History > 2008 > USA > Justice > Police (II)

27 Years Later,

Case Is Closed

in Slaying of Abducted Child

December 17, 2008
The New York Times
By YOLANNE ALMANZAR

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — The murder of 6-year-old Adam Walsh, which raised awareness about missing children and led to television shows like “America’s Most Wanted,” has been solved, the authorities said Tuesday.

At a crowded news conference in the police station here, the police said they were convinced that Adam was killed by Ottis E. Toole, a drifter and convicted serial killer who confessed to the slaying and then recanted before dying in prison in 1996.

Adam was abducted from a mall across from the police headquarters here on July 27, 1981. His severed head was found two weeks later in Vero Beach, 120 miles north of the mall. The body was never found.

John Walsh, Adam’s father and the host of “America’s Most Wanted,” was at the news conference with Adam’s mother, Revé, and their three children.

“Today is a reaffirmation of the fact that he didn’t die in vain,” an emotional Mr. Walsh said. “For all the other victims who haven’t gotten justice, I say one thing: ‘Don’t give up hope.’ ”

Mrs. Walsh added, “This is a wonderful day, in spite of why we’re here.”

Chief Chadwick E. Wagner of the Hollywood Police Department said he regretted that the case had not been closed earlier and attributed that failure, in part, to flaws in his department’s investigation.

“This is a day that’s long overdue,” he said. “This case could have been closed years ago.”

Chief Wagner said Tuesday’s announcement was not the result of any new discovery, but rather the accumulation of all the circumstantial evidence over the years. “What was there was everything that was in front of our face for years,” he said.

Chief Wagner said the investigation had always focused on Mr. Toole, and added that the case was strong enough for the police to have charged him before his death.

The photograph of the freckle-faced Adam, holding a baseball bat, became well known to Americans after his disappearance. The police investigated hundreds of leads — the serial killer Jeffrey L. Dahmer was a suspect at one point — but no arrests were made.

As hope for Adam’s return faded, the Walshes began an organization to aid and comfort other families of missing children, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

The Walsh family also helped lobby Congress to pass the Missing Children’s Act in 1982, which created a national computer database of information on missing children at the F.B.I.

In October 1983, Mr. Toole told the police that he had abducted Adam from the mall and drove for about an hour to an isolated dirt road where he decapitated him.

Investigators lifted bloodstained carpet from Mr. Toole’s white Cadillac. But DNA testing then was not as advanced as it now, and investigators could not tell if the blood was Adam’s.

When a detective assigned to the case in 1994 went to order DNA testing on the bloodstained carpeting from Mr. Toole’s car, the carpeting and the car were found to be missing.

Mr. Toole, who confessed to dozens of killings over the years, was a longtime companion of another serial killer, Henry Lee Lucas. Mr. Toole died in prison on Sept. 15, 1996, while serving five life sentences.

In 2006, on the 25th anniversary of Adam’s disappearance, President Bush signed into law the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act. It expanded the National Sex Offender Registry, created a new child abuse registry and strengthened penalties for crimes against children.

Mr. Walsh said at the news conference Tuesday that while his family would never recover from Adam’s death, it could finally move on.

But, he added, “it’s not about closure; it’s about justice.”

    27 Years Later, Case Is Closed in Slaying of Abducted Child, NYT, 17.12.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/17/us/17adam.html

Assault Inquiry

Brings Charges for 3 Officers

December 10, 2008
The New York Times
By AL BAKER

A New York City patrolman used his baton to sodomize a man in a subway station, and two complicit colleagues helped him cover it up, the Brooklyn district attorney charged on Tuesday as he unsealed indictments against three police officers.

Using graphic detail, the district attorney described an attack that he said left the man, Michael Mineo, with a gashed anus and blood on his hands.

Then, when Mr. Mineo screamed and later showed his hands, he was “ignored by the police officers,” said the district attorney, Charles J. Hynes. At one point, the officer who wielded the baton, Richard Kern, gave Mr. Mineo a disorderly conduct summons with an invalid date and threatened “that if he reported the circumstances to anyone, he would be arrested and charged with a felony,” Mr. Hynes said.

While Mr. Mineo’s accusations have been public for more than a month, the indictments, which were handed up by a special grand jury on Saturday, were the first official corroboration of his account.

The grand jury heard from 20 witnesses, including three officers who were present during the encounter — at least two of whom cooperated with the authorities. The grand jury also reviewed forensic evidence, including DNA from Officer Kern’s baton that prosecutors said matched Mr. Mineo’s.

“Those officers who stepped forward acted in a responsible, if not in a heroic way,” Mr. Hynes said. “Both of them deserve a great deal of praise for doing that.”

More than once, the district attorney drew a connection to a notorious case in Brooklyn 11 years ago, that of Abner Louima, a 30-year-old black Haitian immigrant who was tortured and sodomized with a broomstick by a white officer in the bathroom of a police station house.

The Mineo allegations seemed, even if proven, less extreme than the Louima attack, and did not have the same racial overtones. Both accusations fostered “skepticism,” Mr. Hynes said, particularly in Mr. Mineo’s case, since his encounter happened in a public place in the middle of the day.

But the district attorney cited another fact in tying the two together.

“The endgame, you know, the comparison, is that the allegation that an instrument in each case was shoved up someone’s anus,” he said.

Mr. Hynes made his comments hours after the three accused officers — Alex Cruz, Andrew Morales and Officer Kern — walked, one after another, through the doors of the district attorney’s office to be fingerprinted, photographed and formally arrested. They did so in the 6 a.m. darkness, maneuvering past a phalanx of news reporters, photographers and television camera operators. None said a word.

Officer Kern, 25, faces the most serious charges, including aggravated sexual abuse in the first degree, assault in the first degree and hindering prosecution. The abuse charge could bring a sentence of up to 25 years in prison, Mr. Hynes said.

Officers Morales and Cruz, both 26, face charges that include hindering prosecution and official misconduct. Officials said that there was no evidence Officers Morales and Cruz assisted Officer Kern in the assault but that they knew what was happening, did nothing to stop it and helped conceal it. “Both Police Officers Morales and Cruz have been charged with a cover-up,” Mr. Hynes said. “In essence, they tried to make this thing go away.”

Several hours later, they pleaded not guilty, with Mr. Mineo watching in the courtroom. Officer Kern was released on $15,000 bail and the other two were let go without bail. All three were suspended from duty.

Outside the courtroom, Officer Kern’s lawyer, John D. Patten, suggested that the charges were baseless and driven by greed, saying that doctors who examined Mr. Mineo at the hospital did not see significant injuries.

“They’re looking for payload,” he said of Mr. Mineo’s lawyers.

In an e-mailed statement, Patrick J. Lynch, the head of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, said, “An indictment is nothing more than an accusation, and police enjoy the same presumption of innocence as everyone else.”

The three officers entered the courtroom at noon. Officer Kern, a slight young man who was chewing gum and wearing a gray suit and tie beneath a black leather jacket, looked over at Mr. Mineo, who works as a body piercer. Mr. Mineo pulled up the collar of his jacket, and shrank down a little as spectators turned and stared at him.

According to prosecutors, Mr. Mineo, 24, was with a friend on Oct. 15 near the Prospect Park subway station, smoking a marijuana cigarette. Mr. Mineo caught sight of Officers Kern and Morales, who were in uniform in an unmarked car. Two other officers from the 71st Precinct, Officer Cruz and his partner, Officer Noel Jugraj, were nearby.

Mr. Mineo threw away the marijuana and raced across Flatbush Avenue, into the station. The officers chased him, joined by Officer Kevin Maloney of the Transit Bureau, and several tackled him. He was handcuffed. Officer Jugraj stood at the top of the stairs to the station and saw the struggle, Mr. Hynes said.

Then, said Charles Guria, an assistant district attorney, Officer Kern was seen shoving his retractable baton repeatedly between Mr. Mineo’s buttocks. Mr. Mineo was wearing low-slung pants, which had begun to slip down during the chase. Officer Kern’s act, Mr. Guria said, tore a hole in Mr. Mineo’s underwear, ripping his skin and causing him to bleed. Afterward, Mr. Mineo stood up and started yelling about his injuries.

He was taken to the police car, and Officer Kern asked him if he had been hurt.

Then, Mr. Mineo “reached down and showed proof he had been injured,” Mr. Guria said. “He reached into his pants and showed his bloody hands.”

Officer Kern gave Mr. Mineo a summons for disorderly conduct. The summons was defective, said the assistant district attorney; it said he had to appear in court in January 2008.

One law enforcement official familiar with the investigation said on Tuesday evening that the invalid date was an attempt to make sure that “no one would ever hear what the disorderly conduct was about, assuming it would be rejected” by the court, the official said.

Asked why officers trying to cover up their deeds would not simply avoid writing the summons, the official said, “That is a good question.”

Officer Morales helped Officer Kern give Mr. Mineo the summons and release him, Mr. Guria said. He said that Officer Cruz also saw Mr. Mineo’s bloody hands.

Officer Kern then warned Mr. Mineo, repeatedly, not to go to the hospital or to a police precinct station house, or else he could be arrested for a felony, Mr. Guria said. Officer Morales was in earshot, he said.

Officers Maloney and Jugraj testified before the grand jury. So did Officer Cruz, the law enforcement official said, but that did not prevent him from being indicted.

Mr. Patten, Officer Kern’s lawyer, told the judge on Tuesday that the defense team was at a disadvantage because they had just received a copy of the indictment and did not know what evidence prosecutors had.

“The only information we got came from the media,” Mr. Patten said.

He pointed to Officer Kern’s clean disciplinary record and to his family life — he is married with two children, ages 3 and 1.

Mr. Patten also said that the district attorney’s office told two eyewitnesses not to speak to anyone about the case, a claim Mr. Guria denied.

Officer Morales’s lawyer, Richard Murray, said the charges against his client were baseless, a claim that Officer Cruz’s lawyer, Stuart London, repeated.

Mr. London also said that since Mr. Mineo was handcuffed from behind, he could not have shown anyone his allegedly bloodied hands. Interviewed later, the law enforcement official asserted that Mr. Mineo was able to turn his body even while cuffed.

When the arraignment ended, Mr. Mineo, who was wearing thick wooden rosary beads, a diamond stud in his left ear and low-slung pants, gave a low victory punch to the air.

Officer Kern left the courthouse a little while later and was rushed into the back seat of a waiting car. Reporters yelled questions, which he did not answer, and a spectator shouted: “You’re going to jail!”

Mr. Mineo told reporters that his injuries still caused him suffering. “I move my bowels, I’m in pain,” he said, flanked by his two lawyers, Stephen C. Jackson and Kevin L. Mosley.

He also acknowledged public skepticism about his accusations. “Honestly,” he said, “who would do something like that to themselves?”

Reporting was contributed by Cara Buckley, Ann Farmer,
Mick Meenan and William K. Rashbaum.

    Assault Inquiry Brings Charges for 3 Officers, NYT, 10.12.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/nyregion/10mineo.html

Officers to Be Indicted in Subway Assault

December 7, 2008
The New York Times
By RAY RIVERA and AL BAKER

Grand jurors investigating claims by a 24-year-old man that he was beaten and sodomized with an object by police officers inside a Brooklyn subway station in October have voted to indict three of the officers involved, people briefed on the matter said on Saturday night.

One of the officers, Richard Kern, 25, faces an assault charge, the most serious of the charges in the indictment, which is expected to be unsealed on Tuesday. The charges stem from accusations by the man, Michael Mineo, that one of the officers jabbed a piece of police equipment — later identified in testimony as a baton — into his buttocks, causing internal injuries.

The other two officers are facing lesser charges. It was unclear which of the other four officers involved would be indicted or what the charges would be, said the people briefed on the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it. “Kern’s charge is more serious than the others,” said one of those people.

Officer Kern, who has denied doing anything wrong, could not be reached for comment on Saturday night. His lawyer, John D. Patten, said he had not received any notification of an indictment.

The grand jury’s decision was reported on the Web site of The New York Post on Saturday night.

Albert O’Leary, a spokesman for the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, did not return a call seeking comment on Saturday night.

Asked if the Police Department had been notified of the developments, Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said, “I don’t know.” Asked to confirm that a grand jury had voted to indict Officer Kern and that two other officers would be charged with misconduct, Mr. Browne said, “I can’t confirm it.”

Stephen C. Jackson, who is one of Mr. Mineo’s lawyers, said he had no official confirmation that Officer Kern and the other officers had been indicted, but he said, “We fully expect an indictment.”

He said he would be on the Rev. Al Sharpton’s radio program on Kiss-FM, at 9 a.m. Sunday to discuss the case. He said Mr. Mineo would likely be linked in by phone.

He added that he felt there was no way indictments would not happen, based on all the evidence as he sees it. “I can’t see how indictments cannot be voted upon,” he said.

Kevin L. Mosley, another of Mr. Mineo’s lawyers, said that if reports of the grand jury’s vote were true, then “we’re pleased on behalf of our client that the grand jury has indicted the officer who was the primary miscreant in this and hope that justice will continue to move along.”

The special grand jury, which had been meeting since Oct. 28, was investigating Mr. Mineo’s account of what happened when the police confronted him at the Prospect Park subway station on the afternoon of Oct. 15. The police have said the officers approached Mr. Mineo, believing he was smoking marijuana, and tackled him when he ran. Finding no drugs, Officer Kern issued Mr. Mineo a summons for disorderly conduct.

But one officer, Kevin Maloney, a transit officer, came forward last month and told the grand jury that he saw Mr. Kern jab a baton into Mr. Mineo’s buttocks, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the testimony. The official said the testimony did not make clear whether Officer Kern intended to harm Mr. Mineo or whether he caused physical injury. Another person with knowledge of Officer Maloney’s testimony characterized it differently, saying he told grand jurors that Officer Kern had “pushed” or “placed” the baton against Mr. Mineo’s buttocks.

Mr. Mineo, a body piercer at a Brooklyn tattoo parlor, has said the encounter left him in physical pain for weeks and caused him to be hospitalized twice. Investigators said that medical records supported Mr. Mineo’s assertion that he suffered internal injuries, but Mr. Mineo’s lawyers have yet to publicly release those records.

The case has drawn comparisons to that of Abner Louima, who was sodomized and critically injured with a broomstick in a police station house bathroom in 1997, but the accounts of Officer Maloney’s testimony suggests that the severity of the two episodes are substantially different.

The grand jury voted on the indictments last week after hearing evidence for several weeks. One of the panel’s main tasks was gauging the severity of Mr. Mineo’s internal injuries.

According to accounts of his testimony, Officer Maloney, a two-year veteran of the Transit Bureau, told investigators he was on duty in the Prospect Park station when he saw Mr. Mineo trying to evade a group of officers. Officer Maloney said that he joined the chase and that he was helping to apprehend him when he saw Officer Kern jab or push at Mr. Mineo’s buttocks with the baton.

The Police Department initially said witnesses did not support Mr. Mineo’s account and did not remove any of the officers from active duty. But Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly supported the convening of a special grand jury by the Brooklyn district attorney as a way of establishing what did happen, and after Officer Maloney provided his account, Officer Kern and three others — Officers Alex Cruz, Andrew Morales and Noel Jugraj — were placed on modified assignment and their guns were taken away.

Officer Kern, a four-year veteran of the Police Department, has been part of another case involving accusations of excessive force during a 2007 arrest of two suspects, but his lawyer said he was cleared of wrongdoing in that case by the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates claims of police misconduct. The city settled lawsuits against Officer Kern related to that allegation, but said there was no indication of wrongdoing by the officer.

William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.

    Officers to Be Indicted in Subway Assault, NYT, 7.12.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/nyregion/07mineo.html

Grand Jury Weighs

Accounts of Police and Brooklyn Man

October 30, 2008
The New York Times
By AL BAKER

Grand juries are usually presented with a set of witnesses and facts neatly packaged by the district attorney, with the decision to indict often an easy one.

This is not the case with the special investigative grand jury meeting now to examine the claim of a Brooklyn man that police officers sodomized him with a piece of equipment on Oct. 15. About the only facts each side can agree on is that the man, Michael Mineo, 24, a body piercer from the Prospect-Lefferts Gardens neighborhood, ended up in a hospital after the police, believing he was smoking marijuana, chased him into a subway station, tackled him and, after finding no drugs, let him go with a summons for disorderly conduct.

Among the facts shrouded in confusion are: How did he get to the hospital? Why was he not arrested or charged with a crime? And, perhaps most important, what were his injuries and how did he get them? The Police Department, after initiating an internal inquiry, is standing behind the five officers present that afternoon. The police have interviewed Mr. Mineo and said the facts do not support his accusation. A spokesman said Mr. Mineo’s claim of being sodomized “is not supported by independent civilian witnesses on the scene.” The officers remain on duty.

With the conflicting versions, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said on Wednesday that a grand jury was needed.

“The statements of the complainant and the statements of witnesses are so disparate, and charges here so serious, that I think the investigative grand jury is appropriate in this case,” Mr. Kelly said.

Mr. Mineo’s lawyers, Stephen C. Jackson and Kevin L. Mosley, said that as three officers held their client down in the Prospect Park subway station, another shoved a walkie-talkie antenna or other piece of police equipment into his rectum. They said Mr. Mineo was left with a tear in his rectum that left him hospitalized until Oct. 19, and that hospital records, which they have declined to provide to reporters, attributed the condition to “anal assault.” They said a doctor made that diagnosis.

Both the police and the district attorney’s office have seen his medical records. One law enforcement official said the records show that Mr. Mineo suffered internal tears just inside his rectum. But another law enforcement official, seemingly contradicting that account, has said that Mr. Mineo suffered no internal injuries indicating that his rectum was penetrated by a foreign object. That official said Mr. Mineo suffered a tear just above his rectum, a bruise to the side of his head, injuries to his side and an injury to the outside of his abdomen. Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is not closed.

Mr. Mineo’s lawyers said they have five witnesses bolstering his claim. But a person familiar with the investigation said that a transit worker in the subway station’s booth, and his 12-year-old son who was visiting him, both told investigators they did not see officers jamming anything into Mr. Mineo’s rectum in the moments when Mr. Mineo yelled that they were.

Forensic tests on one officer’s equipment found no presence of hair, fibers, bodily tissue, fecal matter or blood. Mr. Kelly on Wednesday declined to say whether the results of more sophisticated DNA tests were known.

There have been several accounts of how Mr. Mineo got to Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center.

Originally, Mr. Jackson said Mr. Mineo used his cellphone to call his boss, who drove to the subway station and then drove Mr. Mineo to the hospital. On Tuesday, Mr. Jackson said it was a male “roommate” who took Mr. Mineo to the hospital. Mr. Mineo’s boss at the Downtown Brooklyn tattoo parlor where he works, Jason Amolsch, also lives with him, but Mr. Jackson said Mr. Amolsch was not the person who took him to the hospital.

Mr. Amolsch said on Saturday that he hailed a cab for Mr. Mineo’s trip to the hospital, but that he did not ride there with him.

One law enforcement official said two female roommates of Mr. Mineo’s accompanied him to the hospital in a livery cab. It is not clear to whom the official was referring. One female roommate, Jilma Brown, 20, said she did not see Mr. Mineo until days later; another, Keasha Brown, 25, declined to comment.

Before the police released Mr. Mineo they wrote him a summons for disorderly conduct. But the document, released by the State Office of Court Administration, raises as many questions as it answers.

It makes no reference to the marijuana cigarette the officers said they saw Mr. Mineo smoking. Though it says Mr. Mineo provided a state benefits card as identification, Mr. Jackson said he did not believe Mr. Mineo had any identification with him at the time. The law enforcement official said Mr. Mineo told investigators he was not carrying identification. If that were true, it raises the question of why the officers did not take him to the station house, the official said.

Reporting was contributed by Ann Farmer, Christine Hauser, Colin Moynihan, William K. Rashbaum and Nate Schweber.

    Grand Jury Weighs Accounts of Police and Brooklyn Man, NYT, 30.10.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/nyregion/30police.html

Grand Jury to Investigate Allegations of Police Attack

October 28, 2008
The New York Times
By AL BAKER and COLIN MOYNIHAN

The Brooklyn district attorney has decided to have a special investigative grand jury examine evidence in the case of a 24-year-old man who has accused the police of beating and sodomizing him with an object in a Brooklyn subway station two weeks ago.

Charles J. Hynes, the district attorney, said on Monday that the panel would focus in part on the injuries Michael Mineo said he suffered on Oct. 15 when, he said, four uniformed police officers set upon him at the Prospect Park station. The police have rejected Mr. Mineo’s account; the officers’ duty status has not changed.

“On the basis of preliminary conclusions of the early stages of my investigation and a review of the medical evidence concerning the allegations that Michael Mineo was brutally assaulted by four police officers, I have ordered a special investigative grand jury to be impaneled,” Mr. Hynes said in a statement.

The grand jury will begin its work on the case on Tuesday.

A law enforcement official said it was called a special panel because its task will be to weigh facts prior to any potential arrest and to investigate with prosecutors.

The four precinct officers and a transit bureau officer who was also present have been given administrative duties. The move is not punitive, said Paul J. Browne, chief spokesman for the Police Department. Mr. Browne stressed that the officers’ duty status had not changed and that the officers still had their guns and badges. He said the decision was made because of what he said were attempts by some reporters to interview the officers while they were on duty.

Lawyers for Mr. Mineo hailed Mr. Hynes’s action.

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said in a statement, “With differing accounts provided by witnesses and the complainant, we welcome efforts by District Attorney Hynes to establish the facts through an investigative grand jury.”

In bringing the matter to a grand jury, Mr. Hynes might be trying to show he is a responsible public official who takes alleged police misconduct seriously, said Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University. “This is a fast track for political reasons as well as community outrage reasons,” Mr. Gillers said.

The case first gained attention on Thursday, more than a week after Mr. Mineo, a body piercer at a Brooklyn tattoo parlor, said that he was forced to the ground by officers from the 71st Precinct, and that an object, possibly the antenna of a police radio, penetrated his rectum.

Mr. Mineo spent four days in Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center. On Friday, he checked into Brooklyn Hospital Center.

The police have said that witnesses have given accounts contrary to Mr. Mineo’s. They said that Mr. Mineo ran from the officers, who saw him smoking a marijuana cigarette.

Mr. Mineo was given a summons for disorderly conduct.

As he lay in a hospital bed on Monday, his lawyers, Stephen C. Jackson and Kevin L. Mosley, held a news conference to provide information about his condition, but declined to make his medical records public.

“They are personal medical records,” Mr. Jackson said, when pressed for a reason. “And there are some privilege concerns that we may have.”

Investigators have those medical records, including a hospital discharge summary that the lawyers said described Mr. Mineo’s injuries as being caused by “anal assault.” Mr. Jackson said the diagnosis reflected a doctor’s independent conclusion.

In detailing Mr. Mineo’s injuries, a law enforcement official has said that Mr. Mineo suffered a tear just above his rectum, a bruise to the side of his head, injuries to his side and an injury to the outside of his abdomen.

On the day the allegations surfaced, police investigators sought a warrant to search the locker of one of the officers involved, Alex Cruz, and ultimately seized a baton and a radio antenna from the locker.

A law enforcement official said on Monday that tests on that equipment found no presence of hair, fibers, bodily tissue, fecal matter or blood. Officials are still awaiting the results of more sophisticated DNA tests.

Investigators are piecing together the accounts of witnesses. Some saw parts of what occurred; not everyone saw the same thing. No one saw Mr. Mineo being attacked, officials said.

“There is no one at this point who can get on the stand and say, ‘I saw the cop stick something up this guy’s backside,’ either because their view is blocked or they just do not see that,” a law enforcement official said. “Because none of them saw it, though, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

Over the weekend, the district attorney’s office got some calls to a hot line it established for the case and, as a result, several new witnesses were established.
 

John Eligon contributed reporting.

    Grand Jury to Investigate Allegations of Police Attack, NYT, 28.10.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/28/nyregion/28police.html

Chicago Police Head Outlines Anti-Gang Plan

October 25, 2008
Filed at 4:41 a.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CHICAGO (AP) -- The head of the nation's second-largest police department says he is establishing a new unit to deal with gang slayings, which he blames for a murder rate that eclipses that of New York and Los Angeles.

Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weis told aldermen Friday that he was setting up the Mobile Strike Force to attack the city's gangs. The unit will be comprised of roughly 150 veteran officers divided into about a dozen teams and will ''disrupt gang crimes through physical arrests, search warrants and gun seizures,'' Weis said.

He said there were 75 identified gangs in the city and 75,000 gang members.

''The gang culture continues to be the driving force behind the vast majority of violence, with more than half the murders committed by gangs,'' he said.

Weis said the department will focus on gathering intelligence and moving quickly to put police officers in neighborhoods with the most drug dealing and violent gang activity.

Aldermen expressed concern about the rising murder rate, pointing to a published report that Chicago had 426 slayings as of Tuesday, compared to 417 for New York and 302 for Los Angeles.

Murders and other violent crimes in Chicago have been of major concern in recent months, with Weis harshly criticized for the way the department has reacted to it. At the Friday budget hearing, questions were raised about the morale of officers, an issue that has made headlines around the nation as statistics emerged to suggest officers have not been as aggressive in fighting crime as they were in the past.

Officers have said they are concerned that Weis and his administration do not support them.

Weis said Friday that he's trying to assure officers ''that we have their backs.''

The budget hearing also addressed how the city's proposed plans for 2009 would affect the police department. The $1.2 billion budget calls for hiring just 200 officers -- far fewer than in recent years and hundreds fewer than the 450-600 officers that are expected to retire next year.

Weis said he was committed to realigning beats based on where officers are needed, but did not know when that would happen.

Aldermen who represent high-crime areas said that their concerns about crime were not targeted solely at the police. Alderman Emma Mitts said that when she hears about a shooting, she finds herself hoping it occurred in another alderman's ward.

''I believe our murder rate is up because we don't have the resources in some areas of the city,'' said Alderman Anthony Beale. ''If it upsets some people, I could care less.''

    Chicago Police Head Outlines Anti-Gang Plan, NYT, 25.10.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Chicago-Police.html

Progress Is Minimal in Clearing DNA Cases

October 25, 2008
the New York Times
By SOLOMON MOORE

LOS ANGELES — Local and state law enforcement agencies have made uneven progress in reducing a nationwide backlog of cases awaiting DNA analysis over the past four years, according to reports filed by more than 100 agencies with the National Institute of Justice.

The patchy results came despite stepped-up efforts by the federal government, including nearly $500 million in grants since 2004, to help crime laboratories reduce the backlog.

Victims’ rights groups and some law enforcement officials say the untested evidence, much of it stemming from sexual assault crimes, leaves open the possibility that thousands of criminal offenders have gone unpunished or are on the loose and committing new crimes.

“That’s always a concern,” said Sharon Papa, an assistant chief in the Los Angeles Police Department, “because, unfortunately, oftentimes rape is a serial crime.”

The problem seems most severe here in Los Angeles, where the Police Department has the largest known backlog, about 7,000 cases, including many with rape kits from sexual assaults.

The backlog comprises a mix of open cases and solved cases awaiting analysis and entry of DNA into state and national databases.

An audit released Monday by the Los Angeles city comptroller found that 217 backlogged cases here involved sexual assaults so old the 10-year statute of limitations had lapsed. The audit did not determine how many, if any, of those cases might have been prosecuted based on other evidence. The federal government has not quantified the country’s overall DNA evidence backlog since 2003, when it stood at 542,000 cases, but a researcher for Human Rights Watch who has studied the backlog, Sarah Tofte, estimates that it exceeds 400,000.

“People just assumed that we were testing every kit,” Chief Papa said, “and we were not.”

About 95 percent of state and local criminal cases are resolved through plea agreements, often before DNA analyses are completed. The police and prosecutors rely on confessions, witness testimony and physical evidence like fingerprints and ballistics.

Still, DNA remains the most sophisticated and reliable physical evidence, especially in cases with no named suspects or promising investigative leads.

Two weeks ago, President Bush signed a bill that includes an additional $1.6 billion over six years intended to speed DNA analyses by hiring temporary crime lab workers, providing overtime pay and renovating crime labs.

But many crime labs are disqualified from receiving more money because they have failed to spend previous financing in a timely manner. A report prepared for Representative Howard L. Berman, a Democrat representing a district in Los Angeles, found that the Police Department had spent less than half of the $4.4 million in federal money it received from 2004 to 2008. Los Angeles police officials said that they had spent or committed all but one-third of that money but that they had not properly recorded some expenditures.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department spent less than half of its $4.9 million in grants, the report said. Law enforcement agencies blame several factors for the DNA backlogs, including restrictions on how the federal money can be spent, local staff shortages, bureaucratic delays and planning problems. Some agencies have also seen the demand for new DNA analyses outpace efforts to clear old cases, criminalists said.

Pete Marone, chairman of the Consortium of Forensic Science Organizations and director of the Virginia state crime lab, said staffing levels at crime labs had not kept pace with technological advances in DNA analysis.

“Police are starting to send us new work that we couldn’t have done before,” Mr. Marone said. “We can do ‘touch’ evidence now, utilizing DNA analysis to see whether a defendant even touched a weapon. We can get DNA evidence from steering wheels. We can go into a room and find drugs on the floor and we’ll be able to analyze those drugs to determine which hand threw them down on the floor.”

Criminalists said that other kinds of evidence occupied much of their time. Many crime labs facing hundreds of backlogged DNA cases have even more shelved fingerprint, serology, ballistics and drug evidence that needs to be tested.

“DNA really accounts for just 10 percent of the caseload in crime labs around the country,” Mr. Marone said. “The majority of our work is analyzing drugs.”

Processing of a DNA evidence sample takes about a week, said Larry Blanton, a criminologist for the Los Angeles Police Department.

After a sexual assault, the police try to collect biological material — blood, semen, saliva — from the victim and the crime scene. If DNA is found, a chemical process creates billions of copies. A machine then produces a profile of 13 unique markers, which are entered into state and national databases for matches. Each DNA sample costs about $1,500 to analyze, criminalists said.

About a quarter of the 105 local and state law enforcement agencies that received federal money to reduce their DNA backlogs beginning in 2004, when Congress first authorized the spending, were granted less money this year because they had failed to meet spending goals, according to the report prepared for Mr. Berman. In progress reports filed in January with the National Institute of Justice, about 40 of 82 agencies said their DNA case backlogs had increased or remained constant during the previous six months.

“Many places have not even counted their backlogs,” said Ms. Tofte, the researcher with Human Rights Watch.

In January, the Denver Police Department reported that it had used federal funds to process 13 cases last year, including eight rape kits, out of 934 backlogged cases. The Miami-Dade Police Department failed to spend any of the $200,000 it requested in 2007 to cut its DNA backlog, whose size was not reported to the federal government.

The West Virginia State Police reported that its DNA case backlog had grown to 697 cases by Dec. 31, 2007, from 560 cases in July 2007, despite receiving about $230,000 in federal money.

“Our backlog at its peak was around 730, and now we have about a 650-case backlog,” said Lt. Brent Myers, head of the state’s DNA analysis unit. “We haven’t been able to hire temporary employees as we would have liked, so that’s why it’s taken longer to spend that money.”

The federal grants can be used to outsource DNA testing or to hire temporary employees, but not permanent staff members.

Some police departments have done better. In New York City, a backlog of more than 17,000 DNA samples from sexual assault and homicide cases from 2001 to 2004 was brought under control when the Police Department hired additional criminalists to work more cases, added overtime, bought analysis equipment and hired private firms to process DNA.

Elsewhere, the backlog has haunted detectives, as it did in a rape case that Detective Tim Marcia of the Los Angeles Police Department worked 10 years ago. A 43-year-old legal secretary was raped in her home as her son slept in another room. The attacker forced the woman to destroy evidence by cleaning herself.

“Given the way everything happened,” Detective Marcia said, “I knew in my gut that this was a repeat offender and he was going to strike again.”

Detective Marcia said he had rushed the woman’s rape kit to the department’s crime lab but was told to expect a processing delay of more than a year. He drove the kit to the state’s DNA testing laboratory in Sacramento, about 350 miles north. But a backlog there prevented testing for four months.

During that time, the rapist broke into the homes of a pregnant woman and a 17-year-old girl and sexually assaulted them.

    Progress Is Minimal in Clearing DNA Cases, NYT, 25.10.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/25/us/25dna.html

Ex-Officer Linked to Brutality Is Arrested

October 22, 2008
The New York Times
By SUSAN SAULNY and ERIC FERKENHOFF

CHICAGO — The authorities arrested a former Chicago police commander at his Florida home on Tuesday and charged him in a police brutality scandal that contributed to the emptying of Illinois’ death row and that continues to resonate as one of the most racially charged chapters in the city’s history.

The activities of the former commander, Jon Burge, 60, have been the subject of speculation for decades as scores of criminal suspects, many poor and black, have come forward saying they were routinely brutalized by Mr. Burge and the mostly white officers under his command on the South Side in the 1980s.

Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said at a news conference that Mr. Burge “lied and impeded court proceedings” in 2003 when he provided false written answers to questions in a civil lawsuit that claimed he and other officers had abused inmates.

According to the indictment, Mr. Burge “well knew” he had participated in and was aware of “such events involving the abuse or torture of people in custody,” including wrapping inmates’ heads in plastic to make them feel as if they were suffocating.

The statute of limitations on the suspected torture has expired, but Mr. Fitzgerald said Mr. Burge would still be held accountable.

“There is no place for torture and abuse in a police station,” the prosecutor said. “No person is above the law, and nobody — even a suspected murderer — is beneath its protection.”

Calls for Mr. Burge’s prosecution, which were sounded for years, grew louder after a 2006 report by special state prosecutors supported what dozens of inmates had said about being brutalized in jail. The report took more than four years and included more than 700 interviews.

This year, the city approved a $20 million settlement with four former death row inmates who said they had been abused under Mr. Burge.

After posting $250,000 bond, Mr. Burge left the federal courthouse in Tampa, Fla., on Tuesday. He said only that he planned to plead not guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice and one count of perjury. He is scheduled to be arraigned Monday in Chicago.

If he is found guilty, Mr. Burge faces up to 20 years in prison for each obstruction of justice charge, five years for perjury and a $250,000 fine on each count.

The investigation is continuing, and may result in more indictments, officials in Mr. Fitzgerald’s office said.

“It’s a start, after 25 years,” said a defense lawyer, Flint Taylor, who has called for investigations of Mr. Burge and his officers for decades. “After years of struggle, maybe a modicum of justice will be attained here.”

The indictment could mean a great deal of work for prosecutors here, with defense lawyers expected to line up to file motions to overturn convictions during Mr. Burge’s tenure.

“I believe there are 40 to 50 cases where there was evidence of torture and the primary evidence against the defendant was a confession,” said Andrea D. Lyon, a law professor at DePaul University and former head of the Illinois Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Mayor Richard M. Daley was the Cook County state’s attorney during the time of many of the accusations against Mr. Burge.

“Obviously, the Burge case recalls a terrible chapter in our city’s history,” Mr. Daley said. “Some of the police behavior at that time was detestable, which is why steps have been put into place to ensure that the kinds of acts associated with Jon Burge never happen again.”

Monique Bond, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Police Department, which fired Mr. Burge in 1993, said the department supported the findings in the indictment.

Steve Myers contributed reporting from Tampa, Fla.

    Ex-Officer Linked to Brutality Is Arrested, NYT, 22.10.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/22/us/22chicago.html?hp

Study Finds LA Police Stop More Blacks Than Whites

October 21, 2008
Filed at 5:33 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A report by a civil liberties group has found that Los Angeles police officers are more likely to stop and search black and Hispanic residents than they are whites, even though whites are more often found carrying guns and contraband.

''The results of this study raise grave concerns that African-Americans and Hispanics are over-stopped, over-frisked, over-searched, and over-arrested,'' said report author Ian Ayres, a Yale Law School economist and professor.

Ayres' report, published Monday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, analyzed the Los Angeles Police Department's own accounts of 810,000 pedestrian and motor vehicle stops in the year from July 2003 to June 2004.

Even after researchers controlled for demographics and neighborhood crime rates, they found significantly higher stop rates for black and Latino residents. For every 10,000 residents, blacks were nearly three times more likely to be stopped than white and other ''non-minority'' residents, facing 3,400 more stops. Hispanics were stopped on 350 more occasions.

Even though Ayres used the LAPD's own data, his findings were at odds with an earlier analysis carried out for the department. The LAPD acknowledged racial disparities in some divisions but, after controlling for several variables, found ''no consistent pattern of race effects.''

Ayres, however, said one officer stopped more than 100 blacks and 100 Hispanics but only one white. The professor did not include that officer in his analysis because it was an extreme situation and could skew results.

A summary of Ayres' report states that during the past five years the LAPD has received nearly 1,200 citizen complaints alleging racial profiling, but the department hasn't sustained a single one.

''Los Angeles officials have yet to acknowledge the scope of the problem of racially biased policing or to fully embrace solutions,'' the summary stated.

Police Chief William Bratton said he disagrees strongly with the report's findings and interpretation.

''This department does not engage in racial profiling, has not. We have significant safeguards built in to protect against that,'' Bratton said Monday at a press conference. ''Nobody investigates allegations of racial bias or racial profiling more aggressively than this department, this commission and this inspector general.''

Tim Sands, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League union, strongly disputed the report's findings and pointed out that the department mirrors the racial demographics of Los Angeles, with more Hispanic officers than white officers.

''Dr. Ayres is trying to manipulate existing data to prove what 9,700 individual officers are thinking when they make traffic stops -- which is an exercise that might work on a spreadsheet at Yale, but doesn't work on the streets of Los Angeles,'' Sands said.

    Study Finds LA Police Stop More Blacks Than Whites, 21.10.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Racial-Profiling.html

Police Lieutenant in Taser Case Commits Suicide

October 3, 2008
The New York Times
By CHRISTINE HAUSER and SHARON OTTERMAN

A New York City police lieutenant who gave the order to fire a Taser stun gun at an emotionally disturbed man who then fell to his death in Brooklyn committed suicide early on Thursday, law enforcement officials said.

Lt. Michael W. Pigott, a 21-year veteran of the force, was found in a police locker room at a former airfield in Brooklyn, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, said Paul Browne, the police department’s deputy commissioner for public information.

“On behalf of all of the members of the New York City Police Department, I extend deepest condolences to the family and friends of Lt. Michael W. Pigott who served with dedication for 21 years,” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said in a statement.

Lieutenant Pigott had been placed on modified assignment without his gun and badge after he gave the order to a sergeant to fire the Taser at a Bedford-Stuyvesant man, Iman Morales, on Sept. 24.

Mr. Morales, naked and with apparent signs of emotional disturbance, tumbled to his death from a second-story building ledge after an officer shot him with the Taser at the instruction of Lieutenant Pigott. Mr. Morales, 35, had been yelling at passers-by and swinging a long fluorescent light bulb at officers before he fell.

In the aftermath of Mr. Morales’s death, the department announced that the use of the Taser appeared to have violated departmental rules, and a new commander of the Emergency Service Unit was named. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly also ordered refresher training for the unit on how to deal with the mentally ill.

Lieutenant Pigott killed himself on the morning of the burial of Mr. Morales. Funeral services were being held Thursday at Our Lady of Pompeii Church on Carmine Street in Manhattan.

“The family has been in shock and grief and mourning,” said Ronald L. Kuby, the lawyer for Mr. Morales’s family. “Iman’s mother Olga witnessed the killing of her son. No explanation is possible.”

On Wednesday, as the Morales family was holding a wake for the victim, Pigott apologized for what happened, saying he was “truly sorry,” the Associated Press reported.

Mr. Browne said that Lieutenant Pigott went to Emergency Services headquarters at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn alone early Thursday morning. He entered a locker room, where he gained access to a weapon that was not his: a 9-millimeter Glock. His body was discovered in the locker room by a service member who was coming on duty at about 6 a.m.

Mr. Morales, who lived at 489 Tompkins Avenue, was said by neighbors to be a quiet, polite tenant who paid his rent on time and kept his one-bedroom apartment clean. He was on public assistance, and was receiving medication for mental illness, the property manager, Charlene Gayle-Gordon, said in an interview.

In the days before his death, however, Mr. Morales became increasingly distraught. Neighbors said they heard him pacing in his apartment and shouting, though he was apparently alone.

Witnesses said Mr. Morales was extremely agitated as he climbed out the window of his third floor apartment to the fire escape just before 2 p.m. on the day of his death, police said.

“He was saying, ‘This neighborhood is gone to the dogs, it was fine before,’ ” said his upstairs neighbor, Eric Johnson, 27. “He said: ‘Why is everybody infatuated with superstars? Jay-Z is Beyonce.’ His information wasn’t making sense.”

After unsuccessfully trying to enter the apartment of a fourth-floor neighbor, he climbed down to the second-floor fire escape, and from there onto the top of a roll-down security gate, which was just over 10 feet above the sidewalk, police said.

As an Emergency Services officer climbed onto the fire escape, Mr. Morales jabbed at him with the eight-foot-long light bulb. Shortly afterward, Lieutenant Pigott gave the order to Officer Nicholas Marchesona to fire the Taser. Mr. Morales plunged head-first to the sidewalk. He was brought to Kings County Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

While officers had radioed for an inflatable bag as the incident unfolded, it had not yet arrived at the scene when Mr. Morales fell. None of the officers on the scene were positioned to break his fall, nor did they devise a plan in advance to do so, the police said in a statement released the day after the incident.

Lieutenant Pigott’s order to employ the Taser appeared to have violated department guidelines, which state that “when possible, the [Taser] should not be used . . . in situations where the subject may fall from an elevated surface,” the statement said.Following the death of Mr. Morales, Lieutenant Pigott had been placed on desk duty with Fleet Services, which handles the Police Department’s vehicles. Officer Marchesona was also placed on desk duty. Thursday was Lieutenant Pigott’s 46th birthday, the Associated Press reported.

    Police Lieutenant in Taser Case Commits Suicide, NYT, 3.10.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/nyregion/03taser.html?hp

Maryland police find 2 children's frozen corpses

September 29, 2008
Filed at 12:31 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

LUSBY, Md. (AP) -- Maryland police say they have found the bodies of two children in a home freezer.

Calvert County authorities say they discovered the bodies Saturday while they were investigating a report of an injured child in Lusby, about 50 miles southeast of Washington, D.C.

Police say a 43-year-old woman who says the girls were her adopted daughters has been arrested. Renee Bowman told deputies that the remains had been frozen since at least February.

The sheriff's office says investigators also found a 7-year-old girl after she jumped out the window of a locked bedroom. Investigators say Bowman told them she beat the girl. She is charged with child abuse and is being held without bond.

No telephone listing was available for Bowman in Lusby.

    Maryland police find 2 children's frozen corpses, NYT, 29.9.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Frozen-Corpses.html

Detroit Police Lab Is Closed After Audit Finds Serious Errors in Many Cases

September 26, 2008
The New York Times
By NICK BUNKLEY

DETROIT — The Police Department here shut down its crime laboratory on Thursday after an audit uncovered serious errors in numerous cases. The audit said sloppy work had probably resulted in wrongful convictions, and officials expect a wave of appeals in cases that the laboratory processed.

The interim mayor, Kenneth V. Cockrel Jr., and the new police chief, James Barren, ordered the laboratory closed; Mr. Cockrel called the audit’s conclusions “shocking and appalling.” Pending and future cases will be sent to the Michigan State Police, which operates seven laboratories.

Officials from the Detroit Police Department, the Wayne County prosecutor’s office and the State Police will try to determine whether the errors resulted in guilty verdicts against innocent people.

“We do not want any of our activities to result in someone being imprisoned that doesn’t belong there,” the Wayne County prosecutor, Kym L. Worthy, said at a news conference with Mr. Cockrel and Mr. Barren. Ms. Worthy said the mistakes also might have let violent criminals remain at large.

David E. Balash, a retired State Police official who consults on firearms cases, said the audit’s findings could lead to payouts of hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuits.

“I would have never anticipated that it would have been this systemic,” Mr. Balash said. “It’s almost incomprehensible.”

The audit, conducted by the State Police, was initiated in May by Ella Bully-Cummings, the Detroit police chief at the time. Ms. Bully-Cummings, who retired this month, had halted firearms work at the laboratory after questions were raised about the handling of evidence in one of the city’s most notorious unsolved murder cases, the 2003 killing of an exotic dancer. The inspection found that the laboratory’s firearms unit was in compliance with just 42 percent of “essential standards,” which are criteria that fundamentally affect the outcome of work there. Accreditation requires 100 percent compliance. In addition, auditors re-examined 200 randomly selected shooting cases and found serious errors in 19. The laboratory handles about 1,800 shooting cases a year, they said.

“If this 10 percent error rate holds,” the report said, “the negative impact on the judicial system would be substantial, with a strong likelihood of wrongful convictions and a valid concern about numerous appeals.”

The auditors said that officers at the laboratory often cut corners and that in many instances “an assumption was made to the entirety of all items based on the analysis of only a few.” Technical reviews of the work were “almost nonexistent,” they wrote. Factors that contributed to the problems, they said, were a heavy workload, a lack of training and “the deplorable conditions of the facility.”

The report issued Thursday outlines the auditors’ preliminary findings. The finished report is expected to be released next month.

The closing of the laboratory came less than a week after Mr. Cockrel took office in the wake of Kwame M. Kilpatrick’s resignation. Among Mr. Cockrel’s stated priorities is restoring residents’ faith in the city’s leadership.

Mr. Kilpatrick pleaded guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice and no contest to assaulting a police officer.

    Detroit Police Lab Is Closed After Audit Finds Serious Errors in Many Cases, NYT, 26.9.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/us/26detroit.html

Taser Use in Man’s Death Broke Rules, Police Say

September 26, 2008
The New York Times
By CHRISTINE HAUSER

The firing of a Taser stun gun that led a man to fall from a building ledge to his death on Wednesday in Brooklyn appeared to have violated departmental guidelines, the police said on Thursday.

The department said in a statement issued by the chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, that according to policy, a Taser should not be used when a person could fall from an elevated surface.

The lieutenant who gave the order was placed on modified assignment, the statement said, while the officer who fired the device was given administrative duties.

The statement said that the officers at the scene had called by radio for an inflatable bag as the events unfolded, but it had not yet arrived when the man, Inman Morales, 35, was struck with the device and fell.

“None of the E.S.U. officers on the scene were positioned to break his fall, nor did they devise a plan in advance to do so,” the statement said.

Mr. Morales’s death was another episode in the controversial history of Taser use in the city. While Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly has looked cautiously on the use of stun gun technology by the Police Department, he recently said he was open to broadening the use of the weapons after a city-commissioned study on police shooting habits urged the department to consider using Tasers more frequently instead of deadly force when applicable.

A video taken by a witness and posted on the Web site of The New York Post on Wednesday shows Mr. Morales naked on the ledge, waving a long light bulb over the heads of officers as onlookers screamed, in an eerie soundtrack to what soon followed.

“It was a dead man’s fall,” said a witness, Charlene Gordon, the property manager for the four-story brown-brick building at 489 Tompkins Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where Mr. Morales rented a third-floor apartment.

Ms. Gordon said that another tenant in the building told her that she had heard Mr. Morales screaming in his apartment, and then saw him in the hall acting strangely. Ms. Gordon talked to his mother during the standoff, and she told Ms. Gordon that she had not seen her son in a couple of days. She also said he had stopped taking his medication, Ms. Gordon said.

Mr. Morales’s mother went to the building, where she found her son out of control, witnesses said. About 3 p.m., she called 911.

Officers with the Emergency Service Unit who arrived at the building were soon chasing Mr. Morales through his apartment, out a window and onto a fire escape. By then he had ripped a long light bulb from a ceiling fixture and was jabbing it at the pursuing officers, the police said.

He then jumped from the fire escape onto the narrow housing of a rolled-up security gate over the storefront on the ground floor of the building, the police said. Mr. Morales again swung the long tube, hitting an officer on the head, the police said.

“He was naked and he kept screaming,” said Joseph Adrien, who works at a nearby dry cleaner. Another witness said Mr. Morales’s mother was kept off to the side, pleading with the police to let her calm her son’s nerves, but being told repeatedly that it was now a police matter.

For about 30 minutes, Mr. Morales yelled that he did not want anyone touching him, and the police yelled back that they wanted him to come down, witnesses said. Then, an officer approached the man on his perch and fired the Taser at him.

Ms. Gordon said that Mr. Morales had lived in the building for about three years. She described him as quiet and neat. He had previously worked in the financial industry, but had been receiving rent subsidies, she said.

Community activists held a news conference after Mr. Morales’s death, urging neighbors not to prejudge the police and urging the authorities to investigate the episode fully.

City Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr., chairman of the Public Safety Committee, said in a telephone interview that the situation could have been handled better by the police.

“My first take is that while I’m sure there are no experts out there on how to handle a crazy naked man with a weapon on top of a ledge, I’m also sure this wasn’t the right way,” Mr. Vallone said on Wednesday evening.

“A situation like that is never going to end in a good way,” Mr. Vallone said after watching the video. “The most important thing is that no innocent bystanders or police got hurt. But clearly, it could have been handled better.”

Mr. Vallone said a public hearing on the department’s use of Tasers might be needed to fine-tune its policy on using them.

The use of Tasers in New York has a troubled history. In the early 1980s, the police were condemned for using them to force drug suspects to confess. Mr. Kelly, then a deputy inspector, was assigned to reform the police practices.

The study on police shootings, which urged the department to consider expanding its use of Tasers, was conducted by the RAND Corporation and commissioned seven weeks after the shooting of Sean Bell, who died in a hail of 50 police bullets in Queens on his wedding day in November 2006.

Department guidelines say an officer may use a Taser if an emotionally disturbed person is a danger to himself or to others. Emergency service units may use it in an emergency without direction, or, as on Wednesday, at the direction of an emergency unit supervisor on the scene, Mr. Browne said.

Currently, emergency service unit officers use the Taser about 300 times a year, mainly when responding to some of the 80,000 calls regarding emotionally disturbed people, officials said.

The handgun-shaped device, which incapacitates a target with a pulsating electrical current and is meant to be an alternative to deadly force, got a higher profile in the department in June when Mr. Kelly announced that Tasers would also be used by sergeants on patrol, who would carry them on their belts instead of keeping them in the trunk of their cars.


Trymaine Lee and Karen Zraick contributed reporting.

    Taser Use in Man’s Death Broke Rules, Police Say, NYT, 26.9.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/nyregion/26taser.html

A City’s Police Force

Now Doubts Focus on Terrorism

July 24, 2008
The New York Times
By DAVID JOHNSTON

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Nearly seven years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the war on terror in this city has evolved into a quiet struggle against a phantom foe.

Last year, when a sailor slipped over the side of a Turkish merchant ship in the city’s port, a Providence police detective assigned to a joint terrorism task force was quickly alerted, reflecting a new vigilance since the Sept. 11 attacks. Alerts also went out to immigration, customs, the F.B.I. and other federal agencies, but the case went cold.

Another alarm was sounded over a suspicious man of Indian descent who asked a metals dealer about buying old power tools and hair dryers. The lead petered out when the prospective buyer told a police detective in an interview that he wanted to refurbish the equipment for resale overseas.

Like most of the country’s more than 18,000 local law enforcement agencies, the Providence Police Department went to war against terror after 9/11, embracing a fundamental shift in its national security role. Cops everywhere had been shaken by disclosures that police officers in Oklahoma, Florida, Maryland and Virginia had stopped four of the 9/11 hijackers at various times for traffic violations, but had detected nothing amiss.

Over the years since, police officials in Providence joined with state and federal authorities in new information-sharing projects, met with local Muslim leaders and urged their officers to be alert for anything suspicious. Flush with federal homeland-security grants, the department acquired millions of dollars worth of hardware and enrolled officers in training courses to detect and respond to a terrorist attack.

But much has changed. Now, police officials here express doubts about whether the imperative to protect domestic security has blinded federal authorities to other priorities. The department is battling homicides, robberies and gang shootings that the police in a number of cities say are as serious a threat as terrorism.

The Providence police chief, Col. Dean M. Esserman, said the federal government seemed unable to balance antiterror efforts and crime fighting. “Our nation, that I love, is like a great giant that can deal with a problem when it focuses on it,” said Colonel Esserman, who has been chief since 2003, when he was hired by Mayor David N. Cicilline. “But it seems like that giant of a nation is like a Cyclops, with but one eye, that can focus only on one problem at a time.”

“The support we had from the federal government for crime fighting seems like it is being diverted to homeland defense,” he added. “It may be time to reassess, not how to dampen one for the other, but how not to lose support for one as we address the other.”

In Washington, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey has defended cuts in criminal justice programs that have shrunk as homeland security grants continue, although even those seem to be shrinking. At a Senate Appropriations committee hearing in April, Mr. Mukasey responded to a chorus of complaints from Democrats. “We’re not pretending that less money is more money,” Mr. Mukasey said. “But we’re trying to use it as intelligently as we can.”

Some federal homeland security officials worry about complacency given the passage of time since 9/11 without an attack or concrete evidence of a domestic threat. These officials say they are convinced al Qaeda remains determined to strike inside the United States and will find vulnerabilities if vigilance is relaxed.

In Providence, the police have girded for an attack. Flush with Homeland Security money, the department bought a 27-foot patrol boat to monitor the city’s port, along with an automated underwater inspection and detection system and a portable small craft intrusion barrier.

At police headquarters, the department upgraded a video surveillance system, erected 159 concrete posts and 220 feet of guard rails around the building’s perimeter. Supposed targets for attacks, like rail and air terminals, have been inventoried and assessed, and in some cases, hardened against assaults.

The department acquired a small fleet of S.U.V.’s for emergency response, a bomb containment vehicle, a bomb response canine vehicle, mobile data terminals, scuba gear, trauma kits, underwater camera and video gear, and special protective suits for all officers. With a $5.6 million grant, the department is developing a sophisticated radio system so police, fire and other emergency responders throughout the region can communicate with one another.

Police officers have enrolled in training that would have been unlikely before 9/11. Officers attended a terrorist bombing school in New Mexico, learned how to interpret deceptive responses, studied weapons of mass destruction and clandestine explosives labs and attended classes in terrorism prevention and suicide bombings. They carried out a role-playing exercise on airport hijackings.

Today, the boat still patrols the harbor, especially when liquefied natural gas tankers arrive from overseas. The stanchions around police headquarters are in place. The S.U.V.’s, loaded with emergency response gear, have been distributed to field units who use them as part of regular patrols. Most officers have learned to put on and take off their emergency gear, but none of the equipment or training has been needed to respond to a terrorist threat.

From 2002 to this year, the department went from zero to more than $11.6 million in homeland security grants, according to police department figures, while other criminal justice grants, like those from Justice Department programs used to pay overtime and hire more officers, dwindled to less than $4.5 million for the same period.

One Justice Department program, the Byrne Justice Action Grant, which helps police fight violent crime by paying for overtime and other policing costs, has suffered heavy cut backs. Providence’s Byrne grant was reduced to $118,000 this year. from $388,000 in 2007.

The Bush administration has proposed eliminating money for the program in its final 2009 budget.

Larry Reall, a 21-veteran of the Providence police department, is the police liaison to the local Joint Terrorism Task Force. He has top-secret security clearance and access to classified computer databases where he works at the local F.B.I. office down the street from City Hall in Providence’s resurgent downtown.

In Mr. Reall’s six years on the job, none of the hundreds of leads he has chased has turned up a terrorist. But he keeps looking, convinced his work has made the city safer and may have deterred a potential extremist before a threat materialized.

”It’s not whether we are going to be attacked; that’s probably not going to happen,” Mr. Reall said. “But I don’t think that you can let your guard down. Just because nothing has happened, doesn’t mean that something won’t.”

Police experts said Providence’s experience was similar to that of other cities around the country. Looking back, local law enforcement agencies took on new counterterrorism responsibilities when violent crime rates had plunged to statistical lows.

By 2005 and 2006, while overall crime rates were stable, middle-size and larger cities began to be hit with increases in homicides, robberies and aggravated assaults, according to Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which studies policing issues.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police recently issued a scathing analysis of federal spending, saying: “Unfortunately, funding federal homeland security efforts at the expense of state, tribal and local law enforcement agencies weakens rather than enhances our nation’s security.”

The frustration is expressed by other Providence police officials. The deputy chief, Commander Paul J. Kennedy, said the department no longer had the flexibility to use federal funds to pay for overtime. “I just wish we had some discretion about how we can use this federal money,” he said. “We know what our problems are. If you say to us the money can only be used for homeland security or equipment, it really limits how effective we can be in fighting crime.”

A weekly meeting of the department’s command staff, in which nearly three dozen city, state and federal officials, including representatives of social welfare and animal control agencies, assemble in a windowless third-floor conference room to discuss crime, focuses heavily on gangs like the West Side Clowns, the Chad Browns and others, mostly associated with crime in the city’s housing projects.

Providence has big city crime problems, but is small enough so that when the police talk of shootings, assaults and robberies, they sometimes know the victims, suspected perpetrators and their families on a first-name basis. Representatives of the F.B.I. and other federal agencies are on hand, but there is little talk about terrorism.

“This is what we do,” Colonel Esserman said of how crime and violence absorbed his department. “We talk about crime. We talk about it all the time. And we try to respond to it as effectively as we know how.”

    A City’s Police Force Now Doubts Focus on Terrorism, NYT, 24.7.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/us/24terror.html

As Gas Prices Rise,

Police Turn to Foot Patrols

July 20, 2008
The New York Times
By SHAILA DEWAN

SUWANEE, Ga. — People around here are seeing a lot more of Officer Robert Stewart.

Following strict new orders, he frequently leaves his squad car, hopping out to visit a bartender, then a barber, then a bank teller who squealed and clapped her hands, demanding to see the latest photograph of his son.

As gasoline soars past the $4-a-gallon mark, police chiefs in towns and cities across the country are ordering their officers out of the car and onto their feet in a budgetary scramble.

“It’s changing the way we police,” said Chief Mike Jones of the Suwanee Police Department, who has asked his officers to walk for at least one hour of every shift. “We’re going to have to police smarter than we have in the past.”

Chief Jones budgeted about $60,000 for fuel in the fiscal year that ended last month; the department spent $94,000. This year, he budgeted $163,000 — a large line item in a budget of $3.8 million.

The Houston Police Department exceeded its gasoline budget of $8.7 million last year and expects to spend $11.3 million this year. San Diego, which budgets fuel costs citywide, already expects to exceed its budget for the fiscal year that started July 1 by $1.5 million.

Departments have switched to lower octane gasoline and installed G.P.S. receivers in patrol cars to make dispatching more efficient. State troopers have gone from cruising the highways to sitting and monitoring traffic in “stationary patrols.”

The State Highway Patrol in Missouri plans to increase its use of single-engine airplanes to look for speeders. In Marietta, Ga., the police department is working out a policy for its new T3 Personal Mobility Vehicles, a battery-powered cross between a Segway and a scooter. In Cook County, Ill., sheriff’s deputies have mothballed their cars in favor of bicycles. And the New York City Police Department acquired 20 hybrid cars this month.

Other agencies have increased penalties for false alarms, stopped responding to 911 calls if they are determined not to be emergencies or put two officers in some cars.

But one of the most popular fuel conservation measures has been the simplest: walking. Or as Chief Frank Hooper of Gainesville, Ga., put it in a memorandum, “walk and talk.”

The old-fashioned foot patrol has gone in and out of vogue. But in the last decade or so, the use of ever more refined mapping to pinpoint criminal hotspots has lent itself to the practice. Many departments at least pay lip service to the idea of community policing, in which officers get to know residents, develop contacts and tackle problems that fall outside the traditional realm of police work. Police chiefs who are particularly devoted to the community policing model say gasoline prices are helping to push their officers in that direction.

“I’ve always had a theory that one of the greatest inventions was police cars, because it made us more mobile,” Chief Hooper said. “And one of the worst inventions was air-conditioning, because we rolled our windows up.”

Chief Hooper said he had always encouraged his officers to get out and talk to residents. But under the threat of losing the privilege of taking home patrol cars because of high gas prices, Gainesville officers cut their gas consumption by 10 percent last month compared with June 2007. They have walked the town square, the malls and, at night, abandoned buildings.

Officer Adam Crenshaw said he did not mind escaping his car or even sitting in one place to monitor traffic. “Being stationary, you see a lot more,” he said. “I’m able to see a lot more child restraint violations.”

In Suwanee, Officer Stewart said that walking and talking suited his natural inclinations and helped him work cases. Restaurant workers, he said, “have intel on all kinds of stuff. They know who’s doing what. They know about drugs coming into the city.”

He said building relationships can help save on gasoline costs, too. He passes out his cellphone number and e-mail address and can handle business in ways that do not involve getting into his car.

But not all officers have been so easily lured out of their cars.

“The average officer thinks that if they’re constantly on the move, they’re doing a better job of preventing an incident from occurring,” said Chief Ric Moss of Woodstock, Ga. “Candidly some of them have said, ‘Well, gee, you know, it’s hot out there.’ Well, if you go in that store, you’ll cool off, you’ll get to know the manager and you’ll get your presence known. We’ve had to educate them as to the benefits.”

One officer on a bicycle has already caught a thief in the act of stripping copper from an abandoned building, Chief Moss said. “How you measure how much crime you prevented, that’s always a question,” he said. “But if we’re getting into areas that we’re not getting into with a motor vehicle, I’m satisfied.”

Departments that have limited car patrols say that they have seen no effect on crime or citations or that it is too soon to tell. They say that the public has been apprehensive when changes have been announced, but that the reaction to more accessible police officers has been positive.

At Taco Mac, a restaurant in Suwanee where Officer Stewart was greeted with hugs and a Diet Coke, the manager, Steve Helms, said he would rather have an officer in his bar than cruising the streets in a marked car.

“We stay open the latest in the entire city,” Mr. Helms said. “It’s a deterrent.”

Still, some jurisdictions have resisted any notion of restricting patrols. “I have one beat alone in the northeastern division that is larger than the city of San Francisco,” said Detective Gary Hassen of the San Diego Police Department. “To say, ‘Gee, are you going to walk that?’ — it would be impossible.”

George Kelling, a professor of criminal justice at Rutgers University and a longtime proponent of community policing, said police departments that clung to their cars were missing the point.

“There are areas even in suburban areas where citizens congregate, and it seems to me that we would want to have police officers in areas where people congregate,” Professor Kelling said. “You can increase and decrease the number of police riding around in cars, and the public can’t tell the difference. You can increase the number of police out interacting with the community, and people can tell the difference very quickly.”

Rebecca Cathcart contributed reporting from Los Angeles, and Robert Herguth from Chicago.

    As Gas Prices Rise, Police Turn to Foot Patrols, NYT, 20.7.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/us/20patrol.html