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School security officer pleads guilty to sex with student www.privateofficer.com
Juan Armando Candela, 26, of Tustin, pleaded guilty to felony counts of unlawful sexual intercourse and oral copulation of a minor.
Candela used to work as a campus security officer at Beckman High School and between February and March of this 2009, had a relationship with the student, who used to attend the school, prosecutors said.
They engaged in sexual activity in his car and at her home, prosecutors said. Newport Beach police spotted him and the student in his car on Aug. 20.
At the time of his arraignment, prosecutors said Candela faced a maximum of three years and eight months in state prison if convicted. He is scheduled to be sentenced May 26.
Armed school intruder injures security officer www.privateofficer.com
Source: Pittsburgh Gazatte A 23-year-old man was under arrest after police said he entered the Creative and Performing Arts school building Downtown with a gun and alcohol and then injured a security guard as he tried to escape school grounds.
Aaron Darrand Mohamed was scheduled to be arraigned sometime today on charges of aggravated assault, recklessly endangering another person, criminal trespass, possessing a weapon, carrying a firearm without a license and possession of a weapon on school grounds.
School officials said they were still investigating how the man got into the building when he came through an entrance guarded by a school security guard. He entered through the school’s main entrance on Ninth Street.
“The gentlemen came through an entrance where there was security,” said Pittsburgh Public Schools spokeswoman Ebony Pugh. “We just are investigating how he was able to get through with the weapon.”
According to the criminal complaint, Mr. Mohamed came to the school’s entrance and told Alfonso Roberts, a security guard, that he was there to pick up a relative for an early dismissal. Mr. Mohamed had a birth certificate and a bottle of alcohol in a bag on him, Mr. Roberts told police.
Mr. Roberts told Mr. Mohamed to remain at the entrance while he “went to verify the dismissal was legitimate.” When he returned to the entrance, Mr. Mohamed was gone.
Later, student Christopher Olds encountered Mr. Mohamed in the men’s bathroom on the building’s first floor. Christopher told police the man “appeared jumpy and kinda scared me,” the criminal complaint said. Christopher then said he saw Mr. Mohamed pick up a gun off of the bathroom sink and leave.
The student immediately notified a janitor who told security guards. Mr. Roberts again approached Mr. Mohamed and brought him into the security office. While Mr. Mohamed was being searched, a silver firearm fell to the ground. Mr. Mohamed immediately fled, heading for an exit on the Fort Duquesne Boulevard side of the building.
Mr. Roberts caught up to him, and a struggle ensued. The men eventually crashed through a glass door and ended up struggling on the sidewalk. A passer-by saw the two men and helped Mr. Jones detain Mr. Mohamed.
Mr. Roberts had to be taken to Allegheny General Hospital to be treated for cuts.
It was later determined that Mr. Mohamed was carrying a .38-caliber handgun, but it was not loaded, Ms. Pugh said.
Ms. Pugh said there will be increased security at the school today.
Lake City teacher charged with lewd acts www.privateofficer.com
Kari Huggins Campbell, 27, of 201 Saddle Court, Florence, was charged Thursday with second-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor and lewd act on a minor, according to the Florence County Sheriff’s Office.
She was released Thursday afternoon from the Florence County Detention Center in Effingham on a $15,000 surety bond.
The day before her arrest, Campbell was fired by Florence School District 3, which said an investigation revealed an inappropriate relationship between a teacher and a student.
Campbell taught physical education, according to the school’s Web site.
The district notified law enforcement after it said a teacher admitted Wednesday to the relationship, according to a press release. The district also said it will notify the South Carolina Department of Education.
The district began its investigation after school administrators began hearing concerns about text messages between the teacher and the student, a press release states.
The district said the relationship took place outside of school and that nothing indicates any inappropriate behavior happened during school hours.
The text messages weren’t sent on a district-owned cell phone because the district doesn’t issue cell phones to teachers, said district Communications Coordinator Brian Huckabee. The district’s policy states that cell phones can be confiscated if a student is discovered to have one on campus, and a parent must retrieve the phone, Huckabee said.
The teacher has taught for almost two years at Lake City and has a district personnel file clear of disciplinary action, Huckabee said.
Nothing “raised any concerns or red flags” when the district conducted a criminal records check and contacted references before offering a contract to the teacher, according to the district.
Shoplifter charged with robbery after trying to run over security www.privateofficer.com
By: Rick McCann/Staff
PRIVATE OFFICER NEWS
http://www.privateofficer.com
A 17-year-old man teenager is in jail today accused of robbery after he shoplifted from a local Wal-Mart and then tried to run over the security officer who tried to stop him.
Store employees and loss prevention agents from the Wal-Mart on Zapata highway spotted Alfredo Melendez taking several items on camera.
A security officer went out and confronted Melendez who, according to officers, ran, jumped into his vejicle and almost ran over the security officer.
Police were notified of the theft and officers were able to locate the vehicle and the items Melendez allegedly stole.
Melendez was taken into custody and is currently being held without bond.
There was no word as to whether or not he had an attorney in this matter.
Father and son charged with stealing cars with tow trucks www.privateofficer.com
Investigators charged 69-year-old William Charles Craven and 34-year-old Anthony Hulk Craven, of Awendaw, SC with grand larceny. Deputies added a drug charge to the younger Craven following the pair’s arrest April 8.
A Highway Patrolman spotted the pair driving a 1977 Chevrolet truck down Interstate 26 towing an abandoned car on what investigators called “a homemade” tow dolly.
The trooper tagged the abandoned car with a tow notice earlier in the day. The trooper reported the abandoned car, a 1992 Crown Victoria, had a flat front tire and was sitting on the side of the interstate between mile marker 136 and 138. After the stop, troopers told Calhoun County investigators the Cravens gave conflicting stories of why they had the vehicle, and could not provide the name of the vehicle’s owner, according to a sheriff’s office report.
Investigators searched the truck and found scrap yard receipts from as far back as 2009 that showed the Cravens had sold dozens of cars to three separate scrappers in Berkeley County; the most buys came from Berkeley Scrap Metal, Sheriff Thomas Summers said.
Investigators have connected the pair to 155 missing vehicles, with 60 of the total confirmed stolen, Summers said. Another 60 of the total had their vehicle identification numbers partially destroyed. Summers confirmed nine of the vehicles were stolen from Calhoun County. Investigators said the pair could be responsible for car thefts in several counties in South Carolina and Georgia.
The elder Craven told investigators that a man he knew as “Sanchez” paid him $100 to tow the Crown Victoria to a “military base” in Charleston, according to the incident report.
Hours later, the registered owner of the Ford reported the car stolen after he returned to retrieve it from the side of the interstate. The owner told investigators that he did not give the Cravens permission to tow his car.
The Cravens remain jailed at the Orangeburg-Calhoun Regional Detention Center under a $60,000 bond. Summers said Thursday he expects to file additional charges against the Cravens as the investigation continues.
Savannah police, mall security combine efforts www.privateofficer.com
The mission also will teach a lesson to thieves who pick up lost keys from the floor or parking lot of the mall and use them to steal the vehicle to which they belong, said metro police Capt. Richard Zapal, Southside Precinct commander.
Zapal said three such reports have come across his desk in the past six months.
“When I saw another report, I said to myself, ‘That was the third time in six months,’” said Zapal, who commands metro’s Southside Precinct. “Someone dropped their keys, and some little jerk picked them up and made sure that person didn’t have a ride home.”
Good Samaritans prevail
On Wednesday afternoon, metro police crime suppression unit officer Rodney Cooper coordinated efforts outside the mall while trolling its parking lot in an unmarked vehicle. At least one undercover officer posed as a shopper and dropped a pair of car keys on the ground in high-traffic areas of the mall. Then the mall’s security team used its arsenal of surveillance cameras to monitor the keys for a taker.
“We’ve had the auto thefts in this area starting to spike – hopefully we’ll curb those from happening again,” Cooper said. “It’s also a chance to work with mall security and build a better partnership with them.
“This seems to be a recent trend, so we’re going to go ahead and squash it now.”
At least two people promptly picked up the keys from areas inside the mall and turned them in to security. A younger man was seen picking up the keys outside the mall and waving the keyless entry device around while pressing its buttons before walking inside a department store and turning them in to a store employee. Mission supervisor Sgt. George Gundich said the man wasn’t even approached by police because he – in the end – did the right thing.
Lost keys, missing car
Reports on those three stolen-vehicle incidents appeared identical: Someone entered the mall for about an hour, and when they returned their keys were lost and their vehicle was gone.
The first incident was reported Nov. 2 by someone who told police she parked her 1999 Plymouth Breeze outside an Oglethorpe Mall department store. The woman returned two hours later to find the Plymouth had vanished, the report stated.
She told police she couldn’t recall whether she left the keys in the door, trunk or dropped them on the ground.
In another incident reported Dec. 27, a man told police he parked his 2005 Nissan Altima outside Oglethorpe Mall and later realized his keys were missing. The man told police he retraced his steps and checked to see whether his car was still there, the report stated.
The man told police he continued his search for more than four hours, and when he finally gave up to get a ride home, the Nissan had vanished, the report stated.
The car was found on New Year’s Eve in a neighborhood not far from the mall. It’s license plate had been switched for a dealership temporary tag, according to the report.
The latest incident was reported March 24, when a woman told police her nephew drove her 1996 Cadillac Deville to Oglethorpe Mall and dropped the keys. The luxury sedan was found April 1 on Gulfstream Road, the report stated.
That report inspired Zapal to conjure up the mission for his crime suppression unit to execute.
“Honest people, as you saw, would turn in the keys to security,” Zapal. “And if you don’t, we’re going to find you.”
Zapal said the mission was approved by the Chatham County District Attorneys Office.
Auto thefts plummet
Metro officers across the department have worked to slash auto theft numbers in half.
As of April 10, the department has taken 184 reports, about 50 percent less than the same time period the year before, data show.
The Southside Precinct has managed a 57 percent auto theft reduction this year, which Zapal said was the result of several roadside checkpoints in problem areas, good detective work, public education and a few big arrests.
Mission will evolve
Zapal said he plans to continue his latest mission “until I’m sure the problem is gone.”
There are plans in the works to include a disabled vehicle, he said.
“That way we can get him for theft by taking but the car won’t go anywhere,” he said.
Steven Seagal the lawman, is now under investigation www.privateofficer.com
Normand has scheduled a 2:30 p.m. news conference.
The case is particularly sensitive for the Sheriff’s Office not only because it involves a report of crimes in Jefferson Parish but because Seagal is a reserve deputy sheriff. His A&E cable network show, “Steven Seagal Lawman,” features him riding with regular deputies on their rounds.
Seagal’s attorney has dismissed the woman’s assertions as baseless charges leveled by a disgruntled former employee.
In the lawsuit, Kayden Nguyen alleges Seagal held her captive in the town of Jean Lafitte as a “sex toy” while filming the A&E reality show.
The suit was filed Monday in Los Angeles in Superior Court by Nguyen, who claims sexual harassment and illegal trafficking of females for sex. The 23-year-old former model asks for more than $1 million, as well as punitive damages, in the lawsuit.
Nguyen (see a photo of her here) was told she would be needed for clerical duties related to the reality TV show and was flown to New Orleans immediately after a brief interview with Seagal in Los Angeles. According to the lawsuit, Nguyen said Segal’s true intentions began to become clear when he made a statement as the plane was taking off: “I’m a family man, and I live with my wife, but she wouldn’t care if you were my lover.”
Nguyen said she was sexually attacked at a house in Lafitte on 2 consecutive nights after arriving in Jefferson Parish, according to the lawsuit, and began to look for ways to escape. She eventually ran away from the house when a plan to leave in a taxi was thwarted by Seagal, according to the lawsuit. Nguyen said she left all her valuables in the house and was denied airfare back to Los Angeles until she returned to the house to sign a legal release, according to the lawsuit.
Nguyen eventually managed to get money from a relative and flew back to Los Angeles.
You’ve got mail! An electronic subpoena! www.privateofficer.com
Source-journal-courier.com After years of inaction, Louisville Metro Government has signed a $454,000 contract to adopt an electronic subpoena system to replace the county’s cumbersome system of hand-delivering papers and help make sure officers show up for court.
“Everybody’s going to benefit from this,” especially police, said Bruce McMichael of the Louisville Metro Criminal Justice Commission.
Metro Police Lt. Col. Vince Robison, responsible for overseeing court attendance, said the department is “very optimistic this will help us eliminate” the problem of officers missing court.
In recent years, an estimated 10 percent of the approximately 100,000 paper subpoenas issued annually to Louisville police never reached the officers, according to department officials. They and others cite the process as one reason why officers miss court.
Related
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The system will be financed by federal stimulus funds, and police will cover the annual maintenance fee of about $91,000. Metro government also will buy about $16,000 worth of new computer hardware.
But the expense appears likely to be recouped. The Jefferson County attorney’s office alone spends about $150,000 annually to generate paper subpoenas. Police and the Jefferson Circuit Court Clerk’s office also incur costs, which they’ve been unable to quantify.
How it will work
Officials hope to have the electronic system operating by the end of the year. When it is, police will receive notification via e-mail.
They can then accept the subpoena by computer, and once they do, anyone with access to the system — including prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges — can see the subpoena was served.
Besides metro officers, the Jefferson County sheriff’s office will receive the electronic subpoenas. Subpoenaed citizens will continue to receive paper documents.
Police, prosecutors, judges and others have long acknowledged the need to improve how subpoenas are distributed to officers. Chief Jefferson District Judge Sean Delahanty said online subpoenas will cut down on time-consuming paperwork and add accountability
We should have done this years ago,” he said. Under the current system, the signed, paper subpoena was supposed to be placed in the court file as evidence the document had been served. But it often never reached the court record, leaving it unclear whether the subpoena was delivered to the officer.
Under the new system, if officers do not acknowledge and accept the electronic subpoena in a given period, that fact will go up the police chain of command — also electronically — until it is addressed.
Reducing conflicts
Leslie DeLatte, president of Dallas-based Orion Communications, which is providing the system to Jefferson County, said it also will provide officers with a schedule of their upcoming subpoenas so that potential conflicts can be identified. If an officer is unable to attend court, that information can be put into the system to notify others in the case.
Currently, officers’ requests to continue cases are done on paper. But those requests have not always been made, and when they were, they too sometimes did not make it into the official court record.
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Officer Absent: Case Dismissed Special Investigation
DeLatte also said one or more touch-screen computers will be installed in the Hall of Justice for officers to check in and out of court. That will allow the tracking and analysis of officers’ court attendance, something the police department says it has lacked the resources to do.
The criminal-justice commission formed an e-subpoena committee with police, court clerks and prosecutors and others shortly after The Courier-Journal reported in March 2009 that more than 600 felony defendants were set free in 2007 alone because Louisville officers failed to appear for district court hearings.
The newspaper’s five-month investigation also showed countless misdemeanor cases were dismissed that year for the same reason, and that police had not tracked dismissed cases — despite being urged to do so in two reports since 2002, and periodic complaints from prosecutors, judges and others.
As a result, neither the department nor prosecutors have known the frequency of such cases, why the officers failed to appear and whether there were chronically absent officers.
One of the earliest proponents of an electronic subpoena system, Jefferson District Judge William Ryan, proposed the idea in 2003, but it generated little support. He said he never even received a definitive response.
Two years later, Ann Dyke, a supervisor in the Jefferson County attorney’s office, wrote to a metro police official and others that “the biggest problem is timely delivery of the subpoenas” to the various police divisions.
But nothing happened as a result and the problem continued, leading Assistant County Attorney Robert Fleck to note in a November 2008 e-mail to colleagues that “if anyone relies solely on (the) subpoena process to ensure the presence of witnesses, then you are taking an incredible leap of faith and you are not doing your job.”
Jefferson Circuit Judge Irv Maze, county attorney for nearly a decade before joining the bench in August 2008, said last year that he recalled virtually no discussion of e-subpoenas during his tenure and that while he was aware of problems, his suggestions for possible changes went nowhere.
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Officer Absent: Case Dismissed Special Investigation
“I was asking, ‘Why not serve people electronically?’” Maze said. “… But every time I tried to suggest change, I got fussed at.” Ryan, now a senior-status judge, said he has talked with officers who say they are still not always receiving subpoenas in time to appear in court.
“Hopefully this will help out,” Ryan said. “I’ll be interested to see how it works.”
Murderer of armored car guard seeks release from prison www.privateofficer.com
Wearing a ski mask, Lewis, then 35 years old, jerked open the door of a van filled with five bank tellers on their way to the drive-up facility of Citizens National Bank, 250 N. Water St. He and his sister, Bernice, Willie Sangster and Maurice Farris stole $62,061 from the tellers, in addition to kidnapping a woman whose car they stole to use as a getaway vehicle and locking her in the trunk.
When the van’s driver, bank security guard Donald L. Bivens Sr., 51, reached for his gun, Lewis shot him to death. Bivens, a former Decatur police detective and Macon County juvenile probation officer, was posthumously honored for his positive impact on the community when the Bivens/Whitten Juvenile Center was partly named for him.
Lewis was sentenced to death in 1979, but the sentence was overturned by a federal judge on a technicality. He is now serving a life sentence without parole.
In recent years, Lewis, 66, an inmate at the Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet, has been filing petitions to Illinois governors in an effort to gain his release.
On Wednesday, Lewis’s supporters presented his case at a prisoner review board hearing at the Richard J. Daley Center in Chicago. Lewis remained in prison during the hearing.
His plea for release was opposed by the Macon County State’s Attorney’s Office and several members of Bivens family.
Assistant State’s Attorney Elizabeth Dobson filed a written objection to Lewis’s release, which states that Lewis continues to deny that he did anything wrong, despite circuit courts, appellate courts and federal courts finding that the evidence against him is overwhelming. While other criminals have expressed remorse for their crimes, Lewis has not accepted responsibility for shooting and killing another human being and, therefore, remains dangerous, the document states.
Lewis was represented by the National Clemency Project of Hixson, Tenn.
A former prison inmate, Victor Gaines, spoke on behalf of Lewis, saying Lewis helped him turn his life around when they were in prison together, Dobson said.
Gaines told the review board that Lewis already had served much time and could serve the community better if he were released. He said Lewis could tell young people on the outside why they should not make bad choices.
But members of the Bivens family said they do not believe it is fair for Lewis to get out of prison and live his life, when Donald Bivens Sr., who was just doing his job, is not able to live any longer.
Five family members attended the hearing, including Donald Bivens Jr., the victim’s son, and Donald Bivens III and Timothy Bivens, the victim’s grandsons.
They told the board that as many times as Lewis comes forward with clemency requests, they will be present to protest it.
The prisoner review board makes formal recommendations to the governor as to whether an inmate should be granted clemency. The governor may follow or ignore any recommendation. The board’s recommendations usually are presented several months after the hearings.
Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich rejected Lewis’ previous plea in June 2007, five months after Lewis’ previous prisoner review board hearing.
Family members said it is difficult for them to have to keep thinking about the horrible crime and stressful to have to continue to contest Lewis’ release.
Dobson said the Lewis case is another example of victims of crimes not receiving closure through the criminal justice system.
