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Tag Archives: Law Enforcement

The U.S. Supreme Court, Qualified Immunity, Deadly Force, and a Car Chase.

10 Tuesday Nov 2015

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Appellate Law, Civil Rights, Excessive Force, Governmental Tort Claim Act, Qualified Immunity, United States Supreme Court

≈ Comments Off on The U.S. Supreme Court, Qualified Immunity, Deadly Force, and a Car Chase.

Tags

Excessive Use of Force, Law Enforcement, Law Librarians Blog, Mark Giangrande, Qualified Immunity

Supreme Court Action: Qualified Immunity When Deadly Force is Used By Officers During A Car Chase, by Mark Giangrande, Law Librarians Blog

http://tinyurl.com/q8m43ce

It will be interesting to see how this ruling may be applied to recent news events. –CCE

The Supreme Court issued one opinion today [November 9, 2015].  The case, Mullenix v. Luna (14-1143), decided whether a Texas state trooper (Mullenix) was entitled to qualified immunity when he fired shots at a suspect’s car during a high speed chase, killing the suspect. . . .

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Detailed Databases on Fatal Shootings By Law Enforcement.

04 Saturday Jul 2015

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Civil Rights, Excessive Force

≈ Comments Off on Detailed Databases on Fatal Shootings By Law Enforcement.

Tags

beSpacific Blog., Civil Rights, Excessive Force, Law Enforcement, Sabrina I. Pacifici, The Counted, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Wrongful Death

Washington Post Database Collecting Data On Citizen Killings By Police, by Sabrina I. Pacifici, BeSpacific Blog

http://www.bespacific.com/washington-post-database-collecting-data-on-citizen-killings-by-police/

Both The Washington Post and The Guardian have created databases to track numerous details of every fatal shooting by a police officer and other law enforcement in the line of duty in the United States. The Guardian’s project is called “The Counted.” Both the Post and The Counted seek the public’s input, photographs, and videos in an attempt to make their respective databases as comprehensive as possible. -CCE

 

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The Marshall Project Asks How Hard Is It To Count Deaths By The Police?

07 Saturday Mar 2015

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Criminal Law, Law Enforcement, Police Brutality

≈ Comments Off on The Marshall Project Asks How Hard Is It To Count Deaths By The Police?

Tags

Bureau of Justice Statistics, Death In Custody Reporting Act, Department of Jusice, Eli Hager, Ferguson Report, Law Enforcement, The Marshall Project

Missed by a Mile – How Hard Is It To Count Deaths By Police?, by Eli Hager, The Marshall Project

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/03/05/missed-by-a-mile?ref=hp-4-112

A day before administering a searing condemnation of the police department of Ferguson, Mo., where an unarmed black teenager was shot and killed by a white police officer, the Department of Justice quietly published a separate report on the number of Americans killed at the hands of law enforcement.

The verdict? In a startling admission, the Bureau of Justice Statistics confirmed that the government’s own data on so-called police-involved deaths have been off for more than a decade — by more than 100 percent.

The report estimates that there were ‘an average of 928 law-enforcement homicides per year’ from 2003-2009 and 2011 — which means that previous yearly tallies by the BJS and the FBI included fewer than half of all such deaths. The FBI, for example, reported an average of only 383 ‘justifiable homicides by law enforcement’ per year over the same period. The BJS was slightly closer to reality, averaging 454.

These numbers, by the way, do not include the deaths of bystanders, deaths during vehicular pursuit, or deaths at the hands of federal agents.

The new report was released at a pivotal moment in the national conversation about policing and the use of force. Not only was the ‘Ferguson Report’ released on Wednesday, but national outrage about violence by the police has spawned recent calls from President Obama and top officials for reforms, beginning with more accurate data on just how many people are killed by the police.

‘There was a great emphasis on the need to collect more data,’ the president said after a meeting of his task force on policing. ‘Right now, we do not have a good sense…of how frequently there may be interactions with police and community members that result in death.’

In February, in a moment of candor during a speech at Georgetown University, FBI Director James Comey admitted that, ‘It’s ridiculous that I can’t tell you how many people were shot by the police in this country — last week, last year, the last decade. It’s ridiculous.’

The dearth of reliable statistics, widely suspected but never before acknowledged in such detail by a government report, goes to show why Congress last year reauthorized the Death in Custody Reporting Act. The law, an earlier version of which expired in 2006, requires the BJS to compile data on killings by law enforcement and in prisons. That data is to be gathered from a wide range of sources, including coroner’s reports, direct reports from police, media reports, Google alerts, and analysis by program staff. The notion is that this mesh of information will offer a more complete picture than the FBI data, which rely mainly on self-reporting by the police.

However, even in the years before the old reporting law expired, when the BJS was supposedly harvesting information from a wide range of sources, the bureau fell far short of a complete tally. In its best year, it identified only 49 percent of police-involved deaths.

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Teensy Change To Rule 41 Would Change Scope of Technology Search Warrants.

22 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Computer Forensics, Criminal Law, Cybersecurity, Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, Law Enforcement, Legal Technology, PC Computers, Rule 41, Search Warrants

≈ Comments Off on Teensy Change To Rule 41 Would Change Scope of Technology Search Warrants.

Tags

Advisory Committee on the Rules of Criminal Procedure, beSpacific Blog., Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, Google, Law Enforcement, Legal Technology, Richard Salgado, Rule 41, Sabrina I. Pacifici, Search Warrant

Small Rule Change That Could Give the U.S. Government Sweeping New Warrant Power, posted by Richard Salgado, Legal Director, Law Enforcement and Information Security, by Sabrina I Pacifici, BeSpacific Blog

http://www.bespacific.com/small-rule-change-give-u-s-government-sweeping-new-warrant-power/

‘At the request of the Department of Justice, a little-known body — the Advisory Committee on the Rules of Criminal Procedure — is proposing a significant change to procedural rules that could have profound implications for the privacy rights and security interests of everyone who uses the Internet. Last week, Google filed comments opposing this change. It starts with the Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41, an arcane but important procedural rule on the issuance of search warrants. Today, Rule 41 prohibits a federal judge from issuing a search warrant outside of the judge’s district, with some exceptions. The Advisory Committee’s proposed change would significantly expand those exceptions in cases involving computers and networks. The proposed change would allow the U.S. government to obtain a warrant to conduct ‘remote access’ searches of electronic storage media if the physical location of the media is ‘concealed through technological means,’ or to facilitate botnet investigations in certain circumstances. The implications of this expansion of warrant power are significant, and are better addressed by Congress. First, in setting aside the traditional limits under Rule 41, the proposed amendment would likely end up being used by U.S. authorities to directly search computers and devices around the world. Even if the intent of the proposed change is to permit U.S. authorities to obtain a warrant to directly access and retrieve data only from computers and devices within the U.S., there is nothing in the proposed change to Rule 41 that would prevent access to computers and devices worldwide. The U.S. has many diplomatic arrangements in place with other countries to cooperate in investigations that cross national borders, including Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLATs). Google supports ongoing efforts to improve cooperation among governments, and we are concerned that the proposed change to Rule 41 could undermine those efforts. The significant foreign relations issues associated with the proposed change to Rule 41 should be addressed by Congress and the President, not the Advisory Committee.’

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Can You Buy A Gun For Someone Else?

16 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Appellate Law, Gun Control Laws, Second Amendment, United States Supreme Court

≈ Comments Off on Can You Buy A Gun For Someone Else?

Tags

BloombergBusinessweek, Gun-Trafficking, Justice Kagan, Justice Scalia, Law Enforcement, Paul M. Barrett, Second Amendment, Straw Purchaser, U.S. Supreme Court

Supreme Court Is One Vote Away From Wrecking Gun-Trafficking Prosecutions, by Paul M. Barrett, Politics & Policy, BloombergBusinessweek

http://tinyurl.com/msbaoh2

Sometimes what the Supreme Court almost does is more striking than what it says in its majority opinion. Such is the case with today’s 5-4 ruling that federal agents may go after a ‘straw’ purchaser who buys a gun for someone else, even if both people are legally eligible to own firearms.

What’s amazing about this decision is that four dissenting members of the court—led by Justice Antonin Scalia—were prepared to rule against the federal government in a fashion that would have undermined countless prosecutions of alleged gun traffickers. To put this more starkly: The Supreme Court is one vote away from judicially nullifying one of the most common tools U.S. law enforcers use to deter and punish criminals who send other people into gun stores to purchase firearms and circumvent the federal background-check system. . . .

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ProPublica Update Report On Guns In America.

28 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Appellate Law, Gun Control Laws, Recent Links and Articles, Second Amendment, Stand Your Ground Law

≈ Comments Off on ProPublica Update Report On Guns In America.

Tags

Civil Liberties, Firearms, Guns, Law Enforcement, Mass Murder, Mentally Ill, ProPublica, Second Amendment, Statistics

The Best Reporting on Guns in America, by Blair Hickman, Lois Beckett, Cora Currier and Suevon Lee, ProPublica

http://tinyurl.com/k9defcv

Update: With last weekend’s shootings in Santa Barbara, this collection, first published July 24, 2012, unfortunately seems relevant again. We’ve re-organized our roundup and added new reporting about guns and gun violence in America—looking at mass shootings and mental health, as well as other kinds of gun violence.

Please include your suggestions of other stories in the comments.

Are Mass Shootings Increasing? Depends on How You Count Them

Criminologists have made the same point again and again: the number of mass shootings in America is not increasing. Experts told the Los Angeles Times that mass shootings represent only a small fraction of the annual deaths due to gun violence, and that police data indicate that the overall count of mass shootings per year has not shown any significant increase over time. This conclusion is based on the FBI’s broad definition of a mass murder: four or more people murdered in the same incident, typically in the same location. . . .

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Cloud App Used By Police and Public To Catch The Bad Guys.

02 Friday May 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Android Phones, Apps, Cell Phones, Clouds, Criminal Law, iPhones, Law Enforcement

≈ Comments Off on Cloud App Used By Police and Public To Catch The Bad Guys.

Tags

App, Associated Press, Boston Marathon bombings, Clouds, Computers, Forensic Magazine, Large Emergency Event Digital Information Repository, Law Enforcement, LEEDIR, Police, Tami Abdollah

New Tool Helps Police Crowdsource Evidence, by Tami Abdollah, Associated Press, posted by Forensic Magazine

http://bit.ly/1lJps89

An annual spring party in a Southern California beach town devolved into a riot last month when revelers turned violent, rocking cars, smashing windows and throwing rocks. Dozens were injured and about 50 people ended up in the hospital, including several police officers.

Today, as authorities seek help with the investigation in Isla Vista, they’re employing a new online and mobile app that designers say was created specifically for this type of situation.

‘When the public really wants to catch these bad guys as badly as we do, this is the mechanism,’ said Los Angeles Sheriff’s Cmdr. Scott Edson, who helped conceptualize the system in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings. ‘They can help us by sending us pictures and video.’

The innovation, known as LEEDIR, the Large Emergency Event Digital Information Repository, pairs an app with cloud storage to help police use smartphones as tools to gather evidence. . . .

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Smelling Pot From A Moving Car With Closed Windows.

13 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Criminal Law, Drug Possession, Fourth Amendment - Search & Seizure, Governmental Tort Claim Act, Probable Cause

≈ Comments Off on Smelling Pot From A Moving Car With Closed Windows.

Tags

CrimProf Blog, CrimProf BlogEditor, Fourth Amendment, Law Enforcement, Marijuana, Police, Probable Cause, Washington Post

Smelling Pot From A Moving Car With Closed Windows, By CrimProf BlogEditor, CrimProf Blog

http://tinyurl.com/qxt6xyu

FourthAmendment.com links to this piece at the Washington Post, discussing the ease with which police can stop cars that they suspect might be carrying drugs. Among the most interesting aspects is the discussion of cases in which cops in moving cars with closed windows claim to smell pot in other moving cars with closed windows. . . .

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New App for Crime Scene Investigation.

27 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Crime Scene Investigation, Criminal Law

≈ Comments Off on New App for Crime Scene Investigation.

Tags

App, CASE App, Crime Scene Investigation, First Responders, Forensic Institute for Research and Education, Forensic Magazine, Law Enforcement, Middle Tennessee State University, WillowTree Apps

CASE – Checklist App for Scene Examination, by WillowTree Apps, Forensic Magazine

http://tinyurl.com/mzu5kp4

The first moments at a crime scene can be critical to saving lives and ensuring justice. It’s essential that first responding officers arrive on a pristine scene, which can quickly deteriorate and lose its value in helping investigators with every minute that follows. Time, weather and the movement of essential personnel, such as EMTs and scene investigators, can alter the scene and destroy evidence. Early documentation of evidence can make a difference in bringing justice to both the guilty and the innocent.

Now, thanks to the Middle Tennessee State University’s (MTSU) Forensic Institute for Research and Education, known as FIRE; instead of trying to juggle notepads, cameras and video recorders, officers can immediately document crime scenes — capturing text, photographs, video, audio, GPS, dates and times — with their smartphones. Using a $200,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice, MTSU partnered with WillowTree Apps, an award-winning mobile application development company headquartered in Charlottesville, Va., to create CASE, crime scene checklist app for law enforcement agencies. . . .

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Attorney Who Introduces Drug Evidence May Face Criminal Charges.

02 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Criminal Law, Drug Possession

≈ Comments Off on Attorney Who Introduces Drug Evidence May Face Criminal Charges.

Tags

Criminal Law, Drug Evidence, Drug Paraphernalia, Drug Possession, Judge Donald E. Machen, Law Enforcement, Lt. Leo O'Neill, Paula Reed Ward, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Wendy L. Williams

Attorney May Face Charges After Introducing Drug Evidence, by Paula Reed Ward, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

http://tinyurl.com/pdcyn6c

A Pittsburgh defense attorney could be facing criminal charges after she introduced potential drug evidence — a box containing a straw with suspected heroin residue — at a court hearing on Thursday.

Wendy L. Williams was instructed by Common Pleas Judge Donald E. Machen to get an attorney as Allegheny County sheriff’s deputies are now investigating the incident.

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Can Law Enforcement Search A Cell Phone Without A Warrant?

02 Sunday Feb 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, Android Phones, California Supreme Court, Cell Phones, Constitution, Florida Supreme Court, Fourth Amendment - Search & Seizure, Georgia Supreme Court, iPad, iPhones, Legal Technology, Massachusetts Supreme Court, Ohio Supreme Court, Privacy, Tablets, United States Supreme Court

≈ Comments Off on Can Law Enforcement Search A Cell Phone Without A Warrant?

Tags

California Supreme Court, Cell Phones, Fifth U.S. Court of Appeals, First U.S. Court of Appeals, Florida Supreme Court, Fourth Amendment, Fourth U.S. Court of Appeals, Georgia Supreme Court, Kwame Opam, Law Enforcement, Massachusetts Supreme Court, Ohio Supreme Court, Police, Probable Cause, Search and Seizure, Seventh U.S. Court of Appeals, The Verge, U.S. Supreme Court

Supreme Court Will Decide If Warrantless Cellphone Searches Are Constitutional, by Kwame Opam, The Verge

http://tinyurl.com/p7n2oqy

The United States Supreme Court will rule on two cases on whether a warrantless search of cell phones is legal under the Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions will impact Fourth Amendment search and seizure procedures for law enforcement – must police first obtain a search warrant to access the data on an arrestee’s cell phone? May a cell phone and its digital data be used as evidence?

At this time, both federal circuit courts and state supreme courts disagree as to whether the police can search a cell phone without a warrant. The Fourth, Fifth, and Seventh U.S. Court of Appeals, together with the Supreme Courts of Georgia, California, and Massachusetts say yes, they can. The First Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Courts of Florida and Ohio disagree.

The courts are not the only ones paying close attention to the outcome of these two cases. Several organizations and others are concerned about maintaining privacy of digital devices and data. Law enforcement is in favor a final decision allowing warrantless searches on cell phones if there is probable cause.

The Supreme Court may rule as early as April 2014. -CCE

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U.S. Probation Office Now Has LENS (Law Enforcement Notification System).

16 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Criminal Law, Law Enforcement

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Crime, DUI, FBI, Law Enforcement, LENS, The Third Branch News, United States Courts, US Probation Office

With LENS, Offender Data Quickly Reaches Officers on Beat, posted by The Third Branch News, United States Courts

http://news.uscourts.gov/lens-offender-data-quickly-reaches-officers-beat

A police officer on a DUI stop, logs into the online Law Enforcement Notification System (LENS) and finds that not only is the driver under federal supervision for a prior drug offense, but the conditions of release stipulate no alcohol use.

By statute, following release of a prisoner convicted of a drug trafficking crime, crime of violence, or sex offense, the U.S. Probation Office must notify the chief law enforcement officer of the state and of the local jurisdiction when an offender moves into their jurisdiction. All 94 probation offices nationwide are now using LENS to make these notifications easier and more efficiently. And because LENS notifies local law enforcement at the beginning of supervision, it also promotes greater public safety.

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