History > 2011 > USA > Police (I)

A Fallen Officer Is Remembered

December 19, 2011
The New York Times
By N. R. KLEINFIELD

BABYLON, N.Y. — On a day to mourn, thousands of police officers in their crisp dress uniform converged on this tree-rimmed, Long Island bedroom town on Monday morning to see what no one likes to see, a police officer buried who fell while doing his job.

In the town where he lived at the church where he prayed, Officer Peter J. Figoski, 47, of New York City’s Police Department was remembered as a hero and a man. Before saddened officers who knew him and those who did not, from as far away as Michigan, the funeral service was being held at St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church, a stately brick structure beside the high school, which was closed for the day.

Officers and civilians alike squeezed into the pews. Thousands more stood outside, listening to voices that poured over them from portable speakers. “You feel like you’ve lost a brother,” said Officer Joseph Barbanera of the Suffolk County Police Department. “Even though you don’t know the person, you feel that you do.”

Officer Figoski had been a New York City police officer for 22 years. In a darkened basement in Brooklyn a week ago, authorities said, a fleeing thief shot him in the face, an officer tangling with the wrong end of an illegal gun.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly were among the mourners, as stories were shared about a man molded and shaped into a father and an officer of the law. Officer Figoski worked in the crime-riddled 75th precinct in East New York, Brooklyn. He had four daughters, two in college and two in high school, who had lived with him in West Babylon since his divorce.

Though eligible for retirement, he stayed on the job to see that there would be adequate funds for their education.

Officer Figoski’s dedication to his daughters was punctuated by Mr. Kelly and Mr. Bloomberg during their remarks. Mr. Kelly recalled that the day before he was killed, Officer Figoski had had the chance to work an overtime assignment in Manhattan. “To his supervisor’s surprise, he turned it down,” Mr. Kelly said. “When he was later told how much money he could have made, he beamed and said, ‘I got a chance to spend a beautiful day with my girls.’ ”

    A Fallen Officer Is Remembered, NYT, 19.12.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/nyregion/mourners-remember-a-fallen-officer.html

Why Is the N.Y.P.D. After Me?

December 17, 2011
The New York Times
By NICHOLAS K. PEART

WHEN I was 14, my mother told me not to panic if a police officer stopped me. And she cautioned me to carry ID and never run away from the police or I could be shot. In the nine years since my mother gave me this advice, I have had numerous occasions to consider her wisdom.

One evening in August of 2006, I was celebrating my 18th birthday with my cousin and a friend. We were staying at my sister’s house on 96th Street and Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan and decided to walk to a nearby place and get some burgers. It was closed so we sat on benches in the median strip that runs down the middle of Broadway. We were talking, watching the night go by, enjoying the evening when suddenly, and out of nowhere, squad cars surrounded us. A policeman yelled from the window, “Get on the ground!”

I was stunned. And I was scared. Then I was on the ground — with a gun pointed at me. I couldn’t see what was happening but I could feel a policeman’s hand reach into my pocket and remove my wallet. Apparently he looked through and found the ID I kept there. “Happy Birthday,” he said sarcastically. The officers questioned my cousin and friend, asked what they were doing in town, and then said goodnight and left us on the sidewalk.

Less than two years later, in the spring of 2008, N.Y.P.D. officers stopped and frisked me, again. And for no apparent reason. This time I was leaving my grandmother’s home in Flatbush, Brooklyn; a squad car passed me as I walked down East 49th Street to the bus stop. The car backed up. Three officers jumped out. Not again. The officers ordered me to stand, hands against a garage door, fished my wallet out of my pocket and looked at my ID. Then they let me go.

I was stopped again in September of 2010. This time I was just walking home from the gym. It was the same routine: I was stopped, frisked, searched, ID’d and let go.

These experiences changed the way I felt about the police. After the third incident I worried when police cars drove by; I was afraid I would be stopped and searched or that something worse would happen. I dress better if I go downtown. I don’t hang out with friends outside my neighborhood in Harlem as much as I used to. Essentially, I incorporated into my daily life the sense that I might find myself up against a wall or on the ground with an officer’s gun at my head. For a black man in his 20s like me, it’s just a fact of life in New York.

Here are a few other facts: last year, the N.Y.P.D. recorded more than 600,000 stops; 84 percent of those stopped were blacks or Latinos. Police are far more likely to use force when stopping blacks or Latinos than whites. In half the stops police cite the vague “furtive movements” as the reason for the stop. Maybe black and brown people just look more furtive, whatever that means. These stops are part of a larger, more widespread problem — a racially discriminatory system of stop-and-frisk in the N.Y.P.D. The police use the excuse that they’re fighting crime to continue the practice, but no one has ever actually proved that it reduces crime or makes the city safer. Those of us who live in the neighborhoods where stop-and-frisks are a basic fact of daily life don’t feel safer as a result.

We need change. When I was young I thought cops were cool. They had a respectable and honorable job to keep people safe and fight crime. Now, I think their tactics are unfair and they abuse their authority. The police should consider the consequences of a generation of young people who want nothing to do with them — distrust, alienation and more crime.

Last May, I was outside my apartment building on my way to the store when two police officers jumped out of an unmarked car and told me to stop and put my hands up against the wall. I complied. Without my permission, they removed my cellphone from my hand, and one of the officers reached into my pockets, and removed my wallet and keys. He looked through my wallet, then handcuffed me. The officers wanted to know if I had just come out of a particular building. No, I told them, I lived next door.

One of the officers asked which of the keys they had removed from my pocket opened my apartment door. Then he entered my building and tried to get into my apartment with my key. My 18-year-old sister was inside with two of our younger siblings; later she told me she had no idea why the police were trying to get into our apartment and was terrified. She tried to call me, but because they had confiscated my phone, I couldn’t answer.

Meanwhile, a white officer put me in the back of the police car. I was still handcuffed. The officer asked if I had any marijuana, and I said no. He removed and searched my shoes and patted down my socks. I asked why they were searching me, and he told me someone in my building complained that a person they believed fit my description had been ringing their bell. After the other officer returned from inside my apartment building, they opened the door to the police car, told me to get out, removed the handcuffs and simply drove off. I was deeply shaken.

For young people in my neighborhood, getting stopped and frisked is a rite of passage. We expect the police to jump us at any moment. We know the rules: don’t run and don’t try to explain, because speaking up for yourself might get you arrested or worse. And we all feel the same way — degraded, harassed, violated and criminalized because we’re black or Latino. Have I been stopped more than the average young black person? I don’t know, but I look like a zillion other people on the street. And we’re all just trying to live our lives.

As a teenager, I was quiet and kept to myself. I’m about to graduate from the Borough of Manhattan Community College, and I have a stronger sense of myself after getting involved with the Brotherhood/Sister Sol, a neighborhood organization in Harlem. We educate young people about their rights when they’re stopped by the police and how to stay safe in those interactions. I have talked to dozens of young people who have had experiences like mine. And I know firsthand how much it messes with you. Because of them, I’m doing what I can to help change things and am acting as a witness in a lawsuit brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights to stop the police from racially profiling and harassing black and brown people in New York.

It feels like an important thing to be part of a community of hundreds of thousands of people who are wrongfully stopped on their way to work, school, church or shopping, and are patted down or worse by the police though they carry no weapon; and searched for no reason other than the color of their skin. I hope police practices will change and that when I have children I won’t need to pass along my mother’s advice.

 

Nicholas K. Peart is a student at Borough of Manhattan Community College.

    Why Is the N.Y.P.D. After Me?, NYT, 17.12.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/opinion/sunday/young-black-and-frisked-by-the-nypd.html

After Officer’s Killing, a Focus on a North Carolina Warrant

December 13, 2011
The New York Times
By MOSI SECRET

Despite his being wanted for a shooting in North Carolina, the man accused of killing a police officer in Brooklyn on Monday was twice released from jail in New York this fall because the authorities in North Carolina declined to have him extradited, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said on Tuesday.

The New York police had arrested the man, Lamont Pride, twice since September, first for possession of a knife and a second time for possession of crack cocaine and for endangering the welfare of a child.

Each time, Mr. Kelly said, the police noticed that Mr. Pride was wanted for the shooting in North Carolina, but that the arrest warrant could be served only in that state. A New York police officer called the authorities in Greensboro, N.C., after the second arrest, in November, Mr. Kelly said, because of “a concern about a violent felon going back on the streets of New York City,” though a spokeswoman for the Greensboro police disputed Mr. Kelly’s chronology.

In any case, by the time the Greensboro police requested extradition, Mr. Pride had already been freed, Mr. Kelly said. “He should not have been out on the streets,” Mr. Kelly said at a news conference. “He should ideally have been extradited to North Carolina. But that did not happen.”

Mr. Pride, 27, was ordered held without bail Tuesday on charges of first- and second-degree murder, aggravated murder of a police officer, and criminal possession of a weapon. “He made a choice to end the officer’s life,” a prosecutor, Kenneth M. Taub, said in a courtroom packed with about 100 standing police officers, officials and relatives of Officer Peter J. Figoski, who was killed on Monday.

The police said that they had also arrested Kevin Santos, 30, who they said was Mr. Pride’s accomplice in the break-in that led to Officer Figoski’s death, and three other men called accomplices: Ariel Tejada, 22, Nelson Moralez, 27, and Michael Velez, 21. All four face charges of second-degree murder, and each also faces weapons charges, with the exception of Mr. Moralez, according to the police.

Mr. Tejada and Mr. Moralez were found near the scene and were initially “treated as witnesses,” but when their stories began to unravel they were placed under arrest, the police said. Mr. Velez, the authorities said, was supposed to act as a getaway driver.

All four were ordered held without bail, and as they were led out of the courtroom to jail, the crowd of officers erupted in cheers.

Police officers responded to a call of a robbery in progress early Monday, and the first officers who arrived at the basement apartment in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, found a tenant bloodied from a beating, the police said. They had no idea that the robbers were still there, hiding in a dark room behind them. When the robbers tried to slip out, they were met by two more police officers. Mr. Pride raised a pistol and fired, striking Officer Figoski, a 22-year veteran, in the face, the police said. Officer Figoski died five hours later, at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center.

Mr. Pride, who was quickly arrested by Officer Figoski’s partner, has a lengthy arrest record in North Carolina dating back to 2007, when he was arrested for drug possession, according to the authorities there. In 2009, he served prison time for robbery, and he later served jail sentences for assaulting a woman and for misdemeanor assault. Then, in August of this year, he was involved in the nonfatal shooting of a Greensboro man, the police there said.

Mr. Pride went to New York, his birthplace, and was arrested near Coney Island on Sept. 22, for public possession of a blade longer than four inches, a misdemeanor charge. Mr. Pride pleaded guilty to a violation and was released from jail the next day.

Mr. Kelly said that the police had run a background check and found the North Carolina warrant, but that the warrant could be executed only inside North Carolina.

Mr. Pride was arrested again on Nov. 3, in an apartment near Coney Island where the police executed a search warrant. Two children, 11 and 16, were in the home. Prosecutors later described the condition in the apartment as “deplorable, with cockroaches, filth everywhere.”

The police said they found six bags of crack cocaine on a desk and four bags of marijuana on another defendant; they arrested Mr. Pride and two others. Mr. Pride did not live there, but the arrest happened inside the building where he had been arrested for carrying a knife earlier in the fall.

Mr. Kelly said that after the November arrest, the police again checked on the outstanding warrant against Mr. Pride and found that it could be executed only in North Carolina. Mr. Kelly said a police commander called the authorities in North Carolina after the November arrest. “I assume that what he tried to do is have it cleared up over the phone,” Mr. Kelly said.

Mr. Kelly speculated that the Greensboro police did not initially pursue extradition because of “resources.” It would have been up to the Greensboro authorities to pay for detectives to travel to New York and to transport Mr. Pride to North Carolina.

Susan Danielsen, a spokeswoman for the Greensboro Police Department, said in a statement Tuesday night that the district attorney there determines the type of warrant to issue. “In-state extradition is appropriate and reasonable when officials have no reason to believe that the suspect is a flight risk,” she said. “This was the case with Pride.” However, Howard Newman of the district attorney’s office in Guilford County, where Greensboro is located, said Tuesday that the police did not request extradition until Nov. 8.

Ms. Danielson disputed Mr. Kelly’s chronology as to when the police commander called the Greensboro police, saying that it was on Nov. 8 — four days after Mr. Pride had been freed. Paul J. Browne, the spokesman for the New York Police Department, said its records showed that “there was a contact made on Nov. 3,” the day before he was released.

According to a transcript of Mr. Pride’s Nov. 4 court hearing, Judge Evelyn Laporte of Brooklyn Criminal Court was told that there was an active warrant for his arrest in connection with a shooting in North Carolina. The prosecutor on the case, Evan Degrees, requested $2,500 bail.

“Anything recovered from Pride, Lamont?” she asked the prosecutor, referring to drugs.

“Nothing,” he responded. “There is no indication anything was recovered from him.”

She decided to release him without bail. He did not show up for his next court appearance, in November.

Mr. Browne, the New York police spokesman, said, “The person responsible for Officer Figoski’s death is the one who pulled the trigger, not the authorities in North Carolina.”

At his news conference, Mr. Kelly did not criticize the Brooklyn judge for the decision, but he did note the prosecutor’s $2,500 bail request, implying that it was relatively low.

Judge Laporte did not respond to a message seeking comment. A spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney did not respond to messages Tuesday, but earlier said that $2,500 was relatively high for the charge Mr. Pride was facing.

 

Al Baker, Liz Robbins and Tim Stelloh contributed reporting.

    After Officer’s Killing, a Focus on a North Carolina Warrant, NYT, 13.12.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/nyregion/after-officers-killing-a-focus-on-a-north-carolina-warrant.html

11th Body, Believed to Be of Missing Woman, Is Found

December 13, 2011
The New York Times
By MATT FLEGENHEIMER and NOAH ROSENBERG

They had planned to gather on Tuesday, on the barren shore along Ocean Parkway on Long Island, to remember the victims of a suspected serial killer, the remains found scattered among the area’s shrouded thickets over the past year.

Instead, they paid special respects to the woman whose disappearance unfurled this grim string of mysteries in the first place.

Hours before relatives of some of the victims were to hold their vigil, law enforcement officials said they had discovered what they believed to be the “skeletal remains” of Shannan Gilbert, a New Jersey prostitute last seen in May 2010.

In their search for Ms. Gilbert, who was 24 then, investigators found the remains of 10 other victims, including 8 women, a toddler and a man wearing women’s clothing, raising the specter of a serial killer of prostitutes. Each victim had a possible connection to the sex trade, said Richard Dormer, the Suffolk County police commissioner. (The toddler, whose body was discovered on April 4, is believed to be the child of a prostitute whose remains were found miles down Ocean Parkway on April 11.)

The relatives arranged the anniversary vigil before the prospect of Ms. Gilbert’s discovery was even raised: On Dec. 13 of last year, officials reported the discovery of four bodies in the brush on Jones Beach Island.

The authorities have maintained, though, that Ms. Gilbert’s case is not necessarily related to the others. The location of the body believed to be hers, Mr. Dormer said Tuesday, has helped validate his belief that Ms. Gilbert drowned while trying to reach the parkway through the swampland nearby after knocking on a door in Oak Beach. The body was found, Mr. Dormer said, about a quarter mile northeast of where investigators last week retrieved what they believed were Ms. Gilbert’s purse, jeans, shoes and cellphone.

“She traveled at least half a mile, three quarters of a mile, on foot through that muck,” Mr. Dormer said at a news conference on Tuesday. “It would be very easy to get exhausted and fall down and not be able to move any further.”

Later, Mari Gilbert, Shannan’s mother, appeared at the vigil with a small group of friends and relatives of the other victims. Those gathered released balloons into the air, recited the Lord’s Prayer and, in some cases, hammered crosses into the earth beside the parkway.

But Mari Gilbert, who said the authorities contacted her on Tuesday morning with news of the discovery, was unconvinced that the remains were her daughter’s, noting that an autopsy had not been completed. “Until I hear positive confirmation that it’s my daughter, I’m going to believe it’s not,” she said.

Ms. Gilbert has also expressed doubts that her daughter’s death was accidental. She spoke on Tuesday of hoping to meet a killer who the authorities are not sure exists. “I want to meet him face to face one day,” she said. “And I just want to ask him: ‘Who hurt you? Who hurt you this badly that you have to hurt others?’ ”

Mr. Dormer said areas adjacent to where the remains had been found were drained over the last week to aid in the search. Detectives were traveling through thick brush on an amphibious vehicle, Mr. Dormer added, before noticing “the skeletal remains lying on the surface of the ground.”

It is still unclear why Ms. Gilbert might have charted such a dangerous course through the swamp. After leaving a seaside home in the Oak Beach area early on May 1, 2010, Ms. Gilbert banged on the door of a resident, Gus Coletti, shortly before 5 a.m. “She kept saying, ‘Help me,’ ” Mr. Coletti said in an interview last spring. When he dialed 911, she ran. He did not see her again.

Since the discovery of the first bodies along Ocean Parkway, on Dec. 11 and Dec. 13 last year, victims’ relatives have forged a unique, if heart-rending, connection, they say. “We’re a family,” said Lorraine Ela, the mother of Megan Waterman, whose body was found last December, “but not by blood.”

At one point, Mari Gilbert expressed her grief that, if the remains were not her daughter’s, another victim had been added to the tally. “Nobody truly knows how,” she began, before Ms. Ela completed her thought. “How it feels to have a missing child come up deceased,” Ms. Ela said.

Over the past year, Ms. Gilbert seemed to find solace in the notion that her daughter’s disappearance had shined a light on other victims.

“Everyone has their destiny,” she said last spring. “Maybe this was hers.”

    11th Body, Believed to Be of Missing Woman, Is Found, NYT, 13.12.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/nyregion/body-possibly-shannan-gilberts-is-found-on-long-island.html

Corpse Found Near NY Beach Is Likely Prostitute's

December 13, 2011
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

OAK BEACH, N.Y. (AP) — After a yearlong search, police on New York's Long Island announced Tuesday that they believe they have discovered the skeletal remains of a New Jersey prostitute whose disappearance sparked an investigation into a possible serial killing spree.

With about a half-dozen news helicopters whirring overhead, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Police Commissioner Richard Dormer said searchers found the bones at around 9:15 a.m. in a dense wetland thicket, about a half mile from where 24-year-old Shannan Gilbert disappeared after meeting a client for an early-morning sexual encounter.

Dormer said the medical examiner's office would confirm whether the remains were Gilbert's, but the commissioner left little doubt that officers had found their intended target.

"It's certainly a sad day for the Gilbert family," he said. "And our condolences to that family on the death of their daughter."

Later, Gilbert's mother called it a "sad, but happy moment," and said she still had doubts about whether the search was really over.

"Until I hear positive confirmation that it's my daughter, I'm going to believe it's not, until I know for sure," said Mari Gilbert, speaking to reporters not far from where the remains were discovered.

The remnants were found by homicide detectives aboard about a quarter mile from where authorities discovered Gilbert's pants, shoes, pocketbook with ID and other personal items last week. On Tuesday, they were searching on an aluminum amphibious vehicle equipped with pontoons that can maneuver over land and water when they came upon the remains.

Police were searching for the Jersey City, N.J., woman last December when they discovered the first of what would become 10 homicide victims. They were strewn along several miles of thicket and bramble along a parkway leading to Jones Beach. The body believed to be Gilbert's was several miles east from where the other 10 were located on the remote barrier island south of Long Island.

While police believe a lone serial killer is responsible for the deaths of the 10, Dormer reiterated Tuesday that police think Gilbert likely drowned accidentally after fleeing the client's home for an unclear reason. Dormer said the location of the skeleton suggests that Gilbert may have been trying to run through the wetlands to a nearby causeway because it was illuminated by street lights.

She was last seen shortly after 5 a.m. on May 1, 2010. Dormer suggested that she had become hopelessly entangled in the brush, which he called a "tough, desolate, tangled mess."

"The terrain would have made it impossible" for her to get through to the road, Dormer said. "Our people who were in there over the last few days had to cut through that brush and bramble area, before she was located."

Mari Gilbert said she doesn't yet believe the police theory that her daughter died accidentally.

"I think when the autopsy is performed, we'll know more," she said.

Relatives of some of the other people whose bodies were found along a nearby beach highway had been planning a vigil Tuesday to mark the anniversary of when their loves ones' remains were discovered. Melissa Cann, whose sister Maureen Brainerd-Barnes was among the first four victims found, and Lorraine Ela, the mother of victim Megan Waterman, were standing nearby when Dormer made his announcement.

Cann burst into tears and hugged Ela as cameras chronicled their grief.

Authorities at first believed several people could be involved, but Dormer said recently that detectives now suspect one serial killer is likely responsible for all 10 deaths because the victims all had some connection to the sex trade.

The victims included eight women, a man and a toddler. Police believe the women were prostitutes and suspect the man was involved in the sex trade because he was found wearing women's clothing. The toddler is believed to be the child of one of the prostitutes. Only five of the 10 victims have been identified, and police have not commented on any possible suspects.

Cann, of New London, Conn., and Ela, of Portland, Maine, said supporters would release balloons and light candles later outside at Oak Beach, a gated community near where the discoveries took place.

"We think it's important that we do as much as possible to keep the public aware of this case," Cann said. "There could be a clue out there."

Ela said Monday that she took a 14-hour bus trip from Maine to Long Island to attend the vigil. The families are holding a fundraiser later Tuesday at a Wantagh nightclub to help defray their travel expenses.

Before the commissioner left, Cann spoke with Dormer and thanked him for the police effort in the investigation. Dormer assured her that while the case involving Gilbert appeared to be coming to a conclusion, the homicide task force investigating the possible serial killer would continue its work.

    Corpse Found Near NY Beach Is Likely Prostitute's, NYT, 13.12.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/12/13/us/AP-US-Beach-Human-Remains.html

N.Y.C. Police Maligned Paradegoers on Facebook

December 5, 2011
The New York Times
By WILLIAM GLABERSON

They called people “animals” and “savages.” One comment said, “Drop a bomb and wipe them all out.”

Hearing New York police officers speak publicly but candidly about one another and the people they police is rare indeed, especially with their names attached. But for a few days in September, a raw and rude conversation among officers was on Facebook for the world to see — until it vanished for unknown reasons.

It offered a fly-on-the-wall view of officers displaying roiling emotions often hidden from the public, a copy of the posting obtained by The New York Times shows. Some of the remarks appeared to have broken Police Department rules barring officers from “discourteous or disrespectful remarks” about race or ethnicity.

The subject was officers’ loathing of being assigned to the West Indian American Day Parade in Brooklyn, an annual multiday event that unfolds over the Labor Day weekend and that has been marred by episodes of violence, including deaths of paradegoers. Those who posted comments appeared to follow Facebook’s policy requiring the use of real names, and some identified themselves as officers.

Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s deputy commissioner for public information, said he learned of the Facebook group from a reporter and would refer the issue to the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau.

The comments in the online group, which grew over a few days to some 1,200 members, were at times so offensive in referring to West Indian and African-American neighborhoods that some participants warned others to beware how their words might be taken in a public setting open to Internal Affairs “rats.”

But some of the people who posted comments seemed emboldened by Facebook’s freewheeling atmosphere. “Let them kill each other,” wrote one of the Facebook members who posted comments under a name that matched that of a police officer.

“Filth,” wrote a commenter who identified himself as Nick Virgilio, another participant whose name matched that of a police officer. “It’s not racist if it’s true,” yet another wrote.

The officers were at times spurred on by civilian supporters and other city workers, including members of the Fire Department, an analysis indicated.

It is impossible to say with certainty whether those quoted are the people they claim to be. But a comparison by The Times of the names of some of the more than 150 people who posted comments on the page with city employee listings showed that more than 60 percent matched the names of police officers, and Mr. Browne did not deny that they were officers. Of course, some people do circumvent Facebook’s rule on identification.

It was impossible to determine the racial breakdown of the officers who were posting comments, but at least one of the participants said that most of them seemed not to be minorities.

Efforts were made to contact some of those who participated through the Police Department, through the prosecutor in a court case that revealed the existence of the group, through Facebook messages and through other methods. One, Nick Virgilio, said he was a member of the department but responded, “I don’t wish to comment.”

The comments in the group included anger at police and city officials and expressions of anxiety about policing what has often been a dangerous event. “Why is everyone calling this a parade,” one said. “It’s a scheduled riot.” Another said: “We were widely outnumbered. It was an eerie feeling knowing we could be overrun at any moment.”

“Welcome to the Liberal NYC Gale,” said another, “where if the cops sneeze too loud they get investigated for excessive force but the ‘civilians’ can run around like savages and there are no repercussions.”

“They can keep the forced overtime,” said one writer, adding that the safety of officers comes “before the animals.”

Wrote another: “Bloodbath!!! The worst detail to work.”

“I say have the parade one more year,” wrote a commenter who identified himself as Dan Rodney, “and when they all gather drop a bomb and wipe them all out.” Reached on Monday, Mr. Rodney confirmed that he was a police officer and that he had used Facebook, though rarely, but denied making the comment. “That wasn’t me,” he said before suggesting that someone else might have been responsible. “I leave my phone around sometimes. Other than that I have no comment.”

The page — though visible to any Facebook user before it vanished into the digital ether — appears to have drawn no public notice until an obscure criminal case in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn last month, the gun possession trial of an out-of-work Brooklyn food-service worker named Tyrone Johnson. His defense lawyers put many of the controversial remarks before the jury. But when that too seemed to draw little notice outside the courthouse, the lawyers, Benjamin Moore and Paul Lieberman of Brooklyn Defender Services, provided a digital copy of the Facebook conversation to The Times, saying it raised broad questions about police attitudes.

While preparing for the trial, Mr. Moore checked to see if the officer who had arrested his client, Sgt. Dustin Edwards, was on Facebook. He was. Mr. Moore noticed that Sergeant Edwards’s profile showed he belonged to a Facebook group formed, it said, for “N.Y.P.D. officers who are threatened by superiors and forced to be victims themselves by the violence of the West Indian Day massacre.”

The group’s title, “No More West Indian Day Detail,” attracted Mr. Moore’s attention because Sergeant Edwards had arrested Mr. Johnson in the predawn hours of the celebrations before the parade in 2010.

Mr. Moore said that when he clicked on the link — the page was apparently public — and began reading a conversation that ran 70 printed pages, he was struck by what seemed to be its reckless explicitness. “I found it astounding,” he said. He made a digital copy. When he looked two days later, all trace of the group was gone.

At the trial, the defense lawyers argued that the gun Sergeant Edwards said he found near their client had not belonged to Mr. Johnson. Mr. Johnson is black and lived in the parade area. The defense suggested that Sergeant Edwards might have planted the gun.

Sergeant Edwards testified he had never posted a comment on the group that protested the West Indian Day detail. He said his involvement had amounted to nothing more than clicking on the name of the group that included “a lot of the people in another police group that I’m in.”

Still, through Mr. Moore’s questions, Justice Bruce M. Balter’s courtroom got an earful of what Mr. Moore described as the bias-riddled police commentary.

Did Sergeant Edwards agree with the posting that described the parade as “ethnic cleansing”? What about the one that said the parade should be “moved to the zoo”? What about the sarcastic one that called working the parade detail useful “ghetto training”?

“I’m not aware of the post, no,” the sergeant testified. He agreed the comments were offensive.

A prosecutor, Lindsay Zuflacht, argued that with no posts from Sergeant Edwards, there was “nothing to indicate that he feels at all the same.” The sergeant did testify, however, that he agreed with the statement that police officers were forced each year to become victims of the violence of the West Indian Day parade.

On Monday, Jerry Schmetterer, a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney, said the office would investigate any matters stemming from the trial referred to it by the Police Department.

At the trial, the prosecutor read the jurors one of the cautionary postings that was on Facebook. “Please keep it focused,” the post said. “This is not a racist rant. This is about us, the cops.”

On Nov. 21, the jury acquitted Mr. Johnson.

 

Jack Styczynski contributed research.

    N.Y.C. Police Maligned Paradegoers on Facebook, NYT, 5.12.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/nyregion/on-facebook-nypd-officers-malign-west-indian-paradegoers.html

Beyond the Record Lows,

Data on Police Shootings Offer a Wealth of Details

November 24, 2011
The New York Times
By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN

Last year, 52 officers from the New York Police Department fired a total of 236 bullets during confrontations with suspects. About half of the officers used a two-handed grip on their firearm, as the department encourages, while the others shot one-handed. And in a sign of just how tense these 33 separate shooting episodes were, and how rapidly they unfolded, only one officer reported using the gun’s sight before firing.

The department’s latest annual firearms-discharge report provides further evidence of the steep decline in shootings by the police in recent decades. It also catalogs a rich array of details gleaned from internal reviews of each shooting, in the hope of improving training for officers.

Among its findings, the report found that a greater percentage of shootings happen from a distance of 6 to 10 feet than from 1 to 5 feet. The report also notes that one officer fired from a distance of more than 50 feet and missed.

Still, the most significant lesson to be gleaned from the report is perhaps just how rare shootings have become.

The 33 instances in which an officer intentionally shot at a suspect last year represented a 30 percent decrease from the year before. But it reflected a far greater drop since the department began keeping these records in 1971, a year in which the police in New York City fatally shot 93 people and injured 221 others.

Last year, the police shot and killed 8 people and injured 16.

The Police Department said the 2010 statistics marked record lows.

“These figures are a testament to police officers’ restraint, diligence, and honorable performance of duty,” the report says. “But they also show that the drastic reduction in violent crime over the past decade has meant that criminals and police enter into conflict less often.”

The report briefly describes some of the shootings. In one case, four officers fired 46 times on two men at a Harlem block party; one man died, while the other lived after being struck by 23 bullets. In another case, an officer shot the leg of a 69-year-old man armed with a knife who had been released from prison a day earlier and had just tried to rob a bank.

Slightly more than half of the shootings occurred when officers were summoned by a 911 call. The next largest number — about 15 percent — happened after the police stopped someone on the street for questioning.

In two-thirds of the shootings, the police fired only when confronted by suspects carrying guns. In nine episodes, the suspects fired at the police. In two cases, the police believed that the suspects were drawing a firearm, although the report does not indicate whether they were actually armed.

In eight other cases, the suspects attacked or menaced officers with knives or blades. Most of the knife-wielders were people whom the police considered emotionally disturbed, and in several cases the police used pepper spray on them before firing.

Other cases were more difficult to categorize. In one case, a person attacked a police car with a cobblestone and later tried to seize an officer’s firearm. In another, the police shot and killed a man who was beating his mother with a frying pan.

“Restraint is the norm,” the report said, pointing out that a quarter of the officers who shot at suspects fired only a single bullet. The report also pointed out that the police responded to 206,874 radio calls involving reports of weapons, nearly all of which ended without the police firing a shot. In a force of 34,565 officers, only 00.15 percent intentionally fired at people last year, the report said.

Still, Christopher T. Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said, “Every shooting raises the question whether the cops needed to shoot.”

Mr. Dunn, whose organization’s request for the reports prompted the Police Department to release them in recent years, added, “That’s been a concern for years, since in about three-quarters of incidents, the cops are the only ones firing.”

In 2010, four officers were injured by gunfire during shootouts. Two were hurt by police bullets in the gun battle at the Harlem block party. One officer was shot three times when opening the door to the room of an armed suspect. Another officer was shot three times while pursuing an armed 17-year-old up a flight of stairs, the police said.

The report does not only consider shootings involving suspects. According to the report, there were 22 instances of unintentional discharges, including three in which officers accidentally fired while chasing suspects. There were also eight cases that the department found involving the unauthorized use of firearms. They included three suicides in which officers’ firearms were used, and two shootings that involved what the department described as personal disputes.

The report also considers 29 instances in which officers fired on dogs, and in one case, a raccoon.

    Beyond the Record Lows, Data on Police Shootings Offer a Wealth of Details, NYT, 24.11.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/25/nyregion/2010-ny-police-shooting-report-shows-record-lows.html

Brooklyn Detective

Convicted of Planting Drugs on Innocent People

November 1, 2011
The New York Times
By TIM STELLOH

The New York Police Department, already saddled with corruption scandals, saw its image further tainted on Tuesday with the conviction of a police detective for planting drugs on a woman and her boyfriend.

The bench verdict from Justice Gustin L. Reichbach in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn stemmed from incidents committed in 2007 by the defendant, Jason Arbeeny, a 14-year Police Department veteran.

But the case against Detective Arbeeny was rooted in a far larger tale of corruption in Police Department drug units: Several narcotics officers in Brooklyn have been caught mishandling drugs they seized as evidence, and hundreds of potentially tainted drug cases have been dismissed. The city has made payments to settle civil suits over wrongful incarcerations.

During the trial, prosecutors described the corruption within the Police Department drug units that Detective Arbeeny worked for; one former detective, who did not know the defendant, testified that officers in those units often planted drugs on innocent people. That former detective, Stephen Anderson, has pleaded guilty to official misconduct over a 2008 episode involving drug evidence and now faces two years to four years in prison.

The conviction of Detective Arbeeny on charges of falsifying business records, official misconduct and offering a false instrument for filing, was merely the latest example of police corruption, prosecutors said.

On Jan. 25, 2007, prosecutors said Detective Arbeeny planted a small bag of crack cocaine on two innocent people.

The detective’s lawyer, Michael Elbaz, tried to discredit the most important prosecution witnesses, Yvelisse DeLeon and her boyfriend, Juan Figueroa. Ms. DeLeon had testified that the couple drove up to their apartment building in Coney Island and were approached by two plainclothes police officers. She said she then saw Detective Arbeeny remove a bag of powder from his pocket and place it in the vehicle.

“He brought out his pocket,” Ms. DeLeon told the court. “He said, ‘Look what I find.’ It looked like little powder in a little bag.”

Later in 2007, the detective was accused of stealing multiple bags of cocaine from the prisoner van he had been assigned to; Justice Reichbach found Detective Arbeeny not guilty of those charges.

    Brooklyn Detective Convicted of Planting Drugs on Innocent People, NYT, 1.11.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/nyregion/brooklyn-detective-convicted-of-planting-drugs-on-innocent-people.html

Some Cities Begin Cracking Down on ‘Occupy’ Protests

October 27, 2011
The New York Times
By JESSE McKINLEY and ABBY GOODNOUGH

OAKLAND, Calif. — After weeks of cautiously accepting the teeming round-the-clock protests spawned by Occupy Wall Street, several cities have come to the end of their patience and others appear to be not far behind.

Here in Oakland, in a scene reminiscent of the antiwar protests of the 1960s, the police filled downtown streets with tear gas late Tuesday to stop throngs of protesters from re-entering a City Hall plaza that had been cleared of their encampment earlier in the day. And those protests, which resulted in more than 100 arrests and at least one life-threatening injury, appeared ready to ignite again on Wednesday night as supporters of the Occupy movement promised to retake the square. Early Wednesday evening, city officials were trying to defuse the situation, opening streets around City Hall, though the encampment site was still fenced off.

But after about an hour of speeches, the crowd removed the fences. The number of protesters swelled to about 3,000 people, but the demonstration remained peaceful. Leaders led a series of call-and-response chants. “Now the whole world is watching Oakland,” was one phrase that was repeated as passing cars honked in approval. That police had gone, compared with a heavy presence the night before.

The official protest broke up around 10 p.m. local time, peacefully, with protesters dancing, carrying American flags and generally celebrating what seemed to be a well-attended demonstration of some 3,000 people.

Shortly after the end of that protest, however, hundreds of demonstrators began to wander down Broadway, Oakland’s central thoroughfare, in an unplanned march. The Oakland police, who had been noticeably absent during the protests at City Hall, began donning protective riot gear as demonstrators upped their rhetoric and attempted to board San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit trains. Several entrances to the BART system were closed, agitating protesters and adding to an increasingly tense atmosphere in Oakland, which had exploded in violence a mere 24 hours before.

The impromptu march continued west toward Oakland’s waterfront as it became more apparent that there was little central organizing structure as the night grew later.

About 10:25 p.m., a crowd of a thousand protesters arrived at Oakland’s police headquarters and began milling about in front. Some attempted to put garbage cans in the street, while others beseeched the crowd to remain peaceful. The Oakland police manned the front door of their headquarters and maintained a loose perimeter.

Across the bay, meanwhile, in the usually liberal environs of San Francisco, city officials there had also seemingly hit their breaking point, warning several hundred protesters that they were in violation of the law by camping at a downtown site after voicing concerns about unhealthy and often squalid conditions in the camp, including garbage, vermin and human waste.

In Atlanta, Mayor Kasim Reed ordered the police to arrest more than 50 protesters early Wednesday and remove their tents from a downtown park after deciding that the situation had become unsafe, despite originally issuing executive orders to let them camp there overnight.

And like many of his mayoral colleagues nationwide, Mr. Reed openly expressed frustration with the protesters’ methods.

“The attitude I have seen here is not consistent with any civil rights protests I have seen in Atlanta,” Mr. Reed said in an interview, “and certainly not consistent with the most respected forms of civil disobedience.”

Similar confrontations could soon come to pass in other cities, including Providence, R.I., where Mayor Angel Taveras has vowed to seek a court order to remove protesters from Burnside Park, which they have occupied since Oct. 15.

And while other, bigger cities, including New York, Boston and Philadelphia, have taken a more tolerant view of the protests — for now — officials are still grappling with growing concerns about crime, sanitation and homelessness at the encampments. Even in Los Angeles, where the City Council passed a resolution in support of the protesters, Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa warned Wednesday that they would not be allowed to remain outside City Hall indefinitely.

Dot Joyce, a spokeswoman for Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston, echoed that. “It’s a daily assessment for us,” she said.

More and more, mayors across the country say they have found themselves walking a complex and politically delicate line: simultaneously wanting to respect the right to free speech and assembly, but increasingly concerned that the protests cannot stay orderly and safe.

“We can do lots of different things to help them on our end,” said Mr. Taveras, who estimates that roughly 200 people have camped out in Providence despite a city rule forbidding such behavior. “But we cannot allow an indefinite stay there, and we can’t allow them to continue to violate the law.”

The protests showed little sign of slacking. In Chicago, for example, demonstrators gathered Wednesday outside the office of Mayor Rahm Emanuel requesting 24-hour access to Grant Park and demanding that charges be dropped against the more than 300 protesters arrested there in the past weeks.

“He’s denying us our constitutional right to not only free speech, but peaceful continual assembly,” said Andy Manos, 32, one of the protesters.

Even in Democratic Chicago, officials seemed to straining to allow for dissent, while maintaining order. “We’ve been working hard to strike a balance,” said Chris Mather, a spokeswoman for Mr. Emanuel. Ms. Mather added that the mayor’s office had tried to set up meetings with protesters, who themselves said they were trying to find a permanent home for their demonstrations.

Indeed, some city officials said the tensions surrounding the Occupy protests have been increased by the fact that many of the groups involved have few recognized leaders.

“It’s a significant challenge to deal with their decision-making process,” said Richard Negrin, the managing director of Philadelphia, where tents form a protest village outside City Hall.

In Oakland, where one protester — Scott Olsen, an Iraq war veteran — was in critical condition at a local hospital after being struck in the head with a projectile during the chaotic street battle on Tuesday, city officials defended their actions, saying the police used tear gas after being pelted with rocks. The police are investigating what happened to Mr. Olsen.

As the protests continued, worries about possible violence percolated.

In Atlanta, Mr. Reed said the last straw came Tuesday, when he said a man with an AK-47 assault rifle joined the protesters in Woodruff Park. On Wednesday, after all protesters who had been arrested were released on bond, some said the man with the assault rifle — who was carrying it legally under Georgia law — was not part of their group and should not have been a factor in shutting them down. “We don’t even know that guy,” said Candi Cunard, 26.

Protest organizers said many of the troublemakers in Oakland and elsewhere were not part of the Occupy movement, but rather were anarchists or others with simply with a taste for mayhem.

“The people throwing things at police and being violent are not part of our ‘99 Percent’ occupation,” said Momo Aleamotua, 19, a student from Oakland. “They’re not us, and they’re not welcome.”

Still, the scenes of tear gas in the streets and provocative graffiti — including one spray-painted message reading “Kill Pigs” in Oakland — have been seized on by some Republicans to try to make the protests a political liability for Democrats.

On Tuesday, for example, the National Republican Senatorial Committee circulated a report that two people living in the Occupy Boston tent with a young child had been arrested for selling heroin, and paired it with comments from Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic contender for Senate from Massachusetts, in which she said that her work as a consumer advocate had helped inspire the Occupy movement.

“She’s not only standing with those breaking the law and being arrested,” the committee’s release read, “She’s actually taking credit for them.”

The fear that the group’s political message was being lost also resonated with Maria Gastelumendi, who runs a sandwich shop in downtown Oakland.

As a small-business owner, Ms. Gastelumendi said she supported the protests — “There’s been no bailout for us” — but worried that things might end badly. “The occupiers were very organized and very committed,” she said. “But there’s other people who are just opportunists.”

 

Jesse McKinley reported from Oakland, and Abby Goodnough from Providence, R.I. Reporting was contributed by Malia Wollan from Oakland, Ian Lovett from Los Angeles, Jess Bidgood from Boston, Robbie Brown from Atlanta, Kate Zernike from New York, and Steven Yaccino from Chicago.

    Some Cities Begin Cracking Down on ‘Occupy’ Protests, NYT, 27.10.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/us/oakland-and-other-cities-crack-down-on-occupy-protests.html

Detective Tells of Fatal Shots Fired at Car

October 26, 2011
The New York Times
By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN

Looking through the side window of Sean Bell’s crashed car, the detective grew alarmed as he saw a passenger reach for something. Then the man’s arm began to rise toward him. The detective said he surmised there was a gun at the end of that arm.

“I wasn’t going to wait for him to pull up, and, ‘Boom!’ ” the detective, Gescard F. Isnora, testified in a trial room at Police Headquarters on Wednesday. “I wasn’t going to wait for that. But me firing my weapon was the last thing I wanted to do.”

It was the first time that Detective Isnora publicly spoke of the early morning hours of Nov. 25, 2006, when he, three other detectives and an officer opened fire on a Nissan Altima outside Club Kalua in Jamaica, Queens. Fifty shots were fired, killing Mr. Bell, who was to be married that day, and wounding two passengers.

Neither Mr. Bell nor his passengers had a gun. Criminal charges were brought against Detective Isnora and two other detectives; a judge acquitted them at a trial in which none of the three testified.

At the departmental trial on Wednesday, Detective Isnora explained why he was compelled to fire 11 shots at the car. He also, for the first time, faced a public cross-examination.

“You didn’t see him with anything resembling a gun in his hand, correct?” asked Nancy Slater, a police prosecutor who conducted the cross-examination, referring to a passenger, Joseph Guzman.

Detective Isnora said that was true.

Her next question suggested that he had not seen anything at all in Mr. Guzman’s hand.

“Correct,” the detective said in a weak voice.

Detective Isnora’s account comes in the last round of official scrutiny he faces: a trial at which he risks losing his job. His testimony opened a window on the dangerous work done by undercover detectives and what they think and feel as they skulk through neighborhoods, trying to ensnare drug dealers or prostitutes.

The work had evidently worn down Detective Isnora, who, three months before the Bell shooting, sought to leave undercover work and return to patrol.

During his account of the shooting, Detective Isnora spoke cautiously, preferring short explanations to long ones.

He explained that his decision to confront Mr. Bell’s car and then start firing occurred over “a series of seconds” — suggesting that it was difficult to explain in retrospect. “I don’t want you to get confused,” he said as his lawyer elicited his testimony.

He explained that he had heard Mr. Guzman yell outside the Kalua Club, a strip club, that he was going to retrieve a gun — a threat issued during an argument with another man. The detective said he followed Mr. Guzman, Mr. Bell and a third person in their party, Trent Benefield, to Mr. Bell’s car. He testified that based on Mr. Guzman’s threat to get a gun, he believed the men were planning a drive-by shooting in front of the club.

“If you say it, chances are you are going to do it,” he testified, explaining that in his experience in the streets such threats were not idly made.

By the time Detective Isnora got to Mr. Bell’s Nissan, he said, he had pinned his gold shield to his collar and had drawn his gun. He yelled out that he was a police officer and ordered the car not to move, he testified.

But the car came forward, clipping his leg. Then it struck an unmarked police van, before backing into a gate.

Detective Isnora said he looked inside the passenger window.

“I see Joseph Guzman reaching toward something,” he recalled. “He’s bringing it up.”

“As he’s bringing it up, I yell, ‘Gun,’ and I fire into center mass” of Mr. Guzman, he said.

Detective Isnora said a number of factors had led him to believe that Mr. Guzman had a gun in hand; among those were Mr. Guzman’s threat to retrieve a gun and Mr. Bell’s efforts to drive away when Detective Isnora confronted the car.

During a pause in the testimony, Detective Isnora looked mostly at the ceiling and the far side of the trial room, where representatives from the detectives’ union sat. He did not look at Mr. Bell’s fiancée, Nicole Paultre Bell.

“To me it seems like the detective was paranoid and we are here because of his mistakes, his error,” Ms. Paultre Bell said after the hearing. “So now Sean is no longer here.”

    Detective Tells of Fatal Shots Fired at Car, NYT, 26.10.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/27/nyregion/detective-tells-of-decision-to-fire-at-sean-bells-car.html

8 City Officers Charged in Gun Smuggling Case

October 25, 2011
The New York Times
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN

Eight current and former New York police officers were arrested on Tuesday and charged in federal court with accepting thousands of dollars in cash to drive a caravan of firearms into the state, an act of corruption that brazenly defied the city’s strenuous efforts to get illegal guns off the streets.

The officers — five are still on the force, and three are retired — and four other men were accused of transporting M-16 rifles and handguns, as well as what they believed to be stolen merchandise across state lines, according to a complaint filed in the case in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

The current and retired officers, most of whom at one time or another worked in the same Brooklyn station house, were arrested at their homes before sunrise by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and investigators from the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau, officials said. Also arrested were a New Jersey correction officer, a former New York City Sanitation Department police officer and two men identified in the complaint as his associates.

The gun-trafficking accusations strike at the heart of one of the Police Department’s most hard-fought and robust initiatives, and one that has been a central theme of the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg: getting guns off the city’s streets. Mr. Bloomberg is the head of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a coalition of 600 municipal chief executives from around the nation.

And the arrests come at a difficult time for a department, the largest municipal police force in the nation, already besieged by corruption accusations. In recent weeks, testimony at the trial of a narcotics detective has featured accusations that he and his colleagues in Brooklyn and Queens planted drugs or lied under oath to meet arrest quotas and earn overtime, leading to the arrests of eight officers, the dismissal of hundreds of drug cases because of their destroyed credibility and the payout of more than $1 million in taxpayer money to settle false arrest lawsuits.

Two other officers, in unrelated federal cases, have been charged in recent weeks with criminal civil-rights violations accusing them of trumping up charges against innocent victims. In one case, on Staten Island, a white officer is accused of falsely arresting a black man and then bragging about it using a racial slur. And in the coming days, 16 officers are expected to face charges in a ticket-fixing scandal in the Bronx.

Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, announced the charges at a news conference with the head of the criminal division of New York’s F.B.I. office, Diego Rodriguez, and the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly.

Janice K. Fedarcyk, the assistant F.B.I. director in charge of the New York office, who was out of town on business, said in a prepared statement that the investigation began in 2009. “These crimes are without question reprehensible, particularly conspiring to import untraceable guns and assault rifles into New York,” Ms. Fedarcyk said.

In an ironic twist, the new case began after an F.B.I. confidential informant sought to have a traffic ticket fixed in exchange for payment. He was introduced to one of the officers, William Masso, 47, according to the complaint. They developed a relationship, and Officer Masso began expressing interest in working with the informant to obtain and sell contraband, largely cigarettes.

It grew into a yearlong undercover operation conducted by its agents and investigators from the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau, with wiretaps on the phones of Officer Masso, the former Sanitation Department officer and four undercover agents, said the complaint, which was sworn out by Kenneth Hosey, an F.B.I. special agent.

The charges include conspiracy to transport firearms across state lines, conspiracy to transport defaced firearms across state lines, conspiracy to sell firearms across state lines and conspiracy to transport and receive stolen property across state lines, according to the complaint.

Most of the initial trips, in October and November 2010, involved ferrying cigarettes into New York. As months went by, the cargo would also include what the officers believed to be stolen or counterfeit goods, including slot machines, clothing and handbags, and eventually the firearms. In addition, one of the officers, along with two co-defendants, sold a shotgun to an undercover F.B.I. agent in July.

As of late Tuesday afternoon, lawyers for the men were not available for comment.

The accusations leveled against the men in the four-count complaint depict the current and former officers and their co-defendants as little more than a loose confederation of petty crooks.

One of the officers, Ali Oklu, 35, suggested at one point that there were certain things he would not do. “As long as we’re not tying anybody up, I don’t care,” he said in a conversation that the undercover agent secretly recorded after Officer Oklu was paid $15,000 for his role in helping steal 200 cases of cigarettes with several other officers in a sting the F.B.I. arranged in May. He added that he did not care “as long as there’s no drugs and guns involved..”

Four months later, on Sept. 22, the undercover agent paid Officer Oklu, three other current officers, two of their retired colleagues and two of the other men $2,000 to $5,000 to transport 22 weapons, including three M-16 assault rifles and 16 handguns from New Jersey to New York, according to the complaint. The weapons, which were provided by the undercover agent, were inoperable, but the defendants knew that the serial numbers on many of the guns were defaced, according to the complaint, which prevents them from being traced to their source if used in a crime.

In a statement, Mayor Bloomberg said that if the charges proved true, the officers’ actions “would be a disgraceful and deplorable betrayal of the public trust,” noting that the city “has lost too many people — and too many police officers — to criminals who buy guns illegally.”

The mayor and Commissioner Kelly each defended the department, suggesting that the rogue actions of a few officers did not impeach the entire force.

“The sad reality is that some people are going to violate their oath of office,” Mr. Kelly said at the news conference, adding: “I would submit to you that it is a very small minority. But if you had 1 percent of 50,000 people you would have 500 people.”

In addition to Officers Oklu and Masso, the current police officers charged in the case are Gary Ortiz, 27, of Brooklyn; Eddie Goris, 31, of Queens; and John Mahoney, 26, of Staten Island. The retired officers are Joseph Trischitta and Richard Melnik, both 42 and of Staten Island, and Marco Venezia, 46, of Brooklyn. Officers Masso, Goris and Mahoney work in the 68th Precinct in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn.

The three retired officers worked at the 68th Precinct when they retired.

Also charged were David Kanwisher, 38, of Tuckerton, N.J., a correction officer in New Jersey; Anthony Santiago, 45, of Tuckerton, a former officer with the New York City Sanitation Department police, and two of his associates, Michael Gee, 40, and Eric Gomer, 28, both of Staten Island.

 

Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.

    8 City Officers Charged in Gun Smuggling Case, NYT, 25.10.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/nyregion/new-york-officers-accused-of-smuggling-guns.html

Commander Who Pepper-Sprayed Protesters

Faces Disciplinary Charge

October 18, 2011
The New York Times
By AL BAKER

A New York police commander who pepper-sprayed protesters during the opening days of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations last month faces an internal disciplinary charge that could cost him 10 vacation days, the police said Tuesday.

The commander, Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, has been given a so-called command discipline, according to a law enforcement official. Officials said investigators found that the inspector ran afoul of Police Department rules for the use of the spray. The department’s patrol guide, its policy manual, says pepper spray should be used primarily to control a suspect who is resisting arrest, or for protection; it does allow for its use in “disorder control,” but only by officers with special training.

The Internal Affairs Bureau reviewed the episode and found that Inspector Bologna “used pepper spray outside departmental guidelines,” said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman. He declined to elaborate.

The inspector can accept the charge and plead guilty, or he can opt for a departmental trial. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly is the ultimate arbiter of punishment in such matters and has wide leeway in his decisions.

Inspector Bologna’s actions on Sept. 24, when he sprayed several penned-in women, were captured on video and spread widely on the Internet. It became a defining moment in the protests.

Four days later, Mr. Kelly said the Internal Affairs Bureau would look into the inspector’s actions. At the same time, the Manhattan district attorney’s office opened an investigation. On Monday, one woman who was pepper-sprayed, accompanied by her lawyer, met with prosecutors and urged them to bring criminal charges against the inspector.

Mr. Browne could not immediately say where the commander is now assigned. But Deputy Inspector Roy T. Richter, the head of the Captains Endowment Association, said he was still assigned to the same command.

“Deputy Inspector Bologna is disappointed at the results of the department investigation,” Inspector Richter said. “His actions prevented further injury and escalation of tumultuous conduct. To date, this conduct has not been portrayed in its true context.”

On Tuesday afternoon, a few hundred people marched to the offices of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., calling for him to drop criminal charges against people arrested during the protests.

After leaving the district attorney’s office, about 200 people marched to Skylight Studios on Hudson Street, where Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo received an award from the Huffington Post. The protestors said they wanted the governor to support retention of the so-called millionaire tax.

The feminist author Naomi Wolf, who was among the group, was handcuffed and received a summons for blocking pedestrian traffic, the police said.

 

Colin Moynihan and Elizabeth A. Harris contributed reporting.

    Commander Who Pepper-Sprayed Protesters Faces Disciplinary Charge, NYT, 18.10.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/
    nyregion/commander-who-pepper-sprayed-wall-street-protesters-faces-disciplinary-charges.html

Response of the Police Is Expanding With Protests

October 11, 2011
The New York Times
By KIRK JOHNSON

DENVER — Whatever the original impulse behind “Occupy Wall Street,” or the speculation of what the movement might become, this much is true: The groups of protesters, now camping or hanging out in many American cities, and the police agencies that have responsibility for public safety and order, are both shifting into new postures of action and response.

Whether that evolving chemistry will push things toward more confrontation remains unclear. But the combination — new participants, new police tactics — is clearly opening an uncertain chapter in a story that from its inception has embraced the notion of unplanned, unscripted civil action.

People like Darrel Egemo, 75, a former money manager, are part of this new ferment. Mr. Egemo came to the protests, now in their third week, on the grounds of the State Capitol here for the first time on Tuesday.

“I decided they needed one person in a necktie and sport coat,” Mr. Egemo said, looking dapper as he waved a sign to motorists, reading, “Integrity sold short by greed.”

Larger numbers are pushing protesters into new areas as well, raising tensions.

In Boston early Tuesday morning, about 100 protesters were arrested when the group expanded from its previous area in the center of Dewey Square in the financial district to a nearby part of the Rose Kennedy Greenway, part of the necklace of open park space through downtown.

By Tuesday morning, protesters were in sharp disagreement at their general assembly meeting whether the group should have expanded its turf, and whether it had been a collective decision.

“More people are coming, we’re not shrinking,” said Philip Anderson, an unemployed recent college graduate who has been acting as a spokesman. “If we grow into a place they don’t want us, it may come to another standoff like last night. We hope they don’t make the decision to use violence against us, but we’ll have to deal with whatever happens as it comes up.”

In Los Angeles, where protesters as recently as last week were dominated by young people in what seemed a tie-dye and guitar-circle subculture, a second wave of older protesters and homeless people has gravitated toward the encampment at City Hall, demonstrators said.

Elise Whitaker, 21, a freelance script editor and assistant film director, said she thought it was about technology — older protesters took longer to tune in to the gatherings, she said, which had been organized largely through Internet social networks.

“It is the youth who spend the majority of our time on Facebook and Twitter,” she said. “That’s why we knew about it first.”

In Seattle, officials began on Monday pressuring protesters to relocate to City Hall from Westlake Park, in the busy downtown shopping district, after what had been a mostly peaceful, if statutorily illegal standoff.

The police showed up at 10 p.m. Monday and announced that the park was closed for the night, said Gabriel Bell, a volunteer legal adviser for Occupy Seattle. Anyone who stayed was at risk of being arrested, they were warned. After a fourth announcement at 11 p.m., Mr. Bell said, the protesters went across the street to avoid arrest. Many slept in doorways of nearby businesses, but the police kept their flashing lights going all night, making it difficult to sleep, protesters said.

Shifting coalitions and alliances are also complicating the internal politics of the protest movement.

In Chicago, for example, protesters from Occupy Chicago joined forces on Tuesday with members of Action Now, a group concerned with vacant lots in the city’s South and West Side neighborhoods.

The combined groups piled at least a dozen garbage bags on the sidewalk in front of the Bank of America building in the Chicago Loop, along with couches and other trash that they said had been pulled from a foreclosed property. Five women, ranging in age from 56 to 80, were arrested there after they went inside the bank lobby and scattered trash.

In Washington, where disparate groups of protesters with overlapping agendas from pacifism to poverty have been demonstrating in recent days, members of a group called Veterans for Peace joined in on Tuesday, crowding the atrium of the Hart Senate Office Building, which they entered a few at a time before unfurling colorful banners and an upside-down American flag.

“We want to stop the financial influence on our government and we want our people to be taken care of,” said Leah Bolger, national vice president of Veterans for Peace.

In some places, the new alliances are making for some fine-point factional clarification. A spokesman for Occupy Chicago, Micah Philbrook, emphasized that his group had voted to join a week of protests organized by a coalition called Stand Up Chicago, but had not become members of that coalition in participating in Tuesday’s activities, including the one at the Bank of America.

“We don’t want people to think that we are being co-opted by other movements,” Mr. Philbrook said. “Occupy Chicago, like all the Occupy movements, stands apart from any political parties, stands apart from any existing movement.”

A sometimes tentative police response is adding its own element to the mix. In Atlanta, protesters were warned by the police on Tuesday that if, at 11 p.m., they were still in Woodruff Park, a small oasis in the heart of downtown, they would be arrested. Anyone who does not want to be arrested can simply leave the park, the police said. But protesters said they were told the same thing on Monday. Instead, dozens of police officers showed up but made no arrests.

The protesters also seem to have significant numbers of uncounted allies, silent or on the sidelines, at least for now.

Daniel Eavenson, an engineer in Chicago, said he had only been “witnessing.”

“There are millions of us watching online and sending out our hope,” he said.

In New York, a “Millionaire’s March” of about 400 people affiliated with Occupy Wall Street wound its way through Upper East Side on Tuesday afternoon, with participants protesting outside the homes of financial titans, including JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, the media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the industrialist David H. Koch.

The march was peaceful, if noisy, with protesters chanting, trumpeting and drumming their way along Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue under the watchful gaze of dozens of police officers and doormen like John Tima, who stood at the entry to 791 Park Avenue.

“What are they going to accomplish out of this? What’s going to happen, higher taxes for rich people? O.K.,” he shrugged.

Reporting was contributed by Jess Bidgood from Boston, Ian Lovett from Los Angeles, Jada F. Smith from Washington, Stacey Solie from Seattle, Dan Frosch from Denver, Steven Yaccino from Chicago, Robbie Brown from Atlanta, and Rob Harris and Cara Buckley from New York.

    Response of the Police Is Expanding With Protests, NYT, 11.10.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/us/police-response-expands-with-protests.html

Hunting a Murder Suspect on His Own Tough Turf

September 28, 2011
The New York Times
By TIM STELLOH

FORT BRAGG, Calif. — In the ominous photograph, Aaron Bassler’s pants appear ripped and soiled. With his left hand, he is reaching through a window; in his right hand is a black semiautomatic assault rifle.

The image, recently snapped by a surveillance camera at a cabin that the police believe was burglarized, is the latest sighting of Mr. Bassler, 35, a local man wanted in connection with two murders here.

For the last month, Mr. Bassler, whom relatives describe as mentally ill, has eluded the police by nimbly traversing a large swath of forest land in Mendocino County, an isolated area three hours north of San Francisco. It is the most intensive manhunt ever undertaken by the sheriff’s office, said Sheriff Tom Allman.

“Mr. Bassler has lived in this area for close to 30 years,” said Sheriff Allman, who presented the photograph at a news conference at the Fort Bragg Police Department on Monday. “We are in his territory. He knows the trails. He knows the bushes. He knows the hiding spots.”

The manhunt, which has sent aerial surveillance, K-9 units and anywhere from 30 to 60 local, state and federal law enforcement officers daily into a 400-square-mile area that is marked by dense brush, towering redwoods and the occasional cabin, has shaken this coastal city of 7,000.

“The victims are gone, but the fact that he’s still at large is driving people crazy,” said Jim Muto, 64, the owner of V’Canto, a restaurant in Fort Bragg. “They’re very uneasy about it.”

Officers in camouflage regalia are often seen around Fort Bragg, wanted posters hang in gas stations and convenience stores, hikers and hunters have been advised to stay out of the forest, and the city’s middle school was locked down after the police received a tip that Mr. Bassler had been seen in the area (he was not found).

“People are anxious,” said Dan Gjerde, a City Council member. “They’re waiting for resolution.”

The manhunt began after Jere Melo, a prominent council member and a former two-term mayor, was shot and killed around 10 a.m. on Aug. 27.

That Saturday morning, Mr. Melo, 69, who had also worked as a forester since the 1960s, was walking in the deep woods as he often did for his job, said his son, Greg Melo: after being contacted by a property owner who believed someone was growing marijuana nearby on private timberland, Mr. Melo went to check on it.

Once he had GPS coordinates for the garden, he planned on sending them to law enforcement, his son said.

He did not find any marijuana. But Mr. Melo, who was accompanied by a friend, soon encountered Mr. Bassler, said Sheriff’s Sgt. Gregory Van Patten.

Mr. Bassler darted from the brush, shouted at the men, then opened fire, Sergeant Van Patten said. Mr. Melo was killed by multiple shots from a high-powered rifle.

“He didn’t have a chance. He probably died before he hit the ground,” Sergeant Van Patten said, adding that it was unclear why Mr. Bassler had attacked the men.

The friend, who knew Mr. Bassler and has not been identified because of safety concerns, escaped after waving down a service vehicle for a train that ferries tourists through the forest, said Mr. Melo’s son, who spoke with the friend.

Shortly after, the police connected Mr. Bassler to a second killing: on Aug. 11, Matthew Coleman, 45, also a forester, was found dead outside his car on a rural property more than a dozen miles north of Fort Bragg.

Mr. Coleman, who was working in the area, was killed by multiple gunshots. The authorities found Mr. Bassler’s DNA at the crime scene.

After Mr. Melo was shot, Mr. Bassler disappeared into the rugged forest land, where, said his father, James Bassler, he had lived for several months.

Officers have found possible evidence of Aaron Bassler’s movements — burglarized cabins, ammunition caches and burnt-out campfires. The authorities believe that a poppy garden that was discovered near where Mr. Melo was killed belonged to Mr. Bassler.

The only other confirmed sighting of Mr. Bassler, besides the photograph, was on Sept. 4, when the police spotted him near his mother’s home in Fort Bragg, Sergeant Van Patten said. Though chased by a police dog, Mr. Bassler escaped into thick brush.

Last month’s murders came after more than a decade of erratic and strange behavior by Mr. Bassler, his father said.

Though Aaron Bassler seemed normal growing up — he played baseball and had a circle of friends — by the mid-1990s he had changed, James Bassler said.

“He didn’t have any empathy,” his father said. “He just sort of flat-lined.”

He destroyed a vegetable garden while trying to kill gophers, his father said. He drew aliens on the wall. He stole sugar and liquor from his father. Distrustful of his gas stove, he began cooking outside.

Though James Bassler does not believe his son has ever gotten a diagnosis or been medicated — due to privacy laws, he has not been able to find out — he believes such behavior indicates mental illness.

A string of arrests dating to the mid-1990s — many of them for minor, nonviolent crimes, his father said — includes one bizarre incident in February 2009: Mr. Bassler was arrested after throwing a bag containing a black jumpsuit with red stars over a wall of the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco, according to a complaint filed in Federal District Court there.

At the news conference, Mr. Allman said revelations that Mr. Bassler could be mentally ill had not changed law enforcement’s approach to the manhunt.

“The tactics are: safely apprehend a man in the woods with a rifle,” he said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 28, 2011

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article incorrectly attributed a statement characterizing Aaron Bassler's earlier arrests as for minor, nonviolent crimes to Sergeant Van Patten.

    Hunting a Murder Suspect on His Own Tough Turf, NYT, 28.9.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/29/us/hunting-for-aaron-bassler-a-murder-suspect-on-his-own-tough-turf.html

Wall Street Demonstrations Test Police

Trained for Bigger Threats

September 26, 2011
The New York Times
By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN

When members of the loose protest movement known as Occupy Wall Street began a march from the financial district to Union Square on Saturday, the participants seemed relatively harmless, even as they were breaking the law by marching in the street without a permit.

But to the New York Police Department, the protesters represented something else: a visible example of lawlessness akin to that which had resulted in destruction and violence at other anticapitalist demonstrations, like the Group of 20 economic summit meeting in London in 2009 and the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999.

The Police Department’s concerns came up against a perhaps milder reality on Saturday, when their efforts to maintain crowd control suddenly escalated: protesters were corralled by police officers who put up orange mesh netting; the police forcibly arrested some participants; and a deputy inspector used pepper spray on four women who were on the sidewalk, behind the orange netting.

The police’s actions suggested the flip side of a force trained to fight terrorism, in a city whose police commissioner acknowledges the ownership of a gun big enough to take down a plane, but that may appear less nimble in dealing with the likes of the Wall Street protesters. So even as the members of Occupy Wall Street seem unorganized and, at times, uninformed, their continued presence creates a vexing problem for the Police Department.

In recent weeks, police commanders have been discussing the riots in London this summer, and strategizing how they would stop a similar situation in New York, said Roy Richter, the president of the union in New York that represents officers of captain and higher rank. And since August, investigators with the Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have monitored the online efforts of activists to bring demonstrations to Wall Street, people briefed on the matter said.

The Police Department conducts an internal review of its response to every large-scale demonstration, and the protest on Saturday appeared to have resulted in the largest number of arrests since the demonstrations surrounding the Republican National Convention in 2004. The events of Saturday are certain to be examined, especially since so many protesters were recording the events with cameras; videos of the pepper spray episode, for example, offered views from several angles.

Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, defended the use of pepper spray as appropriate and added that it was “used sparingly.”

But Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr., chairman of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee, said that in the video clips he had seen, the use of pepper spray “didn’t look good,” although Mr. Vallone cautioned that he wanted to know if any interactions had occurred between the officers and the women in the minutes before pepper spray was used.

“If no prior verbal command was given and disobeyed, then the use of spray in that instance is completely inappropriate,” Mr. Vallone said. On Monday, several Web sites identified the supervising officer who used the pepper spray as Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, a longtime commander in Manhattan. Like a number of other officers, Inspector Bologna is a defendant in lawsuits claiming wrongful arrests at protests staged during the Republican National Convention in 2004..

A police official who had spoken to Inspector Bologna following the incident confirmed that the inspector had used the spray. “He did his job and now he’s concerned for the safety of his family,” said the official, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to confirm the inspector’s name.

According to the Police Department’s patrol guide, officers may use pepper spray under certain conditions, including “when a member reasonably believes it is necessary to effect an arrest of a resisting suspect.” The guide also advises that the spray should “not be used in situations that do not require the use of physical force.”

The Civilian Complaint Review Board, an independent agency that investigates allegations of police misconduct, received 328 complaints in 2010 relating to the use of pepper spray, accounting for about 5.5 percent of the total number of complaints citing improper use of force.

In the past week, the review board has received more than a dozen complaints relating to officers’ interactions with protesters, said a spokeswoman for the board, Linda Sachs.

Although the Police Department has closely monitored the encampment of protesters in the Financial District and stationed officers there, there appears to have been little discussion between the police and the protesters.

Mr. Browne, the police spokesman said that the protesters never sought a permit for Saturday’s march.

The lack of communication between the two sides may have set the stage for the confrontation on Saturday near Union Square.

When groups have permits, “the department is pretty accommodating when it comes to street marches,” said Christopher T. Dunn, associate legal director for the New York Civil Liberties Union. He added that some groups had perfectly good reasons for not wanting to engage with the police, and “that’s certainly their prerogative.”

In interviews, police officials described the lack of a permit and the fact that protesters were obstructing traffic as key factors in the arrests and the department’s decision to end the march.

“If you have a permit, the police will accommodate for things like diverting traffic,” Mr. Browne said. “If you take a street for a parade or protest without a permit, you are subject to arrest.”

Mr. Richter, of the police union, said that from the perspective of the protesters, the Police Department’s decision to suddenly end the demonstration might have appeared arbitrary.

“I can see it from a demonstrator’s view, asking, ‘What changed?’ ” Mr. Richter said. “But there comes a point when the command staff makes a decision that the crowd is too big, and we’re at a breaking point, and we have to take back the street.”

    Wall Street Demonstrations Test Police Trained for Bigger Threats, NYT, 26.9.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/nyregion/wall-street-demonstrations-test-police-trained-for-bigger-threats.html

The Truth Behind Stop-and-Frisk

September 2, 2011
The New York Times

Judge Shira Scheindlin of Federal District Court in New York made the right call when she refused to dismiss a lawsuit against the New York City Police Department, which alleged that officers use race as a basis for stopping and frisking citizens, rather than reasonable suspicion. The trial will provide an important opportunity to evaluate this increasingly troubling program, which resulted in 600,000 people being stopped on the streets last year alone.

The stop-and-frisk tactic is as old as policing itself. But it has been a central law enforcement tool in New York since the 1990’s, when the police adopted the “broken windows” approach, clamping down on minor crime and emphasizing preventive measures against lawbreaking.

New York has experienced a dramatic reduction in crime. But as Judge Scheindlin pointed out, there is no conclusive proof that widespread use of stop-and-frisk itself drove down crime. Crime fell in many cities, including those that did not adopt the approach.

There is no dispute that minorities are disproportionately singled out. Blacks and Hispanics make up a little more than half of the city’s population but about 85 percent of the people stopped. Supporters of the program argue that minority men are disproportionately represented among offenders as well. But analyses dating back more than a decade have shown that it is not so simple.

As Judge Scheindlin notes in her opinion, a report by the legal scholar Jeffrey Fagan found that blacks and Latinos were more likely to be stopped at police discretion, not just in high-crime, high-minority areas, but in districts where crime is minimal and populations are mixed.

Police officials say that officers stop people when they have reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. An analysis last year by The Times of street stops in one mainly black Brooklyn neighborhood found that officers listed vague reasons in half the stops, including “furtive movement,” a category that can be used to mask harassment.

The Fagan report found that arrests are made in less than 6 percent of all street stops — a lower rate than if the police simply set up random checkpoints. Less than 1 percent of stops turned up weapons. This suggests that hundreds of thousands of people, mostly minorities, have been stopped for no legitimate reason — or worse, because of the color of their skin.

The Police Department says it has a training program that explains proper arrest procedure and warns officers against racial profiling. But Judge Scheindlin was sharply critical of those efforts, noting that numerous officers did not recall ever receiving such training.

In rejecting the city’s request for dismissal, Judge Scheindlin rightly pointed out that the suit, brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights, raises issues of great public concern. New Yorkers need to know whether the Police Department has failed to properly train and monitor its officers to prevent race-based stops.

    The Truth Behind Stop-and-Frisk, NYT, 2.9.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/03/opinion/the-truth-behind-stop-and-frisk.html

Police Dept. Reviews Unsolved Rapes for Ties to Officer

August 25, 2011
The New York Times
By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN and AL BAKER

The police are investigating whether a New York City police officer, already charged with raping a woman last week at gunpoint in Upper Manhattan, may be responsible for other unsolved sex attacks, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said on Thursday.

The officer, Michael Pena, 27, a patrol officer in the 33rd Precinct, is accused of grabbing a 25-year-old teacher off the street, leading her to a building’s backyard in Inwood and raping her there.

When officers from the 34th Precinct, who received a 911 call from a resident who saw the attack from her window, arrived, Officer Pena and the woman were standing in the yard, and the woman ran over and said he had raped her, officials said. The officers handcuffed him and found his police identification and badge in his pocket and his gun on the ground next to him.

Since his arrest, several law enforcement officials said investigators had zeroed in on a few unsolved cases to see if Officer Pena’s DNA matched samples in those rapes. Detectives have been looking through sketches of rape suspects, comparing them with Officer Pena, who is being held on $500,000 bail.

The authorities have not received any indication whether biological evidence links the officer to past crimes.

Mr. Kelly confirmed that investigators had focused on a few specific unsolved crimes, but he would not discuss why those cases were being looked at, or identify where they occurred. He said the unsolved crimes all occurred since Officer Pena joined the Police Department three years ago.

“They have picked out some that they think have potential for having been perpetrated by this individual,” the commissioner said after a promotion ceremony at Police Headquarters.

“This is a very, very disturbing case,” he said. “We’ve looked at other incidents to see if this individual may be involved; that part of the investigation is certainly still going forward.”

He added that it was “very disturbing that anyone with that tendency, or that potential, that capability at all, is a member of the New York City Police Department.”

Investigators said the nature of the attack had the earmarks of a repeat predator.

“I think that if you throw out the fact that he is a cop — take it out of your mind that he is a cop, and you have a cop who would rape a woman, a stranger like that — you have to think it is not a one-time thing,” said one law enforcement member who insisted on anonymity because the investigation is ongoing. “It’s not like any other kind of crime.”

In any case of this kind, the authorities would compare the suspect’s DNA against a vast pool of DNA samples collected from victims or locations in past, unsolved rape cases.

Mr. Kelly said psychologists were asked if the nature of last Friday’s sexual assault suggested that it was the work of someone who had committed a similar act before.

“They believe that it certainly is possible, that something else happened in the past; that it was not the first time,” the commissioner said. “But so far we cannot say with any sort of certitude that there was another incident.”

Juan A. Campos, Mr. Pena’s lawyer, has repeatedly said he has no knowledge that his client is suspected of being involved in other crimes.

Mr. Campos said he met Wednesday with prosecutors and was not informed that Officer Pena was being examined in connection to any other case.

“I’ll be shocked if there’s anything else,” Mr. Campos said in a telephone interview on Thursday morning. “As far as I know, this is his one and only arrest, and he’s had no other problems with the law ever.”

Officer Pena’s appearance had undergone a change in the last month: he had recently grown a beard. The department generally bans beards, except when they are required for religious reasons, undercover work or perhaps a skin condition. Officer Pena had sought permission for a beard because of a shaving-related skin irritation, Mr. Browne said, and received approval from the Department’s medical division about two weeks ago.

William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.

    Police Dept. Reviews Unsolved Rapes for Ties to Officer, NYT, 25.8.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/nyregion/nypd-reviews-unsolved-rapes-for-ties-to-officer.html

New York Police Officer Charged With Rape While Off Duty

August 19, 2011
The New York Times
By AL BAKER

An off-duty New York City police officer was arrested in Upper Manhattan on Friday after he grabbed a woman who was on her way to work, showed her he had a gun and raped her in the backyard of a nearby building, the police said.

The officer, Michael V. Pena, 27, was suspended without pay and stripped of his gun and badge after he was arrested about 6:30 a.m. by officers from the 34th Precinct who had responded to a 911 call from a neighbor awoken by the noise, the police said. He was charged with forcible rape, the officials said.

Officer Pena, a three-year member of the force who has been assigned to the 33rd Precinct since January, lives in Yonkers and had last worked a midnight shift that ended at 8 a.m. Thursday, said Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman. He was due back at work on Saturday.

The woman, a 25-year-old teacher, told the police that she was on her way to work in the Bronx when a man who appeared to be intoxicated approached her near her home in Inwood and asked for directions to the No. 1 train, Mr. Browne said.

At one point, the man put his arm around her, opened his jacket, pointed at a pistol that was on his belt, and said, “ ‘You’re coming with me,’ ” Mr. Browne said.

The man, who was not believed to have identified himself as a police officer, led the woman along for two to three blocks “under threat,” Mr. Brown said. He turned into a backyard behind a residential building near Park Terrace West and West 217th Street, then raped her, Mr. Browne said.

A woman who lives in the building was awoken by the noise and looked outside to see what was happening. “She felt it just didn’t look consensual to her,” Mr. Browne said. About two minutes later, a man walking in the area came upon the attacker, whose pants were down, the police said. He excused himself, apparently believing he had interrupted a consensual encounter. When two uniformed officers arrived, within three minutes of the 911 call, they saw the attacker and the woman standing in the backyard, “and the victim ran to the police officers and said, ‘He raped me; be careful, he has a gun,’ ” Mr. Browne said.

The officers handcuffed the man and called an ambulance, which took the woman to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. As the police searched the man, they found his police identification and his badge in his pocket, Mr. Browne said.

“And his gun was on the ground next to him,” Mr. Browne said, referring to a loaded 9-millimeter Glock pistol.

Additional charges against the officer were pending, the police said.

    New York Police Officer Charged With Rape While Off Duty, NYT, 19.8.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/nyregion/off-duty-new-york-city-police-officer-charged-with-rape.html

Police Seek New Ways to Defuse Tension

May 22, 2011
The New York Times

By ERICA GOODE

LOS ANGELES — When the police arrived, she was barricaded inside her apartment with her former girlfriend, threatening suicide, a gun in her hand.

“Let your hostage go!” one of the officers shouted.

It was the beginning of a seven-hour standoff that brought out the SWAT team and the Fire Department, cost the City of Los Angeles tens of thousands of dollars and could well have ended in lost lives.

But three years later, when two Los Angeles police officers interviewed the woman, Shawn Baxendale, in prison, she told them the police could have handled the situation better. The use of the word “hostage” by the first officers at the scene, she told them, stunned her — her ex-girlfriend had insisted on staying and could have left at any time, she said — and it made her feel that she had no options left.

“At this point I’m thinking, there’s no going back,” Ms. Baxendale said.

The interview, recorded on videotape, is part of an unusual project started by the two officers, Detective Teresa Irvin and Officer Michael Baker, to gain insight into the mind-set of people involved in potentially violent encounters with the police.

They hope the information gained from the interviews — they have conducted about 40 over the last four years — will help law enforcement officers, especially those who are the first to respond to a scene, learn to diffuse volatile moments rather than escalating them.

“Cops like to solve things right away,” said Officer Baker, a senior SWAT team negotiator who in more than 25 years on the force has responded to hundreds of “barricade” situations. “But I think that attitude sometimes causes a response that isn’t appropriate.”

“Just the way you approach a situation verbally or with your body language can put people on the defensive,” Officer Baker said. “It’s been my experience from talking to people that a lot of them get scared, and that’s why they react the way they do.”

The interview project began informally. In 2007, Detective Irvin, a field supervisor with the Mental Health Evaluation Unit who has been with the department 18 years, started following up on some cases, visiting people at their homes, in prison or in psychiatric hospitals and asking them what led them to such drastic actions and how the police could have handled the situation better.

Although police officers held debriefings to discuss how operations were handled, Detective Irvin said, “We were never going back and actually speaking to the subject. It was incredible, the amount of information they would actually provide to us.”

Detective Irvin and Officer Baker have been asked to speak about the project at law enforcement conferences and military training programs and have been contacted by police departments interested in doing similar interviews themselves. They are developing a training program for the Los Angeles department.

The Los Angeles police respond to about 100 calls involving barricaded subjects each year. Often, alcoholism, drugs or mental illness is involved, and in some cases the person has had repeated contacts with the police. How officers respond and what they say when they first arrive at a scene is critical, Detective Irvin and Officer Baker said.

The interviews, they added, make clear that it is never a single event that leads people to such extreme actions, but the accumulation of many stresses.

“Everyone has a breaking point, and that’s what happens in these situations,” said Officer Baker, who added that the Ms. Baxendale, the woman who barricaded herself in her apartment, “was basically not a bad person. She had a bad day.” (Ms. Baxendale served four years in prison for criminal threats and negligent discharge of a weapon, but now has a successful business.)

One of the men Detective Irvin and Officer Baker interviewed — they would identify him only by his first name, George — was struggling financially and had a host of medical ailments when he stood for hours with a gun outside the Hollywood police station in what investigators said was an effort to get police officers there to kill him.

He had first gone up to the Hollywood Hills to shoot himself, George said in the interview, but after 12 hours he realized he could not pull the trigger.

“I was getting a little crazy at that point, dehydrated, too,” he said. “And the idea came to me I could go down to the police station and wave a gun around a little bit and somebody would take care of it.”

At first, he said, the officers at the station did not notice him, but once they did, a standoff ensued. “They showed amazing restraint,” he said, adding that one reason he eventually put down his gun was that he did not want a police officer to have to deal with the emotional effects of having shot him. He was not charged with a crime.

Another man interviewed was a severe alcoholic who frequently called the police and was often suicidal. He seemed grateful for visitors when they interviewed him at his house, Detective Irvin said.

As they were leaving, the man handed her a paper bag holding a suicide note and a toy gun painted with nail polish to look like a Tec-9 assault pistol. The man told them that he had planned to use it later that night to provoke the police into shooting him, but that, at least for the time being, he had changed his mind.

“Yeah, we’re helping him by going, but we’re also helping the officers,” who might end up face to face with the man and his toy gun, Detective Irvin said.

In conducting the interviews, she said, she and Officer Baker arrive unannounced and ask if the subjects will participate. The questions are unscripted.

But they always include asking how well the officers who first responded handled the situation and what could have been done better. In cases involving barricades, they ask: “Why didn’t you come out? What could have caused you to come out sooner? Did someone say something that caused you to stay inside?”

So far, the only person who has refused to be videotaped, Detective Irvin and Officer Baker said, is Joseph Moshe, a man who in 2009 was accused of making threats against the White House and who then drove to the federal building in West Los Angeles, where SWAT officers pumped so much tear gas into his car that the Fire Department had to hose him down afterwards.

But Mr. Moshe, who at the time was in a psychiatric hospital until he could be deemed competent to stand trial, agreed to the interview and told Officer Baker that he remembered him from the standoff at the federal building.

Whatever broader lessons Detective Irvin and Officer Baker have drawn from the interviews, they have also used them as opportunities to establish bonds with people they may meet again in far less relaxed circumstances.

“When the relationships are formed, it makes it a little more difficult for them to think about not just putting themselves at risk but also the responders,” Detective Irvin said.

    Police Seek New Ways to Defuse Tension, NYT, 22.5.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/us/23swat.html

At Trial, Accuser Recalls, in Pieces, Night of Rape

April 14, 2011
The New York Times
By JOHN ELIGON

There were certain things that she remembered from that night, and some things that she did not.

She recalled dancing and drinking at a bar in Park Slope, Brooklyn, celebrating a job promotion with friends, but even that was a bit hazy. Her next recollection, she testified in the rape trial of two New York City police officers, was waking up in the back of a taxicab outside her apartment building in the East Village, lying on her side and vomiting.

Then she remembered tugging herself up the red handrail of her apartment building’s staircase, escorted by two men in navy blue suits with radios crackling.

Over the next few minutes, or perhaps hours, she drifted in and out of consciousness, she said. But she did remember waking up, lying face down on her bed, suddenly aware that someone was removing clothing from her legs.

Prosecutors in Manhattan have accused Officer, Kenneth Moreno of raping the woman while his partner, Officer Franklin Mata, stood guard in the woman’s apartment in the early hours of Dec. 7, 2008. At the time that the charges were announced, the accusation that two police officers called to help a drunken woman would assist or participate in her rape was so extraordinary that the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, characterized it as a “shocking aberration.”

On Thursday, the woman took the witness stand in State Supreme Court to recount what she could.

After her tights were removed, she said, she heard “the rustling of clothing and very loud Velcro ripping,” alluding to a sound that prosecutors have said matched that of a bullet-resistant vest being removed.

“I was so intoxicated I couldn’t say or do anything,” the woman testified. “My body was complete dead weight.”

The woman, 29, told the jury that she had blacked out, waking later as she was being raped, the man positioned behind her. Most jurors looked down as the woman told her story.

Prosecutors have revealed no physical evidence linking either officer to a rape, although the officers were caught by a surveillance camera entering her apartment four times. Still, the prosecution’s case may rely heavily on the credibility of a woman who was admittedly drunk at the time she says she was sexually assaulted, and cannot recall large portions of the evening.

The prosecution’s case is also focused on a tape recording she had made — part of a sting set up by prosecutors — of her confronting Officer Moreno days after the attack is alleged to have taken place.

Her testimony, which was graphic at times, came in fits and starts, interrupted as she sought to gain her composure. Clad in a gray blazer and charcoal slacks, she sat upright at first, speaking with poise and confidence into the microphone, though she said she was nervous. She answered questions without hesitation. But in other moments, her lips curled and face reddened, though her straight, dark hair remained unruffled as it sat below her shoulders.

As Coleen Balbert, an assistant district attorney, began asking the woman about the moment she said she had been raped, the woman’s voice began to sink and her body slumped.

After the woman testified to hearing the sound of Velcro, Ms. Balbert asked what happened next. She then sighed heavily.

“Um ... I remember ... sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes. She broke down and Justice Gregory Carro, who is presiding over the case, ordered a five-minute recess.

When she resumed her testimony, she said she had passed out while being raped.

When she woke up, still face down, she felt a man’s presence, “and he’s actually in my bed to my left,” she said.

“He was talking to me,” she said. “He said something to the effect of, ‘Do you want me to stay?’ ”

She did not respond, she said, and the man kissed her on her shoulder.

She passed out again, she said. She woke up in her dark bedroom to the sound of two men speaking at the foot of her bed, she said.

“There’s a lot of commotion, and there’s the sound of rustling of clothing,” she said.

She felt hands pressing down on the mattress all around her, as though they were looking for something, she said.

“Out of the corner of my eye there’s a flashlight being flashed all over the bed,” she said.

She woke up the next morning with nothing on but a bra, she said, and immediately sensed that she had been raped. She got in the shower, began crying and scrubbing herself, “just tried to basically take my skin off.”

She noticed that the curtain in her living room was drawn and the blinds in the kitchen were down, although she always kept them open. She said she also noticed that her passport and the pillows on her couch were out of place.

Pressed by Ms. Balbert about how she felt that morning, the woman huffed as she spoke, stopped midsentence and put her hand over her mouth. Tears flowed, she sobbed and Justice Carro called for another break.

Later the woman said, “I couldn’t believe that two police officers who had been called there to help me had instead raped me and left me face down in a pool of vomit in my bed to die.”

Officer Moreno and Officer Mata had initially been sent to her address that night after a cabdriver called the police, asking for assistance to get the woman to her fifth-floor apartment. After escorting her upstairs and leaving, prosecutors said, the officers returned three times. Prosecutors have not specified during which visit they believe the woman was raped.

Although prosecutors on Thursday did not ask the woman if she could identify the officers who led her up to her apartment, she described them both as short with short, dark hair. They appeared to be either Italian or Latino and had New York accents, she testified.

Defense lawyers, who briefly cross-examined the woman in the afternoon and will resume on Friday, have argued that no sex took place and that the officers had returned to the apartment at the woman’s request. The lawyers said Officer Moreno, himself a recovering alcoholic, had been counseling the woman about what they said was her drinking problem. He kissed her on the shoulder, but nothing else, his lawyers have said.

During the secretly recorded confrontation days later, the woman pressed Officer Moreno, whom she described in court as “shifty eyed,” to tell her what had happened. On the recording, he can be heard denying several times that anything had occurred, then admitting to having worn a condom — a false admission, the defense has said, made only to appease the woman.

But the woman, who has since moved to California, had a different interpretation.

“This is going to sound kind of weird,” she testified, “but when he said it, he kind of relaxed and, actually, so did I, because he finally admitted what he did to me.”

    At Trial, Accuser Recalls, in Pieces, Night of Rape, NYT, 14.4.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/nyregion/at-rape-trial-of-officers-woman-tells-of-hazy-violent-night.html

Growing Body Count, but Search for a Woman Goes On

April 5, 2011
The New York Times
By MANNY FERNANDEZ and AL BAKER

It began as a simple search for a missing prostitute named Shannan Gilbert, who had disappeared in May, and has evolved into a grisly murder mystery. The remains of eight people have now been discovered on a several-mile stretch of the Long Island shore, and the search will continue on Wednesday — for clues, evidence and, her family fears, perhaps the body of Ms. Gilbert.

Investigators determined on Tuesday that none of the eight victims was Ms. Gilbert, the 24-year-old prostitute from Jersey City whose disappearance sparked the initial search near Ocean Parkway and Gilgo Beach.

In nearly four months, the remains of four female prostitutes and four unidentified people have been found decomposing on the same remote stretch of brush and grassy dunes, heightening residents’ fears that a serial killer is in their midst and fueling an investigation that has intensified with each grim discovery.

A police dog and its handler found the first body on a Saturday in December. Three other bodies were discovered two days later. Months would pass before the police found another body last Tuesday, about one mile east from where the others turned up. On Monday, the body count climbed yet again: the remains of three other people were found.

Meanwhile, Ms. Gilbert is still missing. The police dog and Suffolk County officer who discovered the first body in December had been on a training exercise in the area in connection with the disappearance of Ms. Gilbert, who vanished nearby.

At her home in Ellenville, N.Y., Mari Gilbert, the mother of Shannan Gilbert, sought solace in the notion that even though her daughter had not been found, her disappearance made it possible for others to have been discovered.

“If it wasn’t for my daughter, these bodies never would have been found,” she said. “Everyone has their destiny, maybe this was hers. I’m still hoping she comes home.”

On Tuesday, investigators focused their attention not only on the brush and grassy dunes where the bodies were found, but also on Oak Beach, a residential area a couple miles away. In the morning, a busload of investigators entered the gated community, known as the Oak Island Beach Association. Investigators have returned numerous times to the gated community since last year: It is where Ms. Gilbert was last seen.

Ms. Gilbert had been visiting a seaside home in the Oak Beach area in the early morning hours of May 1. Gus Coletti, 76, was one of the last people to see her alive. He was at home, shaving, shortly before 5 a.m.

“I hear somebody screaming and bang-bang on the door,” he said. “I opened the door, and she stood right there. I said, ‘What’s the matter?’ And she kept saying ‘Help me.’ ”

When he dialed 911, she ran. “She took off, and that was the last I saw her,” he said.

The wave of grim discoveries — the third serial-killer murders involving prostitutes on Long Island in more than 20 years — has shocked residents, and reshaped life in what are typically tranquil beach communities. Mr. Coletti’s wife, Laura Coletti, said on Tuesday that she often walked along a service road on the south side of Ocean Parkway, but no longer. Her husband said the discovery of three new bodies has made his elderly neighbors nervous. “They call and they say, ‘Gus, are you watching out for us?’ ” he said.

Mr. Coletti, the former president of the association, said property values have plummeted in the area since December. Homes used to sell for $1 million, but now the prices are closer to $600,000, he said. “They’d have open houses, and 10 to 12 people would come and look,” he said. “Now, nobody’s coming at all.”

The bodies of the four prostitutes discovered in December were deposited aboveground and spread over a quarter-mile. Each one had been placed roughly 500 feet from the next, and each one lay about 50 feet from the north side of Ocean Parkway. Investigators said that although they were placed there at different times, the four women were all in their 20s and that they had all advertised for clients on Craigslist.

Dominick Varrone, chief of detectives in the Suffolk County police, said that it was too early to ascertain much from the new remains; he noted that three of the four newly discovered bodies “were of a considerable distance from the original four.”

He said that the police still believe that the first four victims were “the work of a serial killer,” but that it was too soon to determine if any of the latest victims were connected to the earlier murders.

He also added that it seemed that the four latest victims had been left there at least as long as the earlier victims, who had been reported missing between July 2007 and September 2010.

In recent days and months, police recruits and cadaver-sniffing dogs have combed through the brush for clues or more remains. Divers have searched a nearby inlet. Forensic anthropologists from the New York City medical examiner’s office have assisted in the case. On Tuesday, several investigators searched for evidence in dense thickets near Ocean Parkway, roughly three miles east of where the three bodies were found on Monday.

The investigators, wearing gardening gloves and boots, used shovels and tree clippers to break through the thick brush and poison ivy close to the roadway. Some have discovered ticks on their bodies, said Stuart Cameron, a deputy inspector in the Suffolk police. “They’re getting scratched up,” he said. “None of them are complaining.”

The entire area the police are now searching is roughly seven miles, from the Robert Moses Causeway to the Nassau County line.

“It is disturbing,” said Chief Varrone. “Most of these crimes have occurred some time ago. We have not found anything recent; that is a little bit of a consolation, and with each set of human remains that we find, as investigators, we are optimistic or hopeful that some or most of them will provide valuable clues, valuable pieces of the puzzle that will help us resolve this case.”


Reporting was contributed by Joseph Goldstein, William K. Rashbaum, Nate Schweber and Tim Stelloh.

    Growing Body Count, but Search for a Woman Goes On, NYT, 5.4.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/nyregion/06bodies.html

Suspect Sought in Killing of Ga. Police Officer

March 23, 2011
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ATHENS, Ga. (AP) — Authorities in a north Georgia college town are searching for a suspect in a shooting that left one Athens police officer dead and another wounded.

It began Tuesday afternoon when Senior Police Officer Tony Howard stopped an SUV. Police say the passenger got out and shot and wounded Howard.

Authorities say that as the passenger ran from the vehicle, he encountered another senior officer, Elmer "Buddy" Christian, and shot and killed him in his patrol car.

The suspect has been identified as 33-year-old Jamie Hood.

After the shooting, police fanned out along a major highway and conducted a house-by-house search for Hood, who authorities said was still at large early Wednesday.

    Suspect Sought in Killing of Ga. Police Officer, NYT, 23.3.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/03/23/us/AP-US-Police-Officers-Shot.html

Race Issues Rise for Miami Police

March 22, 2011
The New York Times
By DON VAN NATTA Jr.

MIAMI — The video, shot with a hand-held camera, shows brawny Miami police officers breaking down doors and hauling handcuffed African-American suspects off some of the city’s toughest streets. “We hunt,” one officer says in the five-and-a-half-minute clip. “I like to hunt.”

But it was not a source of embarrassment for Miami’s police chief, Miguel A. Exposito. The video was part of a reality television pilot, “Miami’s Finest SOS,” a project with the enthusiastic backing of Chief Exposito. “Our guys were proactively going out there, like predators,” he says during his cameo in the video, which surfaced online in January.

A few weeks later, a Miami police officer shot and killed a black man during a traffic stop at North Miami Avenue and 75th Street in the Little Haiti neighborhood. The man, Travis McNeil, 28, was unarmed and never left the driver’s seat of his rental car when he was shot once in the chest, members of his family said.

Mr. McNeil was the seventh African-American man to be shot and killed by Miami police officers in eight months. The shootings in this racially polarized city have led to marches on the Police Department’s headquarters and calls for a Justice Department investigation, and the city manager has initiated an investigation into the chief’s record.

After pushing for action for weeks, the families of the seven shooting victims will speak at a City Commission meeting on Thursday. Some families are demanding that Chief Exposito be dismissed.

“I don’t understand how the powers that be can allow these things to keep happening,” Sheila McNeil, the mother of Mr. McNeil, said of the Feb. 10 shooting death of her son. “Something is drastically wrong.”

Chief Exposito, a burly 37-year veteran who became chief in November 2009, defended his leadership. “We don’t have a violent police department,” he said in an interview last week. “You’ll find our officers are very compassionate with the people they deal with. They will try to de-escalate situations rather than resorting to deadly force.”

The officer who shot Mr. McNeil is Reinaldo Goyo, a member of the city’s elite gang unit who appeared in the “Miami’s Finest SOS” video. (The TV show has since been shelved.)

Saying on the video: “I’ve got some style. I’ve got some flavor” while wearing a hoodie emblazoned with the words “The Punisher,” Detective Goyo says he and his partner inherited the nicknames Crockett and Tubbs after the lead characters in the 1980s TV show “Miami Vice.” “It’s got a nice little ring to it,” he says.

Detective Goyo would not comment, a police spokesman said. A lawyer for Detective Goyo did not respond to phone messages.

Chief Exposito said he thought the video was “excellent,” although in an e-mail to the production company in December, he acknowledged that he regretted using the word “predator” and asked that his quotation be changed. In another e-mail to one of his assistants, he wrote: “This statement would add fuel to the fire. They need to soften it!”

In an interview last week, Chief Exposito said the video was not supposed to be for public consumption. “I had a problem with the production company — it was not supposed to be on YouTube or anywhere else.”

The chief also defended the officer who said, “I like to hunt.”

“Hunting doesn’t mean you go kill people,” the chief said. “Hunting means you go out there and capture people.”

Miami has a long history of racially charged police shootings, some of which combusted into deadly riots and Justice Department inquiries that ended with police officers in prison. The pattern this time is familiar: All seven men who were fatally shot by the police were African-American; the police officers who shot them are all Hispanic.

“There is a wide range of growing concern in the community regarding the apparent lack of communication and response to these incidents by the City of Miami Police Department,” Representative Frederica S. Wilson, a Democrat from Miami, wrote in a recent letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., asking the Justice Department to investigate.

Questions about Chief Exposito’s leadership have galvanized some leaders of the African-American community, who say that two of the men shot by the police were unarmed. Police officials would not describe details, but they have said that during both shootings, the officers had reason to believe their lives were in danger.

Community leaders also expressed outrage that a 12-year veteran of the city’s gang unit, Ricardo Martinez, shot and killed two men within nine days last August. Officer Martinez returned to his job six days after fatally shooting one man, then shot and killed another three days later. Before the shootings, he was under investigation for allegedly selling seized phones.

One officer being responsible for two fatal shootings in such a short period of time is highly unusual, national experts on police forces say. Typically, officers are assigned to desk duty after a shooting pending an inquiry.

“What does that tell you about the chief’s judgment?” said the Rev. Anthony Tate, president of the civil rights organization Pulse and pastor of New Resurrection Community Church in the Liberty City neighborhood.

Chief Exposito said that the inquiry had been initiated by his department, and that it would have been inappropriate to keep Officer Martinez off the street because of an allegation of wrongdoing. In December, Officer Martinez was charged with selling stolen Bluetooth phone headsets. He has been dismissed.

Mr. Tate, two Miami city commissioners and other community leaders have repeatedly called for the chief’s dismissal. Chief Exposito was a major in the property room and in charge of a compliance task force before being elevated two years ago to police chief by Mayor Tomas P. Regalado. Since then, the chief and the mayor have feuded bitterly over a variety of issues.

City Commissioner Richard P. Dunn II was the first on the commission to call for the chief’s dismissal. “It’s not personal. He’s just not competent to be a chief, that’s all,” said Mr. Dunn, whose district includes the neighborhoods where all seven fatal shootings occurred.

“These shootings have us sitting on a time bomb,” he said. “Everyone wonders: When is the next one going to happen? And the fact the chief is still here just makes Miami look like a banana republic.”

Chief Exposito said that after the first of the fatal shootings, last July, he invited the F.B.I. to attend the department’s internal inquiry, a gesture his predecessors had not offered, he said. “This is not something I was forced to do,” he said.

The chief’s critics say his leadership is markedly different from that of his predecessor, John F. Timoney, a deputy police commissioner in New York in the Giuliani administration.

During Mr. Timoney’s seven-year tenure, the department once went 22 months without having a police officer fire a weapon. When Mr. Exposito succeeded Mr. Timoney in November 2009, he assigned more than 100 officers to “tactical units” to try to curb violent crime.

The tactical units, including the gang unit whose officers have been responsible for the majority of the most recent shootings, have arrested hundreds of suspects and removed 400 more guns from the street in 2010 than in 2009, the chief said.

During those sweeps, “seven people decided they were not going to obey the law and not adhere to the police orders,” said Armando Aguilar, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, the police union, “and they ended up getting shot.”

The chief’s fate is in the hands of the city manager, Tony E. Crapp Jr. In late February, Mr. Crapp hired a former senior F.B.I. agent, Paul R. Philip, to assess the department’s record.

Mr. Philip, who headed the F.B.I.’s Miami field office, said in an interview that he compared the number of police shootings in 2009, the last year of Mr. Timoney’s leadership, with the first 15 months of Chief Exposito’s tenure. During Mr. Timoney’s final year as chief, seven officers shot at suspects, killing four and missing three others. Under Chief Exposito, there have been 10 shootings, with seven fatalities.

“It seemed to be a concern that the department was engaged in an accelerated rate of shootings, but there doesn’t appear to be,” Mr. Philip said. “The data seems to support the chief.”

Mr. Philip said his review did not include interviewing police officers who fired their weapons, witnesses or the family members of victims. Determining whether each of the shootings was justified is the state attorney’s job.

The chief said he was gratified that “someone with the stature of Paul Philip is agreeing with me.” He added: “I’ve been saying all along, we’re trying to get violent crime under control in that community. Unfortunately when you do that, you will be confronted by people who are armed and dangerous.”

Community leaders said they were upset about the pace of the Police Department’s own inquiries. They complained that police investigators had not taken a statement from Kareem Williams, 31, who is Mr. McNeil’s cousin and was shot three times as he sat with Mr. McNeil in the rental car last month. Mr. Williams, who left the hospital two days later, told his family that the officer began shooting without saying a single word, Mrs. McNeil said.

Not long ago, Mrs. McNeil met with Chief Exposito, who spoke about police procedures on the use of deadly force, she said. She added that the “impersonal” nature of the discussion had left her frustrated and sad.

“When your son has been shot,” she said, “you don’t want to hear about policies.”

    Race Issues Rise for Miami Police, NYT, 22.3.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/us/23miami.html

Fatal Confusion in a Nassau Town

March 22, 2011
The New York Times
By N. R. KLEINFIELD and AL BAKER

So many police officers, retired or working patrol, live in and around Massapequa Park, N.Y., it is something of a “Cop Land.” They listen to scanners, swap crime stories and remember how it once was.

So after a flurry of calls about a man wielding knives, the scene filled with officers. Among them were two from different departments and a retired officer from a third. They did not know one another. None of the three, it turned out, were necessarily needed, and it is unclear whether any of them should even have been there. But in choosing to be there, they became central players in an ugly suburban drama sown with unforeseen twists.

The man with knives, Anthony DiGeronimo, was shot and killed by Nassau County police officers. Officer Geoffrey J. Breitkopf died by the gun of a transit officer, Glenn Gentile, just four minutes later. And the behavior of the retired officer, John Cafarella, may have pivotally shaped the night’s doomed outcome.

As the episode unfolded a week and a half ago, Mr. Cafarella is believed to have yelled “Gun!” at a crucial instant. Later, witnesses said, he grabbed the rifle of Officer Breitkopf as he was dying. Other tiny and unlucky factors piled up before the officer’s death: Officer Breitkopf’s rifle had been pointed in the worst possible direction; a small-bore dispute with a neighbor contributed another note of tension to an already taut situation.

One issue is whether the phenomenon of police overresponse to a crime contributed to the confusion. In short order, more than a dozen police officers — even that count is murky — converged that Saturday evening in Massapequa Park on one house, making for an overpopulated scene that was difficult to control, with officers who did not know one another, their guns out.

Louis R. Anemone, the former chief of department of the New York Police Department, was loath to evaluate something he was not involved in, but he did say that the appropriate number of officers answering a call is an issue as old as policing itself.

“Throughout my career, cops have always been eager to respond, to help, to get to the scene, and it is one of the inherent dangers of police work,” he said. “There is a very, very, very fine balance.”

The case remains under investigation, and no charges have been filed. As yet, no consensus has been reached on how things ended as they did, and some questions may never be answered.

Three Officers

Police officers run deep through this story. A good number come home to the Cape Cods and ranches of Massapequa Park itself — including Mr. Cafarella. One officer lives down the block from the site of the shootings, but he was out at a movie with his wife at the time. A 79-year-old retired officer lives two doors away from the scene. He was at home watching TV that night and did not come out. He was in his pajamas.

Officer Gentile, 33, grew up 10 blocks away. His father had been a Nassau County detective, working in a number of the Police Department’s premier units. He retired in 2004, and four years later died of cancer at 55.

After high school, in 1996, Glenn Gentile joined the Army and spent a year in Bosnia. He left the service in 2003. Three years later he became a Metropolitan Transportation Authority police officer, one of 700 who patrol the railroads. His younger brother, Anthony, is also an officer with the authority.

Officer Breitkopf, 40, wore a bushy beard, his hair close-cropped. He joined the Nassau police force in 1998 and belonged to its elite special operations unit. The unit’s logo was tattooed on his chest. He was a member of the volunteer fire department in Selden, Suffolk County, where he lived with his wife and two small children. In a former life, he was a BMW mechanic. He was fond of riding his motorcycle.

Mr. Cafarella, 58, retired as a sergeant from the New York Police Department’s Emergency Service Unit in 2008, after 26 years on the force. The unit dealt with confrontations involving violent people and with rescue work.

After the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, he climbed 90 stories up one of the towers to get people out. He also worked for eight months at the trade center site after the Sept. 11 attacks, later complaining of respiratory problems and migraines.

Paul Hargrove, a retired supervisor in the unit, described him as a skilled officer who did not assert his authority inappropriately, but looked for a role when there was a problem. “Let’s say it was a car accident,” Mr. Hargrove said. “If he was not able to help the people in the car, John would have been the guy directing traffic.”

On Saturday, March 12, these three men were in three different places, when something requiring police attention unfolded in Massapequa Park.

A Deranged Man

The village of Massapequa Park sits on the South Shore of Long Island. It fills not much more than two square miles, about an hour’s drive from Manhattan, and resembles many tidy Long Island communities.

Neither Mr. Cafarella nor Officer Gentile would comment for this article. But according to tentative conclusions of law enforcement officials and the accounts of witnesses, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity, this is what happened. There were two distinct chapters.

In the first, a bizarrely dressed young man wearing a white mask and carrying two knives was walking down Front Street. He had passed Johnny McGorey’s Irish Pub and was scratching parked cars. This was Anthony DiGeronimo, 21, who called himself a “spiritual Satanist.” His father, David, said he and his son collected knives.

Theresa Kelly, 71, a retired hairdresser, was backing her Volkswagen Passat out of her driveway to visit her sister for dinner and pinochle. There was a bang on her window, and there was Mr. Geronimo flaunting a knife over the hood of her car.

Frightened, she tooted her horn and dialed 911 on her cellphone. It was 8:15 p.m. A woman at McGorey’s, as it happened, had already called the police twice, the first time at 8:10. Two more 911 calls would follow Ms. Kelly’s.

Mr. DiGeronimo withdrew, and Ms. Kelly drove slowly down the street, watching where he was going. He lived around the corner, but she did not know him. She also called her son, Sean, 43, who lived with her, and told him what was going on.

A Nassau County police officer, dispatched at 8:13, pulled up within a couple of minutes and confronted Mr. DiGeronimo. A second officer arrived at almost the same time.

Right then Mr. Cafarella and his wife were driving by. Mr. Cafarella made the fourth 911 call.

He pulled over, got out and tried to help the officers talk the masked man into dropping his knives. Mr. DiGeronimo retreated into his parents’ house on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Front Street, pursued by the two officers. Backup was radioed for, and additional officers arrived.

Ms. Kelly was outside the DiGeronimo house by her car, its door open. She said the scene was “total chaos,” officers dashing every which way. A man in a red fleece, she said, was “running all over like a lunatic, shouting orders; he caused a lot of chaos.”

One of the first officers on the scene said Mr. Cafarella was wearing a red fleece, and the authorities believe no plainclothes officer was there then.

Mr. DiGeronimo barricaded himself inside his bedroom.

Suddenly, Mr. DiGeronimo emerged, clutching a knife over his head, and lurched at the two officers monitoring him. Both shot him, and he crumpled on the floor.

After she heard the gunfire, Ms. Kelly said, the man in the fleece cursed at her to leave and shoved her into her car, kicking the door shut with his foot.

The Second Shooting

The second chapter can be introduced with the subplot of Sean Kelly — Theresa Kelly’s son — and his sneakers.

He was upstairs in his room, channel surfing. He has been unemployed for two years, trying to find something in shipping or importing.

When he got his mother’s call, he yanked on his sneakers, called a relative and dashed outside. By the time he reached the street, Mr. DiGeronimo was dead.

As he sped down the street, he found himself flanked by a police officer. Mr. Kelly said the officer brusquely ordered him to leave, but Mr. Kelly persisted that he was going to his mother because she had been threatened.

The officer repeated his order, then showed him a can of pepper spray. A second officer extracted a nightstick. At that point, Mr. Kelly said, someone from the neighborhood told him to let the officers do their work, and he backed off.

Officer Gentile had been at the Massapequa Long Island Rail Road station. Hearing the call crackle over the police radio frequency, he and his partner responded. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority said its officers frequently assisted other agencies, just as other officers often helped the agency.

By the time they got there, the disturbance was over.

Shortly afterward, Officer Breitkopf drove up with his partner.

After Mr. DiGeronimo was shot, the police put out a “10-87” over the radio, police code for slow down the response. This is different than a “disregard” code, which would have meant not to respond. It is not known if Officer Breitkopf heard the 10-87.

Officer Breitkopf was in plain clothes. His police shield hung on a lanyard around his neck, but it is unknown whether it was visible. He retrieved his rifle from his trunk, slung it over his shoulder, the barrel pointed down, and, in the pocked darkness, strode toward the house. The police said taking a rifle was appropriate for a situation in which a dangerous person was barricaded.

The Nassau officers knew him. As he crossed the lawn, he greeted a couple of them and let them know he was going to assess the situation.

The rest happened fast. Someone said, “Gun!” or “He’s got a gun!” Mr. Cafarella told investigators that he might have said that.

The brief confrontation moments before with Mr. Kelly may have been on the minds of some officers.

The transit officers did not know Officer Breitkopf. Spotting a man with a rifle, Officer Gentile’s partner came up either from behind him or to his side and grabbed him on his right shoulder, trying to stop him.

At this point, Officer Breitkopf’s rifle swiveled upward so that it was pointing toward the nearby Officer Gentile.

The altered position of the rifle may have resulted from his shoulder being jostled. It is also conceivable that Officer Breitkopf heard “gun” and reflexively raised his rifle, not imagining anyone was talking about him.

It was just about 8:23. Officer Gentile was a few feet away. The authorities said he told investigators he saw a man pointing a rifle toward him.

Protocol when a police officer confronts someone suspicious is to yell, “Police, don’t move.” A plainclothes officer is then to respond, “Police, don’t shoot.”

The authorities believe nothing was said, and time probably did not allow anything to be said.

Officer Gentile fired. It was only the second time in a decade that a transit officer had shot a gun in the line of duty.

Hit in the side, Officer Breitkopf collapsed next to a tree. Officers who knew him shouted, “He’s police!”

At nearly the same time, according to an officer who was there, Mr. Cafarella came over and ripped the rifle off of the stricken officer. Seeing this, another officer drew his gun and nearly shot Mr. Cafarella.

An officer clutched Mr. Cafarella by his throat and seized the rifle. He said Mr. Cafarella identified himself as a retired police officer who was “on the job.”

Officer Gentile stood frozen on the lawn, mute and distraught.

An ambulance raced Officer Breitkopf to the hospital, and there he was pronounced dead.


Reporting was contributed by Joseph Goldstein, William K. Rashbaum, Mosi Secret, Tim Stelloh and Michael Wilson.

    Fatal Confusion in a Nassau Town, NYT, 22.3.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/nyregion/23nassau.html

On a Day of Grieving, Duty Ties Two Killed Officers

March 18, 2011
The New York Times
By MANNY FERNANDEZ and MOSI SECRET

Police Officers Geoffrey J. Breitkopf and Alain Schaberger died nine hours and 38 miles apart. Their funerals were even closer: four hours and 15 miles apart, on the same day, in the same Long Island county, before some of the same mourners.

The two officers had never met, and they wore different badges for different agencies — Officer Breitkopf was with the Nassau County Police Department, and Officer Schaberger was with the New York Police Department. And yet, just as the timing of their deaths linked them, the timing and locations of their funerals on Friday linked those who worked alongside them and those who never got the chance.

At 10:15 a.m., as Officer Schaberger’s casket was carried into the back of a hearse in East Islip in Suffolk County after his funeral, a few thousand officers stood in tight rows in a white-gloved salute. At 12:50 p.m., about a half-hour’s drive some 15 miles away in Selden, thousands of officers saluted once again in tight rows and white gloves as Officer Breitkopf’s casket passed by them atop a red antique fire truck before the start of his funeral.

New York City police officers who attended the 9:30 a.m. funeral for their fellow officer in East Islip also attended the 1:30 p.m. funeral for Officer Breitkopf. Nassau police officers who went to Officer Schaberger’s funeral in the morning also went to Officer Breitkopf’s in the afternoon. A few thousand officers and firefighters from agencies in New York City, Long Island, New Jersey and throughout the region attended each funeral.

“It’s terrible,” said one New York City police officer who went to both funerals and who asked not to be identified. “It’s hard to go from yesterday, marching in the St. Patrick’s Day parade, to two funerals today. It’s really hard to put into words.”

The two funerals stirred memories of the weeks and months following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, when back-to-back funerals for law-enforcement officers and firefighters became a grim fact of life. On one Saturday alone, two dozen memorial services for firefighters killed on Sept. 11 were held. But the ceremonies on Friday came amid an altogether different backdrop. The Nassau officer was shot and killed in what the authorities describe as a tragic case of mistaken identity.

Officer Breitkopf was responding to a confrontation in Massapequa Park at about 8:30 p.m. on Saturday. A 21-year-old deranged man had been shot and killed by police after lunging at them with hunting knives inside his home. As Officer Breitkopf made his way to the house, dressed in street clothes and carrying a rifle, he was shot by a Metropolitan Transportation Authority officer who apparently did not realize Officer Breitkopf was with the Nassau police. Officer Breitkopf, the second Nassau County officer killed in the line of duty this year, was pronounced dead at 9:19 p.m. at Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow.

Hours later on Sunday morning, Officer Schaberger responded at 4:22 a.m. to a 911 call made by a woman in Brooklyn who said her ex-boyfriend was threatening her. As the suspect struggled with a group of officers trying to handcuff him on the stoop of a brownstone, the suspect shoved Officer Schaberger over the railing, causing the officer to fall nine feet down a cement stairwell leading to the basement and to break his neck, the police said.

Officer Schaberger, the first New York City police officer to die in the line of duty since May 2009, was pronounced dead at Lutheran Medical Center at 5:55 a.m. The suspect, George Villanueva, 42, who in the last four months alone had been arrested at least three times on charges of domestic violence against the woman who called 911, was charged with first-degree murder for the aggravated murder of a police officer, criminal contempt and assault, the authorities said.

Each of the officers had lived vastly different lives.

Officer Breitkopf, 40, was part of the Nassau County Police Department’s elite special operations unit, the logo of which he tattooed upon his chest. When he was not busy being a cop, he was busy being a firefighter, volunteering with the fire department in the Suffolk County hamlet of Selden, where he lived with his wife, his two boys and his Harley-Davidson motorcycle. He was a former BMW auto mechanic who took pride in riding in the special operations unit’s custom-built vehicle: He helped design it, and also helped build the unit’s training building. “He would be up there hammering nails and putting boards on,” Philip Brady, a fellow officer, said.

Officer Schaberger, 42, was assigned to the New York Police Department’s 84th Precinct in Brooklyn, far from the rural world of Cortlandt Manor, where he lived with his fiancée near the banks of a Westchester County stream. He took her to parades in nearby Peekskill. She took him to powwows, where he celebrated her Native American roots.

“He spent the last moments of his life trying to subdue a very dangerous man — a man of his own age, but different from him in every possible respect,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg told the mourners inside Chapey & Sons Funeral Home in East Islip.

“Instead of providing comfort to his loved ones, this man terrorized and threatened them. Instead of upholding the laws, he broke them. It’s upsetting to think that this encounter with a violent criminal ended a life as good and promising as Alain’s. It makes you heartsick. It makes you angry. And it makes you deeply, deeply grateful for the work our police officers do.”

    On a Day of Grieving, Duty Ties Two Killed Officers, NYT, 18.3.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/nyregion/19funerals.html

Report Finds Wide Abuses by Police in New Orleans

March 17, 2011
The New York Times
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

NEW ORLEANS — Justice Department officials on Thursday released the findings of a 10-month investigation into this city’s Police Department, revealing a force that is profoundly and alarmingly troubled and setting in motion a process for its wholesale reform.

The report describes in chilling detail a department that is severely dysfunctional on every level: one that regularly uses excessive force on civilians, frequently fails to investigate serious crimes and has a deeply inadequate, in many cases nonexistent, system of accountability.

Using the report as a guideline, federal and local officials will now enter into negotiations leading to a consent decree, a blueprint for systemic reform that will be enforced by a federal judge.

“There is nobody in this room that is surprised by the general tenor and the tone of what this report has to say,” said Mitch Landrieu, the mayor of New Orleans, at a news conference attended by city and federal officials.

But, added Mr. Landrieu, who publicly invited federal intervention in the Police Department just days after his inauguration in May, “I look forward to a very spirited partnership and one that actually transforms this Police Department into one of the best in the country.”

The city’s police chief, Ronal Serpas, said he fully embraced the report and would be going over its findings with senior leadership later in the day.

While the report describes an appalling array of abuses and bad practices, it does not address in detail any of the nine or more federal criminal investigations into the department. These inquiries have already led to the convictions of three police officers, one for fatally shooting an unarmed civilian and another for burning the body.

Justice Department officials chose to exclude the information gleaned in the criminal inquiries to keep a wall between those investigations and the larger civil investigation into the practices of the department. But there were more than enough problems left to uncover.

While other departments generally have problems in specific areas, like the use of excessive force, “New Orleans has every issue that has existed in our practice to date, and a few that we hadn’t encountered,” said Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil rights division.

The report reveals that the department has not found a policy violation in any officer-involved shooting for the last six years, though federal officials who reviewed the records found that violations had clearly occurred. The department’s canine unit was so badly mismanaged — the dogs were so aggressive they frequently attacked their handlers — that federal officials encouraged the department to suspend it last year even though the investigation was still under way.

The report details a record of discriminatory policing, with a ratio of arrests of blacks to whites standing at nearly 16 to 1. Calls for police assistance by non-English speakers often went unanswered.

The report also found that the police “systemically misclassified possible sexual assaults, resulting in a sweeping failure to properly investigate many potential cases of rape, attempted rape and other sex crimes.”

The problems described in the report go beyond policy failings, depicting a culture of dysfunction that reaches all facets of the department. The recruitment program is described as anemic, training as “severely deficient in nearly every respect,” and supervision as poor or in some cases nonexistent.

The department has attracted this level of scrutiny before. As bad as it appears now, the police force was far more troubled in the mid-1990s. Two officers from that era are now on death row, and the number of murders in the city at the time soared above 400.

Federal agents conducted a similar investigation of the department, but there was less cooperation by local officials and, crucially, there was no consent decree.

While the department improved for a time, the structural problems remained and festered, as Thursday’s report makes clear.

This time, there will be federal court oversight, and there is already widespread consensus that systemic police reform is needed. Confidence in the department is so low that prosecutors have trouble finding juries, as so many prospective jurors declare that they would not put any trust in the testimony of a New Orleans police officer.

The robust citizen engagement that has been a significant factor in the city’s recovery from Hurricane Katrina has also changed the dynamic, officials said. While the New Orleans police force may be troubled to a rare degree, federal officials also described the city’s appetite for systemic reform as unprecedented.

Federal officials said the team of agents assigned to investigate the department worked with police leadership as well as rank-and-file officers. Investigators also reached out to community leaders to a degree that they had not previously done.

Still, officials acknowledge that changing the department’s entrenched culture will be hard and will take years. Though Mr. Serpas, who was an officer during the reform efforts in the 1990s, has already begun addressing many of the concerns, news reports of police abuses during the Mardi Gras season have come out in the past few weeks, and the number of homicides is still stubbornly high.

“I’m not naïve about the hard work that lies ahead,” Mr. Perez said, adding that he was still optimistic. “I’m certain that we’re in a qualitatively different position than we were 10 years ago.”

Community advocates viewed the day’s announcement with a mix of hope and skepticism. Some groups had been trying to draw attention to police abuse in the city for years before their complaints were noticed by law enforcement.

“Nobody believed anything we said,” said Norris Henderson, a founder of a group for former prisoners called Voice of the Ex-Offender. He said he was encouraged that community groups were so involved in the federal inquiry, but was concerned about the level of involvement going forward.

“Will we be a part of the conversation?” he asked. “Just going to the quote-unquote criminal justice folks, well, y’all the folks responsible for this damn problem.”

    Report Finds Wide Abuses by Police in New Orleans, NYT, 17.3.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/us/18orleans.html

3 Law Officers Are Shot in St. Louis; One Dies

March 8, 2011
The New York Times
By MALCOLM GAY

ST. LOUIS — A deputy federal marshal was killed and two other law officers were wounded in a shootout early Tuesday while trying to serve an arrest warrant at a house in South St. Louis. The man named in the warrant was pronounced dead at the scene.

Deputy United States Marshal John Perry, who was shot in the head, died Tuesday night at Saint Louis University Hospital, The Associated Press reported. Another deputy marshal was shot in the ankle and was in fair condition.

A St. Louis police officer sustained a graze wound to his face and neck, a Police Department spokeswoman said. He was treated at a hospital and released.

A spokeswoman for the Marshals Service identified the gunman as Carlos Boles, 35.

The spokeswoman, Lynzey Donahue, said the warrant for Mr. Boles contained charges relating to the assault of a law enforcement officer and the possession of a controlled substance. Court documents show that Mr. Boles, whose criminal record stretched back to 1993, pleaded guilty to five felonies.

Shortly before 7 a.m., officials said, two officers from the Police Department and eight from the Marshals Service were trying to serve the warrant when they discovered several children inside the house. After escorting the children outside, the officers began searching for Mr. Boles, who officials said opened fire when they encountered him.

After the shooting, the police cordoned off the area as a SWAT team cleared the rest of the house. Within minutes, a crowd had gathered in a park across the street, where people were trading rumors in a drizzling rain and venting anger over what they called a pointless police shooting.

“They could have just let one of his family members go in and talk to him,” said Tony Johnson, 22. “I don’t blame anyone for the tension right now.”

A man who identified himself as Mr. Boles’s brother but would not give his name said he was frustrated by the lack of information. “We don’t know what’s up,” the man said after holding back a bereaved woman. “All we know is three police were shot, and they’re pulling a body out the back.”

The shooting comes amid a violent wave in which at least 17 federal, state and local officers have been killed by gunfire so far this year, an increase of more than 23 percent over this time last year, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, a nonprofit group.

That number includes the death of Derek Hotsinpiller, 24, a deputy United States marshal. He was killed last month in West Virginia while trying to serve a warrant for a man wanted on charges related to cocaine trafficking. Two other deputies were wounded in the confrontation.

At a news conference, Chief Daniel Isom of the St. Louis Police Department said that the investigation of Tuesday’s shooting was continuing and that details remained “sketchy.”

“Right now,” Chief Isom said, “we’re just praying for the officers who are injured and hope that everything works out well.”

    3 Law Officers Are Shot in St. Louis; One Dies, NYT, 8.3.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/09/us/09stlouis.html

Tips Lead to Teen's Arrest in Fla. Cop Killing

February 23, 2011
Filed at 3:16 a.m. EST
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — A daylong manhunt that covered a swath of the city ended when tips led to the arrest of a 16-year-old who faces a murder charge in the shooting of a St. Petersburg police officer, the third killed in the line of duty in the past month.

Officer David Crawford was shot multiple times Monday night while investigating a report of a prowler in a neighborhood just south of Tropicana Field where the Tampa Bay Rays play baseball. About 24 hours later, officials gathered near police headquarters to announce that the teen was in custody facing a juvenile charge of first-degree murder.

The Associated Press does not routinely release the names of those under 18 years old charged with juvenile crimes.

"When he did make the admission on tape for us at the end of the day, it was quite apparent that he was remorseful in his actions," Police Chief Chuck Harmon said during a late night news conference. "He cried."

Helicopters, SWAT teams, dozens of law enforcement and dogs searched for the gunman and a chunk of the city of about 245,000 was closed to traffic for parts of Monday and into Tuesday. The FBI, the St. Petersburg Police and other groups also were offering a reward of $100,000 for information leading to the identification and arrest of the suspect.

Harmon said three tips led officers to the teen and that police were still looking for the gun. The teen had a prior juvenile criminal record but Harmon did not give details. Prosecutors will decide whether the teen will be charged as an adult. The chief said because of the seriousness of the charge and the teen's prior record that he would expect him to face adult charges.

Two officers were checking out the prowler call and Crawford, 46, spotted the suspect and got out of his car. At 10:37 p.m., another officer, Donald J. Ziglar, reported an exchange of gunfire and told dispatchers an officer was down, police said.

Ziglar found Crawford lying on the pavement near his cruiser, shot at close range, police said. Crawford was not wearing a bullet proof vest.

The suspect was taken to a juvenile lockup and his parents were cooperating, the chief said. Police did not have a motive except that there was some exchange between the teen and officer, Harmon said.

"It breaks my heart," he said. "When you have something like this happen, you don't expect this type of confrontation between a 16-year-old and a police officer to end like this."

The suspect is a student in the Pinellas County Schools, but Harmon wouldn't say which school. It wasn't clear how the boy obtained the gun, Harmon said.

Crawford, who was married, eligible for retirement and the father of an adult daughter, was pronounced dead at a hospital. Officers saluted the van that carried his body to the medical examiner's office Tuesday morning. Crawford, who loved horses, lived in a rural community north of St. Petersburg.

On Jan. 24, two St. Petersburg officers — Jeffrey A. Yaslowitz and Thomas Baitinger — were killed as they helped serve a warrant on a man with a long criminal history. Their killer died in the siege. Prior to that, the St. Petersburg Police department hadn't had an officer killed in the line of duty in more than 30 years.

"We're not even done healing from the first tragedy, then boom, we have a second one," said St. Petersburg Detective Mark Marland, who is also the police union president.

St. Petersburg Mayor Bill Foster said the city will now be able to bury officer Crawford and have some closure — but residents, officers and parents must also learn why a teenager was carrying a handgun.

"We as a community need to stand up and do a better job," Foster said.

___

Associated Press writer David Fischer in Miami contributed to this report.

    Tips Lead to Teen's Arrest in Fla. Cop Killing, NYT, 23.2.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/02/23/us/AP-US-Florida-Police-Shooting.html

Police Departments Downsize, From 4 Legs to 2

February 14, 2011
The New York Times
By MICHAEL COOPER

CHARLESTON, S.C. — He was a 10-year veteran of the Charleston Police Department, specializing in patrolling this city’s palmetto-lined streets, improving community relations and keeping big crowds in check — until his unit was disbanded, a victim of budget cuts.

So this month he was put out to pasture, quite literally.

Napoleon lost his policing job, along with the other five police horses here, as Charleston joined the growing number of cities that have retired their horses and closed their stables to save money. The Great Recession is proving to be the greatest threat to police mounted units since departments embraced the horseless carriage.

This month, the clip-clop of police hooves was silenced both on the cobblestones here and on the streets of Newark, a much harder-hit city whose department recently laid off 163 officers. The downturn has also claimed the mounted units in San Diego; Tulsa, Okla.; Camden, N.J.; and Boston, whose police horses dated to the 19th century and were regulars at Fenway Park.

“It seems like horses are always among the first to go when it comes to budget cuts,” said Mitchel P. Roth, a professor of criminology at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Tex., who has studied mounted patrols over the centuries.

When the Police Executive Research Forum released a report recently asking, “Is the Economic Downturn Fundamentally Changing How We Police?” it featured a mounted officer on the cover.

Supporters of mounted patrols mourn their loss, and fault overzealous oat-counters at city halls across the nation. Romantics have a nostalgic attachment to police horses, and many police officials value them, saying that when dealing with crowds, one mounted officer is as effective as 7 to 10 officers on foot. They are highly visible, these officials say, and can deter crime, and their popularity with the public is a welcome change from the mistrust that many departments battle.

But others see the horses as a costly bit of sentimentality, and as departments make previously unthinkable cuts, like furloughing and laying off police officers, they are re-evaluating the role of the police horse in the 21st century. In Charleston, officials decided that many of the unit’s duties could be carried out at less expense without the horses. It was not a question of getting rid of the department’s four-legged members in order to save its two-legged ones: the force here has actually been growing, and violent crime has gone down.

Nor was it a case of reversing someone else’s policies. Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr., who has been in office since 1975, established the city’s mounted unit early in his tenure, when Charleston — whose horse-drawn carriages are big draw for tourists — joined other cities in adding horses to provide a more approachable police presence, to help with crowd control and to deter crime. At its height, the unit had 14 horses. Mr. Riley said that many of those functions could now be handled in other ways, with more officers on the streets and evening summer camps for adolescents and by using technology.

“It was kind of like the times had changed. And the reasons that you found them beneficial, those reasons had been replaced by other good, solid policing techniques,” he said in an interview.

Charleston’s police chief, Gregory Mullen, said that some of the unit’s duties would be handled by officers on bicycles or on futuristic electric scooters called T3s, which look like a cross between a Roman chariot and a Segway. He said that he had been working to get more officers on the street by hiring administrative workers for desk duty, and that disbanding the mounted unit would help.

Officers in the mounted unit, by necessity, spent a couple of hours of each shift getting their horses ready, traveling with their mounts to their posts and then getting them bedded down. They rarely spent eight hours on patrol. “When we started to look at that, it was a lot less expensive for us to operate bicycles and electric vehicles and other things than it was to maintain the housing and feed and care for the animals,” the chief said.

Closing the unit, he added, will save $250,000 a year. But it was a blow to some in this history-loving city.

“It’s just heartbreaking,” said Alice Forshaw, 68, who was the mounted unit’s groom for nearly 20 years before she retired.

A look through her scrapbooks brought back memories: Horses like Royal’s Rogue, Heavy Ned, Easy Alibi. A former chief who loved to ride the horses, even after he was thrown from one. The out-of-town jobs that took the unit to the inaugurations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton and to the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. And Moonshine, a police horse who was killed by a drunken driver and whose memorial service was held in a church.

Now Ms. Forshaw has a living souvenir. The city let her adopt Napoleon, who is 16 years old. He was walking around the backyard of her home in Cordesville, S.C., about 45 minutes north of the city, tentatively making friends with her other horse and receiving a police pension in hay and feed. “He likes the freedom,” Ms. Forshaw said.

In Newark, the police director, Garry F. McCarthy, said he would like to bring back a few horses, and is trying to privately raise money to do it. “They are a valuable element to policing,” he said. “The problem is I just couldn’t afford it.”

Mounted units often attract charity: the Baltimore department, which got a donation from the 7-Eleven company, now calls one of its horses Slurpee.

But for many departments, including the one in San Diego, the biggest cost was not the animals or their feed, it was deploying police officers on horseback instead of on other duties. “We had to balance it against being able to keep officers in the patrol cars, and making sure we had enough officers on hand to answer emergency calls,” said Assistant Chief Chief Bob Kanaski of San Diego. Officers there now patrol Balboa Park on all-terrain vehicles.

But there are still passionate defenders of mounted police. In New York, Deputy Police Commissioner Paul J. Browne said that the added visibility of the city’s mounted officers was helpful last May when two Times Square street vendors wanted to report smoke rising from a crude car bomb on 45th Street, which ultimately failed to explode. “They looked around,” he said, “and the first thing they saw of anyone in authority was two mounted police officers, who responded and cleared the area of bystanders before the bomb squad arrived.”

New York has one of the largest units in the nation, with 79 officers and 60 horses, but it is smaller than it was a decade ago, when there were 130 officers and 125 horses.

Philadelphia closed its unit in 2004 to save money. Now its police commissioner, Charles Ramsey — who came to value horses for both crowd control and community relations in his previous job as the police chief in Washington — is trying to raise $2.4 million to revive it. “One of my officers once said, ‘Nobody ever tried to pet my police car, but they line up to pet my horse,’ ” he said. “And it’s true.”

He has already received a donation of four trained police horses — from Newark.

    Police Departments Downsize, From 4 Legs to 2, NYT, 14.2.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/us/15horses.html

40 Years On, Detective Sees Light Shed on a Killing

February 4, 2011
The New York Times
By MOSI SECRET

The front door was locked, so police officers broke into the Upper East Side apartment from the back. They found a dead woman lying against an overturned bed, with a rope tied around her neck. Her bra had been pulled up over her head, and someone had bitten her left breast.

Though gruesome, the scene of that 1971 murder was not so different than many others that the lead investigator in the case, Frank Donnelly, said he had encountered during his 22 years as a detective with the New York Police Department.

He canvassed the neighborhood with other officers. He examined fingerprints and compared impressions of suspects’ teeth to a mold of the victim’s breast. He looked for clues in other murder files. He even interrogated the mailman.

Still, the person who had raped and strangled the woman, Cornelia Crilley, a 23-year-old Trans World Airlines flight attendant, eluded him, and the case went unsolved.

Then last month, almost 40 years after he was assigned to the case, Mr. Donnelly, now retired, heard for the first time the name of the man the authorities now believe killed Ms. Crilley: Rodney Alcala, a photographer and a one-time contestant on “The Dating Game” who is on death row in California for murdering five people in the late 1970s.

Mr. Donnelly was called to testify before a Manhattan grand jury last month about how his case went cold, and he learned from a prosecutor before he took the stand that the authorities now believe that Mr. Alcala was his man. The grand jury indicted Mr. Alcala on charges that he killed Ms. Crilley and, six years later, murdered Ellen Hover, another 23-year-old woman who lived in Manhattan.

“I went to the grand jury and heard significant things about the case that I didn’t know,” Mr. Donnelly, 73, said in an interview this week. “In retrospect, you see that this was apparently a serial killer involved in this thing. At the time, we didn’t know that. We didn’t know who killed her. The investigation kind of just ran out of steam.”

Mr. Donnelly had been on the force for three or four years when he got a call on June 12, 1971, that there was a dead body in his jurisdiction, he said.

In addition to routine procedures, he recovered saliva from the wound on Ms. Crilley’s breast. “We didn’t have technology other than to identify the blood type,” he said. “You try to compare that blood type with other cases where someone was bitten.” No luck there.

“There was mail on the floor, and I found out the mailman was asked by one of the girls to bring the mail up,” he said, noting that Ms. Crilley shared her apartment on East 83rd Street with other flight attendants.

“They were living hand-to-mouth and they expected some checks in the mail.” He dusted the mail for fingerprints and “really didn’t get much back,” he said. He interviewed the mailman, who came up clean.

Other efforts proved equally futile. “When I canvassed the building, there were a lot of people who weren’t home,” he said. He wrote down license-plate numbers of cars parked in the neighborhood and tracked down the drivers for interviews. No luck there, either.

“I worked on that case solely probably for a week,” he said. “I didn’t come up with a lot. And bear in mind, I’m catching other cases every day.” He had to move on, he said, speaking of an era when the annual homicide tallies in New York City were three times as high as they are today. But he still picked up the Crilley case file from time to time. He retired from the force in 1979, and now lives in Rhode Island.

Mr. Alcala, 67, has a record of violent offenses dating back to 1968, when he kidnapped, beat and molested an 8-year-old girl in California, authorities said. He fled from California after that crime and was on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s most-wanted list. He lived in New York in the early 1970s under an alias, John Berger.

Mr. Alcala was later arrested in New Hampshire and turned over to the police in Los Angeles after someone noticed his picture on a flier at a post office. He was convicted of kidnapping the girl but was paroled after 34 months.

In 1978, Mr. Alcala was “Bachelor No. 1” on an episode of “the Dating Game.” He has been in prison since 1980, when he was convicted of murdering a 12-year-old girl. He has since been convicted of murdering four other California women in the late 1970s.

Prosecutors said that Mr. Alcala would approach young women and ask to take their picture as a way to lure them. The indictment in New York came after a recent flurry of activity by the New York Police Department and by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

Prosecutors would not discuss the evidence linking Mr. Alcala to Ms. Crilley’s murder, or what led them to him, but a law enforcement official has said that a dental impression from Mr. Alcala was consistent with the bite mark on Ms. Crilley’s body.

Mr. Donnelly said he was not privy to the evidence, but he recalled that forensic scientists appeared as witnesses. “I would presume it was enough information beyond a reasonable doubt to close the case, but I don’t know what specific information they had or how they got it,” he said.

Despite his early work on the Crilley case, Mr. Donnelly does not plan to follow the trial. “It wasn’t that unique of a case to me,” he said. “I think they’re going to make a whole big thing out of this.”

    40 Years On, Detective Sees Light Shed on a Killing, NYT, 4.2.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/nyregion/05unsolved.html

A Car Sale Gone Wrong, Then a Grim Discovery

January 27, 2011
The New York Times
By AL BAKER

The two men met through the Internet, fate and a 2008 BMW. The car was an M3 coupe, a fully loaded speedster with an eight-cylinder engine and an Interlagos Blue Metallic exterior.

The owner, Akeem Ajimotokan, worked in the procurement office at Columbia University. He was the original owner of the car, and he was asking $46,000.

The prospective buyer, identified on a bill of sale found inside the BMW as Barion A. Blake, was an ex-convict with previous arrests for stealing BMWs. He apparently had a different price in mind.

After a series of events that included a police car chase and a collision with a yellow cab, the BMW was found in Upper Manhattan on Wednesday morning, its front end crushed. Mr. Blake, who the police believe was driving the BMW at the time of the collision, was gone, but the police officers examining the wreck found Mr. Ajimotokan.

He was in the trunk — alive, barely, though he was bound, with multiple stab wounds and with his ear partially severed.

Mr. Ajimotokan, 33, was taken to Harlem Hospital, where he was listed in critical condition, was placed on a ventilator and was in a coma on Thursday, the police said. Meanwhile, an all-out search was on for Mr. Blake, 30, who had been released from jail in April after serving time in New Jersey for assault, said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman.

“The motive appears to be the robbery of a high-end car,” Mr. Browne said.

But many investigative gaps were still being filled in.

It was not immediately clear when Mr. Ajimotokan first placed his ad, with his phone number, on Cars.com; it also was not known when Mr. Blake met Mr. Ajimotokan. But something clearly had gone awry for at least several hours before the accident in Upper Manhattan.

At about 3 a.m., a uniformed officer with the Nassau County Police Department spotted the BMW pulled over on the side of the road, near Jericho Turnpike. The officer saw “two people outside of it,” Mr. Browne said, suggesting that it was Mr. Blake and an accomplice.

“It looks like they are swapping license plates on the vehicle,” Mr. Browne said.

The officer, from the Third Precinct, went to inquire, but the two men jumped in the car and took off westbound on Jericho Turnpike, and then southbound on the Cross Island Parkway, Mr. Browne said. The officer followed the BMW in a marked squad car but lost control on the snow-covered streets, and his car flipped over.

The officer was taken to a hospital for evaluation; a spokeswoman for the Nassau Police Department described his injuries as not life-threatening.

The BMW was next seen in Inwood at 9 a.m. on Wednesday. Witnesses, including the yellow cab driver, said that the suspect tried to drive away after the accident, but that the BMW’s undercarriage got hung up on a concrete divider as he attempted a U-turn at Dyckman Street and 10th Avenue.

When the responding officers from the 34th Precinct looked inside the BMW, they saw several .38-caliber bullets sprinkled in the car’s blood-spattered interior.

The car had only one license plate, affixed to the rear, and the officers had determined that it had been stolen from a 1999 Toyota Camry left in a parking lot in Queens.

They saw that a piece of the rear seat, separating the car’s cabin from its trunk, appeared to be missing. Then they found something worse: Inside the trunk was Mr. Ajimotokan, clinging to life. He was unconscious, having been stabbed several times in the head and body. His hands had been tied behind his back with plastic zip ties.

They found a handwritten bill of sale, dated Jan. 25, to Mr. Blake, of 10th Avenue in Manhattan, from Mr. Ajimotokan. Investigators are examining the possibility that the car was stolen from Mr. Ajimotokan’s home in West New York, N.J. It is unclear if he was assaulted there or at some later point.

“We have reason to believe the individual who ran from the car, or fled the scene, is the same one as the purported buyer,” Mr. Browne said. “Right now, we are working on the investigative premise that Mr. Ajimotokan was lured to some location on the belief there was going to be a purchase of the vehicle and was instead assaulted and put in the trunk and the car stolen.”

Linda M. Foglia, a spokeswoman for the New York State Department of Correctional Services, said that Mr. Blake has also used the alias Adrian Burnett, and has been convicted under both names. Under his alias, Mr. Blake was convicted in February 2001 for four crimes between June 1999 and July 2000, in Nassau County, Manhattan and Queens.

“At one point, he stole a 2000 BMW car, valued at $80,000,” Ms. Foglia said. “Then, he possessed a stolen 2001 BMW.”

Another time, she said, he stole “another BMW worth $79,000.”

In October 2004, Mr. Blake, 6-foot-7 and 215 pounds, was released into the custody of New Jersey authorities.

He returned to the New York State correctional system on Feb. 2, 2007, to serve two to four years for a second-degree assault on a police officer stemming from an episode in April 2006 in Queens, Ms. Foglia said.

No one at Mr. Ajimotokan’s residence could immediately be reached by phone.

Robert Hornsby, a spokesman at Columbia University, where Mr. Ajimotokan is employed, said the university did not comment on police investigations.

“Because of the police situation on this, we don’t ever comment,” he said. “If there is additional information, it would have to come from the N.Y.P.D. first.”

    A Car Sale Gone Wrong, Then a Grim Discovery, NYT, 27.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/nyregion/28bmw.html

Unusual Wave of Violence Strikes Police Officers

January 24, 2011
The New York Times
By DON VAN NATTA Jr.

MIAMI — As thousands of law enforcement officers gathered inside the American Airlines Arena here Monday morning for a funeral for two slain Miami-Dade police officers, news quickly spread that two more officers had been shot and killed a few hours earlier — this time in St. Petersburg, Fla.

It was an eerie repeat of the police shootings last Thursday in Miami. In both cases, officers were killed as they tried to serve an arrest warrant.

“This is a chief’s worst nightmare,” said St. Petersburg’s police chief, Chuck Harmon. “To lose two officers in one day is a tremendous loss to our department and our community.”

The Florida shootings are part of a wave of violence that law enforcement officials called highly unusual. Thirteen officers have been shot in the United States since Thursday, four fatally and several others critically wounded.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a research group in Washington. “I can’t remember this many shootings happening in such a short period of time.”

Already this year, 10 police officers have been killed in the line of duty, after an especially deadly year for law enforcement. In 2010, 61 federal, state and local officers were killed by gunfire, a 24 percent increase from 2009, when 49 were killed in the line of duty, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, a nonprofit group.

“It’s a very troubling trend where officers are being put at greater risk than ever before,” said Craig W. Floyd, the group’s chairman. “Many of these criminals are outgunning our police officers. We’re seeing criminals with high-velocity clips on their guns.”

The police shootings come at a time when violent-crime rates are down markedly in most American cities.

One possible explanation for the spike in shootings is that many police departments increased their emphasis on executing arrest warrants against repeat violent offenders.

Mr. Wexler and several senior police officials said they also believed that the shootings reflected a broader lack of respect for authority in American society.

“This has become less of a horrific event to some,” said Jody Weis, superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, where five officers were shot and killed between June and December of last year, one of them while on duty. “Unfortunately, we have a lot of young men who are willing to shoot first.”

In St. Petersburg, the two slain men were identified as Sgt. Thomas J. Baitinger, 48, and Officer Jeffrey A. Yaslowitz, 39, both at least 10-year veterans. Officer Yaslowitz, who was married with three children, had finished his regular shift and was heading home when he responded to a call for backup. Sergeant Baitinger, who was married, was part of the backup team. Although he was wearing a bulletproof vest, Sergeant Baitinger was mortally wounded by a shot fired through the floor of the attic that hit an unprotected area, the police said.

Shortly before 7 a.m. Monday, a St. Petersburg officer and a United States Marshal’s deputy, both of whom were members of a fugitive task force, arrived at a home in south St. Petersburg to serve a felony arrest warrant for aggravated battery to the suspect, Hydra Lacy Jr., 39. Mr. Lacy was a known sex offender, court records show. “He was someone we wanted to get off the streets,” Chief Harmon said. “And after today obviously you can see why.”

A woman at the house told the police that Mr. Lacy was hiding in the attic. After the police called for backup, one officer and the deputy marshal were shot in a gun battle. Not long afterward, another police officer who tried to rescue the injured deputy was shot and killed, the police said. In all, more than 100 bullets were exchanged between officers from a police SWAT team and the suspect, the authorities said.

The deputy marshal was listed in stable condition Monday.

By Monday afternoon, the police confirmed that they had found Mr. Lacy’s body in the house. It was unclear whether he had shot himself or was killed in the gun battle.

Mr. Lacy was sentenced in Pinellas County, Fla., to 15 years for sexual battery with a weapon or force, and five years for false imprisonment and aggravated child abuse of a victim younger than 13, state criminal records show. He was released from state prison in 2001.

Mr. Lacy was the brother of Jeff Lacy, a former International Boxing Federation super-middleweight champion.

In south St. Petersburg, a resident who described himself as a friend of Mr. Lacy but who declined to give his name said that Mr. Lacy had recently told him the police were searching for him, but that he had vowed he would never return to prison.

Lynn Waddell contributed reporting from St. Petersburg, Fla.

    Unusual Wave of Violence Strikes Police Officers, NYT, 24.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/us/25shootings.html

Woman Arrested in ’87 Kidnapping Case

January 23, 2011
The New York Times
By LIZ ROBBINS and JOSEPH BERGER

A woman who the authorities believe took a 3-week-old baby girl from Harlem Hospital 23 years ago and raised her as her own child was arrested Sunday on federal kidnapping charges, the United States attorney in Manhattan said.

The woman, Ann Pettway, 44, was taken into custody by the F.B.I. in Bridgeport, Conn., and was expected to appear in Manhattan federal court on Monday to face the charges, the United States attorney, Preet Bharara, said in a statement.

Ms. Pettway had raised the child, Carlina White, in Connecticut and Georgia. Ms. White was recently reunited with her parents in the Bronx, touching off a storm of national attention and a search for Ms. Pettway by federal authorities and the police in several states.

On Friday, an arrest warrant for Ms. Pettway for a probation violation was issued in North Carolina, where she had been convicted of attempted embezzlement.

Detective Keith Bryant of the Bridgeport Police Department said Ms. Pettway turned herself in to the F.B.I. on Sunday morning. Only afterward was she charged in the kidnapping. Pamela Walker, a spokeswoman for the North Carolina Department of Corrections, said on Sunday evening that her agency would defer to the federal authorities and their more serious charges.

The 23-year search for the mysterious suspect came to an accelerated end.

On Saturday just after noon, Ms. Pettway went to Joe Davis Pawnbroker in Bridgeport, Detective Bryant said. When she left, the clerk, who had seen her picture on television, called the police, who conducted a fruitless search. Ms. Pettway apparently walked about a mile and a half to Stratford. But after she, too, saw herself on television, she contacted the Bridgeport police, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigation.

Later, F.B.I. officials arranged for her to turn herself in to the federal office in Bridgeport on Sunday morning, according to another law enforcement official.

Carlina White was abducted when she was 19 days old. On Aug. 4, 1987, she was brought to Harlem Hospital with a high fever by her mother, Joy White. A stranger, dressed in a nurse’s uniform, approached the anxious mother to console her. A few hours later it was discovered that Carlina was missing.

According to the police account and later information gleaned by reporters, the little girl was taken first to Bridgeport, where she was given a new name, Nejdra Nance, then to Georgia. By her 16th birthday, she had begun to suspect that the woman who raised her was not her mother, partly because they did not resemble each other.

Ms. White eventually turned to a Web site of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and there discovered a photograph that matched other infant photos. She called Joy White, who referred the call to the New York police. DNA samples were taken, and Ms. White’s DNA was found to match samples taken from Joy White and the father, Carl Tyson, who had separated years before.

Paul J. Browne, the New York Police Department’s chief spokesman, said Sunday that the police had been assisting federal agents.


Robert Davey contributed reporting from Bridgeport, Conn.

    Woman Arrested in ’87 Kidnapping Case, NYT, 23.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/24/nyregion/24kidnap.html

4 Detroit Police Injured in Shootout

January 23, 2011
The New York Times
By NICK BUNKLEY

DETROIT — Four police officers were slightly wounded and their assailant killed on Sunday after a man walked into a police precinct and “began shooting indiscriminately,” a spokeswoman for the mayor said.

Karen Dumas, who is spokeswoman for Mayor Dave Bing, said the incident began about 4:30 p.m. when the man walked into the 6th Precinct in the northwestern part of the city and opened fire with a pistol grip shotgun. The man was able to shoot four officers before one or more officers returned fire, killing him.

The most seriously injured police officer was the precinct’s commander, Brian Davis, who was hit in the lower back, Ms. Dumas said. He underwent surgery at the nearby Sinai Grace Hospital on Sunday evening.

“His condition is critical but he is expected to pull through,” Ms. Dumas said.

Two other male officers were hospitalized but expected to be released on Monday. A female officer was hit in the chest but the bulletproof vest she was wearing prevented her from being injured. All four officers were expected to survive, according to a police official at the department’s headquarters who was not authorized to speak to the media.

The police chief, Ralph Godbee, said that the police know the gunman’s identify but did not release that information Sunday as they began to investigate his background and possible motive. It was unclear whether the gunman had previous contact with the precinct or was targeting any specific officers.

Chief Godbee described the scene as one of “utter chaos and pandemonium.” But he said the response by other officers prevented the outcome from being worse.

“They did all the things that they’re trained to do under pressure. We’re very blessed to stand before you with the belief that all four of the officers will be OK,” he said at a news conference.

The police station is one of the Detroit Police Department’s eight district offices. Members of the public who enter the station do not pass through metal detectors or otherwise undergo a security screening.

In light of Sunday’s events and the Jan. 8 shooting in Tucson, Ariz., that killed six people and wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords and others, Chief Godbee said, “We have to take a step back and reassess security procedures at each one of our facilities. Incidents like this are very sobering and remind us how vulnerable we all are.”

The shooting came at the end of a weekend in which at least 10 people were shot in Detroit in three separate incidents. Three men were found murdered in a house on Friday night, and three people were hospitalized Sunday morning after being shot outside a strip club.

Last Monday, a police officer in a Detroit suburb was killed by a suspect in a home burglary. The officer shot and the suspect each died after exchanged fire.

Nick Bunkley reported from Detroit, and Michael Roston from New York.

    4 Detroit Police Injured in Shootout, NYT, 23.1.2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/24/us/24detroit.html

Nearly 125 Arrested in Sweeping Mob Roundup

January 20, 2011
The New York Times
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

The criminal accusations spanned several states and several decades, encompassing figures from seven mob families, and led to the arrest of nearly 125 people on federal charges on Thursday.

There were murders, including a double homicide over a spilled drink in a Queens bar. There were the more run-of-the-mill activities associated with organized crime: racketeering, extortion, loan-sharking, money laundering, gambling and the like.

There were even some names from mob lore, including Luigi Manocchio, 83, the former boss of New England’s Patriarca crime family, who was said to have dressed in women’s clothing to avoid capture decades ago. He was arrested in Florida, accused of another mob standby: shaking down strip clubs, in Providence, R.I.

The charges were included in 16 indictments handed up in federal courts in four jurisdictions. Taken together, they amounted to what federal officials called the “largest mob roundup in F.B.I. history.”

The indictments were announced by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who appeared at a news conference on Thursday morning in Brooklyn.

For the attorney general, it was an opportunity to preside over the kind of law enforcement operation that was once the core mission of the Justice Department, but that has been largely overshadowed during his tenure by far more ambiguous issues inherited from the Bush administration. Mr. Holder spoke of the “unprecedented scope and cooperation” in the investigation, but questions were also raised by the diffuse nature of the indictments, which involved myriad unrelated criminal activity.

The sweep began before dawn, with 800 federal agents and state and local investigators fanning out across the region. The targets, officials said, ran the gamut from what they called small-time bookmakers and shakedown artists to mob middle managers and the entire current leadership of the Colombo crime family, as well as two senior Gambino family figures. Prosecutors said 34 made members of New York’s five crime families — Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese and Luchese — and crime families in New Jersey and New England were among those arrested.

By taking out the leadership of the Colombos and charging large numbers of reputed crime figures from the other families, the F.B.I. and federal prosecutors hoped the case would have a significant impact. But at the same time, officials acknowledged that the mob had shown itself to be remarkably resilient.

“Arresting and convicting the hierarchies of the five families several times over has not eradicated the problem,” said Janice K. Fedarcyk, the head of the New York F.B.I. office, calling it a “a myth” that the mob is a thing of the past.

At the news conference, Mr. Holder also announced that the Justice Department was merging its Organized Crime and Racketeering Section with its Gang Unit, a move he said would provide more-experienced prosecutors and increased resources for cases like the one announced on Thursday.

Some federal, state and local law enforcement officials have privately expressed concern about a possible resurgence in some quarters of the influence of organized crime after two decades of decline.

Mr. Holder emphasized several times that organized crime remained one of the department’s top priorities because mob members and associates were “among the most dangerous criminals in our country.” And he played down the notion of a resurgent mob, saying that while it had been weakened, and “is probably not nationwide in its scope, in its impact, as it once was,” it remained a continuing major threat “to the economic well-being of this country.”

He said his decision to go to Brooklyn to announce the arrests was meant to underscore the importance of the case to the department. Others at the news conference included the head of the department’s Criminal Division, Lanny A. Breuer, and the United States attorneys from Brooklyn, Manhattan, Newark and Rhode Island: Loretta E. Lynch, Preet Bharara, Paul J. Fishman and Peter F. Neronha, respectively. There were also officials from other agencies, including Raymond W. Kelly, the police commissioner of New York, and Daniel R. Petrole, the acting inspector general of the federal Labor Department.

Most of the arrests took place before 8 a.m.; by early evening, all but 3 of the 127 men sought had been taken into custody. Most of them were processed at a United States Army base in Brooklyn and arraigned in the borough’s federal courthouse.

Most of the defendants whom prosecutors characterized as higher-ranking mob figures were held without bail after pleading not guilty.

A dozen of the indictments, naming more than 80 defendants, were handed up in Brooklyn. Among those charged, according to the indictment, were the Colombo street boss Andrew Russo, the acting underboss Benjamin Castellazzo and the consigliere Richard Fusco, and two high-ranking members of the Gambino family hierarchy: the consigliere Joseph Corozzo and the ruling panel member Bartolomeo Vernace.

They were named in a racketeering indictment that also charged four reputed captains and eight soldiers. The alleged crimes spanned two decades and include the 1993 murder of underboss Joseph Scopo, the family’s asserted control of Local 6A of the Cement and Concrete Workers Union and the asserted defrauding of the city in connection with an annual feast, La Festa di Santa Rosalia in Bensonhurst.

Two indictments unsealed in Manhattan charged 26 men they identified as Gambino crime family figures, including Mr. Vernace and Mr. Corozzo, with racketeering, extortion, assault, arson and running a large marijuana and cocaine trafficking operation.

The indictment claims that they distributed cocaine and marijuana over 30 years, generating tens of millions of dollars in profit for the crime family. Two other racketeering indictments in Brooklyn name 13 men described as Gambino members and associates, including Mr. Vernace, who is charged in the double murder in the Shamrock Bar in Queens.

Mr. Vernace’s lawyer, Gerald L. Shargel, said his client was acquitted of the murders in state court in 2002. “These charges will be vigorously contested,” he said.

An indictment handed up in Newark charged 14 people, including several current and former union officials who are said to be affiliated with the Genovese family, with racketeering and extortion of Local 1235 of the International Longshoremen’s Association and other dockworkers’ locals.

The indictment charges a conspiracy over the course of many years to extort union members around Christmastime, when they receive an annual bonus based on the number of containers moving through the port.

The indictment in Rhode Island charged Mr. Manocchio — said to be an enduring figure in the New England mob that was named for its former leader, Raymond L. S. Patriarca Sr. — and Thomas Iafarte, 61, with extorting strip clubs.

Mr. Manocchio, long viewed as the quiet, disciplined power behind the Patriarca family, is a man whose low-key, old-school style has, over the years, reined in a dysfunctional crime operation, officials have said.


Dan Barry and Charlie Savage contributed reporting.

Nearly 125 Arrested in Sweeping Mob Roundup, NYT, 20.1.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/21/nyregion/21mob.html