| | |
Today In Criminal Justice
TCR Special Report: Fraud and the Elderly: Who's Paying Attention?
Trump Anticrime Message Splits Police, Conservatives
Anti-Trump Protests Put Pressure on Law Enforcement
How Young Blacks Are Doing 5 Years After Trayvon Martin Died
Can States Bar Sex Offenders From Social Media?
Comey Again in Political Crosshairs Over Russia
Priorities Change Quickly For U.S. Immigration Agents
Engineer from India Calls KS Shooting 'Isolated Incident'
Homeland Security Challenged Trump's Travel Ban Basis
Murder Clearance Rate Drops Under 50% in Philadelphia
Justice Reformers Attend Conservative Action Meeting
FL Pols Disagree on How to Reduce Youth Shootings
Florida Women Prisoners Had Plumbing Woes for Months
Celebrities Jumping into California's Marijuana Industry
Back-to-Back Domestic Murder-Suicides Shock Memphis
Opioid Overdoses Contribute to MO Foster Care Rise
Top Story
TCR Special Report: Fraud and the Elderly: Who's Paying Attention?Most Americans find frauds, scams and other crimes against the elderly morally repugnant. But their concern hasn’t been matched by the financial and investigative resources necessary to prosecute them in most U.S. jurisdictions, writes TCR Deputy Editor Victoria Mckenzie. The Crime Report Trump Anticrime Message Splits Police, ConservativesPresident Trump depicts a nation suffering from a crime wave, raising the prospect of increased prosecutions and tougher penalties. That message is splitting the law-enforcement community and would contradict a growing consensus in his own party around policies aimed at reducing prison populations, the Wall Street Journal reports. His potential measures have drawn pushback from some law-enforcement leaders, who say they aren’t equipped to enforce immigration law, and from criminal-justice experts wary of a reprise of the “war on drugs” that they say swelled prisons, devastated minority communities and drained tax dollars. They point to data that shows crime hovering near multi-decade lows. Many states, some headed by conservative Republicans, have been easing sentences and helping inmates transition back into society to lower inmate counts. “What I say to conservatives is that we need to be tough on crime, but also smart on crime to make sure that we don’t simply remove people from society, we rehabilitate them,” said Gov. Matt Bevin (R-KY).
“We should always be guided by facts and data in all we do, especially with crime and punishment, and not by fear and emotion—that’s what the dozens of states who have made productive and commonsense reforms to their systems have done,” said Mark Holden of Koch Industries, a conservative voice for criminal-justice overhauls. The Fraternal Order of Police, the largest police union, and suburban and rural sheriffs welcome Trump’s show of solidarity after President Obama expressed sympathy for young black men killed by police. “Standing up for our law enforcement community” is one of six top issues on the White House website. One Trump order comes close to endorsing an FOP “Blue Lives Matter” drive in response to deadly attacks on police in Dallas and Baton Rouge to add “law enforcement” to a federal hate-crimes law.. Wall Street Journal Anti-Trump Protests Put Pressure on Law EnforcementSince Donald Trump became president, Americans are protesting in the streets more frequently and in bigger numbers than many places have seen in decades, and often with little warning. That has pressure on law enforcement and prompted Republican legislators and committees in about a dozen states to propose cracking down on certain actions by demonstrators, the Wall Street Journal reports. Most of the rallies have been free of violence. Groups representing law enforcement say there is anecdotal evidence of stresses facing police, even as they haven’t seen estimates of additional costs or arrests. “We are entering a new era of protests, and for police, it’s a science and a balancing act,” said Chuck Wexler of the Police Executive Research Forum. “They want to let protesters exercise their First Amendment rights, but there will be red lines if protesters want to block a highway.”
State legislative proposals to clamp down on protests have raised concern among civil-liberties groups. A measure defeated in North Dakota said that “a driver of a motor vehicle who unintentionally causes injury or death to an individual obstructing vehicular traffic on a public road, street, or highway is not guilty of an offense.” The trend toward spontaneous rallies challenges police practices of meeting with organizers beforehand to work out logistics. Police chiefs recommend using social media to lay out ground rules and approaching people who emerge as informal leaders, says PERF, which wrote a report on mass demonstrations for the Justice Department. Last week, Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus took the unconventional step of posting an 1,800-word “Dear residents” letter on Facebook after his department was accused of roughing up protesters at a pro-immigration rally. Wall Street Journal How Are Young Blacks Doing Five Years After Trayvon Martin?Trayvon Martin was killed in Florida five years ago this week. The phrase “Black Lives Matter” was coined on July 13, 2013, the day after a jury acquitted George Zimmerman, the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who shot Martin after calling 911 and describing him as suspicious, reports the Orlando Sentinel. When Zimmerman shot Martin, Barack Obama had been in the White House for three years and, “Many Americans … felt that we were in a post-racial era,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, a civil rights activist who came twice to Sanford, where the shooting took place, to lead rallies calling for Zimmerman’s arrest. Sharpton got involved, he said, because “I realized how vulnerable we were, that this guy wasn’t even a policeman, and he could just kill this kid and not even be arrested … That’s what outraged me.”
Sharpton doesn’t think young black men are better off now than they were when Martin was shot, but there is a big change: the movement led to accountability. People now demand answers when police kill young black men, and they’re willing to take to the streets in protest. “Trayvon Martin energized a renewal of civil rights activism in the 21st century like Emmett Till energized it in the 20th century,” Sharpton said. Government data indicates that in Central Florida, life has improved for young black men in some ways and gotten worse in others in five years. Their unemployment rate is down 38 percent, and the rate at which they graduate from high school is up sharply. The poverty rate for black males age 15 to 25 is 3 percent higher. The number of black males 15 to 25 who were the victims of homicide has seesawed since 2012. That year, Martin was one of 31. In 2015, there were 35. Orlando Sentinel Can States Bar Sex Offenders From Social Media?Is your politically-charged Facebook post, an Instagram photo of your last vacation, or Snapchat account a vital, Constitutionally protected right, or a privilege that can be taken away? That’s a question the U.S. Supreme Court is grappling with today as it hears a case involving a North Carolina law that bars registered sex offenders from using some social media platforms where users under the age of 18 are allowed, reports the Christian Science Monitor. While the state argues that the law blocks sexual predators from gathering information on potential victims, the plaintiff counters that the sweeping ban constitutes an infringement of the First Amendment and puts those on the registry outside of political conversation.
The First Amendment says legislators “shall make no law” restricting speech, but courts have ruled many times that the right is far from absolute, particularly when the safety of others comes into play. Privately-owned social media platforms have found themselves straddling the line between allowing free expression on their platforms and keeping sites clear of particularly offensive and abusive communication or obscene material, especially anything that would involve abuse of children. Today’s case involves Lester Packingham, who is in a 30-year term on the sex offender registry for pleading guilty to having consensual sex with a 13-year-old girl he was dating at the age of 21. He said he did not know how old the girl was. He was then found guilty of having a Facebook account. Christian Science Monitor Comey Again in Political Crosshairs Over RussiaWhen the White House asked the FBI to refute publicly news reports that associates of President Trump engaged in possibly illegal contacts with Russian intelligence, Director James Comey refused. The interaction between the White House and the FBI again puts Comey squarely in the political crosshairs, Politico reports. Last fall, Comey disclosed the FBI’s renewed investigation of emails relating to Hillary Clinton days before the presidential election, a decision some Democrats blame for Clinton’s narrow loss to Trump. Now, Comey has remained silent while the White House alleges that one of his top deputies first flagged doubts about a New York Times story on the Russian contacts to Trump chief of staff Reince Priebus, who asked for help knocking the story down.
Priebus’ move could raise questions about the integrity of FBI investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The partisan sensitivity surrounding the issue of the Trump team’s connections with Russia makes it virtually impossible for Comey to do anything (or nothing) without his actions being viewed as somehow political. “He wants to be the honest broker. That’s what’s in his heart,” said a senior Justice Department official. “But he’s having a hard time doing that. He keeps getting accused of doing things wrong, especially when going the extra mile to try to do things right.” Trump himself attacked the FBI on Friday, tweeting that the agency was unable to find “leakers.” Politico Priorities Change Quickly For U.S. Immigration AgentsThe Trump administration’s plan to arrest and deport vast numbers of undocumented immigrants has been introduced in dramatic fashion. Much of that task has fallen to thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers who are newly emboldened, newly empowered and already getting to work, the New York Times reports. Gone are Obama-era rules that required them to focus only on serious criminals. In Southern California, officers detained 161 people with a wide range of felony and misdemeanor convictions, and 10 who had no criminal history at all. “Before, we used to be told, ‘You can’t arrest those people,’ and we’d be disciplined for being insubordinate if we did,” said a 10-year agency veteran. “Now those people are priorities again. And there are a lot of them here.”
Interviews with 17 agents and officials in states including Florida, Alabama, Texas, Arizona, Washington and California, demonstrated how quickly a new atmosphere in the agency had taken hold. “Morale amongst our agents and officers has increased exponentially since the signing of the orders,” the unions representing ICE and Border Patrol agents said after President Trump issued executive orders on immigration last month. A whirlwind of activity has overtaken ICE headquarters in recent weeks, with employees attending back-to-back meetings about how to carry out Trump’s plans quickly. “Some people are like: ‘This is great. Let’s give them all the tools they need,’” said a senior staff member who joined the department under the administration of George W. Bush. “Other people are a little bit more hesitant and fearful about how quickly things are moving.” New York Times Engineer from India Calls KS Shooting ‘Isolated Incident’Alok Madasani walked with crutches last night at a vigil for the victims of the gun violence in Olathe, Ks., that killed his best friend and left him and another man injured. “I wish it was a dream,” Madasani said of the attack last Wednesday night at a bar that left Srinivas Kuchibhotla dead, the Kansas City Star reports. The men, both 32, were engineers from India. “What happened that night was a senseless crime and that took away my best friend,” Madasani said.
Adam Purinton, 51, of Olathe, is charged with first-degree murder and two counts of attempted first-degree murder. The FBI is also investigating the case as a possible federal hate crime. He allegedly told his victims to “get out of my country.” Last night, Madasani on Sunday called the shooting “an isolated incident that doesn’t reflect the true sprit of Kansas, the Midwest and the United States,” generating applause from the overflow audience. Kansas City Star Homeland Security Challenged Trump Travel Ban Basis The Homeland Security Department’s intelligence arm found insufficient evidence that citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries included in President Trump’s travel ban pose a terror threat to the U.S., the Associated Press reports. A draft document concluded that citizenship is an “unlikely indicator” of terrorism threats to the U.S., and that few people from the countries Trump listed in his travel ban have carried out attacks or been involved in terrorism-related activities in the U.S. since Syria’s civil war started in 2011. Trump cited terrorism concerns as the primary reason he signed the sweeping temporary travel ban in late January, which halted the U.S. refugee program. A federal judge blocked the government from carrying out the order. Trump said Friday a new edict would be announced soon.
Homeland Security spokeswoman Gillian Christensen did not dispute the report’s authenticity, but said it was not a final comprehensive review of the government’s intelligence. The Homeland Security report is based on unclassified information from various sources. It challenges Trump’s core claims. It said that of 82 people the government determined were inspired by a foreign terrorist group to carry out or try to carry out an attack in the U.S., just over half were U.S. citizens born in the United States. The others were from 26 countries, led by Pakistan, Somalia, Bangladesh, Cuba, Ethiopia, Iraq and Uzbekistan. Of these, only Somalia and Iraq were among the seven nations in the ban. Associated Press Murder Clearance Rate Drops Under 50% in PhiladelphiaMore often than at any point in recent memory, people have been getting away with murder in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. The city’s homicide clearance rate last year dropped below 50 percent, the lowest the city has seen in at least 15 years, and the third consecutive year that the rate has decreased. The police homicide unit posted a clearance rate above 70 percent as recently as 2012 and 2013, nearly 10 points higher than the national average. Last year, when there were 277 murders, the rate was just 45.4 percent, meaning police arrested dozens fewer murder suspects than they had just a few years earlier.
Theories for the downturn vary, from a shrinking pool of homicide detectives to a belief that media coverage of police brutality allegations has fueled distrust in minority communities, worsening the decades-old challenge of finding cooperating witnesses. Homicide detectives also blame interrogation policies implemented three years ago, which allow witnesses to decline interviews or leave them whenever they want. The rules, designed to protect the civil rights of witnesses and suspects and prevent police from eliciting false confessions, also mandate that suspect interviews be recorded on video. “They changed everything,” said one veteran investigator. “Witnesses are a thing of the past,” said another. Police Commissioner Richard Ross, a former homicide unit commander, was instrumental in crafting the new directives and said they are not going away. Criminologists note that such policies are common in cities with high clearance rates, and simply force detectives to build cases on surveillance video, cellphone records, or other forensic evidence, rather than relying on confessions or witness testimony. Philadelphia Inquirer Justice Reformers Attend Conservative Action MeetingAttendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference near Washington, D.C., were greeted this year, as in years past, by advocates pushing for looser sentencing laws and reducing mass incarceration. Groups like the American Conservative Union Foundation hope to convince more people on the political right to embrace the cause as a conservative one by leveraging their recent successes at the state level and reminding lawmakers that it’s an issue with support from several conservative groups, BuzzFeed News reports. “I do feel that letting politicians know that we are large in numbers and we do support this, and we are present at all of these events, we’re not going to go away; it’s something that’s important and it’s […] a part of the conservative movement,” says Christina Delgado of the conservative group FreedomWorks.
Derek Cohen of Texas-based Right on Crime, which is also attending CPAC, says, “You do have people that have a bit more of a reactionary tough-on-crime approach that have come up to the booth and talked to us about it. But once you start talking to them about .. the practicalities of running a criminal justice system, they actually get it very quickly.” The American Conservative Union Foundation moderated two panels at CPAC on Friday: “Prosecutors Gone Wild,” which included arguments for mens rea requirements in federal offenses, and “Conservatives Leading the Way on Criminal Justice Reform in State Capitals.” Steve Hawkins of the Coalition for Public Safety, another CPAC attendee, said that, “As President Trump considers how best to reduce crime and restore public safety, we hope that he can learn from reform champions in states like Oklahoma, Louisiana and Kentucky.” BuzzFeed News FL Pols Disagree on How to Cut Youth ShootingsWhen Florida’s annual 60-day legislative session gets under way next month, lawmakers will be looking for ways to keep kids safe from guns, reports the Tampa Bay Times. Statewide, the number of children killed by guns has risen nearly 20 percent since 2010. Child gun injuries went up 36 percent. Possible solutions differ radically along party lines. Democrats want to tighten the existing law that holds adults criminally liable when kids access their firearms, and increase the penalties. The lawmaker with the most power over the matter has a different idea. “We could do away with gun-free zones,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Greg Steube, a Republican, citing a key piece of the National Rifle Association’s agenda in Florida.
Florida law prohibits concealed weapons in 15 types of locations, including elementary through high schools. Steube and other Republicans argue that people are generally less safe in these so-called “gun free-zones” because they cannot protect themselves in an active-shooter situation. “There’s not a school resource officer in every one of our elementary schools,” he said. “If a terrorist wants to come in and start shooting our kids, there’s nothing to stop them.” The Times looked at all types of gun incidents that affect children: accidents, suicides and shootings that took place during the commission of a crime, among them. The newspaper found the number of accidents and assaults were roughly even between 2010 and 2015, but that accidents increased far faster than assaults or suicides. Tampa Bay Times Florida Women Prisoners Had Plumbing Woes for MonthsThe 284 women housed in C-dorm at Florida’s Gadsden Correctional Facility lived for months without hot water or heat, faced flooded bathrooms daily and were put on water rations when the septic tanks were jammed with food waste, the Miami Herald reports. After state Rep. David Richardson demanded action after surprise visits over the past 18 months, the private prison’s operator, Utah-based Management Training Corp., received approval from the state to repair and replace the water heater, at a cost to taxpayers of nearly $10,000. Warden Shelly Sonberg never authorized the work. Richardson announced another inspection this month, this time with Chad Poppell, head agency that oversees private prisons, and two other state legislators.
In the two days before they arrived, four work crews descended on the prison and made many of the repairs. The state’s chief inspector general, Melinda Miguel, dispatched inspectors to assess the safety and welfare of the inmates. For Richardson, who has been on a one-man mission to force change in Florida’s troubled prison system, it’s another frustrating example of the failure of the state to monitor and hold accountable its prison operators. “I’m a policymaker. I’m not a monitor. I’m not their auditor. Why is it that I’m out there fixing water heaters?” he said. Poppell has removed the state-paid official in charge of monitoring the prison and has launched his own investigation. He said the 22-year-old prison, like other private prisons built by the state, are “now beginning to show their age and present problems associated with older buildings.” Miami Herald Celebrities Jumping Into California’s Marijuana IndustryCountry singer Willie Nelson, the children of the late reggae icon Bob Marley, and comedian Whoopi Goldberg are just a few of a growing number of celebrities jumping into the marijuana industry. They are eyeing the California pot market, which is expected to explode now that voters have legalized the recreational use of weed, the Associated Press reports. Regulators are scrambling to get California’s recreational pot market launched and to issue licenses to growers and sellers by early 2018. Still to be decided is who will receive the first licenses to grow, distribute and sell recreational marijuana. Growers already cleared to sell medical marijuana in the state could be the first in line.
Analysts say brands already established in legal medical marijuana dispensaries, including celebrities who partner with approved California growers , will have a leg up when the first licenses are issued. Several pot-loving celebrities are in prime positions because of their fame and backstory with the drug, including Marley’s children. The late Jamaican singer was at the vanguard of the global legalization movement. Backed by a Seattle venture capital firm, Marley’s oldest daughter, Cedella, launched Marley Natural in 2014. She says California is the world’s largest legal cannabis market since voters approved Proposition 64 in November. Associated Press Back-to-Back Domestic Murder-Suicides Shock MemphisTwo women killed by their husbands in separate murder-suicides several hours apart on Feb. 18 in Memphis left the community shocked by the back-to-back domestic violence slayings, reports the USA Today Network. “We have through the years had episodes where men kill women and then themselves, but two in one day is not typical at all,” said Deborah Clubb of the Memphis Area Women’s Council.
Last year in Memphis, deadly domestic violence incidents claimed 26 victims, accounting for 11 percent of all homicides. Domestic violence killings have increased sharply from previous years, which included 13 in 2014 and just eight in 2015, says the Memphis Shelby County Crime Commission. “Twenty-six is a huge number. It’s a terrifying number,” said Clubb. “It’s evidence that we still have an epidemic of this violence. People even in family situations, what’s supposed to be a ‘home is your sanctuary’ ideal, we have instead vicious, vicious behavior going on.” Said Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich, “I used to say … our domestic violence numbers were moving in the right direction. But this number just jumped off the page.” USA Today Opioid Overdose Increase Part of MO’s Foster Care RiseLast year more than 650 people died from opioid overdoses in the St. Louis region, more than four times the number in 2007. The epidemic is also measured in delivery rooms of Missouri hospitals, which have seen more than a fivefold increase in the number of infants born with symptoms of opioid withdrawal in the past 10 years, according to the Missouri Hospital Association, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. The number of children going into foster care in Missouri began to climb in 2012, after years of a general decline. Last year 7,505 children entered foster care. That is a leap from 6,432 in 2013.
The state lacks data to tie the spike in foster care directly to opioids. Data from the St. Louis Family Court show the link. Of the 46 children who have entered foster care in the city this year, 17 — or 39 percent — were due to drugs, either involving drug exposure to newborns or issues of abuse or neglect because of substance abuse by parents. One case involved the fatal shooting death of a 6-year-old girl by a younger sibling while the mother and her boyfriend slept after smoking drugs, according to court records. The three living siblings, ages 3, 4 and 9, went into foster care. St. Louis Post-Dispatch | |
| | 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 Victoria Mckenzie. Please send comments or questions to victoria@thecrimereport.org. | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| |
|
|
