Four Baltimore Teens Arrested In Connection To Sexual Assault Of Woman Getting Off An MTA Bus
By Kelsey Kushner
CBS Baltimore
February 15, 2019
BALTIMORE -- Baltimore City Police say that three 14-year-old boys and a 12-year-old are under arrest in connection with the sexual assault of a 19-year-old woman after she got off an MTA Bus in west Baltimore last Wednesday.
Around 10 p.m. on Feb. 6, four suspects followed the 19-year-old woman after she got off an MTA Bus to the 300 block of North Fulton Ave.
The suspects allegedly forced the victim into a backyard at gunpoint and sexually assaulted her, according to police.
Police also said that neighbors came out of their home and interrupted the assault, causing the suspects to flee.
Baltimore City School Police contacted sex offense detectives after seeing news reports with suspect photos.
School police recognized two of the suspects and the other two were identified soon after.
The suspects were positively identified by the victim and warrants were issued for three 14-year-olds and the 12-year-old.
On Feb. 14, 2019, detectives arrested 14 tear-old Wilmer Ramos, 14-year-old Phillip Worrell, and 14-year-old Nile Campbell of the 2500 block of Harlem Avenue.
Ramos, Worrell, and Campbell have all been charged as adults and are currently being held at Central Booking and Intake Facility.
Each of the 14-year-olds have been charged with 1st and 2nd Degree Rape.
The 12-year old who as present during the sexual assault, has been identified and was charged as a juvenile with 1st degree rape, 3rd and 4th degree sex offenses, conspiracy kidnapping, conspiracy robbery, perverted practice and handgun on person.
Wednesday, February 20, 2019
WHO IS POLICING THE PROSECUTORS?
What other branch of law enforcement can destroy lives with 'absolute immunity'?
By Stephen Beale
The American Conservative
February 19, 2019
Five years after being released from death row for a crime he did not commit, a Louisiana jury awarded John Thompson $14 million in damages—one million for every year of his incarceration—after private investigators discovered that prosecutors in the case had withheld exculpatory evidence.
But Thompson was never able to collect on his award, thanks to a little-known legal doctrine known as absolute immunity, which shields prosecutors from lawsuits.
“With a few very limited exceptions prosecutors cannot be sued even when there is evidence that they committed intentional and egregious violations of someone’s civil rights or broke the law. It’s like an invisibility cloak that protects them from lawsuits,” said Nina Morrison, an attorney with the Innocence Project.
“If I’d spilled hot coffee on myself, I could have sued the person who served me the coffee,” Thompson once said. “But I can’t sue the prosecutors who nearly murdered me.”
The decision against Thompson came from the highest court in the land in 2011, reaffirming a doctrine that goes back nearly half a century.
In effect, Clark Neily, the vice president for criminal justice at the Cato Institute, says prosecutors have been given a “hunting license.”
“So you have these officials who have extraordinary discretion and extraordinary power and instead of holding them to a correspondingly high standard …they’re actually the least accountable public officials in the country,” Neily said. “It’s astonishing. They wield the most power and in a way that presents the greatest concerns and the Supreme Court’s response is to say ‘Oh and by the way we should hold them to the lowest standard … of accountability.’”
The doctrine of absolute immunity, which was solidified in the 1976 Supreme Court case, Imbler v. Pachtman, is founded on good intentions: the general idea is to prevent a glut of lawsuits from people accused of crimes, choking the court system and having a chilling effect on prosecutors’ ability to do their job. (The immunity applies to both state and federal prosecutors.)
Legitimate as that concern may be, it doesn’t warrant absolute immunity. The same concerns could apply to a whole host of other high-stakes professions, Neily notes. “You could make pretty much the exact same argument with doctors, for example,” he said.
And the threat of lawsuits doesn’t seem to prevent other government officials who do not enjoy absolute immunity from doing their jobs, like police officers, Morrison notes. (Instead, they have qualified immunity, which is still problematic.) “And the courts are actually very good at sorting out frivolous claims from non-frivolous ones early in the process,” he added.
In theory, of course, prosecutors are still open to professional discipline and criminal charges for truly egregious conduct like tampering with witnesses, altering physical evidence, and knowingly presenting false testimony. Except, professional and criminal sanctions are rare, according to Neily and Morrison.
“Who prosecutes the prosecutors? Other prosecutors,” Morrison said.
There has been only one instance of a prosecutor serving jail time for illegal conduct. In 2015 in Texas, former prosecutor Ken Anderson lost his law license and pled no contest to felony contempt of court for hiding evidence that cleared Michael Morton of guilt in his wife’s murder. The 10 days paled in comparison to the 25 years that Morton had spent in prison, but still, the case sent a message to other prosecutors, according to Morrison.
A ProPublica analysis identified two dozen cases in which ‘harmful misconduct’ by New York City prosecutors had later led to overturned convictions—though the errant prosecutors walked away with little harm to their legal careers. “Disciplinary committees, an arm of the appellate courts, almost never took serious action against prosecutors,” the report states. Just one of the prosecutors was disciplined by having his law license temporarily suspended. No one was disbarred.
Likewise, in Massachusetts, the state prosecutors who misled the court about the extent of a criminal lab employee’s misconduct have yet to be disciplined by the bar. The scandal involved a chemist, Sonja Farak, who stole drugs from the lab to feed her addiction, leading to thousands of wrongful convictions.
“Upon finding out about Farak’s wrongdoing, officials from the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office covered it up, according to a judge’s report. Worse, when the evidence tampering and subsequent cover up came to light, our Massachusetts district attorneys refused to notify the thousands of people they helped wrongfully convict with this tainted evidence,” the state ACLU stated.
Rather than being a deterrent, absolute prosecutorial immunity creates a perverse incentive for prosecutors, according to Somil Trivedi, a staff attorney at the ACLU’s Trone Center for Justice and Equality. “Anecdotally, it certainly allows prosecutors to push the envelope to secure more convictions and longer sentences, whether through withholding discovery, intimidating witnesses, coercing confessions and pleas, and making inappropriate arguments at trial. All of this conduct is covered by immunity, and prosecutors know it,” Trivedi said.
“Prosecutorial immunity virtually eliminates accountability from the system,” Trivedi added. “So criminal defendants whose constitutional rights have been unquestionably violated cannot get justice or compensation, leading to disenchantment with and distrust of law enforcement and the criminal justice system as a whole.”
The irony is that the federal law upon which the Supreme Court based its doctrine was intended to do the opposite, Trivedi says. Known as Section 1983, the law, which was passed during the Reconstruction Era, declared that government officials, including police and prosecutors, could be sued for violating someone’s civil rights.
“Congress chose not to include any immunities or exceptions in that Act, and never wrote them in later. We have completely lost sight of the original intent of our civil rights laws, and immunity makes it infinitely worse,” Trivedi said.
Absolute prosecutorial misconduct plays a role in mass incarceration. Because the immunity shields prosecutors from the kind of lawsuits that would expose how extensive prosecutorial misconduct is, it ensures that we can’t really know for sure how many more people are wrongfully imprisoned thanks to overly zealous or unscrupulous prosecutors.
“We’ve basically created a situation where it is very, very difficult for a defendant to ever determine whether a prosecutor has engaged in misconduct because one of the most powerful tools for bringing that kind of a thing to light, which is a civil lawsuit, is something you can’t do because of absolute prosecutorial immunity. So you can’t sue the prosecutors which means you can’t get discovery, can’t dig into their files,” Neily said. “And so the question becomes, How much? We don’t know—that’s the point.”
But what evidence there is suggests that prosecutors are a big part of the problem. A 2010 Innocence Project report found that in about 30 of the first 255 cases where DNA exonerated a convict prosecutorial misconduct or error was a factor. “In 18 percent of the prosecutorial misconduct claims in wrongful conviction cases, courts overturned convictions or found harmful error—a rate nearly identical to harmful error findings in a larger study of misconduct allegations, including thousands of cases where defendants did not claim innocence,” the report stated.
The good news is that the path to reforming absolute immunity isn’t an impossible one. Neily identifies three approaches. One would be to convince the Supreme Court, where there has been an increase in self-identified originalists, to reverse itself. A second approach would be getting Congress to amend Section 1983, affirming its original intent of holding prosecutors accountable. Or, reformers could try to go state by state, passing local laws allowing prosecutors to be sued—though that wouldn’t address the issue at the federal level, Neily notes.
“At the very least prosecutors should have to play by the same rules that other law enforcement officials do and face the same liability when they commit serious misconduct and violate clearly established law. That seems to be the bare minimum to ensure fairness,” Morrison said.
By Stephen Beale
The American Conservative
February 19, 2019
Five years after being released from death row for a crime he did not commit, a Louisiana jury awarded John Thompson $14 million in damages—one million for every year of his incarceration—after private investigators discovered that prosecutors in the case had withheld exculpatory evidence.
But Thompson was never able to collect on his award, thanks to a little-known legal doctrine known as absolute immunity, which shields prosecutors from lawsuits.
“With a few very limited exceptions prosecutors cannot be sued even when there is evidence that they committed intentional and egregious violations of someone’s civil rights or broke the law. It’s like an invisibility cloak that protects them from lawsuits,” said Nina Morrison, an attorney with the Innocence Project.
“If I’d spilled hot coffee on myself, I could have sued the person who served me the coffee,” Thompson once said. “But I can’t sue the prosecutors who nearly murdered me.”
The decision against Thompson came from the highest court in the land in 2011, reaffirming a doctrine that goes back nearly half a century.
In effect, Clark Neily, the vice president for criminal justice at the Cato Institute, says prosecutors have been given a “hunting license.”
“So you have these officials who have extraordinary discretion and extraordinary power and instead of holding them to a correspondingly high standard …they’re actually the least accountable public officials in the country,” Neily said. “It’s astonishing. They wield the most power and in a way that presents the greatest concerns and the Supreme Court’s response is to say ‘Oh and by the way we should hold them to the lowest standard … of accountability.’”
The doctrine of absolute immunity, which was solidified in the 1976 Supreme Court case, Imbler v. Pachtman, is founded on good intentions: the general idea is to prevent a glut of lawsuits from people accused of crimes, choking the court system and having a chilling effect on prosecutors’ ability to do their job. (The immunity applies to both state and federal prosecutors.)
Legitimate as that concern may be, it doesn’t warrant absolute immunity. The same concerns could apply to a whole host of other high-stakes professions, Neily notes. “You could make pretty much the exact same argument with doctors, for example,” he said.
And the threat of lawsuits doesn’t seem to prevent other government officials who do not enjoy absolute immunity from doing their jobs, like police officers, Morrison notes. (Instead, they have qualified immunity, which is still problematic.) “And the courts are actually very good at sorting out frivolous claims from non-frivolous ones early in the process,” he added.
In theory, of course, prosecutors are still open to professional discipline and criminal charges for truly egregious conduct like tampering with witnesses, altering physical evidence, and knowingly presenting false testimony. Except, professional and criminal sanctions are rare, according to Neily and Morrison.
“Who prosecutes the prosecutors? Other prosecutors,” Morrison said.
There has been only one instance of a prosecutor serving jail time for illegal conduct. In 2015 in Texas, former prosecutor Ken Anderson lost his law license and pled no contest to felony contempt of court for hiding evidence that cleared Michael Morton of guilt in his wife’s murder. The 10 days paled in comparison to the 25 years that Morton had spent in prison, but still, the case sent a message to other prosecutors, according to Morrison.
A ProPublica analysis identified two dozen cases in which ‘harmful misconduct’ by New York City prosecutors had later led to overturned convictions—though the errant prosecutors walked away with little harm to their legal careers. “Disciplinary committees, an arm of the appellate courts, almost never took serious action against prosecutors,” the report states. Just one of the prosecutors was disciplined by having his law license temporarily suspended. No one was disbarred.
Likewise, in Massachusetts, the state prosecutors who misled the court about the extent of a criminal lab employee’s misconduct have yet to be disciplined by the bar. The scandal involved a chemist, Sonja Farak, who stole drugs from the lab to feed her addiction, leading to thousands of wrongful convictions.
“Upon finding out about Farak’s wrongdoing, officials from the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office covered it up, according to a judge’s report. Worse, when the evidence tampering and subsequent cover up came to light, our Massachusetts district attorneys refused to notify the thousands of people they helped wrongfully convict with this tainted evidence,” the state ACLU stated.
Rather than being a deterrent, absolute prosecutorial immunity creates a perverse incentive for prosecutors, according to Somil Trivedi, a staff attorney at the ACLU’s Trone Center for Justice and Equality. “Anecdotally, it certainly allows prosecutors to push the envelope to secure more convictions and longer sentences, whether through withholding discovery, intimidating witnesses, coercing confessions and pleas, and making inappropriate arguments at trial. All of this conduct is covered by immunity, and prosecutors know it,” Trivedi said.
“Prosecutorial immunity virtually eliminates accountability from the system,” Trivedi added. “So criminal defendants whose constitutional rights have been unquestionably violated cannot get justice or compensation, leading to disenchantment with and distrust of law enforcement and the criminal justice system as a whole.”
The irony is that the federal law upon which the Supreme Court based its doctrine was intended to do the opposite, Trivedi says. Known as Section 1983, the law, which was passed during the Reconstruction Era, declared that government officials, including police and prosecutors, could be sued for violating someone’s civil rights.
“Congress chose not to include any immunities or exceptions in that Act, and never wrote them in later. We have completely lost sight of the original intent of our civil rights laws, and immunity makes it infinitely worse,” Trivedi said.
Absolute prosecutorial misconduct plays a role in mass incarceration. Because the immunity shields prosecutors from the kind of lawsuits that would expose how extensive prosecutorial misconduct is, it ensures that we can’t really know for sure how many more people are wrongfully imprisoned thanks to overly zealous or unscrupulous prosecutors.
“We’ve basically created a situation where it is very, very difficult for a defendant to ever determine whether a prosecutor has engaged in misconduct because one of the most powerful tools for bringing that kind of a thing to light, which is a civil lawsuit, is something you can’t do because of absolute prosecutorial immunity. So you can’t sue the prosecutors which means you can’t get discovery, can’t dig into their files,” Neily said. “And so the question becomes, How much? We don’t know—that’s the point.”
But what evidence there is suggests that prosecutors are a big part of the problem. A 2010 Innocence Project report found that in about 30 of the first 255 cases where DNA exonerated a convict prosecutorial misconduct or error was a factor. “In 18 percent of the prosecutorial misconduct claims in wrongful conviction cases, courts overturned convictions or found harmful error—a rate nearly identical to harmful error findings in a larger study of misconduct allegations, including thousands of cases where defendants did not claim innocence,” the report stated.
The good news is that the path to reforming absolute immunity isn’t an impossible one. Neily identifies three approaches. One would be to convince the Supreme Court, where there has been an increase in self-identified originalists, to reverse itself. A second approach would be getting Congress to amend Section 1983, affirming its original intent of holding prosecutors accountable. Or, reformers could try to go state by state, passing local laws allowing prosecutors to be sued—though that wouldn’t address the issue at the federal level, Neily notes.
“At the very least prosecutors should have to play by the same rules that other law enforcement officials do and face the same liability when they commit serious misconduct and violate clearly established law. That seems to be the bare minimum to ensure fairness,” Morrison said.
Tuesday, February 19, 2019
DEMS EATING THEIR WORDS ON SMOLLETT HOAX
Cory Booker, Camel Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, AOC and Al Sharpton suffered knee-jerk reactions from the reported Smollett attack
BarkGrowlBite
February 19, 2019
Immediately after reports emerged of Jussie Smollett being assaulted by two masked men who shouted “Empire faggot” and “Empire nigger” at him, as well as “This is MAGA country,” the following Democrats piped in with expressions of outrage.
Cory Booker tweeted “The vicious attack on actor Jussie Smollett was an attempted modern-day lynching. I'm glad he's safe. To those in Congress who don't feel the urgency to pass our Anti-Lynching bill designating lynching as a federal hate crime– I urge you to pay attention.”
Camel Harris tweeted “.@JussieSmollett is one of the kindest, most gentle human beings I know. I’m praying for his quick recovery. This was an attempted modern day lynching. No one should have to fear for their life because of their sexuality or color of their skin. We must confront this hate.”
Kirsten Gillibrand tweeted “This is a sickening and outrageous attack, and horribly, it's the latest of too many hate crimes against LGBTQ people and people of color. We are all responsible for condemning this behavior and every person who enables or normalizes it. Praying for Jussie and his family.”
Nancy Pelosi tweeted “The racist, homophobic attack on @JussieSmollett is an affront to our humanity. No one should be attacked for who they are or whom they love. I pray that Jussie has a speedy recovery & that justice is served. May we all commit to ending this hate once & for all.”
Maxine Waters blamed Trump, saying “Why all of a sudden do we have people unable to study while black, unable to mow a lawn while black, unable to have picnic while black, and being attacked? It’s coming from the president of the United States. He’s dog whistling every day.”
AOC tweeted “There is no such thing as ‘racially charged.’ This attack was not ‘possibly’ homophobic. It was a racist and homophobic attack. If you don’t like what is happening to our country, then work to change it. It is no one’s job to water down or sugar-coat the rise of hate crimes.”
Al Sharpton tweeted “The reported hate attack on my friend and brother, actor Jussie Smollett is despicable and outrageous. The guilty must face the maximum.”
What a shame. They’re all eating their words now that it has been revealed the attack was all a hoax. Reminds me of Al Sharpton’s 1987 Tawana Brawley hoax. Sharpton, like Smollett with his hoax, continues to insist the Tawana Brawley hoax was no hoax.
BarkGrowlBite
February 19, 2019
Immediately after reports emerged of Jussie Smollett being assaulted by two masked men who shouted “Empire faggot” and “Empire nigger” at him, as well as “This is MAGA country,” the following Democrats piped in with expressions of outrage.
Cory Booker tweeted “The vicious attack on actor Jussie Smollett was an attempted modern-day lynching. I'm glad he's safe. To those in Congress who don't feel the urgency to pass our Anti-Lynching bill designating lynching as a federal hate crime– I urge you to pay attention.”
Camel Harris tweeted “.@JussieSmollett is one of the kindest, most gentle human beings I know. I’m praying for his quick recovery. This was an attempted modern day lynching. No one should have to fear for their life because of their sexuality or color of their skin. We must confront this hate.”
Kirsten Gillibrand tweeted “This is a sickening and outrageous attack, and horribly, it's the latest of too many hate crimes against LGBTQ people and people of color. We are all responsible for condemning this behavior and every person who enables or normalizes it. Praying for Jussie and his family.”
Nancy Pelosi tweeted “The racist, homophobic attack on @JussieSmollett is an affront to our humanity. No one should be attacked for who they are or whom they love. I pray that Jussie has a speedy recovery & that justice is served. May we all commit to ending this hate once & for all.”
Maxine Waters blamed Trump, saying “Why all of a sudden do we have people unable to study while black, unable to mow a lawn while black, unable to have picnic while black, and being attacked? It’s coming from the president of the United States. He’s dog whistling every day.”
AOC tweeted “There is no such thing as ‘racially charged.’ This attack was not ‘possibly’ homophobic. It was a racist and homophobic attack. If you don’t like what is happening to our country, then work to change it. It is no one’s job to water down or sugar-coat the rise of hate crimes.”
Al Sharpton tweeted “The reported hate attack on my friend and brother, actor Jussie Smollett is despicable and outrageous. The guilty must face the maximum.”
What a shame. They’re all eating their words now that it has been revealed the attack was all a hoax. Reminds me of Al Sharpton’s 1987 Tawana Brawley hoax. Sharpton, like Smollett with his hoax, continues to insist the Tawana Brawley hoax was no hoax.
A FLAW IN THE SYSTEM
by Bob Walsh
The shooter in Aurora, Illinois had a gun he should not have had. The cops KNEW he had a gun he should not have had. They did cancel his FOID card but took no active steps to retrieve the now-known-to-be-illegal weapon.
If you assume that, from time to time shit happens, you should have a system in place to deal with the excrement. The guy bought the gun legally. When he applied for a carry permit they did a deeper dive into his background and found he was a convicted felon. They SHOULD HAVE retrieved the weapon. They didn't.
In the formerly great state of California the state KNOWS OF 9,000 weapons in the possession of prohibited persons. Governor Newsom, who hates guns and hates people who own guns, has vowed to improve funding for this purpose. In the entire 2017 calendar year the backlog was reduced by only 408, even though 3.500 names had been cleared either by the death of the person named or the expiration of the gun prohibition.
Many of the DOJ agents that deal with the issue have been carried as part-time employees year after year for several years due to the inability of the DOJ to get permanent positions approved.
It is probably Donald Trump's fault, acting in concert with the Macedonians.
The shooter in Aurora, Illinois had a gun he should not have had. The cops KNEW he had a gun he should not have had. They did cancel his FOID card but took no active steps to retrieve the now-known-to-be-illegal weapon.
If you assume that, from time to time shit happens, you should have a system in place to deal with the excrement. The guy bought the gun legally. When he applied for a carry permit they did a deeper dive into his background and found he was a convicted felon. They SHOULD HAVE retrieved the weapon. They didn't.
In the formerly great state of California the state KNOWS OF 9,000 weapons in the possession of prohibited persons. Governor Newsom, who hates guns and hates people who own guns, has vowed to improve funding for this purpose. In the entire 2017 calendar year the backlog was reduced by only 408, even though 3.500 names had been cleared either by the death of the person named or the expiration of the gun prohibition.
Many of the DOJ agents that deal with the issue have been carried as part-time employees year after year for several years due to the inability of the DOJ to get permanent positions approved.
It is probably Donald Trump's fault, acting in concert with the Macedonians.
IN THIS POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT, COPS HAVE TO JUSTIFY EVERY MOVE THEY MAKE
Survey: Most Baltimore Police Officers 'Afraid' to Initiate Arrests
By Jessica Anderson
The Baltimore Sun
February 18, 2019
BALTIMORE -- Most Baltimore Police officers who participated in a recent informal survey feel restricted by the department’s federal consent decree, inadequately trained and unsupported by city leadership.
Some of the officers surveyed said they don’t even feel comfortable intervening in incidents and making arrests without having been called to the scene.
“They’re afraid,” said City Councilman Isaac “Yitzy” Schleifer, who conducted the unscientific survey. “In this political environment, you have to justify every move you make.”
About 362 of the department’s nearly 2,300 officers responded to Schleifer’s voluntary survey, which was sent at the end of 2018 via department email to police department leadership, officers and civilian members who responded anonymously. The short questionnaire asked basic biographical information, including respondents’ ages and how long they had served on the force, and questions about overall morale.
The results showed 43 percent said they do not feel “comfortable making self-initiated arrests,” which Schleifer said refers to proactive calls when officers are on patrol and they witness an incident and intervene, as opposed to calls they respond to through 911.
The survey also found that 74 percent said they “feel restricted by the consent decree,” while 44 percent said they don’t “fully understand the consent decree.” Only 60 percent said they feel “adequately trained” while 78 percent said they feel the department has “lowered our hiring standards.”
Two of every three officers who took the survey — 68 percent — also said they do not feel city leadership supports law enforcement.
Schleifer, whose district overlays the Northern and Northwest police districts, said he was not surprised by the responses but hopes they will be used to address some of the department’s systemic issues.
He shared the survey results with Acting Police Commissioner Michael Harrison on Thursday afternoon. Though the survey showed significant concerns among officers, Schleifer said Harrison did not seem surprised by the officers’ responses, and responded with specific ideas on how to address tactical departmental issues.
“It’s refreshing. He’s seen challenges similar to ours,” Schleifer said.
He said Harrison is taking action by evaluating the command staff and determining what, if any, changes need to be made, which Schleifer said any successful leader would make a priority.
Attorney Ken Thompson, who heads the independent monitoring team that is helping the department implement the consent decree, said he hadn’t reviewed the survey, but the responses show the team must work on its outreach efforts.
“We want to intensify our efforts to reach out to the rank-and-file,” he said.
Officers should not feel that the consent decree restricts them, he said.
“The consent decree gives them the tools and resources to do their job but in a constitutional way,” Thompson said.
Sgt. Mike Mancuso, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3, the union that represents the rank-and-file officers, said in a statement on Twitter Friday that he hopes city leadership takes notes of the responses.
“The results are no surprise to our members & it points out the shortcomings of the City & how the BPD is (was?) run including the theft of our pension benefits. It should be included in any discussion of recruitment, retention, & morale,” Mancuso said.
When Former Mayor Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake overhauled the city’s police and fire pension system, officers were required to increase contributions to the pension fund and had to stay on the force for 25 years instead of 20 to receive their pensions.
Most who took the survey — 83 percent — were sworn officers and the rest were administrative personnel. Of the officers who responded, the majority were experienced officers. Only 8 percent had served up to five years; 19 percent had served five to 10 years; 19 percent had served 10 to 15; 21 percent had served 15 to 20 years; and 33 percent had served 20 or more years.
The respondents ages were evenly distributed: 28 percent were ages 25 to 34; 32 percent were 35 to 44; 32 percent were 45 to 54; and 7 percent were 55 or older.
The survey also allowed officers to write in responses to detail their concerns and also ways they thought crime could be lowered.
One officer wrote: “Morale won’t rise until the Department and its officers receive consistent public support from the Mayor, City Council and State’s Attorney. No one is asking that corruption be tolerated. What we are asking is that when we investigate crimes and make arrests or issue citations that our elected leaders support us when we encounter resistance.”
One section allowed the officers to say what they would want to tell the next police commissioner.
“Invest more in the men and women who do the job. … If police officers are detailed to patrol for a period of time, have a strategy for them, and don’t just use them as a scarecrows on street corners.”
Others asked for more interaction with the commissioner, including attending roll calls or taking ride-alongs with officers. Some simply asked for more officers.
A detective said: “We don’t have enough people in my unit. The volume of cases we have is absurd given our manpower. It leads to mistakes, and inadequate follow up investigations which lead to sloppy prosecutions. None of which is for lack of trying.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Fallout from Obama’s oversight of law enforcement.
By Jessica Anderson
The Baltimore Sun
February 18, 2019
BALTIMORE -- Most Baltimore Police officers who participated in a recent informal survey feel restricted by the department’s federal consent decree, inadequately trained and unsupported by city leadership.
Some of the officers surveyed said they don’t even feel comfortable intervening in incidents and making arrests without having been called to the scene.
“They’re afraid,” said City Councilman Isaac “Yitzy” Schleifer, who conducted the unscientific survey. “In this political environment, you have to justify every move you make.”
About 362 of the department’s nearly 2,300 officers responded to Schleifer’s voluntary survey, which was sent at the end of 2018 via department email to police department leadership, officers and civilian members who responded anonymously. The short questionnaire asked basic biographical information, including respondents’ ages and how long they had served on the force, and questions about overall morale.
The results showed 43 percent said they do not feel “comfortable making self-initiated arrests,” which Schleifer said refers to proactive calls when officers are on patrol and they witness an incident and intervene, as opposed to calls they respond to through 911.
The survey also found that 74 percent said they “feel restricted by the consent decree,” while 44 percent said they don’t “fully understand the consent decree.” Only 60 percent said they feel “adequately trained” while 78 percent said they feel the department has “lowered our hiring standards.”
Two of every three officers who took the survey — 68 percent — also said they do not feel city leadership supports law enforcement.
Schleifer, whose district overlays the Northern and Northwest police districts, said he was not surprised by the responses but hopes they will be used to address some of the department’s systemic issues.
He shared the survey results with Acting Police Commissioner Michael Harrison on Thursday afternoon. Though the survey showed significant concerns among officers, Schleifer said Harrison did not seem surprised by the officers’ responses, and responded with specific ideas on how to address tactical departmental issues.
“It’s refreshing. He’s seen challenges similar to ours,” Schleifer said.
He said Harrison is taking action by evaluating the command staff and determining what, if any, changes need to be made, which Schleifer said any successful leader would make a priority.
Attorney Ken Thompson, who heads the independent monitoring team that is helping the department implement the consent decree, said he hadn’t reviewed the survey, but the responses show the team must work on its outreach efforts.
“We want to intensify our efforts to reach out to the rank-and-file,” he said.
Officers should not feel that the consent decree restricts them, he said.
“The consent decree gives them the tools and resources to do their job but in a constitutional way,” Thompson said.
Sgt. Mike Mancuso, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3, the union that represents the rank-and-file officers, said in a statement on Twitter Friday that he hopes city leadership takes notes of the responses.
“The results are no surprise to our members & it points out the shortcomings of the City & how the BPD is (was?) run including the theft of our pension benefits. It should be included in any discussion of recruitment, retention, & morale,” Mancuso said.
When Former Mayor Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake overhauled the city’s police and fire pension system, officers were required to increase contributions to the pension fund and had to stay on the force for 25 years instead of 20 to receive their pensions.
Most who took the survey — 83 percent — were sworn officers and the rest were administrative personnel. Of the officers who responded, the majority were experienced officers. Only 8 percent had served up to five years; 19 percent had served five to 10 years; 19 percent had served 10 to 15; 21 percent had served 15 to 20 years; and 33 percent had served 20 or more years.
The respondents ages were evenly distributed: 28 percent were ages 25 to 34; 32 percent were 35 to 44; 32 percent were 45 to 54; and 7 percent were 55 or older.
The survey also allowed officers to write in responses to detail their concerns and also ways they thought crime could be lowered.
One officer wrote: “Morale won’t rise until the Department and its officers receive consistent public support from the Mayor, City Council and State’s Attorney. No one is asking that corruption be tolerated. What we are asking is that when we investigate crimes and make arrests or issue citations that our elected leaders support us when we encounter resistance.”
One section allowed the officers to say what they would want to tell the next police commissioner.
“Invest more in the men and women who do the job. … If police officers are detailed to patrol for a period of time, have a strategy for them, and don’t just use them as a scarecrows on street corners.”
Others asked for more interaction with the commissioner, including attending roll calls or taking ride-alongs with officers. Some simply asked for more officers.
A detective said: “We don’t have enough people in my unit. The volume of cases we have is absurd given our manpower. It leads to mistakes, and inadequate follow up investigations which lead to sloppy prosecutions. None of which is for lack of trying.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Fallout from Obama’s oversight of law enforcement.
TRAGIC ‘OH SHIT’ SHIT
Man dies at the scene after running out of a Port A Potty in FLAMES when fire engulfed four of the units outside Baltimore Ravens' M&T Bank Stadium
By Bhvishya Patel
Daily Mail
February 18, 2019
A man has died after he emerged from a portable toilet in flames, official have reported.
According to the Baltimore City Fire Department, the unidentified man was seen running out of the parking lot toilet outside the M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, Maryland, on Sunday at around 3pm.
A witness saw the man 'on fire' before he collapsed to the ground outside the stadium.
He was pronounced dead at the the scene, the fire department said.
Three portable toilets were also destroyed in the blaze.
It is not yet clear how the three portable toilets caught fire but the cause of the blaze is now under investigation.
Following the incident, officers closed off a light rail walkway next to the stadium.
A message on the Baltimore City Fire Department's Facebook page read: 'BCFD on scene in the 1100blk of Russell St. where an adult male was seen on fire coming from a Port A Potty.
'Upon arrival the adult male was pronounced deceased & three Port A Potties engulfed in flames.'
The M&T Bank Stadium, home ground the Baltimore Ravens, was completed in 1998 at an estimated cost of $220 million.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Somebody must have set those shitters on fire.
By Bhvishya Patel
Daily Mail
February 18, 2019
A man has died after he emerged from a portable toilet in flames, official have reported.
According to the Baltimore City Fire Department, the unidentified man was seen running out of the parking lot toilet outside the M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, Maryland, on Sunday at around 3pm.
A witness saw the man 'on fire' before he collapsed to the ground outside the stadium.
He was pronounced dead at the the scene, the fire department said.
Three portable toilets were also destroyed in the blaze.
It is not yet clear how the three portable toilets caught fire but the cause of the blaze is now under investigation.
Following the incident, officers closed off a light rail walkway next to the stadium.
A message on the Baltimore City Fire Department's Facebook page read: 'BCFD on scene in the 1100blk of Russell St. where an adult male was seen on fire coming from a Port A Potty.
'Upon arrival the adult male was pronounced deceased & three Port A Potties engulfed in flames.'
The M&T Bank Stadium, home ground the Baltimore Ravens, was completed in 1998 at an estimated cost of $220 million.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Somebody must have set those shitters on fire.
MEXICAN CAR THIEF ROBBED OF HEAD AND LIMBS
Cuernavaca: Car Thief Dismembered
Translated from Sol Prendido
Borderland Beat
February 17, 2019
The brutal murder of a young man in Morelos was recorded and disseminated through social networks; his corpse was scattered in several streets of the entity. Last Friday, February 8, at around 11:00 p.m., a human trunk without limbs was located in Paso Exprés in the direction of Vicente Guerrero Avenue, in the Maravillas neighborhood, Cuernavaca.
On the morning of Saturday, a human head was placed next to the genitals in the Tabachin Street of the Bella Vista neighborhood, a few blocks from the State Attorney General's Office (FGE), where cardboard was found with the following message:
"Commissioner, given that your team has not worked and, on the contrary, they only receive money from all the criminal groups, here we give you the clue of some of the groups that are extorting money and stealing cars in the city."
The human remains were picked up and sent to the Forensic Medical Service (Semefo), where the victim remained as a stranger; however, on Monday the body was identified by his relatives as José Rodolfo Bellucci Botello, nineteen years of age.
Rodolfo Bellucci, originally from Iguala, began his criminal activity when he was only fifteen years old, along with his high school classmates, with whom he assaulted businesses, robbing homes and mainly stealing vehicles.
The afternoon of Monday, through social networks began to circulate a video in which an armed group interrogates the young man, who visibly beaten confesses to belong to a criminal group that operates in that state supported by police officers.
In another recording two men appear inside a bathroom, where it is seen that they cut the head and limbs of the corpse of the victim.
As if the images were not violent enough, the individuals end the video warning that this will happen to all the local extortionists.
Translated from Sol Prendido
Borderland Beat
February 17, 2019
The brutal murder of a young man in Morelos was recorded and disseminated through social networks; his corpse was scattered in several streets of the entity. Last Friday, February 8, at around 11:00 p.m., a human trunk without limbs was located in Paso Exprés in the direction of Vicente Guerrero Avenue, in the Maravillas neighborhood, Cuernavaca.
On the morning of Saturday, a human head was placed next to the genitals in the Tabachin Street of the Bella Vista neighborhood, a few blocks from the State Attorney General's Office (FGE), where cardboard was found with the following message:
"Commissioner, given that your team has not worked and, on the contrary, they only receive money from all the criminal groups, here we give you the clue of some of the groups that are extorting money and stealing cars in the city."
The human remains were picked up and sent to the Forensic Medical Service (Semefo), where the victim remained as a stranger; however, on Monday the body was identified by his relatives as José Rodolfo Bellucci Botello, nineteen years of age.
Rodolfo Bellucci, originally from Iguala, began his criminal activity when he was only fifteen years old, along with his high school classmates, with whom he assaulted businesses, robbing homes and mainly stealing vehicles.
The afternoon of Monday, through social networks began to circulate a video in which an armed group interrogates the young man, who visibly beaten confesses to belong to a criminal group that operates in that state supported by police officers.
In another recording two men appear inside a bathroom, where it is seen that they cut the head and limbs of the corpse of the victim.
As if the images were not violent enough, the individuals end the video warning that this will happen to all the local extortionists.
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