Who Watches The Watchers

Texas Women Subjected to Roadside Cavity Search Speak Out After Troopers Indicted

"Angel and Ashley Dobbs say they’re relieved and pleased two state troopers now face criminal charges after this controversial traffic stop caught on dashcam video last July. It shows trooper Kelly Helleson conducting a body cavity search of both women on an off-ramp of the Bush Turnpike in Irving last July. A Dallas County Grand Jury charged Helleson with two counts of sexual assault and two counts of official oppression. If convicted, she would have to register as a sex offender. The other trooper, David Farrell, who initiated the traffic stop, is charged with theft. Angel Dobbs says her bottle of prescription pills was stolen during the traffic stop." Continue reading →

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Supreme Court Rules that Citizens Can Hold Federal Government Liable for Abuse by Law Enforcement Officers

"In its ruling in Millbrook v. United States, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court has concluded that the U.S. government may be held liable for abuses intentionally carried out by law enforcement officers in the course of their employment. Arguments put forward by The Rutherford Institute in its amicus brief urged the Court to enforce the plain meaning of federal statutes allowing citizens to sue the government for injuries intentionally inflicted by law enforcement officers. In striking down lower court rulings, the justices held that the courts had erred in dismissing a prisoner’s lawsuit alleging that three prison guards had brutally and sexually assaulted him." Continue reading →

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Seized drugs stolen from Fribourg police building

"Red-faced police in the canton of Fribourg are admitting that 34 kilograms of hashish and marijuana seized by officers from drug offenders has been stolen from a warehouse. Police had stored 28.6 kilograms of hash and 4.8 kilograms of pot, seized from three different investigations, in a building in Châtillon, near the city of Fribourg. The drugs were likely stolen in late November or early December last year but the theft was only recently noticed, according to media reports. Cantonal police said they discovered that a metal bar on one of the windows at the rear of the warehouse had been sawn off on December 5th." Continue reading →

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Louisiana: Jefferson Parish To Refund Red Light Camera Tickets

"Officials in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana are moving forward on plans to refund $4.7 million in red light camera tickets. About 284,000 tickets were issued in the program until it was suspended over ethical concerns on January 27, 2010 -- long before the Chicago scandal broke. In light of the early revelations of impropriety, a third of recipients threw their photo tickets in the garbage. Redflex had paid a 3.2 percent cut of the firm's profit on each ticket issued to lobbyist Bryan Wagner, a former New Orleans city councilman, who in turn shared the funds with the wife of District Judge Robert Murphy." Continue reading →

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New York: Judge Rules Careful Driving Is Not A Crime

"Driving with hands on the wheel, arms extended, without passing other vehicles is not a crime in New York, a county judge ruled last week. St. Lawrence County Surrogate's Court Judge Kathleen Martin Rogers found the US Border Patrol had been wrong to stop Corene M. Deer and Rachel C. Morgan, who were driving carefully at around 8pm on January 18, 2012 in the town of Gouverneur. Agent Brandon Carrier spotted Deer and Morgan's white SUV and became suspicious when he saw the driver had more than one hand on the wheel and did not appear to be relaxed." Continue reading →

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When Proactive Policing Becomes Harassment

"The track record of the NYPD's stop-and-frisk program suggests that its officers' suspicions of criminal activity are frequently less than reasonable, since they turn out to be right only 12 percent of the time. Forms officers fill out after these encounters rely heavily on all-purpose excuses such as 'furtive movements' and 'high crime area' to justify stopping people. As the number of stop-and-frisk encounters initiated by the NYPD grew from about 100,000 in Michael Bloomberg's first year as mayor to almost 700,000 in 2011, the share of stops yielding guns fell from 0.38 percent to 0.033 percent. Bloomberg says that trend shows the program is working." Continue reading →

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ACLU: Email reveals feds misled judges to abuse wiretapping powers

"Federal law enforcement agents misled judges for years on what type of wiretaps they were carrying out when they requested permission for so-called 'pen register' searches, an email obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reveals. Instead of collecting data on incoming and outgoing callers (among other general information), the ACLU said that agents commonly used a vehicle-mounted technology called the 'stingray' that intercepts all nearby communications in order to pinpoint the location of a particular signal. The ACLU argues that these devices in effect resulted in a de facto wiretap, when that was not yet authorized." Continue reading →

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FBI Pursuing Real-Time Gmail Spying Powers as “Top Priority” for 2013

"Despite the pervasiveness of law enforcement surveillance of digital communication, the FBI still has a difficult time monitoring Gmail, Google Voice, and Dropbox in real time. But that may change soon, because the bureau says it has made gaining more powers to wiretap all forms of Internet conversation and cloud storage a 'top priority' this year. FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann said that the FBI wants the power to mandate real-time surveillance of everything from Dropbox and online games ('the chat feature in Scrabble') to Gmail and Google Voice. 'Those communications are being used for criminal conversations,' he said." Continue reading →

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Welcome to Sulphur Springs, Where the Police Chief is a Murderer

"Last April, the Arkansas Commission on Law Enforcement reinstated Brackney’s 'peace officer' certification. All that he needed now was a job opening – and one was soon created in Sulphur Springs. Between late 2010 and March 25 of this year, residents of Sulphur Springs had known the singular blessing of living in a community devoid of police. There hasn’t been a murder in Sulphur Springs in recent memory. By hiring a murderer as police chief, the people who presume to rule that tiny village managed to handle both the supply and demand side of law enforcement, as it were. Arkansas is riddled with tiny towns afflicted with police who are not merely corrupt, but demented." Continue reading →

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Officer Convicted In Shooting Death Becomes Police Chief

"A former Bella Vista police officer who served jail time after shooting a suspect to death was sworn in as a police chief Monday night. A district court ruled that Brackney was to blame for the shooting death of James Ahern following a high-speed pursuit in January 2010. His negligent homicide conviction was a misdemeanor, so Brackney was spared prison time. 'I told the guys the day I left I would be back, and I told them it may take me a while because it was going to be a long fight,' Brackney told 5NEWS on Tuesday. 'But I’m back.'" Continue reading →

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