complaints about it.
Cetnar has since been promoted to lieutenant colonel.
The memo was a response to a thank-you letter sent to Fuentes from various driving clubs in northern New Jersey that participated in the caravan.
A member of several of those clubs, former New York Giants running back Brandon Jacobs, was friends with Nassry and requested the escort.
Cetnar forwarded the memo to Troop B, where Ventrella was assigned, and indicated he "wanted his appreciation for a job well-done conveyed" to him, the lawsuit said. He also allegedly indicated he wanted the letter included in Ventrella’s personnel file.
Chiofalo, who worked in Troop B headquarters and was responsible for processing the documents, said in the lawsuit that he received them, showed them to Cuomo and asked what should be done with them, given Ventrella had been suspended. Chiofalo said he was told by Cuomo "those documents do not exist" and understood the major was telling him to destroy them or pretend they do not exist.
As part of his duties, the lawsuit said, Chiofalo was also in charge of accounting for and reporting used vacation time and work schedules for high-ranking officers in Troop B headquarters.
He said in the lawsuit Cuomo "had falsified work hours to indicate that he was working for a significant number of days when in fact he was not." As a result of his run-ins with Cuomo, Chiofalo said he was transferred out of Troop B headquarters in Totowa to be the assistant station commander in Netcong, which is considered a less-prestigious assignment with fewer responsibilities.
_______________________________________________________________________
U.S.A.
Guns in the home proving deadly for kids
While efforts at gun control are still being fought, children's advocates are urging parents and communities to take their own steps to protect kids.
By Liz Szabo (Arizona Republic) — Wednesday, May 29th, 2013 ‘USA Today’
He didn't know the gun was loaded.
The 14-year-old Massachusetts boy had recently found his mother's handgun, which she kept hidden under her mattress for protection.
"Promise me you'll never touch it," his mother, a single mom, had asked him.
But the lure of the gun was irresistible. He decided to show it off to his neighbor, 12-year-old Brian Crowell.
"He was going, 'Click, click, click,'" pretending to shoot the gun, says Brian's mother, Ann Marie Crowell, who spoke to the child and his mother after the incident. "But there was one last bullet. It went into Brian's neck."
And just like that, Crowell's son was gone.
Nearly 800 children under 14 were killed in gun accidents from 1999 to 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly one in five injury-related deaths in children and adolescents involve firearms.
Although mass shootings get more attention, children are far more likely to be killed at home.
Through homicide, suicide and accidents, guns cause twice as many deaths in young people as cancer, five times as many as heart disease and 15 times as many as infections, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
And while Congress voted down gun legislation last month, children's advocates such as Crowell are urging parents and communities to take their own steps to protect kids.
Crowell, who attended the State of the Union address in January as President Obama's guest, has devoted her life to gun safety, urging parents to ask whether there are guns in the home before sending their kids for play dates.
"I had never thought to ask about guns in the home," says Crowell, of Saugus, Mass.
Saugus says she's aiming for common sense, not sweeping political change. Nearly 40% of American households have guns, studies show.
"If I owned a gun, I wouldn't be mad that someone asked," Crowell says. "If you were going over for a playdate to a house with a swimming pool, wouldn't you want them to lock the pool gate? As a parent, you want to do anything you need to do to protect your child."
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that pediatricians include a question about guns in the home when taking a patient's history.
"It's no different than when we ask about safety seats in the car or bicycle helmets, or the temperature of your hot water heater," academy president Thomas McInerny says. "We want to keep children safe. And most parents say they appreciate it."
If a child's parents own guns, pediatricians should counsel them about the need to store them safely, the academy says. Its policy statement on guns says, "The safest home for a child or adolescent is one without firearms."
Research shows that storing guns locked and unloaded reduces the risk of both injuries and suicide by about 70%, according to a 2005 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Bill Brassard, a spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, says, "Safe storage is absolutely critical to preventing the misuse of firearms."
People who want quick access to a gun for security can still store them safely, Brassard says, with lockable boxes that can be opened with a keypad. Most major firearm manufacturers now include a gun lock with new guns, Brassard says.
Yet many fail to follow such advice.
About 29% of households with children younger than 12 fail to lock up their guns, according to a 2006 study in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine by Harvard's David Hemenway and others.
Some see the pediatrics academy's policy as a threat to gun owners' rights.
In the past two years, six states have considered bills to prevent doctors from asking about guns in the home or recording that information into medical records. Only Florida's bill passed. That law never went into effect, however, because it was blocked by a judge.
Some of the USA's largest firearms organizations run gun safety programs.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation says its 12-year-old ChildSafe program has distributed 35 million free firearm safety kits that include a gun locking device and firearm safety brochure.
National Rifle Association spokesman Andrew Arulanandam says 18 million children have participated in the NRA's Eddie Eagle GunSafe Program. The program teaches kids, "If you see a gun, STOP! Don't Touch. Leave the Area. Tell an Adult."
"The one thing we always recommend is education," Arulanandam said. "You have to teach your children that guns aren't toys."
Arulanandam notes that gun deaths among adolescents have fallen sharply. In 1994, the rate of all firearms-related deaths in teens 15 to 19 years old peaked at 28 deaths per 100,000 people. Declining homicide rates helped lower that rate to 11 deaths per 100,000 people in 2009, according to the CDC.
Fewer children are dying from gun accidents today than a decade ago, as well. The number of kids younger than 14 who died in a gun accident fell from 86 in 2000 to 62 in 2010, according to the CDC. Yet progress has been uneven. Among the youngest children -- those younger than 4 -- the number of accidental gun deaths more than doubled, to 25 a year in 2010.
Arulanandam credits programs like Eddie Eagle for helping to reduce deaths in children. Yet Arthur Kellermann, a policy analyst at Rand Corp., said programs such as Eddie Eagle have never been independently assessed to measure whether they really make kids safer. He worries that gun safety programs could give parents a false sense of security.
Most parents believe their child is smart enough not to touch a gun, surveys show. Studies prove them wrong, Kellermann said.
In an experiment in which researchers observed how 8- to 12-year-old boys behaved when left alone in a room with a hidden gun, 75% of boys found the gun within 15 minutes. Only one of 64 kids in the experiment left the room to notify an adult. The gun was modified so it couldn't fire.
Of the boys who found the gun, 63% handled it and 33% pulled the trigger.
More than 90% of boys who handled the gun or pulled the trigger said they had received some sort of gun safety instruction, says Kellermann, co-author of the study, published in Pediatrics in 2001.
"Although I have no doubt that the (NRA) program is well intended, I worry that it may foster a sense of complacency among gun-owning parents, that it's OK to keep a gun loaded and readily available for protection because their child will respect it," Kellermann says. "Even kids who've been taught gun safety are naturally curious."
Guns also should be designed more safely, Kellermann says.
If manufacturers can make childproof aspirin bottles, they should be able to make a gun that can't be operated by a child, says Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center.
Guns also should be redesigned so that they don't go off accidentally when dropped, Hemenway says.
"What I don't understand is why the industry hasn't done more to make handguns childproof, since we have no evidence to date that it is possible to make children gun-proof," Kellermann says. "And as recent tragedies have proven, they are not bullet-proof."
_______________________________________________________________________
2nd Amendment / Gun Control Civil Issues
A Law That Keeps Gun Makers Smiling
By JIM DWYER — Wednesday, May 29th, 2013 ‘The New York Times’
(Op-Ed / Commentary)
(Edited for brevity)
In 2005 surrounded by beaming gun manufacturers Mr. Bush put his signature on a piece of legislation that would make it very difficult for anyone hurt by gun violence to sue the makers for injuries.
The law signed that day, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, has smothered lawsuits by cities around the country, including by New York, that sought to force manufacturers to be more careful in how they sold and distributed guns.
Under President Obama, the Justice Department has continued to line up with gun manufacturers to defend the constitutionality of the law.
Last year, a state court threw out a lawsuit by Daniel Williams, of Buffalo, who, as a high school junior, was mistaken for a gang member and shot by a Saturday-night special — a Hi-Point 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol, manufactured by the thousands by Beemiller Inc. of Ohio.
The sole distributor of the Hi-Point, a man named Charles Brown of MKS Supply, “has sold at least 630 handguns traced to crime in the State of New York,” according to the lawsuit.
Like many others in the manufacture and distribution of guns, Mr. Brown has shown little curiosity about how the weapons were used. An article in The New York Times on Tuesday reported that numerous gun executives stated during sworn depositions that it was not important for them to keep track of how often their guns were used in crimes.
For instance, Mr. Brown said that he never examined the “trace” requests that came from law enforcement to see which of the companies that he supplied were, in turn, selling guns that ended up being used in crimes.
Time after time, the executives said they were not concerned with finding out what happened to the guns.
All these statements were made in lawsuits brought before the 2005 law put up a special shield around the gun manufacturers. The law grants an exception for manufacturers or distributors who are accused of having knowingly violated state or federal laws. Because of that exception, a state appellate court in October restored the suit brought by Mr. Williams against Hi-Point, Beemiller, MKS Supply and others. (The owner of Beemiller, Tom Deeb, has said that law enforcement authorities have recognized him for the special help he has given in investigations.)
The Williams lawsuit is one of very few cases not eliminated by the law.
Before the law’s passage, a federal judge in Brooklyn hearing a case brought by the N.A.A.C.P. found that gun manufacturers and distributors were not doing simple things that would reduce the number of weapons available to criminals. As examples of what could be done, wrote the judge, Jack B. Weinstein, manufacturers could only allow their products to be distributed to retailers who had actual storefronts, carried insurance, keep a minimum inventory, and allow the manufacturers to review their books.
Such measures would not restrict any Second Amendment rights, the judge ruled, and the evidence showed that “more prudent and easily available merchandising practices on the part of the defendants would have saved many lives in the past — and would save many in the future.”
Why weren’t these steps being taken?
“Some members of the industry believe that unified, well-organized voluntary attempt to limit diversion of guns to criminals would be the equivalent of a public recognition of failures to take such steps in the past,” Judge Weinstein wrote, “with an implied responsibility for thousands of avoidable deaths.”
What to make of the Department of Justice under President Obama? “We hope they will change their view on the constitutionality of a federal law that effectively rewrites state’s civil justice laws to protect one industry,” said Jonathan Lowy, a lawyer with the Brady Center who has brought many cases against gun manufacturers.
Allison Price, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said: “We continue to defend the constitutionality of this law. While the Newtown tragedy does not alter the department’s view regarding the constitutionality of the statute, it does underscore the need for new gun legislation, as the president and attorney general have said.”
_______________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Feds to review deadly force by Philly cops
By Sam Wood (Philly.com) — Tuesday, May 28th, 2013; 7:47 p.m. EDT
With shootings by Philadelphia police rising to the highest level in over a decade, Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey has asked the Department of Justice to review the department's use of deadly force.
The request follows a Philly.com story published May 14 documenting a 50-percent increase in the number of police shootings in 2012.
Police in Philadelphia shot 52 suspects last year. Of those, 15 people died. In 2011, police wounded or killed 35 people.
"When you have as many as we've had, it gets people wondering if they were all justified," Ramsey said. "We've been looking at this issue since December. The Civil Rights Division of the DOJ knows and agrees this is a good course of action."
The Justice Department's review, to be funded by the federal Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), will include an analysis of policies, procedures, training and tactics. It will begin in mid-July.
Calling on the Justice Department is not a first for Ramsey. As chief of the Washington D.C. police, he requested a similar inquiry.
The DOJ conducted a comparable review in Las Vegas. The 2012 study prompted a major overhaul in policy. Among the changes adopted there: Las Vegas police are now advised to place minimal reliance upon the use of force; focus on de-escalating dangerous situations; and be willing to retreat from erratic subjects.
The rise in shootings by police in Philadelphia last year came as the rate of violent crime continued to plummet and the number of assaults on police officers fell.
Philadelphia police this year have been involved in 19 shootings to date, about 32 percent fewer than last year's 28 during the same period.
Ramsey said he had called in the feds because an internal assessment might not be viewed with the same degree of faith and trust.
"When you don't have the credibility in the minds of the public, then it doesn't matter,” he said. “There will always be a bit of a cloud. It leads to tension in the communities where we're most concerned.
"We may have reached that point here in Philadelphia," he said.
Philadelphia in recent years has had one of the highest rates of shootings by police in the nation. When measured against violent crime, Philadelphia, more often than not, has topped other major cities for which data were available: Dallas, Baltimore, Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and New York City.
The police departments in each of those cities have recently undergone reviews of their use of deadly force.
Ramsey's decision to invite the Department of Justice was met with applause, though some expressed doubt that changes would be made.
“Given the number of police shootings in the last year, an outside review of shooting policies and practices is a good and necessary first step,” said Philadelphia civil rights attorney David Rudovsky. “But none of it is binding. There is no force of law behind any of it. They can ignore it.”
Ramsey said would open up the entire department to federal inspection and act on their findings.
“I think it’s important that that level of scrutiny take place,” Ramsey said. “When we do that, whatever those recommendations are, I’m ready to implement those guidelines."
Ramsey's decision to call in the DOJ was hailed as "courageous" and “extraordinary” by Kelvyn Anderson, the executive director of the city's Police Advisory Commission.
Extraordinary it may be, but for Ramsey it is not without precedent. Ramsey has a national reputation as a reformer.
“He says what he means, means what he says, and will do what he says. That’s why I have such confidence the reforms will be implemented,” said Josh Ederheimer, the interim head of the Justice Department’s COPS office.
When Ramsey was appointed chief in Washington D.C., he joined a department with a reputation tarnished by the use of excessive force. One of his first actions was to call for a review by the Department of Justice.
Before Ramsey left Washington for Philadelphia, police shootings dropped 87 percent. But Washington, he said, was a different situation.
"D.C. had no training and standards at all," he said. "Some officers had gone two or three years without firearms training at all."
The situation in Philadelphia isn't nearly as egregious.
A Philadelphia review will likely take less than a year, Ramsey said. After consultants do a soup-to-nuts investigation, the Justice Department will bring experts to the city. As in Las Vegas, the federal government will fund the entire process.
Ramsey said he is optimistic a review will reduce the amount of police gunfire, and, perhaps save lives of both citizens and the police that protect them.
“I want to keep officers safe. I don’t want any more officer deaths,” he said. “I want people to understand that if you can back out of a situation, or do something else, that may be the better way.”
But he’s also realistic.
"I can't guarantee there will be no more shootings," he said.
_______________________________________________________________________
Baltimore, Maryland
Baltimore May Limit Liquor Stores In High-Crime Areas
By Ted Gest — Wednesday, May 29th, 2013 ‘The John Jay College of Criminal Justice Crime & Justice News’ / Washington, DC
Baltimore has become the latest U.S. city to target liquor stores in an effort to curb crime in troubled neighborhoods, says The Crime Report.
A proposed change to zoning laws would force liquor outlets to move to sites especially zoned for liquor sales, to sell their liquor licenses, or to convert their businesses to non-liquor stores.
The city council is expected to vote on the measure by this fall.
With two liquor retailers for every 1,000 people, Baltimore has twice the number of liquor stores than is considered a reasonable standard nationally, says David Jernigan, director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The overabundance results partly from population decline, he says.
"In Baltimore, what happened is that people left but the [liquor] stores didn't," adds Jernigan. "And Baltimore's problem is not atypical across the county wherever there are large, urban populations:
The more outlets there are, the more you've got homicides, the more you've got assaults." Citing what he describes as one of the most glaring signs of Baltimore's overload of alcohol outlets, Jernigan says 97 such retailers are situated within a mile of the Johns Hopkins campus.
"There is a striking difference between neighborhoods where the per capita income is higher and neighborhoods where it's on the lower end [It] seems like] there's a liquor store on every corner," says Dr. Oxiris Barbot, the city's health commissioner.
To read the full Crime Report article, go to:
http://www.thecrimereport.org/news/inside-criminal-justice/2013-05-alcohol-and-crime
_______________________________________________________________________
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit officer on trial after girl, 7, dies as TV crew films
By ED WHITE (The Associated Press) — Wednesday, May 29th, 2013; 7:23 a.m. EDT
DETROIT (AP) -- Police accompanied by a reality TV crew fired a stun grenade through a window as they raided a Detroit home in search of a murder suspect. A gunshot then went off inside, fatally striking a 7-year-old girl in the head while she slept on a couch.
Now, three years later, Officer Joseph Weekley goes on trial in the death of Aiyana Stanley-Jones. Jury selection starts Wednesday.
Weekley, charged with involuntary manslaughter, is accused of acting with gross negligence when he didn't prevent his gun from firing during the chaos that followed the use of a "flash-bang" device.
The shooting shocked Detroit. Cooperation between police and the reality show, "The First 48," was banned in the aftermath, and the chief soon resigned at the mayor's request when it was revealed that he was working on plans for another TV show.
But beyond the city, there was little, if any, impact on the hunger for real-life police drama on the small screen. "Cops," in its 25th year, still is on the air, moving from Fox to Spike TV this fall. "The First 48" has been on A&E Networks since 2004.
"They're fascinating and compelling," said Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University.
"Everyone has built into them an inherent interest in encounters with police," he said. "We know how our adrenaline gets going when we see that flashing light behind us when we're going too fast on the highway. ... Every now and again an incident happens, but it isn't enough to trump the momentum this genre has."
The loud, smoky device used in the Detroit raid is intended to startle and confuse people as officers swarm a scene. But some critics of the police department's tactics believe it was used in the fatal raid simply to satisfy a crew from "The First 48," a show that focuses on the crucial early stages of homicide investigations.
Weekley's trial could reveal how the TV crew's presence influenced decisions that May 2010 night.
"This was essentially a military assault on a private dwelling," said Ron Scott, spokesman for a watchdog group, Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality. "I think the administration of the police department wanted to show Detroit was tough on crime and show something exciting for television.
"Police work is not television, and television work is not police work," he said. "The two combined to make it a horrific night."
Officers hunting for a suspect in the murder of a 17-year-old boy staked out a home that night on Lillibridge Street. Weekley was first through the door when the grenade went off during the midnight raid.
Police have said his gun accidentally discharged after he confronted or collided with Aiyana's grandmother. A bullet struck and killed Aiyana, one of four children inside.
Then-Police Chief Warren Evans apologized for the girl's death, telling her family, "I will never be able to put myself in your shoes." He promised a "painful self-examination" by the department but never explained why a stun grenade was necessary.
After that, officials declined to speak publicly about the raid because of a civil lawsuit and investigations that led to charges against Weekley.
Defense attorney Steve Fishman declined to comment ahead of the trial. But in court filings, he has knocked Wayne County prosecutors for trying to turn Weekley into a criminal. The maximum penalty for involuntary manslaughter is 15 years in prison.
Weekley "had nothing to do with the planning of the raid and was merely a police officer assigned to a certain position ... by a superior officer," Fishman said in the filings.
He said his client shouldn't be held responsible for the "ineptitude of the officer assigned to deploy" the stun grenade. The jury will see a demonstration of the device away from the courthouse.
Mayor Dave Bing banned reality TV crews from tagging along with police after Aiyana's death. Evans was forced out as chief two months after the shooting, partly because he was involved in planning a different reality show starring himself.
A&E declined to comment on whether Aiyana's death led to any changes in how "The First 48" crews do their job. A videographer, Allison Howard, is charged with perjury and withholding video crucial to the investigation. Her trial is set for June 24.
The Rev. Horace Sheffield III handled Aiyana's funeral and repeatedly has demanded a full accounting by police. He plans to attend the officer's trial.
"If those cameras had not been there, what would the outcome have been?" Sheffield said. "That's the important question to ask. It's a situation that cries out for justice."
_______________________________________________________________________
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Wisconsin: No Civil Rights Charges Over Death in Squad Car
By DINESH RAMDE (The Associated Press) — Tuesday, May 28th, 2013; 9:07 p.m. EDT
MILWAUKEE (AP) -- A woman whose boyfriend died in police custody despite gasping for air and pleading for help is considering filing a lawsuit, her lawyer said Tuesday after the U.S. Justice Department said the three officers would not face federal charges.
Robbery suspect Derek Williams died in July 2011 after fleeing about a block and a half from officers. The medical examiner's office initially classified the death as natural, saying he died of sickle cell crisis - he had the genetic marker for sickle cell but not the disease itself. It was reclassified as a homicide after an investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
A video obtained by the newspaper showed the 22-year-old struggling to breathe and pleading for help from the backseat of a police car for nearly eight minutes, then growing progressively weaker and collapsing. Police eventually performed CPR and called paramedics. Williams was dead within an hour.
The U.S. Department of Justice and FBI investigated but could not find enough evidence to support charging the officers involved with depriving a person's rights under the color of law, U.S. Attorney James Santelle told reporters Tuesday.
A special prosecutor previously declined to file state charges for similar reasons. In March, the inquest jury found probable cause to support charging the three officers in state court with failure to render aid. But special prosecutor John Franke said he wasn't confident he could meet the standard of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
To bring federal charges, Santelle would have to prove the officers had specific intent to deprive Williams of his rights.
"Mistake, misperception, negligence or poor judgment are not sufficient" to bring federal charges, Santelle said. However, he declined to say whether there was evidence of mistake, misperception or poor judgment.
Derek Williams's mother wept silently throughout the news conference, wiping her reddened eyes with the back of her hand. Afterward she told reporters she hasn't been able to sleep since her son died.
"Everyone that's seen that tape knows that was some wrongdoing," Sonya Moore said, fighting back tears. "This is not justice. This is not justice. ... I'm so hurt right now."
Her attorney, Robin Shellow, said she was angry when Santelle declined to offer an opinion on whether the police officers did anything wrong. She also said the reason none of the white police officers was being held accountable is because Williams is black and that the justice system in Milwaukee doesn't care about black people.
"They have no opinion because the lives of young black men don't merit an opinion. That's what I heard," Shellow said.
Shellow said it was too early to discuss a lawsuit. But Jonathan Safran, who represents Williams' girlfriend, Sharday Rose, said his client is seriously considering legal action.
"We certainly think that someone needs to be held accountable," Safran said, "and to this date no one has been held accountable."
FBI agents who looked into the case found no medical evidence to back reports that police used excessive force on Williams or knowingly ignored his apparent medical distress, the Justice Department said. It also said the squad-car video does not show the scene from the officers' vantage point and there's no evidence that officers were watching Williams on the video monitor or for the entire time.
Franke, the special prosecutor, had noted in his report that the squad-car video was filmed with an infrared camera that produces a clearer image than what police would have seen on that dark night. He also wrote that officers' views might have been compromised by glare from their laptops reflecting on the plastic window between the front and back seats.
The officers - Jason Bleichwehl, Jeffrey Cline and Richard Ticcioni - declined to testify during the inquest, citing their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Other officers testified that they thought Williams was faking.
The Justice Department is still reviewing whether it should sue the Milwaukee Police Department for a pattern of civil-rights violations.
Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn said in a statement that the department has taken significant steps to prevent similar tragedies and is committed to regaining the community's trust wherever it is weakened.
---
Associated Press writer M.L. Johnson contributed to this report.
_______________________________________________________________________
Colorado
Colorado governor signs recreational marijuana regulations into law
By Keith Coffman (Reuters) — Tuesday, May 28th, 2013; 10:29 p.m. EDT
DENVER (Reuters) - Governor John Hickenlooper on Tuesday signed into law measures to regulate the recreational use of marijuana in Colorado, including blood-level limits for motorists and setting up a voter referendum to impose a tax on the non-medical sale of cannabis.
Colorado House of Representatives Assistant Majority Leader Dan Pabon said the legislation reflected the "will of the voters" who charged lawmakers with setting up the regulatory system after approving legalization in a vote last November.
One of the bills signed by Hickenlooper calls for a referendum in November on setting a 15 percent excise tax and an additional 10 percent sales tax on marijuana sales.
Other measures included in the legislative package are setting blood limits for driving while under the influence of marijuana at 5 nanograms per milliter, and limiting purchases of marijuana to non-Colorado residents at one-quarter of an ounce.
"The laws ... signed today put the health and safety of our kids front and center," said Pabon, a Democrat. "They drive a stake into the heart of a large black market while creating a regulated, legitimate industry."
House Republican leader Mark Waller, who sponsored the driving-under-the-influence legislation, said Colorado is in "new and foreign territory" in implementing its marijuana laws and it was vital to add a public safety component.
"Equipping law enforcement with the tools they need to ensure people make safe decisions behind the wheel is critical to maximizing public safety," he said.
Voters in Washington state also approved legalizing recreational marijuana use last November.
Mason Tvert, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, which ran the campaign for the Colorado pot legalization ballot initiative, said it is "only a matter of time" before other states follow the lead of Colorado and Washington.
He said Colorado's retail marijuana stores were expected to open in early 2014.
Colorado and Washington are among nearly 20 states and the District of Columbia that allow the use of medical marijuana. The federal government still lists it as a dangerous narcotic and it remains illegal under federal law to take the drug for any purpose.
After the Colorado legislature passed the bills, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Denver said the Justice Department was considering what its response will be to the marijuana legalization movement.
In Washington state, the Liquor Control Board is required to establish regulations for the state's recreational marijuana industry. Earlier this month the agency released a set of draft rules that said marijuana must be grown indoors and tested for contaminants and potency. Licenses to grow, process and sell the drug would each cost $1,000 per year on top of a $250 application fee under the proposed guidelines.
(Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Bill Trott)
_______________________________________________________________________
Seattle / Washington
Seattle police acknowledge violating records act
By Unnamed Author(s) (The Associated Press) — Tuesday, May 28th, 2013; 12:26 p.m. EDT
SEATTLE (AP) -- The Seattle Police Department acknowledged it broke public records laws when it withheld from The Seattle Times an internal memo about its response to riotous May Day demonstrations in 2012.
The department agreed to pay $20,000 to the newspaper and its attorneys to avoid a lawsuit over the issue, The Times reported ( http://is.gd/BulcFi ) Tuesday.
In a settlement signed by Interim Police Chief Jim Pugel, the department acknowledged it should have turned over the report or cited a valid exemption to the Washington state Public Records Act.
"The department agrees that ... it is never permissible to withhold the existence of a responsive document from a requestor or to improperly delay the release of documents," a department statement said.
The department was sharply criticized for losing control of the streets to a small group of anarchists and vandals and having to respond with harsh tactics and force.
The Times filed a public-disclosure request for the memo in July. The internal report on the response led to an external review.
"It is clear to us that this was a blatant violation of the state's Public Records Act, and we felt it was not in the public's interest to simply allow that violation to go by unchallenged," said David Boardman, executive editor of The Times.
Department commanders "believed that the report was subject to the deliberative process exemption, and that premature disclosure would prejudice the independent review," according to the police statement.
However, instead of informing The Times of that decision, as required by the Public Records Act, and giving the newspaper a chance to challenge the exemption in court, the department never officially acknowledged the memorandum existed, even though retiring Chief John Diaz talked about it in a story published in The Seattle Times on July 23.
Diaz acknowledged in April that he had ordered the memo withheld pending the release of the department's own investigation report and an independent review by retired Los Angeles Deputy Chief Mike Hillmann.
Those reports, both critical of the Seattle department's preparations and response to vandalism during the May Day march, were released in April, nearly 11 months later.
After being called ill-prepared during last year's May Day melee, police this year followed some of the recommendations from the previous year.
_______________________________________________________________________
Mike Bosak
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment