Category: Law Enforcement Misconduct

What a Surprise. The FBI and the DoJ Lied

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After attempting to invoke the All Writs Act, the FBI just unlocked the San Bernardino shooter’s phone all by themselves:

The Justice Department is abandoning its bid to force Apple to help it unlock the iPhone used by one of the shooters in the San Bernardino terrorist attack because investigators have found a way in without the tech giant’s assistance, prosecutors wrote in a court filing Monday.

In a three-sentence filing, prosecutors wrote that they had “now successfully accessed the data” stored on Syed Rizwan Farook’s iPhone and that they consequently no longer needed Apple’s court-ordered help getting in. The stunning move averts a courtroom showdown pitting Apple against the government — and privacy interests against security concerns — that many in the tech community had warned might set dangerous precedents.

I am going to put my tinfoil hat on here, and suggest that the FBI always knew that they could hack the phone.  It was probably only a call to Fort Meade away.

It took them just a few days once they realized that the court was not receptive to their demands and they were getting excoriated in the press.

 They were sandbagging the court and abusing legal process.

This is Amazingly Wise

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Ted Cruz had the single dumbest response to the bombings in Brussels.

He suggested that we engaged in increased police and armed militia patrols in Muslim eighborhoods.

Needless to say, anyone with half a brain realized that this was batsh%$ insane.

It’s would create a violent, oppressive, and abusive environment which would drive some people in Muslim neighborhoods to terrorism, and others away from society and law enforcement.

Over at Talking Points Memo, a reader made a brilliant connection.

Specifically, our “Anti-Gang Get Tough on Crime” policing has done exactly that with gangs in poor neighborhoods:

The root of his error is right there in his defense: “If you have a neighborhood where there’s a high level of gang activity, the way to prevent it is you increase the law enforcement presence there and you target the gang members to get them off the streets.”

This is not some radical right-wing Trump-esque sentiment. It is the status quo of law enforcement in this country, and has been for decades. (You may even personally remember California’s 1988 STEP act — an eerily prescient precursor to the USA-PATRIOT act’s acronym idiocy that stood for Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act. STEP made gang participation illegal and massively increased sentences for members—and even for people who just looked like members, by raising the prospect of a gang-related indictment, leading to harsher plea-bargain agreements).

Targeting gangs like this is pretty widely accepted, and the few who push back face toxic accusations of wanting to protect criminals. That’s how escalating anti-gang and anti-crime rhetoric (think “super-predators”) swept everyone in its path in the 1990s. All Cruz did here was swap out “Muslims” for “gangs”.

As you say, that proved a step too far, and now he’s trying to walk it back to “radical Muslims”. But what’s so fascinating to me, as a gang researcher, is the reason folks like the NYPD and O’Reilly (!!) — who surely approve of anti-gang laws — object to Cruz’s idea: they see that it will backfire, that persecuting non-radicalized Muslims will ultimate push them toward radicalization.

They are right. But this is precisely what is wrong with excessive anti-gang laws! They essentially make being a male adolescent of certain ethnicities a motive for arrest and likely incarceration. If the criminal justice system already sees you and treats you as a gang member, you might as well become one — at least you’ll get some protection, especially inside prison, where gangs rule the roost. And for parents, spouses, and children, targeting is more likely to inspire a sense of injustice than a desire to cooperate with law enforcement.

………

We’re finally beginning to acknowledge the counterproductive nature of mass incarceration policies. But walking back over-zealous targeting laws is still a hard sell, especially among law-and-order, conservative types. Yet it is obvious to them that the same policy applied to Muslims is idiocy.

This is truly profound.

The FBI Probably Never Needed Apple’s Help to Read That iPhone

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The Department of Justice has asked for a recess in the court proceedings to force Apple to write a hacking tool for the iPhone:

The Justice Department said on Monday that it might no longer need Apple’s assistance in opening an iPhone used by a gunman in the San Bernardino, Calif., rampage last year.

The disclosure led a judge to postpone a court hearing over the issue and temporarily sidesteps what has become a bitter clash with the world’s most valuable company.

In a new court filing, the government said an outside party had demonstrated a way for the F.B.I. to possibly unlock the phone used by the gunman, Syed Rizwan Farook. The hearing in the contentious case — Apple has loudly opposed opening the iPhone, citing privacy concerns and igniting a heated debate — was originally set for Tuesday.

While the Justice Department must test this method, if it works “it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple,” it said in its filing. The Justice Department added that it would file a status report by April 5 on its progress.

This happened because they think that the case is going against them.

None of this would happened if the FBI hadn’t “mistakenly” reset the iCloud password for the phone, which would have allowed them to access the phoe.

My take is that the FBI attempted to sandbag the judge, and deliberately f%$#ed up the analysis of the phone to have a court case and create a precedent.

What a Surprise. The Terrorists in Paris Did Not Use Encryption

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They used burner phones and made calls instead of texting and emailing:

New details of the Paris attacks carried out last November reveal that it was the consistent use of prepaid burner phones, not encryption, that helped keep the terrorists off the radar of the intelligence services.

As an article in The New York Times reports: “the three teams in Paris were comparatively disciplined. They used only new phones that they would then discard, including several activated minutes before the attacks, or phones seized from their victims.”

The article goes on to give more details of how some phones were used only very briefly in the hours leading up to the attacks. For example: “Security camera footage showed Bilal Hadfi, the youngest of the assailants, as he paced outside the stadium, talking on a cellphone. The phone was activated less than an hour before he detonated his vest.” The information come from a 55-page report compiled by the French antiterrorism police for France’s Interior Ministry.

Outside the Bataclan theatre venue, the investigators found a Samsung phone in a dustbin: “It had a Belgian SIM card that had been in use only since the day before the attack. The phone had called just one other number—belonging to an unidentified user in Belgium.”

As police pieced together the movements of the attackers, they found yet more burner phones: “Everywhere they went, the attackers left behind their throwaway phones, including in Bobigny, at a villa rented in the name of Ibrahim Abdeslam. When the brigade charged with sweeping the location arrived, it found two unused cellphones still inside their boxes.” At another location used by one of the terrorists, the police found dozens of unused burner phones “still in their wrappers.”

As The New York Times says, one of the most striking aspects of the phones is that not a single e-mail or online chat message from the attackers was found on them. That seems to be further evidence that they knew such communications were routinely monitored by intelligence agencies. But rather than trying to avoid discovery by using encryption—which would in itself have drawn attention to their accounts—they seem to have stopped using the Internet as a communication channel altogether, and turned to standard cellular network calls on burner phones.
 
………

As Ars has reported, along with other countries the UK government is pushing for ways to circumvent or weaken encryption because it claims strong crypto creates a “safe space” for terrorists. This new information that the Paris attackers did not routinely use encryption, if at all, but turned instead to the tried-and-tested technique of burner phones, undermines the argument that everyone’s communications must be weakened in order to tackle terrorism.

………

Until we have stronger evidence to the contrary, it seems likely that encryption played little or no part in the Paris terrorist attacks.

The various agencies of various state security apparatuses have been trying to sell the idea that the terrorists will kill us all if we don’t let them.

It does not make us safer.

They intend to use this to go after ordinary criminals and dissidents.

Why Law Enforcement Data Dragnets Are a Wicked Bad Idea, Part 95

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In Denver, it has been revealed that police have been using law enforcement databases for personal purposes, including helping friends stalk their exes.

Rather unsurprisingly, no police officers have received any meaningful discipline for that behavior:

Denver police officers performed searches on state and federal criminal justice databases that were not work-related and instead were made to help officers’ in the romance department and to assist friends, according to an independent department monitor. The report said that punishment, usually a written reprimand instead of being charged criminally, is not enough to deter future abuse of the National Crime information Center (NCIC) and the Colorado Crime Information Center (CCIC) databases.

“When used appropriately, they can be powerful tools to investigate crime,” the report stated. “But the misuse of these databases for personal, non-law enforcement purposes may compromise public trust and result in harm to community members. We believe that the reprimands that are generally imposed on DPD (Denver Police Department) officers who misuse the databases do not reflect the seriousness of that violation, and may not sufficiently deter future misuse.”

The report by Independent Monitor Nicholas Mitchell listed a host of wrongful searches, including an officer getting a phone number of a woman he met on assignment, and an officer running the license plate of a man for a friend who then stalked that person. None of the 25 Denver officers who abused the crime databases were charged with any access crime. The harshest penalty was a three-day suspension. Civilians who accessed the databases without authorization, however, most likely would be charged with hacking.

There’s been reports across the country of officers wrongly accessing criminal justice records for their personal use, sometimes resulting in criminal punishment. And sometimes police officers abuse the database to troll their own. In 2012, for example, Minneapolis paid out $1 million to a former female police officer whose driver’s license record was looked up more than 400 times by fellow officers.

I would bet dollars to navy beans that the suspensions were of the paid variety.

We saw the exactly the same thing with the NSA.

This is what happens when the authorities have access to your data.  They abuse that access for their personal benefit.

This is why the bulk collection of data by the state security apparatus is so toxic.

Corrupt Prosecutors Lose Primaries

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The prosecutors who did their utmost to cover up the police murders of Laquan McDonald and Tamir Rice have been turfed out in the primaries:

Forcing out prosecutors who refuse to treat police shootings as serious crimes is a significant milestone in the movement against unjustified police shootings of black Americans.

Last July, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez explained why she chose to charge police officer Dante Servin with involuntary manslaughter instead of murder for firing his gun into a crowd of people and killing 22-year old Rekia Boyd. Servin was inside a car, and fired the gun over his shoulder, claiming that he fired because he saw a man approaching him with a gun.

“He intentionally fired his weapon, yes. But is there intent to kill? I don’t think he went out intending to kill anyone,” Alvarez told the Chicago Tribune. “He was reckless, shooting off his shoulder into a crowd of people.” Servin was set free after the judge angrily said that the entire case had been wrongfully charged.

How someone could fire a gun into a crowd of people and not intend to kill anyone is as much of a mystery as why it took Alvarez nearly two years to charge Servin. Similarly, Alvarez took more than a year to charge officer Jason Van Dyke for the shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, and only then after the government was forced to release video of the shooting that showed Van Dyke firing his weapon into McDonald’s body while he was lying on the ground. According to the Daily Beast, Alvarez declined to file charges against police involved in fatal shootings more than 68 times in the last seven years.

Alvarez lost her job Tuesday night. So did Timothy McGinty, the Cuyahoga County, Ohio prosecutor who told the grand jury looking into the shooting of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old holding a toy gun, that they shouldn’t press charges against the officers who killed him because Rice’s death was merely tragic and not criminal. Though a video showed that Rice had been shot by police moments after they arrived, with no opportunity to even follow their commands, McGinty, by his own admission, encouraged the grand jury not to indict.

“Justice would not be achieved by bringing charges that would violate the ethical canons of our profession,” McGinty said last December, “because we know these charges could not be sustained under the law in our Constitution.” The local judge who ruled there was probable cause to bring charges against the officers described McGinty’s approach to the matter as “unusual.”

………

Forcing out prosecutors who refuse to charge police with crimes for fatal shootings of unarmed black men may be the best sustainable strategy of changing that national culture of impunity, where police need only say they were afraid to justify ending someone’s life. If prosecutors know they will pay a price for letting cops slide, they will be less likely to do so.

These are deeply evil people, and I would hope that folks in the legal profession in Illinois and Missouri are looking at referrals to the state bar for discipline.

These folks lack the moral character to practice law.

Perhaps some other district attorneys out there who are starting to realize that they have more to fear from people thirsting for justice than they do from the PBA (cop union).

This Reads Like Something from Joseph Heller’s Most Famous Novel*

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It appears that whistleblower protection legislation cannot apply to the FBI because there would be too many whistleblowers:

The Department of Justice is undercutting Chuck Grassley’s efforts to provide FBI employees whistleblower protection. That became clear in an exchange (2:42) on Wednesday.

The exchange disclosed two objections DOJ has raised to Grassley’s FBI Whistleblower Protect Act. First, as Attorney General Loretta Lynch revealed, DOJ is worried that permitting FBI Agents to report crimes or waste through their chain of command would risk exposing intelligence programs.

What I would say is that as we work through this issue, please know that, again, any concerns that the Department raises are not out of a disagreement with the point of view of the protection of whistleblowers but again, just making sure that the FBI’s intelligence are also protected at the same time

I suspect (though am looking for guidance) that the problem may be that the bill permits whistleblowers to go to any member of Congress, rather than just ones on the Intelligence Committees. It’s also possible that DOJ worries whistleblowers will be able to go to someone senior to them, but not read into a given program.

Still, coming from an agency that doesn’t adequately report things like its National Security Letter usage to Congress, which has changed its reporting to the Intelligence Oversight Board so as to exempt more activities, and can’t even count its usage of other intelligence programs, it seems like a tremendous problem that DOJ doesn’t want FBI whistleblowers to have protection because it might expose what FBI is doing on intelligence.

That’s sort of the point!

Especially given Grassley’s other point: apparently, DOJ is opposed to the bill because it will elicit too many complaints.

One of the issues that your department has raised is that allowing FBI employees to report wrong-doing to their chain of command could lead to too many complaints. You know? What’s wrong with too many complaints? … Seems to me you’d invite every wrong doing to get reported to somebody so it could get corrected.


Apparently, DOJ knows there are so many problems FBI employees would like to complain about that things would grind to a halt if they were actually permitted to complain.

We cannot protect whistleblowers, because they might whistleblow.

This does seem to be rather Helleresque, doesn’t it?

*Catch-22

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen!

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The FBI has a new program to spy on high school students:

Under new guidelines, the FBI is instructing high schools across the country to report students who criticize government policies and “western corruption” as potential future terrorists, warning that “anarchist extremists” are in the same category as ISIS and young people who are poor, immigrants or travel to “suspicious” countries are more likely to commit horrific violence.

Based on the widely unpopular British “anti-terror” mass surveillance program, the FBI’s “Preventing Violent Extremism in Schools” guidelines, released in January, are almost certainly designed to single out and target Muslim-American communities. However, in its caution to avoid the appearance of discrimination, the agency identifies risk factors that are so broad and vague that virtually any young person could be deemed dangerous and worthy of surveillance, especially if she is socio-economically marginalized or politically outspoken.

This overwhelming threat is then used to justify a massive surveillance apparatus, wherein educators and pupils function as extensions of the FBI by watching and informing on each other.

The FBI’s justification for such surveillance is based on McCarthy-era theories of radicalization, in which authorities monitor thoughts and behaviors that they claim to lead to acts of violent subversion, even if those people being watched have not committed any wrongdoing. This model has been widely discredited as a violence prevention method, including by the U.S. government, but it is now being imported to schools nationwide as official federal policy.


………

According to the FBI’s educational materials for teenagers, circulated as a visual aide to their new guidelines, the following offenses constitute signs that “could mean that someone plans to commit violence” and therefore should be reported: “Talking about traveling to places that sound suspicious”; “Using code words or unusual language”; “Using several different cell phones and private messaging apps”; and “Studying or taking pictures of potential targets (like a government building).”

Under the category of domestic terrorists, the educational materials warn of the threat posed by “anarchist extremists.” The FBI states, “Anarchist extremists believe that society should have no government, laws, or police, and they are loosely organized, with no central leadership… Violent anarchist extremists usually target symbols of capitalism they believe to be the cause of all problems in society—such as large corporations, government organizations, and police agencies.”

Similarly, “Animal Rights Extremists and Environmental Extremists” are placed alongside “white supremacy extremists”, ISIS and Al Qaeda as terrorists out to recruit high school students. The materials also instruct students to watch out for extremist propaganda messages that communicate criticisms of “corrupt western nations” and express “government mistrust.”

………

At the surface level, the FBI’s new guidelines do not appear to single out Muslim students. The document and supplementary educational materials warn of a broad array of threats, including anti-abortion and white supremacist extremists. The Jewish Defense League is listed alongside Hizbollah and Al Qaeda as an imminent danger to young people in the United States.

But a closer read reveals that the FBI consistently invokes an Islamic threat without naming it. Cultural and religious differences, as well as criticisms of western imperialism, are repeatedly mentioned as risk factors for future extremism. “Some immigrant families may not be sufficiently present in a youth’s life due to work constraints to foster critical thinking,” the guidelines state.

BTW, the science also shows that these programs do not work, but that doesn’t stop lazy cops, and lazy school administrators, from using bigotry as a justification.

What Part of “Peace Officer” Don’t You Get?

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The police chief for the San Francisco police has announced new policies that are geared toward cops deescalating conflicts, and the President of police union’s head is exploding.

The response of the union encapsulates everything that is wrong with the current trend of military oriented policing:

San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr — already under attack from Black Lives Matter activists over the shooting death of Mario Woods — is now facing criticism from his own rank and file for what they see as appeasement of department critics.

At issue: a proposed policy change being drafted by Suhr and the Police Commission that emphasizes “de-escalation” of force when officers confront someone wielding a gun or knife. Of particular concern to the cops are instructions that officers “seek cover” and “engage in thoughtful communication” before doing anything else, unless there is an imminent threat.

The idea is to create enough “time and space” so police won’t need to open fire.

“I’m not happy with that or other provisions in the draft, because it could put our officers in harm’s way and at the same time jeopardize the safety of the community we serve,” said Martin Halloran, president of the Police Officers Association.

The union called an emergency meeting Thursday night at the Irish Cultural Center that was attended by about 200 cops — some of whom were calling for a vote of no confidence in the chief.

How can a cop object to not having to shoot someone?

This is Amazingly Evil

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The most evil thing in America this doesn’t come from the Republican Presidential campaign.

It came from immigration judge Jack Weil, who has asserted that 3 and 4 year old children are qualified to represent themselves before an immigration judge:

A senior Justice Department official is arguing that 3- and 4-year-olds can learn immigration law well enough to represent themselves in court, staking out an unconventional position in a growing debate over whether immigrant children facing deportation are entitled to taxpayer-funded attorneys.

Jack H. Weil, a longtime immigration judge who is responsible for training other judges, made the assertion in sworn testimony in a deposition in federal court in Seattle. His comments highlighted the plight of thousands of juveniles who are forced to defend themselves each year in immigration court amid a surge of children from Central America who cross the southwestern U.S. border .

“I’ve taught immigration law literally to 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds,” Weil said. “It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of patience. They get it. It’s not the most efficient, but it can be done.”

He repeated his claim twice in the deposition, also saying, “I’ve told you I have trained 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds in immigration law,” according to a transcript. “You can do a fair hearing. It’s going to take you a lot of time.”

Legal and child psychology experts ridiculed Weil’s assertions, noting that key milestones for 3- and 4-year-olds include cooperating with other children, saying simple sentences and building towers of blocks.

“I nearly fell off my chair when I read that deposition,” said Laurence Steinberg, a psychology professor at Temple University, who is a witness for the plaintiffs in the Seattle case. “Three- and 4-year-olds do not yet have logical reasoning abilities. It’s preposterous, frankly, to think they could be taught enough about immigration law to be able to represent themselves in court.”

………

Lauren Alder Reid, a spokeswoman for the department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), said in a statement: “At no time has the Department indicated that 3 and 4 year olds are capable of representing themselves. Jack Weil was speaking in a personal capacity and his statements, therefore, do not necessarily represent the views of EOIR or the Department of Justice.”

………

Weil is not just any immigration official. As an assistant chief immigration judge in EOIR’s Office of the Chief Immigration Judge — which sets and oversees policies for the nation’s 58 immigration courts — he is responsible for coordinating the Justice Department’s training of immigration judges.

………

Ahilan Arulanantham, deputy legal director at the ACLU of Southern California and the attorney who questioned Weil in the deposition, said he initially thought the judge had misspoken “because what he said was so outrageous. As I asked further questions, he obviously meant what he said.”

“This is the person in charge of training immigration judges about how to treat children? And this is the witness the government puts forward to present their views as to how this is supposed to happen? That is horrifying,” said Arulanantham. He added that Weil’s assertions “are going to be a significant issue in the case.”

Unlike in felony criminal cases in federal court, children charged with violating immigration laws have no right to appointed counsel, even though the government is represented by Department of Homeland Security attorneys.

Although a network of pro bono organizations and a Justice Department program try to help children find attorneys — some paid for by the government — many children are forced to fend for themselves. According to Justice Department figures, 42 percent of the more than 20,000 unaccompanied children involved in deportation proceedings completed between July 2014 and late December had no attorney. It is unclear how often children 5 or under are forced to defend themselves, but attorneys and advocates for immigrants said it does happen.

This is a level of outright malice inherent in his statements that leaves me dumbstruck.

Weil should not be an Immigration Judge.  I’m not sure that he should be trusted as a pastry chef.

San Bernardino DA Uses the Chewbacca Defense

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The San Bernardino District Attorney told a federal judge late Thursday that Apple must assist the authorities in unlocking the iPhone used by Syed Farook, one of the two San Bernardino shooters that killed 14 people in a killing rampage in December. The phone, which was a county work phone issued to Farook as part of his Health Department duties, may have been the trigger to unleash a “cyber pathogen,” county prosecutors said in a brief court filing.

“The iPhone is a county owned telephone that may have connected to the San Bernardino County computer network. The seized iPhone may contain evidence that can only be found on the seized phone that it was used as a weapon to introduce a lying dormant cyber pathogen that endangers San Bernardino’s infrastructure,” according to a court filing (PDF) by Michael Ramos, the San Bernardino County district attorney.

The development represents the first time any law enforcement official connected to the investigation provided an indication, other than links to possible co-conspirators, of what the authorities might discover on the phone. The district attorney’s position comes a week after Jarrod Burguan, the San Bernardino police chief, said there was a “reasonably good chance that there is nothing of any value on the phone.” James Comey, the FBI director, said Feb, 21 that “Maybe the phone holds the clue to finding more terrorists. Maybe it doesn’t.”

The county declined to directly comment. A spokesman, David Wert, told Ars in an e-mail that “The county didn’t have anything to do with this brief. It was filed by the district attorney.” The DA’s office, which did not immediately respond for comment, followed up with a statement to Ars, saying that there is a “compelling governmental interest in acquiring any evidence of criminal conduct, additional perpetrators, potential damage to the infrastructure of San Bernardino County, and in protecting the California Constitutionally guaranteed due process rights of the victims, deceased and living, arising from state crimes committed on December 2, 2015.”

Jonathan Zdziarski, a prominent iPhone forensics expert, said in a telephone interview that the district attorney is suggesting that a “magical unicorn might exist on this phone.”

OK, it might not be an apocalyptic computer virus, it might just be a “magical unicorn”, or some other mythical beast, like a moderate Republican or a humble Frenchman.

This is a level of mendacity that should have the judge issuing sanctions against the DA.  (Some jail time would be nice)

So Not a Surprise

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Transparency International is a NGO whose mission is to name and shame corruption.

The state Delaware was just named one of the most corrupt organizations on earth:

Normally, when one of our 50 states gets singled out by an international body of some consequence, you would hope it would be good news and something that the locals would brag about. But that’s not likely to be the case with Delaware’s recognition by Transparency International this month as one of the world’s best examples of “grand corruption.” The dubious distinction comes in recognition of the state’s laissez faire corporate registration system, which critics say provides corporations, fraudsters and wealthy individuals secrecy and asset protection that puts it on a footing with notorious tax havens like the Cayman Islands.

Transparency International’s selection of the top nine “grand corruption” winners was based on both internal deliberations by the non-governmental organization, most famous for its global ranking of the world’s nations for corruption, and the votes of 170,000 people around the world. Other “winners” include Brazilian oil giant Petrobras, enmeshed in an octopus like $2 billion dollar scandal that has shaken the sitting government; as well as FIFA, former leaders of the Ukraine, Panama and Tunisia, and Lebanon’s entire political system.

In the statement announcing the “dirty nine,” Transparency International said all the nominees were central to an “abuse of high level power that benefits the few at the expense of the many, and causes serious and widespread harm to individuals and society” in a way “that often goes unpunished” yet “concerns millions of victims around the world.”

Delaware’s over the top pro-business Chancery Court, its statutory trust provisions, non-existent taxes, as well as its extremely user friendly limited-liability-corporation registration process, has drawn in more than 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies and over half of America’s publicly traded companies. Back in 2012, the New York Times reported that Delaware had more registered corporations than it had residents, roughly one million compared to fewer than 900,000 people.

………

Worth noting: Delaware’s functioning as America’s home-away-from-home sanctuary for all business, big and small, brings in $1.1 billion dollars a year in revenue to the state coffers, roughly a quarter of the state’s annual budget.

“This is Delaware’s industry,” says William Black, professor of Economics and the Law at the University of Missouri and Kentucky. “They sell corporate leaders protection from compliance from fiduciary obligations and the provisions of law like anti-money laundering statutes.”

Boosters of Delaware say that the major reason businesses choose Delaware is their business savvy Chancery Court, which has been sorting out commercial equity issues since the 1790s and today has jurisdiction over suits in which the massive universe of Delaware entities are named as defendants.

Black — who as a federal bank regulator blew the whistle on the role of Congress in the Keating 5 (McCain, Glenn et al) savings and loan scandal — says Delaware’s Chancery Court is at the heart of the problem, noting it has enforced trusts between parties in a way that “allows you to eliminate the fiduciary duty of standard of care for shareholders and eviscerates the fiduciary duty of loyalty through their court decisions.”

I am not sure how the US can engage in sanctions against one of its own states, but if Delaware were a foreign nation, sanctions would be well justified.

Your Moment of Daily Tyranny

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The NYPD wants to make the most transparently corrupt tool of abusive police officers a felony:

On Wednesday, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton urged state legislators to consider increasing the penalty for resisting arrest from a misdemeanor to a felony. The change, he argued, would help New Yorkers “get around this idea that you can resist arrest. You can’t.” It would also give cops an easy way to turn victims of their own worst impulses into the worst class of criminal.

 In theory, a resisting arrest charge allows the state to further punish suspects who endanger the safety of police officers as they’re being apprehended; in practice, it gives tautological justification to cops who enjoy roughing people up. Why did you use force against that suspect, officer? Because she was resisting arrest. How do I know you’re telling the truth? Because I charged her with it, sir.

………

Anticipating criticism, Bratton told the assembled lawmakers that he already had a plan to curb abuse: the department would use its CompStat arrest-tracking system to monitor officers who make lots of resisting charges that are eventually dropped, leaving oversight of the NYPD to the NYPD itself.

Making resisting arrest a felony, which makes it far more likely that people will cop a plea, because the prospect of years in prison, which means that uncovering police misconduct becomes even less likely.

This proposal is an unalloyed evil, which is literally a blue print for a police state.

Protect and Serve, My Ass

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What a surprise. Chicago cops are actively sabotaging their dashcams:

Why are so many police dashcam videos silent?

 Chicago Police Department officers stashed microphones in their squad car glove boxes. They pulled out batteries. Microphone antennas got busted or went missing. And sometimes, dashcam systems didn’t have any microphones at all, DNAinfo Chicago has learned.

 Police officials last month blamed the absence of audio in 80 percent of dashcam videos on officer error and “intentional destruction.”

 A DNAinfo Chicago review of more than 1,800 police maintenance logs sheds light on the no-sound syndrome plaguing Police Department videos — including its most notorious dashcam case.

 Maintenance records of the squad car used by Jason Van Dyke, who shot and killed Laquan McDonald, and his partner, Joseph Walsh, show monthslong delays for two dashcam repairs, including a long wait to fix “intentional damage.”

 On June 17, 2014, police technicians reported fixing a dashcam wiring issue in police vehicle No. 6412, the squad shared by Van Dyke and Walsh, about three months after it was reported broken, records show.

 A day later, the same vehicle’s dashcam system was reported busted again. It took until Oct. 8, 2014, to complete repairs of what technicians deemed “intentional damage,” according to reports.

 Just 12 days later, on Oct. 20, 2014, dashcam video recorded from squad car No. 6412 on the night Van Dyke shot and killed McDonald did not record audio. The video that went viral showing Van Dyke killing Laquan was taken from a different squad car, but it, too, had no audio.

………

Police officials quickly placed the blame on officers and shift supervisors responsible for making sure dashcam systems work properly before officers go on patrol.

In December, interim Police Supt. John Escalante warned the rank and file that they would be disciplined for failing to follow proper dashcam protocol. Weeks later, he followed through by hitting some officers and supervisors with formal reprimands and up-to-three-day suspensions.

“To boil this down, the Police Department will not tolerate officers maliciously destructing equipment,” police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.

Note that there are threats, but when the president of the local police union complains, he does not complain about actual punishments, just the threat of punishment.

This isn’t going to be fixed until someone from the outside excises the rot at the department’s core.

The Tamir Rice Investigatation Gets Even Less Credible

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It turns out that the grand jury investigating the two officers who shot 12 year old Tamir Rice to death never even took a vote on whether to indict:

The grand jury that opted not to indict Cleveland police officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback in the shooting death of Tamir Rice never actually took a vote on the matter, according to the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office.

What actually happened in the most significant grand jury hearing in county history isn’t quite clear, and the mechanism by which the grand jury “declined to indict” — in Prosecutor Timothy McGinty’s own words — is equally unclear.

At the conclusion of a typical grand jury hearing, there are two possible outcomes achieved via vote: a “true bill,” which results in criminal charges and a case number in the court system, or a “no bill,” which is a decision not to bring charges. A “no-bill notification” is signed and stamped and kept on record at the county clerk’s office.

Though Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty never explicitly said the grand jury voted not to indict — nor did he utter the phrase “no bill” — in his Dec. 28 press conference, he declared that that grand jury had declined to indict.

How, then, if not by voting?

After learning and confirming on Jan. 15 that there was no “no-bill notification” on file at the county clerk’s office for the Tamir Rice grand jury proceedings, Scene formally requested the document officially showing the decision, however it was reached, and wherever said document might be. We were told that it didn’t exist. Employees at both the clerk’s and prosecutor’s officers were unable to explain the lack of paperwork.

Tuesday, Scene spoke with Joe Frolik, the communications director for the Prosecutor’s Office, who said no no-bill record exists because, “it’s technically not a no-bill, because they didn’t vote on charges.”
He elaborated: “This was an investigative grand jury. This was kind of their role. Sometimes, a grand jury, after its investigation, will decide if there are no votes to be taken on charges.”
But how that decision was reached and the location of any record of that decision remain publicly unaccounted for. The term “investigative grand jury” appears nowhere in McGinty’s public statements and reports on the proceedings.

………

As for a case that went before a grand jury but didn’t result in a vote, [Law Professor Jonathan] Witmer-Rich said, “I’m not aware of an example…It could happen, I suppose, but I’ve never heard anyone talk about that.”
Professor Lewis Katz, a criminal law expert at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law, noted that investigative grand juries are ordinarily held in secret. In his view, the Tamir Rice grand jury was not investigative.

………

Reached Tuesday, Subodh Chandra, the local attorney for the Rice family, said that the whole process has been “irregular.” He said he and his team had asked the county if the grand jury members were led through each possible charge for a vote or whether there was one overarching vote on all charges, but never received an answer. When informed no vote of any kind took place, Chandra said: “If it is true that the prosecutor didn’t even call for an up or down vote on potential criminal charges, including aggravated murder, then it is truly the ultimate insult to the Rice family,” Chandra said, “that the prosecutor didn’t even think it mattered to bring the grand jury proceedings to their proper conclusion.”

Our system allows a lot of leeway for prosecutors to make decisions, so I don’t think that there is any call here for a criminal investigation, but the good people of Cleveland need to put a permanent end to this guy’s political career.

Not Unanticipated, but a Bummer None the Less

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Circuit Court Judge Barry Williams has rejected a request for a subpoena to compell Officer William Porter to testify against his co-conspirators on the Baltimore Police Force:

A Baltimore judge on Wednesday rejected prosecutors’ request to force an officer whose trial ended in a hung jury to testify against three of his fellow officers facing charges in the death of Freddie Gray.

Baltimore Circuit Judge Barry Williams refused the state’s motion to force William Porter to testify against Edward Nero, Garrett Miller and Lt. Brian Rice, who were the officers who initially arrested and detained Gray last April.

It was not until this month that prosecutors indicated that they wanted Porter to testify against the three officers. Previously, they identified him as a material witness only in the trials of two other officers, Caesar Goodson and Sgt. Alicia White.

………

Judge Williams ruled in December that Porter must testify against Goodson, despite Porter’s own pending retrial. Porter’s attorneys appealed to the Maryland Court of Special Appeals, which postponed Goodson’s trial until it decides whether to uphold or overturn the order. A hearing is scheduled for March 4.

Williams said he rejected the state’s request to compel Porter to testify against Nero, Miller and Rice because it would result in all of the officers’ trials being pushed back while the appeals court mulled whatever decision he made. Lawyers for the three officers had objected to pushing back their clients’ trials.

I really hope that the fix isn’t in.

And Police Wonder Why Some People Call Them “Pigs”

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The sense of self-entitled hostility directed toward the public for whom they nominally work is clear when they pull this sort of sh%$:

In April 2015, the New York City television station NY1 filed a open-records request for “unedited video files from the NYPD’s body camera program” captured during five specific weeks in 2014 and 2015. Four months later, the New York City Police Department agreed to review and release the footage—but only after NY1 paid a $36,000 “copying fee.” NY1 appealed the N.Y.P.D.’s decision and, in a letter dated September 16 of last year, was once again denied by the N.Y.P.D.’s deputy commissioner of legal matters.

As the New York Post reported yesterday, the details of the N.Y.P.D.’s response, including the exorbitant fee (charged by a public agency with a budget of $4.8 billion*), were revealed in a lawsuit NY1 filed against the N.Y.P.D. in the Supreme Court of New York County on Wednesday. In it, the channel accuses the department of violating New York State’s Freedom of Information Law by inflating the cost of producing the requested body camera footage—a process that, according to the N.Y.P.D., involves copying video segments that could be withheld under certain privacy and security exemptions.

The fee does indeed come from a curious calculation of labor costs. In a letter to NY1 explaining the administrative denial of the channel’s appeal, a police official explained:

The [record access officer]’s estimate of the cost of processing a copy of the [body camera footage] was reasonable based on an estimate that the total time of footage recorded during the five weeks specified in the FOIL request was approximately 190 hours, and that in addition to the 190 hours required to view the recordings in real time, an additional 60% (or 114 hours) will be required to copy the footage in a manner that will redact the exempt portions of the [body camera footage], for a total of approximately 304 hours. The lowest paid NYPD employee with the skills required to prepare a redacted copy of the recordings is in the rank of police officer, and the cost of compensating a police officer is $120.00 per hour. Multiplying $120.00 by 304 hours equals $36,480, which closely approximates the amount estimated by the [records access officer].

It’s unclear where exactly these figures came from. A police officer is the third-lowest rank within the N.Y.P.D.’s rank structure; individuals holding that title make nowhere near $120 per hour, which is the equivalent of $249,600 per year (assuming a 40-hour workweek).

This is, of course, complete bullsh%$.

A sledge hammer needs to be taken wall that the police place between themselves and the general public.

It breeds contempt, and corruption, and abuse.

Your Law Enforcement Misconduct Update

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First, we have former (Yay!) Texas State Trooper Brian Encinia, who went postal on Sandra Band, has been indicted for perjury and fired by the Texas DPS:

The state trooper who arrested Sandra Bland, the 28-year-old African-American woman who was found dead three days later in her Waller County jail cell, has been indicted on perjury charges, a special prosecutor said.

 Hours after the decision was announced, the Texas Department of Public Safety said it was initiating termination proceedings against Brian Encinia, the 30-year-old trooper who last July stopped Bland for failing to signal a lane change and arrested her.

 The announcement came late Wednesday afternoon at the courthouse in Hempstead, about 50 miles northwest of Houston, during the grand jury’s fourth meeting since it was convened this fall to deliberate the circumstances around Bland’s arrest and incarceration.

 Darrell Jordan, one of five special prosecutors, said the grand jury’s indictment stemmed from a statement the trooper made in a one-page affidavit he filed in Bland’s arrest, in which he said he pulled her out of her Hyundai Azera to “further conduct a safe traffic investigation.”

Well, that was fairly clearly a lie, and it was material, which is the basic definition of perjury.

Meanwhile, in my hometown of Baltimore, the prosecution continues apace, with Officer William Porter, whose trial ended in a hung jury, being ordered by a judge to testify at the trial of Officer Caesar Goodson, Jr.:

In an unprecedented move, Judge Barry G. Williams ordered Officer William G. Porter on Wednesday to testify at the upcoming trial of a fellow city officer charged in the death of Freddie Gray.

 Porter’s attorneys immediately said they would seek an injunction to block the ruling.

 Williams said he found himself in “uncharted territory” but felt the law was “clear.” He granted Porter a type of immunity that allows his charges to stand, but which precludes his testimony in the trial of Officer Caesar R. Goodson Jr. from being used against him.

 Legal experts — and Williams — said the ruling was unprecedented for a criminal defendant with pending charges.

 Williams also warned prosecutors that calling Porter as a witness could have serious implications for their ability to retry him. Porter’s trial on manslaughter and other charges ended last month in a hung jury, and he is scheduled to be tried again in June.

 “The second he testifies, that may change the game,” Williams said.

 After Williams issued the ruling, defense attorney Gary Proctor leapt to his feet and told Williams he intended to appeal to the Court of Special Appeals on Thursday to block prosecutors from calling Porter to testify.

 Should Williams’ ruling stand, Porter would not be able to invoke the Fifth Amendment and would have to testify or face the threat of contempt and jail time.

I think that the strategy here is to force him to testify in the hope that some of the other officers get angry enough to roll in him, and under those circumstances, the first guy to make it to the prosecutor’s office wins, and everyone else loses.

Also, the prosecution has let slip some elements of its strategy, and it appears that they will be attempting to prove that Gray was the victim was of a “Rough Ride” where officers use abrupt maneuvers to throw a detainee around a car to punish him:

The idea has long been floated that Freddie Gray might have been given a “rough ride” — a practice in which police transport vans are intentionally driven erratically to harm unbuckled, handcuffed detainees.

 Now prosecutors have signaled for the first time that they may adopt the theory in the case against Officer Caesar R. Goodson Jr., the driver of the van in which they say Gray suffered a fatal spinal cord injury. Goodson faces second-degree depraved-heart murder charges in a trial that begins with jury selection Monday.

 Prosecutors have notified Goodson’s attorneys that they intend to call expert witness Neill Franklin, a retired Baltimore police officer and Maryland state trooper who has testified in Annapolis on policing, to talk about “retaliatory prisoner transportation practices.” Legal experts said that refers to what is colloquially known in Baltimore as a “rough ride.”

 “That is a retaliatory, sort of ‘teach the guy a lesson’ move,” said Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina professor and an expert in use of force by police.

 Both the defense and prosecution are barred by a gag order from discussing the case, and retained witnesses are not allowed to discuss their intended testimony.

Here is the kicker:

Gray was unbuckled, handcuffed, placed in leg shackles and driven around West Baltimore for about 45 minutes before he was found unconscious and not breathing in the back of the van when it arrived at the Western District police station.

There is no reason for it take 45 minutes to get him to booking.

I am sure that the defense will attempt to provide an alternate theory for this, but there is no justification for going on a joy ride with a detainee in the back.

And Now, Even the Rich People are Throwing Rahm Emanuel Under the Bus

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Since emails came out revealing the Rahm Emanuel administrations aggressive efforts to manage and suppress information on the Laquan McDonald shooting, Rahm’s old friends, basically rich corrupt people from whom he has raised money from over the years, have been avoiding him like the plague.

One of his very good friends, they have vacationed together and Rauner was a former client of Emanuel’s, was wingnut, gazillionaire, and now Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner how has announced that he would sign a bill allowing for a recall vote for the Chicago Mayor:

Fresh from a Saharan Desert holiday where he says he and his family rode camels and slept in tents, Gov. Bruce Rauner did nothing Monday to quell the shifting sands beneath Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

 Rauner told reporters he would sign a bill allowing Chicago voters to recall their mayor from office if it reaches his desk.

 The governor also said he was “very disappointed” in Emanuel and Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez over their handling of Chicago police misconduct cases.

 ………

 Asked about state Rep. La Shawn Ford’s legislation that would allow Chicago voters to attempt recall the mayor, Rauner said he hasn’t studied the bill but based on what he’s been told about it, “I would sign that bill.”

 The governor went on to say that he would also be “broadly supportive of the recall concept in general for all elected officials in the state. … That would be the best bill to pass.”

6 months ago, I would not have predicted the degree to which his power base, once thought to be unassailable, to have collapsed like this.

It’s gone from a crazy guy on the street corner rant to an implosion in a very short time.

Additionally, it appears that people appointed after the sh%$ hit the fan have absolutely no interest whatsoever in having his back:

The new chief of the agency that looks into shootings by Chicago police officers says she wants to hear out an investigator who was fired by her predecessor last July after refusing orders to change findings that the cops were at fault in several cases.

Sharon Fairley, acting chief administrator of the Independent Police Review Authority, last month reached out to the investigator, Lorenzo Davis, a former Chicago police commander.

“I’d like to hear about his side of what happened,” Fairley said at a news conference Monday afternoon. “I look forward to that conversation and I think that that will be happening soon.”

Davis’s lawyer, Torreya Hamilton, said an attorney with the city’s Law Department called two weeks ago to set up the meeting. Hamilton said Davis, who is suing the city for wrongful termination, is eager to meet with Fairley. The sides have not yet set a time and place.

Fairley, a former federal prosecutor appointed a month ago by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, said she also wants to examine the work that got Davis fired.


………



WBEZ revealed Davis’s termination and his resistance to orders by IPRA superiors that he change findings about at least a dozen incidents, all shootings or alleged excessive-force cases.

Davis said Monday evening he would welcome Fairley’s review of his findings. “I’d like to be present when she does it,” he said. “It’s better to review a report with the person who wrote it.”

………

Fairley’s predecessor, Scott M. Ando, was forced out as IPRA’s chief administrator after heading the agency since 2013. Ando, a former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent, filled several key IPRA posts with former sworn law-enforcement officers, including two other former DEA agents, a WBEZ investigation found.

Fairley did not directly criticize Ando’s hiring but said the agency needs “stronger independence.”

“I was a prosecutor for eight years, where my job was to collect evidence and then make the call,” said Fairley, who worked at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago. “That’s what I’m planning on doing here.”

Fairley also insisted she is independent from Emanuel despite a pile of email messages that show coordination between his aides and IPRA in recent years.

“Yes, I’m in communication with the mayor’s office,” Fairley said. “They’ve been very helpful in helping me get situated here but they have not tried to direct my activities or tell me what to do. I don’t have any pressure on me from the mayor to conduct an investigation any particular way.”

Fairley serves at the pleasure of Rahm Emanuel.

The fact that she is subtly dismissive of the Mayor’s office is significant.

I’m hoping that Rahm ends up recalled, and in jail, and it actually looks like these outcomes are no longer outside of the range of possibility.

The Truth, from John Erlichman, of All People

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Over at Esquire, the inimitable Charlie Pierce found this gem from Dan Baum’s book Smoke and Mirrors, in an interview of John Ehrlichman:

The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar Left, and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black. But by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.

While the Nixon administration is not generally considered to be a font of unvarnished truth, sometimes, after a career is over, the truth will slip out, and in retrospect, Ehrlichman always seemed the most self aware of that scurvy lot.