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Today In Criminal Justice
Airport Attack Could Start New Mental Health-Violence Debate
Florida Shooting Shows Airport Vulnerabilities
Brennan Center: Sessions Backs ‘Outdated’ Justice Ideas
Feds OK Nursing Home for Infirm, Elderly Parolees
Obamacare Repeal Would Hit Drug, Mental Health Coverage
Latest Opioid Overdose Data Show Worsening Crisis
Are Police Body Cams Ensuring Officer Accountability?
NYC Police Captain Under Fire for Comments on Rape
Thousands of LA Children Are Punished for Parents’ Mistakes
DOJ Issues Guidance on Getting Better Eyewitness IDs
Trump Jr. Backs Effort to Ease Curbs on Silencers
Will Trump Change U.S. Policy on Homelessness, Crime?
First Criminal Trial Starts in Fatal Meningitis Outbreak
OH Mall, Other Centers Bar Some Youths After Melee
Ex-Army Reservist Was Unnoticed After Escape
UT Inmates Banned From Reading 'Manipulation' Books
Top Story
Airport Attack Could Start New Mental Health-Violence DebateFederal officials say that the gunman who opened fire in a Fort Lauderdale airport after retrieving the weapon from his checked luggage, killing five people before surrendering to police, had been treated for mental health issues in Alaska after complaining of hearing voices, reports the Christian Science Monitor. It’s unclear whether Esteban Santiago had been formally diagnosed with an illness. In November, the former National Guardsman and Iraq war veteran claimed at an FBI office in Anchorage that U.S. intelligence agencies were controlling his mind and forcing him to watch ISIS videos. The shooting seems to be an example of a type of mass violence that is much rarer than most people believe: studies show the mentally ill account for just one percent of gun violence against strangers, although almost two-thirds of the public sees such incidents as a reflection of failures in the mental health system, the Pew Research Center reports.
The Fort Lauderdale shooting may ignite fresh debates over whether law-enforcement and mental-health authorities could have done more, or if they should be able to more freely disclose patient information. Such questions about the mental-health system’s ability to head off such tragedies have been raised in cases like the 2012 shooting in Aurora, Co., by James Holmes, who had told psychiatrists and family members about his homicidal thoughts, as well as the depressed German pilot who deliberately crashed a commercial liner in 2015, killing all 150 people on board. On the Fort Lauderdale shooter, “the early reporting seems to indicate this is someone with a significant history of mental illness,” says psychiatry Prof. Liza Gold of the Georgetown University School of Medicine. “Everyone may have been doing their job and this still happens.” Christian Science Monitor Florida Shooting Shows Airport VulnerabilitiesThe attack at the Fort Lauderdale airport raised concerns about how to protect travelers and what place firearms have in U.S. airports, the Associated Press reports. Authorities say Iraq war veteran Esteban Santiago flew in from Alaska, retrieved a handgun from his checked luggage, went to a bathroom to load it, and returned to the baggage claim area to open fire. “There’s no question we need to review not only the question of whether people should be able to travel with their firearms even if they’re in checked baggage, but I think we need to take a hard look at the security around baggage claim areas, and not just leave it at that,” said U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, whose district includes the airport.
Law enforcement experts say the baggage claim area remains one of the most vulnerable parts of the airport. Security is lighter and large numbers of people move in and out quickly. “An elementary school is harder to get into than a baggage claim at an airport,” said Chris Grollnek, a former law enforcement officer who specializes in security issues, especially involving active shooter situations. In the past year, suicide bombers targeted ticket and terminal areas in Brussels and Istanbul, Turkey. The only way to prevent such attacks, experts say, is to ensure the wrong people don’t get guns and to encourage the general public to alert authorities if they believe a friend or family member is acting erratically. Florida is one of six states that restrict firearms at the airport, declaring it a “gun-free” zone. Before the shooting, state legislators sought to relax those restrictions, arguing they prevent people from protecting themselves. Opponents of those efforts said having guns there would make them more dangerous. Associated Press Brennan Center: Sessions Backs ‘Outdated’ Justice IdeasAlabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, whose confirmation hearings for attorney general begin tomorrow, “appears to subscribe to outdated ideas about criminal justice policy that conservatives, progressives, and law enforcement have come to agree do not help reduce crime and unnecessarily increase the prison population,” contends the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University in an analysis of his record on criminal justice.
The center says Sessions opposes efforts to reduce unnecessarily long federal prison sentences for nonviolent crimes, despite a consensus for reform within his own party. Last year, he blocked the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act that would have reduced federal mandatory minimum penalties. Drug convictions made up 40 percent of the convictions in the district where Sessions’s served as U.S. Attorney in Alabama, double the rate of other Alabama federal prosecutors. Sessions continues to oppose any attempts to legalize marijuana and any reduction in drug sentences, says the center. It says he could direct federal prosecutors to pursue the harshest penalties possible for even low-level drug offenses, which the center terms “a step backward from Republican-supported efforts to modernize criminal justice policy.” Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Feds OK Nursing Home for Infirm, Elderly ParoleesA landmark decision last month to certify a private Connecticut facility is called a “huge deal” by advocates of better care for the nation’s growing population of aging prisoners, writes writes TCR contributing editor Katti Gray. The Crime Report Obamacare Repeal Would Hit Drug, Mental Health CoverageAs Congress works to repeal the Affordable Care Act with the support of President-elect Donald Trump, people with addiction and mental health disorders, their families and treatment providers wonder how patients would maintain their sobriety and psyches without insurance coverage, USA Today reports. The people helped the most by the ACA are the ones most likely to suffer from poor mental health and addiction. Nearly 30 percent of those who got coverage through Medicaid expansion have a mental disorder, such as anxiety or schizophrenia, or an addiction to substances, such as opioids or alcohol, says the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. [That compares to the more than 20 percent of the overall population.]
In New Hampshire, which has the nation’s highest synthetic opioid death rate, Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen is reminding Trump about some of his campaign promises in her state. “He pledged to take on this crisis, not immediately make matters much worse,” Shaheen said. “Repealing the Affordable Care Act without a replacement is highly reckless and will come at a high cost for people struggling with substance use disorders.” Chicago’s Cook County jail is often referred to as the largest U.S. mental health facility. Up to 30 percent of the 9,000 or more inmates in the jail have a diagnosed mental illness. “The ACA has been a game changer for those who are in and out of Cook County Jail,” says Mark Ishaug of Thresholds, a community-based mental health and addiction services provider. He says poor people of color, especially single men, were finally able to keep health coverage once they left the jail. About a third of Threshold’s 15,000 clients became eligible for coverage through the ACA. USA Today Latest Opioid Overdose Data Show Worsening CrisisThe U.S. opioid crisis shows no sign of receding as a new year begins, with the latest data from several hard-hit cities and states showing overdose fatalities reaching new peaks as authorities scramble to stem the tide, reports the Wall Street Journal. The synthetic opioid fentanyl, which has up to 50 times the potency of heroin, remains the chief culprit driving the increase in fatalities, say medical examiners and health and law-enforcement authorities in abuse hot spots such as Ohio, Maryland and New England. Federal data for 2015 deaths came out only last month, showing a nearly 16 percent climb to 33,091 opioid deaths in the year. Many jurisdictions are still compiling the grim tallies for 2016.
“We’re just really awash in drug deaths, and it got acutely worse,” said Thomas Gilson, the medical examiner in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, which includes Cleveland and is the state’s most populous county. So far, his office has recorded 517 deaths from heroin and fentanyl in 2016, more than double the number from the previous year. Pennsylvania is on track to have a significant statewide rise in 2016, said Patrick Trainor of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which tallies overdose data for the state. Philadelphia alone may surpass 900 overdoses in 2016, up from 720 the prior year, he said. In Maryland, the latest data show an estimated 1,468 overdose deaths through September 2016, which exceeds the entire tally from 2015. Authorities in Baltimore, a longtime heroin hot spot with a rising fentanyl problem, said overdose deaths surged 68 percent to 481 in the first nine-months last year, compared with the same period a year earlier. Wall Street Journal Are Police Body Cams Ensuring Officer Accountability?Body-worn cameras are reshaping perceptions of policing. The devices, typically mounted on officers’ shirts, provide a lens into law enforcement that is meant to build transparency and trust. Their increased use has also raised a host of questions and concerns, the New York Times reports in a four-chapter video series. Among them are who should have access to recordings? How will the footage be used? What are the privacy rights of people caught on video? What are the long-term costs to taxpayers? Police departments large and small are rolling out expensive body-camera programs without consistent answers to the questions or convincing evidence that the cameras ensure the level of accountability that the public demands.
At least 19 states have enacted laws restricting public access to footage, and a dozen more are proposing legislation. The video series examines the challenges and incentives surrounding the rapid rise of police body cameras. The story begins in Cincinnati, with a pitch for their use to officers in training. Research for the project began in August after Chicago police officers, recently equipped with body-worn cameras, shot and killed an 18-year-old African-American named Paul O’Neal. In the weeks after the death, Chicago’s Independent Police Review Authority released hours of footage from body and dashboard cameras. Absent from the trove of video was footage of the fatal shot — a fact that led to weeks of protests and claims of a police cover-up. More than half of all medium-to-large U.S. police departments now use or are testing body-worn cameras in a pilot program, says Chuck Wexler of the Police Executive Research Forum. New York Times NYC Police Captain Under Fire for Comments on RapeA New York police captain is under fire after suggesting that some rapes are not so serious as others, reports the Washington Post. Capt. Peter Rose, head of New York’s 94th Precinct, made his comments to a DNA Info New York reporter about an increase in sex attacks in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood. Thirteen attempted rapes and rapes were reported in the precinct in 2016, compared with eight in 2015. Rose seemingly tried to play down the increase. “It really becomes a balancing act for the investigators. Some of them were Tinder, some of them were hookup sites, some of theme were actually coworkers,” Rose said. “It’s not a trend that we’re too worried about because out of 13 [cases], only two were true stranger rapes. … If there’s a true stranger rape, a random guy picks up a stranger off the street, those are the troubling ones. That person has, like, no moral standards.”
Rose elaborated on his perceived difference between those cases at a community council meeting. “They’re not total-abomination rapes where strangers are being dragged off the streets,” Rose said at the meeting, according to the news site. After word of Rose’s comments spread online, thousands reacted in outrage and anger. “Wtf,” one Twitter user said. “No NYPD rape is always rape. There are no degrees of rape. And no always means no. No matter what.” Eric Phillips, a spokesman for Mayor Bill de Blasio, said, “Rape is rape, in New York City and everywhere else.” Washington Post Thousands of LA Children Are Punished for Parents’ MistakesThey have done no wrong, committed no crimes, yet thousands of children in Louisiana are being punished for their parents’ mistakes, reports the New Orleans Times-Picayune. They are the hidden casualties of the state’s world-leading mass incarceration rate, and the newspaper is exploring the damage done to children when a parent is sent to prison in a series, Family Sentences, that started today. The series reports on how law enforcement and the courts don’t always recognize that the people that they arrest, prosecute, and sentence are more than just suspects. Often, they are mothers and fathers. Their imprisonment will affect children, households and entire communities.
The newspaper says its series will report on how parents charged with nonviolent offenses are held for months — sometimes years — as they await trial simply because they are too poor to pay bail and how this practice can leave children teetering on the edge of homelessness or falling into the foster care system. It will detail how keeping some children connected to their incarcerated parents can break the cycle of recidivism. And yet families encounter significant obstacles along the way: from long and expensive trips across Louisiana to a jail telephone system that charges low-income families up to 10 times the average rate while generating millions of dollars for sheriffs and correctional facilities. In the U.S., there are an estimated 5.1 million, or one in 14 children who at one point in their lives have had to cope with having a parent in jail. New Orleans Times-Picayune DOJ Issues Guidance on Getting Better Eyewitness IDsThe U.S. Justice Department is issuing new guidance to federal agents on how to secure eyewitness identifications, an initiative designed to reflect decades of scientific research and bolster public confidence in the criminal justice system, NPR reports. The policy has two major components: It directs investigators to document or record an eyewitness’s confidence in an identification at the very moment the ID is made, and it encourages federal agents to conduct “blind” or “blinded” photo arrays of suspects in which the agent leading the session doesn’t know which photo represents the prime suspect. “We view this as an important step in doing everything we can to ensure the greatest reliability possible for the evidence we’re using at trial,” said Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates.
Yates said the department based its guidance on research that supports the idea “of just how important it is to get as much detail as possible about just how sure that witness is that this is the guy” long before any trial or court proceeding begins. The guidance from Yates marks the first department-wide policy, and it applies to such law enforcement components as the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the U.S. Marshals Service. “This DOJ memo reflects a series of best practices recommended by scientists based on research conducted over the past,” said University of Virginia law Prof. Brandon Garrett, author of a book about wrongful convictions. NPR Trump Jr. Backs Effort to Ease Curbs on SilencersThe gun industry, which for decades has complained about federal restrictions on firearm silencers, is pursuing new legislation to make them easier to buy, and a key backer is Donad Trump Jr., an avid hunter and the oldest son of the president-elect, who campaigned as a friend of the gun industry, the Washington Post reports. The legislation stalled in Congress last year. With Republicans in charge of Congress and the elder Trump moving into the White House, gun rights advocates are excited about its prospects this year. They call the bill, the Hearing Protection Act, a public-health effort to safeguard the eardrums of the nation’s 55 million gun owners. It would end treating silencers as the same category as machine guns and grenades, eliminating a $200 tax and a nine-month approval process. “It’s about safety,” Trump Jr. explained in a video interview with the founder of SilencerCo, a Utah silencer manufacturer. “It’s a health issue, frankly.”
Violence prevention advocates are outraged that the industry is linking the issue to the eardrums of gun owners. They argue the legislation will make it easier for criminals and potential mass shooters to obtain devices to conceal attacks. “They want the general public to think it’s about hearing aids or something,” said Kristen Rand of the Violence Policy Center. “It’s both a silly and smart way to do it, I guess. But when the general public finds out what’s really happening, there will be outrage.” The silencer industry and gun rights groups say critics overstate the dangers, arguing that Hollywood has created an unrealistic image of silencers, which they call “suppressors.” They cite studies showing that silencers reduce the decibel level of a gunshot from a dangerous 165 to about 135 — the sound of a jackhammer — and that they are rarely used in crimes. Washington Post Will Trump Change U.S. Policy on Homelessness, Crime?Growing numbers of homeless encampments have led to civic soul-searching in cities around the country, from Philadelphia to Denver to Seattle, the New York Times reports. Should cities open up public spaces to their poorest residents, or sweep away camps that city leaders, neighbors, and business groups see as islands of drugs and crime? The Obama administration has offered the homeless and their advocates support. In a 2015 letter addressing a law in Boise, Id., the Justice Department warned that local laws criminalizing homelessness could violate the Constitution’s protections against cruel and unusual punishment. The Department of Housing and Urban Development says it takes into consideration policies that criminalize homelessness when deciding which places should get competitive grants.
Advocates for the homeless said those policies had strengthened their hand. They are worried about how those measures — and broader funding for homeless services — will fare under President-elect Donald Trump, who ran as a “law and order” candidate. “We’re quite concerned,” said Maria Foscarinis of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, which estimated that half of U.S. cities had some kind of anti-camping law. “No sooner do you win the battle than 10 other cities pop up criminalizing homelessness, she said. “The idea was if you could get the federal government on your side, you have a much broader impact.” New York Times First Criminal Trial Starts in Fatal Meningitis OutbreakSome 750 people nationwide were sickened by fungal meningitis attributed to tainted steroid injections made by a Massachusetts pharmacy in 2012. Seventy-six people died in the outbreak, said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Now, after a lengthy federal probe and two years of legal battling, victims are anxiously watching as the first pharmacy executive goes to trial on criminal charges, The Tennessean reports. Facing a jury in Boston is Barry Cadden, director of the New England Compounding Center, who is charged with 25 counts of second-degree murder connected to deaths in seven states. He and 13 other company executives and pharmacists were indicted in 2014.
Opening statements are scheduled to begin today. Federal prosecutors say Cadden and other pharmacy executives did not follow regulation and procedure in preparing the medicine methylprednisolone acetate, leading to 10,000 tainted doses. Michigan was hardest hit by the outbreak, with 264 illnesses and 19 deaths. Tennessee was the second-hardest hit state, with 153 illnesses and 16 deaths. Among the violations alleged by prosecutors that led to that toll: using expired ingredients, failing to sterilize the medicine and ignoring indications there was mold in the rooms where medicines were made. Prosecutors say the pharmacy executives knew the potential consequence of those actions was death. “This is the deadliest catastrophe in the history of modern medicine,” said Mark Chalos, a Nashville lawyer who has represented victims. The Tennesean OH Mall, Other Centers Bar Some Youths After MeleeAn upscale shopping mall near Cleveland where police broke up a December 26 melee with pepper spray has joined other shopping centers in Ohio and the U.S. that have instituted restrictions on youths after certain weekend hours, the Associated Press reports. The new policy at Beachwood Place went into effect Friday night. Children under age 17 are not allowed inside the mall after 5 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays unless accompanied by someone 21 or older.
Beachwood Place and malls in a half-dozen other states reported fights and disturbances Dec. 26. The melee at Beachwood Place reportedly involved hundreds of people. An industry trade group says at least 100 U.S. malls and shopping centers have similar weekend restrictions. Associated Press Ex-Army Reservist Was Unnoticed After EscapeRhode Island authorities are trying to determine how a former Army reservist, awaiting trial for allegedly stealing guns, managed to escape a detention center on New Year’s Eve and go unnoticed for hours before he was caught five days later, reports the Wall Street Journal. A Massachusetts State Police trooper captured James Morales, 35, near Boston on Thursday. He is suspected of trying to rob two banks during the manhunt. Morales broke out of a maximum-security center for federal detainees on New Year’s Eve while awaiting trial on charges of stealing machine guns and pistols from an Army Reserve facility in Worcester, Ma. The Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, R.I., suspended three guards and a supervisor while the escape is investigated.
Morales had been in the Wyatt facility for more than a year. Authorities say he escaped by climbing onto a basketball hoop in the outdoor recreation area, pushing through a hole in the fence and jumping up onto the detention center roof. He shimmied down the side of the building and ran to nearby train tracks, which he followed for about a mile before reaching Interstate 95. Jail officials did not miss Morales for four hours, until he was absent at an evening bed count. The Wyatt facility is a maximum-security facility built to house as many as 770 federal detainees. Wall Street Journal UT Inmates Banned From Reading 'Manipulation' BooksFor inmates locked up at the Utah State Prison, copies of John Grisham’s “A Time to Kill,” the classic “Crime and Punishment” and each installment in the “Game of Thrones” series are encouraged reading. Two provocative guidebooks are not. As the only titles on the prison’s banned books list, “The 48 Laws of Power” and “The Art of Seduction,” both by Robert Greene, are not allowed inside the institution’s towering wire fences, the Salt Lake Tribune reports The reason? They’re all about manipulation.
The ban was categorized as a security measure, accompanied by a brief explanation. Prison officials feared the books, could show inmates “how to control people, how to get people to do exactly what you want them to do,” says prison librarian Christie Jensen. Greene’s “The 48 Laws of Power” has been described as the “bible for atheists,” “chicken soup for the soulless” and, by The New Yorker, a manual on “how to be a creep.” Salt Lake Tribune | |
| | 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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