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Today In Criminal Justice
Chicago Police Fired Gun Once Every Five Days in Six Years
Another Look at WA Police Killing of Hispanic Man
‘Less Than Human’: What the DOJ Private Prison Decision Missed
Private Prison Company Donates $45K to Trump
How Baltimore Air Surveillance Differs from Ground Cameras
Baltimore Conflict: Police Reform vs. Clearing Corners
Cincinnati Overdose Crisis: 174 Cases in Six Days
Judge Affirms Cleveland Gun Control Registry
Mandatory Minimum Opponent Says Idea Remains Alive
Judge in CA Swimmer Case Leaves Criminal Court
Many Reforms Never Made After 1971 Attica Riots
Gays 'Overrepresented' in Juvenile Justice System
Teen Crimes Can’t Raise OH Adult Sentences, Court Says
Florida Man Clicks ‘Like,’ Ordered To Remain in Jail
Top Story
Chicago Police Fired Gun Once Every Five Days in Six YearsIn 435 Chicago shootings over a recent six-year span, officers killed 92 people and wounded 170 others, firing a gun at someone every five days, on average. While a few of those incidents captured widespread attention, they occurred with such brutal regularity — and with scant information provided by police — that most have escaped public scrutiny. After months of struggles with Chicago police to get information through the Freedom of Information Act, the Chicago Tribune compiled an unprecedented database with details of every incident when police fired a weapon from 2010 through 2015. Analysis of that data revealed startling patterns about the officers who fired and the people they shot at.
At least 2,623 bullets were fired by police in 435 shootings. In 235 of those incidents, officers struck at least one person; in another 200 shootings, officers missed entirely. About four out of every five people shot by police were African-American males. About half of the officers involved in shootings were African American or Hispanic. The officers who fired weren't rookies but, on average, had almost a decade of experience. Of the 520 officers who fired their weapons, more than 60 of them did so in more than one incident.The number of shootings by police declined over the six years, from more than 100 in 2011 to 44 in 2015. For years, examining the full scale of the problem in Chicago was impossible because the city refused to release most details about police-involved shootings. Chicago Tribune Another Look at WA Police Killing of Hispanic ManThe Seattle Times takes a look at Pasco, Wa., where last year, three police officers shot and killed 35-year-old Mexican farm worker Antonio Zambrano-Montes, who reportedly was throwing rocks at passing motorists and later at the officers. For weeks, protesters decried the use of deadly force against Zambrano-Montes and expressed concerns about aggressive police tactics against local Latinos, who make up 60 percent of the population. Journalists as far away as Great Britain wondered whether Pasco, located among sun-parched buttes at the confluence of the Columbia and Snake rivers, would become the desert version of Ferguson, Mo. “Black Lives Matter. Hispanic Lives Matter,” the Pasco protesters chanted, giving a Latin spin to the now-famous rallying cry.
In what has become a recurring feature of police-involved shootings of black and brown people, grainy phone videos recorded by bystanders circulated online, showing the officers firing 17 times at an erratically behaving Zambrano-Montes. Multiple investigations have found that the officers were justified, although a wrongful-death lawsuit by Zambrano-Montes’ parents, arguing that he was actually trying to flee and then surrender, continues to move forward. Police chief Bob Metzger and city manager Dave Zabell, who are white, point to a longtime emphasis on community policing in Pasco and cite reforms made since the shooting, including the hiring of more Spanish-speaking police officers, the creation of a city Facebook page in Spanish and changes to city hiring that should make it easier to recruit bilingual employees. Seattle Times ‘Less Than Human’: What the DOJ's Private Prison Decision MissedThe DOJ’s decision to end private prison contracts leaves unresolved the continuing practice of keeping undocumented immigrants in for-profit detention facilities, says Dan Stageman, Director of Research Operations in the Office for the Advancement of Research at John Jay College, in a Viewpoints column for TCR. It may not be surprising that the stock prices of private providers have rebounded. The Crime Report Private Prison Company Donates $45K to TrumpThe political arm of one of the leading operators of federally contracted immigrant detention facilities donated $45,000 last month to a joint fundraising committee supporting Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, according to a recent Federal Election Commission filing, reports Roll Call. The political action committee representing The GEO Group, Inc., made the donation on July 27 to the Trump Victory fund, a joint committee also supporting the Republican National Committee and 11 state parties. Donors to GEO's PAC are almost entirely employees of the Boca Raton, Florida-based company.
The GEO Group contracts with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Justice Department, and foreign, state and local governments to operate detention and correctional facilities. In 2015, it oversaw 64 facilities comprising 75,145 beds. Pablo Paez, the GEO Group’s vice president for corporate relations, declined to comment specifically on the donation, citing company policy. “Our company's political activities are aimed at promoting the benefits of public-private partnerships in the provision of correctional and detention management services as well as offender rehabilitation and community reentry programs at both the federal level and in state and local jurisdictions across the country,” Paez said. The donation came weeks before the Justice Department said it would phase out its practice of hiring private prison companies — the GEO Group among them — to operate 13 correctional facilities. The group’s stock price plunged after the announcement even though ICE, the group’s biggest customer, indicated it would continue its private detention contracts. Roll Call How Baltimore Air Surveillance Differs from Ground CamerasConfronted with questions about a secret aerial surveillance program used to record footage of broad swaths of Baltimore, the police department tried to allay concerns by characterizing it as a simple expansion of the existing network of street-level CitiWatch cameras. "This, effectively, is a mobile CitiWatch camera," said police spokesman T.J. Smith. Experts in privacy law and in aerial surveillance by law enforcement say that characterization is way off base, reports the Baltimore Sun. "They're trying to make people calm by saying, 'Don't worry, this is just an expansion of our CCTV program.' It's not," said Anne McKenna law professor at Penn State University and a legal consultant to the U.S. Justice Department on aerial surveillance. "This is not a camera pole that sits in one location and films people walking back and forth."
The new program involves a privately owned company strapping a bank of cameras into a small Cessna airplane and capturing hundreds of hours of footage — more than 32 square miles at a time — from about 8,000 feet above Baltimore. That footage is fed to analysts on the ground who can go back in time to track individuals and vehicles as they moved across the city. It is a vastly different technology from CitiWatch, said Jake Laperruque, a privacy fellow at The Constitution Project, a Washington-based think tank. It is "more invasive and is in greater need of checks and limits," he said. "You need a lot of [street-level] cameras to get to a point where you can actually track a person's movements throughout a city. And even then it can be difficult at a ground-level view because there are obstructions. There is a fundamental difference that makes this a whole new type of surveillance, and it should be treated as such." Baltimore Sun Baltimore Conflict: Police Reform vs. Clearing CornersEight days had passed since the Justice Department issued a scathing review of the Baltimore Police Department, detailing years of racial discrimination in its law enforcement practices. Yet the 40 or so longtime residents who gathered in a church basement, many of whom were older black women afraid to walk to the store or leave their homes at night, had come to urge police to clear their corners of miscreants and restore order to their crime-plagued community,reports the Washington Post. “Please help me,” pleaded gas station owner Chaubhry Masood, whose parking lot has been overrun by loiterers and where a 17-year-old was recently shot and killed.
At the same time, in an adjacent church hall, Justice Department civil rights attorneys were discussing how to change the police department with another group of residents intent on curbing the abusive behavior of corner-clearing cops. Those attending included black youths long targeted by police. The organizers of each gathering didn’t know the other was taking place. And as people showed up last Thursday night, a priest from St. Peter Claver Catholic Church hurriedly attached paper signs to metal railings to direct the flow. The meeting with the police community relations council was to the right, the meeting with Justice Department lawyers to the left. The disconnect between those focused on crime and those focused on changes in policing looms large as Baltimore reaches an agreement with the federal government to restructure the department and end unconstitutional detentions, arrests, and beatings. Washington Post Cincinnati Overdose Crisis: 174 Cases in Six DaysAn overdose crisis in Cincinnati for the past six days has left police and emergency responders drained and, for now, without clues. It has also underscored that the region does not have the resources to treat all of the addicted, reports the Cincinnati Enquirer. Police are asking for the public's help in identifying the source of purported heroin sold to people in Cincinnati that caused scores of overdoses, including at least three deaths. "We're working very closely to find the source dealer," said Newtown Police Chief Tom Synan, who heads the law enforcement task force for the Hamilton County Heroin Coalition. He said local, state and federal authorities are combining their forces to investigate the source or sources. "We don't have anything solid to go off of."
With an estimated 78 overdoses Tuesday and Wednesday alone, and an estimated 174 overdose cases in emergency rooms in less than a week, officials are scrambling to attack a heroin crisis of a magnitude they've never had before. "This is unprecedented to see as many alerts as we've seen in the last six days," said Hamilton County Health Commissioner Tim Ingram. Cincinnati typically sees an average of four overdose runs per day. "It's unlike anything we've seen before," said Hamilton County Commissioner Dennis Deters, who called the outbreak a public health emergency. There are no samples of the drugs to test yet. The victims could have injected heroin mixed with the potent painkiller fentanyl or the mega-potent animal opioid carfentanil. Carfentanil, an analgesic for large animals including elephants, was discovered in July in the region's heroin stream. Cincinnati Enquirer Judge Affirms Cleveland Gun Control RegistryA judge ruled that some of Cleveland's new gun control laws violate the state constitution, but left intact a controversial gun offender registry that drew the ire of gun-rights groups, reports Cleveland.com. Judge Shirley Strickland-Saffold ruled that three laws enacted in April 2015 violated a state law that gives state legislators preemptive control over gun laws, including a provision that allowed police officers to confiscate guns. The ruling came after Ohioans for Concealed Carry filed a constitutional challenge against the ordinance just after it was passed by city council.
"Her ruling cites three cases where the City of Cleveland passed ordinances that are unconstitutional," said the concealed carry group's Jeff Garvas. "The City of Cleveland has been told three times now that they're not allowed to do this, twice by the Supreme Court." Parts of the law were upheld, including: a rule that prohibits leaving a firearm where it can be accessed by someone under the age of 18; a provision that requires people who aren't gun dealers to report the sale of guns or weapons; a requirement that gun owners report lost or stolen firearms to the city; a requirement that gun offenders register with the city; and a ban on the negligent transfer of firearms to someone who is intoxicated or is a convicted felon. Cleveland.com Mandatory Minimum Opponent Says Idea Remains Alive"It is discouraging to see members of Congress continue to introduce bills with mandatory minimums. It’s as if they have no impulse control when an emotional crime occurs. Their Pavlovian response is to pass a stiff mandatory sentence," Julie Stewart, founder of Families Against Mandatory Minimums,tells Mimesislaw.com. The latest examples are “Kate’s Law,” introduced after the murder of Kate Steinle in San Francisco, and the “Back the Blue Act,” introduced after the murder of five police officers in Dallas. Both bills carry long mandatory minimum sentences.
Stewart notes that few bills with mandatory minimums actually have been enacted recently. The last major group was in 2006, involving sex offenses. "I credit this to the younger, more junior, more libertarian and liberal members of Congress who recognize that mandatory minimum sentences are an expensive failure," Stewart says. "That number is growing while the old-time hard-liners are shrinking." Although Congress is yet to enact a new sentencing-reform bill, and may not this year, Stewart is optimistic, saying, "I think the main reason for progress is that people from different ideological backgrounds have begun to see prisoners as human beings ... Until you believe people who break the law might not be that different than you or someone you know, you are not likely to care how long they are sent away, what kind of conditions they are kept in, and what happens to them when they are released. But the culture is shifting – finally – and so I think that has helped those of us pushing for reform." She adds, "I am always worried that one high-profile crime could stop our progress ...but I think support for reform will stay high and continue to grow." Mimesislaw.com Judge in CA Swimmer Case Leaves Criminal CourtThe California judge who has faced widespread criticism and a recall effort after sentencing a former Stanford University swimmer to six months in jail for sexual assault has voluntarily moved to civil court, reports the Los Angeles Times. The Santa Clara Superior Court said Judge Aaron Persky will move to the civil court in San Jose. Presiding Judge Risë Jones Pichon said Persky asked for the move to reduce the distraction that reaction to the sentencing of Brock Turner has brought to his courtroom.
"While I firmly believe in Judge Persky's ability to serve in his current assignment, he has requested to be assigned to the civil division," she said, adding that Persky “believes the change will aid the public and the court by reducing the distractions that threaten to interfere with his ability to effectively discharge the duties of his current criminal assignment.” The move comes after Persky, who is facing a recall effort by those who say the sentence he imposed on Turner for the sexual assault was too lenient, removed himself from a case in which he was set to decide whether to reduce the conviction of a plumber for possession of child pornography from a felony to a misdemeanor. Los Angeles Times Many Reforms Never Made After 1971 Attica RiotsIn her new book, “Blood in the Water,” Heather Ann Thompson offers the most detailed account yet of the historic uprising by inmates over squalid conditions at Attica Correctional Facility in western New York. In 1971, Gov. Nelson Rockefeller ordered state troopers, armed with rifles and handguns, to storm the prison and quash a four-day rebellion. By the time it was over, 39 people had been shot dead, including 10 prison employees, reports the New York Times, with the Marshall Project. The retaking of Attica prompted landmark prison reforms. The state agreed to 28 of the inmates’ demands meant to expand their rights and improve prison conditions.
Before the riot, prisoners got one roll of toilet paper a month and were permitted one shower a week. Inmate letters written in a foreign language were thrown away. Islam was not recognized as a legitimate religion. Today, there are Muslim chaplains in most state prisons, inmates can take high school equivalency tests in Spanish and access to law libraries is guaranteed. They are entitled to more showers. Still, many changes that were promised were never made or have been rolled back. For example, a permanent ombudsman for inmates never was established, and working inmates never have been paid the minimum wage. New York Times Gays 'Overrepresented' in Juvenile Justice SystemStigma and discrimination, unsafe schools, and discriminatory policing drive lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth into the justice system where they are overrepresented and subject to unfair treatment and abuse, says a new report quoted by the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange. While LGBT youth make up about 7 to 9 percent of the population, they account for larger percentages of youth in juvenile justice facilities, says the report from the Movement Advancement Project and the Center for American Progress. In a survey by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, 12 percent of youth in juvenile justice facilities self-identified as nonheterosexual. A survey by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency of seven facilities found that 20 percent of youth identified as LGBT or gender nonconforming. Some 85 percent of nongender-conforming youth were youth of color.
“This report confirms once and for all what many of us have known for some time: LGBTQ young people are grossly overrepresented in the juvenile justice system, and it’s no coincidence. We live in a society where discrimination and stigma too often lead to criminalization and mistreatment at the hands of law enforcement,” said Ineke Mushovic of the Movement Advancement Project. Juvenile Justice Information Exchange
Teen Crimes Can’t Raise OH Adult Sentences, Court Says
Prior juvenile convictions cannot be used to increase the prison sentences of adults in Ohio, said a divided state supreme court ruling reported by the Columbus Dispatch. Splitting 4-3, the justices declared that treating cases from juvenile court as prior convictions for adult sentencing violates the due-process clauses of the Ohio and U.S. constitutions, and is “fundamentally unfair.” Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger wrote for the majority that juvenile court proceedings are designed to protect the development of those under age 18 while they are rehabilitated. Adult felony sentences are designed to protect the public and punish offenders, she wrote. “In summary, juvenile adjudication differs from criminal sentencing – one is civil and rehabilitative, the other is criminal and punitive,” she said.
Because juveniles facing delinquency charges have no right to a jury trial, crimes committed by youths cannot be used to enhance prison sentences they later receive as adults, the opinion said. The ruling overturned an appellate court decision on the Dayton case of Adrian Hand Jr., who pleaded no contest as an adult to three first-degree felonies – aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery and kidnapping – while using a gun. The judge considered a juvenile court adjudication against Hand as a prior felony conviction and ordered him to serve a mandatory additional three years in prison consecutive to another three-year term. Columbus Dispatch Florida Man Clicks ‘Like,’ Ordered To Remain in JailClicking the "like" button on a Facebook photo usually doesn't result in a one-way ticket to jail. Apparently that's what cost Paul Maida Jr. his freedom,reports the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. The 31-year-old Boca Raton man had been on house arrest, charged with DUI manslaughter and other crimes in the 2014 death of a bicyclist. This month, Maida allegedly "liked" a photo on the Facebook page of key prosecution witness and former girlfriend Bianca Fichtel.
Prosecutor Laura Laurie then argued for Maida's $76,000 bond to be revoked, accusing him of violating a court order to avoid any contact, direct or indirect, with Fichtel. On Wednesday, Circuit Judge Krista Marx cited the Facebook foul as the reason for yanking the bond and ordering Maida to remain in jail. Last year, investigators obtained emails between Fichtel and Maida. "There are hundreds of back-and-forth conversations between he and Fichtel about the crash, and more specifically that he was driving and should be charged and not Fichtel," an investigator wrote in Maida's arrest report. South Florida Sun-Sentinel | |
| | On every business day, The Crime Report (TCR) and Criminal Justice Journalists (CJJ) provide a summary of the nation's top crime and justice news stories with Internet links commentary, and New & Notable research in the field. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the Langeloth Foundation and the Urban Institute. Today's report was prepared by Ted Gest and Isidoro Rodriguez. Please send comments or questions to izzy@thecrimereport.org. | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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