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NFL’S Chris Henry injured in domestic dispute www.privateofficer.com
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department received a call around noon about a person who was injured at 1135 Oakdale Road. That person was later identified as Chris Henry who is wide receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals.
When police officers arrived, they found Henry in the middle of the road suffering from life-threatening injuries. He was taken to Carolinas Medical Center where he is being treated for his injuries.
The CMPD said Henry was involved in a domestic situation at 840 Peachtree Road. Police said Henry’s fiancé got into a pickup truck and drove away from the home.
As she was driving away, police said Henry jumped into the bed of the truck.
A short time later, Henry came out of the back of the truck and was injured.
Both the CMPD Homicide Unit and H.I.T.S. Unit are investigating the incident.
If you know anything about this case, call 704-432-TIPS or Crime Stoppers at 704-334-1600.
16 Year old boy arrested for bank robberies www.privateofficer.com
Marietta Police Department officials said the boy, 16, entered the BB&T Bank on Nov. 13 just after 11 a.m. and gave the teller a note demanding money. The teller gave the boy money and he left the area on foot.
Police said the teen did not show a weapon.
The boy is in custody at the Clayton County Youth Detention Center. He was also charged with bank robberies in Clayton County. No details on those robberies have been released.
Ga. Baptist Home employee charged with rape of teen www.privateofficer.com
Maj. James Yarbrough of the Coweta County Sheriff’s Office confirmed to Channel 2 Action News Wednesday that Raymond Chapman, 44, of Newnan, was charged with two counts of raping a child on Friday. Police said Chapman and his wife were both terminated by the Georgia Baptist Children’s Home after the charges came to light.
Officials said a homeowner in a new subdivision near Chapman’s house called police after seeing a white Ford SUV parked for a long period of time on several occasions. When police responded, officials found Chapman and a 17-year-old girl inside, police said.
Authorities said an investigation revealed that Chapman and his wife were in the process of adopting the teenager. Police said before and during the adoption process, Chapman had been having a sexual relationship with the girl.
Chapman is being held at the Coweta County Jail without bond.
Vegas teacher charged with sex assault on student www.privateofficer.com
A teacher at the Las Vegas Academy has been arrested for sexual misconduct with a student.
Thirty-eight-year-old Ronny Scott Hoffman was taken into custody last week and police are looking for more victims. Hoffman was a French teacher at the Academy. The victim was a former female student.
“The purpose of the release is to get it out to the community — to the parents, to any other former students who may have been in contact with Mr. Hoffman and see if there were any prior or recent conduct involving victims we are not aware of,” said Metro Lt. John Bradshaw.
Police started their investigation in May of 2009. Hoffman was removed from the school at that time and according to the school district was assigned to work from home.
According to court documents, the victim claims Hoffman inappropriately touched her while in one of the girl’s bathrooms at the Academy sometime in October or November of 2007. The victim alleges another girl entered the bathroom and she was able to run away.
Police have interviewed approximately 105 female students from the Academy and were unable to find the witness or other victims.
Court records indicate the victim never came forward because she was ashamed. But nearly two years after the assault, on advice from a counselor, she e-mailed the teacher. Hoffman then hired an attorney and sent a letter to the victim’s parents ordering “harassing communications” with him to stop.
Police interviewed Hoffman and he denied entering the women’s bathroom.
Hoffman agreed to a polygraph test, but police say he failed. Police say he changed his story, first denying he ever touched the victim and then saying he hugged her in the classroom. According to the report, he admitted it was possible “my hands and possibly my arms touched her breast” during a hug.
Police say Hoffman did not have an ongoing relationship with any students.
Parents say they’re disheartened by the news. “I’m actually really very surprised because I always thought this was a great school and I always thought that the teachers that taught here were just a little different. They were a lot more creative and it’s very surprising for me,” said parent Janel Sinatra.
Court documents reveal this isn’t the only time the victim has taken issue with the teacher. Records show the victim complained about him back in 2008 because she felt he was stalking her.
Police say an investigation in the case is now on going, but they’re also urging parents of students who have ever been in contact with the teacher to be aware. “Be inquisitive if anything happened inappropriate with him and if it did, then notify the sexual assault detail as soon as possible,” said Lt. Bradshaw.
Hoffman has been charged with felony coercion with force and three counts of open and gross lewdness.
Police are asking if there are any other victims to please come forward and call Metro Sexual Assault Unit at (702) 828-3421.
Text message case could redefine workplace privacy www.privateofficer.com
California police officer Jeff Quon says he believed that hundreds of personal text messages he’d sent with his work-issued pager — including sexually explicit notes to his mistress — were private.
After all, the Ontario Police Department, where the married Quon is a SWAT team sergeant, had told him and others that electronic missives wouldn’t be reviewed if officers reimbursed the department for charges beyond what the city’s text service contract allowed.
But when police officials eventually decided to review the texts of heavy users like Quon — ostensibly to determine if the service contract needed to be expanded to accommodate work-related texts — they set off a legal battle over workplace privacy in the digital world that has now reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
At issue is whether and when constitutional privacy rights extend to text messages sent by public employees on work-issued communication devices, and how far government employers may go in writing policies that limit those rights. Whatever the court decides next year could have broad privacy repercussions for public employees who use work-issued communications devices, and their employers who write the rules for usage.
“There’s a cry for clarity in this area,” says Evans Anyanwu, a New Jersey lawyer who specializes in Internet law.
The Supreme Court case that established an employee’s reasonable right to expect privacy in the workplace — and an employer’s companion right to intrude if circumstances warrant — is more than two decades old.
And that decision in O’Connor v. Ortega, which involved a physical search of a public hospital doctor’s office, was rendered long before e-mail, texting and tweeting became the coins of the work communications realm.
“A lot has happened in two decades,” Anyanwu says. “In the digital era, O’Connor has a problem.”
Work Vs. Personal Uses
Quon’s case once appeared to be a clumsy vehicle for a privacy dispute because, at the time of the texting controversy, the Ontario Police Department essentially had two policies on personal use of city-owned computer equipment and e-mail services.
A written policy permitted only limited personal use of equipment; but Quon and other officers had been told verbally that there would be no examination of personal vs. work use of their pager text function if they paid the overages.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said that verbal “policy” gave Quon and others a reasonable expectation of privacy,and that police officials had other, less intrusive ways to determine whether they needed to amend their text service contract.
The police department appealed, claiming that the officers should not harbor expectations of privacy when using a workplace pager — in this case, one issued by a police department for public safety purposes.
But the circuit was bitterly divided, and seven dissenting judges argued that the police department was not obligated to use a less intrusive means to conduct its search and that O’Connor guaranteed a public employer’s right to conduct its text search.
“The circuit’s decision was surprising and controversial,” says Kristen Mathews, head of law firm Proskauer Rose’s privacy and data security group and editor of its privacy law blog.
“It called into question an entity’s ability to rely on their written policy for employee use of company or city-provided Internet services,” she says. “To me, the Supreme Court took the case to resolve the quandary we’re in and to give us clarity as to what extent a company can rely on its written policies.”
As For Private Employers And Their Employees…
The law is more settled in the private-company realm: Employees of private companies have almost no expectation of privacy when using company-issued equipment, including computers and hand-held devices. Though most legal analysts predict little private-sector ripple effect from a high court decision on the Quon case, the justices’ opinion could help private employers shape their policies for use of work-issued communications equipment.
Lawyers for both public employees and their employers are looking to the court for a bright line regarding workplace privacy and electronic communications — though most acknowledge that clear solutions may remain elusive.
“The technology has overreached what the law seems to be able to handle,” says Paul Mollica, a Chicago-based lawyer and member of the National Employment Lawyers Association. “The analysis of who has a reasonable expectation to privacy — there just are not a lot of bright lines on these kinds of rules.”
“Every claim,” he says, “brings its own set of facts.”
And those facts are complicated by the ubiquity of hand-held communications devices — and employers’ tacit expectations that employees be available on those devices during and often after work, and employees’ almost unavoidable use of the devices for personal communications.
Rewriting Privacy Precedent?
Quon’s claim that his constitutional rights were violated by what his lawyers assert was an unreasonable search and seizure of his text messages may not survive high court scrutiny. The nature of many of his nonwork text messages has also complicated his argument.
But the police sergeant’s case has the potential to rewrite a privacy precedent that has seemed increasingly creaky — and limited — in the brave new world of digital communication, where by both necessity and human nature, work and personal communication have become inextricably entwined.
Says Atlanta-based lawyer Jon Neiditz, who has written about the Quon case: “It’s a real thicket of issues.”
Security officer’s tip leads police to murder suspects www.privateofficer.com
The Broward Sheriff’s Office says 17-year-old Harry Velez is charged with first-degree murder, while 19-year-old Brady John Fisher is charged with one count of accessory after the fact.
Authorities say the two tried to rob two men outside an apartment Saturday when they fired shots. One man died at the hospital. The other is expected to fully recover.
A security guard in a gated apartment complex nearby noticed two shirtless men jump into a car. The guard recorded the license plate number and passed it on to investigators.
Homicide detectives used the number to locate the teens. They were arrested Sunday night.
Miami top cops investigated for moonlighting www.privateofficer.com
CBS4 News has learned that Miami-Dade County’s Inspector General, the County Ethics Commission and Miami-Dade Police are investigating outside work performed by a high-ranking mayoral aide and members of the police department.
The probes come after a Miami Herald investigation revealed that Denis Morales, a former cop now serving as Mayor Carlos Alvarez’s chief of staff, moonlighted as a police instructor in Panama while on county time. Alvarez at first defended his long-time friend and aide, but hardened his position after learning that Morales had not used his own time to perform the outside work.
“I told him that that was not acceptable, that I never would have approved it, and I made him immediately change it back to annual leave,” Alvarez told CBS4 reporter Gary Nelson.
Alvarez also tells CBS4 News that he has directed interim police Director James Loftus to “take a look at all the members of the Miami-Dade police department that have been involved in outside employment.” The mayor said “there is no allegation of wrongdoing” but that he wants to make sure that “everything that was supposed to have been done right was actually done.”
Records show that several high-ranking members of the police department have moonlighted as consultants for a company called Protective Strategies, an outfit that trains police officers in other countries. The Miami-Dade officers have worked primarily in Panama.
Assistant Police Director Oscar Vigoa, in disclosure papers filed with the county, reported outside “consulting” fees of nearly $5,000 in 2007 and $12,000 in 2008. Miami-Dade police training director Bernardo Gonzalez reported that he earned money working for Protective Strategies in 2008, but the disclosure record does not list an amount. In 2007 Gonzalez reported earning approximately $70,000 in a variety of outside teaching and consulting jobs. Miami-Dade police Major Ariel Artime disclosed $12,000 in payments from Protective Strategies in 2008.
Gonzalez, the department’s training chief, is also listed as a “senior consultant” on the homepage of a website for a company called the Miami Boston Group, which bills itself as a consulting firm to Latin American police agencies. The phone number for the company on the website has been disconnected. It is not clear when the phone was disconnected.
Robert Meyers, executive director of the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics, declined to discuss particulars of his agency’s probe into the moonlighting by Morales or others, but told CBS4 News, “We are concerned about any government employee who has outside employment and is doing it on government time.”
The Inspector General’s investigation is also looking at whether Morales or others may have received free first-class upgrades from American Airlines while traveling on outside business. A source close to the investigation told CBS4 News that one allegation being probed is that a ticket agent was “strong-armed” into giving Morales an upgrade on a recent flight. The source says Morales was allegedly accompanied by a uniformed Miami-Dade police officer.
A memo obtained by CBS4 News reveals that a Miami-Dade police major cautioned officers against seeking favors from airlines just days after Morales got his upgrade from American.
In the October 23rd memo Major Daniel Llano wrote, “To avoid the appearance of impropriety, officers…are not to request or solicit any travel discounts, rewards or upgrades.”
A gift disclosure form filed by Morales with the county shows that he accepted a “seat upgrade” from the “American ticket counter” on October 18th. Morales estimated the value of the “gift” at $776.
Even though he disclosed the gift, Morales could find himself on the wrong side of county ethics laws that prohibit employees from using their “official position to secure special privileges.”
American Airlines spokesperson Martha Pantene issued a statement saying, “American Airlines has received no reports of gate agents being pressured for upgrades by police officers. Space available upgrades are given for a variety of reasons.”
Morales did not respond to requests for comment for this story. Bernardo Gonzalez declined comment, referring CBS4 to the police department’s media relations bureau. The media relations bureau said issues having to do with outside employment by its officers are “private” and declined to comment. Neither Assistant Director Vigoa nor Major Artime returned emails or calls from CBS4 News.
Man pleads guilty to using fake chips at casino www.privateofficer.com
A Missouri man pleaded guilty Tuesday to stealing from an Oklahoma casino by creating counterfeit gambling chips.
William Reece Lancaster, 49, admitted bleaching legitimate 25 cent chips and then dying them to match the Seneca Cayuga Grand Lake Casino’s $500 chips.
Lancaster would then take the counterfeit chips to the casino, near Grove, and introduce them into play at a blackjack table or exchange them for cash, according to a plea document filed in federal court in Tulsa.
Casino security officials eventually noticed a significant increase in the number of $500 chips in circulation and used surveillance to identify Lancaster as the culprit, Assistant U.S. Attorney Trent Shores said.
Lancaster’s plea pertained only to one transgression, which occurred on Oct. 8. However, he acknowledged that the casino is owed at least $27,236 in restitution.
The Webb City, Mo., resident is to be sentenced by U.S. Chief District Judge Claire Eagan on March 9.
Lancaster could face as much as 10 years in prison, but sentencing guidelines probably will call for no more than one year in prison, with probation a possibility, Federal Public Defender Julia O’Connell and Shores said.
Lancaster was accused of conspiring with Mark Vernon Edmiston, 45, of Joplin, Mo., from Sept. 11 through Oct. 8.
However, Eagan granted Shores’ request to drop the charges against Edmiston on Tuesday. Shores told the court that Edmiston apparently did not know the chips were counterfeit and had been “duped” by Lancaster.
The casino has taken steps to prevent anything
