How do you spell "stun gun fun" - Taser!!!
How do you spell "stun gun fun" - Taser!!!
I am sure in some cases they do save lives by allowing cops to fry people instead of shooting them. But I am also sure sadistic cops love to torture and punish people they consider criminals with their Taser toys.
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Doubts surface as police sharply increase Taser use
Electroshock weapons fired more frequently by city, suburban cops
By Dan Hinkel, Chicago Tribune reporter
January 1, 2012
The traffic stop began peacefully three hours into New Year's Day 2010, with the woman driving the SUV telling the officer that she hadn't been drinking and her husband merrily exclaiming he was the source of the alcohol smell.
But the situation soured when Steven Kotlinski, 55, stepped out to watch his wife's sobriety test, provoking the Mundelein officers to order him into the SUV. He reluctantly obeyed, but one officer said Kotlinski had obstructed his efforts. He ordered him back out, then tried to pull him out.
Next came the electric crackle of a Taser, a sound heard far more often in Chicago and many suburbs than it was just a few years ago.
A Tribune analysis shows Taser use has jumped fivefold in the city since 2008 and suburban agencies that were surveyed were on pace to double their use, as departments equipped more officers with the devices. Chicago police were deploying Tasers at a rate of more than twice a day in 2011.
And oversight has not kept pace with the explosion in use. Departments are on their own in developing policies on when and how electroshock devices should be deployed, with no state regulation.
In Kotlinski's case, the engineer at Abbott Laboratories was removed from his SUV and pinned in the snow. He lost control of his body as an "intense burning sensation" accompanied the surreal feeling that he was floating over the ground, he said. He roared about his heart condition, then begged in a faint wheeze for someone to call 911.
"Pain. I've never felt that way in my life," Kotlinski said.
They may bring pain, but the weapons save lives by reducing the use of guns or physical combat, police say. Civil rights advocates and experts on use of force counter that some officers deploy them too eagerly, spurring lawsuits and fomenting distrust of officers. The potential lethality of the weapons remains under debate, but critics point to hundreds of deaths that have followed their use as proof that electroshock devices should be seen as deadly weapons.
"It's a wonderful tool, when used properly," said Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminal justice professor who co-wrote a recent federal report on the weapons.
"But they've just got to be used judiciously, and in many departments, they aren't."
Like almost all states, Illinois does not track the weapons' use by local police, and departments have been left to monitor and govern electroshock devices with a patchwork of policies. In Chicago, the leap in the number of police carrying Tasers coincided with the scaling back of post-shock investigations by the Independent Police Review Authority.
Safety debate
Although no Illinois agency collects data on uses of force by police, figures provided to the Tribune by Mundelein and eight randomly selected suburban departments that use the devices show police are on pace to deploy them roughly twice as often in 2011 as they did in 2008.
Police in those departments used the weapons 35 times in 2008. By fall 2011, they had used them 56 times on the year. If that pace continued through December, the figure for 2011 would fall near 70.
Departments reported deployments at different levels of detail, and it was not clear in every case how a "use" or "incident" was defined. But the trend toward more frequent use was clear.
The rise has been steeper in Chicago. In 2009, officers logged 197 incidents. A year later, after hundreds more weapons were passed out, Chicago police reported 871 incidents. As of fall, the department was on pace for 857 uses in 2011, which works out to 2.3 per day.
The growth in the weapons' use should not come as a surprise, given their rise in popularity.
Several companies make electroshock weapons, which override the target's central nervous system by firing wire-tethered probes that deliver electrical jolts. Arizona-based Taser International makes the most popular models. About 576,000 of the devices are used by more than 16,500 law enforcement and military organizations, nearly all in the United States, said spokesman Steve Tuttle. Only 500 or so agencies used the weapons in 2000, he said.
In Illinois, a little fewer than half of the municipal police agencies that responded to a 2007 survey reported they were using electroshock weapons, according to the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board, and more departments have since bought the weapons. Several suburban agencies contacted by the Tribune appear to have started using them in 2008 or 2009.
Taser International and police departments have faced lawsuits over safety. And though many fatalities following electroshock weapon use have been attributed to other causes, human rights group Amnesty International has counted 490 deaths after electroshock device use in the U.S. since 1990, said Debra Erenberg, Midwest regional director for the group. In some 50 cases between 2001 and 2008, coroners listed the weapons as a cause or contributing factor in a death, according to a study by the group.
Tuttle said the company has yet to be informed of a study proving the weapons can directly cause death. A study published last year by the U.S. Department of Justice found "no clear medical evidence that shows a high risk of serious injury or death from the direct effects" of the weapons. But that study also noted more research is needed to determine what role electroshock weapons can play in suspect deaths, especially in the case of unhealthy or intoxicated people.
The same limited study concluded the weapons reduce injury rates among police and civilians, compared with other types of force. But the report cautioned against overuse.
Split-second decision
Kotlinski's confrontation with police — captured on video and microphones — shows that a split-second choice to shock a suspect can sow long-term consequences. Lawyers for Kotlinski and Mundelein recently negotiated an undisclosed settlement to a federal lawsuit, and attempts by the Lake County state's attorney's office to prosecute him ultimately were unsuccessful.
The traffic stop "should have been a quick, 30-second ordeal," Kotlinski said.
Instead, he got out of the SUV during his wife's DUI test and hesitated for several seconds before obeying emphatic orders to get back in, the video shows. Back in the SUV, he can be heard on the recordings speaking heatedly with Officer Richard Turek, at one point asking, "What are you trying to prove?" The other officer, Anthony Raciak, halted the DUI tests and shut Kotlinski's wife, Jean, in the squad car's rear.
After telling Jean Kotlinski that her husband would be arrested for obstruction, Raciak walked briskly back to the SUV, where Steven Kotlinski sat in the passenger seat with the door shut but apparently not latched. Raciak ordered him out, then tried to tug him out.
Raciak later reported Kotlinski struggled, squeezing the officer's bicep painfully. Kotlinski said the officer struggled to remove him because he was wearing his seat belt.
The officer reported Kotlinski moved toward him, so he aimed the Taser's laser sight at his chest and fired. The probes hit Kotlinski's jacket as he sat in the car but didn't connect with his body, according to Raciak's report. Kotlinski said he felt "intense searing pain."
Kotlinski spilled from the SUV, and the officers pinned him to the snowy ground. During the commotion in the snow, Turek shocked Kotlinski twice in the Taser's "drive stun" mode, according to police records. A drive stun delivers a potentially painful charge by prodding the target with the weapon, rather than trying to incapacitate the subject by firing the probes. Kotlinski, who said he suffers high blood pressure and an irregular heartbeat, cried out, "I've got a heart condition," and, "My heart."
Kotlinski was shocked because he resisted, Turek reported. Kotlinski said he couldn't control his limbs as he was being shocked.
Once her husband was subdued and sitting in an ambulance, Jean Kotlinski registered a blood-alcohol level of zero, records show. She was not charged.
Steven Kotlinski was charged with felony aggravated battery and misdemeanor obstruction. A Lake County jury in August 2010 acquitted him of battery but convicted him of obstructing. He was sentenced to 100 hours of community service and 12 months of conditional release tied to good behavior.
State appeals judges in October 2011 reversed the guilty verdict, declaring "no rational trier of fact" could have found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, a move lawyers said is rare.
The judges said the officers' testimony clashed with the recordings.
Lake County prosecutors did not challenge the ruling. The officers, their lawyers and prosecutors did not return calls for comment.
An internal investigation found "other options were available" apart from shocking Kotlinski, according to records. But Mundelein Chief Ray Rose said the Taser use was not in violation of departmental policy.
"You use whatever force is necessary to effect the arrest, and if the incident escalates, the use of force has to escalate at the same rate, and that's what happened here," Rose said.
Although the internal inquiry found no policy violations, Raciak was suspended for 15 days after he admitted lying to department personnel when he said he didn't watch the video footage after the arrest, according to police records.
Rose said Raciak "does a good job."
An array of policies
Like other forms of police weaponry that came before, Tasers have opened a new avenue for civil rights lawsuits that can cost cities millions, and local police agencies continue to absorb new accusations.
North Chicago police face a suit from the family of 45-year-old Darrin Hanna, who died in November after police intervened in a domestic incident, leaving him with trauma and marks from the shocks, according to the Lake County coroner's office. Chicago is being sued by a motorist who said police shocked him 11 times in four minutes in May 2010.
Cities can reduce their exposure by making sure officers are trained and operate under firm policies, civil lawyers said.
But local agencies rely on policies that range from specific to general. Some say specifically when to use electroshock devices, while other departments have a broad policy on use of force.
Evanston's policy, for example, deals extensively with Tasers and spells out that they are only to be used on subjects who are aggressively resisting or attacking officers or threatening to hurt themselves. In smaller Itasca, a section of a broader policy on use of force deals with Tasers, authorizing officers to use them against people who don't obey verbal commands.
The Police Executive Research Forum and some experts on use of force recommend avoiding the use of electroshock weapons on passively resistant subjects.
Itasca police Chief Scott Heher said he agrees the weapons should only be used against actively resistant or violent subjects. But he said the device might be appropriate for a suspect who repeatedly refuses to get on the ground or put down a weapon.
Heher said the policy hasn't translated into heavy use by Itasca officers, who have logged seven incidents since 2008.
Frequency of use also varies widely by agency, according to the Tribune analysis.
The village of Northbrook owns 20 Tasers. Since 2006, the weapons have been used during an arrest in the suburb just once.
Chief Charles Wernick said he is glad his officers have the weapons because they provide a level of force that falls below lethal. "It's good that they have them, in case," he said.
Use in Chicago is understandably much higher, but Police Department spokeswoman Sarah Hamilton said the numbers don't show how many injuries are avoided — for officers and suspects — by pulling Tasers instead of shooting or using physical force.
Every incident is reported and examined by a supervisor, she said. However, the Independent Police Review Authority relaxed its review procedures for some Taser incidents just as the department raised the number on the street from 280 to 590.
Until 2010, each incident spurred an extensive investigation that could involve interviewing victims or witnesses, said Chief Administrator Ilana Rosenzweig. Now many incidents get a less exhaustive review that involves inspecting the department's documentation of the Taser use. The agency still launches deeper investigations when misconduct is alleged, a minor or senior citizen is involved, or a person is seriously hurt or killed, she said.
The increase in Taser use hasn't caused an explosion of complaints, and the agency must use its limited resources wisely, Rosenzweig said.
But the increase in use, concurrent with a reduction in oversight, worries civil rights advocates.
"When you look at this dramatic increase in the use of the device, it calls out for more oversight and more control and more training," said Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.
Nationwide, police uses of force are poorly tracked and regulation is generally left to individual agencies, experts said.
Tracking of electroshock weapon use "just doesn't exist, and we have a hard enough time documenting police use of firearms at a national level," said Michael White, an associate professor of criminology at Arizona State University.
The Illinois State Police collect crime data statewide, while the Department of Transportation gathers information about traffic stops statewide, as mandated by a 2003 law designed to detect racial profiling.
But the state doesn't ask local agencies for any information on uses of force against civilians. Informed of this, Rep. Monique Davis, D-Chicago, said she will introduce legislation soon that will mandate the tracking of uses of force, including the deployment of electroshock weapons.
In his comfortable home in Hawthorn Woods nearly two years after the encounter with the devices, Steven Kotlinski joked that his "bucket list" didn't include absorbing shocks while writhing in the snow. But, in the era of electroshock weapons, the incident shows how a traffic stop can turn into a life-altering ordeal, he said.
"If it could happen to me," he said, "it could happen to anyone."
Tribune reporter Joe Mahr contributed.
dhinkel@tribune.com
Video tape a crooked cop? You go to jail, not the crooked cop!!!!
Video tape a crooked cop? You go to jail in Chicago, not the crooked cop!!!!
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State's eavesdropping law faces growing challenges
Court cases pile up over law that forbids audio recordings of police without their consent
By Ryan Haggerty and Jason Meisner, Chicago Tribune reporters
January 2, 2012
When a Cook County jury in August acquitted a woman of violating Illinois' strict eavesdropping law, an unassuming man with wire-rimmed glasses and wispy white hair sat in the gallery, quietly taking notes.
Chris Drew had good reason to keep an eye on the case — he's facing trial on the same felony charge of eavesdropping on a public official, which carries up to 15 years in prison.
An artist whose '60s upbringing instilled a deep respect for questioning authority, Drew, 61, is accused of making an illegal audio recording of Chicago police during a 2009 arrest for selling art on a downtown street without a permit.
Drew intended the incident to be a test of the city's permit laws. But now his case has wound up at the forefront of a much bigger effort to challenge the constitutionality of Illinois' eavesdropping law, which makes it illegal to audio-record police without their consent, even when they're performing their public duties.
"He's become the accidental eavesdropping activist," Drew's lawyer, Joshua Kutnick, joked in a recent interview.
Illinois is one of a handful of states in which it is illegal to record audio of public conversations without the permission of everyone involved and has one of the strictest eavesdropping laws in the country.
Opposition to Illinois' law has been gaining traction for months as several cases have been tossed out of court.
In August, while Drew watched, Tiawanda Moore, 21, was acquitted of illegally recording two Chicago police internal affairs investigators whom she believed were trying to dissuade her from filing a sexual harassment complaint against a patrol officer. One juror later told the Tribune that he and his fellow panelists considered the case "a waste of time."
The next month, a Crawford County judge ruled the law unconstitutional and dismissed eavesdropping charges against a man accused of recording police and court officials without their consent.
In Chicago, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to rule on a federal lawsuit challenging the law that was filed by the ACLU in 2010.
"It's turned into something bigger," Kutnick said. "As you're seeing, the whole state of Illinois is looking at this."
When Drew set up his wares on State Street in the Loop on Dec. 2, 2009, he knew there was a good chance he would be arrested. So he slipped a voice recorder in his pocket to document any interactions with police.
Within about an hour, Drew was arrested and charged with peddling without a license. He was shocked, however, when he was also charged with eavesdropping.
"I knew it was a violation to tape-record private conversations," Drew said in a recent interview. "I understood what eavesdropping means. Eavesdropping does not mean recording a public conversation. The conversation we were having — if it was a conversation at all — the words that we were having were all public words."
Illinois' eavesdropping ban was extended in 1994 to include open and obvious audio recording, even if it takes place on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists and in a volume audible to the "unassisted human ear."
Kutnick said the law makes no sense today, when so many people carry smartphones capable of shooting video and thousands of public and private surveillance cameras are stationed throughout the city.
"There's no place for it in today's sophisticated, technological society," he said. "Now the first thing anybody does (is) pull out the phone, pull out the recorder. Laws should track what's happening in the world, and this is a perfect example of where it is not keeping up."
Officials with the Fraternal Order of Police in Chicago have said the union supports the law because it prevents people from making baseless accusations against officers by recording them and then releasing snippets that don't reveal the full context of the incident.
But Kutnick counters that people should have the right to record public police activity and that officers who perform their duties properly shouldn't mind the scrutiny.
"The legitimate police officer, the police officer who's doing the right thing, should only welcome these recordings because then they can prove, 'I did everything by the book,'" Kutnick said.
Still, recording police who are doing their jobs properly can invite unwanted attention.
Ralph Braseth, a journalism professor at Loyola University Chicago, said he was handcuffed and lectured by a Chicago police officer in November after he videoed the officer and his partner arresting a teen who jumped a turnstile at the CTA's Red Line station at Chicago Avenue.
Braseth said he was shooting video for a documentary about teens from poor neighborhoods who come downtown on weekends, and he happened to be in the station when the arrest took place. The officers were professional when arresting the teen and "didn't do anything wrong," Braseth said.
"There was nothing damning on that tape," he said.
Braseth said one of the officers saw him recording the arrest, handcuffed him and put him in the back of a squad car outside the station. The officer never mentioned the eavesdropping law. Instead, he told Braseth "I had no business doing what I was doing" and said that videoing officers "interferes with the work of police," according to the professor.
The officer released Braseth after about 25 minutes, but before he let Braseth go, he asked to see the video, the professor said. Braseth said that when he played the video on his camera, the officer reached down and hit the delete button and then told him to have a good night.
Braseth has since filed a complaint with the Independent Police Review Authority, which forwarded the case to Chicago police internal affairs investigators.
While Braseth said he understands why some police officers don't like to be recorded, he said Illinois' eavesdropping law "should have been done away with a long time ago."
"The citizens of Chicago employ the police officers, and they are acting as agents for our government," Braseth said. "I don't necessarily think it's my job to police the police, but I think it's a good idea for them to know that that can happen at any time. It's one of the checks and balances that we have. It's so fundamental."
Many of the challenges against the Illinois law stem from its vague wording and exceptions.
About five years ago, Illinois state Rep. Chapin Rose, R-Charleston set out to rewrite the law to provide some "bright line rules" on exactly when and where recording someone was illegal. His bill sought to amend the language to make it legal to record the official duties of the police in public as long as the "physical act of recording does not interfere with those duties."
Rose, a former prosecutor, said in a recent interview that the idea was not warmly received.
"I put the bill in and it went absolutely nowhere," he said. "I couldn't even get interest in it in committee."
The bill died in the Illinois House Rules Committee in January 2007. Rose said, to his knowledge, there have been no efforts to update the law since.
Despite opposition from some law enforcement groups and a reluctance among lawmakers to revise the law, Drew said, he believes it's only a matter of time before the law is changed, especially if more people are charged with felonies for recording police in public.
"It affects everybody," he said. "Citizens are … telling each other, 'You're damn right we have this right, and you're damn right we're going to use it.'"
rhaggerty@tribune.com
jmeisner@tribune.com
Edward F. Murphy doesn't like fat cops????
I don't have a problem with obese cops. The problem is corrupt cops who violated people constitutional rights.
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Letter: MCSO -- Large officers could be big problem
Posted: Monday, January 2, 2012 2:41 pm
Letter to the Editor
The Maricopa Country Sheriff’s Office has many large problems, but one that I’ve not heard mentioned is the overweight condition of so many of its officers.
From Sheriff Joe (Arpaio), to his henchman David Hendershott, officers of the MCSO are huge! I don’t know what these men and women are fed, but they should push back from the table before taking a second helping of whatever it is Sheriff Joe gives them. Every time there is a news video of MCSO officers or I see an officer on the street, all one sees are huge beer bellies hanging over belts and broad beams stretching pants to nearly their breaking point as the officer waddles around.
I know Sheriff Joe’s policies have cost county taxpayers untold millions in settled lawsuits, but I would like to know what the health costs are for such an obese force. Most of these officers have to be suffering from high blood pressure, clogged arteries, diabetes, and every other disease associated with obesity.
Perhaps Sheriff Joe should give up trying to be in the limelight — his and everyone else’s — and work out a healthy eating and exercise program for his officers before they all keel over dead from a heart attack.
Edward F. Murphy
Mesa
Proving murder without 5-year-old's body a challenge
I'm sure the police would love to jail everybody they suspect is a criminal. Of course one problem with that is many people the police suspect of being a criminal are innocent. People who were just at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Look I suspect there is a 90 percent chance that OJ was guilty of murdering Nicole. But should we jail OJ, when there is a 10 percent chance he is innocent and somebody else is guilty. If you ask me that answer is NO.
OJ may be a scum bag jerk, but that doesn't mean he should do time in prison for a crime he didn't commit.
I suspect the same thing is true about this murder. The circumstantial evidence indicates there probably is a 80 or 90 percent chance that the child mom murdered her. But should this woman really be placed in prison when there is a 10 to 20 percent chance she is innocent. I don't think so.
The government tells us they would rather have 100 guilty people escape jail instead of jailing one innocent person. But in reality I think it's exactly the opposite. The cops would rather have 100 innocent people go to prison if it means one extra guilty person would go to prison.
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Proving murder without 5-year-old's body a challenge
by Lisa Halverstadt - Jan. 2, 2012 11:36 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Police suspect that a 5-year-old Glendale girl who went missing a few months ago is dead, her body callously disposed of and probably lying buried beneath tons of trash in a giant landfill.
If Jhessye Shockley's body is not found, bringing a killer to justice will be a daunting task. But experts say it is not impossible.
Across the nation, prosecutors have won murder convictions in dozens of cases in which there was no victim's body. In the past year, the Maricopa County Attorney's Office successfully prosecuted two such cases.
Experts say the cases come with a unique challenge: Not only must authorities convince jurors that a suspect was responsible for a murder, they also need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim is actually dead.
Jhessye's mother reported her missing nearly three months ago.
After initial searches for the missing girl, the case shifted to a homicide investigation.
Police said their work and tips from the public eventually led them to suspect Jhessye's body was dumped in a Tempe trash bin, miles from her Glendale home, by someone who wanted to cover his or her tracks and keep anyone from finding the body.
Now, Glendale police are weighing a search at a landfill south of the Valley where the contents of the bin would have gone. Police will launch the search if experts can help them narrow where they might find the body among acres of trash that grows by at least 6,000 tons each day.
Jhessye's mother, Jerice Hunter, remains the pivotal figure in the investigation, although police stop short of calling her a suspect. Hunter was arrested Nov. 21 on suspicion of felony child abuse involving Jhessye. She was released several days later when prosecutors decided that pursuing an abuse charge might create a situation of double jeopardy that could prevent her from being tried again in the same case if prosecutors pursue a murder charge against her.
The attorney representing Jhessye's mother has said his client is innocent. Scott Maasen has criticized the focus on Jhessye's mother and has hired private investigators to aid in the search for the girl, saying Hunter's primary interest is finding her.
Detectives who have worked on similar cases caution it can take months or years to arrest a murder suspect if a body isn't located, because it takes an enormous amount of effort to build an airtight case.
Melissa Lutch, a Phoenix detective who handled a homicide case with no body that led to a 2011 conviction, said killers in such cases often take great pains to destroy evidence and hide the body.
"You don't want to see somebody get away with that," she said. "No one deserves to be killed and have their remains hidden so they don't get their final resting place, or to have their families be tortured over the years."
Proving murder
In the weeks after Jhessye's disappearance, police received hundreds of tips. Detectives initially suspected the girl might have been abducted. Jhessye's family suggested a sex offender or family member might have taken her.
Police later said Jhessye's 13-year-old sister told them that she last saw the 5-year-old unresponsive, eyes bruised and hair pulled out, inside her mother's closet. The teen said their mother often kept Jhessye in the closet without food or water, according to a police probable-cause statement filed in Maricopa County Superior Court.
Since then, police have shifted their focus.
If prosecutors decide to pursue a murder case without Jhessye's body, police must seek details that prove death was the most plausible explanation for the disappearance. They must wade through hundreds of interviews conducted immediately after Jhessye was reported missing and home in on inconsistencies in their suspect's story.
Police also must try to find a motive for the crime, an element that can be especially crucial for jurors once such a case goes to trial, said Treena Kay, a deputy Maricopa County attorney who won a conviction in the case Lutch investigated, the slaying of William McGrath.
At trial, authorities emphasized efforts by McGrath's handyman to use the Phoenix man's bank cards and ID to wire funds.
A motive isn't necessary to prosecute a murder, but it makes a jury more comfortable with finding a person guilty, Kay said.
If Jhessye's case goes to trial, prosecutors will likely call a slew of witnesses to talk about her life. They might be asked about Jhessye's relationship with the person believed to be responsible for her disappearance and Jhessye's behavior at school. They'll likely be asked about the last time they saw Jhessye.
Prosecutors also will want to show evidence that a crime scene may have existed, such as traces of blood or cleaning supplies used to wipe away evidence, as well as establish a timeline for Jhessye's disappearance.
Authorities must use multiple examples to convince jurors that death is the reason for a disappearance, said Tad DiBiase, a former federal prosecutor who has studied more than 300 homicide cases in which a body was never found.
"It is the combination of things that's damning in these cases -- not any one single factor," he said.
Long investigations
Most homicide investigations start with a body, a weapon and, if police are fortunate, a witness or two.
When authorities have none of those, there's a lot more work to do.
In the Phoenix case, it took police eight months to know for sure that McGrath was murdered, said Lutch, the lead investigator.
Detectives made their case after they recovered McGrath's bank cards, wallet and a gun covered in his blood hidden in the cobwebbed attic of a home his killer was remodeling.
Other cases have taken even longer.
Detectives in Aurora, Colo., spent more than four years investigating the disappearance of 6-year-old Aaroné Thompson. Her father reported her missing in November 2005, saying the girl had stomped off after he refused to give her a cookie. A tip revealed Aaroné had been missing for months. Eventually, the girl's siblings opened up and told authorities their parents often whipped them with a belt and left Aaroné in a closet.
In 2009, Aaroné's father was convicted of child abuse resulting in death.
Before the case went to trial, police searched the Thompson home multiple times. Investigators questioned children and friends numerous times over weeks and months.
Detective Randy Hansen, one of the lead investigators on the case, is convinced authorities wouldn't have won a conviction if they had rushed to arrest Aaroné's father.
"Without a body and without saying the cause of death, without having those particular evidentiary pieces, you need to make sure you have as much information as possible, and that might come weeks, months or even a year later," Hansen said.
Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery has said he is determined to bring Jhessye's killer to justice, no matter how long it takes.
Closing cases
Authorities who have worked on murder cases without a body say they can be frustrating.
Lutch recalls feeling sick with worry on some trial days during the McGrath case.
The public sometimes has the mistaken impression that police are not acting quickly enough to make an arrest, she said. But the police are thinking only of getting a conviction, which means being thorough, no matter how long it takes to "make sure everything is right," she added.
"Ultimately, the jury is going to determine whether we screwed anything up," Lutch said.
Even after a trial ends, difficult cases such as these stick with detectives because of the intensity with which they pursue details about the victim, and a need to bring some kind of meaningful closure for families who may never get to bury their loved ones.
After the jury convicted McGrath's killer, he told police where to find the body. Lutch helped dig a 5-foot-deep hole beneath a central Phoenix home to recover the man's body last spring.
Hansen, the Colorado detective, still searches for Aaroné.
"I guess I felt my job was to find her," he said.
Lock em for for life if the President doesn't like them???
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Detention hour
How to handle terror suspects
January 3, 2012
From the uproar over new legislation covering the detention of terrorism suspects, which President Barack Obama signed Saturday, you might assume that it represents a major change of policy. Actually, the notable feature of the bill is that it essentially preserves the policy status quo. That's the good news, but also the bad.
The measure could have been worse. Republicans in Congress wanted to decree that anyone connected to al-Qaida could be held only in military custody, not tried in civilian courts — even if the detainees were U.S. citizens captured on American soil. Obama threatened to veto the bill over that mandate, and it was dropped.
So the administration will be free to decide whether to detain alleged terrorists in military facilities located abroad or prosecute them as criminals in federal court. But it had that latitude already.
Congress also reaffirmed existing practice regarding the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay by barring any federal outlays to transfer inmates to the United States.
That's unfortunate because civilian trials would be the best course for at least some of those prisoners. But the administration has shown little interest in pursuing them because of the political risks. Again, no change.
The real defect in the legislation is that it skates over something that implicates our fundamental values. Though it doesn't require the president to hold suspects without trial as long as the war with al-Qaida and its allies continues, it permits such detention.
Some people could be locked up indefinitely with no meaningful way to assert their innocence. In the worst case, a U.S. citizen arrested on an American street could be jailed for life without being convicted of anything. "The idea that one person, the president, without any kind of review, can lock someone up forever is deeply disturbing," says Northwestern University law professor Ronald Allen.
Obama, in signing the law, said he "will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens." But that won't prevent his successors from doing so. In that case, the courts will have to decide whether to insist on some form of due process.
This is an abdication of responsibility by Congress and the president. They need to look for creative remedies that balance the unique demands of this national security threat with the liberties that define America.
One option, Allen says, is to put time limits on military detention. Another is to authorize civilian courts to try suspects (or at least review their claims) under special procedures that are sensitive to national security interests and the need to protect classified information.
The war on terrorism has made it hard to demarcate the proper lines between military action and law enforcement, simply because it doesn't resemble traditional wars between national armies.
No one objected to detaining German POWs without trial until the end of World War II — because they were simple to identify and the conflict was destined to have a clear end. But in this fight, nothing is quite so clear.
The government has the duty to incapacitate enemy fighters bent on killing Americans. At the same time, it has to uphold constitutional protections and the rule of law. Congress and the president have a duty to work together to find sensible ways to advance liberty as well as security. But so far, it's a duty both are ducking.
Tempe piggy gets his machine gun stolen??
Tempe piggy gets his machine gun stolen?? Or is this AR-15 just a cheep semi-automatic one?
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Tempe police seek SWAT officer's stolen AR-15 rifle
Posted: Tuesday, January 3, 2012 2:29 pm
By Mike Sakal, Tribune
Tempe police are asking for the public's assistance in locating an AR-15 rifle that was stolen from the personal car of a SWAT officer early New Year's Day, and have launched an administrative review into the officer for any potential weapons policy violations.
The officer's car was parked in a lot on Arizona State University's campus and burglarized between 4:45 a.m. and 6:20 a.m. on Sunday, according to information from Tempe police. The officer had just ended his shift and was exercising at ASU during that time and had secured the firearm in his vehicle, according to police.
The department's policy states that it's a violation of procedure for an officer to fail to "properly care for assigned equipment, which results in damage or loss due to neglect or carelessness."
The officer has not been placed on paid administrative leave and police are not commenting as to why the officer had the rifle in his vehicle.
By comparison, federal officers are required to keep issued weapons locked and incapable of firing when the officer is not carrying them.
An AR-15 rifle is a military version of the M-16. Most AR-15 rifles are semi-automatic and fire just one round at a time when the trigger is pulled, according to Scott Wesch, owner of the Mesa Gun Shop.
Under most normal conditions, the government restricts ownership of full-automatic weapons, however, some police departments do own full automatic weapons, according to Wesch.
The rifle is black and weighs between six to 8.5 pounds.
Anyone with information about this incident can call the Tempe Police Department at (480) 350-8311 or Silent Witness at (480) 948-6377.
• Contact writer: (480) 898-6533 or msakal@evtrib.com
Video tape a crooked cop? You go to jail???
Video tape a crooked cop? You go to jail in Chicago, not the crooked cop!!!!
Source
State's eavesdropping law faces growing challenges
Court cases pile up over law that forbids audio recordings of police without their consent
By Ryan Haggerty and Jason Meisner, Chicago Tribune reporters
January 2, 2012
When a Cook County jury in August acquitted a woman of violating Illinois' strict eavesdropping law, an unassuming man with wire-rimmed glasses and wispy white hair sat in the gallery, quietly taking notes.
Chris Drew had good reason to keep an eye on the case — he's facing trial on the same felony charge of eavesdropping on a public official, which carries up to 15 years in prison.
An artist whose '60s upbringing instilled a deep respect for questioning authority, Drew, 61, is accused of making an illegal audio recording of Chicago police during a 2009 arrest for selling art on a downtown street without a permit.
Drew intended the incident to be a test of the city's permit laws. But now his case has wound up at the forefront of a much bigger effort to challenge the constitutionality of Illinois' eavesdropping law, which makes it illegal to audio-record police without their consent, even when they're performing their public duties.
"He's become the accidental eavesdropping activist," Drew's lawyer, Joshua Kutnick, joked in a recent interview.
Illinois is one of a handful of states in which it is illegal to record audio of public conversations without the permission of everyone involved and has one of the strictest eavesdropping laws in the country.
Opposition to Illinois' law has been gaining traction for months as several cases have been tossed out of court.
In August, while Drew watched, Tiawanda Moore, 21, was acquitted of illegally recording two Chicago police internal affairs investigators whom she believed were trying to dissuade her from filing a sexual harassment complaint against a patrol officer. One juror later told the Tribune that he and his fellow panelists considered the case "a waste of time."
The next month, a Crawford County judge ruled the law unconstitutional and dismissed eavesdropping charges against a man accused of recording police and court officials without their consent.
In Chicago, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to rule on a federal lawsuit challenging the law that was filed by the ACLU in 2010.
"It's turned into something bigger," Kutnick said. "As you're seeing, the whole state of Illinois is looking at this."
When Drew set up his wares on State Street in the Loop on Dec. 2, 2009, he knew there was a good chance he would be arrested. So he slipped a voice recorder in his pocket to document any interactions with police.
Within about an hour, Drew was arrested and charged with peddling without a license. He was shocked, however, when he was also charged with eavesdropping.
"I knew it was a violation to tape-record private conversations," Drew said in a recent interview. "I understood what eavesdropping means. Eavesdropping does not mean recording a public conversation. The conversation we were having — if it was a conversation at all — the words that we were having were all public words."
Illinois' eavesdropping ban was extended in 1994 to include open and obvious audio recording, even if it takes place on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists and in a volume audible to the "unassisted human ear."
Kutnick said the law makes no sense today, when so many people carry smartphones capable of shooting video and thousands of public and private surveillance cameras are stationed throughout the city.
"There's no place for it in today's sophisticated, technological society," he said. "Now the first thing anybody does (is) pull out the phone, pull out the recorder. Laws should track what's happening in the world, and this is a perfect example of where it is not keeping up."
Officials with the Fraternal Order of Police in Chicago have said the union supports the law because it prevents people from making baseless accusations against officers by recording them and then releasing snippets that don't reveal the full context of the incident.
But Kutnick counters that people should have the right to record public police activity and that officers who perform their duties properly shouldn't mind the scrutiny.
"The legitimate police officer, the police officer who's doing the right thing, should only welcome these recordings because then they can prove, 'I did everything by the book,'" Kutnick said.
Still, recording police who are doing their jobs properly can invite unwanted attention.
Ralph Braseth, a journalism professor at Loyola University Chicago, said he was handcuffed and lectured by a Chicago police officer in November after he videoed the officer and his partner arresting a teen who jumped a turnstile at the CTA's Red Line station at Chicago Avenue.
Braseth said he was shooting video for a documentary about teens from poor neighborhoods who come downtown on weekends, and he happened to be in the station when the arrest took place. The officers were professional when arresting the teen and "didn't do anything wrong," Braseth said.
"There was nothing damning on that tape," he said.
Braseth said one of the officers saw him recording the arrest, handcuffed him and put him in the back of a squad car outside the station. The officer never mentioned the eavesdropping law. Instead, he told Braseth "I had no business doing what I was doing" and said that videoing officers "interferes with the work of police," according to the professor.
The officer released Braseth after about 25 minutes, but before he let Braseth go, he asked to see the video, the professor said. Braseth said that when he played the video on his camera, the officer reached down and hit the delete button and then told him to have a good night.
Braseth has since filed a complaint with the Independent Police Review Authority, which forwarded the case to Chicago police internal affairs investigators.
While Braseth said he understands why some police officers don't like to be recorded, he said Illinois' eavesdropping law "should have been done away with a long time ago."
"The citizens of Chicago employ the police officers, and they are acting as agents for our government," Braseth said. "I don't necessarily think it's my job to police the police, but I think it's a good idea for them to know that that can happen at any time. It's one of the checks and balances that we have. It's so fundamental."
Many of the challenges against the Illinois law stem from its vague wording and exceptions.
About five years ago, Illinois state Rep. Chapin Rose, R-Charleston set out to rewrite the law to provide some "bright line rules" on exactly when and where recording someone was illegal. His bill sought to amend the language to make it legal to record the official duties of the police in public as long as the "physical act of recording does not interfere with those duties."
Rose, a former prosecutor, said in a recent interview that the idea was not warmly received.
"I put the bill in and it went absolutely nowhere," he said. "I couldn't even get interest in it in committee."
The bill died in the Illinois House Rules Committee in January 2007. Rose said, to his knowledge, there have been no efforts to update the law since.
Despite opposition from some law enforcement groups and a reluctance among lawmakers to revise the law, Drew said, he believes it's only a matter of time before the law is changed, especially if more people are charged with felonies for recording police in public.
"It affects everybody," he said. "Citizens are … telling each other, 'You're damn right we have this right, and you're damn right we're going to use it.'"
rhaggerty@tribune.com
jmeisner@tribune.com
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