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Today In Criminal Justice
Comey Disputes Epidemic of Biased Police Killing Blacks
PERF Presses De-Escalation With Skeptical Police Chiefs
Police Worry About Facebook, Twitter Cutting Access
Privacy Advocates Fighting Rule to Allow Mass U.S. Hacking
Private Prison Industry Fighting U.S. Move to End Contracts
Federal Inmate on Drug Sentence Refuses Clemency
Will ‘Law and Order’ Win The Day in MO, NC, WVA Votes?
Viewpoint: Why the Money Bail System Needs to End
Three Charged in Plot Against Somali Immigrants in Kansas
Muslim-Americans Charge U.S. Abuse on Informants
Pharma Industry Response to Opioid Epidemic: More Drugs
Long U.S.-Canada Border Offers Crime Opportunities
Silicon Valley Contributes Heavily to End CA Death Penalty
FL Court Requires Unanimous Juries in Death Penalty Cases
Policing Issues Becoming Liability in de Blasio Re-Election
Judge Tosses Newtown Families' Suit Vs. Gun Maker
Clinton's 1975 Rape Case: Memories Have Changed
Top Story
Comey Disputes Epidemic of Biased Police Killing BlacksFBI Director James Comey gave an impassioned defense of police officers yesterday, saying most are overwhelmingly good people working in a “uniquely difficult time in American law enforcement,” the Wall Street Journal reports. Speaking at the annual convention of the International Association of Chiefs of Police in San Diego, Comey pushed back at the narrative forming in the U.S. that “biased police are killing black men at epidemic rates.” He said the emerging narrative was driven by video images of “real and gut wrenching misconduct,” but also on perceived misconduct. He cautioned that there were only a small number of videos and not yet enough data to show whether police shootings were more pervasive in some communities than others.
“In the absence of information, we have anecdotes, we have videos, we have good people believing something terrible is happening in this country,” he said. “In a nation of almost one million sworn law enforcement officers, and tens of millions of police encounters every year, a small group of videos serves as proof an epidemic.” He added, “There are bad cops. There are departments with troubled cultures. Unfortunately, people are flawed. But for law enforcement, the spotlight is brighter, and the standards are higher. And that’s the way it should be.” Wall Street Journal PERF Presses De-Escalation With Skeptical Police ChiefsA new training program to teach street officers tactics to defuse tense encounters with people who aren’t wielding guns is being embraced by many big-city police chiefs as a way to prevent unnecessary fatal shootings each year,reports the Washington Post. The number of fatal police shootings in the U.S. this year is on pace to match last year’s total of 991. In about 40 percent of cases, the subject does not have a gun, and many police officials think that reducing the intensity of such encounters, establishing more distance between officer and subject, and simply talking to the person can result in no shots being fired and less trauma on all sides.
A de-escalation effort being rolled out Sunday at a the International Association of Chiefs of Police convention in San Diego could reaching hundreds of thousands of officers across the nation. Chuck Wexler of the Police Executive Research Forum is seeking wide backing at IACP for calling on officers to take a “tactical pause” when encountering subjects who do not present an immediate threat. However, the IACP and the Fraternal Order of Police oppose the idea. “An officer can only de-escalate a situation if the person they’re dealing with is willing to de-escalate,” says IACP President Terry Cunningham of Wellesley, Ma., said. Washington Post
Editors Note: See also George Hofstetter’s October 14 TCR Viewpoint: “LA Sheriffs: There’s No ‘Safe’ Use of Police Force. Police Worry About Facebook, Twitter Cutting AccessLaw enforcement is worried about losing access to powerful tools for searching social media because of changing attitudes at the social media companies that allow the searches. NPR reports. Last week, Facebook and Twitter restricted bulk data access to users’ information for a company called Geofeedia, after the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California said Geofeedia had suggested to police departments that they could use the service to track protests. Social media monitoring services like Geofeedia rely on bulk data access to be able to search far larger volumes of social media posts, and more efficiently, than the average user.
It’s the kind of large-scale social media analysis that’s mainly used by commercial clients, such as marketers, but which has also been sold to law enforcement agencies. The social media posts being scanned are public, but the ACLU’s Nicole Ozer says the practice is still an invasion of privacy, because of the sheer scale. “Many of these police departments are actually surveilling entire communities,” she says. That’s a reference to the services’ ability to pinpoint social media posts by location — although most people don’t enable location tagging on their social media, and wouldn’t be subject to this kind of “geo-fencing.” Twitter appears to be getting more restrictive. Not only did it cut off Geofeedia’s access to bulk data after the ACLU complainted, earlier this year it cut off data to another company, Dataminr, because it provided deep searches of public Twitter feeds to U.S. intelligence agencies. NPR Privacy Advocates Fighting Rule to Allow Mass U.S. HackingPrivacy advocates in Congress are trying to stop a new rule from taking effect Dec. 1 that would allow federal agents armed with a single search warrant to hack millions of Americans’ computers at once, USA Today reports. “It’s more government surveillance,” said Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX), a former criminal court judge and prosecutor who is leading bipartisan efforts with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) to stop the rule change. “It’s disturbing.” Despite congressional concern about criminals and rogue nations hacking everything from the Democratic National Committee to Yahoo, Congress has not held a hearing on the potential mass hacking of Americans by U.S. government agents.
The Justice Department says the rule is necessary to keep pace with changes in the technology used by criminals, particularly “botnets. They are clusters of computers infected by malware that can be controlled remotely and used by hackers to steal financial data. Opponents of the new rule say it goes too far, and they’ve got backing from big tech companies that want it stopped. They are pushing to enact the Stopping Mass Hacking Act, a bipartisan bill that would bar the change in federal criminal procedures from taking effect. Congress is scheduled to return from recess on Nov. 15 for about four weeks. “We’re really up against the clock,” said Wyden, who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “If Congress does what it does best and does nothing, then a lot of people are going to have to explain to their constituents why they let this happen without even a debate.” The new rule will automatically take effect Dec. 1 unless Congress stops it. USA Today Private Prison Industry Fighting U.S. Move to End ContractsThe private prison industry is lobbying against a U.S. Justice Department directive to end the use of their facilities, encouraging legislators to question the policy change and legally protesting one significant contract reduction, the Washington Post reports. Moves by the GEO Group and others show practical and political hurdles that stand in the way of the Bureau of Prisons actually ending its use of for-profit facilities to manage federal inmates. The industry says that the decision to do so was based on faulty research and that officials need private firms because of overcrowding in the federal prison system. “We think the private sector facilities did very well, that they were comparably secure, and in some important respects, they were better,” said George Zoley, chairman of GEO, which operates six facilities.
The industry, which generates billions of dollars in revenue, is a powerful force on Capitol Hill. Last month, six Republican representatives from Texas, California, and Georgia asked the Justice Department to “step back” from the directive until they provided Congress with more information. Separately, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), chair of the House Oversight Committee, wrote with two other Republicans that the DOJ plan would “undermine the effectiveness of the system’s rehabilitation programs.” There are 13 privately run facilities, housing more than 22,000 inmates, in the Bureau of Prisons system. It was unclear precisely how soon the contract prisons could be phased out. One of those 13 prisons in New Mexico has had its inmates moved out, and the population in the rest stood just above 21,600 on Friday. Washington Post Federal Inmate on Drug Sentence Refuses ClemencyFederal inmate Arnold Ray Jones asked for clemency in President Obama’s program and then refused to accept it when it was offered on Aug. 3, USA Today reports. Jones’ turnabout may be due to a string that came attached: Enrollment in a residential drug treatment program, which has been a condition of 92 of Obama commutation grants. Jones is the first to refuse that condition.
If Jones had agreed to complete the the program, he would be out in two years. He still has six years left on his 2002 sentence for drug trafficking, but Jones may be counting on getting time off for good behavior, which would have him released in April 2019, eight months longer than if he had accepted the commutation. Jones, 50, is in a low-security federal prison in Beaumont, Texas. The unusual rejection came recently when Obama commuted the sentences of 102 more federal inmates. With the 673 previous commutations granted, the total should have been 775, but a White House accounting had only 774. USA Today Will ‘Law and Order’ Win The Day in MO, NC, WVA Votes?Despite many criminal justice issues percolating in Missouri, not much talk of change has emerged in the tight race next month to replace term-limited Gov. Jay Nixon, reports The Marshall Project. The state is home to Ferguson, the city that became shorthand for racial conflicts in policing after the 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown. Missouri topped the nation in executions per capita last year, and is near the bottom in spending on public defenders. St. Louis has a high violent crime rate, and both Ferguson and St. Louis were admonished after Justice Department probes last year for racial bias in their court systems.
“What people want to hear is how [candidates for governor] would have responded to Ferguson,” said David Drebes, author of a political blog “Missouri Scout.” The events of Ferguson have led candidates to shore up their law-and-order bona fides. Voter turnout is higher in mostly white suburban and rural areas, where many feel a sense of anger and embarrassment about images of lawlessness seen after the Ferguson shooting. Many voters believe the lesson was not that police are too aggressive, but that state officials did not respond aggressively enough. The same dynamic may be at work in North Carolina, where upheaval after the fatal police shooting of Keith Scott in Charlotte last month may play to the advantage of incumbent Republican Gov. Pat McCrory. In a close governor’s race in West Virginia, an opioid epidemic has fueled campaign talk of cracking down on dealers, not treatment for addicts. “There’s still a real political opening for criminal justice reform, but in these big races the issue of policing in particular has become politicized and polarizing again — a resurrection of law and order,” said Inimai Chettiar of the Brennan Center for Justice. The Marshall Project Why the Money Bail System Needs to EndIn a Viewpoint for TCR, Cherise Fanno Burdeen, chief executive officer of the Pretrial Justice Institute, emphasizes the need for pretrial risk assessment in changing the current money bail system which she argues not only discriminates against the poor, but risks public safety as well. The Crime Report Three Charged in Plot Against Somali Immigrants in KansasLaw enforcement officials are seeking to reassure immigrants in a diverse western Kansas community of their safety after three men were accused of plotting to target Somali immigrants, the Associated Press reports. Curtis Wayne Allen, 49; Patrick Eugene Stein, 47; and Gavin Wayne Wright, 49, with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction in Garden City. The men are members of a small militia group that calls itself “the Crusaders,” and whose members allegedly espouse sovereign citizen, anti-government, anti-Muslim, and anti-immigrant extremist beliefs.
The suspects are charged with planning to detonate truck bombs around a small apartment complex where about 120 Somali residents live. Prosecutors said the men talked about attacking churches that have helped settle refugees and helped them get jobs at Tyson Foods, the meat packing company that has drawn a diverse immigrant population to the area. Debra Bolton of Kansas State University said 35 languages and dialects besides English are spoken in Garden City schools. Of the 40,000 people in Finney County, only 46 percent are of white European descent, and there are about 500 Somalians. “This is devastating to the community,” she said. Associated Press Muslim-Americans Charge U.S. Abuse on InformantsCivil rights advocates and Muslim-American leaders are citing what they say is a pattern of abuse by the U.S. government in using informants or undercover FBI employees to target Muslim-Americans. In recent years, the FBI has used informants in undercover investigations with greater frequency, say advocates and experts, reports the Detroit Free Press. U.S. officials strongly defend the use of informants, saying they only target people who have already expressed intentions to commit crimes. Using informants is “a legitimate tool in combating terrorism,” says David Gelios, chief FBI agent in Detroit. In Detroit, three cases involving undercover FBI agents or informants have played out in courtrooms this year, but no one has been charged with any terrorism crimes, drawing criticism from civil rights advocates who say that even after using informants who seek to push suspects to terrorism, the U.S. government is unable to bring terror charges.
Local Muslims who head mosques say they have nothing to hide but are concerned about the FBI going after young men who might be mentally unstable or have emotional problems who can be manipulated. In April, a lawsuit was filed against the FBI and other federal agencies by the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, saying Muslim-Americans were being pressured to become informants. A similar lawsuit was filed this month in Texas by the Constitutional Law Center for Muslims in America on behalf of a Muslim immigrant who said he was asked to spy on local Muslims in exchange for getting permission to work in the U.S. Of the 104 individuals charged with ISIS-related offenses in the U.S. since March 2014, 58 percent of cases involve informants or undercover agents, said Seamus Hughes of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. Detroit Free Press Pharma Industry Response to Opioid Epidemic: More DrugsSix in 10 U.S. adults take prescription drugs, creating a vast market for new meds to treat the side effects of the old ones. Opioid prescriptions have skyrocketed from 112 million in 1992 to nearly 249 million in 2015, and the nation’s dependence on the drugs has reached crisis levels.
Millions are addicted to or abusing prescription painkillers such as OxyContin, Vicodin, and Percocet. The Centers for Disease Control and Preventions say that from 1999 to 2014, more than 165,000 people died in the U.S. from prescription-opioid overdoses, which have contributed to a startling increase in early mortality among whites, particularly women, a toll that has hit hardest in small towns and rural areas.
The pharmaceutical industry’s response has been more drugs, the Washington Post reports. The opioid market — now worth nearly $10 billion a year in U.S. sales — has expanded to include a growing universe of medications aimed at treating secondary effects rather than controlling pain. In colorful charts designed to entice investors, pharmaceutical makers tout the “expansion opportunity” that exists in the “opioid use disorders population.” Analysts estimate that each of three submarkets — addiction, overdose and side effects — is worth at least $1 billion a year in sales. These economics, experts say, work against efforts to end the epidemic. If opioid addiction disappeared tomorrow, it would wipe billions of dollars from drug companies’ bottom lines. Washington Post Long U.S.-Canada Border Offers Crime OpportunitiesWhile the Southern border with Mexico, about 2,000 miles, attracts attention, the 5,500-mile Northern border with Canada offers more opportunity for illegal crossing, the New York Times reports. In many places, there are few signs of where one nation ends and another begins. In the past year, agents made 3,000 apprehensions along the Northern border, compared with 100 times that many along the Southwestern border with Mexico. They seized 700 pounds of marijuana and cocaine in the North, compared with 1.6 million pounds along the heavily gated Southern border. Authorities acknowledge that they cannot say with certainty how much criminal activity occurs with Northern border crossings because their means of detection are so limited.
The border with Canada, the largest in the world between two nations, has hardly warranted a mention in a presidential campaign dominated by Donald Trump’s call to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. Law enforcement officers say that makes the region more vulnerable in many ways to exploitation by criminal enterprises and possible terrorists. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Department of Homeland Security has increased the number of Border Patrol agents stationed along the Northern border to more than 2,000, from about 340, in addition to adding ground sensors, drones, and other detection devices. Nearly 18,000 agents patrol the Southwestern border with Mexico. New York Times Silicon Valley Contributes Heavily to End CA Death PenaltyAs California voters weigh two dueling death penalty measures on the Nov. 8 ballot, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the effort to end executions, the Los Angeles Times reports. Some have long been practitioners of so-called conscious capitalism, giving to social causes and ballot measures in support of issues such as education and the environment. This year’s death penalty debate has generated heavier funding and drawn in first-time donors, as contributors say they see potential for change amid waning public opinion of capital punishment.
“It feels like now the time is right,” said Nicholas McKeown, a computer science professor at Stanford University and founder of four tech companies. “Public opinion has changed a lot, and there’s also the general sense that we need to bring about that change in California so that it sweeps across the country to the Supreme Court and nationwide.” McKeown and Netlfix CEO Reed Hastings have been the two biggest contributors to the cause. Other top donors include Robert Eustace, who was senior vice president of knowledge at Google, and Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and founder of Emerson Collective, a nonprofit that advocates for policies on education, immigration reform, and environmental conversation. Los Angeles Times FL Court Requires Unanimous Juries in Death Penalty CasesThe Florida Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty cannot be imposed without the unanimous support of a jury. The New York Times says two decisions on the issue deepen “the recent turmoil around capital punishment in a state with a long history of executions.” One decision in a case that previously reached the U.S. Supreme Court and upended Florida’s death penalty system, said that the Eighth Amendment, which forbids cruel and unusual punishment, and Florida law effectively mandate consensus in capital cases. The court said a new state law that allowed for the death penalty when 10 of 12 jurors agreed was unconstitutional.
“Requiring unanimous jury recommendations of death before the ultimate penalty may be imposed will ensure that in the view of the jury — a veritable microcosm of the community — the defendant committed the worst of murders with the least amount of mitigation,” the court said. The ruling sided with Timothy Hurst, a death row inmate whose appeal led lawmakers early this year to rewrite the death penalty law. Nearly all of the 30 states with capital punishment require that a jury unanimously support a death sentence, and the Florida justices said their ruling would allow the state to “achieve the important goal of bringing its capital sentencing laws into harmony with the direction of society reflected in all these states and with federal law.” The rulings shift attention and pressure back to the legislature, which is not scheduled to meet until March. Legislators could also consider the death penalty system during a special session. New York Times Policing Issues Becoming Liability in de Blasio Re-ElectionAs New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio faces a re-election fight next year, an issue that galvanized his first run — achieving significant police reform — is becoming a liability, reports the New York Times. Caught between his soaring rhetoric as an outsider candidate and the realities of leading a city with a hair-trigger sensitivity to crime, de Blasio is disappointing many who once supported him, in a community he can ill afford to lose: the black voters who propelled him to office. “There’s a buzz going around about the disappointment,” said Bertha Lewis, who served on de Blasio’s transition team in 2014 but has become a vocal critic. “There’s a growing enthusiasm gap.” There have been opportunities for de Blasio him to live up to his image and his promise as a police reformer. Instead, those issues have become magnets for dissent.
Included are tens of thousands of dollars in extra pay for Daniel Pantaleo, the police officer who put Eric Garner in a fatal chokehold in 2014, disciplinary records newly shielded from disclosure, resistance to police-reform legislation in the City Council and continuing fidelity to a “broken-windows” model of policing. At the Council, a growing number of members have been refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of meetings, in part, because of de Blasio’s handling of policing issues. New York Times Judge Tosses Newtown Families' Suit Vs. Gun MakerA Connecticut judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by relatives of victims of the Newtown school attack, delivering a blow to an effort to hold accountable the makers of the assault rifle used in the 2012 massacre, the New York Times reports. Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis had surprised some of the plaintiffs by allowing the case to move toward trial this year, despite a 2005 federal law that offers firearm manufacturers and sellers broad protection from lawsuits when guns are used in crimes. Now, Bellis is citing the law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, as the basis for her reasoning. “This action falls squarely within the broad immunity provided” by the act, she wrote.
Lawyers for Remington Outdoor, whose AR-15-style Bushmaster rifle was used by Adam Lanza in the attack at the school, had argued for dismissal of the lawsuit, which also named the wholesaler and a local retailer as defendants. The plaintiffs, including relatives of nine of the 26 people who were killed in the shooting and a teacher who survived, contended that the law’s exception for cases of negligent entrustment, in which a gun is carelessly given or sold to a person posing a high risk of misusing it, justified the complaint. Bellis ruled that their claims were too broad to fall under negligent entrustment. She said Congress had already deemed the civilian population competent to possess the weapons by the nature of its law. The families will appeal. New York Times Clinton's 1975 Rape Case: Memories Have ChangedBefore the last presidential debate, Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump appeared with Kathy Shelton, who says Hillary Clinton ruined her life when she was appointed by the court to defend the man who raped Shelton in 1975. Until a Newsday reporter informed her in 2007 that Clinton was the lawyer in the case, Shelton had no idea that Hillary Clinton had been involved. Shelton has been quoted in different ways on the case, reports the Washington Post, telling Newsday, “I’m sure Hillary was just doing her job,” but telling the Daily Beast seven years later that, “Hillary Clinton took me through hell.”
The Post says Shelton’s memories of the case have changed, specifically concerning being forced to take a psychiatric exam that, it turns out, was not approved by the court. The newspaper concludes that, “There is little indication that the outcome of the case would have been much different, no matter the defense attorney, given the mishandling of … evidence and Shelton’s difficulties as a witness.” Washington Post | |
| | 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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