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Store security guard pistol whipped during robbery www.privateofficer.com
Two armed men ordered customers and employees of an east Allentown discount store to the floor and pistol-whipped a security guard before making off with money from the registers Thursday night, police said.
The robbers entered the Dollar General, 2106 Union Blvd., at 7:48 p.m. and one of the men pulled a gun on the five employees and customers, Assistant Chief Ron Manescu said. A security guard was struck in the back of the head and suffered a minor injury, Manescu said.
The men then removed money from the registers and fled in an unknown direction, he said.
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George County teacher arrested www.privateofficer.com
The George County Sheriff’s Department has arrested and charged a George County High School teacher with the sexual battery of a 16-year-old female.
Andrew B. Brantley Jr. age 44, of Lucedale was arrested at the high school at approximately 12:47 p.m. Friday.
The arrest is the culmination of a joint investigation conducted by the George County Sheriff’s office and the George County School Resource Officers.
Brantley was transported to the George County Regional Correctional Facility to await an initial court appearance.
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Nuke guards may be armed with machine guns www.privateofficer.com
“It’s my belief that an upgrade of this kind is long overdue,” said Edwin Lyman, a global security expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C.
“There’s not a ban on semi-automatic weapons anymore, so that’s what’s out there, not just for terrorists but for the guy on the street,” he said. “Security officers need more firepower.”
Indian Point officials have not decided if they will add “enhanced weapons,” which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission calls the machine guns, short-barreled shotguns or short-barreled rifles, but will review their alternatives when the regulations are finalized.
“With any change in regulations that provide additional options or opportunities, we would look at potential enhancements in our security posture,” said Dan Gagnon, security manager at Indian Point. “However, specialized weapons and their potential impact is just one element of a comprehensive security program.”
The NRC acknowledges that there hasn’t been a single shot fired to defend a nuclear power plant, but the changes were included in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and the new guidelines have been approved by the U.S. Attorney General, agency officials said. The final regulations could take until 2011 to hammer out.
NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said the timing of the announcement on the eighth anniversary of Sept. 11 was coincidental.
Lyman said the anniversary of the terrorist attacks was a good time to remember the importance of not underestimating America’s enemies.
While the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry association, supports the weapon upgrades, there are those who think there’s more to fear than heavily armed attackers.
These weapons won’t protect us from the spontaneous problems related to the aging of the plant itself, such as steam boiler ruptures, transformer explosions, clogged cooling water intakes or whatever is discovered next,” said Manna Jo Greene, environmental director for Hudson River Sloop Clearwater. “Anything that lessens that danger is welcome, but this additional protection does not address the larger issues.”
Thomas Locke, a retired FBI agent and private security official in Washington, D.C., said the key to properly handling increased firepower is the person with the gun in his or her hands and the training they have received.
“The bad guys are bringing automatic weapons and explosives, so you have to have something to fight back with,” said Locke, who trained nuclear plant guards during an FBI tenure in Tennessee. “The key is vetting the personnel who are going to be assigned these tasks and then training, training and training.” Nuclear material cannot be allowed to leave the site, Locke said.
“We talk about casualties all the time, and the emphasis is always on the safety and security of law enforcement personnel,” he said. “But there’s no room for error with this type of stuff.”
Locke said highly trained officers know not to just spray bullets with machine guns; that shorter, more focused bursts of ammunition will be more effective.
With inadequate firepower, however, even sharpshooters can find themselves in trouble.
“We learned a hard lesson back in 1986 in Miami, when two bank robbers with automatic weapons took on FBI agents armed with revolvers and rifles,” he said. “We got the robbers, but we lost two agents, and eight others were wounded. You have to have the weapons and you have to know how to use them.”
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12 Shot including security officer during bloody ramapge www.privateofficer.com
Marking an exceptionally bloody 11-hour period in New Orleans, 12 people were shot in seven separate attacks between 3 p.m., Friday, and 2 a.m., Saturday, local authorities said.
Two of the victims — Charlie Johnson Jr., 31, and David Handy, 19, both of New Orleans — died from their injuries, New Orleans police said.
Despite near-constant rain — the sort of weather that tends to keep outlaws indoors — gunfire erupted across town, from eastern New Orleans to Central City and Gentilly to Algiers, and taxed paramedics beyond any experience in recent memory, said Dr. Jullette Saussy, director New Orleans Emergency Medical Services.
“They did an outstanding job taking care of these people,” Saussy said of her crews, which treated many of the victims. “I cannot remember a night where weve had (so many) shootings.”
The last time a dozen people were shot in a single day was Mardi Gras, with seven victims wounded in a shootout along the St. Charles Avenue parade route.
Police on Saturday didn’t announce motives or suspects in any of the recent shootings, and few details were available about most of the incidents. None of the survivors’ names was provided.
The carnage started about 3 p.m., Friday, when a man was shot in the jaw in the 3400 block of Delachaise Street in Central City, said officer Jonette Williams, a police department spokeswoman. He apparently drove himself to a local hospital.
At 8:40 p.m., New Orleans EMS paramedics and police responded to reports that a man’s arm was grazed by a bullet in the 2100 block of Sere Street, near Frenchmen Street about two blocks from Dillard University. Paramedics took the man to Tulane University Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition, EMS spokesman Jeb Tate said.
Williams, however, said doctors determined that the wound was not a bullet graze, prompting officers to designate the shooting as unfounded. Their report states that investigators responded to gunshots in the area, she said.
Fifteen minutes later, just before 9 p.m., paramedics rushed a man who had been shot in the leg in the 3300 block of Delachaise Street, a block from the earlier Central City shooting, to LSU Interim Public Hospital, where he was in stable condition, Tate and Williams said.
At 9:10 p.m., paramedics found a second victim, apparently from the same shooting, at South Claiborne Avenue and Amelia Street, less than a block from the 3300 block of Delachaise Street. The 38-year-old woman had been grazed by a bullet and was in stable condition when paramedics delivered her to Touro Infirmary, Tate said.
Williams said the afternoon and evening incidents on Delachaise Street are not related.
Friday’s last shooting, around 10:40 p.m., left Johnson dead inside a parked car in the driveway of his apartment building in the 10700 block of Roger Drive in eastern New Orleans. He was accompanied by a 25-year-old woman who had been shot in the torso and badly wounded, authorities said.
Johnson died from multiple gunshot wounds before paramedics could treat him, chief coroner’s investigator John Gagliano said. Paramedics rushed the woman to LSU Interim Public Hospital, Tate said. She was in critical condition Saturday morning, Williams said.
Then, a half-hour past midnight, a quadruple shooting broke out in the 7700 block of Mullet Road in eastern New Orleans, about a block from Kenilworth Playground, killing Handy and injuring three others.
Handy, shot multiple times, was dead when authorities arrived, Gagliano said. Williams said bullets also hit a woman in the torso, another man in the foot and another woman in the arm and foot.
Paramedics took one woman to LSU Interim Public Hospital’s emergency room, Tate said. The other victims drove themselves to a local hospital.
At 1:09 a.m., 911 calls took police and paramedics back to the Gentilly intersection of Sere and Frenchmen streets, near Dillard. A man had been shot in the torso, Williams said.
Paramedics rushed him to LSU Interim Public Hospital, Tate said. He was in stable condition, Williams said.
EMS records show paramedics responding to the 1:09 a.m. call arrived at the same location as the 8:40 p.m. shooting, Tate said. But police say the 911 calls are unrelated, partly because officers technically responded to different addresses, Williams said.
In the Friday incident, they went to the 3600 block of Frenchmen Street, while early Saturday, they arrived in the 2100 block of Sere Street, Williams said. Both addresses indicate the intersection of Sere and Frenchman.
The last spray of gunfire erupted 2:25 a.m., in the 3700 block of Behrmann Highway in Algiers. A 26-year-old security guard patrolling outside a retirement home heard gunshots, then realized he had been shot in the side of the leg, Williams said.
Paramedics rushed him to LSU Interim Public Hospital, Tate said. He was in stable condition, Williams said.
Mayor Ray Nagin and Police Superintendent Warren Riley did not immediately respond to requests for comment Saturday.
Saussy, a paramedic since 1984, said the night easily is one of the most hectic ones she has seen.
Besides the shootings, paramedics around 2 a.m. extricated two people from their vehicle after the driver crossed a guardrail and careened off westbound Interstate 10 near South Claiborne Avenue. Navigating slick roads, they rushed to LSU Interim Public Hospital, where the victims initially were listed in critical condition.
“In the least favorable (weather) conditions, our guys and gals rose to the occasion,” Saussy said.
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Security officer shot at nightclub www.privateofficer.com
The shooting happened at Club Fever near 69th and South Lewis.
Officers say a group of men got into a fight inside the bar and a security guard kicked them out.
A fight then started in the parking lot.
When the men went to leave, one started firing shots from a car window, officers said.
A security guard was shot in the foot. He was taken to a hospital and is expected to be fine. No other injuries were reported.
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Police prepare to draw your blood www.privateofficer.com
“I was looking at people’s arms and hands, thinking, ‘I could draw from that,’” Dowell said.
It’s all part of training he and a select cadre of officers in Idaho and Texas have received in recent months to draw blood from those suspected of drunken or drugged driving. The federal program’s aim is to determine if blood draws by cops can be an effective tool against drunk drivers and aid in their prosecution.
If the results seem promising after a year or two, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will encourage police nationwide to undergo similar training.
For years, defense attorneys in Idaho advised clients to always refuse breath tests, Ada County Deputy Prosecutor Christine Starr said. When the state toughened the penalties for refusing the tests a few years ago, the problem lessened, but it’s still the main reason that drunk driving cases go to trial in the Boise region, Starr said.
Idaho had a 20 percent breath test refusal rate in 2005, compared with 22 percent nationally, according to an NHTSA study.
Starr hopes the new system will cut down on the number of drunken driving trials. Officers can’t hold down a suspect and force them to breath into a tube, she noted, but they can forcefully take blood — a practice that’s been upheld by Idaho’s Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court.
The nation’s highest court ruled in 1966 that police could have blood tests forcibly done on a drunk driving suspect without a warrant, as long as the draw was based on a reasonable suspicion that a suspect was intoxicated, that it was done after an arrest and carried out in a medically approved manner.
The practice of cops drawing blood, implemented first in 1995 in Arizona, has also raised concerns about safety and the credibility of the evidence.
“I would imagine that a lot of people would be wary of having their blood drawn by an officer on the hood of their police vehicle,” said Steve Oberman, chair of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers’ DUI Committee.
The officer phlebotomists are generally trained under the same program as their state’s hospital or clinical phlebotomists, but they do it under a highly compressed schedule, and some of the curriculum is cut.
That’s because officers don’t need to know how to draw blood from a foot or other difficult sites, or from an infant or medically fragile patient, said Nicole Watson, the College of Western Idaho phlebotomy instructor teaching the Idaho officers.
Instead, they are trained on the elbow crease, the forearm and the back of the hand. If none are accessible, they’ll take the suspect to the hospital for testing.
In a nondescript Boise office building where the Nampa officers were trained, Dowell scanned his subject and prepared to draw blood. Chase Abston, an officer taking his turn playing a suspect, recoiled a bit, pressing his back deeper into the gray pleather chair.
Dowell slid a fine-gauge needle into the back of Abston’s hand. Abston, who had been holding his breath, slowly exhaled as his blood began to flow.
All the officers seemed like they’d be more comfortable if their colleagues were wielding sidearms instead of syringes. But halfway through the second day of training, with about 10 venipunctures each under their belts, they relaxed enough to trade barbs alongside needle jabs.
They’re making quick progress, Watson said. Their training will be complete after they have logged 75 successful blood draws.
Once they’re back on patrol, they will draw blood of any suspected drunk driver who refuses a breath test. They’ll use force if they need to, such as getting help from another officer to pin down a suspect and potentially strap them down, Watson said.
Though most legal experts agree blood tests measure blood alcohol more accurately than breath tests, Oberman said the tests can be fraught with problems, too.
Vials can be mixed up, preservative levels in the tubes used to collect the blood can be off, or the blood can be stored improperly, causing it to ferment and boosting the alcohol content.
Oberman said law enforcement agencies should also be concerned “about possible malpractice cases over somebody who was not properly trained.”
Alan Haywood, Arizona’s law enforcement phlebotomy coordinator who is directing the training programs in Idaho and Texas, said officers are exposed to some extra on-the-job risk if they draw blood, but that any concern is mitigated by good training and safe practices.
“If we can’t get the evidence safely, we’re not going to endanger the officers or the public to collect that evidence,” he said.
The Phoenix Police Department only uses blood tests for impaired driving cases. Detective Kemp Layden, who oversees drug recognition, phlebotomy and field sobriety, said the city now has about 120 officers certified to draw blood. Typically, a suspect is brought to a precinct or mobile booking van for the blood draw.
Under the state’s implied consent law, drivers who refuse to voluntarily submit to the test lose their license for a year, so most comply. For the approximately 5 percent who refuse, the officer obtains a search warrant from an on-call judge and the suspect can be restrained if needed to obtain a sample, Layden said.
Between 300 to 400 blood tests are done in an average month in the nation’s fifth-largest city.
During holiday months that number can rise to 500, said Layden, who reviews each case to make sure legal procedures were followed.
Outside of Arizona, some law enforcement agencies in Utah have officer phlebotomists, and police in Dalworthington Gardens, Texas are cross-trained as paramedics and have been drawing blood for about three years. The NHTSA is in talks with Houston, Texas about doing the phlebotomy training there, he said.
They’re all attracted by Arizona’s anecdotal evidence.
“What we found was that the refusal rates of chemical testing lowered significantly since this program began,” Haywood said. “Arizona we had about a 20 percent refusal rate in 1995, and today we see about an 8 to 9 percent refusal rate.”
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Security officers caught in near riot www.privateofficer.com
Vallejo police arrested five people Sunday evening after a near riot at the Marina Vista Apartments.
Officers responded to the complex at 201 Maine St. after receiving a frantic call from a security guard’s cell phone calling for help in the laundry room, police said.
Upon arriving on scene, officers saw at least three people in a heated physical fight with two security guards inside the laundry room, which officers discovered locked, police said.
One of the security guards managed to unlock the door, and Vallejo officers rushed in and began to handcuff and detain the combatants, police said.
However, as officers began arresting the combatants, between 75 and 100 people began streaming out of the complex and acted in a hostile, threatening manner toward the officers, police said.
Officers called for all available units as backup and requested mutual aid from the Solano County Sheriff’s Office.
During the melee, a female juvenile allegedly punched one of the security guards, police said.
As officers tried to control the crowd, one of the handcuffed suspects appeared to be reaching for an object in his front waist area, police said. An officer saw the movement and tried to retrieve the object. The suspect struggled, but the officer was able to recover a loaded handgun, police said.
The suspect, Auntario Sullen, 20, of Hercules, was also found with a large amount of cash and individually packaged marijuana, police said.
As police investigated the incident, they ascertained that the two other suspects in the laundry room had broken into the room in an attempt to save Sullen from a citizen’s arrest by one of the security guards, police said.
After officers arrested the three initial suspects, they managed to quell the crowd, police said. Later, upon learning the female juvenile’s identity, officers returned to the complex to arrest her, police said.
The juvenile’s family was also allegedly combative with police, and another melee ensued, police said. A second female was also arrested after fighting with officers, police said.
The incident remains under investigation.
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Security officer involved shooting at nightclub www.privateofficer.com
West Sacramento police Sgt. Mark Tingley said an altercation between two groups of people as the club at 4205 West Capitol Ave. was letting out around 2 a.m. Sunday resulted in the fatal shooting.
The male victim in his mid 20s died from severe gunshot wounds. Tingley said the other man suffered bullet graze wounds to his back.
Witnesses told police a group of three men and one woman argued with the victims, got into their car and began shooting. An on-duty security guard responded to the shooting and used his gun to fire back at the suspects as they sped away, Tingley said.
The security officer was not injured and police do not know if he injured anyone in the shooting.
The vehicle was described as a red or burgundy Ford Expedition. Tingley said the SUV will have bullet holes in the back and the rear window may have been shot out.
No one else was injured in the shooting.
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Pregnant teenager shot-killed at bus stop www.privateofficer.com
Police said Tiffany Wright, 15, was 32 weeks pregnant when she was shot in the head on Mallard Creek Road between Sugar Creek Road and Harris Boulevard in north Charlotte. Doctors were able to deliver her baby, which is currently being treated at Carolinas Medical Center.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Rodney Monroe said a relative had just walked Wright out to the bus stop and walked back home. The relative then heard at least three gunshots and went outside to find teen lying in the street just before 6 a.m.
Wright attended Hawthorne High School, an alternative school in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.
Monroe was unable to say if Wright was targeted. He said a witness reported a car speeding away from the scene, but did not have a good description.
Officers closed Mallard Creek Road and set up a perimeter around the neighborhood to search for the gunman. Detectives said that although they didn’t make any arrests, they are following several promising leads.
Officers from a number of CMPD units are still on the scene talking to residents, collecting evidence and following leads.
Anyone with information is asked to call 704-432-TIPS.
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