Eideard

 
Same as it ever was.

Though I have obvious reasons to remember a few coppers who beat and attacked demonstrators – scars – I always smile remembering the state troopers assigned to follow the car I was in in a southern border state on the way to a sit-in in 1959 who pulled alongside to offer directions to the town while we were gazing blankly at a road map by the side of the road.

Dangerous murals on Maine labor history – removed by Scrooge LePage

Prosecutors have declined to pursue charges against a homeless man in Maine who helped himself to an outdoor electrical outlet to charge a pair of cellphones.

Bangor police originally charged 23-year-old Shaun Fawster last weekend with theft of services after an officer caught him charging phones on an outlet hidden behind some flowers. He was also charged with carrying a concealed weapon after the officer found a folding knife tucked under his shirt.

But Susan J. Pope, assistant district attorney, said prosecutors declined to pursue the case.

Fawster, who’s a transient with no known address, couldn’t be reached for comment.

I don’t mind giving you a comment. With a state governed by a drudge who hates art that depicts working people as worthwhile human beings, with [a few] coppers who harass a homeless dude who stays North instead of heading South – it only took a day or two to find an assistant DA with her head screwed on straight enough to release the poor bugger.

As long as police officers have worn uniforms and carried badges, criminals have dressed like them to try to win the trust of potential victims. Now the impersonators are far more sophisticated, according to nearly a dozen city police chiefs and detectives across the country.

In South Florida, seemingly an incubator of law-breaking innovation, police impersonators have become better organized and, most troubling to law enforcement officials, more violent. The practice is so common that the Miami-Dade Police Department has a Police Impersonator Unit.

Since the unit was established in 2007, it has arrested or had encounters with more than 80 phony officers in Miami-Dade County, and the frequency has increased in recent months, said Lt. Daniel Villanueva, who heads the unit.

“It’s definitely a trend,” Lieutenant Villanueva said. “They use the guise of being a police officer to knock on a door, and the victim lowers their guard for just a second. At that point, it’s too late.”

He added that part of the problem was that it was easy for civilians to buy “police products,” like fake badges, handcuffs and uniforms. “The states need to lock this down and make impersonating a police officer a more serious crime because we’re seeing more people using these types of these things to commit more serious crimes,” he said…

Some police impersonators commit violent crimes like home invasions, car-jackings, rapes and, rarely, murders…

Other police impersonators, police chiefs and detectives say, masquerade as officers for more benign reasons, like trying to scare or impress someone. “Usually,” Detective Baez said, “the wannabe cop outfits their vehicles with police lights and fake insignias to fulfill some psychological need…”

Impersonating an officer is a misdemeanor in some states, though it is a felony in Florida. The charge’s severity, and punishment, increases if a criminal charged with posing as a police officer commits a felony. Several chiefs and detectives say the crime is not taken seriously enough by the justice system and the public. Often, the crime goes unreported, the police say.

Detective Hernandez, of Biscayne Park, Fla., said: “People minimize it. They just let it go. They won’t think about how dangerous this potentially can be. They just don’t see it.”

I agree. We’ve had a few of these in recent months here in New Mexico. One of the wannabe coppers had a buddy who was deputy sheriff – who helped him buy the real deal at a local police supply store. Absolutely illegal.

Way too likely some of these crooks are spending their energies in the commission of crimes – and given the size of our undocumentado population – a number of victims never report the crimes because they’re afraid of being deported. A handy-dandy convenience store for gangsters.

Dalia Dippolito never planned to have her husband killed, her attorney told a jury on Tuesday. Rather, she thought she was acting in a reality show orchestrated by her husband to achieve fame and publicity.

In his opening statement in her murder-for-hire trial, defense attorney Michael Salnick said Michael Dippolito was a controlling husband who duped his wife into taking part in his hoax.

“Michael Dippolito’s hoax to orchestrate his own murder to achieve fame and fortune was a bad prank,” Salnick said. “It was never anyone’s intention to harm anyone…”

Video from an undercover sting by Boynton Beach police showed Dalia Dippolito in August 2009 trying to hire an undercover officer to kill her husband. Video of her wailing at news of his murder went viral and will be featured on the television show “COPS.”

Salnick told jurors that Dalia Dippolito knew the entire time that she was being recorded, because her husband persuaded her to take part in his reality-show idea. Michael Dippolito won’t admit it, Salnick said…

Dippolito faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted of solicitation to commit first-degree murder. Her alleged plan to have a hit man kill her husband backfired when the man she hired to do the job was the undercover Boynton Beach police officer.

Boynton Beach police were fooled by Michael Dippolito’s staged murder-for-hire scenario, Salnick said, and were more focused on pleasing COPS producers…

On Aug. 5, 2009, police staged the elaborate crime scene, and recorded video of her shrieks and tears when they told her that her husband had been killed.

Later they confronted her, brought her face-to-face with her husband and arrested her. Her reaction and arrest also were caught on video, which will be evidence in the trial.

Michael Dippolito was the victim in the case, Parker said, and was blinded by his love for his wife of six months.

Do you think this is going to work better than the twinkie defense used in San Francisco to justify the murder of Harvey Milk? You have to admit it’s creative and including in a reasonably sleazy reality TV show like COPS is brilliant.

At least 35 people, mostly Rio de Janeiro police officers, were arrested on Friday on suspicion of colluding with drug gangs as the Brazilian city attempts to clean itself up before hosting the 2014 World Cup and the Olympic Games two years later.

It was one of the biggest operations against police corruption in the city, which is gradually overcoming a reputation for crime and violence. Rio police have long been accused of corruption and of covering up their violent tactics in the city’s hundreds of slum areas that are often controlled by drug traffickers…

Hundreds of officers took part in the operation, code-named “Guillotine,” seeking the arrest of 45 people, including 32 police officers. By Friday evening, 27 police officers had been arrested, investigators said.

The investigation began in 2009 when a planned police operation in a slum had to be aborted after details of the raid were leaked to drug traffickers, officials said.

Police officers targeted in the operation were also suspected of running protection rackets for illegal gambling, leading militia groups and taking bribes from traffickers.

One of the suspected leaders of the scheme, former police commander Carlos de Oliveira, was suspected of charging drug chiefs $60,000 a time in exchange for information about police operations. Oliveira, who turned himself in to investigators, had since left the police to join the city government.

Har! Corruption suspect leaves police force – to join city government. Sounds like a few places I’ve lived in the good old USA.

Store detectives at Christmas Markets in Austria are being disguised as the baby Jesus in an attempt to catch shoplifters and pick pockets.

In the German speaking world the Christ child is usually played by young women and is also the traditional bringer of Christmas gifts.

Actors have been replaced by the undercover detectives to stop criminals taking advantage of the crowds to steal items from the stalls and shoppers’ bags at the events which are popular tourists attractions.

Church officials have criticised the idea of using staff employed to play the role as the Christ child to also catch thieves.

A spokesman for the city council in Weitra, Austria, which is one of those to employ the Christ child detectives said: “They are in among the crowds all day long and they are perfect for keeping an eye out for petty crooks.”

Har!

Alan Newton served over 21 years in prison for a rape, robbery and assault he didn’t commit, before DNA evidence exonerated him in 2006. Now, he was awarded $18.5 million by a jury for his wrongful imprisonment, one of the largest ever amounts awarded for wrongful imprisonment in NYC. “It hasn’t really sunk in. It’s so emotional. It’s something I’ve been fighting for the last four years, since I came home. I’m just glad things worked out at the end of the day,” he told the Times.

Newton’s cause had been taken up by The Innocence Project, which works on cases “where postconviction DNA testing of evidence can yield conclusive proof of innocence.” The jury ruled that the city had violated Newton’s constitutional rights, and found two police officers liable for intentional infliction of emotional distress for failing to produce Mr. Newton’s evidence when requested. Newton had asked for DNA evidence in 1994, 1997 and 1998; the Innocence Project was only able to get it in 2005.

The Innocence Project has helped exonerate a number of people in NYC in the last decade, including a former postal worker who spent 18 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit.

Since being released from prison, Newton, 49, spent two years as a full-time student at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn completing his degree; now he works as a research associate at the Black Male Initiative of the City University of New York, and plans on applying to law school. “I want to work with people that really need that legal assistance that’s just not there for them. There are so many issues where people need competent counsel, and it’s just not out there. I think I’ll jump into it with both arms.”

When will prosecutor stop being persecutors? When will judges insure equal rights before the law? Do you think we’ll ever run out of stories on injustice like this one?

Chief William Blair provided answers Friday afternoon about Toronto Police’s $122-million policing budget for the upcoming G20 summit, as well as the police force’s plan for limiting the use of “sound cannons” during the event.

At a special meeting of the Toronto Police Services Board, Chief Blair told board members that $82-million will be spent on salaries for police officers. This includes 3,500 Toronto Police officers, 1,600 police officers from across the country, and 900 Toronto Police civilian employees.

The remaining $40-million will be spent on additional costs such as equipment, vehicles, housing for non-Toronto Police officers, and clothing.

Chief Blair emphasized that the full $122-million will be paid for by the federal government, and will not come out of Toronto Police Service’s budget.

OK. I was afraid there might be some excess.

Like for popsicles.

Suspected drug hitmen killed nine people in Tegucigalpa in one of the deadliest attacks in Honduras since Mexican drug kingpins escalated their war over smuggling routes.

Masked men with automatic weapons opened fire in the street in a poor area of the Honduran capital on Saturday night and then burst into two houses, killing seven men and two women, police said. Several bodies lay in the street, oozing blood, police said.

“These deaths were provoked by territorial disputes between drug traffickers,” Tegucigalpa’s police chief Mario Chamorro told reporters.

Since last year, drug violence has been rising in Honduras, a key transit route for Colombian cocaine heading to the United States, as powerful Mexican cartels fight over smuggling corridors through Mexico and Central America.

Some 1,600 people died in drug violence in Honduras in 2009. Honduran authorities say Mexico’s top trafficker, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman, is trying to crush rivals from the ruthless Gulf cartel from northeastern Mexico who are also fighting for control in Central America.

Corrupt coppers, corrupt politicians and local officials make a home for drug gangs just about anywhere they wish. As long as money counts for more than human lives, criminals really don’t spend much time worrying about their business.

German police detained a nightclub reveler they caught trying to snort amphetamines off the top of their unmarked patrol car.

The 26-year-old began lining up the powdered drugs on the roof of the car in a disco car park, when the two police officers surprised him, a Nuremberg police spokesman said on Tuesday.

The man had no idea the normal looking vehicle belonged to the police, and it was coincidence that the officers — who were walking by their parked car — discovered him just as he was about to take the drugs.

“He’s got horrible luck,” said Bert Rauenbusch, police spokesman in the southern German city.

Yeah, that’s one of the things you could say about him.