https://crimeshop.org/2016/10/17/fbi-director-james-comey-takes-on-the-police-shooting-epidemic/
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Showing posts with label Department of justice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Department of justice. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
Law Enforcement using facial recognition - with no oversight
Law Enforcement using facial recognition - with no oversight
https://crimeshop.org/2016/10/18/u-s-police-using-facial-recognition-with-no-oversight/
https://crimeshop.org
https://crimeshop.org
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
U.S. Department of Justice - Resorting to veiled threats...against the Kremlin?
U.S. Department of Justice - Resorting to veiled threats...against the Kremlin?
Instead of resort to preventative measures
In light of the recent political hacks here in the U.S. today, 9/14/16, the Justice Department dropped a couple of hints that they do in fact, plan to hold Russia accountable for what is suspected to be a broad hacking campaign that has targeted U.S. political organizations and election databases.
Assistant Attorney General John Carlin said “You’ve seen us use it time and again, the message is clear: You are not safe because you are doing it under another nation’s flag. We can figure out who did it ... and when we do, we’re committed to holding people accountable.”
True enough, we have seen it and heard it, over and over again. What we are more interested in seeing are preventative measures. Something along the lines of being proactive rather than reactive.
Both Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Assistant Attorney General John Carlin fell short of actually coming right out and saying they in fact knew that Russia was behind the recent hacks in today’s announcement.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch had this to say: “Whether you are a rogue hacker or a uniformed soldier, the shadowy corners of the internet will not provide respite for long. The light of our efforts is bright, the reach of our resolve is long. There literally is no hiding place.”
Yet, whomever these hackers are, they have still managed to be hiding, they are unnamed, they have no face for us to look upon, we don’t even really know where they reside, for all we know, the hacks could have all been inside jobs.
Information and access can both be bought and sold for a fairly reasonable price these days...
Assistant Attorney General John Carlin named Russia as one of the 4 main actors that have been involved in supporting hackers targeting the U.S., the other 3 are North Korea, Iran and China.
While it’s true that the U.S. has taken action against hackers with regards to hacks against Sony Pictures, financial institutions and U.S. companies. The action taken so far was against North Korea, Iran and China, nothing for Russia.
Russia has been suspected of the Democratic Party hacks, as well as for hacks into election systems in both Arizona and Illinois. The word on the street is, they did it in an effort to disrupt the November elections.
Forbes reported that Edward Snowden suspected Russia as being behind the leak over at the NSA last month, something I am personally convinced is part of an inside job, rather than Russia kicking down the air-gapped network doors of the NSA.
Right now Russia is also being accused of hacking the medical records of Olympic Athletes...
President Obama has not acknowledged that he believes Russia is behind the hacks either. At least not publicly.
In Fact, so far most Government officials have hesitated at pointing the blame to Russia and Russia has denied any involvement in the recent hacks.
All save for...
Senator John McCain-R Arizona who today subtly suggested that “Russia is conducting cyber-attacks to undermine American interests at every turn.”
It’s one thing to have irrefutable evidence against someone, it’s an entirely different thing to blame someone for something you cannot prove they did.
It’s unforgivable to place blame on a very public level…When you lack THE EVIDENCE to support that!
What’s that thing we tell all criminals in this country...oh help me out here, isn’t it something along the lines of, being innocent until proven guilty…
Don’t we also allow for defendants to ask for and receive a change of venue if they feel they will not get a fair trial where they were charged because so much media attention was placed on the case that they feel the public, their jury would not give them a fair shot?
Way to practice that public persecution thing here, we are publicly persecuting another country who the U.S. Government hasn’t proven did anything.
I keep seeing headlines suggesting what the U.S. might do should they discover Russia was behind the recent hacks.
What I am not seeing is what the U.S. plans to do if they learn that Russia in fact, had absolutely nothing to do with the recent hacks?
It matters not right now who is behind the hacks as far as the public is concerned, what matters is that our Government is taking steps to prevent future hacks while at the same time investigates what did happen without and this is important, casting blame on another country.
For a country that wants to be a world leader, be seen and known as a world leader, this blame game is not the move a progressive, forward thinking world leading country, would make.
Whether or not someone is hacking for the Russian Government, or it’s a lone hacker if it were me, I’d hold off on blaming anyone outright until I did have irrefutable proof.
While we are all focused on who did it, we are failing to see and realize these hacks clearly illustrate our inability as a nation to prevent cyber attacks.
These hacks illustrate our weakness when it comes to the cyber world.
Because of that, I wouldn’t want to risk rocking the boat without having proof to back up my accusations because until anyone can prove anything...we are still pretty vulnerable to yet another hack and/or cyber attack.
From a still unknown and unnamed hacker or group of hackers.
Cristal M Clark
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
US ends private prison contracts
US ends private prison contracts
Goodbye Corrections Corp of America
Deinstitutionalisation is the process of doing away with long term psychiatric hospitals and replacing them with less isolating community services such as mental health treatment on an outpatient basis.
The idea was that it would work in a couple of ways first by focusing on reducing the number of patients that were housed in mental institutions by releasing them of course, for some it meant shortening stays, in turn it would reduce both admissions and readmission rates.
The second focused on reforming mental a hospital's institutional processes, the image it would create of the patient in the mind of the patient. It was the hope that ending the processes it would reduce or eliminate the concepts of patient dependency, the feelings of being hopeless once out of the institution and unable to cope with that, learned helplessness which the institutions drilled into the heads of patients and loved one’s of the patients, and other behaviors that institutions reinforced into the minds of patients and the families of patients.
Not to mention, wide scale patterns of patient neglect, care and unimaginable abuse were occurring in the facilities.
The idea sounded great, on paper and in presentations.
The idea failed, miserably.
These days it’s difficult to find a long term psychiatric hospital that cares for the mentally ill.
Today over half of the mentally ill population are left to self manage, mental holds in hospitals are short lived, some patients are released when they truly shouldn’t be, but the hospital psych ward needs the bed space.
Patients are asked to get continued therapy, over half of which don’t because of cost, the inability to get to and from the therapy or simply because they don’t want it or are too mentally ill to realize they really do need it in order to live through each and every day.
Once in therapy, they are a number in the system and aren’t really always receiving the right kind of therapy.
Patients that are on medications don’t take them or worse mix them with other medications, illegal drugs or they drink with them.
This creates a problem for police because when they are heading to a call they don’t know what the individual was diagnosed with, are they on meds, off meds, mixing alcohol with the meds, etc.
A lot of mentally ill individuals struggle with keeping a job and they struggle to obtain housing so that leaves a good chunk of them living on the streets or couch surfing with friends who may or may not be aware the individual is struggling with mental issues until something happens.
When we made the move to private prison contracts...
Back in the 1980's not only was the hair and clothing bad, the public was frustrated over a ‘perceived’ failure of the penal system to rehabilitate offenders and in turn the public was reluctant to provide more funding for correctional institutions, to top it off the penal system was facing a demand for more jail space.
This created a ‘perceived’ issue that needed a very fast solution.
So one proposed solution was the privatizing of prisons and jails by contracting out, in part or in whole, the entire operation.
And now, we want to end the privatization of our penal system and go backwards instead of forward. We are not really looking for a solution to the ‘perceived’ issues.
It’s a reaction, one that I believe is normal for all of us once we realize that privatization of prisons really never was more cost effective.
Some are suggesting that the Department of Justice was maybe misguided on some of the information pertaining to why we need to begin the process of parting ways with private prison contracts.
One group says that private prisons show a savings of between 3-12% on annual per capita costs. Yet the report came with a caution that said they really could not honestly compare the costs between private and non-private prisons because of inmate population differences and programs offered.
The report found that as of January 2014 over half of the prison population housed in private prisons were non-us citizens.
That really isn’t the full picture because that particular report did not truly look at or study the actual demographics of those that were in prison at the time they conducted the study.
The report did study to see how the two compared to 8 measures of safety and security. The study found that private prisons did a poor job when it came to things like contraband, lockdowns, inmate discipline, grievances, phone monitoring and reports of incidents.
It’s easy to conduct a controlled study in order to obtain the outcome one wants. I can do it and so can you. I’m fairly certain a 5 year old can do it as well.
The issue here is, what happens when we or if we truly part ways with private prison contracts?
But let’s back up and look at the situation again...
Severing ties with private prisons will affect maybe 15-20% of Federal Inmates. That’s right, Federal inmates. States can still keep what contracts they have in place for state contracted private prisons.
They can also choose to part ways with private prison contracts if they wish. This decision would not affect states that use private run prisons on the state level.
I worked for this really great company once, the owner Troy Widgery was a really good owner, and an even better manager/trainer.
He always pushed me to not focus on a ‘perceived’ problem. He was right, because our focus on the ‘perceived’ problem clouds our abilities to come up with a solution that will provide the outcome we truly want.
It also clouds our ability to figure out if we truly have a problem or if the problem might be something we never even considered as the culprit.
Just remember, when we decided on Deinstitutionalisation in psychiatric facilities, we saw a ‘perceived’ problem, ran to create a solution and never planned for the outcome that eventually followed.
In the 1980’s, we saw a ‘perceived’ problem with the penal system and today, we are not liking the solution that created the outcome we are now hearing about.
“The problem is not the problem, the problem is your attitude about the problem.”
Cristal M Clark
https://crimeshop.org
Tuesday, August 30, 2016
Police unions holding police reform hostage
Police unions holding police reform hostage
At least that’s how it’s being sold
While they say they support reform, in many cities the police unions which represent the officers in those cities are holding reform hostage until they can gain monetarily from the reform.
This this month in Cincinnati, a local Police Union attorney sent a “cease and desist” letter to the city that said that officers should only use body cameras if the city was willing to pay them more.
Basically, unions are using the reform as a bargaining chip and are holding it hostage which is so very wrong. I can see something like, well the department needs more funds in order to purchase the body camera’s but, the unions are blatantly using reform as a way to increase police paychecks.
They are asking for money for officers from taxpayers to ensure officers are doing an effective and fair job.
According to a report at the Huffington Post, Daniel Hils, who is the president of one of Cincinnati’s Fraternal Order of Police lodges had this to say with regards to suggesting that police be paid more for the reforms:
“We recognize [body cameras are] the direction we’re going, but I believe this is a game changer, as far as complexity of the job. And this level of monitoring will result in positives and negatives about what it’s like to be a policeman. Because of that, I think it does require some additional compensation or at least bargaining for that.”
The argument is being presented in such a way by the unions that they are suggesting that adding the camera’s adds additional expectations, responsibilities and/or enhances the job of the officers.
Those have to be some of the weakest reason’s to be asking for an increase in police pay that I have ever seen.
Many police departments, not the unions that represent them are for the camera’s, from the top brass to the rookies. They want them, they support them and are willing to wear them. It’s the unions who are pushing back.
Boston just went down this road when the Patrolman's Association fought the use of body cameras on a voluntary basis. The police in Boston are not being forced to wear them, so now the volunteers were selected by some third party, and the now forced volunteers are wearing the cameras for some time then an evaluation will be done by said third party who I assume is not associated with the department itself or the Patrolman's Association.
Understanding
Who wants to be under constant surveillance while at work, anyone? The answer is that none of us want that, you may say you don’t care but when push comes to shove, no one really wants that. The idea is uncomfortable for most us, we don’t want it and don’t like the idea of it.
Some think that police have been granted this enormous, great power to be above and over us, they have authority over us, they can abuse us, use unnecessary force against us, be unfair, racist, biased, kill us without reason etc.
The assumption is that police have been give this great power over all of us little people and it needs to be monitored, seen and it has to have this check and balance process.
I agree with that to an extent however...
I personally do not believe that all police departments or police believe that they have been granted this great power over us.
Sure, the ones for instance that we see splashed all over the news have this power and control issue. Except for the Commerce City, Colorado Police Department, those guys are just playing Pokémon Go while on the job. By the way does anyone know how many Pokémon they captured before they were busted?
I do know several police departments who don’t feel that way at all.
Both the Denver, Colorado Police Department and the Arvada, Colorado Police Department just to name a couple feel a sense of responsibility to the communities they serve and protect.
Sure they may have had at one time or another a bad apple or two, many of the officers that work for those departments do not truly feel that they have been handed this enormous power over the people.
I’ve had the privilege to work with many of them and to also know some on a personal level. They don’t feel over us in anyway, they feel a greater sense of responsibility the each citizen and the communities that they serve.
The sense of power over someone and the sense of responsibility to someone are two vastly different things.
All people are asking for are transparency and accountability, this requires nothing more out of police than what they should already be doing today.
Until the Fed’s can think of a way to prevent unions from holding reform hostage, this will continue to be a problem. I don’t know it feels like the unions are now pimping out the police.
The unions need to carefully consider that having the ability to see what it’s like being a cop just might clear up a lot of misconceptions the general public has about police and what they do while on duty... not all of them are playing Pokémon Go while on the clock.
Cristal M Clark
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
Police Caught Playing Pokémon Go while working
Police Caught Playing Pokémon Go while working
But walking is good for your mental and physical health...right?
Earlier this week news broke that two Commerce City, Colorado police officers are now facing discipline for well, playing Pokémon Go instead of actually working.
The officers were caught by one of their supervisors in unusual places and it was quickly determined they were chasing cartoon characters and not any actual criminals.
This announcement comes just after last week’s announcement that the Department of Justice has agreed to look at the departments police practices. The department decided to participate in the DOJ’s new program aimed at police reform.
The Commerce City, Colorado police department has faced years of complaints from the union, officers and citizens. They have recently dealt with officer misconduct and in 2011 the police union for the department presented the department with some concerns, two of which were poor management and cover-ups.
The city brought in an investigator to look into the union’s claims but that didn’t go so well because as it turned out that particular investigator was accused of having a conflict of interest and long story short is, since then the city has face several lawsuits, which of course they settled them rather than go to court.
It’s also worth a mention that union chief Tom Boskovich says turnover among officers in Commerce City is pretty much off the charts.
The Justice Department’s Collaborative Reform Initiative for Technical Assistance which is volunteer by the way, works to analyze a police department’s policies, training and practices.
The DOJ claims that the program keeps an eye toward finding the specific problems that are causing it trouble in the community.
Quite frankly, since the program is new only time will tell so we'll have to wait and see if the DOJ can handle what’s coming for them with the recent findings in Boston, Oakland is still a mess, Cleveland, Portland is trying to take a step in the right direction but who knows.
Then look at Chicago, which granted has a huge number of shootings, they also have an equally large number of issues with regards to police misconduct, New York had a cop who was also a pimp, in Texas a cop was also a member of the Mexican Mafia in uniform...that’s just the tip of the iceberg considering stories are becoming more readily available. Daily.
In looking at some of the DOJ’s past history with investigating some of these departments and the outcome of those investigations, not only were some of the departments (like Oakland) still a problem, the investigations took forever but it also, ended up costing taxpayers a lot of money.
I just have this one nagging question...
Will the Justice Department’s Collaborative Reform Initiative for Technical Assistance prevent cops from playing Playing Pokémon Go while on duty or does that not fall within the scope of "problems that are trouble in the community?"
Cristal M Clark
Thursday, July 14, 2016
Department of Justice enacting national policing reforms
Department of Justice enacting national policing reforms
Is that the answer we need?
Some are asking for it, some say we don’t need and somewhere in the middle of the argument is the DOJ.
It is not as easy or timely as one might think. We live in an age where we want instant gratification and when we sit back and look at cases of police misconduct we tend to become frustrated that the process is taking too long.
In the wake of officer Brendan O’Brien’s suicide, the Oakland, CA Police Bureau has been rocked by a scandal involving Brendan and several of its officers as well as neighboring police agencies.
Oakland by the way is currently and has been under a consent to decree for 13 years which is costly, but it imposes court oversight of reforms. Oakland was once considered one of the most corrupt police departments in the country.
The city of Oakland, CA has spent more than $13 million to pay for officer monitoring, equipment like body cameras, court fee’s, auditors and training.
Yes you read that right the city paid for it, meaning it was paid for by taxpayer dollars.
It works and then it doesn’t work as Oakland has shown us with it’s most recent scandal. While policing in the city has improved, for instance use of force has dropped significantly, clearly sexual misconduct somehow slipped through the cracks. Still however, according to some the reforms flopped.
According to the Guardian as I type this 586 individuals have been shot and killed by police in 2016 in the United States. Not all of them are black.
If we look at Chicago, over 100 people showed up at Truman College on Tuesday to share stories of shootings, beatings and even robberies by officers of the Chicago Police Department. The are begging the Justice Department to do something about the abuse by the Chicago Police.
Some of the people asking for help would describe the police in Chicago as ruthless killers, mobsters and predators.
Yet when we look at Chicago as a whole, it is riddled with crime that seems to run out of control at times. In some cases it is easy to understand why the police might overreact and shoot someone, however when you hear stories like Theodore Daffin’s you wonder.
Theodore's run in with police left him with a deep scar in the shape of a vagina that was cut into his belly, by police.
Other stories reveal that people were shot and killed simply for opening the door to police.
But investigations like these that are conducted by the DOJ could take months if not years to conclude, then if the DOJ has enough evidence to prove systematic civil rights violations to take the Chicago Police Department to court, well it would take even more time in terms of years before anyone saw any type of reform within the police department.
Again, it would be costly as well.
So that begs the question, should the DOJ enact national police reforms which would affect all of our nation’s police departments?
IF you said yes, riddle me this, is the DOJ even capable of doing that?
Right now it takes years just for the DOJ to do it’s job and that is simply just not good enough.
The other part of that when I look at places like Chicago, I have to stop and wonder, why did it take the DOJ this long to get involved? Seeing over 100 people who managed to travel in sweltering heat to show up and tell stories of abuse at the hands of Chicago police, it amazes me that these individuals were not heard sooner.
Then, I wonder why they weren’t heard before Tuesday. Why did it take so long for anyone to hear these people?
National reforms are a good idea but not a well thought out idea because not all police agencies are a problem. Not all police within a department are a problem. Not even racial bias is always a problem with departments, but other issues of police misconduct are.
Then we have departments that seem to be able to walk on water, they may not always be able to solve the case but they try, they are not abusing criminals or law abiding citizens.
One place to start would be getting the DOJ involved sooner. The big question is, does the DOJ have the staff or time to handle getting on board sooner rather than waiting until over 100 people show up after years of systematic abuse at the hands of a police department?
Another really good place to start, begin isolating departments that tend to show racial bias more than other departments, which is really quite simple when it comes down to it.
Besides, most legal experts agree that a national reform plan is highly unlikely because it would have no political will.
One thing a lot of people may not know or understand is that a large part of the DOJ’s budget goes to the War on Drugs through the Bureau of Prisons and the FBI. That means only a small fraction of it goes to investigations of police misconduct.
Changing the budget for the DOJ requires action from Congress to re-appropriate funds. Congress isn’t doing a lot in terms of action right now in case anyone hasn’t noticed.
Some would argue that the bigger issues are:
Politics, in that our nation's politics do not have a strong enough commitment to its public as of today. And we unfortunately need them in order to make changes with things like police reform.
And the biggest issue of all, many would argue is that large amounts of money designated to fight the war on drugs have allowed police departments to militarize and become more aggressive in their approach.
Ahh but another solution does exist and it's one that a lot of people are eyeing as a possible solution .
The DOJ could make some of the grants offered to police departments contingent upon departments being in compliance with the Civil Rights Act as well as other Federal laws…
Here is a small break down of what some of that looks like:
Since around 94 the DOJ has allotted something like $15 Billion to police departments around the country in community oriented policing service grants. And that my friends, well it’s just one of the types of grants the DOJ offers to police departments.
The DOJ says that in 2015 the Chicago police department received over $3.1 million just to hire 25 new officers.
The Chicago police department has received at least, a cool $5 million in grants from 2007-2013.
No one likes to talk about it but the threat to take that kind of money away from police departments might just help resolve a lot of issues with police misconduct.
That would certainly entice Chicago to clean up much faster than the DOJ’s ongoing investigation will.
In Oakland even with the consent to decree, the department was able to keep its internal investigation of sexual misconduct from the court ordered auditor for months. I wrote about it before if you missed it.
By withholding Federal funds from police agencies and departments rife with problems, it would bring about the much needed change many are calling for in certain communities.
Taking that money or the possibility of the ability to even qualify for a grant would hurt police departments and it would in turn force them to act much more quickly to reform than the DOJ’s investigation and possible outcome.
In order to do even that however, well we’d need politics, and right now the political will to change things is pretty much stalled out somewhere.
Maybe someone playing Pokémon Go can manage to find our political leaders political will somewhere along the way???
Our answer is that we need our nation’s political leaders to find the political will it needs to make the right kinds of changes instead of just play around and not give a shit.
We can go about this the long way or the short way. It’s taking money away from departments who are problems or letting the DOJ have years to investigate then wait even more years and years to see change.
As much as I hate to admit this again, but this is yet another reason voters are swinging towards Trump. In business if you don’t take swift action it can be costly, business leaders don’t wait they act.
Political leaders, they tend not to act quickly enough. They have the wait and see approach when instead they should be reciting “Founded on the Principles of Right,” until it sinks in and they get it.
Sadly, this is another time where we have to ask our leaders if they are even listening and then if they hear the words we are speaking?
Cristal M Clark
@thecrimeshop
https://crimeshop.wordpress.com
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