He thought it was funny

  

Apology cake: 'Sorry I Tased You'

Woman suing former deputy who allegedly tased her without provocation and apologized with a cake

pnj.com

A Florida woman has filed a civil lawsuit against a former Escambia County, Fla., deputy, charging that he shocked her with a Taser in her chest and neck without provocation, tried to cover up the incident and then later—adding insult to injury—apologized with a cake.

According to the Pensacola News Journal, Stephanie Byron filed the lawsuit in May, claiming that Michael Wohlers used excessive force, violated her civil rights, committed battery, and caused her physical injuries, monetary loss, medical expenses, humiliation and mental anguish.

The original alleged incident dates to June 2015, when, according to the suit, Wohlers had finished his patrol shift and went to visit Byron at an apartment complex where she worked.

According to the News Journal, documents from the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office and the Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission indicated that Wohlers deployed his stun gun during “horseplay” with the victim. However, Byron and her attorney deny that any “play” was involved.

The lawsuit accuses Wohlers of using “his apparent law-enforcement authority to intimidate, harass and threaten plaintiff … about her personal life. Because Wohlers did not like how plaintiff failed to respond to his show of authority, Wohlers became increasingly aggressive toward employees at the apartment complex’s office, including with Ms. Byron,” the News Journal reports.

The lawsuit claims that Wohlers took Byron’s sweet tea from her and refused to return it, and that when Byron went to get the drink back, Wohlers discharged his Taser into her chest and throat. When Byron fell to the ground, the lawsuit charges, Wohlers “jumped onto [her], kneeing her in the chest” and “forcefully removed the Taser prods.”

Court documents indicate that Wohler later tried to apologize by baking Byron a cake with the words “Sorry I Tased You” written on it, the News Journal reports.

Police departments struggle to get cops mental health training

  Aamer Madhani , USA

Police departments and policymakers around the country are grappling with how to bolster training for cops on mental health issues in the midst of a string of high-profile fatal incidents involving suspects believed to be in the throes of mental breakdowns.

The current debate on policing in America has largely focused on whether inherent racial bias has led to police disproportionately using deadly force against African-Americans.

But long simmering on the back burner is the struggle for police departments to deal with the eye-popping number of deadly incidents that involve people with mental health issues, law enforcement and mental health experts says. A study by the Virginia-based Treatment Advocacy Center published last year found that people with mental illness are 16 times more likely than others to be killed by police, while theNational Alliance on Mental Illness estimates 15% of men and 30% women annually booked at U.S. jails have mental health problems.

“What departments are going through right now is nothing short of a cultural revolution,” said Peter Scharf, a criminologist at the LSU School of Public Health and Justice. "Jails have become the alms house of this generation and police have become the first responders to the mentally ill."

The issue of mental illness and policing was drawn back into the spotlight after police in El Cajon, Calif., on Sept. 27 fatally shot Alfred Olango, 38, an unarmed man who was killed after his sister says she called police for help because he was in the midst of a mental health crisis. Olango's sister, who has not been identified, says she told police that Olango did not have a weapon.

Police in the San Diego suburb said officers fatally shot Olango only after he rapidly pulled an object from his waistband and took what was described as a “shooting stance.” After shooting him, police discovered the object that Olango drew from his pants was a vape device.

The Olango shooting came days after the controversial police-involved shooting of Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte in which his wife can be heard on a cellphone video telling police officers that Scott suffered a traumatic brain injury moments before they opened fire. Police say Scott was holding a gun when he was shot, while some family members say he was only holding a book.

 Before the incidents in Charlotte and San Diego, there had been a surge in the effort by police departments and politicians looking to find ways to reduce the number of instances in which force is deployed and diverting the number of mentally ill people from the expensive proposition of incarceration.

In Minneapolis, Mayor Betsy Hodges in August introduced plans for a pilot programthat would pair mental health professionals with streets cops responding to emergencies. Meanwhile, the Chicago Police Department this month launched a new mandatory de-escalation training program for the nation’s second-largest police force that has a heavy focus on mental health training.

And during the first presidential debate, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said the federal government should do more to support police departments to deal with the vexing issue.

“Police are having to handle a lot of really difficult mental health problems on the street,” Clinton said. “They want support, they want more training, they want more assistance. And I think the federal government could be in a position where we would offer and provide that.”

TRAINING WITH BALANCE

In the newly launched Chicago training program, officers, over two days, are presented a variety of live scenarios and exercises that force them to wrestle with how they would respond to tense situations.

As part of the training, the department is using some recent incidents as teaching moments — including having officers study aspects of a controversial police shooting last year in which a Chicago cop killed a bat-wielding college student in the throes of a mental health crisis, while also mistakenly fatally shooting the young man’s 55-year-old neighbor.

That incident last December came a little more than a month after the city was forced by court order to release a chilling video showing a white police officer fatally shoot a black teen 16 times. Laquan McDonald, 17, who was gunned down holding a small knife as he appeared to run away from police had a history of mental health problems.

Sgt. Larry Snelling, lead instructor of the Chicago training program, said the department wants officers to use the least amount of force as possible.

“That being said, de-escalation doesn’t always work,” Snelling said. “The training is balanced in the hopes that officers when they are faced with a deadly threat…are capable of responding to save the lives of one of our citizens or themselves.”

TRAINING ALONE NO PANACEA

More than 3,000 of the nation’s roughly 18,000 police departments have some or all of their officers go through Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training, according to Laura Usher, a program manager for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).

The model for the program, which was pioneered in the late 1980s by the Memphis Police Department, calls for 40 hours of training that includes teaching officers verbal de-escalation skills, scenario-based training and having officers spend time interacting with individuals who have gone through a mental health crisis.

It’s unclear what percentage of departments have such robust training. A survey published by the Police Executive Research Forum last year found that that new recruits received a median amount of eight hours on crisis intervention training compared to 58 hours on firearms training.

Usher said that while police chiefs largely recognize that a disproportionate number of people arrested have mental health issues, but they struggle to make time for training when they face demands to keep officers on the street.

“The other thing is that the training is not a panacea,” Usher said. “It’s also about the partnerships with their local mental health agencies and advocates in changing the culture and how the community approaches people in a mental health crisis.”

Some law enforcement experts, including the LSU criminologist Scharf, say mental health training can help officers reduce arrests for relatively small infractions and help cops build a baseline of understanding about what mentally ill people experience – valuable knowledge when thrown into a volatile encounter with someone in the midst of a crisis.

But Scharf cautioned that the training has its limitations for a cop who has to make a split-second decision particularly when dealing with someone who is believed to be armed and agitated.

"Should police get this training? Yes," Scharf said. "But just like you can't do neurosurgery with eight hours of training, you can't expect a cop to be able to learn to talk a gun out of the hands of someone with such limited training."

COPS BUDDY UP WITH MENTAL HEALTH PROS

Over the years, a handful of large and midsize departments – including Los Angeles and San Antonio – have partnered with mental health professionals to work as “co-responders,” assisting street cops responding to incidents involving individuals in the midst of a mental health crisis.

Some midsize departments in recent years have begun testing pairing cops with mental health professionals.

The Overland Park (Kan.) Police Department, a force of about 250, hired a “co-responder” in 2014 to assist officers after seeing a surge in mental health related calls, which were often bogging down beat officers’ time.

During her first year on the job, the co-responder, Megan Younger, helped divert individuals on 129 occasions to receive mental health care, according to Overland Park Police.

The department estimates that her work also helped the department avoid making 40 arrests during her first year on the job, saving the department $61,000 in costs.

Overland Park police officials believe that the interventions with the co-responder, who has made more than 1,800 visits with people with mental health issues during the time with the force, mitigate the chances of a more dangerous encounter with the individuals occurring in the future.

Officer Jackie Zickel said she partnered with Younger not long after the department started the program and saw firsthand the efficacy of having  a mental health specialist by her side. The first call she was on in which Younger was deployed involved a couple whose adult son was destroying their home during a schizophrenic episode.

Zickel recalled that when she and her police partner arrived at the volatile scene the young man had locked himself in his room. Zickel was eventually able to talk the young man into coming to the family’s living room to meet Younger, who was able to persuade him to take his medication.

“They see the difference between us and her,” Zickel said. “It helps them understand that we’re there to make sure the situation stays safe, and that she is there to help them get out of the crisis.”

Fla. Woman Charges That Cop Baked Her a ‘Sorry I Tased You’ Cake

Stephanie Byron has filed a civil lawsuit claiming that former Escambia County Deputy Michael Wohlers used excessive force, violated her civil rights, committed battery against her and caused her hardships—then baked her a cake to say “Sorry.”

and he'll get away with it too

An undercover prostitution operation conducted by the Columbia Police Department resulted in the arrests of 10 men, including the police chief of the Winnsboro Department of Public Safety.

CPD officers say the Organized Crime and Narcotics Unit, along with North and Metro Regions Community Response Teams, conducted the operation Friday at a hotel in the Greystone Boulevard area.

WIS is told Freddie Lorick Sr. identified himself to officers during the arrest as being the police chief of the Winnsboro Department of Public Safety. Lorick requested medical attention during the arrests and was transported by EMS to a local hospital.

Officers say the men arrested ranged in age from 29 to 59 years old. All of the men were charged with soliciting for prostitution and one of the men was hit with an extra charge of cocaine possession.

JOHN OLIVER SAYS POLICE ARE BEING HELD ACCOUNTABLE EVEN LESS THAN WE REALIZE

BY RYAN BORT

CULTUREJOHN OLIVERLAST WEEK TONIGHT

John Oliver is no stranger to law enforcement...or at least not to covering it on Last Week Tonight. Most recently, he delved into why police are so rarely held accountable for their actions, after earlier taking on civil forfeiture, police militarization, municipal violations and mandatory minimum prison sentences.

While there have been thousands of fatal police shootings since 2005, only 77 officers were charged with murder or manslaughter in that time, and only 26 were convicted. The numbers are staggering, but just as astonishing is how difficult it is to ascertain these sorts of statistics. In 2015, FBI Director James Comey spoke of the lack of information available about our police. "We don't have data," he said at an FBI oversight committee hearing. "People have data about who went to a movie last weekend or how many books were sold or how many cases of the flu walked into an emergency room, and I cannot tell you how many people were shot by police in the United States last month, last year or anything about the demographics."

Who does track statistics on police misconduct? According to Oliver, it's a researcher named Philip Stinson, who accumulated data by setting up 48 Google alerts in 2005.

Police simply aren't held accountable for their actions the way others with jobs of such high importance are scrutinized. As Oliver explained Sunday night, there are several reasons for this. One is that police misconduct is typically investigated internally, by other police officers, which could be considered something of a conflict of interest. You want examples?

The Department of Justice reported that in Cleveland, "investigators told us that they intentionally cast an officer in the best light possible when investigating the officer’s use of deadly force." In Miami, an investigation took so long, “at least two…officers shot and killed a suspect while still under investigation for a previous [shooting].” In Baltimore, an officer who reported misconduct was relentlessly harassed by his fellow officers, to the point where they weren't even sending him backup when he requested it. They also left pictures of cheese on his desk and a dead rat on his windshield.

It is also remarkably easy for officers to wipe clean any evidence of previous misconduct, and to do so legally. In some precincts, records can be thrown out after a certain amount of time elapses. A Mesa, Arizona police chief even instructed his officers to “purge your files according to policy." As Oliver notes, "This seems wrong."

Basically, the system is far more insular than it should be, and it is designed to protect police officers from themselves. The justice system only bolsters their relative immunity to recourse. It is incredibly awkward for prosecutors to go after police officers, because the former usually have close relationships with the latter, relying on them to give advice and analyze evidence. If a case against an officer ever does go to trial, which is very rare, the juries are predisposed to give officers the benefit of the doubt. Despite recent events, it's difficult for anyone to override the idea that police officers are trustworthy figures on a noble pursuit to protect and serve.

Again, out of thousands of fatal police shootings, only 77 officers went to trial and only 26 were convicted.

So what can be done? Body cameras, for one. As Oliver points out, police in Rialto, California, saw complaints against officers fall 88 percent and use of force fall 60 percent after one year of using body cameras. They have been so successful, in fact, that officers in Baltimore were reluctant to hand them in after a trial run came to an end. As Oliver says, “These cops aren’t M. Night Shyamalan. If they plead with you to let them have a camera again, you should give it to them.”

Other options to heighten accountability that have been tested include forcing officers to file separate reports when force is used and bringing in outside prosecutors. However it's done, it is imperative that officers are held accountable for their actions. As Oliver says, “A lack of trust in police accountability leads to a lack of trust in police." 

Not One New York Police Officer Has a Body Camera

By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN

The New York Police Department once seemed poised to be an early adopter of body cameras. A federal judge thought the technology could curb unwarranted stops and searches of black and Hispanic men. So in 2013, after finding the department’s stop-and-frisk practices unconstitutional, the judge ordered that a pilot program be established in at least five precincts.

Three years later, not one of the department’s approximately 35,800 officers is wearing a body camera, even as the devices have become a staple for officers elsewhere.

The Police Department says it is committed to outfitting officers with body cameras, and on Monday said that a company had been chosen to supply up to 5,000 over the next five years. But a contract has yet to be signed, and a rollout of the cameras would not begin for months.

The halting pace of its effort is striking for an agency that has pledged to make itself a model of technology-driven policing and a leader in improving police-community relations.

Since the unrest in Ferguson, Mo. and the deaths of Eric Garner on Staten Island and Walter Scott in South Carolina, many police departments have moved to deploy the body-worn cameras. Police forces in Chicago; Houston; Las Vegas; Los Angeles; Oakland, Calif.; and Washington each have at least 500 officers wearing the devices.

The video can provide a useful, if often incomplete, record of what occurred during arrests, violent encounters or police shootings. Such footage, along with video captured on bystanders’ smartphones, and on the dashboard cameras in police vehicles in many jurisdictions, is driving a debate — across the country and in the policing profession itself — over whether some officers are too quick to open fire, and, if so, why that might be the case.

The recent shooting of a black man by the police in Charlotte, N.C.,portions of which were recorded by body cameras, has brought renewed attention to the practices of police departments when it comes to how, or even whether, they record their encounters with civilians.

Envisioned as a tool to bolster police accountability, body cameras have faced pockets of resistance, from both police reform advocates and some law enforcement agencies and state legislatures. Reform advocates have cautioned that cameras could provide the police with new methods of surveillance that might erode personal privacy, while some law enforcement agencies have balked at the cost of storing so much data, and some states have added restrictions on public access to the footage.

In North Carolina, where the Charlotte police initially declined to release footage of the recent shooting of Keith Lamont Scott, a new law that went into effect this month limits release of police camera footage to the general public.

The fatal shooting of Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Okla., was recorded by a police dashboard camera and a camera in a police helicopter; footage from both was released to the public. The officer who shot Mr. Crutcher has been charged with manslaughter.

The New York department conducted a pilot program involving 54 officers that ended in March. J. Peter Donald, a spokesman for the agency, said one of the lessons was that “we needed better policy guidance and training for officers on body cameras.” The project, however, did not even satisfy the federal court order calling for a robust pilot program.

Even dashboard cameras, which have become standard in many departments, are not used in the vast majority of the New York Police Department’s patrol vehicles.

Police officials have attributed the delays to the city’s procurement process and the department’s need to carefully select the right equipment before proceeding on a larger scale.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, center, with the New York City police commissioner, William J. Bratton, left, and the city’s public advocate, Letitia James, announcing a pilot program putting body-worn cameras on police officers in 2014. CreditOzier Muhammad/The New York Times

At a news conference on Monday, city officials announced that the company chosen to supply the 5,000 cameras is Vievu L.L.C. of Seattle.

“There are still things that have to be worked through,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “But I want to be very clear that they are coming.”

The rules regarding what officers record, and when, and who outside the department will have access to the footage, have yet to be made final.

A member of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee, Ritchie Torres, a Bronx Democrat, said he believed the “glacial pace” reflected a lack of enthusiasm. “What do you expect to happen when the N.Y.P.D. sets the terms and the pace of police reform?” Councilman Torres said in an interview. “I have trouble imagining it’s for lack of capacity,” he said of the delays. “I suspect it’s for lack of will.”

The mayor said the department has been acting prudently. “We’ve been very, very clear about the complication and the challenges of doing this in the biggest city in the country with the biggest police force, by far, in the country,” Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, said at the news conference. “So we’re going be purposeful about getting it right. Once we start down the road, we have to make sure that we are getting it right.”

The timetable puts the New York agency behind a number of other big city departments.

The Chicago Police Department has 2,000 body cameras in use. The Los Angeles Police Department has so far deployed 1,160. In Charlotte, most of the police force is outfitted with body cameras.

In New Jersey, the State Police have a pilot program involving more than a 100 cameras, though many troopers also have a dashboard camera in their cars. The Newark Police Department, which was placed under federal supervision earlier this year after a Justice Department investigation, is not using body-worn cameras.

New York City and New York State have been slower than many jurisdictions in putting in place not only the use of body cameras but also some other criminal justice reforms.

And when it comes to transparency regarding officer misconduct, New York City is becoming more secretive. The city has filed a legal appeal to prevent the release of a summary of disciplinary records involving Daniel Pantaleo, the Staten Island officer who applied the fatal chokehold to Mr. Garner in 2014. This year it stopped providing reporters with notification of suspensions and other significant disciplinary actions against officers.

The use of body-worn cameras by the police, regarded as a novelty just a few years ago, has quickly grown in acceptance.

The ubiquity of cellphone videos taken of police encounters with the public helped convince departments that they, too, should be recording. So has an aggressive marketing push by companies that produce the body-worn cameras, particularly Taser International, whose Axon brand cameras have, according to Taser, been bought by 3,500 police agencies nationwide.

While body-worn cameras were quickly hailed as a tool to foster police accountability, some civil rights activists and technology experts say they are more concerned with the policies that police departments develop regarding use of the cameras than the speed with which officers start wearing them.

“I think the view has been shifting,” said Harlan Yu, who works for Upturn, a technology consultancy, and who was involved in the compilation of a comprehensive review of police departments’ policies. “Many of the groups I work with don’t see body cameras as a silver bullet for the problems we’re seeing in our communities when it comes to policing.”

The devices raise privacy questions. Among them: Should police officers keep recording inside homes, where the expectation of privacy is greatest, along with the potential for unwarranted intrusions?

Mr. Yu noted that very few departments had policies that clearly provided a right to view any body camera footage of a police encounter to those that allege misconduct. The departments in Las Vegas and Washington were exceptions; both had clear procedures in place for individuals to review footage pertaining to the police, he said.

Fairfax County approves independent auditor for police

Fairfax County approves independent auditor for police

By Angela Woolsey/Fairfax County Times

The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the establishment of an Office of Independent Police Auditor during its Sept. 20 meeting.

One of 202 recommendations given to the county by the Ad Hoc Police Practices Review Commission created by Board of Supervisors Chairman Sharon Bulova in 2015, the independent police auditor will be responsible for reviewing internal affairs investigations into use-of-force incidents involving Fairfax County Police Department (FCPD) officers that resulted in serious injury or death, or that were the subject of a public complaint.

The auditor’s office can also look into police department policies and practices. For example, the auditor could investigate why a disproportionate number of incidents involve African American citizens, according to the FCPD’s annual use-of-force survey.

“I’m very pleased that the board supported the independent auditor,” Bulova said. “This program within the county will provide independent oversight when there is a police-involved incident. It provides assurance to the Board of Supervisors, but even more importantly, to the public, that there’s an independent, objective look at how things are being handled.”

The Board of Supervisors formed the Ad Hoc Police Practices Review Commission on Mar. 3, 2015 in response to community concerns about transparency and law enforcement’s use of force following the 2013 shooting death of Springfield resident John Geer at the hands of an FCPD officer.

Adam Torres, the officer involved in that incident, was later fired and pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter in Fairfax Circuit Court on Apr. 18.

In addition to use-of-force practices, the ad hoc commission made recommendations concerning independent oversight, communications, recruitment and vetting, and mental health and crisis intervention team (CIT) training.

The commission delivered its final report to the Board of Supervisors on Oct. 20, 2015.

Though the board’s approval of the independent auditor recommendation was largely expected, the process of getting the proposal from the ad hoc commission to the Board of Supervisors required extensive discussions and some revisions.

For example, the ad hoc commission suggested that the independent auditor have full access to the major crimes division and internal affairs bureau (IAB) files for a case under investigation.

The final recommendation brought before the Board of Supervisors said that the auditor can request a copy of the criminal investigation file through the chief of police upon the completion of a criminal case or an announcement that the Commonwealth’s Attorney has declined to prosecute. The auditor can monitor and review internal affairs investigations and have access to the bureau’s files from the beginning of any such investigation.

The recommendation ultimately approved by the Board of Supervisors eliminated an initial requirement of a term between two and five years for the auditor.

It also clarified that the auditor will review internal affairs bureau investigations, rather than participating in them, and that if the auditor finds deficiencies in a particular investigation, they recommend further investigation that will “absent good cause be conducted by IAB or other police department investigating authority.”

The commission’s original recommendation gave the auditor authority to conduct any such further investigation.

The other proposed revisions to the commission’s report regarding an independent auditor can be found in the Board of Supervisor’s Sept. 20 meeting agenda.

During the board’s discussion of the recommendation, Braddock District Supervisor John Cook, who chairs the board’s public safety committee, noted that the approved document can still be amended in the future, since it isn’t an ordinance or a land use case.

“We can change, amend, add as circumstances warrant,” Cook said.

Springfield District Supervisor Pat Herrity proposed an amendment to Cook’s motion to use reserve funding from the ad hoc commission to create two additional positions within the FCPD internal affairs bureau instead of waiting until Fiscal Year 2018 to supplement the department’s investigative work.

Sully District Supervisor Kathy Smith seconded Herrity’s motion to consider an amendment, but it ultimately failed by a 2-8 vote, with Smith and Herrity recording the two affirmative votes.

The board passed Cook’s main motion by a unanimous vote.

When reached for comment, FCPD Second Lt. Brian Gaydos said through the department’s public affairs bureau that the Chief of Police’s Office “is not releasing any official opinion on the auditor’s office at this time.”

Now that the Office of Independent Police Auditor has been officially created, the Board of Supervisors will launch a job search for a person to fill the auditor position.

According to Bulova, the main position’s requirement is a familiarity with public safety and law enforcement that would give the auditor professional expertise in handling an investigation. However, the auditor can’t be a current or former employee of Fairfax County, ruling out anyone who has worked for the FCPD.

The job description initially required that applicants be attorneys and members of the Virginia State Bar, but that qualification was removed.

“We felt that putting that requirement in there could possibly eliminate qualified individuals,” Fairfax County NAACP president Shirley Ginwright said. “We don’t want to eliminate people based on criteria that have nothing to do with the job.”

In addition to leading Fairfax County’s branch of the NAACP, Ginwright serves as chair for the Fairfax County Communities of Trust Committee, a citizen group that works with the county and law enforcement to improve relations between police and the public.

The Board of Supervisors public safety committee will discuss the possibility of creating a civilian review panel that would work in conjunction with the Office of Independent Police Auditor at its next meeting, which is scheduled for 1:00 p.m. on Oct. 25.

Like the independent auditor position, the civilian review panel was recommended by the ad hoc commission’s independent oversight and investigations subcommittee.

Ginwright says that, if the Board of Supervisors ultimately approves a civilian review panel, it should include black and Hispanic people in particular, since they enter the criminal justice system at rates disproportionate to their overall population size.

“It’s important that diversity is around the table and we do not have a panel [where] everybody on the panel looks alike,” Ginwright said. “We have that too much in committees and panels now, and I think that’s why we don’t get a lot of things done, because the voices that should be representing our minority communities aren’t there

cops as sexual predators ...its an everyday thing

Ex-Tenn. cop accused of sexually assaulting women during traffic stops

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A former Spring Hill, Tennessee police officer has been indicted on sex-related charges that allegedly occurred while he was on duty.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said that a Maury County grand jury on Monday returned indictments charging 26-year-old Christopher Patrick Odom with rape, sexual battery and two counts of official misconduct.

The agency said it began investigating Odom on Aug. 1. A TBI news release said that Odom is accused of initiating sexual contact with one woman during a traffic stop in June and another woman during a stop in July.

The TBI said Odom was arrested Monday and jailed on $75,000 bond, but online records indicated he had been released. There was no information about an attorney for Odom who could comment on the case.

Odom was fired by the Spring Hill Police Department as a result of the investigation’s findings, reports CBS affiliate WTVF. He had been employed with the city since December 2013. 

“The actions of Officer Odom are not indicative of a Spring Hill Police Officer and is in direct violation of departmental policies,” the department said in a statement released to the station. “The department takes great pride in serving our community and preserving the trust of our citizens.”

•          

Two Miss. cops fired after girl left in patrol car dies

Officials say Officer Cassie Barker left her 3-year-old daughter alone in her patrol car for four hours before she died

Well, this will fail within 6 month

Chicago gets new agency to investigate police shootings

  Aamer Madhani , USA TODAY

CHICAGO – The city council here voted on Wednesday to create a new agency to investigate police shootings and major misconduct allegations, a move that Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his allies say is critical to bolstering trust of the embattled Chicago Police Department.

The newly created investigative agency, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA), will replace the Independent Police Review Authority. The much-maligned IPRA had been criticized for moving too slow slowly in its investigations and rarely finding wrongdoing by the Chicago cops it investigated.

The ordinance also creates a deputy inspector general’s post to monitor the police department and the oversight system.

The move comes as the city’s police department is in the midst of a Justice Department civil rights investigation launched in December following the court-ordered release of a video that showed a white police officer shoot a black teen 16 times on a city street. The video of the death of Laquan McDonald, 17, set off weeks of protests in the city and put pressure on Emanuel to strengthen oversight of the police department.

 “I would consider this the beginning of a journey, not the end,” Emanuel said after the council voted 39-to-8 in favor of the ordinance. “It’s an important step forward on the improvements we all seek.”

The agency is guaranteed minimum funding that is equal to 1% of the police department’s budget excluding grants. COPA is tasked with reviewing all police shootings and allegations of major misconduct by officers, such as verbal abuse, excessive force and physical or psychological coercion.

Some members of the city council were pushing for an alternative ordinance that would have provided more funding for the new agency and deputy inspector general as well as setting out the details for establishing a separate community board that would be tasked with picking the head of COPA. Critics also took aim at a provision in the ordinance that calls for COPA to hire its attorneys from five law firms previously approved by the city’s law department.

Protesters briefly delayed Wednesday's vote, chanting, "Hold the vote," before being ushered out of the chamber.

"This was our chance to get it right the first time…before the U.S. Department of Justice tells us to start over again,” said Alderman Leslie Hariston, who was a co-sponsor of an alternative ordinance. “Such an edict will cost time and precious month. Obviously, Chicago is not read for reform."

The city’s corporation counsel, Steve Patton, said the launch of the new agency would occur in the coming months.

Sharon Fairley, who was appointed to head IPRA following the release of the McDonald video, is expected to serve as an interim director of the new agency.

When you give idiots money and authority, this is what happens

Margaret Holcomb, an 81-year-old woman from Amherst, Mass., grew a single marijuana plant in her garden, tucked away behind the raspberries. She used it to ease the ailments of old age: glaucoma, arthritis and the occasional sleepless night.

She hadn't tried to get a medical marijuana card, because of the challenges of getting a doctor's approval, she told the Daily Hampshire Gazette. And traveling to the dispensary in the next town over and paying for marijuana grown by someone else would be too costly, she feared.

So on the afternoon of Sept. 21, a team of Massachusetts State Police and Massachusetts National Guard troops sent a helicopter, several vehicles, and a handful of troopers to Holcomb's house to chop down the plant and haul it away in a pickup truck.

Holcomb wasn't the only one targeted by the marijuana raid. State police spokesman David Procopio told the Gazette that authorities also seized 43 other plants from various properties that day. The largest of these seizures involved 20 plants. Several properties netted only two plants each. None of the property owners were charged with crimes, according to Procopio.

Procopio said these operations were done under the auspices of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Cannabis Eradication Program, which gives state authorities money to uproot pot plants. This year, the DEA gave Massachusetts $60,000 for marijuana eradication efforts, according to federal documents obtained and published by journalist Drew Atkins.

Last year, Massachusetts received $75,000 and destroyed 3,138 plants under the program, a cost to federal taxpayers of about $24 per plant.

Annette Shattuck describes her home being raided and possessions seized by law enforcement

Annette Shattuck, a registered medical marijuana caregiver, testified on May 26 before the Michigan state House of Representatives on having her home ravaged and possessions seized by law enforcement officials.(House.MI.gov)

Responding to criticism from a local government official in western Massachusetts, DEA spokesman Melvin Pattersontold the Boston Herald that the state decides when and how to conduct raids for pot plants.

The Cannabis Eradication Program's stated goal is to "halt the spread of cannabis cultivation in the United States." But with more and more states legalizing recreational marijuana use in recent years, some lawmakers are questioning whether an $18 million federal program to pull pot plants makes sense.

The program has also been the subject of controversy and ridicule. In the mid-2000s, DEA data revealed that most of the plants destroyed under the program were "ditchweed," naturally growing marijuana plants that weren't being cultivated for any particular use.

Last year in Utah, a member of an eradication team testified that a medical marijuana law could lead to an epidemic of stoned rabbits and other animals. The incidentbecame fodder for late-night talk shows.

During a Utah Senate panel on a bill that will allow certain patients to be treated with edible forms of marijuana, special agent Matt Fairbanks warned of the environmental costs associated marijuana cultivation on public land. (Utah State Legislature)

Even residents carrying licenses in medical marijuana states can fall prey to the program. In a Massachusetts raid last month, Procopio told the Daily Hampshire Gazette that 10 plants were seized from a couple's back yard because they were not kept in an enclosed area protected by a lock, as the statute requires. The growers, Patti Scutari and Francesco Compagnone, dispute that, saying that their entire yard is surrounded by a fence with a locked gate. Under Massachusetts law patients may grow as many marijuana plants as necessary to meet their medical needs.

[The DEA spent $73,000 to eradicate marijuana plants in Utah. It didn’t find any.]

This summer, a task force consisting of National Guard troops and state troopers used a helicopter to aid in seizing four marijuana plants from 81-year-old former cancer patient Paul Jackson on Martha's Vineyard, according to the Martha's Vineyard Times. Like Margaret Holcomb, Jackson didn't have a medical marijuana license.

"I figured what I was growing was such a small amount, what the hell was the big deal?" Jackson told the newspaper.

In 2014, marijuana eradicators in Georgia raided a retiree's garden after mistaking okra for marijuana.

Margaret Holcomb's case is providing additional fodder for critics of strict anti-marijuana enforcement, particularly now since voters in Massachusetts will consider whether to legalize the plant for recreational use this fall.

"This raid, and similar raids in recent weeks, exposes the rank falsity of prohibitionist claims that law enforcement resources aren't being used on marijuana enforcement," said Jim Borghesani of the group Yes on 4, which is running the campaign to legalize marijuana in Massachusetts. "It's difficult to say what's worse: the waste of taxpayer dollars or the violation of an elderly woman's peace."

Efforts to reach the Campaign for a Safe and Healthy Massachusetts, the group opposing legalization, were unsuccessful.

Holcomb told the Gazette she is considering simply growing another pot plant. "I don’t picture them out here and putting an 81-year-old woman in jail," she said.

There is no end to how fucking stupid the Fairfax County Police Are

The case of Mohammad Weiss Rasool shows why such infiltration is potentially dangerous.

The FBI busted Rasool, an Afghan immigrant, for tipping off an al-Qaida terrorist suspect last decade while working as a police officer for the Fairfax County Police Department outside Washington and moonlighting for CAIR. He worked his way up to sergeant before authorities realized they had an al-Qaida spy in their ranks.

According to a Justice Department complaint filed in 2008, Rasool searched a national criminal database containing names of terrorist suspects and confirmed that FBI agents were tailing a Muslim friend of his from a local mosque.

When agents went to arrest the target early one morning, they found him and his family already dressed and destroying evidence. They knew they had a mole, and worked back through the system to find Rasool.

That's when agents discovered the cop had breached their database at least 15 times to look up names of other contacts, including relatives, to see if they showed up on the federal terrorist watch list.

Rasool's actions "damaged the integrity of the NCIC system and jeopardized at least one federal investigation," prosecutors said in federal court papers. "The defendant's actions could have placed federal agents in danger."

Rasool at first claimed he didn't know the terrorist target. He confessed only after hearing a recording of his message for the suspect, Abdullah Alnoshan - a close associate of al-Qaida cleric Anwar Awlaki, a local imam who had helped some of the 9/11 hijackers obtain housing and ID's in Fairfax County.

Rasool finally pleaded guilty to illegally searching a federal database.

According to the bestselling book "Muslim Mafia," Rasool at the time worked closely with CAIR, which lobbied on his behalf during his prosecution.

In fact, Rasool acted as CAIR's liaison within the police department, and often met with CAIR officials at CAIR's headquarters located just three blocks from the US Capitol.

A senior Fairfax County Police Department official, who called Rasool "a traitor" who "disgraced the uniform," said he was "deeply embedded with CAIR."

"He was the spokesman to the department for CAIR," the official explained in "Muslim Mafia."

Muslim Terrorists Infiltrating Law Enforcement

by PAUL SPERRY

In an alarming trend, more and more Muslim terrorists are infiltrating the ranks of security firms and police departments, where they have acquired official IDs and uniforms to help gain access to secure areas, as well as firearms and tactical training to help carry out attacks.

Some jihadists posing as law enforcement officers have also gained access to classified federal databases to tip off other terrorist suspects under surveillance.

On Sept. 17, Somali-American Dahi Adan wore a security guard uniform as he stabbed or slashed 10 people at a St. Cloud, Minn., mall with a knife before he was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer. Adan made at least one reference to Allah during the stabbings and asked victims if they were Muslim before attacking. An ISIS affiliate claimed Adan was a "soldier of the Islamic State."

Stockholm-based Securitas AB, a security firm that provides security services to companies in more than 200 cities worldwide, confirmed that Adan worked through June as a guard for its US division.

On the same day, Afghan-American Ahmad Rahami allegedly detonated a pressure-cooker bomb in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York that left 31 injured. A blood-soaked journal found on Rahami after he was shot by police indicated he was carrying out "jihad" against "nonbelievers" in their "backyard."

Though Rahami was working for his family restaurant at the time, he aspired to be a police officer, according to friends and neighbors. He majored in criminal justice at Middlesex County College in Edison, N.J. Rahami was enrolled there from 2010-2012 but did not graduate.

Another Afghan-American terrorist, Omar Mateen, was employed as a security guard for a major federal security contractor this June, when he opened fire at an Orlando nightclub, killing 49 people. He had been dismissed from training as a prison guard after making threatening remarks, and ended up as a private security guard for G4S Secure Solutions USA Inc., which maintains a $234 million contract with the Department of Homeland Security.

Mateen was subject to a background check and psychological test when he was recruited by G4S in 2007 and rescreened in 2013 with no adverse findings - even though he threatened to kill a sheriff's deputy at the St. Lucie County Courthouse where he was stationed as a security guard and had been placed on a terrorist watch list by the FBI.

"Omar became very agitated and made a comment that he could have al-Qaida kill my employee and his family," St. Lucie County Sheriff Ken Mascara said. "If that wasn't bad enough, he went on to say that the Fort Hood shooter was justified in his actions."

As CounterJihad first reported, the Jupiter, Fla.-based security contractor G4S also provides security guards and other security services for "90 percent of U.S. nuclear facilities."

In fact, G4S has the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) contract to run simulated Red Team terrorist attacks on US nuclear plants and US nuclear weapons labs, CounterJihad has learned. G4S is managing the exercises, and its armed guards are participating in the force-on-force attacks, including mock terrorist strikes, which are designed to identify weaknesses and vulnerabilities in nuclear security.

CounterJihad has also learned that Senate investigators have been working with NRC's Nuclear Security and Incident Response division to determine if there are other potential Mateens working as security guards at America's nuclear facilities. A preliminary review has found that dozens of other Middle Easterners have landed jobs with nuclear reactor licensees as contract security guards - including a possible relative of Mateen.  Only further scrutiny might identify insider threats among them.

It is far from an idle concern.  In a 2011 intelligence report, Homeland Security warned that "violent extremists have, in fact, obtained insider positions" at nuclear facilities.  Security experts fear opening nuclear security jobs to insufficiently vetted Muslims like Mateen risks inviting jihadists to exploit weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the security of US nuclear plants, as well as spent-fuel rod repositories and even the federal nuclear weapons labs.

"ISIS has nuclear facilities on their targeting radar, not only to secure fissile material for dirty bombs, but also to exploit the inherent vulnerability presented by overfilled spent fuel pools," said Brian F. Sullivan, retired FAA special agent, retired Army lieutenant colonel in the military police corps and senior fellow at the American Leadership and Policy Foundation.

"Europe is well aware of this threat potential and the results could be devastating here in the United States, where our government has totally dropped the ball," Sullivan added in a recent interview with CounterJihad. He said radioactive fallout from dirty nukes could render major US cities uninhabitable for years, if not decades.

Of increasing concern, meanwhile, are the operatives the terrorist front group Council on American-Islamic Relations is planting inside law enforcement agencies. CAIR is no friend of police. The group has published and distributed posters advising Muslims not to cooperate with FBI agents investigating terrorist suspects and to slam the door in their faces.

In Florida, for example, the Broward Sheriff's Office employs a senior CAIR official, even though CAIR has been identified by the US Justice Department as a co-conspirator in funding terrorism and is so closely tied to the Hamas terrorist group that the FBI has banned CAIR from all its outreach activities nationwide.

Broward deputy sheriff Nezar Hamze doubles as regional director for CAIR in Florida, where he pushes CAIR's Islamist agenda and defends Islam against criticism it promotes terrorism, most recently in the bloody wake of the Orlando terrorist attack by devout Muslim Omar Mateen, whose radical mosque was defended by a CAIR lawyer.

Broward Sheriff Scott Israel, who calls himself "Florida's most progressive sheriff," has ignored calls for Hamze's removal from the force despite growing local protests.

Another CAIR executive, Khalid Latif, infiltrated the NYPD as its Muslim chaplain. Reportedly, Latif led the pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia that Mateen joined in 2012.

The case of Mohammad Weiss Rasool shows why such infiltration is potentially dangerous.

The FBI busted Rasool, an Afghan immigrant, for tipping off an al-Qaida terrorist suspect last decade while working as a police officer for the Fairfax County Police Department outside Washington and moonlighting for CAIR. He worked his way up to sergeant before authorities realized they had an al-Qaida spy in their ranks.

According to a Justice Department complaint filed in 2008, Rasool searched a national criminal database containing names of terrorist suspects and confirmed that FBI agents were tailing a Muslim friend of his from a local mosque.

When agents went to arrest the target early one morning, they found him and his family already dressed and destroying evidence. They knew they had a mole, and worked back through the system to find Rasool.

That's when agents discovered the cop had breached their database at least 15 times to look up names of other contacts, including relatives, to see if they showed up on the federal terrorist watch list.

Rasool's actions "damaged the integrity of the NCIC system and jeopardized at least one federal investigation," prosecutors said in federal court papers. "The defendant's actions could have placed federal agents in danger."

Rasool at first claimed he didn't know the terrorist target. He confessed only after hearing a recording of his message for the suspect, Abdullah Alnoshan - a close associate of al-Qaida cleric Anwar Awlaki, a local imam who had helped some of the 9/11 hijackers obtain housing and ID's in Fairfax County.

Rasool finally pleaded guilty to illegally searching a federal database.

According to the bestselling book "Muslim Mafia," Rasool at the time worked closely with CAIR, which lobbied on his behalf during his prosecution.

In fact, Rasool acted as CAIR's liaison within the police department, and often met with CAIR officials at CAIR's headquarters located just three blocks from the US Capitol.

A senior Fairfax County Police Department official, who called Rasool "a traitor" who "disgraced the uniform," said he was "deeply embedded with CAIR."

"He was the spokesman to the department for CAIR," the official explained in "Muslim Mafia."

The FBI has its own problems with Islamist moles.

Consider the case of the Muslim FBI agent in Los Angeles who allegedly compromised a multi-agency terrorism investigation by tipping off the ringleader of a Pakistani-based terror cell that the local Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) had under surveillance for more than two years.

The "dirty" agent - an Egyptian-American married to an Afghan woman - allegedly sabotaged several investigations across the country, including ones in New York and Boston, that tie back to the Taliban in Pakistan. According to "Muslim Mafia," he not only tipped the terror cell leader off to a so-called "trash cover" that investigators tried to execute outside his home in Los Angeles, but also identified surveillance vehicles for the terrorist suspect.

After an internal FBI investigation, the Muslim agent was reprimanded but not fired.

"The dirty FBI agent, my JTTF counterpart, compromised by investigation as well as several other agency investigations across the country," said a detective who works counterterrorism intelligence for the LAPD. "The agent is embedded with the bad guys and gave them critical information detailing the investigations."

The LAPD source added: "The FBI is covering it all up."

Bureau tolerance for such betrayal by Muslim agents is not new.

Gamal Abdel-Hafiz, an Egyptian-American and the first Muslim FBI agent, twice refused on religious grounds to tape-record Muslim terrorist suspects under investigation, including his friend Sami al-Arian, who was later convicted in spite of Abdel-Hafiz gumming up the investigation.

In early 2001, then-FBI Director Louis Freeh picked Abdel-Hafiz to become the FBI's deputy legal attache at the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - a key post in the battle against al-Qaida, which had hit American military barracks inside Saudi and a warship in neighboring Yemen.

After 9/11, when 15 of the 19 hijackers turned out to be Saudi nationals, Abdel-Hafiz was in a prime position to run down leads in the Saudi capital. Only, that didn't happen, at least not as often as headquarters had hoped. Agents back in Washington complained about his performance there, saying they were not getting answers to the hundreds of leads they were sending him in Riyadh. Abdel-Hafiz says he was one of only two people manning the office there and was further hobbled by an antiquated computer system.

But he and his FBI boss Wilfred Rattigan, a black convert to Islam, had still found time to travel to Mecca for the annual pilgrimage, where they surrendered their FBI cell phones to Saudi nationals and were out of contact with officials back in the U.S. who were trying to ring them up about investigations into al-Qaida and 9/11. Both Rattigan and Abdel-Hafiz wore traditional Muslim headgear and robes while on the job in Saudi Arabia, further outraging fellow agents.

When a senior supervisor was sent to the Riyadh office nearly a year after 9/11, she found secret documents strewn all over the office, some even wedged between cabinets. She also found a huge backlog of boxes each filled with three feet of paper containing secret, time-sensitive leads. Much of the materials, including information on Saudi airline pilots, had not been translated or reviewed.

It's anyone's guess how many terror cases were compromised in the FBI's Saudi office.

The FBI tried to fire Abdel-Hafiz in 2003 for insurance fraud and making false statements on his FBI application. But his termination was overruled by a special panel convened to hear the case, and he was reinstated. Reassigned to Dallas, Abdel-Hafiz recruited other Muslims to join the FBI at Islamic conferences held by Muslim Brotherhood front groups.

He finally retired last year, after being placed in the bureau's post-adjudication risk management program, or PARM, which stripped him of access to certain classified material. He now works as a Homeland Security contractor advising on "countering violent extremism," or CVE, the program the Obama administration started to pretend Islam has nothing to do with terrorism.

Among other things, Abdel-Hafiz argues against arresting young Muslim men who are being radicalized in order to build "trust" in the Muslim community.

Hundreds of other Muslim FBI agents, analysts, linguists and contractors have been subjected to additional security screening under the PARM program. The investigations have been prompted by concerns these FBI employees maintain family and other ties in the Middle East, as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan, and could be coerced by foreign spies or terrorist organizations to leak classified national security information.