Saturday, March 31, 2012

Do You Know Which are the Most Frequently Violated Laws?

The Criminal Justice Degree Guide forwarded us an interesting list of the 9 most frequently violated laws and they may not be exactly what you are thinking. The number one most violated law? SPEEDING! No surprise there, I suppose. Others on the list include underage drinking, pot smoking, jaywalking, copyright violations, and littering. How many of these apply to you?
By the way, the Criminal Justice Degree Guide has many resources for careers in investigation and law enforcement.

25 Top Private Investigator Trainings

PI Now.com recently published a top 25 list for private investigator trainings. As noted in the article, picking a training course for investigation is difficult as no formal training is required in order to become an investigator. Many people enter the world of criminal investigation as former law enforcement or with a degree in criminal justice. However, the world of investigation has become more complicated. Specialized training can really make the difference especially in the areas of fraud, technology, computer crimes, and complex cases. PI Now ranked 25 programs based upon the following criteria: the type of program available, college accreditation, what information is available, application requirements and license qualification. A training program available right here in Washington is ranked number one(!)...University of Washington Certificate in Private Investigation. The UW program covers such topics as private investigator licensing preparation, criminal and civil investigations, crime scene investigation, discovery analysis, report writing, and courtroom testimony. If you are considering a career as a criminal investigator, this list is a good place to start!

Monday, March 19, 2012

Trayvon Martin Case: 911 Audio Released Of Teen Shot By Neighborhood Watch Captain

From the Huffington Post:

Police have released audio 911 tapes in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed teenager allegedly killed by a neighborhood watch captain while walking home from a store.
In eight chilling recordings, made the night of February 26, listeners can hear the frightened voices of neighbors calling to report screams for help, gunfire and then that someone was dead.
In perhaps the most disturbing of the recordings, a frightened voice in the background cries out for help and pleads "No! No!" and then continues to wail.
And for the first time, we hear the voice of George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch captain who admitted to police that he shot Martin, who was walking home from a convenience store to his father's home in the gated community. Zimmerman has not been arrested or charged in the shooting.
"This guy looks like he's up to no good, or he's on drugs or something," Zimmerman tells the 911 operator. "He's just staring, looking at all the houses. Now he's coming toward me. He's got his hand in his waistband. Something's wrong with him."
Zimmerman described Martin as wearing a hoodie and sweatpants or jeans. He continues: "He's coming to check me out. He's got something in his hands. I don't know what his deal is. Can we get an officer over here?"
"These assholes always get away," he says to the operator. Zimmerman is then heard giving directions to the dispatcher. "Shit, he's running," Zimmerman says.
"Are you following him?" the dispatcher asks.
"Yes," Zimmerman responds.
"We don't need you to do that," the dispatcher says.
In other recordings, callers tell the 911 dispatcher that someone has been shot. One person tells the dispatcher that two guys were wrestling behind his back porch and that one of them was yelling for help. Then the male caller stammers in shock. "I'm pretty sure the guy is dead ... Oh, my God! ... The black guy looks like he's been shot and he's dead."
"The guy on top has a white T-shirt," another caller said.
"Is he on top of someone?" the operator asks.
"Mmmhmmm," a female caller responds.
Yet another caller says, "Someone was screaming 'Help! help! help!' Then I heard a gunshot."
One caller, a teenage boy, said that as he was walking his dog, "I saw a man laying on the ground that needed help. He was screaming."
Then, he told the operator, he heard a gunshot and said the screaming stopped.
Martin's family and their attorneys were allowed to hear the audio before it was made public.
"You hear a shot, a clear shot, that we can only assume is a warning shot," said Natalie Jackson, a family attorney. "Then a 17-year-old boy is begging for his life. Everything tells me that that was Trayvon Martin."
Tracy Martin, the teenager's father, broke down crying as he listened to the audio on Friday, the family lawyers said. "My son was crying for help, and he still shot him," Tracy Martin, the teenager's father said, according to Benjamin Crump, another family attorney.
The local state attorney is reviewing the investigation and will decide whether to prosecute the volunteer watchman.
Police in Sanford initially told Martin's family that Zimmerman had not been arrested because he had a "squeaky clean" record, according to Tracy Martin. Zimmerman had been arrested in 2005 on charges of resisting arrest with violence and battery on a law enforcement officer, according to court records. Those charges were later dropped.
"Do we really believe that if Trayvon Martin would have pulled the trigger, he would not be arrested?" said Crump. "This is obviously a cover-up, and we need a sweeping overhaul of the Sanford Police Department."
Sanford Mayor Jeff Triplett said he spent Thursday meeting with the state attorney's office discussing the release of the tapes. "It was as simple as us saying, 'We're going to do this, what do you think?'" Triplett told HuffPost.
Earlier Friday, Triplett met with Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.), Police Chief Bill Lee and city manager Norton Bonaparte to discuss the 911 recording.
The police chief serves at the pleasure of the city manager. Bonaparte was asked by HuffPost whether the furor jeopardizes Lee's job. "We're reviewing all of our options at this point," he said, adding that he currently sees "no reason" to remove Lee.
Zimmerman had been the subject of earlier complaints by residents of the gated community in which he and Martin's family lived. At an emergency homeowner's association meeting earlier this month, "one man was escorted out because he openly expressed his frustration because he had previously contacted the Sanford Police Department about Zimmerman approaching him and even coming to his home," a resident wrote in an email to HuffPost. "It was also made known that there had been several complaints about George Zimmerman and his tactics" in his neighborhood watch captain role.
The case has drawn national attention and has outraged many residents of Sanford, a town about 20 miles north of Orlando, particularly in the African-American community. Many have suggested a history of strained relations between the police department and blacks.
Full article with audio can be found here.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Go To Trial and Crash the System


The New York Times ran an op-ed piece this past Sunday entitled "Go to Trial: Crash the Justice System". The article describes one woman's idea to organize thousands of people charged with a crime to not "play the game" and plead out, but instead to go to trial and "crash the system". As anyone who has worked in the criminal defense industry knows, the system depends on the plea bargain. There are not enough judges, juries, prosecutors, defenders, or other resources for everyone to go to trial. Indeed, over 90% of all criminal cases end in plea bargain. That, of course, is related to the unique threat and promise system of justice in America: a person charged is often threatened with stiffer penalties if he or she chooses to exercise the Constitutional Right to trial and the fear is a real one in a system where the Government generally has the better hand in terms of resources. But what would happen if those accused decided simultaneously to "break the house" and go to trial?
This is the question Susan Burton posed. Ms. Burton became a crack cocaine addict after her five year old son was run over by the police. For fifteen years she was in the revolving door of arrest, incarceration, release with no resources, and rearrest that is the hallmark of the American criminal justice system. But Ms. Burton asked Michelle Alexander, the author of the article and a new book entitled "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”, what would happen if the people accused refused to play along? Here is an excerpt (full article here):
On the phone, Susan said she knew exactly what was involved in asking people who have been charged with crimes to reject plea bargains, and press for trial. “Believe me, I know. I’m asking what we can do. Can we crash the system just by exercising our rights?”

The answer is yes. The system of mass incarceration depends almost entirely on the cooperation of those it seeks to control. If everyone charged with crimes suddenly exercised his constitutional rights, there would not be enough judges, lawyers or prison cells to deal with the ensuing tsunami of litigation. Not everyone would have to join for the revolt to have an impact; as the legal scholar Angela J. Davis noted, “if the number of people exercising their trial rights suddenly doubled or tripled in some jurisdictions, it would create chaos.”

Such chaos would force mass incarceration to the top of the agenda for politicians and policy makers, leaving them only two viable options: sharply scale back the number of criminal cases filed (for drug possession, for example) or amend the Constitution (or eviscerate it by judicial “emergency” fiat). Either action would create a crisis and the system would crash — it could no longer function as it had before. Mass protest would force a public conversation that, to date, we have been content to avoid.

In telling Susan that she was right, I found myself uneasy. “As a mother myself, I don’t think there’s anything I wouldn’t plead guilty to if a prosecutor told me that accepting a plea was the only way to get home to my children,” I said. “I truly can’t imagine risking life imprisonment, so how can I urge others to take that risk — even if it would send shock waves through a fundamentally immoral and unjust system?”

Susan, silent for a while, replied: “I’m not saying we should do it. I’m saying we ought to know that it’s an option. People should understand that simply exercising their rights would shake the foundations of our justice system which works only so long as we accept its terms. As you know, another brutal system of racial and social control once prevailed in this country, and it never would have ended if some people weren’t willing to risk their lives. It would be nice if reasoned argument would do, but as we’ve seen that’s just not the case. So maybe, just maybe, if we truly want to end this system, some of us will have to risk our lives.”

Monday, March 12, 2012

Taser: An Officer's Weapon of Choice


A Crack in the FBI's Wall of Silence


The New Jersey FBI head who publicly criticized the NYPD's widespread spying on Newark's Muslims had the green light from FBI headquarters for a rare rebuke of NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, sources said.
Or at least he didn't have a red light.
FBI special agent Michael Ward, who heads the Bureau's Newark office, had cleared his remarks with superiors in Washington the day before he publicly took on the NYPD, sources said.
"They didn't say, 'Don't do it.' They could easily have stopped it," said one of his former Bureau colleagues.
At a news conference last week, Ward said that the NYPD's spying on Muslim businesses and mosques has damaged relations between the FBI and Newark's Muslims, making it more difficult to protect the public.
"There's no correlation between the location of houses of worship and minority-owned businesses and counterterrorism" work, Ward said. By generating distrust, the NYPD operation created "more risk," he said.
Ward's remarks were striking, given the FBI's button-down culture and their decade-long reluctance to mess with Kelly.
Ward's remarks also contrasted with those of FBI Director Robert Mueller, who told a Congressional subcommittee the same day that the Bureau maintained a close working relationship with the NYPD. Mueller also praised Kelly for "a remarkable job of protecting New York" from terrorism.
Some, noting the byzantine world of internal FBI politics, saw the secret hand of Mueller behind Ward's criticisms of the NYPD.
However, a former FBI official said that Ward's remarks "were not Mueller's idea."
In fact, Ward's remarks represent an undercurrent of dissent from Mueller's continual praise of Kelly despite the police commissioner's repeated taunts and criticism of the FBI.
"Many people in the Bureau were happy Ward did this," said his former colleague. "Many people in management at headquarters hold the same view of Kelly and of the NYPD as Ward.
"Mueller has been stroking Kelly all along. Most people in the Bureau do not agree with Mueller's approach. Mueller may not have known what Ward planned to say, but very high ranking people knew of it."
Unlike Jan Fedarcyk, head of the FBI's New York office, Ward has local political cover in challenging the NYPD.
Newark Mayor Cory Booker, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and New Jersey Senators Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez have all criticized the NYPD's blanket spying on New Jersey Muslims, which was brought to light by the Associated Press.
In addition, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder last week called reports of the NYPD New Jersey spying "disturbing."
By contrast, in New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has defended Kelly and the NYPD's aggressive tactics while other major politicians and civil rights organizations have remained silent.
Meanwhile, the city's tabloids, the Daily News and the New York Post, have stridently supported Kelly and the police department.
As Michael Goodwin wrote in Sunday's Post: "The misguided souls and professional whiners determined to keep the New York Police Department handcuffed, blind and silent need a refresher course on terrorism."
Last week Kelly received support from an unlikely source: his predecessor, Bernard Kerik.
On his prison blog (Kerik is serving four years in federal prison in Maryland for bribery and extortion), Kerik wrote: "Let Ray Kelly do his job... For those who have difficulty letting him do so, take a walk down Memory Lane, dating back to September 11, 2001."
This is not the first time that New Jersey officials have criticized the NYPD's spying tactics.
In 2003, after Jersey officials discovered that the NYPD's Intelligence Division had conducted a secret undercover anti-terrorism operation involving scuba-diving shops on the Jersey shore, the state's then head of the Office of Counter-Terrorism [OCT] Sidney Caspersen warned the NYPD to stop.
"OCT was not aware that the tests were being conducted and has since informed the NYPD Intelligence Division to cease and desist all such activity in the state of New Jersey," Caspersen wrote.
But Caspersen's criticism was private. It became public only after NYPD Confidential reported it. 
Caspersen, meanwhile, a former FBI official, is now the NYPD Intelligence Division's Assistant Commissioner for Programs.

Nor is Ward's the first public criticism of the NYPD from the head of an FBI office.
In 2004, Kelly held a news conference praising an NYPD detective after a joint FBI-NYPD investigation led to the arrest of a radical Muslim cleric in London. Kelly divulged so much information about the detective that he was sent back to New York for his own safety.
Pat D'Amuro, then the head of the FBI's New York office, was angered that Kelly had held the news conference without informing the Bureau and that he had ignored the FBI agents who were part of the investigation.
This prompted D'Amuro to post an internal memo, released to the media, criticizing Kelly and pointedly saying, "This is not how we do business."
Within a year, D'Amuro was gone, joining the firm of Kelly's arch-enemy, Rudy Giuliani.
Finally, Ward's remarks bring into sharp relief the hoops that Mueller has jumped through to get along with Kelly.
After D'Amuro retired, Mueller brought in Mark Mershon to succeed him.
"I got word of my appointment on a Monday," Mershon said at the time. "My first business call was to Ray Kelly."
Following a subway bomb threat in 2005, Mershon participated in a joint news conference with Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg. "I came back to the office and the phone was ringing. It was the Director's secretary Wanda. Before I could say a word he [Mueller] said, 'Mark, thank you, thank, thank you... thank you for the manner in which you handled yourself.'"
Mershon said that as he was driving home the phone rang again. Again it was Mueller. He said, 'Mark, I hope you don't mind. I just called Ray Kelly to thank him for working together.'"
Full article can be found here.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

FBI Stopped Using Over 3,000 GPS Trackers After Supreme Court Ruling

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling in United States v. Jones overturning the warrantless use of GPS tracking devices has caused a “sea change” inside the U.S. Justice Department, according to FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann.

Last Friday during a conference held at the University of San Francisco entitled "Big Brother in the 21st Century" USDOJ Mr. Weissmann said that the court ruling prompted the FBI to turn off about 3,000 GPS tracking devices that were in use. Hmmm.

These devices were often stuck underneath cars to track the movements of the car owners. In U.S. v. Jones, the Supreme Court ruled that using a device to track a car owner without a search warrant violated the law. Of course, the FBI may still have some of the data and intelligence already accumulated prior to shutting off the device....