LAPD Officer Jin Oh displays video from a body camera. Some residents have raised privacy and civil liberties questions about the use of the devices. (Photo: Marcus Yam/ latimes.com)
The Los Angeles Police Commission voted Tuesday to approve a policy for equipping officers with body cameras, moving the LAPD a step closer to becoming the nation’s largest law enforcement agency to adopt the widespread use of the devices.
The 3-1 vote occurred after a sometimes-heated discussion over whether officers should be allowed to review video from the cameras before writing reports or giving statements to investigators following serious force incidents.
Civil libertarians opposed allowing officers to review the footage, though LAPD officials said investigators may prevent officers from looking at the video following force incidents that might result in a criminal investigation of the officers.
Nosa Akol (Photo via clutchmagonline.com)
Seventeen-year-old Nosa Akol was born in Sudan and moved to the states when she was 5 years-old. Akol says throughout her childhood and teens she was teased because of her dark skin. The taunts ate away at what little self-esteem her tumultuous life had permitted.
In response, she folded into herself and tried to disappear into the crowds at West Middle School, then Binghamton High in New York. The sharp barbs shaped her personality. “It made me really insecure when I passed by large groups,” she said.
But when she discovered the opportunities open to her through the 4-H Club, and Nosa, then a high school freshman, threw herself into one project after another. As National 4-H Council has named Nosa the 2015 recipient of the 4-H Youth in Action Award, she seems well on her way.
“Through the work that I will do in my life, I want to be known as the person who saw an issue, became the change, and did something about it,” Nosa stated.
Nosa will receive a $10,000 scholarship and was honored on April 23 at National 4-H Council’s sixth annual Legacy Awards in Washington, D.C., but while Nosa look forwards to her bright future, she also remembers where she came from.
Before she graduates from BHS she’ll have partnered with 4-H alumnus and rising food star Lazarus Lynch to spearhead a Hunger Banquet and Poverty Simulation that will aim to encourage the community to help end world hunger.
“I was a shy hermit of a girl,” Nosa said, “and now I’m trying to make a difference.” article via clutchmagonline.com
10,000 people from across the country peacefully protested in Baltimore in support of the seeking of justice of the death of Freddie Gray. Despite the fact that 100 of the 10,000 acted up and approximately 35 people were arrested after the peaceful protest, (that’s about 1%), much of the mainstream media used attention grabbing words in their headlines like ‘Protest Turns Destructive, (USA Today)’ ‘Scenes of Chaos In Baltimore… (NY Times), Dozens Arrested After Protest Turns Violent (WBAL TV). One website BreitBart.com’s headlines read: 1,000 Black Rioters In Baltimore Smash Police Cars, Attack Motorists In Frenzied Protest.The truth is you had 10,000 plus people come together in unity in support of the fight for justice for Freddie Gray. While the numbers vary, 100 or so were the ones you saw acting up on the news and the 35 persons who were arrested were the ones you read about. But reporting that won’t bring in the ratings that attract a heavy advertising revenue.
“A number of protesters were concerned that Baltimore—nicknamed “Charm City”—was being treated unfairly in the media after the trouble on Saturday. Baltimore was not out of control,” said Karen DeCamp, a director at the Greater Homewood Community Corporation, a nonprofit advocacy organization, who was demonstrating outside the funeral home, Sunday. “Baltimore was not burning. A very small number of people made some trouble, and it was completely blown out of proportion.”
As you read most of the nationwide coverage, the various news media and websites do admit that most of the protesters were peaceful as you read further down their stories, despite the attention grabbing headlines that speaks of only the violence, destruction and criminal mischief of a few. Unfortunately there will always be a few agitators in any crowd this size. Some of which are purposely positioned among the peaceful protesters for just that reason. Read more via blackweschester.com: 10,000 Strong Peacefully Protest In Downtown Baltimore, Media Only Reports The Violence & Arrest of Dozens.
Last night, President Obama hosted his final White House Correspondents’ Dinner with more comedic relied than ever before. “Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner…and welcome to the fourth quarter of my presidency,” he said jokingly to start off the evening.
Confessing that he feels “more relaxed than ever,” President Obama joked comfortably about everything from CNN’s extensive coverage of the U.S. Ebola scare to recently mending ties with Cuba. “The Castro brothers are here tonight. Welcome to America, amigos!… What? It’s the Castro’s from Texas? Oh. Hi Joaquin. Hi Julian,” he said.
Arguably the best moment of the evening happened when the President invited comedian Keegan-Michael Key to be his “anger translator.”
Watch and enjoy! article by Whitney Gaspard via essence.com
Loretta Lynch confirmed by Senate as new U.S. Attorney General (Photo via eurweb.com) Loretta Lynch was confirmed Thursday as attorney general, the first black woman in American history to hold the country’s top law enforcement post.
The Senate approved Lynch, a federal prosecutor from New York, on a 56-43 vote after an unusually lengthy confirmation delay. President Barack Obama nominated Lynch as the successor to Eric Holder in November.
Lynch’s path to becoming the first African American woman to serve as attorney general was fraught with partisan bickering — fighting that continued on Thursday. Obama said the Justice Department would benefit from Lynch’s experience as a “a tough, independent, and well-respected prosecutor.”
“Loretta has spent her life fighting for the fair and equal justice that is the foundation of our democracy,” the president said in a statement on Thursday. “As head of the Justice Department, she will oversee a vast portfolio of cases, including counterterrorism and voting rights; public corruption and white-collar crime; judicial recommendations and policy reviews – all of which matter to the lives of every American, and shape the story of our country.”
Holder said he was pleased the Senate recognized “her clear qualifications.”
“I have known and worked closely with Loretta for many years, and I know that she will continue the vital work that this Administration has set in motion and leave her own innovative mark on the Department in which we have both been privileged to serve,” Holder said in a statement. “I am confident that Loretta will be an outstanding Attorney General, a dedicated guardian of the Constitution, and a devoted champion of all those whom the law protects and empowers.”
U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D- Mich., is pictured during a House Judiciary Committee hearing. On Wednesday, Conyers and Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., re-introduced the End Racial Profiling Act in Congress. (Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)
Democratic lawmakers are making yet another attempt to pass legislation against racial profiling in local law enforcement. On Wednesday, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., and Sen.Ben Cardin, D-Md., announced they would re-introduce the End Racial Profiling Act for at least the third time in the last three sessions of Congress. Previous bills have failed to get hearings or clear the Senate and House committees with law enforcement oversight.
The latest measure, coming as tensions rise between police and communities of color amid a wave of police killings of black men, would stop police officers from racially profiling African-Americans and Latinos, as well as Muslims, Sikhs and other minority groups that have long complained of targeting by law enforcement. Last year, the Department of Justice expanded policies that protect racial and religious minorities from profiling by federal law enforcement agencies.
The DOJ rules don’t apply to state, county and local law enforcement; the proposed law would expand on them by requiring states to certify their compliance with policies discouraging racial profiling. The announcement by Cardin and Conyers was welcomed Wednesday by civil rights leaders and activists.
“Racial profiling robs people of their dignity, undermines the integrity of our criminal justice system and instills fear and distrust among members of targeted communities,” Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said in a statement. Studies have shown how generally ineffective and counter-productive racial profiling has been as a law enforcement tool, Henderson said. Officers can become overly distracted by racial stereotypes and overlook individuals posing serious threats to public security, he said. But despite the evidence of its ineffectiveness, racial profiling expanded after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., in the guise of counterterrorism and immigration enforcement.
Senate and House versions of the law were introduced one day after the “March 2 Justice,” a group of activists against racial profiling and police brutality who walked 250 miles from New York to the U.S. Capitol, arrived in Washington. The group met Wednesday with members of Congress to urge passage of the racial profiling ban. article by Aaron Morrison via ibtimes.com
The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office is creating a unit dedicated to examining wrongful-conviction claims, joining a small but growing number of prosecutorial agencies around the country that are devoting resources to identify innocent prisoners. Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey
Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey is asking county supervisors for nearly $1 million to fund the new team, which would include three prosecutors, an investigator and a paralegal.
In seeking the funds, Lacey’s office said it wanted to keep up with an increasing number of wrongful-conviction claims that have followed the advent of similar units around the country as well as a growing number of innocence projects and increased publicity of innocence claims, said county spokesman Dave Sommers.
“This is exactly what should happen in every district attorney’s office in America,” said Justin Brooks, director of the California Innocence Project at the California Western School of Law in San Diego. “We all have the same goal: to make sure the right people are in prison.”
While such units are still rare, Los Angeles would join more than 15 district attorney offices around the country that have adopted similar teams, including Santa Clara County, Dallas County, Brooklyn and Manhattan, as well as the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C.
Los Angeles’ proposal remained largely under wraps until last week, when Lacey addressed a group of attorneys and students at Loyola Law School on Friday and mentioned she had been promised funding for a conviction review unit. She gave no details and did not return calls for comment.
A district attorney’s spokeswoman declined to discuss the plan until after the Board of Supervisors formally approves the funding in the coming weeks. The county’s recommended budget includes money for the unit for the next fiscal year, which starts in July.
Floyd Dent Thanks Prosecutors for Bringing Charges Against Michigan Police Officer
A suburban Detroit police officer who was seen on dash-cam video dragging a black man from his car before kicking and punching him repeatedly will be charged with two felony counts, a county prosecutor said Monday.
A drug possession charge against the man, Floyd Dent, 57, will be dropped, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said. Dent’s treatment by Inkster police during a Jan. 28 traffic stop sparked outrage after the video was released by NBC affiliate WDIV.
“We cannot turn our heads when the law enforcer becomes the law breaker,” Worthy said during a news conference Monday. “The alleged police brutality in this case cannot and will not be tolerated.”
William Melendez, who allegedly punched Dent 16 times while keeping him in a chokehold during an arrest, will be charged with one count of mistreatment of a prisoner and one count of assault with intent to do great bodily harm, Worthy said.
WDIV had also later released a video that showed officers stripping Dent to his underwear and searching him while he was being held in jail.
If convicted, Melendez could face up to 15 years in prison.
Inkster City Manager Richard Marsh said in a statement that Melendez had been fired from the Inkster Police Department on April 15, “which I and others believe was in the best interest of our community.” Marsh said he wouldn’t comment further on the charges “in order to preserve the integrity of both the criminal and the civil actions surrounding Officer Melendez’s employment.”
Melendez is working part-time at the Highland Park Police department, according to WDIV. The department did not immediately respond to requests for comment from NBC News.
The case was independently investigated by the Michigan State Police and separately by the Wayne County Prosecutors Office.
Charges against Dent of resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer were dropped after the video was released nearly two months after the incident occurred. A count of possession of cocaine remained, but Dent claimed the drugs were planted in his car. The drug charge against Dent was dropped “in the best interest of justice,” Worthy said. article by Elisha Fieldstadt via msnbc.com
New York high schooler Daria Rose was accepted to every Ivy League school where she applied. (Photo Courtesy Daria Rose)
Hurricane Sandy hit in October 2012, forcing her family to evacuate their beloved home in Baldwin. The house was then completely destroyed by fire.
After the storm, Rose’s family lived in several hotels as well as her grandmother’s house. She said the moves made finishing school work extremely difficult. “It was hard because it’s really unpredictable when you don’t have a stable place to live,” she told ABC News today. “[You] don’t know if you’re moving here next, or there.”
Rose said she lost all of her belongings in the fire, including clothes, furniture, makeup, jewelry and pictures. “My mom and my dad and my family, they made me realize what was important,” she said. “Stuff is just stuff. What is important is your health, education, your family.”
After about a year and a half, they finally moved into a new house in Baldwin. For a college application essay, Rose wrote about her Hurricane Sandy experience.
“It talks about the storm, but the focus is how reading helped me cope,” she said. “I was living in these small spaces but in my head I was able to escape … find myself in a literary world.”
When it came to college preferences, Rose said she had always leaned towards Yale.
“I’ve always known I wanted to go to Yale,” she said. “But junior year I started looking at all my options and I realized how many great schools there were out there.”
She decided to apply to seven of the eight Ivy League colleges, and on March 31, all the schools posted their decisions online. “I went home and checked Harvard first, and then Princeton, and then Brown … and as they kept coming in I was just astonished. I couldn’t even breathe,” Rose said. “It was an amazing moment.”
“I couldn’t believe it,” she added. “I thought I’d get in maybe one or two.”
And now Rose has a big decision ahead of her. While she’s always loved Yale’s environment, Rose says she’s also very interested in Harvard and Princeton. This week she’ll have her last two college visits at Yale and Harvard.
“They’re all such great schools,” she said. “[I’ll] try to see where I’ll fit in the best.”
Wherever Rose ends up, she says she plans to study political science and Russian literature.
She has until May 1 to decide. article by Emily Shapiro via abcnews.go.com
Rosean S. Hargrave leaving court in Brooklyn on Tuesday after a hearing at which his conviction for the murder of an off-duty correction officer was vacated. (Credit: Sam Hodgson for The New York Times)
More than two decades after Rosean S. Hargrave was convicted of murdering an off-duty correction officer in Brooklyn, a judge on Tuesday ordered him released from prison, saying Mr. Hargrave’s prosecution was based on deeply flawed detective work that “undermines our judicial system.”
Mr. Hargrave, surrounded by his family and friends as he left State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, was asked whether he had thought he would ever be free.
“I dreamt,” he said.
The prosecution of Mr. Hargrave was built on the work of the former detective Louis Scarcellaand his partner, Stephen W. Chmil. It is one of dozens of cases that have come under review since accusations emerged that Mr. Scarcella once framed an innocent man. Six people have had their convictions overturned, one posthumously, since the Brooklyn district attorney’s office began its review in 2013.
But this is the first time that Mr. Scarcella’s investigative methods have come under direct judicial scrutiny, and Justice ShawnDya L. Simpson delivered a scathing review of his record.
Many of the cases under review date to an era when many neighborhoods were plagued by crime, with the city regularly registering well over 1,000 murders a year. It was in this environment that Mr. Scarcella made his name, gaining wide acclaim for solving murder cases.
Justice Simpson noted that Mr. Scarcella was something of “a legend” for getting so many convictions. “There’s a saying, when it’s too good to be true, it usually is,” she said.
Mr. Hargrave’s conviction, she said, was “based solely on identification of evidence by Detective Scarcella and Detective Chmil” and therefore “brings into question the due process and reliability in this trial.”
Justice Simpson said that if the case were tried today, there would most likely be a different outcome. She also noted that since the time of the trial, no new evidence had emerged to support the prosecution, citing the lack of ballistics or serology testing, or a fingerprint match to identify Mr. Hargrave. “The scant evidence that convicted the defendant makes the newfound wrongdoing of Detective Scarcella significant,” Justice Simpson said.
Since the trial, she also said, “potentially exculpatory evidence” had been destroyed, further undermining the chances that Mr. Hargrave could find justice. After the judge read her decision, Mr. Hargrave’s mother broke down in tears as others around her burst out with shouts of joy.
“Thank you, your honor!” his sister Monique Hargrave shouted. “Thank you, God.” Outside the courthouse, Mr. Hargrave’s mother, Shirley, was still trying to process the fact that her son would finally be set free.
“I have never been so happy in 23 years,” she said. “I’m just so glad it’s over, and I hope it never happens to anyone else.” During the proceeding, Mr. Hargrave sat stoically, despite the celebrations behind him. His lawyer, Pierre Sussman, embraced him in a long hug.
“This is the strongest condemnation from the court of Detective Scarcella and Detective Chmil,” Mr. Sussman said. “Mr. Hargrave went in at age 17, and he’s being released at age 40.”
Justice Simpson said that the district attorney’s office had 30 days to appeal the ruling but that if prosecutors did not present new evidence in that time, any new trial would have to rely on the flawed evidence gathered by the detectives. Mark Hale, the chief of the conviction review unit for the district attorney’s office, said prosecutors were reviewing the decision before deciding how to proceed.
The decision caps a long battle to win Mr. Hargrave’s freedom. The New York Times investigated Mr. Hargrave’s case as part of a series of articles examining Mr. Scarcella’s record.
In a September hearing on the motion to vacate the conviction, Mr. Hargrave’s lawyers argued that the case had problems that began with flawed work by Mr. Scarcella and continued through the trial.
Supporters of Mr. Hargrave at the hearing, the end of a long battle for his freedom. Now 40, he was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison at age 17. (Credit: Sam Hodgson for The New York Times)
For instance, blood evidence was lost, making DNA testing impossible. And the case hinged on one witness: another correction officer who was in the car with the officer who was killed, in a 1991 shootout in Crown Heights.
