28 Dec 2011

December 28, 2011


173 Police Officers Die In Line of Duty, Up 13% This Year

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The number of police fatalities caused by firearms made 2011 one of the deadliest years in recent history for U.S. law enforcement, reports the Associated Press. Some 173 officers died in the line of duty, up 13 percent from 153 the year before, says the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. The group reported that 68 federal, state and local officers were killed by gunfire in 2011, a 15 percent jump from last year when 59 were killed. It marks the first time in 14 years that firearms fatalities were higher than traffic-related deaths. The data shows that 64 officers died in traffic accidents, down from the 71 killed in 2010.

Craig Floyd, the group's chairman, blamed the rise on budget cuts to public safety departments. He cited surveys by police groups that showed many cut back on training and delay upgrading equipment, and referenced a Department of Justice report issued in October that said an estimated 10,000 police officers and sheriff's deputies have been laid off within the past year. It's the second year in a row the number of officers killed in the line of duty has grown. In 2009, the death toll dipped to 122 in a 50-year-low that encouraged police groups even though the year seemed to be an aberration.

Associated Press/Washington Post


Text Message May Have Presaged Killing of Six Near Ft. Worth

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Conflicting pictures emerged of a man who fatally shot six people, including his estranged wife and two children, and then himself on Christmas morning in Grapevine, Tx.,, reports the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram. A friend of his children described Azizolah "Boba" Yazdanpanah as conservative and protective of his family, saying he didn't want his teenage daughter to date and restricted her cellphone use. "Aziz had weapons for protection and cameras in the house," said Allison Baum, 18, a classmate of the children. "He knew what bad people could do. He was very upset when the mother moved out."

Baum said one daughter had said her parents had an arranged marriage and were no longer in love. One woman who was part of a happy hour group that included Yazdanpanah described him as a sweet man who didn't talk about family problems. "One woman got a puzzling text message from Yazdanpanah on Dec. 4, a few months after his wife and two children moved out of their home. The message went like this: "What do u call a guy who's born in Austin and grows up in Dallas and then dies in Grapevine? [ ] DEAD." On Christmas morning a middle-aged man dressed in a Santa Claus suit shot and killed a man, a teenage boy, and four women and then himself inside an apartment. The attack was planned, investigators said. Police recovered two handguns, at least one of which Yazdanpanah had owned for years.

Ft. Worth Star-Telegram/McClatchy Newspapers


Hundreds of Youths Wreak Havoc In Post-Holiday Mall of America Mob

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The day after hundreds of youths wreaked havoc on the nation's largest shopping mall, Minnesota's Mall of America, during one of its busiest days, shoppers still mobbed the center yesterday as the nation chattered online about the unruly incident, reports the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Parking spots and food court seats were scarce, but uniformed police and security guards were not. Heightened security might have mollified mall patrons, but employees worried about a repeat of the Monday fights and thefts that roiled the sprawling complex that resulted in 10 arrests.

"It was a scary situation," said Guy, a kiosk worker who did not want to give his last name. "I was worried about my cart, but we were all worried about each other." The incident lasted several hours, beginning with a large fight at a north food court. Mobs of young people ran through the mall, knocked things over and grabbed merchandise. Large groups of young people gathering to cause mayhem is a social phenomenon happening across the country, said mall spokesman Dan Jasper. Some suggested the incident was a criminal flash mob or "smash-and-grab" mob, which occurs when a group of people coordinate on social media sites, swarm into stores and ransack shelves. "No doubt, the trend is growing quite quickly," the National Retail Federation warned its members in August.

St. Paul Pioneer Press


Sexual Assault Reports On the Rise At U.S. Military Academies

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The number of sexual assaults reported at the Naval Academy doubled during the 2010-2011 academic year, as did the percentage of female midshipmen reporting unwanted sexual contact, according to Defense Department report quoted by the Baltimore Sun. Assaults reported at the Naval Academy rose from 11 to 22, more than the 10 at the U.S. Military Academy but fewer than the 33 at the Air Force Academy.

Overall, the number of assaults reported at the three service academies rose from 41 to 65. "We know that the military academies are similar to college campuses around the country in that sexual harassment and assault are challenges that all faculty, staff and students need to work to prevent," said Maj. Gen. Mary Kay Hertog, director of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office. The report attributed at least some of the increase in reports to greater awareness of sexual violence and growing confidence in the reporting process. The percentage of female midshipmen who said they had been subjected to unwanted sexual contact rose from 8.3 in 2008 to 16.5 in 2010 - nearly one in six. The percentage of male midshipmen reporting such contact rose from 2.4 to 3.4 during the same span. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said "one sexual assault is one too many."

Baltimore Sun


Baca Task Force To Investigate Wrongful L.A. County Jailings

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Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca will create a task force to minimize the wrongful jailings of people mistaken for someone else, reports the Los Angeles Times. The move responded to a Times investigation that found hundreds of people wrongly imprisoned in recent years, with some spending weeks behind bars before authorities realized their true identities. "It's a horrible reality of what is basically the imperfect nature of the criminal justice system," Baca said. "No one who is an innocent person should ever be tied in with the criminal justice system. [ ] There's a difference between saying 'I plead not guilty.' It's another thing to say to anybody 'I'm not that person.'"

The wrongful incarcerations occurred more than 1,480 times in the last five years. Many of those mistakenly held inside the county's lockups had the same names as suspects or had their identities stolen. L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas called the jailings "a travesty of justice" and another blow to the sheriff's jails, which are under federal investigation over allegations of inmate abuse and other deputy misconduct. "The original arresting agency has to, up front, do a better job in vetting the person," Baca said. Victims of mistaken identification typically go through several rounds of checks before they land in L.A. County Jail.

Los Angeles Times


A Close Look at a Michigan Juvenile Life Without Parole Sentence

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As the Supreme Court prepares to take up two new cases of life without parole sentences for juveniles, the New Yorker tells the story of Michigan's Dakotah Eliason, who suffers from a bipolar disorder, and who killed his grandfather at age 14. In an article available only to subscribers, the magazine says that although judges have long been attuned to the difficulty of trying mentally ill defendants, there is little recognition that people may be incompetent to stand trial because of their age.

Each year, more than 200,000 offenders younger than eighteen are tried as adults, yet only about half of them understand the Miranda warning. In Michigan, several judges have described discomfort over sentencing an adolescent to die in prison, but the state's automatic-sentencing laws leave them no choice. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit challenging the law.

The New Yorker


Florida Panel May Call for Reviewing All Jailhouse Informant Testimony

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Chad Heins, a Jacksonville, Fl., man, spent 11 years in prison for a murder he did not commit based solely on the testimony of two jailhouse informants who lied to jurors, saying Heins had confessed, says the Orlando Sentinel. The New York-based Innocence Project says 15 percent of all wrongful convictions later cleared by DNA testing featured false testimony by jailhouse informants. In murder cases, it's 50 percent.

Florida's Innocence Commission, the blue-ribbon panel working to prevent future false convictions, is debating what to do about them. The panel's staff is drafting legislation that could make Florida the only state that would require judges to review the reliability of jailhouse informants - as well as any witness with pending criminal charges - before allowing them to testify at a felony trial. Florida now requires a pretrial reliability test for scientific evidence, said Henry "Hank" Coxe III, a panel member and former president of the Florida Bar. If it requires a test for that, it should also for "something this critically important."

Orlando Sentinel


CA's Cate Wants to Remake Prisons, Including Rehab, Health Care

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California corrections chief Matthew Cate, 45, is steering the department's historic downsizing with a flat budget and a federal court looking over his shoulder, says the Sacramento Bee. "For the first time, maybe, there's a chance to run the prisons the way they were designed to be run," he said. The goal of a current realignment is to cut the inmate population at the state's 33 prisons from 144,000 to 110,000 in about two years. As of Nov. 30, head count was at about 137,000.

Appointed by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2008, Cate inherited a deeply troubled department under court order to relieve overcrowding and a prison medical system under federal control. Despite many challenges, he hung on when Democrat Jerry Brown took office. "Usually, when the governor keeps on a senior appointee from the previous administration, it's a because of a need for continuity," said Dan Schnur of the University of Southern California. Cate wants to remake the prison system "instead of taking the same model and just making it smaller." So look for him to press for more money for inmate education and rehabilitation. He wants to take back control over prison health care. He'll have to manage shrinking the 63,000- employee workforce.

Sacramento Bee


College Degree Program Hopes to Make Impact in Missouri Prison

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A class of 19 inmates, a small sampling of the 30,000 offenders in the Missouri Department of Corrections system, is part of the St. Louis University Prison Program, an effort that educators and prison reformers are watching with hopeful, yet cautious, eyes, reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "Too many programs, for the last two or three decades, get brought in and then somebody finds something they don't like about them and they smash it," said Jason Lewis, deputy warden of the Eastern Reception and Diagnostic Correctional Center in Bonne Terre. "We are moving slowly to get the momentum so we can spread it everywhere."

In 2008, SLU started offering certificates in Theology Studies at the prison. In March, it expanded to an associate of arts, a two-year degree that will take the inmates four years to finish. "We have got to find other ways of dealing with problems in our society besides locking people up," said Kenneth Parker, a SLU theologian who directs the program. "And that means finding more rehabilitative approaches. And that's where I think private nonprofits like SLU have a role to play." Doug Burris, chief U.S. probation officer for the Eastern District of Missouri, said he hopes the "Bonne Terre model" can expand with the help of a small college in Greenville, Il., home to St. Louis' closest federal lockup. The program, free to inmates, is supported by SLU, a $150,000 grant from the Hearst Foundation and other donations. More than 350 college prison programs used to operate, but only a few survived after Pell grants were cut for convicts in the 1990s, says a report by Bard College.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch


New False Confession Cases Raise Question: Why Would Someone Do It?

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This month a Montana judge released confessed murderer Barry Beach after ruling that new evidence in his case was "credible" and that he deserved a new trial, says USA Today. Beach, 49, served 28 years of a 100-year prison sentence for the 1979 murder of high school classmate Kim Nees, a crime he confessed to but has since maintained he didn't commit. Illinois and New York also dealt this month with cases of confessions that defendants later said were coerced.

The question at the heart of each of these cases and dozens like them across the U.S. is: "Why would someone confess to a crime they didn't commit?" Until recently, the idea that someone would falsely admit to a murder or a rape they didn't commit was considered preposterous, says former Washington, D.C., homicide detective Jim Trainum. Law Prof. Steven Drizin of Northwestern University, legal director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions, studied more than 250 false confession cases. Nearly all start with the "misclassification error," Drizin says. "When the police officer enters the interrogation room, they've already presumed that the suspect is guilty based on evidence that has been gathered in the course of the investigation. Often times, it's based on little more than a hunch," he says.

USA Today


How Crime-Scene Crews Clean Up Bloody Messes in Oklahoma

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At homicide scenes, suicide scenes, or when a body has decomposed after an unattended death, crime scene cleanup specialists like Sean Small have a bloody mess to take care of, says The Oklahoman. Small, 45, knows firsthand the trauma a family faces after a sudden death. In 2001, in a farmhouse, his father, Lonnie, 65, died of a heart attack. It was nearly a week before church members found him.

Six years later, he was watching a crime scene television show and had the idea to start a cleanup business in Oklahoma City. In 2009, Small faced his most horrendous cleanup job after a man beat and stabbed to death his pregnant girlfriend. The boyfriend, still covered in blood, was arrested a short time later nearby. Her blood had been spilled in a room where family members found love letters she wrote to him before her death. Small has cleaned up about 40 sites in the past five years, including a filthy house where the Department of Human Services found 17 cats living inside

The Oklahoman


Phoebe Prince Family Was Paid $225,000 By MA Town In Suicide Case

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The family of Phoebe Prince, the Massachusetts teenager who took her life allegedly in response to a barrage of bullying, received $225,000 from the town and in exchange agreed not to sue the girl's school district, says a copy of the settlement disclosed yesterday and reported by the Boston Globe. South Hadley, Ma., officials had fought disclosure of the settlement, saying it violated a confidentiality agreement with Prince's family, who had accused the school district of ignoring the teenager's suffering.

Prince, a 15-year-old transfer student from Ireland, hanged herself in her home in January 2010. Her death led to a national outcry over bullying in schools. Prince's mother, Anne O'Brien, settled with the town because she wanted to avoid a trial. She feared a public legal proceeding would be painful for the family, which was still reeling from a news story that detailed Prince's medical history. The complaint accused the district of creating an "intimidating, hostile, and sexually offensive educational environment.''

Boston Globe