Washington D.C.

Attorney general wants return to tough enforcement policies

by the Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — For three decades, America got tough on crime.

Police used aggressive tactics and arrest rates soared. Small-time drug cases clogged the courts. Vigorous gun prosecutions sent young men away from their communities and to faraway prisons for long terms.

But as crime rates dropped since 2000, enforcement policies changed. Even conservative lawmakers sought to reduce mandatory minimum sentences and to lower prison populations, and law enforcement shifted to new models that emphasized community partnerships over mass arrests.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions often reflects fondly on the tough enforcement strategies of decades ago and sees today's comparatively low crime rates as a sign they worked. He is preparing to revive some of those practices even as some involved in criminal justice during that period have come to believe those approaches went too far, for too long.

“In many ways with this administration we are rolling back,” said David Baugh, who worked as a federal prosecutor in the 1970s and 1980s before becoming a defense lawyer in Richmond, Virginia. “We are implementing plans that have been proven not to work.”

Sessions, who cut his teeth as a federal prosecutor in Mobile, Alabama, at the height of the drug war, favors strict enforcement of drug laws and mandatory minimum sentences. He says a recent spike in violence in some cities shows the need for more aggressive work. The Justice Department said there won't be a repeat of past problems.

“The field of criminal justice has advanced leaps and bounds in the past several decades,” spokesman Ian Prior said. “It is not our intention to simply jettison every lesson learned from previous administrations.”

Sessions took another step back from recent practices when the Justice Department announced last week that it might back away from federal agreements that force cities to agree to major policing overhauls. His concern is that such deals might conflict with his crime-fighting agenda.

Consent decrees were a staple of the Obama administration's efforts to change troubled departments, but Sessions has said those agreements can unfairly malign an entire police force. He has advanced the unproven theory that heavy scrutiny of police in recent years has made officers less aggressive, leading to a rise in crime in Chicago and other cities.

It's the latest worry for civil rights activists fretting about a return to the kind of aggressive policing that grew out of the drug war, when officers were encouraged to make large numbers of stops, searches and arrests, including for minor offenses. That technique is increasingly seen as more of a strain on police-community relationships than an effective way to deter crime, said Ronal Serpas, former police chief in New Orleans. He was a young officer in the 1980s when crack cocaine ravaged some communities.

Officers' orders were simple, Serpas said: “‘Go arrest everybody.' We had no idea what the answers were,” he said. “Those of us who were on the front line of that era of policing have learned there are far more effective ways to arrest repeat, violent offenders, versus arresting a lot of people. That's what we have learned over the last 30 years.”

In a recent memo calling for aggressive prosecution of violent crime, Sessions told the nation's federal prosecutors that he soon would provide more guidance on how they should prosecute all criminal cases.

Sessions' approach is embodied in his encouraging cities to send certain gun cases to tougher federal courts, where the penalties are more severe than in state courts, and defendants are often sent out of state to serve their terms.

He credits one such program, Project Exile, with slowing murders in Richmond, Virginia, in the late 1990s. Its pioneer was FBI Director James Comey, who was then the lead federal prosecutor in the area.

In the community, billboards and ads warned anyone caught with an illegal gun faced harsh punishment. Homicides fell more than 30 percent in the first year in Richmond, and other cities adopted similar approaches.

But studies reached mixed conclusions about its long-term success. Defense lawyers such as Baugh said the program disproportionately hurt the black community by putting gun suspects in front of mostly white federal juries, as opposed to state juries drawn from predominantly black Richmond jury pools that might be more sympathetic to black defendants.

“They took a lot of young African-American men and took them off the streets and out of their communities and homes and placed them in federal prison,” said Robert Wagner, a federal public defender in Richmond.

Baugh argued the program was unconstitutional after a client was arrested for gun and marijuana possession during a traffic stop. He lost the argument, but a judge who revealed 90 percent of Project Exile defendants were black also shared concerns about the initiative.

Sessions has acknowledged the need to be sensitive to racial disparities, but has also said, “When you fight crime, you have to fight it where it is … if it's focused fairly and objectively on dangerous criminals, then you're doing the right thing.”

During the drug war, sentencing disparities between crack cocaine and powder cocaine crimes were seen as unfairly punishing black defendants. Sessions in 2010 co-sponsored legislation that reduced that disparity. But he later opposed bipartisan criminal justice overhaul efforts, warning that eliminating mandatory minimum sentences weakens the ability of law enforcement to protect the public.

“My vision of a smart way to do this is, let's take that arrest, lets hammer that criminal who's distributing drugs that have been imported in our country,” Sessions said in a recent speech to law enforcement officials.

The rhetoric sounds familiar to Mark Osler, who worked as a federal prosecutor in Detroit in the late 1990s, when possessing 5 grams of crack cocaine brought an automatic five-year prison sentence. Osler said he came onto the job expecting to go after international drug trafficking rings but “instead we were locking up 18-year-old kids selling a small amount of crack, and pretending it was an international trafficker.”

http://wtop.com/government/2017/04/attorney-general-wants-return-to-tough-enforcement-policies/

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North Carolina

Mayor: Charlotte is addressing spike in murders

by Jennifer Roberts

The spike in homicides this year in Charlotte is unsettling and unacceptable, but most of all it is heartbreaking to the friends and families who are suffering the loss of a loved one.

I applaud CMPD for taking concrete steps to address crime. This Friday, Charlotte swore in 28 new officers, part of the 125 new police officers the City Council and I worked to fund last year. These officers were hired to better reflect the neighborhoods they will serve as our police are committed to building personal relationships in all corners of our city. We are grateful for our community partners who know their local patrol officers and work with them on a daily basis in our neighborhoods to both prevent and solve crimes.

In addition to community policing, Chief Kerr Putney and his officers are focusing resources on specific neighborhoods to reduce violent crime. In January, CMPD launched Operation Avalanche, which has resulted in an overall decrease in violent crime of 84 percent in those neighborhoods. Of the 27 recent homicides, CMPD has been working hard to bring these violent criminals to justice, and 19 of these cases have been solved, including the double homicide that occurred last weekend.

Despite these successes, in the overwhelming majority of recent homicides, the victims knew their attackers, and unfortunately that type of crime is among the most difficult for law enforcement to prevent. That is why our investments in community programs and partnerships are so important in our work to reduce violence.

The recent work of the Opportunity Task Force has put in place a framework for action. I call on our business and philanthropic community to invest more deeply in our children and in the educational and family development programs we know are critical to the future prosperity and safety of our city. Government cannot do it alone; we must all give back to the city that has given so much to us.

Police respond most frequently to domestic violence calls, and domestic violence all too often leads to worse crimes. I have long been committed to preventing domestic violence and providing survivors and their families with the resources to escape these criminal environments. I will continue to partner with the community, our faith leaders, Mecklenburg County, our non-profits like Safe Alliance and others to reduce domestic violence and assault between family members and intimate partners.

This month is Child Abuse Awareness Month as well as Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and it is important for us as a community to know the signs of abuse and domestic violence, and to know the resources we can point our friends and family to if they are in need. This knowledge has the power to save lives. I urge you to recognize the signs of domestic violence and abuse and report it to 911.

While we are committed to addressing the systemic and structural causes of violent crime, I want it to be clear to everyone in our community: If you commit a violent crime in the City of Charlotte, you will be brought to justice.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article143407754.html

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Utah

Police social workers? Salt Lake City's unusual program has scores of success stories

by Matthew Piper

First, Salt Lake City's police department gave Eric Bird a citation.

Then the department gave him a list of felon-friendly apartment complexes, two bus tokens and an affirming fist bump.

"Let's talk about some of your barriers to housing," said police social worker Debbie Davis in the department's inconspicuous Community Connection Center (CCC), not far from where Bird had been caught smoking spice on a downtown median.

Bird is one of more than 3,200 walk-in clients seen at the center since it opened in July — many of them, like Bird, referred by officers policing the Rio Grande district's homeless population.

Area law enforcement agencies made headlines in October with three sweeps they branded "Operation Diversion," in which 132 offenders were given a choice between treatment and jail.

Of 68 who chose treatment, 51 absconded.

The greater success story, says Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown, is what the department's newly hired social workers have accomplished through their daily work — straightforwardly termed "Operation Voluntary Clients."

Of 320 people who've received a full assessment at the one-of-a-kind Community Connections Center since the end of Operation Diversion, 93 remain in treatment, while 92 await treatment availability.

Other clients have been pointed toward resources for housing and employment, or sent on a Greyhound bus to families who are willing to help end their homelessness.

The department pitched in to obtain supportive housing for one mentally ill man who had stayed at the 210 S. Rio Grande St. shelter on and off for 15 years and secured a housing voucher for another man who had slept at the shelter 1,000 consecutive nights.

On a mid-February day, Bird spoke freely to Davis about his 2-year-old son, his ambition to return to school in the summer and his struggles staying clean — "I'm hot stuff in rehab," he said, regretfully.

Afterward, jittery and in need of a cigarette, Bird said his past history led him to doubt whether he'd ever fully address his mental health and substance abuse problems.

Still, he said, "I'm glad this place is here."

"It's good to have someone that has all that stuff organized."

Triage • Lana Dalton's thin blinds do little to obscure her view of the bustling drug market at the corner of 200 South and 500 West.

Instead, she focuses this afternoon on a gregarious man named Rodney, who has paid her a visit because, he says, "I've got some things I've got to talk about, and we don't have nobody to talk to."

Dalton is frank and unfiltered. One among an array of offbeat motivational materials in her office reads: "Sometimes life sucks ass, no matter how much love, light and patchouli you throw in its face."

The Community Connections Center's mission is short-term triage, not shooting the breeze, and while nearly a dozen people wait in the lobby, Dalton persuades Rodney to schedule an appointment before he returns.

Next, she must inform a woman sent to Salt Lake City from Evanston, Wyo., that SLCPD will not be able to put her on a bus to stay with an Oregon friend until it clears an outstanding warrant with a prosecutor in Washington state.

"She's not going to be happy," Dalton predicts correctly.

It is Dalton's show. The City Council first budgeted for police social workers in 2015 at the insistence of now-Chairman Stan Penfold, and Dalton was hired that November to build a program that would be unlike any other in the nation.

Although many cops work alongside social workers, it is highly unusual for a police department to actually employ those social workers. In most comparable models, county health departments embed with police units.

"To do research on this is nearly impossible," Dalton said, "because it doesn't exist."

She added, laughing, "for good reason."

Some clients are victims or perpetrators in active cases. And while walk-in clients don't get the federal privacy protections they would at a hospital, Dalton's social workers adhere to their own ethics and licensing guidelines, she said.

Brown said there was some internal frustration about that early on.

"Lana said, 'Look, we're social workers, and we're going to find out information about people that we can't share with you.' Cops were like, 'We need to know everything,' and Lana was like, 'No, you don't. Just trust us.' "

Soon, they said, the frustration gave way to gratitude.

Dalton's staff is more qualified to solve many of the problems that officers encounter on calls in the area.

About a quarter of the clients need treatment for substance abuse or mental-health problems, a fifth require housing and another fifth require transportation. One in 10 needs help finding employment. And one in 20 just wants to use a phone or computer.

"We're freed up a lot more," said homeless outreach Officer Michael McKenna.

Added partner Brandi Palmer:"We'll have clients who we're trying to reach out to and they're really police-resistant." Social workers, she said, often have more luck. Davis said some clients will look over their shoulders in the bare-bones office to see who's listening, but "we really assure them that we are not police officers."

And while there may be complications about sharing information, there are advantages to having social workers attached to the department — like rapid deployment.

"The window for providing help to some of these people is sometimes open for a very short time," Brown said.

In one example, Dalton talked down a young man who had threatened to jump off an overpass.

When he was released from supervised treatment, an internal report said her office planned to buy him a Greyhound ticket to attend his father's funeral.

Rock bottom. Not everyone in the Rio Grande district is ready for that kind of help.

Palmer, who has made outreach rounds with McKenna for 20 months, said that with some drug users, "You can tell them almost exactly what's going to happen, and they do it anyway."

On a gusty day in late February, the duo was called to speak to an unkempt man loitering outside an apartment complex.

"Daniel," shirtless beneath an unzipped Started jacker, staggered and stared at the ground as though lost in thought or looking for something as the officers told him about the Community Connections Center.

The behavior is common with spice users, Palmer said. Free to go, Daniel stopped a few paces away to inspect some cigarette butts.

"With just straight-up drug use, [a CCC visit] has to be something they want to do," Palmer said.

They have to hit rock bottom, McKenna said.

"And rock bottom is relative," Palmer added. "Like, that's pretty rock bottom to me," she said, pointing to Daniel, "but he's cool."

Davis said the first thing the department's social workers do is determine whether there's a crisis that requires immediate treatment. They then assess a client's housing situation and then try to resolve lingering criminal and legal problems.

Most have challenges that can't be worked through in a single conversation.

Dustin Garcia, orginally from Seattle, agreed to let The Salt Lake Tribune observe as he told Davis that he thought he'd finished a detox program with an understanding that officials would help him find an apartment. But there had been a disagreement about his treatment obligation, he said, and now he had nowhere to go. A return to the shelter would bring the inescapable temptation of heroin, he said.

Among Garcia's barriers to housing: a previous eviction and $17,000 in unpaid rent.

"I feel like I've got to take care of so many things," he said, pleading for motel vouchers that CCC didn't have to spare.

"I'm not sure we have a solution for you today," she said. "Let's come uo with a plan for tonight, because I really want you to work on your sobriety."

Dalton said many people have the misconception that homelessness is about "getting a job," but it's "way more complex than that."

"If you ask anybody down here, 100 percent would say it wasn't my intention to become homeless, shooting up heroin on [a traffic] island."

Her staff members "have to be flexible, innovative, and willing to throw out their day plans and just roll with what's going to happen next," she said, "because they just don't know."

Last week, the hired a fourth social worker. The office also includes a therapist, two part-time drivers and two office technicians.

The department has hosted visits from the Ciry University of New York and police departments in Anaheim , Calif., and Mesa Arz., with interest also expressed by Physicians for Criminal Justice Reform, based in Atlanta and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, based in Houston.

Anaheim police Lt. Bob Dunn said Salt Lake City's department was already reputed to be one of the nation's best at homeless outreach, prompting his visit late last year, and he found the nascent caseworker program "really cool."

Thought it's "not all rainbows and unicorns," Dalton said, she was surprised that officers have greeted them with the same camaraderie that they afford one another.

"They're tired of being the default social worker," she said, "because that is not their job."

Not anymore, at least.

http://www.sltrib.com/home/5094630-155/police-social-workers-salt-lake-citys

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Utah

Amid contention over homeless issues, Salt Lake leaders celebrate success stories

Officials say Connection Center working, but time, more resources needed

by Katie McKellar

SALT LAKE CITY — Kevin Thrower became homeless in February 2015 after leaving an abusive relationship with a woman he said knocked his teeth out and broke his jaw.

He came to Salt Lake City from Nevada, which he said had little to no homeless services.

Finding work in Utah, he said, wasn't difficult — housing was the real problem.

That's where Salt Lake City's team of social workers saved the day, Thrower said, finding him an affordable apartment downtown near his job as a construction worker.

"It's just like how space travel for the dinosaurs 65 million years ago would have been helpful. You can't get any more helpful than this right here," Thrower said. "This is needed. This is necessary."

"The only failure here," Thrower added. "Is there's not enough."

Thrower revisited Salt Lake City's Community Connection Center Thursday, where city leaders including Mayor Jackie Biskupski and Police Chief Mike Brown came to celebrate its work.

The center — at the heart of the Rio Grande neighborhood on the corner of 500 West and 200 South — is a headquarters for a team of six, soon to be eight social workers who help connect people experiencing homelessness, addiction and mental illness to housing or treatment.

Since the center opened last July, it has served more than 3,240 walk-in clients referred by officers policing the Rio Grande neighborhood, according to Salt Lake City data. More than 330 have come to the center voluntarily seeking help, of which 93 have remained in treatment. Another 102 wait for treatment.

"Salt Lake City has seen a lot of success from this center here," Brown said. "This is a pilot program that's proved itself and is worth its weight in gold. We need to look at ways to expand it."

Social work manager Lana Dalton takes pride in the center's success stories — saying her team does everything it can do to help as many people as possible.

"I'm really proud of this program and my staff. My staff work day in and day out. …"

But Dalton didn't finish the sentence. Her eyes tearing up, her voice strained with emotion.

Though Wednesday's gathering was cheery, it came during a contentious time for Salt Lake City and the homeless population that state, county and city leaders have been trying to help by reshaping the homeless services model.

Over the past several years, fear and anger have gripped Salt Lake residents and visitors over the drug and crime problems that have plagued the overcrowded Road Home shelter.

That fear and anger has since spread, particularly to neighborhoods in South Salt Lake, West Valley and Draper, where nine sites were under consideration for a new homeless resource center, one of three facilities meant to break up Road Home's 1,100-bed population.

When South Salt Lake was chosen for the facility, their mayor called it a "lethal blow" to the community.

This week, business leaders in the Rio Grande community gathered to pressure city and county leaders to seriously consider at least some parts of Salt Lake County Sheriff Jim Winder's "21-point plan" to handle homeless issues to prevent another out-of-control summer this year — even though parts of the plan have drawn controversy and concerns over its constitutionality.

So even as Salt Lake City leaders celebrate the work at the Community Connection Center, frustration lingers over the troubles that continue to plague the neighborhood.

"The next six months are going to be brutal if we don't get on top of it," Jason Mathis, director of the Salt Lake-based business group the Downtown Alliance, said this week.

But the work that's happening in the Community Connection Center shouldn't be discounted, Dalton said.

"There's a lot of hard work happening," she said, adding that she's hopeful it may alleviate the pressures on the neighborhood enough so perhaps the upcoming summer won't be as chaotic.

Brown, who has expressed concerns about Winder's plan to quickly reduce the bed space at the Road Home and divert people to managed encampments, said the Community Connection Center's work is a more wholesome solution, but he's not sure whether this summer will be noticeably better than last.

"We are ramping up to prepare for what could happen this summer — we know," Biskupski said. "We want to make sure we do what we can to mitigate, especially over the next two years before our resource centers are open and our housing becomes available."

But Biskupski added it takes time to change a homeless system that has been in place for decades.

"People are expecting some sort of miracle," she said. "But we are talking about thousands of people — these are real human beings that need assistance.

"To say nothing is working is coming from people who aren't knowledgeable of the work that's being done," Biskupski added, urging community members who are skeptical to come to the center to see the work in action.

The chief and the mayor said increased funding for behavioral health treatment beds and health coverage is key to reforming homeless services.

Biskupski noted ongoing funding for Operation Diversion — the effort last fall to separate criminals and the addicted from the homeless — has been included in her budget proposal this year, to the tune of more than $600,000, with matching funds from the county.

She said Operation Diversion will be a critical "tool" as city officials work to manage the area in the coming summer months.

****

LDS Church on homeless issue

Amid ongoing controversy surrounding homeless issues, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints released a statement Wednesday afternoon, applauding the ongoing efforts to find solutions:

"Homelessness is a tragic condition that afflicts individuals and even families in many places, including Utah. The causes are varied, and solutions are often difficult, but whether homelessness stems from conflict, poverty, mental illness, addiction or other sources, our response to those in need defines us as individuals and communities.

"We are grateful for the willingness of government, community and civic leaders to tackle this issue. We applaud their continuing efforts to find solutions that will not only relieve the suffering inherent in homelessness but also implement measures that will help homeless individuals become self-reliant and deal with criminal elements that prey on the homeless.

"The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints feels keenly a responsibility to help in a Christlike way and has participated in efforts to address homelessness for many years, particularly in the Salt Lake Valley. Our farms and facilities provide food, clothing and resources. We have partnered with government, relief organizations, community groups and other faiths to care for those in need and to help address the underlying causes of homelessness.

"Over the last decade, the Church has donated cash and commodities totaling more than $42 million to eight community and religious organizations that serve the homeless in Salt Lake City. There are dozens of partners that draw upon the Church's food reserves at bishops' storehouses on a monthly basis. In addition, the Church offers counseling services, employment training, job placement and personal ministering to the homeless. To support the current efforts of city and county officials, the Church earlier agreed to sell its Deseret Industries facility at 130 East 700 South to Salt Lake City for use as one of three or four planned homeless resource centers. In addition, we are in active discussions with community partners to identify where the greatest needs exist and how the Church may offer additional help.

"The Church's institutional response is made possible by the ongoing generous humanitarian and other contributions of Church members. In addition, many members do what they can as individuals and families to support community efforts designed to assist the homeless, for which we express our gratitude."

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865677301/Amid-contention-over-homeless-issues-Salt-Lake-leaders-celebrate-success-stories.html

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Massachusetts

Bill aims to take guns from those at risk of inflicting harm

The bill would let family and police ask a judge to impose an "extreme risk protective order" against individuals experiencing a personal crisis and at risk of dangerous behavior

by Steve LeBlanc

BOSTON — Massachusetts lawmakers are weighing legislation aimed at taking guns out of the hands of those deemed at risk of hurting themselves or others.

The bill would let family members and police ask a judge to impose what supporters call an "extreme risk protective order" against individuals experiencing a personal crisis and at risk of dangerous behavior.

The order would let police temporarily restrict the individual's access to firearms. The initial order would remain for 10 days after which an individual could petition to have the order removed. A judge could agree or could extend the order for up to a year.

Supporters point in part to suicides among veterans, many of whom use guns to kill themselves. The bill, which gun rights advocates oppose, could help avoid some of those suicides by giving family members more power to intervene, they say.

The bill's sponsor, Democratic state Rep. David Linsky, said there have been a number of cases where family members knew a relative had a mental health problem and sought to have weapons removed from the home, but were told by police they didn't have the authority.

"If someone is having a temporary mental health problem but is a firearms owner, this will be a mechanism for mental health providers to temporarily get those guns out of their hands," said Linsky.

Massachusetts isn't alone. Supporters say 20 states are currently weighing some form of the legislation.

A handful of states already have similar measures on the books including California, which passed a law in the wake of a 2014 mass shooting that allows family members and police to ask a judge to issue an emergency protective order for those at risk of harming themselves or others.

Jim Wallace, executive director of the Gun Owners Action League of Massachusetts, said the legislation is misguided.

"We're actually pretty concerned about the bill. I think it's an extraordinarily dangerous bill in terms of civil rights and public safety," Wallace said. "It's a sound bite."

Wallace said lawmakers should focus more on the issue of mental illness and not on limiting access to firearms in a state which already has some of the strictest gun laws in the country.

He said there are other ways for an individual to hurt themselves besides using a gun.

"We're labeling someone an extreme risk and taking their civil rights away and letting them walk away? That's a horrific situation," Wallace said. "We're ignoring the human element. We're ignoring the situation. There are a lot of other ways they can hurt themselves and others."

Linsky said that argument is hypocritical.

"Gun advocates for years have been saying it's not a gun problem, it's a mental health problem. Here it is a court finding that there is a mental health problem and the gun extremists still want these individuals to have guns to kill themselves or their family members or innocent people," Linsky said.

He said the goal of the bill is to "take away the guns and get them treatment rather than leaving them with their guns and hoping they get treatment."

Linsky said he's hopeful the bill could pass during the current two-year legislative which began in January. He said he already has 32 co-sponsors in the 160 member House.

Egypt

Palm Sunday in Egypt: 27 killed in blasts in, near Coptic churches

by Joe Sterling, Faith Karimi and Mohanned Tawfeeq

Palm Sunday in Egypt: 27 killed in blasts in, near Coptic churches

In Tanta, news footage shows people gathered at the church, singing hymns. The video then quickly switches to bars as harrowing screams and cries echo in the background.

"Everything is destroyed inside the church" and blood can be seen on marble pillars, said Peter Kamel, who saw the aftermath of the carnage.

It appeared the explosive device was placed near the altar, he said. Priests and the church choir were among the casualties.

Social media video showed crowds gathered outside the church shortly after the attack.

There were no further details about the Alexandria incident. The city sits on the Mediterranean and has a large Christian population.

While it's unclear who attacked the church Sunday, Copts face persecution and discrimination that has spiked since the toppling of Hosni Mubarak's regime in 2011.

Dozens have been killed in sectarian clashes. In December, an attack at a Coptic church in Cairo killed 25 people.

"Coptic churches and homes have been set on fire, members of the Coptic minority have been physically attacked, and their property has been looted, " rights group Amnesty International reported in March.

Coptic Christians make up about 10% of Egypt's population of 91 million. They base their theology on the teachings of the Apostle Mark, who introduced Christianity to Egypt.

Tanta is roughly 60 miles (96 kilometers) north of Cairo, in the Nile delta.

The attack comes days after President Donald Trump welcomed Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to Washington and stressed his support for Cairo. Among the topics of mutual concern were terrorism and terror group ISIS.

El-Sisi met Saturday with a US congressional delegation led by US Rep. Darrell Issa, the Egyptian government said.

The meeting addressed Egypt's counter-terrorism efforts and adopting a strategy to fight terror and encourage religious tolerance and acceptance of others.

The Tanta attack Sunday drew outrage from religious leaders across the globe.

Pope Francis is scheduled to visit Cairo this month, where he will meet with various religious leaders, including the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church.

He expressed his grief following the church attack.

"To my dear brother his Holiness Pope Tawadros II, to the Coptic church and to all of the dear country Egypt, I express my deep condolences, I prayed for the dead and the wounded, I am close to the families and to the entire community. God convert the hearts of the people who spread terror, violence and dead, and also the heart of who produces and traffic weapons," the pope said.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, serving the Church of England and the worldwide Anglican Communion, called the attacks "evil" and urged people to pray for the victims.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/09/middleeast/egypt-church-explosion/

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Texas

Hacking Attack Woke Up Dallas With Emergency Sirens, Officials Say

by Eli Rosenberg and Maya Salam

Officials in Dallas said the city's warning system was hacked late on Friday night, disrupting the city when all 156 of its emergency sirens sounded into the early hours of Saturday morning.

The alarms, which started going off around 11:40 p.m. Friday and lasted until 1:20 a.m. Saturday, created a sense of fear and confusion, jarring residents awake and flooding 911 with thousands of calls, officials said.

Sana Syed, a spokeswoman for the city, said in a telephone interview that the sound of the sirens, which are meant to alert the public to severe weather or other emergencies, was interpreted by some as a warning sign of a “bomb or something, a missile.”

“I can understand the concern,” she said, noting the recent airstrikes in Syria.

Social media was flooded with complaints. “Talk about creepy,” wrote one user.

Officials declined to give full details about the nature of the breach, citing security reasons, but they said they believed it had originated locally.

“We do believe it came from the Dallas area because of the proximity to our signal you need to have in order to pull it off,” Ms. Syed said.

Mayor Mike Rawlings called the breach “an attack on our emergency notification system” and said it was evidence of a need to upgrade and safeguard the city's technology infrastructure.

“We will work to identify and prosecute those responsible,” he wrote on his Facebook page.

The alarms blasted for 90-second durations about 15 times, Rocky Vaz, the director of the city's Office of Emergency Management, told reporters at a news conference.

Mr. Vaz said emergency workers and technicians had to first figure out whether the sirens had been activated because of an actual emergency. And turning off the sirens also proved difficult, eventually prompting officials to shut down the entire system.

“Every time we thought we had turned it off, the sirens would sound again, because whoever was hacking us was continuously hacking us,” Ms. Syed said.

The system was still down on Saturday afternoon, and officials said they hoped to have it functional again by the end of the weekend. They said they had pinpointed the origin of the security breach after ruling out that the alarms had come from their control system or from remote access.

“Talking to all the experts in the siren industry, in the field,” Mr. Vaz said. “This is a very rare event.”

Mr. Vaz said that Dallas had reached out to the Federal Communications Commission for help and was taking steps to prevent hackers from setting off the entire system again, but that city officials had not communicated with federal law enforcement authorities.

The city has had other recent struggles with its emergency systems. Its 911 system has had a problem with one phone carrier that has caused wait times as long as 26 minutes, The Dallas Morning News reported.

At least 4,400 calls came into the area's 911 system locally in the hours around the attack on Friday night, Ms. Syed said — about double the amount normal overnight. The longest wait time was about six minutes, she said.

Security officials have warned for years about the risks that hacking attacks can pose to infrastructure. The number of attacks on critical infrastructure appears to have risen: to nearly 300 in 2015 from just under 200 in 2012, according to federal data. In 2013, hackers tied to the Iranian military tried to gain control of a small dam in upstate New York.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/08/us/dallas-emergency-sirens-hacking.html?_r=0

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Wisconsin

Wisconsin Police Hunt Armed Man Who Allegedly Mailed Manifesto to Trump

by Chelsea Bailey

(Picture on site)

Wisconsin police were widening their hunt Saturday for a 32-year-old man who allegedly burglarized a gun store after mailing an anti-government manifesto to President Donald Trump.

Joseph Jakubowski has been on the run since Tuesday, when police say he broke into the Armageddon Gun Shop in Janesville, south of Madison, and stole 16 high-caliber rifles and handguns. He is believed to be armed and dangerous, and traveling with a bulletproof vest and helmet, according to authorities.

At a news conference Friday, Rock County Sheriff Robert Spoden said Jakubowski had been highly agitated by national politics recently and had confessed to friends that he had plans to steal guns and conduct an "unspecified attack."

Janesville Police Chief David Moore said his department has also had multiple run-ins with Jakubowski over the years.

"There was one specific case where he attempted to disarm a police officer," Moore told reporters. "Were it not for the very secure holster of this police officer, he would have certainly disarmed that police officer. And for that crime, (he) was sent to prison."

Police released a video Jakubowski allegedly posted to Facebook that shows a man mailing a large envelope clearly addressed to Trump and the White House. Authorities say the package contained a 160-page manifesto that featured anti-government rants and "personal angst against anything other than natural law or rule."

"This manifesto has been evaluated by experts within the FBI behavioral analysis unit to better understand his mindset and locate leads or evidence," Spoden said. "All technological resources are currently being exploited and used in this endeavor after this individual."

On Tuesday night, police also responded to a report of a car fire and discovered a burned vehicle registered to Jabukowski, located just a short distance from the gun shop that was burglarized.

Jakubowski is described as 5-foot-10 and 200 pounds with green eyes and brown hair.

Since Tuesday, authorities have responded to more than 200 leads in their search, and the FBI is offering a $10,000 reward to anyone with information leading to Jabukowsi's arrest.

Local communities were told to consider closing schools Monday if he is not apprehended over the weekend.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wisconsin-police-search-armed-man-who-sent-manifesto-trump-n744186

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Massachusetts

Mass. governor pushes police protection law

Gov. Charlie Baker wants to boost the charge of assault and battery on a police officer to a felony in cases where the cop sustains a "serious bodily injury"

by Matt Stout

Boston-Gov. Charlie Baker is renewing his push to up the penalty for attacking and injuring cops with a bill his top public safety aide is touting as a "foolproff" measure to protect police officers in the line of duty.

The legislation, which Baker aides say he'll file today, mirrors a bill he pushed last spring in the wake of a murder of an Auburn cop. That bill never came to a vote in the Legislature.

Baker wants to boost the charge of assault and battery on a police officer to a felony in cases where the cop sustains a “serious bodily injury.” The change would impose a mandatory minimum sentence of a year, with the potential for up to 10 years — well above the current maximum of 2?1/2 years.

“Under the law right now, technically it's only a misdemeanor,” said Chelsea police Chief Brian Kyes. “You might push me, you might punch me in the face.”

Under Baker's bill, Kyes said, “It would only rise to the level of felony if you beat someone to the point where you broke my arm, broke my jaw. Having that currently as only a misdemeanor, the punishment doesn't fit the crime.”

The bill joins others already filed by lawmakers on Beacon Hill, and was prompted in part by the high-profile death last May of Auburn police officer Ronald Tarentino during an early morning traffic stop.

Suspect Jorge Zambrano, who was later shot and killed by police, had a history of arrests and assaults on cops beforehand, including a charge just months earlier when he pulled a cop into a car. He had been given probation on that charge.

But the legislation faced headwinds. Civil libertarians objected that it would do little to deter such attacks and could give police a heavy-handed charge to hold over defendants who may inadvertently strike an officer during a tussle.

Rahsaan Hall, director of the ACLU of Massachusetts' racial justice program, noted at the time that even if the bill was on the books, it would not have prevented Tarentino's death.

“There are adequate protections already,” Hall told lawmakers last July. “There's already a penalty for assault and battery with serious bodily injury.”

Baker did not make any substantive changes to the new bill, but Public Safety Secretary Dan Bennett said his administration would emphasize the mandate of “serious bodily injury,” which under state law generally includes permanent disfigurement or “substantial risk of death.”

“(We're) trying to do a better job convincing them, legislative members, that this is the right bill at the right time,” Bennett said. “Is it a bill that's foolproof in making sure it's not abused? That ‘serious bodily injury' is what makes it foolproof to that. ... It's going to get knocked out by a court if they can't produce medical records showing that.”

State Rep. Paul K. Frost, an Auburn Republican who is co-sponsoring a similar bill, said the timing of last year's push near the end of the legislative session contributed to its demise.

“Now we're going to have to do more education on it,” he said.

https://www.policeone.com/legal/articles/325008006-Mass-governor-pushes-police-protection-law/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

New York

NY police set to deploy 1,200 bodycams around the city

Officers who work the evening shift will get the cameras as part of a pilot program ordered by a federal judge

by Colleen Long

NEW YORK- The New York Police Department is set to deploy the first body cameras to officers around the city after resolving some of the thorniest issues on when to switch on the camera, how long to keep the tape and when to tell the public they're being recorded.

About 1,200 officers who work the evening shift in 20 precincts will get the cameras starting at the end of the month as part of a pilot program ordered by a federal judge. The order followed a 2013 ruling that officers were wrongly targeting black and Hispanic men with its stop-and-frisk program. At the time, few police departments used body cameras.

Their use has exploded around the country following a string of killings of unarmed black people by police over the past three years and the ambush and killing of officers in New York City, Dallas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Both officers and citizens have said cameras could help de-escalate tense situations that lead to violence.

But the NYPD's deployment has been on hold following a lengthy process to choose the camera company and storage, and questions on how they would work. As part of the federal mandate, the department sought public comment through a questionnaire. Some 25,000 people, plus 5,000 police officers, responded anonymously, and NYPD officials made changes based on the results.

Public response was disproportionately white relative to the city's population, police officials acknowledged. But the report found that on many key questions, there was little difference in response by race.

One change based on the results was to alert civilians they are being recorded.

"New Yorkers ... really want to be told they're being recorded," assistant deputy commissioner Nancy Hoppock said. "And officers really don't want to tell them."

Police won't record every interaction — even though the public would prefer it — because there's not enough storage capability and it would bump up against privacy laws and could stop witnesses from coming forward.

"We're very cognizant of people's privacy. We don't want to deter people from cooperating," said Assistant Chief Matthew Pontillo.

According to a draft of the operations order, officers will turn on their cameras for arrests, summonses, vehicle stops, interactions with crime suspects, interactions with a mentally unstable person who is violent, or when using force. They record property searches. They won't record demonstrations unless there is a crime in process or other enforcement. Officers also won't be able to view their footage if they're involved in a fatal shooting or a criminal probe before being questioned by prosecutors. The tapes will be kept for a year.

Lawyers on the federal stop-and-frisk case, who are working with the NYPD, said they believe the amount of recording doesn't go far enough and creates too much confusion for officers on when to record.

"Making a call to turn on a camera in the heat of the moment is much more burdensome for officers," said attorney Darius Charney. "Just turning on the camera at the beginning is a much more straightforward approach."

The federal monitor must sign off on the changes. Officers will receive a day of training on the camera, and the order will be revised as the department gets feedback and does its own study using a yearlong comparison to 20 precincts without cameras. Mayor Bill de Blasio has said he wants all 23,000 of its patrol officers outfitted with cameras by 2019.

San Francisco's policy is similar to New York's. In Chicago, officers are told to turn on cameras at the start of every tour and activate them only as they encounter citizens. In Baltimore, cameras are used for "all enforcement actions; for calls of a potentially criminal or adversarial nature; and for any other law enforcement contact that the officer believes appropriate," according to city policy.

https://www.policeone.com/police-products/body-cameras/articles/325010006-NY-police-set-to-deploy-1-200-bodycams-around-the-city/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Washington

Review of Seattle police shows promise of US-backed reform

Federally mandated changes in the Seattle Police Department led to a drop in how often officers use serious force, with no rise in crime or officer injuries

by Gene Johnson

SEATTLE — Federally mandated changes in the Seattle Police Department led to a stunning drop in how often officers use serious force, with no rise in crime or officer injuries, according to a review released Thursday.

The city's improvements come after Attorney General Jeff Sessions signaled that the Justice Department might back away from overhauling local police departments. Some say the move would be disastrous given the tensions that have plagued the country following violence by officers and attacks against police.

During a 28-month span from 2014 to 2016, incidents in which Seattle officers used force that caused or could be expected to cause injury fell at least 60 percent from a similar period in 2009 to 2011, according to the review from a court-appointed monitor overseeing police reforms under a 2012 settlement.

Officers reach for their Tasers and batons less frequently than they used to, and while minorities are more likely to be subject to force, they are not more likely to be subject to serious force than whites, the report said.

The numbers suggest that a police department whose officers formerly "would escalate even minor offenses ... has changed in fundamental ways," the monitor wrote.

Importantly, concerns that crime would rise or police would get hurt more often because of perceptions that officers would be reluctant to act proved unfounded, the monitor said.

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray called the results from the collaboration with the Justice Department an example of what's possible when both a police chief and rank-and-file officers buy into reforms.

"My message is, one, these skills, learning how to de-escalate situations, makes it safer for you, as an officer," the Democratic mayor said in an interview. "Secondly, the training doesn't work, the reform doesn't work, unless it comes from the top down."

He said for the DOJ to reconsider its commitment to overhauling departments like those in Chicago and Baltimore is "a recipe for an explosive situation."

Sessions issued a memo last week announcing his intention to reconsider all existing consent decrees, the court-overseen agreements between the DOJ and cities designed to resolve concerns about unconstitutional policing. He said while police must respect people's rights, it "is not the responsibility of the federal government to manage non-federal law enforcement agencies."

The DOJ sought to delay a hearing Thursday on a proposed agreement to overhaul the Baltimore Police Department, saying it needed time to determine whether the proposal would hinder efforts to fight violent crime. The judge refused.

In Seattle, federal prosecutors launched an investigation of the Police Department following questionable use of force against minorities, including an officer's fatal shooting of a Native American woodcarver in 2010. They found that officers were too quick to get physical, especially in low-level situations, a conclusion that the department's brass strongly resisted at the time.

In hard-fought negotiations, the Justice Department pushed the city into a settlement in 2012 that overhauled police training, procedures and record-keeping, all aimed at reducing unnecessary uses of force, curbing biased policing and improving residents' trust.

The results have been unequivocal, according to the city, the DOJ and the monitor.

"This positive assessment is a credit to the men and women of SPD, from line officers to command staff," Seattle U.S. Attorney Annette Hayes said in a written statement. "They have embraced reform, made it their own, and fundamentally changed what is happening on the streets of Seattle."

All Seattle officers have received training on how to better handle those with mental illness or abusing drugs.

In responding to roughly 10,000 incidents a year in which people are in behavioral crisis, officers use force just 2 percent of the time. And in the vast majority of those instances, officers used the lowest level of force, equivalent to pointing a gun at a subject or a suspect complaining of pain from handcuffs.

An incident last week illustrated the new approach. A suicidal man, armed with a knife, caused a disturbance on a downtown street and refused to drop the weapon. Officers cordoned off the street. A stun gun failed to subdue him, but negotiators spoke with him for hours, eventually persuading him to surrender.

Polling conducted for the monitor says residents' attitudes toward police had improved. The percentage of those who said they approve of Seattle police has risen from 60 percent in 2013 to 72 percent in 2016. Much of that improvement is among black residents, with approval jumping from 49 percent to 62 percent.

The report contained the first department-wide assessment of how officers use force, and the results were striking, the monitor's team found.

The review covered 2,385 incidents — about three per day — from July 2014, soon after new use-of-force policies were adopted, through October 2016. The total use of force declined 10 percent from the first half of that study period to the second, the monitor said.

Seattle police used serious levels of force, anything that could be expected to cause injury, 487 times — a 60 percent drop from the 1,230 instances reported from January 2009 to April 2011, when reporting practices were not as rigorous, the monitor said.

Dept of Justice

California

PRESS RELEASE

Ventura County Man Indicted by Federal Grand Jury for Allegedly Producing Child Pornography Involving 6-Year-Old Girl

LOS ANGELES – A Simi Valley man was indicted today by a federal grand jury on charges of producing child pornography in a case involving a 6-year-old girl.

Eric Allen Haensgen, 38, who until August 2015 lived in Huntley, Illinois, is also charged with distributing and possessing child pornography.

The indictment alleges that Haensgen produced still photos and videos of the young victim. Investigators found 83 images and three videos of a 6-year-old girl that had been shot with Haensgen's iPhone and downloaded to a computer, according to court documents.

Haensgen allegedly distributed over the BitTorrent Network other examples of child pornography he obtained from the internet.

Haensgen was arrested on March 24 by special agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) after federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint that accused him of one count of producing child pornography.

Haensgen is scheduled to be arraigned on the indictment on April 13 in United States District Court. Haensgen remains in custody without bond.

An indictment contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Every defendant is presumed to be innocent until and unless proven guilty in court.

The charge of producing child pornography carries a mandatory minimum penalty of 15 years in federal prison and a statutory maximum sentence of 30 years. The charge of distributing child pornography carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years and a maximum sentence of 20 years. The charge of possessing child pornography carries a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison.

This case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Vanessa Baehr-Jones of the Violent and Organized Crime Section.

FROM:  Thom Mrozek, Spokesperson/Public Affairs Officer
United States Attorney's Office, Central District of California (Los Angeles)

www.justice.gov/usao-cdca

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

US launches massive strikes against Syrian regime's positions in retaliation for chemical attack

by ARA News

US President Donald Trump ordered a massive military strike against Syria Thursday in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack they blame on President Bashar al-Assad.

A US official said 59 precision guided missiles hit Shayrat Airfield in Syria, where Washington believes Tuesday's deadly attack was launched.

Ahead of the strike, President Donald Trump called for “all civilized nations” to work to end the bloodshed in Syria, after launching a massive strike against the regime in retaliation for a chemical attack.

“On Tuesday, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians using a deadly nerve agent,” Trump said Thursday in a televised address from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

“Tonight I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end this slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types,” he said. “We hope that as long as America stands for justice, then peace and harmony will in the end prevail.”

The US military strike on a Syrian air base caused losses, a Syrian military source told state television Friday without providing further details.

“One of our air bases in the centre of the country was targeted at dawn by a missile fired by the United States, causing loses,” said the source, who had earlier described the strike as an act of “aggression”.

“My fellow Americans: On Tuesday, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians.

“Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women, and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror.

“Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched. It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons.

“There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and ignored the urging of the UN Security Council.

“Years of previous attempts at changing Assad's behavior have all failed, and failed very dramatically. As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilize, threatening the United States and its allies.

“Tonight, I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria, and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types.

“We ask for God's wisdom as we face the challenge of our very troubled world. We pray for the lives of the wounded and for the souls of those who have passed. And we hope that as long as America stands for justice, then peace and harmony will, in the end, prevail.

The United States warned Russia ahead of a massive military strike on a Syrian regime air base, the Pentagon said Thursday.

“Russian forces were notified in advance of the strike using the established deconfliction line,” Navy Captain Jeff Davis said, referring to a special military hotline.

“US military planners took precautions to minimize risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield.

Nine Planes Destroyed

Nine planes as well as munition and fuel depots were destroyed in the US strike on Syria's Shayrat airbase early Friday but the runway was intact, the Russian state channel Rossiya24 reported from the scene.

“According to preliminary information, nine Syrian airplanes were destroyed,” its correspondent said in a report from the base, broadcast hours after the strike at 0040 GMT Friday.

Stores with ammunition and fuel were also targeted, he said, adding that a fire and some explosions were ongoing.

“But not all equipment has been destroyed, there is some that was not impacted by the strike,” the correspondent said.

“The landing strip… is practically not impacted,” he added.

Footage showed the runway intact but covered in debris, as well as two planes sitting in concrete hangars.

The aircraft were apparently not heavily damaged while some other hangars were charred and surrounded by rubble.

Moscow slammed the attack ordered by US President Donald Trump as “thoughtless” and called it “aggression against a sovereign state” that violated international norms.

Trump ordered the strike in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack Tuesday after the UN Security Council failed to agree on a probe into the bombing that killed at least 86 people.

http://aranews.net/2017/04/us-launches-massive-strikes-against-syrian-regimes-positions-in-retaliation-for-chemical-attack/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sweden

Stockholm Truck Attack Kills 3; Terrorism Is Suspected

by Christina Anderson, Marin Selsoe Sorensen, Palko Karasz and Mark Scott

A man steered a stolen beer truck into a crowd of people and then rammed it into a department store, killing at least three people in the heart of Stockholm on Friday afternoon, the police and local news outlets reported.

The Swedish intelligence agency said “a large number” of people had been wounded in what officials were calling a terrorist assault.

“Sweden has been attacked. All indications are that it was a terrorist attack,” Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said in a statement.

At a news conference later in the evening, the Swedish police released a photo of a man they were seeking to question in connection with the attack. The authorities said they did not know if it had been an isolated attack, or something bigger.

Mats Löfving, the head of national operative department of the Swedish police, said, “This is now declared a national security event,” adding the officers across the nation were on heightened alert.

The Swedish Parliament was on lockdown, according to news reports. Train service in and out of the city grounded to a halt, and the police, which blocked off the affected area, urged people to stay at home and to avoid the city center.

The police said the first emergency call came in around 2:50 p.m. local time as the attack unfolded in Drottninggatan, Stockholm's busiest shopping street.

Witnesses described a scene of panic and terror.

“I saw hundreds of people running; they ran for their lives” before the truck crashed into the Ahlens department store, a witness identified only as Anna told the newspaper Aftonbladet.

Katarina Libert, a 32-year-old freelance journalist, was trying on clothes at the department store when she heard a boom and the walls shook.

At first, she said, she thought the noise was people moving things around the store, but then the fire alarm went off and staff members told her and other shoppers to get out of the building.

“We were running, we were crying, everyone was in shock,” Ms. Libert said. “We rushed down the street, and I glanced to the right and saw the truck. People were lying on the ground. They were not moving.”

Ms. Libert, who followed others as they were guided by officials to shelter, added, “My sister in law and some friends are close to the scene and at lockdown, can't leave their office.”

She said that she usually avoided busy areas that could be potential terrorist targets, but that she had decided to take the Friday afternoon off to do some shopping.

“Some people felt that this was just a matter of time,” she said. “Paris, Brussels, London and now Stockholm. I just had a feeling something like this would happen.”

The front part of the truck, which the authorities believed had been stolen minutes before the attack, ended up inside the department store.

A representative of the Spendrups brewery told Radio Sweden that the vehicle had been taken earlier in the day. A spokesman for the company told SVT, a national public broadcaster, that the truck had been stolen while the driver was loading it from the rear.

The brewery's driver told the police that a masked man stole the vehicle, and that he was injured trying to stop him.

At the news conference, police officials said officers across Sweden were protecting certain high-risk sites.

Officials released a photo of a man wearing a hoodie. They did not name him as a suspect, saying only that they wanted to question him in connection with the attack.

The national police chief, Dan Eliasson, said, “We have the truck and the driver who usually drives it, but we do not have contact with the person or persons who drove it.”

Mr. Löfving, also of the police, asked for the public's help in sharing the photo: “We want to get in touch with this man.”

The authorities also said that they could not confirm the number of dead or injured until they received more information from the hospitals. Previous accounts of shots being fired in parts of Stockholm are unfounded, they said.

The attack reverberated as far away as Norway, where the police said on Twitter that officers in that nation's largest cities and at the airport in Oslo would be armed until further notice following the attack in Stockholm.

The assault came after several other episodes in Europe in the past year in which a vehicle was used to attack people.

The Islamic State group revived the idea of using cars as weapons after it broke with Al Qaeda in 2014. In the past year, ISIS militants have claimed responsibility for the deaths of more than 100 people in Europe.

In France, a man drove into a crowd on a busy seaside promenade during Bastille Day celebrations in Nice.

Another attacker plowed a truck into shoppers at a Christmas market in Berlin.

And last month, an assailant drove a car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge near Parliament in London.

Other attempts, including an episode in which a man tried to drive over pedestrians in Antwerp, Belgium, claimed no victims, but have contributed to a sense of dread across the Continent.

Although some Swedes have expressed concern that immigration has led to a crime wave in the country — and President Trump seemed to suggest in a speech on Feb. 18 that there had been an attack in Sweden, when in fact nothing had occurred — the country and the region remain largely peaceful and safe.

The most notable exception came in 2010, when a n assailant killed himself and wounded two others after detonating two bombs in central Stockholm, on a side street not far from where the attack on Friday took place.

The attack in 2010 was said to be the first suicide bombing in Scandinavia, and it caused consternation in Sweden. It was linked to an Iraqi-born Swede who had attended college in Britain.

On Friday, they police said they were well trained for these types of episodes. “Last week we rehearsed a similar scenario,” said Anders Thornberg, chief of national intelligence.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/world/europe/stockholm-attack.html?_r=0

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Washington D.C.

Review of Seattle police shows promise of US-backed reform

Federally mandated changes in the Seattle Police Department led to a drop in how often officers use serious force, with no rise in crime or officer injuries

by Gene Johnson

SEATTLE — Federally mandated changes in the Seattle Police Department led to a stunning drop in how often officers use serious force, with no rise in crime or officer injuries, according to a review released Thursday.

The city's improvements come after Attorney General Jeff Sessions signaled that the Justice Department might back away from overhauling local police departments. Some say the move would be disastrous given the tensions that have plagued the country following violence by officers and attacks against police.

During a 28-month span from 2014 to 2016, incidents in which Seattle officers used force that caused or could be expected to cause injury fell at least 60 percent from a similar period in 2009 to 2011, according to the review from a court-appointed monitor overseeing police reforms under a 2012 settlement.

Officers reach for their Tasers and batons less frequently than they used to, and while minorities are more likely to be subject to force, they are not more likely to be subject to serious force than whites, the report said.

The numbers suggest that a police department whose officers formerly "would escalate even minor offenses ... has changed in fundamental ways," the monitor wrote.

Importantly, concerns that crime would rise or police would get hurt more often because of perceptions that officers would be reluctant to act proved unfounded, the monitor said.

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray called the results from the collaboration with the Justice Department an example of what's possible when both a police chief and rank-and-file officers buy into reforms.

"My message is, one, these skills, learning how to de-escalate situations, makes it safer for you, as an officer," the Democratic mayor said in an interview. "Secondly, the training doesn't work, the reform doesn't work, unless it comes from the top down."

He said for the DOJ to reconsider its commitment to overhauling departments like those in Chicago and Baltimore is "a recipe for an explosive situation."

Sessions issued a memo last week announcing his intention to reconsider all existing consent decrees, the court-overseen agreements between the DOJ and cities designed to resolve concerns about unconstitutional policing. He said while police must respect people's rights, it "is not the responsibility of the federal government to manage non-federal law enforcement agencies."

The DOJ sought to delay a hearing Thursday on a proposed agreement to overhaul the Baltimore Police Department, saying it needed time to determine whether the proposal would hinder efforts to fight violent crime. The judge refused.

In Seattle, federal prosecutors launched an investigation of the Police Department following questionable use of force against minorities, including an officer's fatal shooting of a Native American woodcarver in 2010. They found that officers were too quick to get physical, especially in low-level situations, a conclusion that the department's brass strongly resisted at the time.

In hard-fought negotiations, the Justice Department pushed the city into a settlement in 2012 that overhauled police training, procedures and record-keeping, all aimed at reducing unnecessary uses of force, curbing biased policing and improving residents' trust.

The results have been unequivocal, according to the city, the DOJ and the monitor.

"This positive assessment is a credit to the men and women of SPD, from line officers to command staff," Seattle U.S. Attorney Annette Hayes said in a written statement. "They have embraced reform, made it their own, and fundamentally changed what is happening on the streets of Seattle."

All Seattle officers have received training on how to better handle those with mental illness or abusing drugs.

In responding to roughly 10,000 incidents a year in which people are in behavioral crisis, officers use force just 2 percent of the time. And in the vast majority of those instances, officers used the lowest level of force, equivalent to pointing a gun at a subject or a suspect complaining of pain from handcuffs.

An incident last week illustrated the new approach. A suicidal man, armed with a knife, caused a disturbance on a downtown street and refused to drop the weapon. Officers cordoned off the street. A stun gun failed to subdue him, but negotiators spoke with him for hours, eventually persuading him to surrender.

Polling conducted for the monitor says residents' attitudes toward police had improved. The percentage of those who said they approve of Seattle police has risen from 60 percent in 2013 to 72 percent in 2016. Much of that improvement is among black residents, with approval jumping from 49 percent to 62 percent.

The report contained the first department-wide assessment of how officers use force, and the results were striking, the monitor's team found.

The review covered 2,385 incidents — about three per day — from July 2014, soon after new use-of-force policies were adopted, through October 2016. The total use of force declined 10 percent from the first half of that study period to the second, the monitor said.

Seattle police used serious levels of force, anything that could be expected to cause injury, 487 times — a 60 percent drop from the 1,230 instances reported from January 2009 to April 2011, when reporting practices were not as rigorous, the monitor said.

https://www.policeone.com/doj/articles/324847006-Review-of-Seattle-police-shows-promise-of-US-backed-reform/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

New Mexico

NM to require officers to carry overdose antidote

New Mexico became the first state to require all local and state law enforcement agencies to provide officers with antidote kits

by Susan Montoya Bryan

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — New Mexico on Thursday became the first U.S. state to require all local and state law enforcement agencies to provide officers with antidote kits as the state works to curb deaths from opioid and heroin overdoses.

Surrounded by advocates and parents who had lost children to overdoses, Gov. Susana Martinez signed legislation that was approved unanimously by lawmakers during their recent session.

The former prosecutor and two-term Republican governor said she has seen firsthand what drug abuse can do to families and communities.

"We're making progress but it's never enough," she said. "We have to keep working hard at this problem and reducing the number of overdoses. Signing this bill is an important step to fight the scourge of drug abuse and overdose fatalities."

New Mexico has been working for years to curb what has only recently been identified by the highest levels of the federal government as a national epidemic.

The state was the first in 2001 to increase access to the overdose-reversal drug naloxone and a few years later it led the way to release people from legal liability when they assist in overdose situations.

New Mexico also was the first state to allow pharmacists to dispense naloxone without a prescription in an effort to expand access to the life-saving drug.

Other measures enacted by New Mexico in recent years include requiring all licensed clinicians to undergo extra training for prescribing painkillers and the creation of a system to track prescriptions for pain medication so addicts cannot obtain new prescriptions from unsuspecting doctors.

Martinez said the comprehensive approach is starting to show results.

In 2014, New Mexico had one of the highest overdose death rates in the nation, second only to West Virginia. More recent health statistics show the state is now ranked 44th.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, opioids were involved in more than 33,000 deaths nationally in 2015.

"This doesn't discriminate," said state Rep. Sarah Maestas Barnes, the Albuquerque Republican who sponsored the legislation with Democratic colleagues.

"Every community, every county, every ethnicity, every socio-economic status, everybody is affected by this epidemic and that's why this bill is critically important," she said after the signing ceremony.

Advocates call the legislation cutting-edge, saying it targets those who are most at risk.

Joanna Katzman, a neurologist and director of the University of New Mexico Pain Center, was instrumental in helping craft the legislation after years of working on the problem.

She said expanding access to anti-overdose medication saves lives and increases recovery opportunities for addicts.

Aside from outfitting first-responders with anti-overdose kits, the legislation requires federally-certified addiction treatment centers to provide patients with education plus two doses of naloxone and a prescription for the antidote.

The state's prisons and jails will be required to do the same for at-risk inmates upon their release as long as funding and supplies are available.

While the bill does not include any new funding, public safety officials said each police force in New Mexico receives annual state funding per officer to help with training, equipment and supplies.

A portion of that can be used to purchase naloxone kits, which cost roughly $70 each. It can be administered with a nasal spray or via injection.

Grant funding will also be sought to fully implement expanded access, Barnes said.

In New Mexico's largest city, law enforcement is already gearing up. Albuquerque city councilors recently voted to equip at least half of the city's police vehicles with naloxone by the fall and the rest by the end of this year.

In northern New Mexico, which has some of the highest overdose rates, Santa Fe County deputies began carrying naloxone in 2015. State police officers in at-risk areas also carry the drug and more will have access by the end of the year.

Washington D.C.

New House bill would ban immigration agents from wearing police uniforms

by Cameron Joseph

WASHINGTON — House Democrats are introducing a new bill to bar immigration and customs agents from wearing the word "police" on their apparel when conducting immigration raids.

In an effort to improve police relations with minority communities, Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.) will introduce legislation on Thursday to make it clearer whether they're local police or Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Multiple reports and videos have circulated of ICE agents posing as police during raids to get undocumented immigrants to open their doors and let them in, then arresting them.

“Not only are ICE raids an unconscionable attack on our most vulnerable communities, any attempt by immigration officers to deceivingly pose as local police ought to be prohibited,” she said in a statement to the Daily News. “After holding various ‘Know Your Rights' workshops in my district, I've heard firsthand from families who fear reporting crime or engaging with the police due to the potential of getting caught up with immigration agents. This only makes our communities less safe.”

Immigration advocates and some local law enforcement agencies warn that when ICE agents pose as police, it hurts community relations and makes it harder for local police to prosecute serious crimes because locals fear them. This would rectify that, at a time where President Trump's administration is dramatically ratcheting up deportations and raids against immigrants.

"Instead of keeping our communities safe, this practice fuels fear, undermines trust and ultimately further marginalizes our immigrant neighbors,” Velazquez said.

The bill is unlikely to go anywhere in the Republican-controlled House. But it earned praise from immigration advocates, and has the backing of the Service Employees International Union.

“We applaud this proposal to prevent ICE from using the word ‘police' on their agents' vests. For years, ICE has tried to confuse and scare community members by making people believe they are police officers, often trying to force their way into families' homes without a warrant signed by a judge,” said Javier H. Valdés, the co-head of the pro-immigrant group Make the Road New York.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/house-bill-ban-immigration-agents-wearing-police-labels-article-1.3022489

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Indiana

Hammond rolls out new community policing program

by Ed Bierschenk

HAMMOND — Police will be encouraged to have more informal interactions with citizens under a new community policing initiative.

The Voluntary Contact Protocol program is the latest effort by Police Chief John Doughty to encourage more social contact between police and residents. He spoke about encouraging more interaction between police and the public two years ago following a spate of negative publicity about police nationwide.

At that time, Doughty said officers were "being encouraged to attempt more out-of-the-car face time when possible during the course of their tour of duty."

Later that year, Hammond police also underwent two days of training focusing on how police could improve interactions with the public, although that dealt more with contacts made during regular enforcement duties.

The latest initiative, which will begin Saturday, again will focus on non-enforcement contacts between police and the community.

Under the program, officers will let people people know when they are working in the area and that they are available and approachable. During this time, officers can engage in a general conversation and ask about potential issues or problems.

To gauge the program's success, the contacts will be documented for administrative review.

Doughty said he was encouraged to start the new initiative by a recent interaction he had with a local business owner and what he heard at a community policing class out of state.

In the first incident, Doughty said he went into the Amtech Pro Audio store to talk about a problem he was having with his receiver. The person at the store was busy, but after a while the two started talking and soon built a rapport.

"Once I built a rapport, his whole demeanor changed," said Doughty, who said the man spent a lot of time chatting with him.

When he left, Doughty, who didn't reveal he was the chief, asked the man if he needed anything from the police. The man replied that he didn't, but appreciated being asked.

Today, police are more dispatch-driven and quicker response is required, Doughty noted. Walking the beat is not considered as efficient.

"I get why it changed, but it stopped that casual contact," Doughty said.

He hopes to increase that contact and have officers take time to make conversation with people around town.

"I told my guys you can build relationships one handshake at a time," he said.

Doughty also wants officers to take the time to explain to neighbors what they are doing when they visit a person's home, whether it be to serve a warrant or some other reason.

Doughty said building these relationships and trust can help in combating crime when residents become more comfortable telling police of suspicious activity in their neighborhoods.

"I have a bunch of great guys, and I hope they are going to embrace it," he said of the new initiative.

http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/hammond/hammond-rolls-out-new-community-policing-program/article_4be3b55f-7932-5a3f-9e7e-6faf4b64e6d3.html

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New York

Neighborhood Policing Changing Attitudes and Reaping Benefits, NYPD Says

by Trevor Kapp

HARLEM — Gunfire erupted on West 133rd Street near Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and one of the first things NYPD Officer Peter DiViesti did was reach for his iPhone.

He had befriended a property manager on the block months before the September incident as part of the NYPD's neighborhood policing strategy — which gets officers off the radio and gives them more time to meet community members — and the worker had given him access to his building's cameras.

Now, through the tap of a button, he could monitor that surveillance at any hour on his phone — and he immediately recognized the shooter as someone he'd nabbed for drug possession months before.

“He came back on the block and was up to his old tricks,” DiViesti, 36, said. “We saw him go into the basement with the gun, then we saw him come back up.”

Matthew Hall, 52, was later charged with criminal possession of a weapon for firing those rounds.

And while an arrest for shots fired may not be on the same scale as a bust for murder, it's the type of crime the NYPD says is now being cracked more easily through the neighborhood policing model.

THE ORIGINS

On paper, the stats had been strong for years — an 85 percent drop in murders across the city from 1990 to 2013 and a 54 percent decrease in felony assaults — results of the data-driven COMPSTAT era that took an analytical approach to crime fighting.

“But the communities weren't feeling it,” NYPD Chief of Patrol Terence Monahan said. “It was all about the numbers. Make stops, give out summonses. How many numbers did you do as opposed to what results did you get? It did reduce crime, but it really didn't teach a cop how to be a cop.”

Police-community relations became a centerpiece of the 2013 mayoral race. Bill de Blasio was elected, at least in part, on a pledge to replace NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly and make significant reforms to stop-and-frisk, which had reached a record high of more than 680,000 just two years before.

But it was difficult to quickly change the reputation of a department that had largely been seen as overaggressive for years.

Those relations were further strained in July 2014 by the chokehold death of Eric Garner by police in Staten Island and then weeks later by the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., both of which sparked massive protests throughout the city and across the country.

“We had to adapt, and we had to adapt quickly,” Monahan said.

So Monahan, then the No. 1 in Chief of Department James O'Neill's office, flew to Los Angeles in November for a four-day crash course on its community policing program.

The most compelling element he said he saw with the LAPD was the pride that officers had in their areas.

“They knew the people, they were really in tune," Monahan said. "And once you get to see the really good people that live and work in your neighborhood, you want to protect them.”

The challenge would be figuring out how to condense the tips and information these neighborhood officers were receiving and then disseminate that to detectives and patrol officers, who run on dozens of 911 calls a day and have far less intimacy with neighborhood residents.

Over the next four months, Monahan, O'Neill and other top NYPD officials met regularly to devise a sustainable model for New York that would improve relations while still reducing crime.

“If crime goes up, it doesn't matter how much connectivity you have with the community,” Monahan said. “If people aren't safe, this doesn't work.”

They ultimately agreed on a pilot program that would keep the precincts broken down into sectors, smaller segments that officers regularly patrol.

Each sector would also be assigned two neighborhood coordination officers (NCOs), who would be the eyes and ears on the street. They'd go to shops and businesses, attend community meetings more frequently and even give out their phone numbers — with the goal of creating a friendlier NYPD.

“They were also going to be the ones who were going to have the ultimate responsibility for crime,” Monahan said.

Additionally, smaller teams within the department such as the street narcotics enforcement unit would be disbanded with officers put back on patrol to ensure that crime numbers remained low.

Over the next several months, the prospective NCOs received extensive training on everything from conflict resolution strategies to public speaking, and by May 2015, the program was rolled out in the 33rd and 34th Precincts in upper Manhattan and the 100th and 101st Precincts in the Rockaways, to mixed expectations.

“A lot of people looked at this and said, ‘This isn't the way we did business. Crime is going to go up,'” Monahan said.

“There was so much fear from the boss level, but if you took it back down to the cop level, it was, ‘Thank God someone is actually going to trust us.'”

MEET YOUR NCOS

Det. Theodore Watson, like several NYPD officers interviewed by DNAinfo for this story, said he wasn't entirely sure what he was getting himself into when he signed on to become a neighborhood coordination officer at the 101st Precinct in Far Rockaway.

But with the highly-concentrated units in the department being disbanded, Watson, a 14-year veteran, needed another role — and he didn't want to go back to just running on 911 jobs.

“I just thought this was gonna be like shaking hands and kissing babies," he said. "I took it as something like, ‘Yeah, I can do that.'”

The 101, as one of the four pilot precincts, had been given a lot of flexibility by department brass to customize its neighborhood policing strategy as it saw fit.

So, in the early weeks, Watson and the seven other NCOs went around to stores and community centers in the area to begin promoting the idea.

“Get to know the players, the good people, the not-so-good people,” his supervisor, Sgt. Robert Garrity, said.

But the relationship between police and residents has long been tumultuous in Far Rockaway, and it was not going to be mended in a few weeks with a couple handshakes and smiles.

Two unsolved, high-profile murders of teen brothers Shawn Plummer, 18, who was killed in 2012, and NeShawn Plummer, 16, who was fatally shot in 2015, still haunt investigators, and there's a sense in the area that residents have an idea of who the killers are.

Yet, tips at this point appear to be scarce.

“People know,” said the boys' mom, Sharon Plummer. “But they're scared of retaliation. And there's a big trust gap. A lot of people don't trust police because of things they've done in the past — unnecessary stop-and-frisk stuff they weren't supposed to do. And that leaves a bitter taste in your mouth.”

O'Neill, however, now NYPD commissioner, has said neighborhood policing is a long-term strategy that has already paid short-term dividends.

When a gang member in January fired several rounds outside a pizzeria on Beach 20th Street near Mott Avenue, narrowly missing a group of young kids, investigators could only come up with was a grainy surveillance image of the suspected shooter.

But a couple of days later, a tipster with a checkered past walked by the precinct and spotted Det. Watson, who had previously cooled down a heated situation between him and other officers from the 101, saving the man from arrest.

“He's a real pain the butt,” Watson said. “He's been collared plenty of times, real perpetrator.”

“So I'm standing in front of the precinct and he's just walking through and he goes, ‘Yo, Watson, can I talk to you for a second?' He was like, ‘I usually don't talk to the cops, but I'ma talk to you ‘cause I'm cool with you, and when kids are in danger, I'm not gonna tolerate that.' So he tells me what happened.”

Watson then went upstairs to the precinct's detective bureau and relayed that information. He later moderated a meeting between investigators and the informant.

Days later, police had a suspect in custody.

Smaller success stories like that have been common across the city since the inception of neighborhood policing, the department insists.

In East New York last fall, NCO Terrance Lloyd was approached outside the 75th Precinct by a mother who said her 16-year-old daughter had been roughed up multiple times by an ex-friend.

“It's the sort of thing that leads to boyfriends getting involved, and all of a sudden, someone shoots someone over it,” Monahan said.

Lloyd got the name of the other girl, 17, from the 16-year-old's mother and went over to her house — and ultimately coordinated a meeting between the families at a community center in nearby Starrett City.

“I just spoke and said, ‘Nobody's in trouble. I'm here to let you guys talk it out, not to say who's right and who's wrong,'” Lloyd, 36, said.

“But they were so mad and heated. The mother and grandmother kept going back and forth. The girls weren't even talking. Everyone just needed to calm down.”

He had the mother and grandmother leave the room and then let the girls talk for 15 minutes uninterrupted, a strategy he learned from his NCO training.

“I was just the referee not letting anybody disrespect anybody,” he said. “I said, ‘Y'all don't have to be best friends, but y'all don't have to fight every time you see each other.'”

Ultimately, he learned the feud stemmed from a miscommunication in which another girl had spread false rumors about them, enraging them both.

“It was nothing of any substance where you should ever be fighting,” he said. “They were going by a third party. I said, ‘Did you ever think that girl was jealous over y'all's friendship?'”

The teens were ultimately able to work it out, he said, and by the end, even the mother and grandmother were embracing.

“It was cool to see,” Lloyd said. "They were so mad, then an hour-and-a-half later, they were hugging and joking.”

But as impactful as his work was, it also underscored one of the major challenges the department says it's facing.

THE HURDLES

“How do we quantify what we do?” Monahan asked.

The NYPD insists it's no longer putting as heavy an emphasis on arrest and summons numbers, so how does it gauge officer effectiveness?

The department recently developed an internal phone app, Craft, that allows police to report their accomplishments that may have gone unnoticed in the past, like jumping in the water to help a child or finding a missing person.

“We want them to toot their own horns,” Monahan said.

But officers expressed skepticism about whether an app that encourages self-promotion will be an effective barometer of success.

“I think some might abuse it,” said Officer Lauren Nadle, 26, of the 101st Precinct. “There's officers who don't get a lot of arrests, don't get a lot of summonses. They may overcompensate by saying, ‘I just did this, this and that.'”

The other key issue with the NCO program is officer turnover, Sgt. Garrity said.

In the nearly 21 months since its inception, the neighborhood program in the 101st Precinct has already had about 15 different NCOs.

The extensive training, specifically the detective courses, are almost too informative, Garrity said, to the point where officers see the program as a steppingstone.

“My guys aren't staying longer than a year,” he said. “I'm losing my best guys for narcotics, for gang, for detective bureau. They've put so much emphasis into the NCO program, but I don't think anybody thought about retention.”

Yet, Monahan insists that though there are tweaks to be made, the model is working. There are now NCOs in 48 precincts and public service areas — and the department has said they will eventually reach all of them.

The program still does not have a specific budget, but Queens District Attorney Richard Brown recently pledged more than $20 million in asset forfeiture funds toward it.

Crime fell to historically low levels in the city in 2016. In the 101st Precinct, major crime was down about 4 percent, NYPD statistics show. In the 32nd Precinct, it was down more than 7 percent, though it's difficult to determine what role, if any, neighborhood policing played in that.

Some are more skeptical than others.

John Jay College of Criminal Justice professor and ex-NYPD Officer Eugene O'Donnell said that program is just a public relations ploy by the department.

"It's a sop," he said of neighborhood policing. "It's common to be wheeled out in a time of crisis. After a case like Eric Garner, you send people out. Chicago has had community policing since 1985. They've still had 25,000 murders."

But some New Yorkers said that while they've witnessed the uglier side of the NYPD for years, getting to interact with the same officers regularly has warmed them up to the department.

“I've witnessed first hand how they can act. I've witnessed an officer talking down, ‘You M.F., you this, you that, get out the effing car!'” said Jackie Rowe-Adams, 68, a non-violence advocate in Harlem, who gets a weekly visit from DiViesti and his partner.

“But this has changed people taking the police for granted. When they had no respect for the police recently, they're seeing the police around now, and they're making arrests for the right reasons, not just picking on people.”

Derrick Irving, 53, the owner of 361 Laundromat on Malcolm X Boulevard, also sees DiViesti every week. But he said he's still cautious around him.

“If I need them, they're here,” he said. “But it's still the 'hood, and I respect the 'hood. I'm not ratting nobody out.”

The exact future of the model and whether tips gathered by NCOs will lead to arrests for bigger crimes remains to be seen.

But DiViesti, Watson and Lloyd insisted their satisfaction comes from their positive interactions with residents, not by anything measured through statistics.

“Some people feel rewarded when they get guns off the street — that's their thing. But I'm not a big gun guy,” Lloyd said.

“Not to sound cheesy, but I just like helping people.”

https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20170406/central-harlem/nypd-neighborhood-policing-nco-community-police-department

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Arizona

Ariz. House OKs bill protecting off-duty police officers

The legislation would specify aggravated assault against off-duty officers as a crime equal to assaulting on-duty officers

by the Associated Press

PHOENIX — The Arizona House has passed legislation that would specify aggravated assault against off-duty police officers is a crime equal to assaulting on-duty officers.

The proposal by sponsor Republican Sen. Steve Smith would mandate calling the act the Blue Lives Matter Law. Smith says the measure is necessary because directly assaulting officers shouldn't be tolerated on any level.

Senate Bill 1366 notes aggravated assault against police officers includes those that are not "on duty or engaged in the execution of any official duties."

Democratic Rep. Reginald Bolding called the measure's title disrespectful and said the bill is an affront to issues concerning the Black Lives Matter movement.

The House's 34-25 vote Wednesday sends the legislation back to the Senate for final approval before it heads to Gov. Doug Ducey's desk.

https://www.policeone.com/legal/articles/324584006-Ariz-House-OKs-bill-protecting-off-duty-police-officers/

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Oklahoma

Okla. cop sues Taco Bell over throat burns

Lab tests confirmed there was "an extremely hot pepper sauce" and cologne in his food

by PoliceOne Staff

OKLAHOMA CITY — An officer who suffered severe burns on his throat from eating a Taco Bell quesadilla is suing the restaurant claiming the employees deliberately ruined his food to cause him harm.

In February, Officer Shawn Byrne stopped to eat in uniform after volunteering at an event when he realized his food didn't taste right and employees were laughing at him, KFOR reported.

“By the time he took the third bite, apparently, was whenever his mouth started burning really, really bad,” attorney Brian Dell said.

Following a doctor's diagnosis of severe burns on his throat, Byrne filed a police report and sent the leftovers to a lab to be tested.

Dell told KFOR the results found an “extremely hot pepper sauce” and cologne in the food. Dell said Byrne doesn't wear cologne.

Dell said the employees are convicted felons. Byrne is seeking more than $75,000 in damages.

“There's the possibility they wanted to deliberately cause some harm or play a trick, if you will, on a policeman,” Dell said. “If indeed these convicted felons did it deliberately, then you have to assume that's exactly why they did it. They'd get away with it because it wouldn't cause the injury it did, it caused serious injury.”

https://www.policeone.com/Officer-Safety/articles/324311006-Okla-cop-sues-Taco-Bell-over-throat-burns/

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Alabama

Daughter of radio legend Casey Kasem talks elder abuse, prevention at Alabama crime vigil

by Carol Robinson

If anybody had told Kerri Kasem that one day her life would be devoted to protecting the elderly, she likely wouldn't have believed them.

The daughter of radio legend Casey Kasem - best known for hosting American Top 40 for decades - had her own successful career in radio and was living out her dream.

But she was thrust into the role of activist in 2013 when she and her siblings found themselves in an emotional and protracted legal battle with their father's wife of more than 30 years, Jean Kasem, who they said barred the family from seeing the ailing Casey Kasem.

"Four years ago, I was told I was never going to see my dad again by his wife,'' Kerri Kasem said, chronicling how Jean Kasem cut the entire family out of his life. "She isolated him."

"I had a talk radio show five days a week and my countdown show on the weekend. I was making money. I was happy. This was my dream,'' she said. "I left the job to fight for my dad, and I couldn't be happier."

Kerri Kasem told the heartbreaking and well-documented story of her father's final months and days Tuesday night at the 6 th Annual Walker County Crime Victims' Candlelight Vigil in Jasper. As they do every year, hundreds of community members, crime victims and family members of crime victims, joined together as part of National Crime Victims' Rights Week.

Walker County District Attorney Bill Adair launched the memorial six years, not only as the county's top prosecutor but also as someone who knows firsthand the ravages of crime. His father, William "Sonny" Adair, was fatally shot, once at close range, by a man with whom he had worked in Lawrence County in 1981. The killing helped propel the younger Adair into a law career, and instilled in him a compassion for victims and their families.

When he took office in 2011, Adair held a small dinner at steakhouse for families of crime victims. During that gathering, the victims created a Victim's Rights Council and planned a candlelight vigil for the following year during National Crime Victims' Rights Week in April. The memorial has grown each year and, in 2013, he helped to unveil an out-of-order fountain in the Walker County Courthouse square that was lovingly restored by crime victims' families as a memorial to not only those slain in the county, but to all who are victims of violence.

"What happened to my father is just part of why I do this,'' Adair said Tuesday night. "Like Kerri said earlier, she's trying to carry on what her father would want her to do and that's what this is for."

His message for victims and their families is this: "You're not alone."

The vigil was held at the Jasper Civic Center, and attended by law enforcement and residents from throughout the county and beyond. Another victim's advocate, former Birmingham television reporter Deborah Vance Bowie who is now the CEO of the United Way of North Central Florida, spoke about her ordeal after her sister - Sharon Anderson - was murdered in Florida in 1994.

Bowie has traveled across the U.S. speaking about her journey for justice and her sister's murder which was recorded on a hidden camera. There have been numerous trials and the appeals process has repeatedly victimized her family. She said she doesn't consider herself, however, a victim and that's the message that she hopes to send to other victims and survivors.

"You can choose what role you want to play,'' Bowie said. "They took my sister, but they're not going to take the rest of my future."

But horrific crime - which also left two others dead - did shape her future. "My promise to her was I'll see it through to the end,'' she said. "You never forget somebody you love. You never forget family."

Keith Nation was among those in attendance Tuesday night. His father, 78-year-old Glenn Nation, was murdered in 2005. His brother, Michael, was convicted in the killing and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Nation has long been active in Walker County's crime vigils and said being with others who have endured similar tragedies is a comfort of sorts. "You have other people you can share your feelings with. There are feelings that come out that you weren't even aware were inside you,'' he said. "You can help each other. It gives you a shoulder to lean on, a helping hand. It helps to know you're not the only one going through anything like this."

Kerri Kasem chronicled her ordeal with her father. In 2007, Casey Kasem was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, but that diagnosis was later changed to Lewy body dementia for which this is no cure. At the time of his diagnosis, he signed a power of attorney giving his three children from his first marriage the authority to make medical decisions for him if he became unable to make those decisions for himself.

But as time went on, and Casey Kasem became gravely ill, Kerri Kasem said she and her siblings and other family members were kept from seeing him by his wife. Kerri Kasem thought she could just call the police, but they couldn't help her. She called Adult Protective Services, but they had no answers either. Surely, she thought, once a judge heard her story, the nightmare would be over. Again, there was no relief.

"I quickly realized there was no law in place to help adult children see their ailing parents, even though my father said to the court-appointed doctor, the court-appointed lawyer and the judge, 'I want to see my children,''' she said. "The judge couldn't rule on visitation because his caretaker (Jean Kasem) said no, and they were at their home."

There were many twists and turns in the saga, including Kerri Kasem and her sister leading a protest outside of their father's Los Angeles mansion, numerous court hearings about whether Casey Kasem would be kept alive despite is directive, and even allegations that his wife took him out of the hospital and out of the country to keep from following the judge's decision.

On June 15, 2014, the 82-year-old Kasem died at a Washington hospital. The immediate cause of death was reported as sepsis caused by an ulcerated bedsore. His wife later had him buried in Norway, despite his family's objections.

That same year, Kerri Kasem founded the Kasem Cares Foundation, a non-profit organization to stop elder abuse and to establish and fight for the rights to have visitation and reasonable access to an ailing parent, especially when under the care and control of an uncooperative spuse or sibling.

"I thought, 'This is crazy and we have to change the law' and that's what we did,'' Kerri Kasem said Tuesday night. The Kasem Cares "Visitation Bill" was passed first in California and eight other states, including Alabama. "I'm so proud of Alabama,'' she said. "It took one year. A lot of states take two to three years."

Similar laws, she said, have been passed in other states for a total of about 20. "Elder abuse is a major epidemic,'' Kerri Kasem said. "It's a huge problem. It's where child abuse and domestic violence were 30 years ago - nobody talks about it."

She said 10,000 people a day turn 65 and by the year 2030, there will be more senior citizens in this country than any other age group, something that's never happened before. The problem of elder abuse will only grow as do the numbers of elderly, and it's important that it be addressed and handled.

The abuse starts and flourishes, she says, when the elderly are isolated. "Once you isolate an individual, you can abuse them,'' she said. "You can physically abuse them, you can financially abuse them, you can verbally abuse them.

"Isolation is abuse, especially for people with dementia,'' Kerri Kasem said. "They die 50 percent faster when they're not around people love and in familiar surroundings."

She said her message is simple: "Prevention, prevention, prevention and awareness. It's easier to prevent something than to go through a traumatic situation."

Arizona

New sheriff to shut Tent City as he seeks to undo Joe Arpaio's policies

by Madison Park

Tent City, the infamous outdoor jail in Arizona where inmates wore pink underwear and shuffled around in chain gangs, will close, officials announced Tuesday.

Joe Arpaio, the former top cop in Phoenix's Maricopa County, established the jail in 1993. But he was voted out of office last year. Soon, Tent City will also be gone.

Erected in a remote area in Arizona, Tent City became a symbol of Arpaio's 24-year tenure as sheriff and magnet for controversy. Critics said the facility was demeaning for inmates, who stayed in scorching heat over 100 degrees, ate calorie-controlled meals and were given pink accessories including their underwear.

Arpaio promoted the desert camp, burnishing his reputation and touting himself as "America's toughest sheriff."

But his successor, who defeated Arapaio in November's election, said there was no evidence that Tent City deterred crime.

"This facility became more of a circus atmosphere for the general public," said Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone. "Starting today, that circus ends and these tents come down."

The new sheriff in town is reversing many of Arpaio's controversial policies.

Arpaio: 'Insulting to call it a circus'

At a news conference Tuesday, Penzone estimated closing Tent City would save $4.5 million.

Running the outdoor, canvas camp was difficult for detention center staff, who had to wear full gear in "very trying conditions" with "difficult dynamics," he said.

Cobbled together using donated Korean War tents, Tent City was established to alleviate prison overcrowding. It was in a remote area in Arizona, known for intense heat. Record temperatures inside a tent had reached 140 degrees, according to a 2016 press release from Maricopa County Sheriff's Department.

Arpaio dismissed heat concerns, saying: "If our servicemen and women serve in the Middle East in extreme hot weather over there, our inmates can deal with the heat here as well in Tent City."

When reached for comment by KPHO, a CNN affiliate in Phoenix, Arpaio denounced the jail's closure.

"It's disgusting and insulting to call it a circus," he said.

"It is a deterrence. [The inmates] hate that place. I don't care what [Penzone] says."

Officials say economics drove the jail's closure.

Tent City has the capacity of holding 2,100 inmates and peaked at 1,700 inmates, former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods said at a news conference.

"The last several years it held 700-800 inmates and yet the cost for Tent City has stayed the same, whether you have 1,700 inmates or half of that. So economically it's become a problem," Woods said.

Moving the inmates will take several months, Penzone said.

Penzone disbands Arpaio's policies

Since taking helm of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office on January 1, Penzone has sought to undo many of Arpaio's policies.

For one, the sheriff's office no longer issues news releases with a page-long photo of Arpaio watermarked on the background of every page.

Arpaio, the poster child for hardline immigration policy in the United States, was ordered to be tried on a criminal contempt charge. A federal judge found Arpaio and three members of his office to be in civil contempt because they allegedly violated court orders intended to keep the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office from racially profiling Latinos. His trial is scheduled for this month.

Under Arpaio, the sheriff's office led workplace raids leading to criminal ID theft charges for undocumented immigrants.

Penzone, a Democrat and former Phoenix police officer, has said the county's deputies will not take the lead on immigration enforcement anymore. He reached a compromise with Immigration and Customs Enforcement after initially announcing that the sheriff's office wouldn't honor the agency's request to hold inmates who would otherwise be released, according to CNN affiliate KNXV.

Shortly after taking office, he disbanded Arpaio's Cold Case Posse, which investigated former President Barack Obama's birth certificate.

A staunch supporter of Donald Trump, Arpaio insisted that Obama was not a US citizen and that his birth certificate was fraudulent -- a claim that has been thoroughly debunked.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/05/us/arizona-tent-city-close-sheriff-joe-arpaio/

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Connecticut

A look at police consent decrees in East Haven, other US cities

by John Seewer

Fourteen police departments big and small are working under reform agreements with the U.S. Department of Justice.

The agreements known as consent decrees force police officials and mayors to put reforms in place by a set deadline. The deals often are overseen and monitored by a federal judge or another third party.

Here are some of the city police departments across the U.S. with consent decrees or negotiating decrees:

• EAST HAVEN, CONNECTICUT

The city's federal consent decree in 2012 came after an investigation found a pattern of police discrimination and bias against Hispanic residents who said they were subjected to false arrests, assaults and illegal searches. Four white police officers were convicted. A 2014 federal report said the town had made “remarkable” progress, including reducing the percentage of police motor vehicle stops involving Hispanics. A year later, then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch called East Haven a model for improving police-community relations.

• MIAMI

The fatal shootings of seven black men and teenagers within eight months resulted in an agreement between police and the Justice Department in 2016. The investigation found officers were overzealous in use of deadly force, used tactics that sparked confrontations and did a poor job of investigating the shootings. The agreement, which runs through 2020, requires improved training of front-line officers, reduction of tactical squads that tend to be most aggressive and better internal investigations of officer-involved shootings.

• NEWARK, NEW JERSEY

Police agreed to make changes in 2016 after a federal investigation found that three-fourths of pedestrian stops were made without constitutionally adequate reasons and often targeted people in high-crime areas. It also said officers routinely used excessive force. The agreement will cost the city roughly $7.5 million and requires more community policing and training on use of force and stops and searches. It also calls for video cameras in all patrol cars and bodycams for most officers.

• CLEVELAND

The 137-shot barrage of police gunfire that killed two unarmed blacks after a high-speed chase in 2012 was one of several instances involving police that led to a consent decree two year later. Among the findings were that officers had hit suspects in the head with their weapons and used stun guns on handcuffed people. Reforms called for a switch to community policing, an overhaul for investigating misconduct allegations and new training in avoiding racial stereotyping and dealing with the mentally ill.

• FERGUSON, MISSOURI

A scathing Justice Department report alleging racial bias and profiling came in the wake of the 2014 police shooting death of Michael Brown, a black 18-year-old. The consent decree called for a Civilian Review Board to examine allegations of police misconduct. But the board's first meeting in March came after it missed a deadline to become operational and it's still not able to accept complaints from citizens. But a federal judge overseeing the agreement said the city is making meaningful progress.

• BALTIMORE

The death of Freddie Gray in police custody led to the Justice Department's 2016 report that said officers routinely stopped people in black neighborhoods for dubious reasons and arrested residents for speaking in ways police deemed disrespectful. A proposed agreement calls for discouraging arrests for loitering and littering and requiring a supervisor to sign off on taking someone into custody for a minor infraction. The agreement also lays out policies for transporting prisoners like Gray, a black man who suffered a broken neck while riding in a police van.

• SEATTLE

An investigation after an officer's fatal shooting of a Native American woodcarver in 2010 and other questionable uses of force against minorities found officers were too quick to be physical, especially in low-level situations. A settlement in 2012 overhauled the police department's training and procedures, all aimed at reducing unnecessary uses of force and improving citizens' trust in officers. Both sides agree the results have been positive. Polling showed residents' attitudes toward police have improved greatly.

• NEW ORLEANS

The Justice Department opened civil rights investigations focused on police misconduct in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath and then made a separate push to address systemic problems in the police department. That second effort led to the signing of the consent decree in 2012. There's been a vast revamp of policies and increased use of body and dashboard cameras. Monitors have generally praised the city's efforts, but they said in January that nearly 60 recent police recruits were accepted despite red flags for “risk factors,” including possible drug use and domestic abuse.

• CHICAGO

A video showing a white officer fatally shooting a black teenager 16 times set off a civil-rights investigation of the police department in December 2015. It concluded, among other things, that officers were way too quick to use excessive force. While the probe was carried out under a Democratic administration, the city must hammer out a reform agreement with a Republican one that hasn't yet made its policy clear. Legal experts say staff attorneys for both sides likely are laying the groundwork for the formal negotiation stage that should start within a few months.

http://www.nhregister.com/general-news/20170405/a-look-at-police-consent-decrees-in-east-haven-other-us-cities

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Vermont

Will extra police presence make Burlington more safe?

by Priscilla Liguori

BURLINGTON, Vt. -- City leaders say they plan to add five officers to the Burlington police force to increase the department's presence in the community.

"That's 200 additional hours of police time on the street a week. These extra five officers will allow us to continue delivering 911 response, but really enhance our foot response as well," said Chief Brandon del Pozo, Burlington Police Department.

Right now, the Burlington Police Department has about 100 officers. In Monday night's State of the City address, Mayor Miro Weinberger says he hopes to add five more by the 2019.

"City Hall Park, North Street, the downtown area, the waterfront, you should all see officers there consistently and more of them as time goes on," said del Pozo.

Penny Shtull is a criminologist who teaches at Norwich University.

"It's not really the number of police officers so much that we put on, but what those officers are doing the can play a significant role in addressing crime," said Shtull.

Shtull says the department's focus on community policing is what she thinks will make a difference.

"They're engaging in proactive versus reactive policing, and that's what's important in reducing crime so engaging the community, targeting hot spots or geographic areas of high crime," said Shtull.

Chief del Pozo says the department is also getting more training and equipment to respond to mental health and addiction problems.

"One of the things we're planning on doing is requiring an emergency response vehicle, and that's going to have all of our nonlethal equipment and our devices for safety subduing people and controlling situations on the road," said del Pozo.

The department has come under fire in recent years for what some have called an excessive use of force. In 2013 a man was shot and killed by police after he reportedly came charging at them with a shovel. Last year a 76-year-old man was shot and killed by an officer after he reportedly threatened authorities with a knife. Chief del Pozo says these new tools are meant to minimize use of force.

"We want the force to be as minimal as we can, so nonlethal devices and teamwork and various techniques and teamwork will help minimize that force and that's the vision here," said del Pozo.

"We have devices to force doors open, or keep doors shut, things to protect cops bodies, things to help us isolate a crime scene, some medical response equipment. Really a wide range of equipment," said del Pozo.

These changes were announced just days after a fatal stabbing on Church Street. Chief del Pozo says this incident isn't what prompted these changes, but highlights the need for more foot patrol.

Mark Hughes from the Justice for All organization says he hopes there is clear transparency and communication with the community about the department's changes.

http://www.wcax.com/story/35071546/will-extra-police-presence-make-burlington-more-safe

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Texas

Police release video of suspected Texas cop killer's car

Last week, Clint Greenwood told officials he felt threatened by a man he'd once targeted in a corruption investigation

by Andrew Kragie

(Video on site)

HARRIS COUNTY, Texas — The day after a local law enforcement leader was ambushed and fatally shot east of Houston, police said on Tuesday morning that they are pursuing leads and following up on the few tips that have come in.

"We're getting a few here and there," Baytown police Lt. Steve Dorris said of tips that have come through Crime Stoppers, which on Monday offered a reward up to $50,000. Gov. Greg Abbott's office offered an additional $15,000 reward.

Late Monday, police released surveillance video of a suspected getaway car. Authorities believe the driver is the same man who fatally shot Clint Greenwood, assistant chief deputy with the Harris County Precinct 3 Constable's Office. The vehicle appears to be a dark-colored subcompact car.

Police described a man who was seen in the area at the time of the 7 a.m. shooting as a white or Hispanic man, about 6 foot to 6 feet 3, with short hair and a medium to stocky build.

The driver could have blended in with traffic as students, parents and staff arrived to a nearby high school, which was later locked down.

Authorities said late Monday they were investigating several leads but had not made any arrests.

Just last week, Greenwood had told county officials he felt threatened by a man he'd once targeted in a corruption investigation. He shared his concerns with officials in the Harris County Attorney's Office who were handling an administrative matter related to the case, according to a source who asked not to be identified because of the nature of the investigation.

"I believe [this person] poses a real threat to my and my family's safety," Greenwood said in an email sent Thursday to the county attorney's office.

Greenwood's concerns about the corruption case were passed along to law enforcement, the source said.

The reward of up to $65,000 is being offered for information leading to an arrest and charges in the case through Crime Stoppers, 713-222-TIPS.

Russia

St. Petersburg metro attack 'carried out by suicide bomber'

by Tim Lister, Euan McKirdy and Angela Downs

Moscow (CNN) -- The St. Petersburg metro attack was carried out by a suicide bomber, the Kyrgyz Foreign Minister has said.

Kyrgyz authorities had earlier identified Akbarjon Djalilov, a Russian national born in Kyrgyzstan, as a suspect in the blast that ripped through a train in Russia's second city on Monday afternoon.

The Russian health ministry raised the number of dead from 11 to 14, although it was unclear whether that included the attacker. Four of the dozens of people injured are in critical condition, Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova said, according to TASS.

Russians laid flowers and tributes at memorials and a three-day period of mourning has begun.

A woman pays her respects at a memorial at the Tekhnologichesky Institute metro station in St. Petersburg on Tuesday.

The explosion took place between the Sennaya Ploshchad and Tekhnologichesky Institut stations at about 2.40 p.m. on Monday. Photographs from the scene showed bandaged and bloodied bodies being carried from the station where the train came to a stop.

Others showed bodies lying by the train itself at Tekhnologichesky Institut as the station filled with smoke.

A second, larger device was found and defused at another station, Russia's Anti-Terrorism Committee said.

That device, hidden in a fire extinguisher, was larger than the one that exploded, according to state media reports that quoted law enforcement sources. It carried about a kilogram of TNT, the reports said.

Train driver praised

The driver of the train, Alexander Kaverin, has been praised in Russia for continuing to the next station after the blast, ensurin a quick evacuation of passengers.

"At that moment there was no question of fear. It was just a question of working, rolling up your sleeves," he said.

"I just acted according to instructions, because we have instructions worked out especially for such cases. We have had explosions before and I think these instructions are very clever, very correct."

Kyrgyzstan connection

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which led to the shutdown of the city's metro system. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev described it as a "terrorist act."

Erlan Abyldaev, the Kyrgyz Foreign Minister, said the bomber's motives were unclear.

"Regarding the link with Islamic radicalism, we have to wait to know more until the investigation yields its full results," Abyldaev said at a press conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Kyrgyzstan is a Muslim-majority nation in Central Asia of around six million people. It is formerly part of the Soviet Union and remains a close ally of Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was in St. Petersburg for a media conference the morning of the attack. At a press conference Tuesday, reporters asked Kremlin spokesman Peskov whether he thought the President may have been a target.

"Of course the fact that the terror attack happened when the head of the state was in town is a food for thought and is subject to analysis by the special services. Any terror attack that happens in the country is an attack on every single Russian citizen. Including the head of state," he said.

Analysts have speculated that the bomber could be affiliated with either a Chechen separatist group or ISIS. The bombing of a Russian MetroJet flight over the Sinai desert in Egypt, which killed all 224 people aboard, was claimed by ISIS.

Another possibility, says former CNN Moscow Bureau Chief and Woodrow Wilson Center Global Fellow Jill Dougherty, is a hybrid Chechen rebel-ISIS attack.

Many Chechen fighters have gone to fight in Syria, she said, and it has long been feared that they could bring their battlefield expertise back home.

"The fear was that after (Chechens) had been radicalized and almost professionalized, by that time in Syria would then come home and carry out attacks in Russia ... (which) would fit the kind of ISIS international terrorism theory that Putin has been talking about," she said.

"The first thing that's missing from an investigator's perspective is the claim of responsibility," he told CNN.

"Last year when two ISIS operatives attacked police officers on the outskirts of Moscow... one of the first things that was released was the video where they claimed allegiance to al Baghdadi, the ISIS leader and ISIS itself and that's a hallmark, as we've seen in San Bernardino, of an ISIS attack."

Russia was once a hotspot for terror attacks, but the country has experienced relatively few in recent years.

In December 2013, a suicide bombing at a train station in Volgograd killed at least 16 people. The following day, in the same city, a suicide bombing on a trolley bus killed 14 people.

In 2010, two female suicide bombers linked to the Chechen insurgency blew themselves up at two Moscow metro stations, killing 40. In 2002, Chechen rebels killed 170 hostages in a theater in the capital, Moscow.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/04/europe/st-petersburg-russia-explosion/

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Washington D.C.

Sessions orders Justice Department to review all police reform agreements

by Sari Horwitz, Mark Berman and Wesley Lowery

Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered Justice Department officials to review reform agreements with troubled police forces nationwide, saying it was necessary to ensure that these pacts do not work against the Trump administration's goals of promoting officer safety and morale while fighting violent crime.

In a two-page memo released Monday, Sessions said agreements reached previously between the department's civil rights division and local police departments — a key legacy of the Obama administration — will be subject to review by his two top deputies, throwing into question whether all of the agreements will stay in place.

The memo was released not long before the department's civil rights lawyers asked a federal judge to postpone until at least the end of June a hearing on a sweeping police reform agreement, known as a consent decree, with the Baltimore Police Department that was announced just days before President Trump took office.

“The Attorney General and the new leadership in the Department are actively developing strategies to support the thousands of law enforcement agencies across the country that seek to prevent crime and protect the public,” Justice officials said in their filing. “The Department is working to ensure that those initiatives effectively dovetail with robust enforcement of federal laws designed to preserve and protect civil rights.”

Sessions has often criticized the effectiveness of consent decrees and has vowed in recent speeches to more strongly support law enforcement.

Since 2009, the Justice Department opened 25 investigations into law enforcement agencies and has been enforcing 14 consent decrees, along with some other agreements. Civil rights advocates fear that Sessions's memo could particularly imperil the status of agreements that have yet to be finalized, such as a pending agreement with the Chicago Police Department.

“This is terrifying,” said Jonathan Smith, executive director of the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, who spent five years as the department's chief of special litigation, overseeing investigations into 23 police departments such as New Orleans, Cleveland and Ferguson, Mo. “This raises the question of whether, under the current attorney general, the Department of Justice is going to walk away from its obligation to ensure that law enforcement across the country is following the Constitution.”

The Baltimore agreement, reached after Freddie Gray died in April 2015 following an injury in police custody, calls for changes including training officers on how to resolve conflicts without force. The Justice Department asked for 90 additional days to assess whether the agreement fits with the “directives of the President and the Attorney General,” according to the filing Monday evening in U.S District Court of the District of Maryland. U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar had scheduled the public hearing for Thursday.

The filing notes that Baltimore has already made its own progress toward police reform and states that “it may be possible to take these changes into account where appropriate to ensure further compliance while protecting public safety.”

Officials who negotiated the agreement criticized the move. Vanita Gupta, former head of the Civil Rights Division under President Barack Obama, said that “the request for a delay is alarming and signals a retreat from the Justice Department's commitment to civil rights and public safety in Baltimore.”

Baltimore Mayor Catherine E. Pugh also said she and Police Commissioner Kevin Davis oppose the delay. “Any interruption in moving forward may have the effect of eroding the trust that we are working hard to establish,” Pugh said.

But Gene Ryan, president of the union that represents rank-and-file police officers in Baltimore, said he welcomed the federal government's request. Ryan said his chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police is in favor of reform but worries that the process was hasty.

The agreement reached between Baltimore and the Justice Department was announced in January, coming after a push by Obama administration officials to secure police reform agreements before Trump took office. The department, in a report last year, said the Baltimore police engaged in racially discriminatory policing and used excessive force because of “systemic deficiencies” in the department.

In the blistering report, federal investigators wrote that police in Baltimore, driven by a “legacy of zero tolerance enforcement,” conducted stops, searches and arrests that violated the Constitution.

The federal civil rights probe was launched after Gray, 25, died of a spinal cord injury he suffered while in police custody. That episode added Baltimore to the list of cities that saw heated demonstrations erupt following controversial encounters between police and black residents.

After months of negotiations, federal and city officials announced an agreement to improve the department's training, strengthen its responses to sexual assaults and encourage officers to “use force in a manner that avoids unnecessary injury or risk of injury to officers and civilians.”

Then-Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch described the decree, which must be approved by a federal judge, as “binding” and something that “will live on.” A day later, Lynch went to Chicago for the release of a sprawling federal investigation into that city's police department that similarly assailed its practices. It's now unclear what will happen with either of the agreements.

Adolphus Pruitt, the president of the St. Louis NAACP, questioned whether the department would also review investigations where officers were not deemed to be at fault.

“We've got just as many times that the Justice Department was called in to look at an incident and they found no probable cause for charges,” said Pruitt, who was among the first to call for a Justice Department investigation into the August 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson. “Are they going to go back and look at those? The attorney general wants to re-examine something? Hell, I've got some stuff he can take a look at!”

Pruitt said he fears what the review will signal to communities awaiting reform.

[Read Sessions's full memo]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/sessions-orders-justice-department-to-review-all-police-reform-agreements/2017/04/03/ba934058-18bd-11e7-9887-1a5314b56a08_story.html?utm_term=.ba9e1cf35056

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Texas

Deputy constable shot and killed; reward for gunman increased to $65,000

by Sophia Beausoleil, Janelle Bludau and Stephanie Cano

BAYTOWN, Texas - The reward has been increased to $65,000 for information about the death of Harris County Precinct 3 Assistant Chief Deputy Constable Clint Greenwood, 57, who was killed Monday morning after a shooting near the Harris County government building in Baytown, Baytown police said.

Officials said at 7 a.m. police were called to the 700 block of West Baker Road, where the 30-year veteran where the had been shot at least once on his way to work.

Greenwood was taken to Memorial Hermann where he was pronounced dead, officials said.

The motive of the shooting is currently unknown.

Police have released surveillance video of the suspect vehicle.

Numerous federal, state and local law enforcement agencies are assisting in the investigation to find the shooter.

Several businesses and nearby Sterling High School were put on lock-down for hours.

"They're doing their job. That's the one thing you need to remember the police officers are doing very good. They're doing very well. They always do well and as you can see they're protecting the school," Sterling High School Sophomore James Hinna said.

The chaotic morning unfolded as employees tried to get to work and as students tried to get to class.

"You don't know if he's out here among everybody else, we don't know who he is or if it's a he or a if it's a she," Debbie Frank said.

Greenwood was once a major with the Harris County Sheriff's Office. Deputies said they don't know why he was attacked, but they plan to find out.

"It's very early on in the investigation. What I can tell you is that we have the full force of the Baytown Police Department working the case along with members of the HCSO, the Texas Rangers, the Precinct 3 Constables Department and the Gulf Coast Violent Defenders Task Force," Lt. Steve Dorris with Baytown Police said.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Baytown Police Department or Baytown Crime Stoppers. A reward of up to $65,000 is available for information that leads to an arrest.

Family recalls moments after shooting death of deputy constable

Many neighbors and businesses said they didn't hear anything, but one family who lives less than a quarter mile from the shooting did.

"I was cooking breakfast this morning somewhere between 6:45 a.m. and 7 a.m. and my daughter ran out of the restroom and said, 'Mom did you hear the gunshots?'” Cyndi Frazier said, who lives about a quarter mile from where the shooting happened.

"I said, 'No,' and she said, 'Well I think it was gunshots it sounded like it was like two and went 'boom boom,' and then she heard two more she heard 'boom boom' again.

Frazier said she didn't hear anything. When they were on the way to school, police officers were not letting anyone into Sterling High School because it was on lock down.

"I said, this has to be something to do with what she heard this morning, so we still didn't know until we got back home and we started getting updates on the news and it was gunshots," explained Frazier.

"I didn't hear anything or see anything," explained Stella Vidrine whose home backs up to East Fork Goose Creek. From there, one can see the parking lot where it appears the deputy was shot and killed.

"I was taking my kids out to the bus like every day and there was a bunch of cops and the next thing I knew cop coming toward me asking me if those were my kids and I said yes," said Vidrine. "He said, 'Can you get them inside because we're on lockdown, we're shutting everything down because there's an active shooting in the area."

Vidrine said investigators took her security video, she's not sure if it will help in finding the suspect.

Her street, Allenbrook Dr. is parallel to where the shooting happened.

Officials release statements

"We're going to do everything we can to make sure that we track down whoever was responsible for this. We're going to stand united in this and we appreciate all of the collaboration that we've seen this morning, the show of support from the community and the law enforcement community for having lost a fellow law enforcement officer this morning," Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said.

"I am sickened and profoundly saddened by the brutal killing of Deputy Greenwood this morning. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family, of course, and to all the men and women who surround us and protect us from similar acts of lawlessness and brutality," Harris County Judge Emmett said.

“The thoughts and prayers of all Texans are with the family of Deputy Constable Clint Greenwood, who has died from a gunshot wound in Harris County. My office stands ready to assist in any way possible. This is a reminder to pray for and support all law enforcement officials in our state, especially at this time of grief,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said.

"My heart goes out to the family and friends of Assistant Chief Deputy Greenwood and the Harris County law enforcement community in the wake of this heinous murder.

"Texas is taking action to strengthen penalties for those brazen enough to commit crimes against law enforcement, and we will send a message that such vile acts will not be tolerated in the Lone Star State.

"I am confident the perpetrator of this despicable act will be apprehended and that the murderer will be met with swift justice,” Governor Greg Abbott said.

"Jan and I send our thoughts and prayers to the friends and family of Assistant Chief Deputy Greenwood, a 30-year law enforcement veteran, during this very difficult time.

"Violence against our law enforcement officers must stop. Protecting our men and women in uniform continues to be a top priority for me and I will do whatever it takes to bring this latest assassin to justice," Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said.

“We knew him as a lawyer, law-enforcement officer and colleague respected in every role,” District Attorney Kim Ogg said. “Our prayers are with his family.” The Baytown Police Department is leading the investigation of his death.

“I'm deeply saddened to hear the news of Assistant Chief Clint Greenwood who passed away from his injuries this morning. We owe a deep debt of gratitude to all those who put on the uniform every day and risk their lives to ensure the safety of our communities, and Deputy Greenwood gave the ultimate sacrifice.

"I pray that God will provide comfort and peace to Deputy Greenwood's family and the law enforcement community as they grieve his loss. You do not stand alone in your grief. Baytown grieves with you," Baytown Mayor Stephen DonCarlos said.

“Thousands of men and women faithfully wear the badge of a Texas peace officer day in and day out in Houston and Harris County,” stated Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez. “They answer a high call to service for their fellow man. That was the call that Assistant Chief Clint Greenwood answered over decades of service. His bravery and sacrifice will not be forgotten and will not go unanswered.”

100 Club provides assistance to Greenwood's family

"A $20,000 check will be given to Chief Greenwood's wife to help with any immediate financial needs. Additional financial support for the family will be made after an assessment of their needs is conducted. The average gift from the 100 Club to a dependent family is approximately $300,000."

Donations can be made online at the100club.org or sent to

100 Club Survivors Fund
5555 San Felipe Street, Suite 1750
Houston Texas, 77056

http://www.click2houston.com/news/life-flight-called-to-shooting-near-government-building-in-baytown

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California

Police arrests dropping across California

Police Chief Charlie Beck noted that arrests for serious crimes have risen along with the numbers of those offenses, while the decrease comes largely from narcotics arrests

by James Queally, Kate Mather and Cindy Chang

LOS ANGELES — In 2013, something changed on the streets of Los Angeles.

Police officers began making fewer arrests. The following year, the Police Department's arrest numbers dipped even lower and continued to fall, dropping by 25 percent from 2013 to 2015.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and the San Diego Police Department also saw significant drops in arrests during that period.

The statewide numbers are just as striking: Police recorded the lowest number of arrests in nearly 50 years, according to the California attorney general's office, with about 1.1 million arrests in 2015 compared with 1.5 million in 2006.

It is unclear why officers are making fewer arrests. Some in law enforcement cite diminished manpower and changes in deployment strategies. Others say officers have lost motivation in the face of increased scrutiny — from the public as well as their supervisors.

The picture is further complicated by Proposition 47, a November 2014 ballot measure that downgraded some drug and property felonies to misdemeanors. Many police officers say an arrest isn't worth the time it takes to process when the suspect will spend at most a few months in jail.

In Los Angeles, the drop in arrests comes amid a persistent increase in crime, which began in 2014. Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck noted that arrests for the most serious crimes have risen along with the numbers of those offenses, while the decrease comes largely from narcotics arrests.

The arrest data include felonies and misdemeanors — crimes ranging from homicide to disorderly conduct. From 2010 to 2015, felony arrests made by Los Angeles police officers were down 29 percent and misdemeanor arrests were down 32 percent.

Two other measures of police productivity, citations and field interviews, have also declined significantly.

The LAPD could not provide final tallies for arrests in 2016. But based on numbers that include arrests by other agencies within city limits, the downward trend continued last year, Assistant Chief Michel Moore said.

A direct link between the crime pattern and the drop in arrests is difficult to draw, in part because the arrest data include minor offenses not counted in the tally the city uses to measure crime. Still, some city officials are concerned.

“Those are dramatic numbers that definitely demand scrutiny and explanation,” said Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Bonin, who sits on the Public Safety Committee and represents the LA's west side.

“If crime was dramatically down, I wouldn't have a problem with arrests going down. But if crime is going up, I want to see arrests going up,” he said.

Beck said that although arrests are an important component of policing, they are not the sole barometer of officer productivity. As an example, he pointed to community policing programs that he credits with reducing homicides in housing developments hit hard by violent crime.

Modern policing includes an array of strategies, such as swarming hot spots to prevent crimes from occurring, that may increase public safety without generating many arrests, he said.

For the LAPD, Beck said, modern policing also includes a different philosophy than the one the department embraced decades ago, during the Operation Hammer days when officers would stop, search and arrest thousands of people during weekend raids.

“The only thing we cared about was how many arrests we made. I don't want them to care about that,” Beck said of his officers. “I want them to care about how safe their community is and how healthy it is.”

Nationwide criticism of police stoked by the 2014 fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and other highly publicized law enforcement killings has had an effect on officers' mindsets — but not to the detriment of crime fighting, Beck said.

“I'd be denying human nature if I didn't say police are very cautious about what they do now because of the scrutiny,” Beck said. “But do I see it? I don't really see things that make me think that the workforce as a body is retreating. I don't see that at all.”

The decline in arrests had already begun before Brown, an unarmed black man, was killed by a white Ferguson police officer in August 2014, setting off nationwide demonstrations. After a grand jury declined to indict the Ferguson officer, protesters in Los Angeles and other cities marched through the streets.

In a nationwide survey conducted in 2016 by the Pew Research Center, 72 percent of the law enforcement officers questioned said their colleagues were less likely to stop and question suspicious people “as a result of high-profile incidents involving blacks and the police.”

Police officers and sheriff's deputies interviewed by the Los Angeles Times echoed that view.

“Everyone is against whatever law enforcement is doing, so that makes an officer kind of hesitant to initiate contact,” said one LAPD officer, who has worked in South L.A. for more than a decade and requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

“A lot of guys will shy away from it because we've got the dash cams, we've got the body cams … . We don't want it to come back on us.”

The heightened atmosphere surrounding ordinary police encounters was apparent one day in Compton last summer, when L.A. County Sheriff's Deputy Anthony Federico made a routine stop of a vehicle without license plates.

Federico gave polite directions, calmly telling the driver why he had been pulled over, and the driver complied.

But as Federico moved back toward his cruiser, someone stepped out of a house and trained a cellphone on him. About 25 feet away, an Uber driver pulled over and also began filming.

Federico said he refuses to let the added scrutiny affect his work.

“It doesn't bother me, because I know I'm not doing anything wrong,” he said.

But others say it is inevitable that some officers will pull back, taking care of necessary work while not engaging in the “proactive policing” that could lead to more arrests — and to more encounters that turn violent.

“Not to make fun of it, but a lot of guys are like, ‘Look, I'm just going to act like a fireman.' I'm going to handle my calls for service and the things that I have to do,” said George Hofstetter, a motorcycle deputy in Pico Rivera and former president of the union representing L.A. County sheriff's deputies. “But going out there and making traffic stops and contacting persons who may be up to something nefarious? ‘I'm not going to do that anymore.'”

LAPD officers are troubled by contentious demonstrations at Police Commission meetings and by public criticism of their colleagues for using deadly force, said Robert Harris, a police officer on the LAPD union's board of directors.

“Suddenly, you feel like you can't do any police work, because every opportunity that you have might turn into the next big media case,” Harris said. “Of course, you're going to take stock a little bit more, I think, before you put yourself out there like that.”

The recent decline in police activity is not limited to arrests: The number of field interview cards written by officers has plummeted at both the LAPD and the L.A. County Sheriff's Department.

The cards document some encounters between police and civilians that stop short of an arrest or citation. They are a tool sometimes used to keep track of gang members and other suspected criminals.

The number of LAPD field interview cards fell nearly every month in the second half of 2014, and the department recorded its lowest number of cards in nearly five years in November 2014.

Field interviews conducted by Los Angeles sheriff's deputies have also been in steep decline, falling by 67 percent from 2012 to 2016. Sheriff Jim McDonnell said the drop-off is probably connected to the elimination of many gang enforcement teams because of budget cuts. But the trend is worrisome, he said, because the cards are useful in documenting the movements of potential suspects.

It would be “naive” to think that the national debate over policing hasn't affected the Sheriff's Department, McDonnell said. Nevertheless, he said, his deputies are not shying away from potentially dangerous situations.

The number of citations, which includes traffic violations and other types of tickets, issued by LAPD officers also fell sharply, from almost 600,000 in 2010 to about 269,500 five years later. The biggest drop came in 2015, when police issued roughly 154,000 fewer citations than the year before.

Beck said that in 2014, the department began issuing written warnings as a substitute where appropriate.

“The goal is not to write citations,” Beck said. “The goal is to manage traffic flow, the goal is to create safe streets.”

The LAPD could not provide the number of field inquiries conducted or citations issued by its officers in 2016.

McDonnell and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti are among local officials who have blamed Proposition 47, which took effect on Nov. 5, 2014, for a rise in crime, especially property offenses, in both the city of L.A. and the Sheriff's Department's territory. Critics of the measure say that with some drug and property felonies downgraded to misdemeanors, offenders spend less time in jail and have the opportunity to commit more crimes.

In 2016, violent crime in Los Angeles increased for the third straight year and was up 38 percent over the previous two years. Property crime jumped for the second consecutive year, with a 4 percent rise that was driven by double-digit increases in car-related thefts.

Still, the city remains far safer than a decade ago, when there were 40 percent more robberies than in 2016 and 480 homicides compared with 294 last year.

Proponents of Proposition 47, which was designed to funnel funds that would have been used to jail low-level offenders into creating treatment programs for those same people, say there is no evidence linking the legislation to crime increases. They say that criminal justice officials, including prosecutors and judges, need to change the way they do business.

But the measure has almost certainly contributed to the decline in felony arrests, since some drug and property crimes are no longer felonies. Moreover, some police officers and sheriff's deputies are less inclined to make a misdemeanor arrest for a Proposition 47 crime, saying it is not worth the hours it takes to book a person who could wind up back on the street soon after being placed in handcuffs.

In 2015, the first full year after the legislation took effect, Los Angeles police made 37 percent fewer narcotics arrests than they did the year before. Narcotics arrests made by L.A. sheriff's deputies fell by 28 percent in the same time frame.

Beck said that with possession of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and other drugs reduced to misdemeanors, it is “absolutely predictable” that felony arrests would drop off.

Harris, the LAPD union director, said that Proposition 47, combined with the department's “inadequate” staffing levels, has altered the calculus for officers when deciding whether to engage with someone.

“Are you going to go and make an arrest that you know is only going to be a misdemeanor? You know your impact is not going to be very great,” Harris said. “That guy is going to be right back out again.”

But declining arrest totals are not necessarily a bad thing, some officials and activists said.

If officers think twice about approaching people, some situations where police use force might be avoided, said Melina Abdullah, a leader of the local Black Lives Matter movement and chair of the Pan-African studies department at California State, Los Angeles.

“If police are more cautious about making arrests that might be controversial, making arrests that might elicit protests, then that is a victory,” Abdullah said. “We want them to begin to check themselves.”

https://www.policeone.com/patrol-issues/articles/323765006-Police-arrests-dropping-across-California/

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From ICE

Texas

153 arrested in South Texas during 12-day ICE operation targeting criminal aliens, illegal re-entrants and immigration fugitives

ICE operation took place in Austin, San Antonio, Rio Grande Valley and Laredo areas

SAN ANTONIO — Federal officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) arrested 153 criminal aliens and others throughout South Texas during a 12-day enforcement action which ended Friday.

The operation began March 20 and ended March 31. ERO officers made arrests in the following San Antonio Field Office cities: Austin/Waco (24), San Antonio (62), Laredo (29) and Harlingen (38). Of those arrested, 138 were men; 15 were women.

All the foreign nationals targeted by ICE officers during this enforcement action had prior criminal convictions. The vast majority of those arrested (137 of the 153) had criminal histories that included convictions for the following crimes: aggravated assault with a weapon, aggravate sexual assault of a child, driving under the influence (DUI), sexual assault, burglary, robbery, resisting officer, vehicular manslaughter, alien smuggling, domestic violence, cocaine possession, prostitution, fraud, simple assault, cocaine possession, dangerous drugs and controlled substance distribution.

Those arrested throughout South Texas include foreign nationals from five countries: Mexico (140), Honduras (7), Guatemala (3), Canada (2) and El Salvador (1). Following are criminal summaries of five of those arrested during this operation:

•  A 27- year-old woman from Mexico was arrested in Laredo March 20. She has a prior conviction for injury to a child with bodily injury. She was processed and removed to Mexico.

•  A 30-year-old man from Mexico was arrested in Austin March 21. He has a prior conviction for delivery of a controlled substance (cocaine). The U.S. Attorney's Office is prosecuting him for illegally re-entering the United States after being deported.

•  A 48-year-old man from Mexico was arrested in Harlingen, Texas, March 24. He was convicted of intoxicated manslaughter with a vehicle. The U.S. Attorney's Office is prosecuting him for illegally re-entering the United States after being deported.

•  A 20-year-old man from Guatemala was arrested in San Antonio March 23. He was convicted of injury to a child with intent to cause bodily injury. He remains in ICE custody pending a hearing before an immigration judge.

•  A 46-year-old man from Mexico was arrested in San Antonio March 31. He was convicted of the following crimes: aggravated sexual assault of a child (first degree felony), 2 DUIs and assault. He is in ICE custody pending removal proceedings.

During this ICE operation, ERO officers received assistance from special agents with ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

“ICE's primary immigration enforcement efforts target convicted criminal aliens,” said Daniel Bible, field office director for ERO in San Antonio. “Consequently, our operations improve overall public safety by removing these criminals from our streets, and ultimately from our country.”

Of the 153 arrested, 33 were presented to the U.S. Attorney's Office to face criminal prosecution on charges of re-entry after deportation. The others arrested during this 12-day operation are being processed administratively for deportation. Those who have outstanding orders of removal, or who illegally re-entered the U.S. after being deported, are subject to immediate removal. Those remaining in ICE custody are awaiting a hearing before a federal immigration judge or are pending travel arrangements for removal. Anyone who illegally re-enters the United States after having been previously deported commits a felony punishable by up to 20 years in federal prison, if convicted.

All of the targets in this operation were amenable to arrest and removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

ICE deportation officers carry out targeted enforcement operations daily nationwide as part of the agency's ongoing efforts to protect the nation, uphold public safety and protect the integrity of our immigration laws and border controls. These operations involve existing and established Fugitive Operations Teams.

During enforcement operations, ICE officers frequently encounter other aliens illegally present in the United States. They are evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and, when appropriate, they are arrested by ICE officers.

In fiscal year 2016, ICE conducted 240,255 removals nationwide. Ninety-two percent of individuals removed from the interior of the United States had previously been convicted of a crime.

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Dept of Justice

California

PRESS RELEASE

Inland Empire Dentist Pleads Guilty to Possessing Child Pornography and Admits Distributing Images on Computer Network

RIVERSIDE, California – A dentist who formerly lived and worked in Temecula pleaded guilty this afternoon to possession of child pornography, including videos of children under the age of 10 engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

Milan Irvin, 34, who currently resides in Rancho Cucamonga, pleaded guilty this afternoon to one count of possession of child pornography and admitted in a plea agreement that he “downloaded, received, possessed and distributed images and videos of child pornography using the internet.”

Irvin specifically admitted possessing a sexual explicit video depicting a girl under 10 and distributing another video involving a girl between 10 and 12. Irvin possessed approximately 200 images and 50 videos of child pornography on a computer.

Irvin pleaded guilty today before United States District Judge Jesus G. Bernal, who scheduled a sentencing hearing for July 10.

The charge of possession of child pornography carries a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison. The plea agreement calls for a prison sentence of three years to five years, to be followed by 10 years of supervised release. The actual sentence will be determined by Judge Bernal, but if the court decides to deviate from the agreed-upon sentence, both parties have the option to withdraw from the plea agreement and proceed to trial.

Once he completes his prison sentence in this case, Irvin will be required to register as a sex offender and will be prohibited from associating with people under the age of 18.

This case was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), which received substantial assistance from the Riverside County District Attorney's Office, Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement (SAFE) Team. Irvin came to the attention of investigators during an undercover investigation involving the Ares peer-to-peer network.

This case is being prosecuted by Special Assistant United States Attorney Teresa K.B. Beecham.

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FROM:  Thom Mrozek, Spokesperson/Public Affairs Officer
United States Attorney's Office, Central District of California (Los Angeles)

www.justice.gov/usao-cdca