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The United States needs to overhaul its law-enforcement system THE store camera tells a harrowing tale. John Crawford was standing in a Walmart in Ohio holding an air rifle—a toy he had picked off a shelf and was presumably planning to buy. He was pointing it at the floor while talking on his phone and browsing other goods. The children playing near him did not consider him a threat; nor did their mother, who was standing a few feet away. The police, responding to a 911 caller who said that a black man with a gun was threatening people, burst… Read More

Maurice Alexander was 61 when he was convicted on a misdemeanor charge. He only served ten days in jail, but six years later it would cost him a chance at affordable housing and leave him homeless for nearly seven months. Federal, state, and local laws impose a convoluted network of barriers on anyone with a criminal record, no matter how small. These collateral consequences of conviction vary depending on the type of crime committed, but can affect nearly every aspect of a person’s life, including eligibility for social services, professional licenses, housing, student loans, parental rights, immigration status, and even… Read More

The Council of the District of Columbia voted unanimously on Tuesday in favor of overhauling the city’s civil forfeiture laws, which lets police seize property from people never charged with a crime. Law enforcement can then pocket all of the proceeds gained from forfeiture. The Civil Asset Forfeiture Amendment Act of 2014 stabs at the heart of what makes civil forfeiture so potentially corrupting: Letting cops and prosecutors keep what they forfeit creates “at best, the appearance of a conflict of interest, and at worst, an unchecked incentive for slush funds,” remarked Councilman Tommy Wells, who authored the reform. If… Read More

President Barack Obama on Monday proposed a $263 million program to reform U.S. law enforcement, which includes $75 million that would be allocated to helping police departments purchase 50,000 body cameras. The funds would, over the course of three years, also be used to expand police training. The announcement came after the president met with his Cabinet, civil rights leaders and law enforcement officials on Monday to discuss the situation in Ferguson, Missouri, where days of protests followed a grand jury decision to not indict Darren Wilson, a white police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old,… Read More

Apple says its new mobile operating system puts text messages, e-mails, photos and other data out of the reach of police, even if authorities present the company with a search warrant. In a blog post, Apple says that iOS 8, which began rolling out Wednesday, has new encryption that will no longer allow the company to bypass a customer’s passcode to access the data. “So it’s not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession running iOS 8,” it said. Earlier versions of the operating system allowed the… Read More

To hear prosecutors tell it, Darrien Hunt lunged at officers with a “samurai-type sword” before he was killed. To hear his family tell it, police shot the 22-year-old several times while he was running away. An independent autopsy proves he was shot from behind, his family’s attorney said. And while there’s no consensus about what happened last Wednesday morning, the Utah case is already drawing comparisons to the police shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Hunt’s mother said she believes race played a role in her son’s death. “They killed my son because he’s black,” Susan Hunt told… Read More

Source: Naples Daily News, Brent Batten Aug 26, 2014 It is an episode worthy of a Perry Mason mystery. The Case of the Missing Judicial Rating. For years, Collier County had a system whereby attorneys could anonymously rate judges’ performance in the courtroom. The results were seen only by the judges, who presumably took any criticism under advisement. Then, just like that, it stopped. No one, not the judges, not the attorneys, not the Collier County Bar Association staff, quite remembers why it went away. Now, at least one local attorney is advocating bringing it back. And, mysteriously again, is… Read More

There was nobody at the QuikTrip on Thursday — that’s the gas station and convenience store that burned down on the first night of violent protests in Ferguson, Mo. It was once a focal point for protesters. On Thursday, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon ordered his state’s National Guard to start withdrawing, a sign of the calm that has finally descended on the city racked by protests ever since police shot and killed an unarmed 18-year-old African-American man named Michael Brown. While the QuikTrip was quiet, there’s more of a crowd a short walk away at the Canfield Green Apartment Complex… Read More

Washington (CNN) — The sometimes violent protests in Ferguson, Missouri, and the law enforcement response has sparked a debate about what some call the “militarization of police,” after armored vehicles, stun grenades and high-tech weaponry were brought in to calm the violence. Some of the equipment may be military surplus that came from the government, and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is asking his staff to provide him with more information on that program. Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said Hagel “wants to have an informed opinion going forward” about the program that provides military surplus to local police departments across the country. Kirby… Read More

BY: Scott Neuman U.S. law enforcement at all levels has undergone a dangerous militarization in recent years, with heavily armed SWAT teams being deployed to serve warrants and for drug searches, but rarely for the hostage situations they were designed for, the American Civil Liberties Union says in a new report. In “War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing,” the ACLU says its investigation corroborates the unnecessary use of a proliferation of Special Weapons and Tactics teams made possible by federal programs that incentivize aggressive weapons and battlefield tactics at the local level. The study looked at 800 SWAT… Read More