Wisconsin

Wis. DOJ issues guidelines for investigating fatal police shootings

The guidelines revise the agency's past practice of allowing police involved in shootings to review video and audio of the incidents before being interviewed by investigators

by Jason Stein

MADISON, Wis. — For the first time, the Wisconsin Department of Justice has formalized its guidelines for independently investigating police shootings — the latest step in the state's efforts to be a national leader on the issue.

Before April, the state investigators charged with reviewing police shootings were relying on their agency's general guidelines for investigations and even in some cases on unwritten understandings about how to handle these specific cases.

Going forward, state agents will be able to say — literally — that they're handling these sensitive investigations by the book.

The stakes could not be higher: public turmoil over shootings has resulted in riots in cities around the nation in recent years, including last summer in Milwaukee. Police unions have also expressed concern that a perceived lack of public support is making it harder to recruit and keep good officers.

"The public wants to see a fair process and I think the written policies spell out what the process is and I think it is a good policy," said Rep. Chris Taylor (D-Madison), who helped write the Wisconsin law that requires independent investigations of police shootings. "In a lot of ways they could be a model policy."

A spokesman for the Milwaukee Police Department declined to comment on the new guidelines, but the executive director of the state's largest police union welcomed them.

"This is the first time that we're aware of that the department has had a formal policy and that's a very positive development," said Jim Palmer of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association. "There are benefits for the public and for officers to know what the policy looks like."

The new 20-page guidebook will also serve as a set of best practices for other police investigators around Wisconsin who, like DOJ agents, do outside reviews of shootings by other law enforcement agencies. Because police shootings vary so widely, agents will still be able to work outside the guidelines to adapt to unforeseen circumstances, state officials said.

Johnny Koremenos, a spokesman for the Justice Department and GOP Attorney General Brad Schimel, said the guidelines would also be used in agency training for local police. The policies reflect what the agency has learned from reviewing best practices nationally and 60 investigations since 2014 in which police used force or a suspect died.

"It has been a continuous review of (officer-involved death and officer-involved shooting) events in the state of Wisconsin and what is happening around the country," Koremenos said.

The guidelines, which come out of a DOJ review begun in April 2016, revise the agency's past practice of allowing police involved in shootings to review video and audio of the incidents before being interviewed by investigators.

In at least five cases since 2015, officers being investigated in a shooting were allowed to review recordings of the event before discussing it in depth with DOJ agents, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported in March. Starting in July 2016, DOJ stopped allowing officers to review those recordings in advance of their interviews without sign off from a district attorney.

The new guidebook reflects lessons learned from the DOJ's investigation of a December 2015 shooting of a hostage in Neenah, Koremenos said. The Appleton Post-Crescent first reported about concerns over the differences in how state agents questioned a hostage-taker in that case compared with how they questioned two police officers who mistakenly shot the hostage.

In that case, the accused hostage-taker was interviewed and recorded with no attorney present three hours after the standoff at Eagle Nation Cycles ended. The officers were interviewed four days later, accompanied by a union attorney; no recording was made.

Though this change in interviewing practices was adopted last summer, it wasn't put in writing until the guidelines were issued last month. Taylor, the Democratic lawmaker, said that was critical.

"You really do have to put policies in writing," she said.

The guidelines cover everything from the management of the shooting scene to the release of information to the news media. They also call for:

Requiring DOJ agents to disclose any relationships they may have had with officers involved in a shooting. The rules don't specifically address concerns from Taylor and the ACLU of Wisconsin about DOJ agents investigating police departments that formerly employed them.

Limiting DOJ's investigation to a strict review of whether officers committed a crime. The family attorneys of Tony Robinson, a 19-year-old biracial man killed by a Madison police officer, have objected to a DOJ interview also being used for the officer's disciplinary review in that case.

Recording DOJ interviews of officers. If officers object, DOJ cannot force them to have their statements recorded since it could prevent the evidence from being used in any resulting criminal case.

Wisconsin's model has been drawing attention outside the state as a way of boosting public confidence in the outcomes of shooting investigations. A report last year by the Stanford Criminal Justice Center pointed to the transparency, experienced state investigators, public support, flexibility and promptness of the state's system.

"(These) five attributes of Wisconsin's system make it an especially favorable way of achieving independence," the report reads.

Hawaii

(Additional information from previously posted article)

Off-duty cop helps detain man who tried to break cockpit door mid-flight

Authorities said Anil Uskanli created so many problems on the American Airlines flight that he had to be immobilized with duct tape in a seat until the plane landed in Honolulu

by Jennifer Sinco Kelleher and Michael Balsamo

HONOLULU — Soon after they boarded a flight to Honolulu, Mark and Donna Basden found a laptop computer in a seat pocket in front of them.

The couple assumed someone on a previous flight left it there. But a flight attendant said it probably belonged to a man who was in the bathroom.

A man Donna Basden described as a "disheveled looking fellow" emerged and Mark Basden gave him the laptop. The man scowled, took the laptop and opened it and closed it and then tried to sit in another first class seat, Mark Basden said.

Authorities say that moments later, the man — identified as Anil Uskanli, 25, of Turkey — had created so many problems on American Airlines Flight 31 on Friday from Los Angeles to Honolulu that he had to be immobilized with duct tape in a seat until the plane landed in Honolulu. Uskanli was taken into custody after the plane, escorted by two fighter jets, landed.

As authorities on Saturday investigated what happened, it was not clear whether Uskanli intended to harm anyone. He now faces a possible federal charge of interference with a flight crew, Paul Delacourt, special agent in charge of the FBI's Honolulu office, told reporters in Hawaii.

Halfway through the six-hour flight, the Basdens saw the same man again holding his laptop with something over his head that they thought was a towel or a blanket.

"He was very quiet, moving very sluggish. He was trying to approach the cabin, like where the captain is," said another passenger, Grant Arakelian.

At that point, a flight attendant ran down the aisle with her serving cart and blocked the entrance to first class, said passenger Lee Lorenzen, of Orange County, California.

"She jammed the cart in that the doorway and she just said, 'You're not coming in here,'" Lorenzen said.

The man pushed the cart, trying to get through but passengers came up behind him and grabbed him. He spent the rest of the flight restrained in a seat with duct tape.

"This unfortunate incident highlights the tremendous professionalism of American's team members, and specifically, in this situation, our flight attendants," American Airlines said in a statement. "Their decisive actions ensured the safety of everyone onboard the flight. We are proud of our crew and are grateful to them for their actions."

Bob Ross, president of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, on Saturday said attendants who represent the last line of air travel defense managed to "defuse a high-risk situation"

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly was briefed on the midair disturbance, according to a statement from the department. There were no other reports of disruptions, but the department said it monitored all flights Friday as a precautionary measure.

Passengers among the 181 flying on Flight 31 staffed with six crew members took notice of Uskanli before the jet took off from Los Angeles.

Before he boarded the flight to Hawaii, Uskanli was also arrested at Los Angeles International airport for opening a door that led onto an airfield ramp, according to Los Angeles Airport police.

"He immediately walked up to somebody and said, 'Where can I get something to eat?' " Los Angeles airport spokesman Rob Pedregon said. "He walked right up to somebody. He wasn't trying to go somewhere or do something illicit."

Though airport police smelled alcohol on Uskanli's breath he was not intoxicated enough to be held for public drunkenness, so they cited and released him.

Uskanli provided police a home address in the affluent Santa Monica suburb of California. A Linkedin page for someone with his name says he attended film school in London until this year.

Passengers among the 181 flying on Flight 31 staffed with six crew members took notice of Uskanli before the jet took off from Los Angeles.

Before he boarded the flight to Hawaii, Uskanli was also arrested at Los Angeles International airport for opening a door that led onto an airfield ramp, according to Los Angeles Airport police.

"He immediately walked up to somebody and said, 'Where can I get something to eat?' " Los Angeles airport spokesman Rob Pedregon said. "He walked right up to somebody. He wasn't trying to go somewhere or do something illicit."

Though airport police smelled alcohol on Uskanli's breath he was not intoxicated enough to be held for public drunkenness, so they cited and released him.

Uskanli provided police a home address in the affluent Santa Monica suburb of California. A Linkedin page for someone with his name says he attended film school in London until this year.

The incident was not that unusual, Pedregon said. "We have all these fire doors and people get confused because they're walking around, and some people do breach it," he said.

https://www.policeone.com/off-duty/articles/346291006-Off-duty-cop-helps-detain-man-who-tried-to-break-cockpit-door-mid-flight/

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Hawaii

US Air Force fighter jets escorted an American Airlines plane into Hawaii after a passenger disturbance

by Bryan Logan

US Air Force fighter jets escorted an American Airlines plane into Honolulu, Hawaii, on Friday after a passenger disturbance on the flight.

The FBI did not immediately disclose the nature of the incident, but local CBS and NBC affiliates reported Friday that a passenger on American Airlines Flight 31 was detained after trying to breach the cockpit.

Crew members on Flight 31 and an off-duty police officer restrained the man aboard the flight which originated from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), the reports said. Flight 31 landed safely in Honolulu at 11:35 a.m. local time. No injuries were reported.

Federal authorities were preparing a criminal complaint to charge Turkish national Anil Uskanil, 25, with interference with a flight crew, FBI special-agent-in charge Paul Delacourt said at a Honolulu news conference, Reuters said.

Local news outlets said the man had "breached" security at LAX but was allowed to board the plane. It was not immediately clear what the circumstances of that breach were, but the news outlets, citing unnamed sources, said once Flight 31 departed, the man allegedly "tried to break through the cockpit door."

Delacourt, when asked by a reporter if Uskanil tried to break into the cockpit, said the Turkish man was in the aisle of the plane and it was "unclear what his motivation was."

Witnesses on Flight 31 told NBC News correspondent Gadi Schwartz that the passenger had a shirt over his head and did not make it past the first-class section of the aircraft. "Flight attendant blocked aisle, man taken down," Schwartz wrote.

American Airlines said in an emailed statement to Business Insider:

"This unfortunate incident highlights the tremendous professionalism of American's team members, and specifically, in this situation, our flight attendants. Their decisive actions ensured the safety of everyone onboard the flight. We are proud of our crew and are grateful to them for their actions."

http://www.businessinsider.com/american-airlines-flight-31-lax-to-hawaii-passenger-detained-2017-5

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New York

Car barrels into pedestrians in New York's Times Square

by Ray Sanchez

An 18-year-old woman was killed and at least 22 people injured Thursday when a speeding car plowed into pedestrians in Manhattan's bustling Times Square, city officials said.

Police identified the woman as Alyssa Elsman, a resident of Portage, Michigan.

The driver of the 2009 Honda Accord -- Richard Rojas, 26, of the Bronx -- tested positive for PCP and told police that God made him do it, a law enforcement source told CNN.

The suspect, who suffered from "psychological issues," told police he expected officers to shoot him, according to the source.

Rojas has been arrested twice in New York -- in 2015 and 2008 -- for drunken driving, New York Police Commissioner James O'Neill said.

There is no indication the incident, which unfolded just before noon, was an act of terrorism, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and other officials said. It is being investigated as an accident, a police official said. Charges against the driver are pending.

One of the hospitals treating the injured said four patients were in critical condition Thursday night. Two were in serious condition.

NYC Health + Hospitals Bellevue said it received 13 patients, 10 adults and three teenagers. The serious injuries included pelvic fractures, internal bleeding and head injuries.

Car was 'out of control'

Before striking pedestrians, the car was "out of control," an emergency management official said. Four people were critically injured but are expected to survive, officials said.

The speeding car jumped the sidewalk on the west side of 7th Avenue at 42nd Street and barreled into pedestrians for three blocks before crashing at the northwest corner of 45th Street, police said.

Witnesses described a harrowing scene that started with screeching tires and ended with screams, panic and a fiery crash at one of the world's most visited sites.

"A woman in front on the sidewalk was hit and tossed before then car reached 44th st, continued plowing people down at full speed up to 45th street, where it was stopped after crashing into more people and the light post," posted Instagram user Ed G Val, who from across the street "saw the car speeding north on the west sidewalk of southbound 7th Ave."

Harlem resident Tyezhane, 20, who would only give her first name, said she was walking to work at a shoe store when she saw the car on the sidewalk. She bolted across the street.

"There were a lot of people out, enjoying the good day, and then I heard screaming and the car running over bodies," she said. "I didn't know what was going on. At first, I thought someone was intentionally doing it. I was scared for my life."

Social media images show injured people on the street, a car upended at an angle and crowds gathered in the heart of the tourist hub.

'More of a surreal thing'

Elizabeth Long, of Dayton, Ohio, told CNN she was walking to the Hard Rock Cafe when she saw a maroon car heading toward her on the sidewalk. She heard screaming. Fearing the car would hit her, she ran to a nearby building's revolving door.

"I wasn't even all the way in when the car sped by," perhaps 10 feet behind her, said Long, a 54-year-old who was in town to see a musical.

When Long went outside and looked in the direction the car had gone, she saw at least six people lying on the ground, including a woman lying face-down with blood pouring from her head.

"I'm shaken," said Long, who wasn't injured. "Two of the people I saw that were really hurt. People were beside them, ... we were trying to tell (police) they were hurt."

"I felt so bad ... standing there," not being able to do anything more to help, she said.

Annette Proehl, of Pennsylvania, was in Times Square with children on a field trip when she heard the screeching tires of the vehicle and people screaming. She watched the car slam into a steel divider and catch fire, she said.

Proehl was hit by a piece of gravel but otherwise was not injured, she said.

"It was more of a surreal thing," she said. "We initially thought they were filming something."

Patsy Sciutto, who works in Times Square, said she was meeting someone for lunch when an announcement came over a loudspeaker that the building was on lockdown because of an incident outside.

Principal says victim was thoughtful, bright

Elsman was in New York with her sisters, mother and a friend, CNN affiliate WOOD reported.

She graduated from Portage Central High School.

"Alyssa was a really thoughtful, really bright, very pleasant young lady. Every interaction I had with her was positive," school principal Eric Alburtus told the Grand Rapids station.

Among world's most popular spots

Officers there told her there was an "unknown speeding car," Sciutto said.

Within moments of the incident, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and de Blasio rushed to the scene. President Donald Trump, whose home at Trump Tower is one mile from the crash scene, was made aware of the incident almost immediately and given updates, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer tweeted.

The sidewalks around Times Square are secured with more than 200 steel bollards intended to prevent accidental or criminal vehicle intrusions, said Rob Reiter, chief security consultant for CalPipe Security Bollards. The bollards are designed to stop vehicles going about 30 miles an hour, he said.

Times Square averaged about 360,000 daily visitors in April, according to a tally by the Times Square Alliance, making it one of the most visited locations in the world.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/18/us/new-york-times-square-car-pedestrians/

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New York

Meet the heroes who took down the Times Square driver

by Eric Levenson

Kenya Bradix heard the screams.

The longtime Planet Hollywood bouncer saw a red car driving on the sidewalk into crowds of pedestrians near New York City's Times Square. He saw the car smash into a metal pole, saw a man hop out of the car flailing his arms and screaming, and saw others try -- but fail -- to grab him.

So he ran after the suspect himself.

"I saw an opportunity and tackled him to the ground from his left side," Bradix told HLN on Friday. "I got him down, turned him on his stomach."

Nearby, Alpha Balde, a father of eight from Guinea, was helping move a man out of harm's way when he heard the commotion just before noon Thursday.

Balde, in the trademark yellow shirt and red vest worn by employees of the New York City sightseeing bus company Gray Line, looked to his left and saw Bradix tackle the man. He sprung into motion.

Balde ran to the suspect and put his hands around the man's neck to keep him down, he said. Balde also patted the suspect down and searched him to make sure he didn't have a weapon.

Balde and Bradix were joined within a minute by a handful of on-duty and undercover New York police officers, who took over the scene and arrested the suspect.

Police have identified the driver as Richard Rojas, a 26-year Bronx resident who intentionally drove onto the sidewalk in an attempt to "kill them all," he told police, according to a criminal complaint. He was charged with murder and 20 counts of attempted murder.

Now two days later, Balde and Bradix are being praised for their bravery and willingness to risk their own safety to stop a fleeing suspect in one of the most popular places in the world. Yet in separate interviews, both said they weren't scared at that moment and downplayed any suggestion they're heroes.

"I'm just trying to help," Balde said.

'I was in security mode'

For Balde, the incident was all a little familiar. Back in August 2007, he tackled a man fleeing a bank robbery and was featured as a crime-stopping hero in the New York Post.

To this day, Balde keeps a photocopy of that story folded up in his pocket.

"I keep this for my record. You never know," said Balde, who moved to the US decades ago. "I've got the newspaper at home, so I always make a copy."

Bradix, a buff man with imposing biceps, has worked security at the Times Square restaurant for 25 years, he said on HLN on Friday.

When he saw the screaming suspect, then heard a man say "Get him, get him," Bradix jumped up and, well, got him, he said.

"At that moment, I guess I was in security mode, I would call it. I basically was on instinct," he said. "And I didn't think for a second if he had anything (dangerous) or what could he possibly do. I was just thinking, 'Just get the guy down and subdue him 'til the police came.'"

Despite his decades of work in Times Square, Bradix said he'd never seen anything like this.

"You don't expect this to happen. Or when you do see it, it's always on TV, some other state, but not right in front of you," Bradix said. "This happened in front of me."

In an interview Saturday with CNN in Times Square, Balde said he's been getting handshakes and praise from friends and strangers who recognized him from the news. As he recounted taking down Rojas, two people interrupted to shake his hand or get a photo.

And though this was Balde's second crime-stopping adventure, it may not be his last.

"I'm ready to do the same thing again," he said. "(If) you're gonna come in New York City trying to hurt somebody, come in this area here, you don't have no chance. Because we're gonna keep our eyes open."

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/20/us/times-square-heroes/

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New Jersey

Community policing

North Bergen cops hold informal meeting with residents

by Hannington Dia

North Bergen police officers held one of their monthly TAPS (Township Alternative Policing Strategy) meetings at the Uptown Library May 16. The department has been holding meetings to allow residents to express concerns and discuss issues with officers in a relaxed environment. Detective William Fleischhauer, Captain William Lyons, Captain David Corbisiero, and Officer Saray Durango were on hand and listened to a handful of locals who stopped by for an hour.

Evelyn, a resident, had a few issues with people double-parking on residential streets in the town, specifically around her home on 78th Street, between Palisade and Bergenline avenues.

“Typically, they can be parked there for quite a while,” she shared. “And then that makes it difficult to move around.”
The officers responded that they will send someone to perform day and night-time checks in the area.

When asked why she believes such meetings are important for the community, Evelyn said, “I came to support the local police officers, and to voice some problems that I had.”

Others were similarly thankful.

“I came because I wanted to say, ‘thank you,' resident Susan Nissim told the officers. She said she is a big fan of police in general. The former Manhattan resident even shared with the officers a picture of the New York Police Department's Shorim Society—an official organization of Jewish NYPD officers—from 1972.

She also asked whether she could use her handicap placard to park anywhere on the street in the township.

Lyons said that it could be used in handicap spots in businesses, but not just anywhere. “If you pull into a Walmart parking lot and there's a blue space, you can park there,” he responded.

Sylvia DeYorgi also told police that too many people park in unauthorized spaces.

Afterward, she said, “I just saw it in the paper, and I wanted to see what happens here. This is something that I would be interested in coming to more often.”

Lyons encouraged residents to follow the department's Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages for any new information. “Please, talk to your neighbors and anybody else that wants to come out,” he said. “You don't have to come here with any complaints or concerns. You can just come here to ask any questions.”

For information the next round of TAPS meetings, keep visiting North Bergen's official website at http://www.northbergen.org/ . You can also keep checking the briefs section of the North Bergen Reporter.

http://hudsonreporter.com/view/full_story/27419299/article-Community-policing--North-Bergen-cops-hold-informal-meeting-with-residents-?instance=latest_story

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From the Department of Homeland Security

National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin

Date Issued: Monday, May 15, 2017
View as PDF: National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin - May 15, 2017 (pdf, 1 page, 608.02KB)

Summary

Since 2015, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has used this Bulletin to highlight the continuing threat from homegrown terrorists, many of whom are inspired online to violence by foreign terrorist organizations. The United States is engaged in a generational fight against terrorists, who seek to attack the American people, our country, and our way of life. An informed, vigilant, and engaged public remains one of our greatest assets to identify potential homegrown terrorists and prevent attacks.

Duration

Issued: May 15, 2017
Expires: November 15, 2017

Details

•  We face one of the most serious terror threat environments since the 9/11 attacks as foreign terrorist organizations continue to exploit the Internet to inspire, enable, or direct individuals already here in the homeland to commit terrorist acts.

•  Homegrown terror suspects are increasingly relying on technology, such as end-to-end encrypted social media applications, to avoid detection. Moreover, terrorist groups are urging recruits to adopt easy-to-use tools to target public places and events. Specific attack tactics have included the use of vehicle ramming, small arms, straight-edged blades or knives, and homemade explosives, as well as other acts such as taking hostages.

•  As the United States steps up efforts to disrupt and defeat terrorist groups overseas, we will continue to face a multi-faceted threat environment.

•  Specifically, continued successes aimed at disrupting and defeating terrorist groups overseas may encourage homegrown terrorists inside the United States to carry out acts of violence.

•  Additionally, foreign terrorist fighters, who have acquired training and battle-tested terrorism experience, are likely to flee from terrorist-controlled territories with a desire to conduct attacks elsewhere, including the United States. Some of these individuals may be U.S. citizens or citizens of other nations attempting to travel to the United States on visas, from visa-waiver countries, with the aim of attacking the homeland or inciting others within our borders to conduct attacks.

U.S. Government Counterterrorism Efforts

•  DHS and the FBI continue to provide guidance to state, local, tribal and territorial partners related to the current threat environment. DHS also partners closely with the private sector to provide risk assessments and coordinate security measures with business owners and operators. The public may continue to observe law enforcement and security activity in and around public places and events.

•  DHS is taking steps to address the threat from foreign terrorist fighters who have traveled or attempt to travel to the United States, including working closely with the FBI and Intelligence partners to identify U.S. persons who left the country to join terrorist groups, as well as putting in place enhanced screening and vetting measures to detect travelers with potential terrorist connections.

•  More broadly, we remain committed to preventing violence and threats meant to intimidate or coerce specific populations on the basis of their religion, ethnicity, or identity, and we will seek justice against the perpetrators of such acts.

Types of Advisories

Bulletin

Describes current developments or general trends regarding threats of terrorism.

Elevated Alert

Warns of a credible terrorism threat against the United States.

Imminent Alert

Warns of a credible, specific and impending terrorism threat against the United States.

How You Can Help

•  Report suspicious activity to local law enforcement who are best to offer specific details on terroristic indicators.

•  Suspicious activity or information about a threat may also be reported to Fusion Centers and the FBI's Field Offices - part of the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative. DHS and FBI are especially interested in unusual foreign travel to known terrorist locations.

•  Learn how to recognize signs of pre-operational planning associated with terrorism or other criminal activity.

Be Prepared

•  Be prepared for security and plan ahead. Anticipate delays and restrictions on items around populated places and at events.

•  Be responsible for your personal safety. Make a mental note of emergency exits and security personnel. Carry emergency contact and special needs info with you at all times.

•  Business owners are encouraged to Connect, Plan, Train, and Report to prepare businesses & employees. Security tools/resources can be accessed through the DHS's Hometown Security Campaign.

•  For more visit Ready.

Stay Informed

•  The U.S. Government will provide additional information about any emerging threat as additional information is identified. The public is encouraged to listen to local law enforcement and public safety officials.

•  We urge Americans to continue to travel, attend public events, and freely associate with others but remain vigilant and aware of surroundings.

•  The Department of State issues international travel alerts and warnings.

If You See Something, Say Something™. Report suspicious activity to local law enforcement or call 911.

https://www.dhs.gov/ntas/advisory/ntas_17_0515_0001?utm_source=hp_slideshow&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=dhs_hp

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From the FBI

National Police Week 2017

FBI Remembers Fallen Heroes

The FBI this week honored seven special agents who responded to the 9/11 attacks and later died from illnesses linked to their exposure to toxic air and hazardous materials at the sites. The agents were recognized as part of National Police Week, an annual event that draws thousands of law enforcement officers to Washington, D.C. each May to honor their fallen colleagues.

In the weeks following the 9/11 attacks, Special Agents Steven Carr, William Craig, Jerry Jobe, Robert Roth, Gerard Senatore, Paul Wilson, and Wesley Yoo were among the FBI personnel who recovered the deceased and gathered critical evidence in the largest investigation in FBI history. After scientists confirmed a connection between 9/11 responders and their illnesses, the agents—who passed away between 2007 and 2015—were added to the FBI's Hall of Honor this week. They ranged in age from 44 to 68 at the time of their deaths.

During a memorial service on May 17 at FBI Headquarters for all agents who have died in the line of duty, FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe called the fallen 9/11 responders “peacemakers dedicated to protecting the lives of Americans.”

“They did their jobs not knowing that responding to the scene of a tragic attack would set into motion another tragedy that they would not realize until many years later,” he said.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy designated May 15 as Peace Officers Memorial Day and the week in which it falls as National Police Week. Multiple events are held in the nation's capital each year in the days leading up to and during the week, including a candlelight vigil, a Blue Mass at St. Patrick's Catholic Church, a wreath-laying ceremony at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, and several others.

This year's events were underscored by the release of a preliminary FBI report that shows 66 law enforcement officers were feloniously killed last year in the line of duty. An additional 52 officers were killed in line-of-duty accidents, according to preliminary statistics compiled by the Bureau's Uniform Crime Reporting Program, which will release a full report, Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted, 2016, in the fall.

https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/national-police-week-2017

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From the Department of Justice

Justice Department Announces the National Blue Alert Network

The Justice Department, along with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), today announced the nationwide rollout of the National Blue Alert Network, including newly developed deliverables and federal interagency cooperation to enhance the safety and support of America's law enforcement officers. Under implementation by the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office), the National Blue Alert Network promotes rapid dissemination of information to law enforcement, the media and the public about violent offenders who have killed, seriously injured or pose an imminent threat to law enforcement, or when an officer is missing in connection with official duties.

Named in honor of two fallen New York City Police Department (NYPD) officers who were ambushed in December 2014, the Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu National Blue Alert Act was signed into law in May 2015. The COPS Office was selected to implement the Act in September 2016 and has partnered with other federal agencies, including the FCC and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to establish enhanced communications systems, guidelines and resources.

“This network provides the means of quickly identifying, pursuing and capturing violent offenders who have hurt, killed or pose an imminent danger to law enforcement,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions. “This National Police Week, we are proud to show our support for our nation's brave police officers, and to work with our federal partners to keep them safe.”

“The men and women of law enforcement put their lives on the line to protect and serve the public,” said Acting Associate Attorney General Jesse Panuccio. “The Department of Justice is committed to supporting law enforcement, and the National Blue Alert Network will provide this country with the necessary framework for rapid response to help save lives and apprehend criminals who would attack those who bravely protect public safety.”

Blue Alerts are operationally similar to AMBER Alerts and can be broadcast on television, radio, and sent to cellphones and other wireless devices. Like AMBER Alerts, which are designed to quickly provide information about missing children to the public, Blue Alerts provide details about possible assailants, including physical descriptions, vehicle information and other identifying characteristics.

At present, there are 27 states with Blue Alert plans; however, this coordinated framework will help facilitate and streamline the adoption of new Blue Alert plans throughout the nation and help integrate existing plans. To learn more about the National Blue Alert Network, visit https://cops.usdoj.gov/bluealert.

The COPS Office is a federal agency responsible for advancing community policing nationwide and has a long history of supporting officer safety and wellness. Since 1994, the COPS Office has invested more than $14 billion to advance community policing, including grants awarded to more than 13,000 state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies to fund the hiring and redeployment of approximately 129,000 officers and provide a variety of knowledge resource products including publications, training and technical assistance. For additional information about the COPS Office, please visit www.cops.usdoj.gov.

New Jersey

Park Ridge PD Among Few In NJ Honored For Community Policing

by Jerry DeMarco

PARK RIDGE, N.J. -- Park Ridge police will be among fewer than three dozen law enforcement agencies and officers from New Jersey who will be honored next week for "outstanding achievements and innovation in community policing throughout the state," officials said Thursday.

Attorney General Christopher Porrino said he will present the 2017 Attorney General's Community Policing Awards to three Bergen County recipients -- Emerson, Midland Park and Park Ridge police -- at a ceremony Monday in the Rutgers University Livingston Campus Student Center in Piscataway.

The ceremony "will feature presentations from agencies showcasing their initiatives, and a panel discussion among leaders in the field," said Porrino, who will be joined by state Criminal Justice Director Elie Honig, the State Association of Chiefs of Police and community and faith-based leaders in honoring the local officers.

The award recognizes "innovative and successful approaches to fostering relationships of collaboration, trust, and understanding between police departments and community groups," the attorney general said.

The event begins at 10:30 am. at the student center at 84 Joyce Kilmer Avenue.

http://pascackvalley.dailyvoice.com/police-fire/park-ridge-pd-among-few-in-nj-honored-for-community-policing/711145/

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California

Calif. officers frustrated by footage of confrontations

Members of the force are frustrated that a new city policy requiring release of video in extreme confrontations unfairly portrays their department

by Anita Chabria

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Responding to low morale and frustration on the police force, Sacramento may consider wider release of police videos to include everyday interactions and incidents where officers appear in a positive light – a practice that would make the department among the most forthcoming in the nation with official footage.

Mayor Darrell Steinberg and Tim Davis, head of the Sacramento police officers union, said members of the force are dispirited that a new city policy requiring release of video in extreme confrontations unfairly portrays their department. In the most recent example, an officer was captured on tape last month tackling a pedestrian to the ground and repeatedly punching him in Del Paso Heights.

Steinberg called Tuesday for the city to consider releasing “as much video as possible” to show “everyday interactions, incidents that occur where the police officer acted in the right,” which he said would boost department morale. He also, however, supports releasing video from lesser confrontations that don't meet the current threshold.

“The police have ... rightly complained that with our current video release policy, the only thing the public sees is the controversial shooting. Well, there is a lot more to see,” said Steinberg at Tuesday's City Council meeting. “Transparency is transparency and we have the technology now to be able to actually do more than we are doing in a way that I think could bridge some of the trust gap that we hear so much about.”

A Sacramento city policy approved last year requires that footage of police shootings, deaths in custody and some citizen complaints be released to the public within 30 days, unless the City Council grants a waiver. The council responded to community demands for more transparency following controversial police shootings in the city and elsewhere in the nation.

Davis said the current video release policy is partly to blame for an exodus of officers from the department. He said negative videos have left some officers feeling undervalued and unappreciated, causing them to look elsewhere for work.

“If the city through this policy is going to select the most tragic incidents and release that video, then they need to find the most triumphant and release it,” said Davis. “It's not fair to just tell one side of the story.”

Police chief Brian Louie told the council that 28 officers are projected to leave Sacramento's force this year for jobs at other departments. By comparison, 20 officers left last year and 19 in 2015.

Police spokesman Matt McPhail said the department currently has the discretion to release video in non-critical incidents but does not regularly do so in part because it lacks the manpower to edit the footage – the department currently blurs faces and identifying details such as license plate numbers. Also, he said, the department has not determined that releasing more video is the best course.

“I know it seems really simple to say you have it why don't you just do it, but there are a lot more calculations,” said McPhail. “The question is by putting that video out, what is the value and what is the potential negative?”

Some community leaders also expressed reservations about the idea.

Les Simmons, a member of Sacramento Area Congregations Together, said releasing more video would likely not impact community trust or resolve the department's “PR problem.”

Simmons said the department had been slow to release video under the existing policy and missed the 30-day mandate during a March incident. Repairing community relations would best be done by “holding (officers) accountable in places where they need to be held accountable ... In those moments you will see trust start to build,” said Simmons.

Police in recent weeks have expanded collection of video, deploying body cameras on field officers. Currently, the department has about 100 body-worn units up and running, McPhail said.

He said many officers assigned to the south area of the city and downtown have received and are using body cameras, and the department remains on schedule to have all sworn officers using them by fall. Officers who don't have cars with dash cameras, such as horse, motorcycle and bike officers, received the body cameras first, he said.

Police union head Davis has met privately with Steinberg and said after Tuesday's City Council meeting that he supports expanding video release as a practice.

Steinberg pointed to the Seattle Police Department as a model for greater video release. Seattle police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee said his department releases video in critical incidents ,such as shootings, within 72 hours but often as soon as 24 hours. The department also puts out video and other materials when “we think there is public interest or public value,” said Spangenthal-Lee.

He said the video release was not mandated by policy, although the city is currently working on a policy. The releases help “show people all the work that goes into public safety and tell that story,” he said.

Both Steinberg and Davis said any change in video releases would need to consider the privacy of residents and police.

McPhail said the current policy is “not typically showcasing the big picture of what policing is,” but added that many officers had safety and privacy concerns and might not want the notoriety that increased video access could bring, even when it highlighted positive actions.

“It is difficult to have all of our people want to have their names and faces put out there publicly,” said McPhail. “These are the same sorts of questions that agencies across the country are having, balancing privacy rights of the public, privacy rights of their own employees, versus what we want to and need to lawfully release. There is a tension between those factors and there is not an easy answer.”

Editing also has proved costly and time-intensive for police. Davis said the department would likely require greater funding and staffing if more video is released.

https://www.policeone.com/police-products/body-cameras/articles/342675006-Calif-officers-frustrated-by-footage-of-confrontations/

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Louisianna

Louisianna House votes to bolster police training after Alton Sterling death

The bill calls for officers to receive at least 400 hours of basic training and learn more about de-escalation practices, recognizing biases and handling in-custody deaths

by the Associated Press

BATON ROUGE, La. — Louisiana lawmakers are moving forward with a proposal to increase police officers' training requirements nearly a year after police fatally shot a black man outside a Baton Rouge convenience store.

The House voted 82-5 Thursday in favor of Rep. Ted James' bill, which calls for officers to receive at least 400 hours of basic training and learn more about de-escalation practices, recognizing biases and handling in-custody deaths.

James says many departments already exceed 400 training hours, but he wants a statewide minimum.

The measure heads to the Senate for consideration.

James, a Baton Rouge Democrat, says the proposal was prompted by the July death of Alton Sterling, who was killed during a struggle with two white officers. The officers are on leave pending an investigation.

https://www.policeone.com/police-training/articles/345451006-La-House-votes-to-bolster-police-training-after-Alton-Sterling-death/

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Many States Still Deny Juveniles Access to Counsel, 50 Years After Gault Ruling, Report Finds

by Victoria McKenzie

Fifty years after the Supreme Court ruling that recognized children's right to due process and legal representation, the National Juvenile Defense Council has issued a report that takes a granular look at the juvenile justice system across the states.

“Defense representation for youth is indispensable. Unfortunately, state laws and practices largely tell a different story,” the NJDC concludes.

“Though every state has a basic structure to provide attorneys for children, few states or territories adequately satisfy access to counsel for young people.”

According to the NJDC, the only barrier to ensuring juvenile due process nationwide is individual states' lack of interest in making it a priority.

The report found that only 11 states provide all juveniles accused of a crime with a defense attorney; and nowhere in the United States are children guaranteed an attorney during interrogation, despite the 1967 Supreme Court ruling that children must have “the guiding hand of counsel at every step in the proceedings against [them].”

Moreover, 36 states actually charge for a “free” lawyer, the report found, with expenses ranging from “$10 for an application fee to over $1,000 for an attorney's services—an attorney who is supposed to be appointed at public expense.”

Finally, the NJDC found that children across the U.S. are waiving their rights without even knowing it. In 43 states, children can waive their right to counsel without ever speaking to an attorney; often without the knowledge they are doing so.

Paternalism over due process

In most states, a child's right to counsel hinges on his or her parents' income, with no presumption of eligibility for free legal defense. There are a number of ways that this system undermines childrens' rights, the report finds. Parents can fall outside of the eligibility threshold–on average, around 125% of poverty level– but still not have enough income to hire a private attorney. According to 2017 poverty guidelines, the child of a single parent earning over $20,300 a year could be denied a public defense attorney.

The process of determining eligibility varies widely, according to the report–and in Louisiana, one public defender told the National Juvenile Defender Center that “a child is simply asked if he or she receives free or reduced-price lunch at school, and if so, counsel is appointed.”

Private attorneys also face the continual risk of conflicted loyalties–to their client, the child; and the parents, who foot the bill.

Finally, this system presumes that parents will always act in their child's best interest. Parents can waive their child's right to counsel even if they can afford a private attorney.

‘Unbridled discretion'

In all but the 11 states where children automatically have “presumption of eligibility” for free legal defense, NJDC found large discrepancies in the guidelines and procedures used to determine access to counsel. A 2015 DOJ investigation into the St. Louis family court system concluded that the lack of uniform procedures was a “contributing factor to the high rates of children who waived their right to counsel in St. Louis County.”

Furthermore, according to the NJDC, “arbitrary eligibility determinations also contribute to the disparate treatment of children of color, who are more likely than their white peers to be denied their right to an attorney — and thus, denied access to important constitutional protections.”

Arrives too late, ends too early

Statutory language varies across the states, according to the NJDC, and in some jurisdictions, the right to counsel only begins when a child enters the court for the first time. Only in the state of Illinois does the law require appointment of an attorney during interrogation (and only in certain circumstances).

The NJDC calls on states to “recognize interrogation as a critical stage of juvenile proceedings requiring a publicly funded defense lawyer to protect children from potential abuses of authority.”

Earlier appointment of counsel would also give attorneys time to prepare, whereas now, they often meet their juvenile clients for the first time in the courtroom.

The report found that children held in detention are more likely to be appointed counsel before their first hearing, thanks to the dogged work of juvenile justice advocates around the country. But the practice is very uneven, and “some youth meet their lawyer at the detention hearing while others wait in detention for days before ever seeing a lawyer.”

Where attorneys did have adequate time to meet with their clients, the NJDC found, it was due to the discretion of “flexible judges and court staff.”

In at least five jurisdictions, attorneys reported that their meetings are often not private, breaching ethical duties of confidentiality. And interviews that take place over the phone or by video “severely inhibit advocacy and the ability to develop the trust necessary to adequately represent children,” according to the report.

In states where the public defender's office is responsible for initiating the appointment of counsel for children, and not the courts, the NJDC found that more children have the opportunity to meet with their lawyers and establish a rapport before they appear in court, concluding that “such successes suggest that defender offices are best situated to appoint lawyers for children.”

In the majority of states, youth have limited or no right to counsel during most stages of post-disposition, according to the NJDC– including appeals, probation, disciplinary hearings, and confinement conditions.

Liberty at a price

In the 36 states that charge a fee for a public defender appointment, the NJDC found “huge discrepancies in how often or whether they are enforced.” In some jurisdictions, fees are always waived; in others, they are always enforced.

As a result of these fees, a child with no income of his or her own can be denied due process over a $50 fee.

“Charging fees for a publicly funded attorney — the very advocate through whom such protections become accessible — renders the right to counsel meaningless for children,” concludes the NJDC.

Waiving their rights

43 states allow children to waive their rights to an attorney without consulting one first. According to the NJDC, “the frequency and reasoning behind waiver of counsel is limited and likely under-representative of the crisis” because only three states collect this kind of public data. Based on interviews, however, the report found that waiver of counsel “is occurring at higher rates in rural and remote areas,” and in some places, it is “routine.”

By contrast, in the few states that do have a statutory requirement to consult with an attorney, “young people are waiving their right to counsel infrequently, if at all.”

This story was written for The Crime Report.

Washington

Citizen commission pushing for more power in Seattle police oversight

by Steve Miletich

In an 11th-hour campaign, the citizen-based Community Police Commission has mounted an all-out blitz to gain more power under police-accountability legislation being considered by the Seattle City Council.

The effort comes as City Attorney Pete Holmes, in withering terms, has urged the council to rein in the commission, saying it shouldn't be a collection of experts who believe they know what is best for the community.

The skirmishing is occurring under the watch of U.S. District Judge James Robart, who ultimately will review the legislation to ensure it doesn't conflict with a 2012 consent decree between the city and U.S. Justice Department requiring the Police Department to address excessive force and biased policing.

It was an angry Robart who, in 2015, halted a previous legislative effort to expand the commission's authority, calling it an attempt to “grab power” without the approval of the court.

He has since allowed a more deliberate process to unfold, culminating in a legislative package in which the police chief would retain final say over discipline, with input from the citizen commission, a powerful new civilian inspector general and the civilian head of the department's internal-investigation unit.

The council committee that oversees the Police Department is expected to vote on the ordinance Thursday, followed by the full council on Monday.

At issue is the future role of the commission, also known as the CPC. It was originally created as a temporary, 15-member body under the consent decree to provide a voice for the community.

Under the proposed legislation, the commission would become permanent, with 21 members, a bigger budget and a greater role in shaping citizen oversight of police discipline and internal workings of the Police Department.

But the council committee rejected a proposal that would have given the CPC the authority to formally evaluate and not just provide input on the performance of the inspector general, as well as of the director of the Office of Police Accountability, the newly named internal-investigation unit now called the Office of Professional Accountability.

The committee also voted down a proposal to allow the commission to add topics to the work plan of the inspector general. It can only suggest items.

In a guest editorial published in The Seattle Times on Wednesday, the commission's three co-chairs urged the public to contact City Council members and ask them to make sure the CPC is not just a “paper tiger.”

“It is essential that the police-accountability system and police services reflect community priorities and values. This requires a community board, representing community interests, to exercise system oversight, which will provide legitimacy for the accountability system and give the public greater confidence in SPD,” wrote the Rev. Harriett Walden, Enrique Gonzalez and Isaac Ruiz.

On Tuesday evening, the commission forwarded a letter to the council from more than 40 community activists and organizations urging the council to adopt the proposals, along with more funding and a greater citizen-oversight role in negotiations with the police unions.

“We support CPC's balanced approach, which stops short of placing a community board above the Police Chief, and instead gives CPC oversight responsibility for the overall accountability system,” the letter said. “Without the changes listed here that we support, this ordinance will fall short of that goal, calling into question the original decision to not seek more direct community power. Please restore the missing provisions.”

Holmes, however, raised alarms last week about the CPC's proposed role.

“The legislation … proposes a larger, less-focused and much more expensive CPC, which could undercut the reform progress made to date,” he wrote in a letter to City Council President Bruce Harrell; M. Lorena González, chair of the council's police-oversight committee; and Tim Burgess, the vice chair.

Arguing that the commission should be a “megaphone” for community input, Holmes wrote, “This should be the CPC's primary mission — not to ‘interpret' community opinion, decide who are the ‘legitimate voices' of the community, or tell the community what it believes.”

As proposed, the CPC would choose one-third of its own members and its executive director, Holmes wrote, “with no checks from the public or any branch of government.”

He urged that all commissioners — who are now appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the council — be appointed by either the mayor, the council or a combination of the two.

Holmes and Police Chief Kathleen O'Toole have called for giving the inspector general an elevated role, acting as the clearinghouse for recommendations.

The CPC, in a statement, said the commission serves as an important check on abuses and failures of police oversight professionals, who tend to come from a narrow pool with a stunning lack of racial diversity.

“We have to give up on the hope that we're going to hire the right single technocrat who will unilaterally make things better,” the statement said. “Instead, we prefer to establish an expectation that police leaders will be in meaningful dialogue with credible community leaders on a broad based commission and continuously identify issues that need work.”

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/citizen-commission-pushing-for-more-power-in-seattle-police-oversight/

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Louisianna

Data-Driven Baton Rouge, La., Violence Elimination Project Seeks Extension to Spend Grant Funds

Officials have asked the federal government to allow them an extra year to spend the remaining $1.6 million earmarked for the crime-fighting initiative

by Jim Mustian

Five years after the launch of the vaunted Baton Rouge Area Violence Elimination project, city-parish officials have asked the federal government to allow them an extra year to spend the remaining $1.6 million earmarked for the crime-fighting initiative — unused grant dollars set to expire at the end of the summer.

The request, which officials described as a long shot, highlights the growing uncertainty surrounding a data-driven program credited with reducing bloodshed in the city's most violent neighborhoods.

In talks with the federal government, Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome's administration has touted BRAVE's success — murder in Baton Rouge fell last year to levels last seen before Hurricane Katrina — even as it seeks to explain why more than half of the federal funding dedicated to BRAVE remains untapped. The feds are expected to respond to the request by the end of the week.

"Without an extension, the efforts of BRAVE will be abbreviated and reduced dramatically," James Gilmore, Broome's assistant chief administrative officer, wrote in a recent letter to the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

The letter noted that the BRAVE grant already has received an extension from the federal government to spend the grant money. But a confluence of events appears to have distracted the prior administration from implementing certain BRAVE services, Gilmore said, pointing to last summer's devastating floods and the unrest that followed the police-involved shooting death of Alton Sterling. The city's attention and resources, he wrote, "have been devoted to survival and disaster recovery."

"We had eight to nine months out of the year where this program probably wasn't managed or wasn't the focus," Gilmore added in an interview.

BRAVE has been credited with transforming the way local law enforcement tracks and responds to violent crime. Hundreds of thousands of dollars has been spent on the research and data-collection aspects of the program.

The money left on the table, Gilmore said, "is what we call the preventative dollars," or funds related to providing job skills and mental-health services to at-risk youths. If the BRAVE grant was "beautifully written, the reality of implementation was a weakness of it," Gilmore added. Perhaps one flaw was the vision for partnering with churches and local organizations, which couldn't afford to front the dollars to hire social workers and then get reimbursed by the grant funding, he said.

Launched in 2012 under former Mayor-President Kip Holden's administration, BRAVE targeted gun violence in Baton Rouge by identifying the city's gangs and their respective members, a coordinated effort to interrupt the cycle of retaliatory violence that fuels the murder rate. The initiative, modeled after the nationally acclaimed Operation Ceasefire, is based on the premise that violence is rooted in a "group dynamic," and that it can be significantly reduced when law enforcement, citizens and social service providers offer gang members alternatives to a life of crime. It generally targets 12- to 24-year-olds known to be associated with gangs, a demographic that local authorities have determined to be 900 times more likely than other citizens to be the perpetrator or victim of a murder.

Funded by a $1.5 million grant, the community-policing effort focused originally on the crime-ridden 70805 ZIP code, an area bordered by Airline Highway to the north and east, Choctaw Drive to the south and the Mississippi River to the west. It later expanded, with the help of an additional $1 million grant, to include the adjacent 70802 ZIP code, another epicenter of violence that is bordered by Choctaw Drive to the north, the Mississippi River and Nicholson Drive to the west, LSU to the south, and North Foster Drive, North Street and Park Boulevard to the east. Taken together, those two ZIP codes still account for roughly half of the city's killings. BRAVE has also operated in the Gardere neighborhood in the south part of East Baton Rouge Parish.

Altogether, about $900,000 was spent out of both grants, Gilmore said.

Three times a year, local law enforcement leaders arrange a gathering known as a "call-in" in which authorities, joined by faith-based community leaders, offer gang members a host of services but also warn them that violence won't be tolerated, and that their failure to put down their weapons will result in swift prosecution. That hammer, as the authorities call it, has not been as heavy or utilized as originally envisioned, said Hillar Moore III, the East Baton Rouge Parish district attorney, in a recent interview.

"I don't think we've done as good of a job on enforcement as we should," Moore said. "I think BRAVE has been more kind and gentle than punitive in that regard."

Moore told the Rotary Club of Baton Rouge last week that BRAVE has reduced the city's killings significantly over the past five years and provided law enforcement with a wealth of information about crime trends.

He said the authorities have spoken to more than 40 "groups" — a term local law enforcement uses to distinguish the city's loosely affiliated gangs from their more sophisticated counterparts in larger cities — and that "virtually every" one of them has decreased its violence. Researchers have reported that some 62 percent of the groups or gangs identified through BRAVE have since been downgraded to "inactive status."

"One of the worst groups, the Block Boyz, was terrorizing Gardere," Moore told the Rotary Club. "Now most of their members are in jail facing prosecution or already committed to prison for lengthy terms."

While BRAVE has resulted in few prosecutions, the federal funding has enabled a scientific approach to tracking crime "that we couldn't otherwise afford," Moore said in the interview. "A ton of research and data would be lost" if BRAVE were discontinued, he said. "We always have said that the day is going to come, sooner than later, where we have to determine how we're going to fund BRAVE."

To that end, officials have taken steps to prepare for a BRAVE that is unmoored from federal funding. "In the last year, we set up a BRAVE nonprofit. We have a BRAVE board." Moore said. "It's really just getting off the ground to see if we can't raise money from private folks."

In the meantime, city-parish officials are holding out hope that the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention will agree to extend the unused BRAVE funding from the current deadline of Sept. 18 to the end of August 2018. In his letter, Gilmore said an extension would allow the city-parish to implement several new programs for youth, including job skills, arts and intramural basketball programs.

"A denial of this extension will diminish the lasting impact of BRAVE in providing an intervention approach aimed at diverting youth from a violent criminal pathway," he wrote. "Hundreds of youth will miss opportunities to develop healthy coping skills, as well as reflect on alternative means of addressing negative circumstances."

http://www.govtech.com/public-safety/Data-Driven-Baton-Rouge-Violence-Elimination-Project-Seeks-Extension.html

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A new Approach to Patrol

by Hilary Romig

Policing in schools plays an important role in law enforcement, as officers in this capacity are not just assigned to institutions to simply handle criminal activity. Rather, officers on duty in schools and on campuses serve as mentors and as a resource for both students and staff. Additionally, new technology and smartphone apps specifically designed for law enforcement have made it easier and less intimidating for students to connect with police. In fact, using the apps has been a quick way to alert school law enforcement agencies of suspicious activity.

Laying the groundwork with trust

When it comes to policing in schools, maintaining trust, respect and communication are crucial for success.

Jody Scrifes, chief of police at the Lubbock Independent School District (LISD) in Lubbock, Texas, says consistency is key to creating bonds of trust. “The students see the officers at their schools and athletic events and are able to get to know them on a daily basis.”

In Albuquerque, N.M., Henry Wong, an officer in the Albuquerque Public Schools, states that trust is an important aspect for all law enforcement officers and that it must be established with students, teachers and the public. “It is important for many reasons,” says Wong. “A campus is like a small community with students, teachers, staff and administrators each with their roles in the campus society.” Wong says as School Resource Officers (SRO), police in those settings must have professional relationships with the entire school community. “It has to be a partnership,” Wong continues. Lack of trust can ruin the solid foundation that officers and schools may create; a SRO must be approachable to all who are on the campus.

Wong says the SRO must be able to communicate with students in a way that they will listen and retain information and cites his firsthand experience with the positive impact police can make with a troubled student. “After building respect and trust between myself and a student, they changed their attitude and made better decisions,” he says. With that positive impact he was able to effectively relay information to the student regarding a dual credit program partnered with the local community college. As a result the student is now excelling in both high school and college courses.

http://www.officer.com/command-hq

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Illinois

Chicago Police Finalize Use of Force Changes

by Dan Hinkel

CHICAGO -- After months of debate and back-and-forth revisions, the Chicago Police Department has finalized changes to make its rules on shootings and other uses of force more restrictive.

The policy changes announced Wednesday by Superintendent Eddie Johnson will tighten many of the department rules that experts and advocates have criticized as far too permissive of unnecessary uses of force.

But the changes do not go as far in some respects as the rules Johnson proposed in October when the department and Mayor Rahm Emanuel faced more intense federal scrutiny amid the continuing fallout over the police video of a white officer shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times. The final version of the department's use-of-force policy substantially resembles the scaled-back proposal Johnson made in March after rank-and-file police complained that his first proposal was too extreme.

The department's new policies, however, will be more restrictive than the comparatively bare bones rules that have been in place for years.

In a key change, the policy tightens the rules on shooting fleeing persons. The new rules hold that officers can't shoot a fleeing person unless he presents an imminent threat to police or others. Previously, an officer could shoot any person who was fleeing after committing or trying to commit a felony using force.

Like past revisions of the rules proposed by Johnson, the final policy begins with a symbolic statement of the department's commitment to protecting human life.

The new policy also calls on officers to use their new de-escalation training to try to defuse incidents. The adopted language is less strict than Johnson's first proposal, though, saying officers only have to try de-escalation "when it is safe and feasible to do so."

Johnson, flanked by command staff and Emanuel's floor leader, Ald. Ariel Reboyras, 30th, announced the final policy changes at a morning news conference at police headquarters while vowing that the department would not waver in its commitment to reform.

"We will be a department that is better for the citizens of Chicago and better for the brave men and women that make up its ranks," he said.

In a change from the past when the department has done little to train officers on policy changes, all of its approximately 12,000 officers will receive both computerized and in-person training on the new force rules.

The rules won't take effect until that training has been completed, potentially this fall. That will be followed by more training next year.

The adoption of the new rules marks a milestone nearly 18 months in the making for a department burdened by frequent accusations of abuse and questions about institutional commitment to reform.

The issue drew intense focus after Emanuel was forced in November 2015 to release video of Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting McDonald as he walked away from police with a knife in his hand.

Furious protests followed, and the U.S. Department of Justice launched what turned out to be a scathing investigation into the department's practices.

Emanuel, meanwhile, made changes aimed at getting ahead of federal authorities with his own reforms. One of his first moves was to propose new rules on the use of force.

The new policies are not just symbolic because the details of the department's rules determine what conduct can lead to punishment for officers.

Officer discipline has been rare and often light in Chicago, and oversight officials aiming to strengthen accountability have long sought changes to policies widely criticized as too permissive.

Johnson, appointed to lead the department as the McDonald crisis deepened, first proposed new force rules in October that were markedly more restrictive than the rules in place. Some officers said the draft policy was too exacting for cops making split-second decisions under pressure, while reform advocates said it didn't spell out clearly when police should and should not use force.

Months after Johnson put that proposal out for public comment, the Justice Department finalized a report that supported the position of reform advocates, castigating officers for using force too aggressively and frequently against minorities, with limited fear of repercussions.

But President Donald Trump's election and his appointment of Jeff Sessions as attorney general upended the political discussion about police reform. Sessions has signaled that he is unlikely to seek court enforcement of reforms, and the lack of federal pressure would leave Emanuel largely in control.

Emanuel, for his part, is trying to boost officer morale and tamp down violence on the South and West sides, which some blame on officers scaling back activity to avoid trouble.

Last year, the city had more than 760 slayings and 4,300 people shot, major increases over 2015. Homicides have continued at a similar rate this year, with shootings down modestly.

Emanuel has vowed to continue pursuing reforms, but experts have voiced skepticism that meaningful change will come without federal pressure.

In March, Johnson made a shift both in tone and policy by scaling back and tweaking his proposal from October.

The policy released in March opened by proclaiming the department's commitment to officer safety while eliminating a provision saying cops must use only the least amount of force needed. The second draft also softened the department's stance on officers using their new de-escalation training to defuse tense encounters, saying cops only have to try those tactics "when it is safe and feasible."

Police union officials welcomed the second draft, while policing experts voiced concern about the department backing off on de-escalation.

http://www.officer.com/command-hq

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California

Former L.A. Sheriff Gets Three Years in Prison

by Joel Rubin

LOS ANGELES—Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, once a towering, respected figure in policing, was sentenced Friday to three years in federal prison for his role in a scheme to obstruct an FBI investigation of abuses in county jails, marking an end to a corruption scandal that has roiled the Sheriff's Department for several years.

U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson announced Baca's fate in a downtown courtroom filled with loyal supporters on one side and the FBI agents and prosecutors who ensnared him on the other. Baca, 74 and suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, showed no emotion as the decision was read.

Before issuing the sentence, Anderson, who has dealt unsparingly with the former sheriff throughout his legal battle and last year threw out a plea deal that would have sent Baca to prison for no more than six months, unleashed a scathing rebuke of the man who ran one of the nation's largest law enforcement agencies for 15 years.

Excoriating Baca's refusal to accept responsibility for having overseen and condoned the obstruction ploy carried out by subordinates, the judge portrayed him as a man driven by his desire to protect his own reputation and maintain control over the Sheriff's Department.

“Your actions embarrass the thousands of men and women (in the department) who put their lives on the line every day,” Anderson said to Baca. “They were a gross abuse of the trust the public placed in you.”

The prison term, Anderson added, should serve as a deterrent to other public servants. “Blind obedience to a corrupt culture has serious consequences,” he said. “No person, no matter how powerful, no matter his or her title, is above the law.”

Baca was ordered to surrender to federal prison officials by July 25. Although he is expected to ask to remain free on bail while he pursues an appeal, it is an open question whether he will be allowed to do so. Anderson denied the same request from Baca's second in command, former Undersheriff Paul Tanaka, who was forced to begin his five-year sentence.

No decision has been made on where Baca will serve his sentence. His defense attorney requested that he be assigned to a camp in Taft, Calif., or barring that, a camp in Oregon. After serving his time behind bars, Baca must also spend a year under supervised release. He was also fined $7,500.

In going after Baca, a team of prosecutors headed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Fox meticulously worked its way up the department's ranks, charging lower-level figures and members of Baca's command staff before bringing charges of obstruction of justice, conspiracy and lying against the sheriff.

He is the ninth person to be convicted and sentenced to prison as part of what Fox convinced several juries was a cunning conspiracy to interfere with FBI agents as they worked to gather evidence for a grand jury investigation into allegations of widespread abuse by deputies working in county jails run by the Sheriff's Department.

A 10th conspirator, former sheriff's Capt. William “Tom” Carey, pleaded guilty in a deal with prosecutors and testified against Baca. Carey is scheduled to be sentenced this month. Several other deputies were convicted for beating inmates or helping to cover up the abuse.

The obstruction plan played out over six weeks in August and September 2011, after sheriff's officials discovered FBI agents had used a corrupt deputy to smuggle a cellphone to a jail inmate who was working as an informant.

The audacious move was part of an investigation opened the year before into the Men's Central Jail, the main facility in the county's enormous detention system. For years, the Sheriff's Department had been dogged by reports of a place run amok, in which deputies routinely beat inmates without provocation and covered up the abuse, often with the knowledge of supervisors. Other corruption, including deputies who took bribes to bring contraband in to inmates, was said to be rampant as well.

Prosecutors argued that word of the smuggled phone and the FBI investigation angered Baca and Tanaka, who viewed it as an unwarranted incursion into their territory by an outside agency.

With Baca's knowledge and, at times, his involvement, Tanaka oversaw a group of deputies and midlevel commanders who worked to derail the FBI investigation, prosecutors said. They moved the informant under fake names to conceal his whereabouts from his handlers, pressured deputies and the informant not to cooperate with federal authorities and brazenly tried to intimidate the lead FBI agent on the case by threatening her with arrest.

Anderson on Friday checked off examples of Baca's complicity in the scheme, recalling testimony that Baca signed off on the idea of threatening the agent with arrest by telling deputies they could “do everything but put handcuffs” on her. His greatest failure, the judge said, was eagerly promoting Tanaka through the ranks until he was running the department's day-to-day operations.

“Rather than fulfill his sworn duty to uphold the law and protect the public, Lee Baca made a decision to protect what he viewed as his empire, and then he took actions in an effort to simply protect himself,” said acting U.S. Attorney Sandra R. Brown. “He wore the badge, but ultimately, he failed the department and the public's trust.”

Baca's attorney Nathan Hochman nearly won the former sheriff an acquittal at a trial late last year by hammering the government for the scarcity of hard evidence tying Baca directly to the obstruction plan. That proceeding ended in a mistrial when the jury deadlocked with all but one juror voting to acquit Baca.

For the second trial, however, Fox revamped his case and Anderson issued a string of rulings that hamstrung Hochman. All along, Hochman argued that although Baca was upset by the FBI investigation, he never authorized anything illegal. Tanaka, he said, was the ringleader who carried out the obstruction without Baca's knowledge.

In giving Baca three years in prison, Anderson struck a middle ground of sorts.

Federal sentencing guidelines called for a term of 41 to 51 months. Under normal circumstances, the government would have urged Anderson to come down within that range, Fox wrote in court filings.

But Baca's age, his diagnosis last year with Alzheimer's and medical experts' expectation that his mind will have deteriorated badly within a few years were legitimate mitigating factors in determining his punishment, Fox said.

“The interests of justice will not be served by defendant spending many years behind bars in a severely impaired state,” the prosecutor wrote. He recommended that Baca be sentenced to two years in prison.

Hochman, meanwhile, urged Anderson in court papers and again on Friday to spare Baca any time in prison, saying he should instead be confined to his home for a period of time and perform community service. In a lengthy last-ditch bid for leniency, Hochman reviewed Baca's nearly five decades of service in the Sheriff's Department, saying he served “with distinction and honor.”

The true measure of the man, Hochman insisted, was seen in the education programs he started as sheriff for inmates and at-risk youth. Hochman submitted to Anderson letters from a few hundred of Baca's supporters, including former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and several local religious leaders.

The inevitable toll from Alzheimer's was another reason to spare him prison, Hochman said.

“This diagnosis is a sentence of its own. It is a sentence that will leave him a mere shell of his former self and one that will rob him of the memories of his life,” he wrote in a court filing.

Anderson rejected out of hand the idea that Baca should avoid time in prison. He acknowledged Baca's lengthy record as a public servant, but said it made his crimes more perplexing.

“Mr. Baca's criminal conduct is so at odds with the public image he carefully crafted,” Anderson said. Like old B-movies, “you seem to have your own version of the good cop/bad cop routine … that allowed you to keep your hands clean but did not make you any less culpable.”

Although the two-year sentence suggested by the government was not enough in Anderson's eyes, the judge said he did take Baca's failing health and career into account. Absent those factors, he said he would have imposed on Baca the same five-year sentence he gave Tanaka.

The sentence deepens the stain already imprinted on Baca's legacy and the reputation he enjoyed as one of the nation's most visible and respected reformers in law enforcement. Although he was quirky to the point of being enigmatic, Baca was seen as a champion of progressive ideas, including the need for police to build strong ties to minority communities. He stepped down in 2014 with the department engulfed in the jail scandal.

“When I stand tall, I stand right with what I think is right,” Baca said in his trademark elliptical style after the hearing. “There is right and wrong, that I'm clear with. Final comment, I will never accept a cellphone in a county jail, given to a career criminal. I don't care who puts it in.”

http://www.officer.com/news/12335028/former-la-sheriff-gets-three-years-in-prison

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Wisconsin

Wis. lawmakers: Rioting should be a felony

The proposals would also make it a misdemeanor to block roads and a felony to carry a dangerous weapon while rioting

by the Associated Press

MADISON, Wis. — Two Republican lawmakers want to make rioting in Wisconsin a felony — and define exactly what "rioting" is.

Rep. John Spiros and Sen. Van Wanggaard circulated three bills Wednesday that would legally define rioting and make it a felony. The proposals would also make it a misdemeanor to block roads and a felony to carry a dangerous weapon while rioting.

Rioting would be defined as an assembly of three or more people that presents a clear danger of injury or property damage.

Spiros says he has been "deeply affected" by reports of chaotic riots nationally and in Wisconsin and wants to give law enforcement officers more tools to maintain order.

Violence and protests erupted in Milwaukee last summer after a police officer fatally shot a man following a traffic stop.

New York

New NYPD Plan Involves New Yorkers in Community Policing

by WNYC

The NYPD is rolling out a new community policing program that will involve regular meetings with the public in neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs. The idea is to bring residents closer to the officers who patrol their streets, ending decades of top-down relationships between precinct commanders and community leaders.

According to the NYPD's Chief of Patrol, Terence Monahan, "This is what the cops want. They want to get to work closer with their communities. They know that 99 percent of the communities they serve are good, hard-working people and they want to be able to interact....We want them to be innovative, come up with new ideas."

http://www.wnyc.org/story/nypd-reveals-plan-new-and-improved-community-policing/

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Louisianna

Debut of community-policing effort met with joy, dismay

by Jasmine Payoute

SHREVEPORT, LA (KSLA) -- Liaisons with Shreveport's Community-Oriented Policing Bureau have started a 12-week effort to tackle quality-of-life concerns.

The officers are working to address residents' complaints such as "public works, streets and drainage, property standards, representatives from the mayor's office," police Cpl. Angie Willhite said.

"It is truly a citywide effort to reassure the public that we're here and also follow up on crime."

The officers will patrol the city on bicycles during the 12 weeks.

The aim of stepping out of their police units is to help to build familiarity with residents, Willhite said.

"Being on these bicycles allows us a more intimate type of contact. We can drive by people 'Hey, how are you doing?" 'Good morning.'

"We want the community to know that we're out here. We're here to help, we want to help and here we are, let us help.”

Focusing much of one morning on the city's Mooretown neighborhood, the officers patrolled several streets including Melon and Clover streets and Broadway Avenue.

It was on Baxter Street where some residents say the police officers caused more problems than they solved.

"I don't see how coming out and issuing tickets are solving problems," one Mooretown resident said.

A woman, who did not want to be identified, said she was just one of many who received a parking ticket for something she says she could not control.

"I was parked in front of my yard on the grass. But city workers were out working, and they're parked on the street. So I can't park on the street. They even block my driveway, so we have problems getting out the yard."

Several houses down, Gloria Fuller said it happened to her as well.

"I like what the police are doing in the neighborhood and everything. But they saw the construction; they should not have given us a ticket."

Fuller said the ticket she received was for $100.

That amount does not fit the crime, she said.

"I believe this is an unfair price for people parking on they lawn," Fuller stated.

"They were doing they job. Let's make sure we understand that they were doing their job," resident David Newton said.

"And if it's against the law to park in front of your yard, then they was doing they job. But the only thing I'm saying is there could have been some leniency on this particular situation."

Construction in the area has been going on for about two weeks.

Neighbors say the crews are working on a natural gas line.

In response to the tickets, Willhite said she and the other officers will go back to Mooretown and speak with residents.

http://www.ksla.com/story/35445699/debut-of-community-policing-effort-met-with-joy-dismay

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Community policing shows both good and bad

by Cydney Baron

No two days on the job are the same.

When it comes to community policing officers never know what they're going to come across.

For Claremore Police Department it was just another night—but it happened to span both ends of the spectrum, showing both the good and bad present in any community.

Officer Mark Isaac began his shift working the school zone—something Claremore officers are tasked with daily to ensure safety and smoothness during end-of-day pick ups.

Later, across town Officer Donald Thirion was called to investigate a burglary in which medication was stolen.

Officer Nate Reed responded to a domestic assault where the victim was left with visible marks on her neck.

During this, Isaac was sent to respond to a disturbance involving a young man who resides in a residential care facility—a young man Isaac has worked with before. They found him standing in the roadway visibly upset.

On scene Isaac said the man was worked up, angry.

Isaac, Thirion and Brian Burnett knew the solution.

Isaac waved down the passing ice cream truck. He told the driver he was buying the ice cream for the boy and she happily donated it to the cause.

“Nobody can be sad when they've got ice cream,” Isaac told the man, who sat on the hood of the car between officers and enjoyed his ice cream.

Minutes passed as the man enjoyed his ice cream talking to officers about what was going on in his life.

With everyone cooled off, officers made a plan of how to handle the incident.

Isaac retrieved a bottle of water from his car, rinsed the sticky ice cream remnants of the man's hands and everyone went their separate ways.

The officers no sooner left the scene than Isaac got another call—an adult male stumbling down Blue Starr Drive.

It didn't take long for Isaac to find the man, later identified as Israel Machuca, who was having a hard time walking down the street.

Isaac asked the man his name and if he'd been drinking. The man took off running.

Now with multiple officers on scene a brief foot pursuit began. It ended with Machuca on the ground.

En route to the patrol car Machuca told officers, “the penitentiary is all I know.”

Dispatch advised officers Machuca had felony warrants with Rogers County. Additionally he was charged with public intoxication and obstructing an officer.

Machuca's bond was later set at $20,000.

“You never know what you're going to get when the call goes out,” Isaac said. “You have to be ready for anything, really. We wear a lot of hats.”

http://www.claremoreprogress.com/news/community-policing-shows-both-good-and-bad/article_2f6dd696-3a6e-11e7-9b9d-ab2b0e8d14bc.html

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Texas

Tyler Police chief talks department diversity, community policing at Race Relations forum

by Emily Guevara

Tyler Police Chief Jimmy Toler said the department will look to partner with local organizations such as the NAACP as it seeks to diversify its workforce.

Toler said the department is looking to work with the NAACP, Tyler Together Race Relations, Hispanic Business Alliance and any other available entity to find qualified candidates, particularly those from minority races, who are interested in taking the test to become police officers.

Presently, 10 percent of all sworn personnel in the department are minorities and 20 percent of non-sworn personnel. Sworn personnel include police officers, sergeants, liutenants, assistant chiefs and the chief.

Toler shared the information Tuesday during a Tyler Together Race Relations Forum, the first of several planned that are aimed at improving community engagement with local peace officers. Almost 40 people attended the event.

“We want to help facilitate a way to get answers,” Jeff Williams, of the Tyler Together Race Relations Forum, said.

Assistant Police Chief Rusty Jacks said as a civil service occupation, the hiring process is regulated by government code and federal law.

The department is required to hire candidates based on how they perform on the test they take, regardless of race.

That is why it is so important to get more minority candidates to take the test because then the department has a greater chance of hiring them.

“The whole thing comes down to recruiting, recruiting, recruiting,” Toler said.

Toler also shared the report about motor vehicle stops and racial profiling. In 2015, the department made 24,772 stops, with the majority of those made to white people (53 percent), followed by African-Americans (26 percent) and Hispanics (19 percent). Asians, Middle Easterners and Native Americans made up the remainder.

In 2016, the total number of traffic stops increase to 26,432, with demographic breakdowns staying about the same at 55 percent for whites, 25 percent for African-Americans and 18 percent for Hispanics.

Toler said the department would take any report of racial profiling very seriously.

“If somebody makes that allegation, we look into it,” he said.

In addition to using data in its effort to fight crime, the department heavily emphasizes relationship building in the community.

Examples of this include the community resources officers, who regularly participate in programs and presentations around the city; officer involvement on nonprofit boards and the community's Behavioral Health Leadership Team; and officers' participation in training about cultural diversity and de-escalation.

“We are focused on keeping Tyler, Texas, safe,” Toler said.

Teresa Risvold, 32, of Troup, said she wanted to attend the forum even though she does not live in Tyler because it is important for police to beinvolved with the community and vice versa.

She said she was pleased to learn about how the department is involved in the community and how its leaders recognize there is more to preventing crime than just arresting people.

http://www.tylerpaper.com/TP-News+Local/283472/tyler-police-chief-talks-department-diversity-community-policing-at-race-relations-forum

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Massachusetts

Lancaster police chief says community efforts paying off

by Peter Jasinski

LANCASTER -- Police Chief Ed Burgwinkel reported the success of new community policing efforts and traffic safety improvements during his presentation before the Board of Selectmen Monday night.

"It has been one of my major goals since I was appointed to this position to bring our community and Police Department together and make our department more accessible for the people in our town," Burgwinkel told the selectmen.

One of the most crucial changes was a recent restructuring of staff the department underwent in March, specifically the creation of Lancaster's first lieutenant position. With the new lieutenant available to take complaints from the public, Burgwinkel said more officers are able to remain on patrol, contributing to an ongoing increase in traffic citations.

The number of citations doubled between 2014 and 2015 and increased by another 70 percent in 2016. Burgwinkel said that the issue of speeding cars has remained the most common complaint the department receives from local residents.

He also reported a decrease in speeds where speeding issues were most common. Installation of new speed limit signs resulted in a median speed decrease from 51 miles per hour to only 31 miles per hour on route 117 over the last year.

The department's full staff also made the department eligible for a drop-off box from the Worcester County District Attorney's Office that local residents can use to dispose of prescription medicine.

In order to improve community relations, Burgwinkel said the department made LTC applications, vehicle accident reports, and anonymous tips and complaints available on the department's website.

"We now have all these things. It's a virtual police lobby right in your living room, right on your computer," he said.

During his presentation, Burgwinkel also pointed out to selectmen that the police department does have exterior security cameras and suggested that residents should feel free to park there when going for a jog or to meet there when exchanging items for sale over the internet.

News of the changes made at the department, and the successes they've seen, was greeted positively by selectmen.

'A lot of departments in the area are following the example that you've set. They're trying to get more involved in their neighborhoods," Selectman Walter Sendrowski said.

"The productivity you've demonstrated since day one is to be commended," said board Chairman Stanley Starr. "It's absolutely right for this town."

Selectman Mark Grasso also applauded Burgwinkel's efforts. He later asked what progress the department had made on recent "smash and grab" robberies in the area.

"There have been a lot of them here," Burgwinkel said. "In Lancaster, with the armed robberies we've had here, every one of those has been solved."

He added that the department is currently collaborating with numerous other communities in response to smash and grab robberies, which he said are comparatively harder to solve.

http://www.sentinelandenterprise.com/news/ci_30994669/leominster-police-chief-says-community-efforts-paying-off

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Washington

Community Board Won't Have Direct Power Over Police in New Accountability Legislation

by Lester Black

The City Council is on the verge of passing new legislation that will greatly increase the number of civilians ostensibly watching the Seattle Police Department's cops. Some have cheered the impending law, expected to pass on May 22, as a historic leap forward for police accountability in a city with a troubled history with law enforcement.

But the very commission the city created to provide feedback on the reforms—the Community Police Commission (CPC)—is raising red flags, claiming that the law does not give enough oversight power to citizens outside of the city government. The CPC was created in 2013 as a temporary body to provide input on court-mandated reforms to SPD under a 2012 legal agreement with the federal government. The new law will make the CPC, a board composed of lawyers, cops, religious leaders and other citizens, the city's permanent body for hearing the public's voice on policing issues.

Over the past month, city lawmakers have rejected tweaks to the legislation that would have granted the CPC more authority—two powers that advocates say were necessary to give the commission a meaningful voice on police reform.

First, council members voted down a provision granting the CPC the responsibility of conducting yearly performance reviews of the Office of the Inspector General, another body formed by the legislation, and the director of the Office of Professional Accountability (renamed the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) in the proposed law), the internal board that investigates police misconduct cases. Lawmakers also rejected an amendment that would've granted the CPC authority to place items on the inspector general's annual agenda.

For some members of the CPC, the failure to pass those two amendments amount to a dismissal of the community interest in improving the Seattle Police Department. Unlike other cities undergoing police reform, Seattle won't give citizens any control on how police are disciplined or how the department operates to these new watchdogs, leaving that power in the hands of the mayor, police chief, City Council, and police unions.

The CPC agreed with this general framework—keeping the hard power to discipline cops and change policy where it has always been, but then elevating the community's voice to an equally prominent role. But for this system to work, the CPC says, the community's voice must be so prominent that future mayors and police chiefs can't ignore it.

“A decision has been made by this council, as well as by the CPC, that the [community] oversight role will not be oversight of investigations, so that begs the question, where is the oversight? Where is the actual oversight?” said Councilmember Lisa Herbold before her amendment failed in May 10 public safety committee.

Herbold and the CPC say that this legislation needs to be fireproof in the hypothetical, worst-case scenario: a city council, mayor and police chief that are resistant to police accountability.

“If we are not doing their performance evaluation they can just ignore us,” said Lisa Daugaard, a CPC commissioner and director of the Public Defender Association. “It can't just be voluntary for people to engage with us.”

Councilmember Lorena González and Councilmember Tim Burgess, the chair and co-chair of the public safety committee, both opposed the amendments, saying that putting the CPC in that role would jeopardize the ability for the three separate accountability offices to work independently.

“The CPC is correct in that they have extensive and intimate relationships in the community and are a strong voice to represent the community, but that doesn't mean the OPA and the OIG shouldn't as well,” Burgess told The Stranger .

Daugaard said this idea of independence misses the point—the accountability system works by keeping the three bodies independent from outside political forces, like the council and mayor. But they shouldn't be exempt from checks-and-balances on each other, she added. In the proposed system, the inspector general can audit the CPC or the Office of Professional Accountability. The inspector general can also force the OPA to reinvestigate individual misconduct complaints when deemed necessary.

Burgess thinks that the CPC is digging in too hard on this small detail of the legislation.

“It's just bizarre for me that they would single out this particular issue and keep pressing for it, and damage the credibility of this whole ordinance which is sweeping and more citizen-led and empowered than we have ever had,” Burgess said.

Burgess has a point—buried in the lengthy legislation is a list of policy changes made in response to requests from local reform advocates:

All OPA investigators will be civilians. The OPA currently uses sworn SPD police officers to investigate misconduct complaints – this bill would replace those sworn officers with civilians. Even though civilians will staff the new OPA, final decisions on punishment are still up to the chief of police

If the council veers too radical on police reform, it may torpedo the legislation at the collective bargaining table. The court monitor appointed by the Obama administration to oversee Seattle's police reforms has told the unions that they can't stonewall reform, but he has also upheld the union's right to collective bargaining and shot down a request by the city to bypass union negotiations entirely with these reforms.

For many in Seattle's police reform community, how this accountability legislation as evolved over the last two years encapsulates one of the biggest fears for how the future accountability system will work. The CPC only has power to recommend changes to the law – the real legal authority, like in the proposed legislation, lies with the council and mayor – and many of their recommendations have been changed or ignored.

Chris Stearns, an attorney that has been involved in police reform in Seattle for over a decade and is a chairman of the Washington State Gambling Commission, said the current proposal is not perfect—he would like to see officer discipline handled completely outside of the police chief's control.

“There's some institutional problems when an outside person, a citizen, is pursuing a complaint against an employee who's boss has the final say. That's a closed loop, that's a closed box,” Stearns said. “Ideally you'd like a citizen to grieve and file complaints with an independent body separate from the police that can make their own independent decision.”

Honolulu in 2016 gave its civilian police oversight commission the power to fire their police chief. A new citizen-led board in Oakland not only reserves the right to can the chief, but also investigates civilian complaints.

Stearns said this legislation is still a meaningful step in the right direction.

“Ideally, and maybe down the road, it would be totally independent from the police department but that will require some bigger structural changes and it will require the city to really rethink this sort of three-part approach,” Stearns said.

Have an idea of where the city should end up on police reform? You can provide input at a public comment meeting for this bill today, May 16. The council is required by law to hear the public's comments before they take a vote—the last public safety committee is planned for May 18 and the council expects to vote on the bill at their full council meeting on May 22.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article erroneously stated that all OPA investigators under the new legislation would be civilians. Only the supervisors would be civilians. That version also stated that the time limit on investigating alleged misconduct by cops would be extended from 180 days to three years. In fact, while the statute of limitations would be three years under the legislation, there would still exist a 180-day time limit from when investigations start to when findings must be made. The Stranger regrets the errors.

Korea

North Korean hackers behind global cyberattack?

by CBS News

BEIJING -- Technology experts say the threat of another global cyberattack continues Tuesday morning, and they say there's evidence North Korean hackers could be behind the massive malware assault that paralyzed computer systems world-wide last week.

Just as North Korea boasted about the successful launch of a new missile it says can carry a "large" nuclear warhead , technology experts said they had found evidence buried deep in computer code that North Korean hackers could be behind the digital international threat, too.

Cyber security firms have found similarities between the tools used in this attack and those used in previous hacks blamed on North Korea.

The hacking tools were first developed by the National Security Agency but were stolen and leaked, and now they may have been used by a North Korean hacking group.

"In this case, there is a fragment of the technology that was associated with Lazarus," Gregory Clark, CEO of cybersecurity firm Symantec, told CBS News.

"The Lazurus Group" is a hacker collective with ties to North Korea, and experts at Symantec and other companies say they found a portion of the group's previous malware coding inside the "WannaCry" hacking program used in last week's cyberattacks.

The discovery was made by a Google security researcher, Neel Mehta, who pointed it out in a cryptic tweet on Monday the parallel between an early version of the WannaCry tool used last week and code used by Lazurus in several years ago.

Lazarus was implicated in the 2014 hack of data from Sony Pictures -- an apparent retaliation for Sony's release of the film "The Interview," which mocked North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Lazarus was also connected with last year's theft of $81 million from a Bangladesh account at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York. U.S. officials blamed both hacks on North Korea.

This latest attack was more widespread, taking advantage of a known vulnerability in older Microsoft software to force the shut-down of hospitals and other businesses around the world by encrypting files to make them inaccessible until a ransom of $300 was paid.

While technology experts were able to contain this weekend's attack, they warn the threat is not over.

"We are worried about the smart guys realizing what worked and what didn't, and something else coming our way that might be a little better engineered," Symantec's Clark told CBS News.

So far, the cyberattack has infected some 300,000 computers in 150 countries, but only about $63,000 dollars in ransom has actually been paid to the hackers.

Experts say it's too early to blame last week's attack on North Korean hackers, however, citing the possibility that other cybercriminals could have used the Lazarus malware and even included the identical portion of code as a false flag to implicate the isolated regime.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cyberattack-wannacry-ransomware-north-korea-hackers-lazarus-group/

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Missouri

Mike Brown Sr. On Community, Police And Keeping His Son's Memory Alive

by Jacob Ryan

The 2014 death of 17-year-old Michael Brown Jr. in Ferguson, Missouri turned attention to fatal police shootings of African-Americans across the country.

Last week, Brown's father — Mike Brown Sr. — was in Louisville to meet with the family of a Louisville man shot and killed by police last year.

I spoke with him about the impact his son's death has had on the national conversation around race and police relations. Listen to our conversation in the player above.

On how his son's death changed the conversation around police and race:

“He really brought a lot of attention to, you know, the things that people just weren't paying attention to. You know, a lot of people's eyes are open now — some people's eyes went back shut, which is sad. But that's the reality of all of it. You know, my mission is just to keep his name alive — which is my name — and fight for what's right.”

On what he sees as the most successful way to improve police-community relations:

“We have to get back to where community and police interact, you know. We have to start by getting people in our communities that live in that area, you know, to start policing those communities instead of bringing people way out from the boondocks that don't have no idea what they're doing, never interacted with black people — and throw them out there with no knowledge of approaching a different race, you know.

“So, where we at is just trying to get them and the community to get back in action — as far as like, you know police getting out their car, tossing football, jumping rope with the community, you know. We have a whole lot of work to do on both ends — it ain't just police, it's us, too.”

https://wfpl.org/mike-brown-sr-community-police-keeping-sons-memory-alive/

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Texas

Survey: Austinites endorse Police Department's call for more officers

by Tony Plohetski

Austin residents want more police officers and think increased law enforcement would help community and police engagement and tamp down issues such as the city's K2 problem downtown, according to a survey by the Greater Austin Crime Commission that will be released Tuesday.

About three-quarters of 1,909 telephone survey participants picked from the rolls of registered voters said they think increasing the number of patrol officers would help improve the Austin Police Department's response times to emergency calls, and 84 percent said they think officers should be hired immediately or over the next three to four years. The responses were consistent across all 10 City Council districts, according to the survey, which has a margin of error of 2.2 percentage points.

The crime commission sought the survey, which was conducted by Austin-based Littlefield Consulting, after officials said repeated studies by city-hired experts showed the need for more police officers.

“The experts have spoken, and now the people of Austin have spoken too,” David Roche, president of the Greater Austin Crime Commission, which supports first responders and promotes public safety planning, said in a statement. “We need more officers to prevent crime in our neighborhoods. We cannot fall behind on public safety, as we have with traffic and affordable housing in Austin. We are alarmed.”

The commission is expected to announce the results of the survey Tuesday at a news conference that will include participants from community groups and the Austin Police Association.

Whether Austin needs more police officers has been a topic of debate in recent years. In the past couple of years, council members have resisted adding more officers, saying they were not sure how doing so would help community policing. The council has funded other priorities, such as spending $12 million on body cameras for officers.

A key part of community policing is allowing officers to have more free time so they can interact with residents in more positive situations instead of going from call to call.

As recently as last May, officers and detectives have been pulled from their regular assignments to work patrol shifts for a three-week period because of what police officials said were staffing shortages.

A recent Austin Police Department staffing report indicated that the city is already short more than 100 officers and that cities the size of Austin have at least that many more officers. Studies have also shown that police response times have increased as much as 15 percent in recent years.

City officials say the addition of more than 100 officers would add $10 million a year to the budget.

“We saw how increased walking patrols and community policing in our neighborhood had a positive impact on reducing crime incidents,” said Rachel Pry, vice chairwoman of the federally funded Restore Rundberg effort, which has worked over the past several years to rid the area near Rundberg Lane and Interstate 35 of crime. “I think it improved overall safety and it built a sense of community.

“We would hate to see that success slide,” she said.

http://www.mystatesman.com/news/survey-austinites-endorse-police-department-call-for-more-officers/qIPDUdEspNkjEx4uC87xkJ/

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Illinois

Bonding over basketball: Third Ballin' with the Cops brings community and police together

by Cory Davenport

ALTON - A few weeks after a young, up-and-coming basketball player, Romell Jones, 11, was killed outside his home in Alton Acres at the beginning of 2016, appointed Fourth Ward Alderwoman Tammy Smith called Alton Police Chief Jason "Jake" Simmons and requested a special form of community outreach between the police and the community.

Over the past three years, Simmons's administration has seen a special focus on community policing, which culminated in a community policing study championed by former St. Louis Police Chief Daniel Isom through the University of Missouri St. Louis (UMSL). Besides that study, the department has also done plenty of other outreach such as "Pizza with the Police" and "Shop with a Cop." Last Saturday's Ballin' with the Cops, however, takes that community spirit and gives it a fun competitive edge.

"We had about 60 kids come from all over the city," Simmons said. "We also had about 10 officers, a couple jailers and some Alton Police Explorers. "

The Explorer Program is affiliated with the Boy Scouts of America, and are a kind of cadet program for the department with people between 14-20 who work with the police department to learn about the job of the police.

Smith also attended Ballin' with the Cops, Simmons said. He said it was the third such outing Smith had helped create with the department.

As far as the community outreach aspect of the program, Simmons said he was more than pleased with the progress. He said not only did as many as 60 children between 5-17 get to know and play with the police department, but added their parents did as well. He said that important addition is essential to community policing.

The police and children participated in basketball games as well as free-throw and three-point contests.

"Some of us old guys were feeling it the next day, that's for sure," Simmons said.

https://www.riverbender.com/articles/details/bonding-over-basketball-third-ballin-with-the-cops-brings-community-and-police-together-20717.cfm#.WRrmx4WcFZU

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Washington

Losing anti-gang program puts Yakima police at disadvantage

by Phil Ferolito

The recent resurgence of gang violence in Yakima comes in the absence of a countywide program that once brought police, school and city officials together from across the Yakima Valley to combat gangs.

The program, known as the Gang Free Initiative, dissolved five years ago when a $105,000 federal grant supporting it expired and efforts to renew the grant were unsuccessful.

Without a group dedicated to keeping the community and organizations engaged in a united effort, gang prevention and intervention programs fizzle out, said the program's former coordinator Anna Maria Dufault.

“We know that communities that have dedicated staff who are convening the community have better results,” Dufault said. “There has to be sustainability. Prevention needs to be maintained. I'm sorry, but in this county, we have not figured out how to maintain prevention.”

Meanwhile, the shell of what was left of the Gang Free Initiative was passed to the Yakima Police Athletic League, which operates without police involvement.

Administering youth activities intended to dissuade gang membership under the program has been tough at best due to a lack of volunteers, said YPAL Executive Director Joe Willis.

“When you have a gym full of kids and not enough volunteers, it's tough,” he said.

Yakima City Councilwoman Carmen Mendez said she hopes she can convince the rest of the council to seriously consider supporting prevention programs.

There needs to a bigger effort at prevention, she said.

“Not only do gang intervention, but youth development,” she said. “It's a tough situation when almost 60 percent of our ($76.3 million) general fund budget is for law enforcement, but very little of that is going toward preventive work.”

Breaking barriers

Youth programs are proving themselves in gang intervention and prevention programs and community policing in Los Angeles, said Paul Carrillo, a training instructor with Southern California Crossroads, a nonprofit agency that's part of a multi-agency gang prevention and intervention program in Los Angeles.

There, the Gang Reduction and Youth Development, or GRYD, offers multiple resources to youths ranging from sports activities such as basketball and football to art, music, tutoring and even counseling, Carrillo said.

More than 20 GRYD zones were established with offices to reach at-risk youths, and area foundations and the city pulled resources together to fund the more-than $20 million project, he said.

Police there embarked on the Community Safety Program that places officers in four major housing projects, where they build relationships with residents by participating in sports and other activities with youths.

Staff with the GRYD serve as a useful conduit between police and the community when a crime is being investigated, Carrillo said.

A similar conduit could be useful in Yakima, where police have said many residents are often reluctant to report what they about a crime.

“Fear of retaliation, that's a legitimate feeling to have,” Mendez said.

Statistics appear to show GRYDs are working.

A recent survey showed an overall reduction of 185 violent crimes — 175 fewer aggravated assaults and 10 fewer homicides in GRYD areas from 2014 to 2015, according to the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

“There's been tremendous success,” Carrillo said, noting that Los Angeles has seen a drastic reduction in homicides since the programs were established about six years ago.

“One thing was before they implemented the programs, (police) weren't getting anything from the public in solving crime. About a year later, the program changed that. It lowered tension.”

Now gang members sometimes cooperate in investigations. “But you have Los Angeles police playing football with their children,” he said.

Yakima's barriers

Although many communities lack the level of resources as Los Angeles, efforts to combat gangs can still be successful, Carrillo said.

Most communities need to conduct accurate assessments of gang areas and dedicate long-term support of what Carrillo calls the four pillars: Prevention, intervention, suppression and re-entry, the latter which establishes education and job training programs for gang members released from prison.

Yakima hasn't conducted a gang assessment in nearly a decade, Yakima police Capt. Jeff Schneider said.

The department's 141 police officers and $28 million budget are barely enough to provide adequate crime suppression in the city of more than 93,000 residents, he said.

“To allow officers to get out and walk a beat and interact with the community in a positive way, we actually don't have the staff to pull that off.”

Capt. Jeff Schneider, Yakima Police

Schneider said police have been trying to build relationships with the community by hosting barbecues in northeast and southeast parks, and holding Coffee with a Cop events at various locations in the city. The last two coffee events were held in areas largely removed from gang activity. But Schneider said previous coffee events have been held closer to troublesome areas, such as one at McDonald's at the corner of First Street and Nob Hill Boulevard.

Schneider said the department may have officers who work in the schools walk beats this summer when school is out, but doesn't see that becoming a year-round practice given the level of current resources and crime.

“Honestly, community policing is manpower intensive — it takes a lot of police to do it,” he said. “To allow officers to get out and walk a beat and interact with the community in a positive way, we actually don't have the staff to pull that off.”

The department is taking other measures to combat gang violence, however.

Three detectives working with a federal task force focused on long-term investigations of gang crime will be moved back to the department to work on local gang issues, Schneider said.

Shootings in Yakima this year have resulted in eight homicides and injuries ranging from minor to critical.

Most are believed to have been committed by gang members, and only one arrest has been made so far.

Meanwhile, Mendez said she plans to hold meetings in neighborhoods where gang violence is occurring in hopes of unifying residents.

“Hopefully we can get community members to mobilize to start block watches or a neighborhood association,” she said.

http://www.yakimaherald.com/news/crime_and_courts/losing-anti-gang-program-puts-yakima-police-at-disadvantage/article_ff8cb7fe-39f9-11e7-a879-d7cc3334b280.html

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Louisianna

With clock ticking, city-parish leaders ask federal government for extension on untapped BRAVE funds

by Jim Mustian

Five years after the launch of the vaunted Baton Rouge Area Violence Elimination project, city-parish officials have asked the federal government to allow them an extra year to spend the remaining $1.6 million earmarked for the crime-fighting initiative — unused grant dollars set to expire at the end of the summer.

The request, which officials described as a long shot, highlights the growing uncertainty surrounding a data-driven program credited with reducing bloodshed in the city's most violent neighborhoods.

In talks with the federal government, Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome's administration has touted BRAVE's success — murder in Baton Rouge fell last year to levels last seen before Hurricane Katrina — even as it seeks to explain why more than half of the federal funding dedicated to BRAVE remains untapped. The feds are expected to respond to the request by the end of the week.

"Without an extension, the efforts of BRAVE will be abbreviated and reduced dramatically," James Gilmore, Broome's assistant chief administrative officer, wrote in a recent letter to the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

The letter noted that the BRAVE grant already has received an extension from the federal government to spend the grant money. But a confluence of events appears to have distracted the prior administration from implementing certain BRAVE services, Gilmore said, pointing to last summer's devastating floods and the unrest that followed the police-involved shooting death of Alton Sterling. The city's attention and resources, he wrote, "have been devoted to survival and disaster recovery."

"We had eight to nine months out of the year where this program probably wasn't managed or wasn't the focus," Gilmore added in an interview.

BRAVE has been credited with transforming the way local law enforcement tracks and responds to violent crime. Hundreds of thousands of dollars has been spent on the research and data-collection aspects of the program.

The money left on the table, Gilmore said, "is what we call the preventative dollars," or funds related to providing job skills and mental-health services to at-risk youths. If the BRAVE grant was "beautifully written, the reality of implementation was a weakness of it," Gilmore added. Perhaps one flaw was the vision for partnering with churches and local organizations, which couldn't afford to front the dollars to hire social workers and then get reimbursed by the grant funding, he said.

Launched in 2012 under former Mayor-President Kip Holden's administration, BRAVE targeted gun violence in Baton Rouge by identifying the city's gangs and their respective members, a coordinated effort to interrupt the cycle of retaliatory violence that fuels the murder rate. The initiative, modeled after the nationally acclaimed Operation Ceasefire, is based on the premise that violence is rooted in a "group dynamic," and that it can be significantly reduced when law enforcement, citizens and social service providers offer gang members alternatives to a life of crime. It generally targets 12- to 24-year-olds known to be associated with gangs, a demographic that local authorities have determined to be 900 times more likely than other citizens to be the perpetrator or victim of a murder.

Funded by a $1.5 million grant, the community-policing effort focused originally on the crime-ridden 70805 ZIP code, an area bordered by Airline Highway to the north and east, Choctaw Drive to the south and the Mississippi River to the west. It later expanded, with the help of an additional $1 million grant, to include the adjacent 70802 ZIP code, another epicenter of violence that is bordered by Choctaw Drive to the north, the Mississippi River and Nicholson Drive to the west, LSU to the south, and North Foster Drive, North Street and Park Boulevard to the east. Taken together, those two ZIP codes still account for roughly half of the city's killings. BRAVE has also operated in the Gardere neighborhood in the south part of East Baton Rouge Parish.

Altogether, about $900,000 was spent out of both grants, Gilmore said.

Three times a year, local law enforcement leaders arrange a gathering known as a "call-in" in which authorities, joined by faith-based community leaders, offer gang members a host of services but also warn them that violence won't be tolerated, and that their failure to put down their weapons will result in swift prosecution. That hammer, as the authorities call it, has not been as heavy or utilized as originally envisioned, said Hillar Moore III, the East Baton Rouge Parish district attorney, in a recent interview.

"I don't think we've done as good of a job on enforcement as we should," Moore said. "I think BRAVE has been more kind and gentle than punitive in that regard."

Moore told the Rotary Club of Baton Rouge last week that BRAVE has reduced the city's killings significantly over the past five years and provided law enforcement with a wealth of information about crime trends.

He said the authorities have spoken to more than 40 "groups" — a term local law enforcement uses to distinguish the city's loosely affiliated gangs from their more sophisticated counterparts in larger cities — and that "virtually every" one of them has decreased its violence. Researchers have reported that some 62 percent of the groups or gangs identified through BRAVE have since been downgraded to "inactive status."

"One of the worst groups, the Block Boyz, was terrorizing Gardere," Moore told the Rotary Club. "Now most of their members are in jail facing prosecution or already committed to prison for lengthy terms."

While BRAVE has resulted in few prosecutions, the federal funding has enabled a scientific approach to tracking crime "that we couldn't otherwise afford," Moore said in the interview. "A ton of research and data would be lost" if BRAVE were discontinued, he said. "We always have said that the day is going to come, sooner than later, where we have to determine how we're going to fund BRAVE."

To that end, officials have taken steps to prepare for a BRAVE that is unmoored from federal funding. "In the last year, we set up a BRAVE nonprofit. We have a BRAVE board." Moore said. "It's really just getting off the ground to see if we can't raise money from private folks."

In the meantime, city-parish officials are holding out hope that the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention will agree to extend the unused BRAVE funding from the current deadline of Sept. 18 to the end of August 2018. In his letter, Gilmore said an extension would allow the city-parish to implement several new programs for youth, including job skills, arts and intramural basketball programs.

"A denial of this extension will diminish the lasting impact of BRAVE in providing an intervention approach aimed at diverting youth from a violent criminal pathway," he wrote. "Hundreds of youth will miss opportunities to develop healthy coping skills, as well as reflect on alternative means of addressing negative circumstances."

http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/crime_police/article_71f18b5e-3986-11e7-97f5-578d2ebd897c.html

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California

Cop tracks down tricycle stolen from special-needs girl

Surgery to remove a brain tumor left 12-year-old Charlotte Luther with little mobility on her right side

by Aaron Davis

ANTIOCH, Calif. — After her adaptive tricycle was stolen while she was in the hospital, a young special-needs girl was in need of help.

Early Monday morning, two bicycles were stolen from a home on the 2600 block of Belmont Lane. What the suspect did not know was that the adaptive tricycle was custom made for 12-year-old Charlotte Luther, who would be returning from the hospital later that day.

According to Cate Luther, Charlotte's mother, surgery to remove a brain tumor a year ago left Charlotte with little mobility on her right side.

After struggling with getting around, a friend of Cate's suggested she set up a fundraising page with the Great Bike Giveaway, a national campaign to raise money for adaptive bikes for kids with special needs.

“Even before the brain tumor, she wasn't really stable,” Cate Luther said. “This was the first bike she's ever had where she could actually ride it. She had this smile on her face, a sense of independence. She was just loving it.”

Officer Dan Fachner of the Antioch police department was called to the Luther family's home to take statements and file the police report. The father had seen a woman take the tricycle, but could not catch her in time.

The thief had also taken one of Cate Luther's bikes, but she was more concerned with Charlotte's bike. In searching for the serial number for the bike, Cate Luther found out that the adaptive tricycle had been custom made for Charlotte in late March. The bike, which included a back rest, steering assist bar and pedal pulley system, was worth approximately $4,000.

After speaking with police that day, Cate Luther went to bed feeling that the bike had either been sold already.

Fachner filed his report and finished his graveyard shift at 7:30 a.m. When he went back on shift that night, he was on a mission to bring Charlotte's bike back.

“I started driving around a bunch of the shopping centers around their house and contacting people,” Fachner said. “A bunch of people told me they've seen the daughter riding it and she always seemed happy.”

A transient woman had seen a trike just like the one Fachner described around Sycamore Drive and Peppertree Way.

Fachner found 24-year-old Matthew Jefferson riding the tricycle around, and to Fachner, his story “that he just found it” didn't pan out.

At 11:30 p.m. that night, Cate Luther got a call from Fachner with the good news.

“They seemed pretty happy and I was happy to be able to find it for the little girl,” Fachner said. “It says a lot when you got people in the community that say they always see her happy, riding it around. It strikes a chord.”

Officer Robert Gerber transported Jefferson to the station, while Officer Martin Hynes arranged arranged to get the department's truck to deliver the bike back to the Luther family.

“It was just awesome. I felt the officer really went out of his way to make it happen,” Cate Luther said. “The fact that he found it, completely perfect the way it was, was a huge miracle.”

https://www.policeone.com/quiet-warrior/articles/341884006-Cop-tracks-down-tricycle-stolen-from-special-needs-girl/

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California

Quiet Warrior: How one officer fights homelessness, one person at a time

Orange County Sheriff's Deputy Chet Parker connects people to services that can get them off the streets and hopes to inspire others to do the same

by Rachel Zoch

Chet Parker has never met a stranger. His outgoing personality serves him well as Homeless Liaison Officer in the city of Lake Forest, a post he accepted in December 2014. So far, this Orange County (California) Sheriff's deputy has helped more than four dozen people get off the streets and is working to help a dozen more at any given time.

Since NBC4 News in Los Angeles covered the HLO program in March 2017, Parker says his phone has been ringing like crazy with calls from people wanting to know how to start their own programs. He's grateful for the interest and eager to spread the word.

After all, Parker says, he became a cop to try to make a difference. In this job, that's his primary mission every day.

“In the last two or three years, I've probably helped more people than I have in my entire career,” he said.

A seasoned deputy, Parker did not seek the job. He was recruited by OCSD Lt. Brad Valentine, who serves as the city's police chief. Valentine attended the academy with Parker and knew that his colleague's personality made him the perfect candidate to grow the HLO program.

“He's got the gift of gab. He can walk up to a complete stranger and have an hour-long conversation about anything,” said Valentine. “He's just got that uncanny ability to make people feel at ease and develop rapport.”

CALLED TO SERVE

Parker was hooked immediately. The first people he helped were a couple and their young son living in a car. He found out the woman had served in the military, and things quickly fell into place because of the services available for veterans.

“I couldn't believe it was that simple,” he said. “We literally had them off the street by the end of the week.”

A former Marine himself, Parker makes a point of talking to anyone wearing a veteran hat. Between the VA and myriad other service organizations, he says it's easy to find help for vets.

“They deserve every single thing that we can give them, so if there's a veteran, I will stop at nothing to get them off the streets,” he said.

MAKING CONNECTIONS

Much of what Parker does is build relationships with people and then help connect them with organizations that can provide housing, job training or treatment. He asks if they are ready to make a change, then finds the right fit for their needs – whether it's a detox program or something as simple as a haircut, a load of laundry or fixing a flat tire.

“I'm 90 percent social worker and 10 percent police officer at this late stage of my career, and it seems to work pretty well,” he said. “I just let them know that their past is their past, and if they're willing to change something in their future, I would love to help them out.”

And Parker follows up, especially with the folks in treatment programs, says Valentine.

“He's not just putting them in a cab or handing them off to a third party. He's seeing it all the way through, and I think that's what makes a difference,” said Valentine. “He also calls these people and asks how they're doing, and he'll give them some encouragement to stick it out. It's the genuine compassion he has that has made the program so successful.”

RESTORING IDENTITIES

Parker quickly figured out that many of the people living on the streets lacked ID, which prevented them from gaining access to the services they needed, so he enlisted the help of the manager at the local DMV. The office opens early and privately on certain days so that Parker can bring people, many of whom have social anxiety issues, to get their IDs when it's quiet.

He provides forms for people to get discounted or free ID cards, and the city keeps a P.O. box to provide them with an address. When the cards arrive, Parker takes a picture for each person's file and delivers the cards.

“The IDs are a huge thing because it opens so many doors,” he said. “Now they're in line for food stamps or health services or even housing now that they've been established as a citizen of Lake Forest or a citizen of the county – or a citizen of the state or the country, for that matter. I'm so thankful to those guys at the DMV.”

BRIDGING THE FINANCIAL GAP

Parker is quick to remind people that homelessness can happen to anyone. Most people he encounters aren't on drugs or mentally ill; they just fell on hard times financially.

Not only does the HLO program help these individuals rebuild their lives, says Parker, the program can save the city and county potentially tens of thousands of dollars. A study conducted in 2016 by the University of California at Irvine found that homelessness in Orange County “is caused primarily by lack of sufficient income or job loss, combined with the high costs of housing in Orange County.” The study concludes that $42 million a year would be saved by placing people who chronically live on the streets into housing.

Parker says it's easy to help these folks if you can just make the connections.

“People don't know what's out there,” to help, he said. “When you can just point them in the right direction, it's so easy, and it's just communication.”

PERSISTENCE IS KEY

Parker starts his day at 5 a.m. with a pre-dawn visit to the Wal-Mart parking lot to look for people sleeping in their cars. He knocks on windows to say hello or give an update, then at daybreak, he makes his regular rounds to check on the chronically homeless folks living on the streets.

He asks only two things of the people he serves: Be honest and show up when you say you will.

“They always have to tell me the truth, no matter how down and dirty it is,” he said. “The second thing is they always have to follow through with what they agree to do.”

The latter takes some patience. But Parker doesn't give up. He meets with individuals until something sticks, working to gain their trust, sometimes breaking the ice with a fresh pair of socks or a gift card for a hamburger.

“Something as simple as a pair of socks or a bottle of water or one of those silly $5 gift cards opens doors,” he said. “You can't discount the human touch.”

Parker keeps two 4-inch binders in his squad, one full of gift cards for restaurants, the other filled with flyers for shelters, veterans services, medical resources, food banks and other organizations he works with regularly.

One of the biggest challenges, he says, is finding housing for men who are homeless but don't have any other problems. Local charity organizations are geared toward families, substance abuse, domestic violence and other specific issues.

“Everybody has their own little niche, but there's not a niche for normal guys who are just down on their luck,” he said.

Another challenge is pride – and its flipside, low self-esteem. Many people are reluctant to admit they need help; others don't believe they deserve it.

“Self-esteem is a huge issue out there. It's unbelievable how many people don't think they're worth helping,” said Parker. But he is undeterred.

“You can't give up on them. If you do, then their incorrect notions of not being worthwhile come to life,” he said. “Everybody's worth a second chance, or third or fourth or fifth chance. Why not?”

‘IT JUST TAKES A LITTLE BIT OF HARD WORK'

The HLO program is a work in progress, says Parker, and it requires a lot of patience, persistence and a little creativity, but he loves the job and would like to help other agencies develop similar efforts before he retires.

“I tell people every single person, no matter what's going on, can become homeless,” he said. “If you're living paycheck to paycheck, just like most of us do out here, it only takes one or two things – a health issue or a broken down car issue – and now you've landed yourself in your car and you're trying to figure out a way to get back on your feet.”

It can be heartbreaking, he says, but at the same time, “It's not anything that can't be overcome. It just takes a little bit of hard work.”

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