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Mall voyeur arrested in Bloomington www.privateofficer.com
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. July 15 2010 – The man suspected of snapping shots of a 19-year-old woman in a Bloomington, Ind. changing room is now behind bars.
Bloomington Police say they received several tips who indicated 25-year-old Ryan P. Mosier was the man seen on security camera video running out of the store.
Detectives arrived at Mosier’s home where he surrendered without incident. He is charged with Voyeurism.
Police began investigating after the woman reported she tripped over a man on his hands and knees at a College Mall store. She told officers she thinks the man was trying to take pictures up her skirt.
After that, the woman says, she was trying on a pair of shorts when she saw someone stick a camera under the door.
Arrest made in beating of Atlanta parole officer www.privateofficer.com
Gregory Johnson, 30, of Atlanta, has been charged with robbery and aggravated battery in the attack on George B. Walker, 31, an officer with the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles. Johnson will be transported to the Fulton County Jail, according to a press release issued at 6:20 p.m. today
Atlanta Police Department officers went to the Atlanta Eagle Tuesday night after a missing state parole officer’s vehicle was found in the gay bar’s parking lot.
Atlanta police say an officer with the Georgia Pardons & Parole Board was found severely beaten in Central Park in Midtown on Saturday and his car was found at the Atlanta Eagle, a gay bar located on Ponce de Leon Avenue.
The victim is identified as George B. Walker, 31, of Marietta. He works as a parole officer.
Carlos Campos, public affairs manager for the APD, said the APD 911 center received a call at about 6 a.m. on Saturday that a man who appeared to have been assaulted was on the ground in Central Park, located at 400 Merritt Ave.
“We got the call and our units responded and Grady EMS were already on the scene loading him into the ambulance,” he said. “He appeared to have been beaten.”
Injuries included facial injuries, Campos said.
Walker, the victim, was put into a medically induced coma, Campos said, and remains in a coma.
Based on interviews with other people, APD investigators were able to locate Walker’s vehicle at the Atlanta Eagle, Campos said.
“We went to the bar [last night] and impounded it for safekeeping,” Campos said.
Richard Ramey, co-owner of the Atlanta Eagle, said there were several APD units in the bar’s parking lot about 11 p.m. Tuesday. Some people thought the bar may have been raided again as it was last September, but that is not the case, Ramey stressed.
“Police were there to get the vehicle [a black SUV]. They did not enter our establishment and we cooperated with the officers,” he said.
Ramey said a bartender remembers the black SUV pulling into the Atlanta Eagle parking lot on Friday evening because it was one of the first cars to arrive, but no one remembers details of the person driving it. Ramey said Atlanta Eagle staff looked through the bar’s credit card receipts to see if the parole officer may have purchased drinks at the bar, but none were found.
Ramey also said that the parole officer was not beaten at the bar located on Ponce de Leon Avenue.
“This did not take place at the Atlanta Eagle or in the vicinity of the Atlanta Eagle,” he said. “Nothing happened at the Eagle — that’s just where his car was found.”
Campos said investigators are still trying to piece together what happened to Walker.
“Because he can’t communicate, we can’t retrace his steps,” Campos said. “We are hopeful we will identify a suspect soon.
“At this time we are not classifying this as a bias crime although we have notified the GLBT liaison [Patricia Powell] due to the connection to the Eagle,” Campos added.
Walker’s sexual orientation is unknown, Campos said, but added that Walker is married.
“Right now we don’t have evidence this was motivated by sexual orientation. Our investigators are pursuing every lead to determine what transpired,” he said. “We need to talk to him.”
Atlanta Eagle personnel were not immediately suspicious that a vehicle was parked in the bar’s lot for several days because the bar shares parking with people living in the neighborhood when the bar is not open, Ramey said.
NJ police chief used posiiton to support his private guard company www.privateofficer.com
Hackensack NJ July 15 2010 Embattled Hackensack Police Chief Charles “Ken” Zisa was paid $5,000 a month to provide security services to a county hospital, part of a lucrative side business that included a separate consulting deal brokered by former Democratic powerhouse and convicted felon Dennis Oury.
Ken Zisa, Hackensack’s suspended chief of police. According to state records, Zisa was the sole owner of Krisant Security Associates. The chief – who was charged recently with insurance fraud and official misconduct — landed a two-year pact to work for Bergen Regional Medical Center in Paramus in 2004, an agreement worth $120,000 to his company, Krisant Security Associates LLC.
And the city of Linden paid a business connected to both Zisa and Oury — former attorney to the county’s Democratic Party — $25,000 for a review of its police department.
“It was just my feeling that it was done to give a political friend a little something,” said retired Linden Police Chief John Miliano.
So, apparently, was the hospital contract. State Sen. Loretta Weinberg said recently she was told by then-Democratic Party Chairman Joseph Ferriero — who was convicted of federal fraud charges connected to his work with Oury last year – that the contract was payback for Zisa’s giving up his state Assembly seat to run in the 2001 sheriff election. (He lost, leaving him with neither elected post.)
“I was so annoyed over this whole thing,” Weinberg said.
Zisa was in line to land a similar contract from Bergenfield, but one councilman criticized the move as political and said the matter was dropped.
Maki Haberfeld, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, described the chief’s actions as “just wrong, wrong, wrong,” and said they suggest that he was misusing his public position.
“You should not use your position in law enforcement to generate business. You just shouldn’t,” she said. “It’s a question of ethics.”
Zisa is suspended without pay from his $191,606-a-year post in the wake of his arrest, which stems from claims that he covered up alleged misdeeds by his girlfriend and someone else with whom he had a close relationship.
In addition, members of his own department have accused him of using his position to advance his private and political interests. More than 20 current and retired officers have filed suit against him in the past year, some alleging he used his influence to get officers to vote for the police union delegate of his choice and to donate to public election campaigns. The Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office took steps to depoliticize the department and installed a monitor to oversee operations after his initial arrest in April.
Zisa hung up on a reporter, and his attorney could not be reached for comment.
The chief used off-duty officers from his own department to work at the hospital. In a statement, Bergen Regional officials said Krisant was hired to assess security and provided consulting and security services during the June 2004 nurses strike, “including the employment of off-duty police officers.”
In an earlier interview, the chief said he paid Hackensack police through his company to work at the hospital. At that time, he would not discuss his side business or what he hired the officers to do.
“I’m not going into anything, other than to confirm that there … was a time that I fulfilled a request of theirs to see if there were any police officers that were interested in working part time for them, and they did,” he said in 2007, adding “I paid the police officers.”
Haberfeld, who has written extensively about police integrity, said the use of subordinates is troubling.
“That’s a conflict of interest,” she said. “If you’re in a supervisory position in a government organization and you run a private enterprise and you’re asking people to work for you, you’re basically using your status as a government employee to influence people to work for you. That, by itself, is wrong.”
Two Hackensack officers who worked at Bergen Regional said they provided security at a walkathon that was taking place on the grounds of the hospital during the strike by nurses. The pair, who both requested anonymity, said they assumed they were working for — and being paid by — the hospital.
They said they were recruited for the out-of-town job not by Zisa but by the ranking officer in charge of security details for the Hackensack police; one recalled being paid in cash by that officer a few days later.
Because of the strike and so many people being there, they wanted security in the crowd,” said one of the officers.
Both said they were in plainclothes and joined the walkers.
“We all went in different directions,” another said. “…ŸWe were just part of the crowd and we had to make sure nothing went wrong.”
State law prohibits active law-enforcement officers from owning a private-investigation or security company or from being a “qualifying member, officer or director” of any such company. Active police officers can do consulting work, such as recommending where security cameras should be placed, but they cannot be hired as independent contractors to provide investigations or security guards for hire.
A spokesman for the New Jersey State Police, which has oversight of security and private-investigation firms, said they do not comment on whether specific circumstances present a violation of the law.
Asked about Zisa, a spokesman for the state Attorney General’s Office said they would not comment because of an ongoing case against the chief.
The ousted chief isn’t the only prominent police official to get a side deal from a local hospital while on the public payroll. Michael Mordaga, former chief of detectives for the Prosecutor’s Office, was paid as a consultant by Hackensack University Medical Center for five years – a job that began while he was with the Hackensack police force.
Bergen Regional Medical Center LP, the private company that manages the Paramus hospital formerly known as Bergen Pines, said in its statement that the contract with Krisant began in January 2004 and ended in December 2005; Zisa is listed as the firm’s sole owner in records on file in the state Division of Revenue.
In its statement, the hospital management company said Krisant was paid to evaluate the level of security of the facility, monitor movement within the hospital to deter and prevent “patient elopements” — unauthorized departures — and determine “the vulnerability of the facility relating to post-9/11 security concerns.”
Krisant also submitted “several written reports,” which included findings and recommendations regarding the hospital’s “technology and infrastructure such as lighting, parking lots, cameras, card access control, and closed-circuit TV systems.”
The hospital management company refused to provide copies of its contract with Krisant or any reports submitted by the firm.
The Bergen County Improvement Authority, which oversees the hospital, said it has no reports or contracts related to Krisant or Zisa. The hospital was privatized by former Republican County Executive William “Pat” Schuber after several scandals involving poor conditions and patronage. Consultants also projected that the hospital would become a drain on the county budget. It has been run by a private manager since 1998.
Another company
Krisant isn’t the only company name the chief has worked under.
In 2001, the city of Linden, in Union County, awarded Professional Law Enforcement Evaluators LLC a no-bid contract to review the operations of its police department.
The company was formed in January 2001, and its registered agent — and the only name on incorporation documents — is Oury, who declined to comment.
Oury, who is also a former counsel for the county Improvement Authority, signed the proposal submitted by the company to Linden. Zisa signed the three-page contract on behalf of the business. The chief also signed the 17-page final report to the city and the payment voucher. Both the proposal and the report include a Hackensack post office box as the mailing address for the company that is the same one used for Krisant Security Associates.
Zisa was a Democratic state assemblyman for the 37th Legislative District when the contract was struck.
Linden Mayor Richard Gerbounka, who was a councilman in 2001, said Joseph S. Suliga, who was the city’s financial officer and also a Democratic state assemblyman at the time, urged city officials to hire Professional Law Enforcement Evaluators. Suliga, who became a state senator, died in an auto accident in 2005.
“We voted on it on his recommendation,” said Gerbounka, an independent.
According to the final report, members of Professional Law Enforcement Evaluators conducted interviews with various police and civilian personnel and did on-site inspections of facilities and equipment. The report also makes recommendations, including the elimination of two-man patrols, reducing overtime by offering compensatory days and the upgrade of police vehicles.
Miliano, the former Linden chief, said he was dissatisfied with most of the study and called much of the information flawed. He said he met with Zisa once or twice in his office during the workday to talk about it, and wrote a memo to the mayor refuting some of its recommendations.
In 2002, Bergenfield officials discussed giving Zisa a similar $30,000 consulting job to review police services. Former Republican Councilman George Williams remembers discussing the possibility of hiring Zisa for a “substantial contract,” but argued against it because he saw it as a conflict. Williams said the subject was tabled; Bergenfield officials say they have no record of payments or contracts to Zisa or the two companies.
“Ken Zisa’s name did come up, and I did adamantly come up and say that is absolutely not correct,” he said. “Let’s keep politics out, because I knew what had happened before with the Oury thing.”
Earlier that year, Bergenfield had hired Oury as its borough attorney. That same day the Democrat-controlled Borough Council hired Governmental Grants Consulting to help it obtain county and state grants. The company was secretly owned by Oury and Ferriero, who were later indicted on federal corruption charges relating to the firm and its work in Bergenfield. Oury pleaded guilty and testified against Ferriero, who was convicted in a jury trial.
Neither Ferriero nor his attorney could be reached for comment. Ferriero’s lawyer has said his client would seek to overturn his conviction, based on last month’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court limiting the application of the “honest services” fraud statute under which he was prosecuted. Oury’s attorney did not return phone calls seeking comment on his plans in light of the honest-services decision.
Current and former city managers in Hackensack say they were unaware of Zisa’s security firm or his work at the hospital or Linden, but only one thought he should have been notified. Peter Capone, who served as city manager from July 2004 until September 2005, said the chief should have told him.
“I think it’s a critical aspect of being a city manager. You need to know what’s occurring in the city, and what personnel is doing, absolutely,” he said.
Hackensack’s current city manager, Stephen Lo Iacono, sees things differently. He said he never spoke with Zisa about any of his outside work.
“I don’t necessarily have to know what everybody is doing on their own time as long as there was no impact,” said Lo Iacono. “I didn’t see any impact on his official duties here. I mean, he was here every day. He spent actually pretty long days.”
The written rules and regulations for the Hackensack Police Department say the chief is “on duty at all times” unless the city manager grants a special leave of absence.
Source:NorthJersey.com
Police arrest 15 in silver Spring disturbance www.privateofficer.com
Fifteen people were arrested Monday evening after a group of teenagers harassing pedestrians in downtown Silver Spring slammed one man to the ground, breaking his face and drawing the attention of several eyewitnesses.
The incident occurred just after 7 p.m. Monday on a Fenton Street sidewalk, near the intersection with Ellsworth Drive and just outside the perimeter of the newly opened Veterans Plaza. After late-afternoon showers gave way to sunshine, dozens of pedestrians milled about the downtown area, including a group of 15 men and women described as being in their late teens and early 20s, according to witnesses.
One man from that group was approaching random pedestrians as they walked by the outdoor eating area outside the Baja Fresh restaurant.
About 15 different people were accosted by the man, who was standing inches from the victims’ faces and “verbally harassing” and “making crazy sexual comments” to passersby, said Chris Wilhelm, a Silver Spring resident who was reading a book nearby.
“It was something building, like a volcano about to erupt,” said T. Hill, a Takoma, D.C., resident who was parallel parking his car on Fenton Street at the time of the incident.
One middle-aged man tried to ignore the teens and walk past them, but as he walked toward the intersection of Fenton Street and Wayne Avenue, the teen who was accosting pedestrians slapped the man in the back of the head, Wilhelm said. When the man turned around and showed his frustration, at least one other member of the group punched or hit him in the side of the head, according to witnesses and Montgomery County Police.
The man fell, and his head slammed against the red brick sidewalk. Blood poured over the sidewalk and could be seen in footprints tracked through the Fenton Street and Ellsworth Drive intersection Monday night.
“The sound I heard was like a brain getting crushed,” said Silver Spring resident Jane Gorbaty, who witnessed the incident as she was walking to the newly opened Silver Spring Civic Building for a meeting and immediately called 911.
Wilhelm said several witnesses rushed over to the victim — his friend began scuffling with one of the attackers — and the group fled toward Wayne Avenue.
Police arrived within 10 minutes, Hill said. The man suffered fractured facial bones and was in serious but non-life-threatening condition at Holy Cross Hospital, said Cpl. Dan Friz, a Montgomery County Police spokesman. He did not know if the man had been released from the hospital as of Tuesday morning.
Police arrested 15 people and three were charged with first-degree assault, although their identities are not yet available, Friz said. The other suspects were charged with disorderly conduct, Friz said.
The civic building and Veterans Plaza opened Thursday evening with much celebration, but the incident Monday forced Silver Spring Regional Services Center Director Reemberto Rodriguez to explain the security of the plaza to residents—about 30 of whom had gathered in the civic building for a scheduled Silver Spring Citizens Advisory Board meeting.
The area of the sidewalk where Monday’s assault occurred is public property, just between the county-owned Veterans Plaza and the Silver Plaza on Ellsworth Drive, which is a public street managed by a private company, Peterson Cos., with its own security team.
The same security that mans the civic building also patrols the plaza, Rodriguez said. The Silver Spring Regional Services Center recently moved its offices into the civic building. Security cameras mounted on the exterior of the building also overlook the plaza, Rodriguez said. One security guard was on duty Monday night, Rodriguez said.
Peterson security did respond to the incident but is not responsible for patrolling the Fenton Street sidewalk, said Jennifer Nettles, manager of Downtown Silver Spring for Peterson Cos. Downtown Silver Spring security cameras may have caught the incident, Nettles said.
Nettles said Monday’s incident was the most violent near that intersection since March 2009, when a large fight broke out after a youth “Stop the Violence” concert. Seventy-five police officers and private security officers responded and 35 people, about half of whom were adults, were arrested or cited for offenses including assault and disorderly conduct.
Friz said Metro Transit Police responded about 11:52 p.m. Saturday night to an unrelated incident outside the Majestic Theater, also at the corner of Fenton and Ellsworth. Shortly before midnight, Metro Transit Police arrested Kokavi Patterson, 22, of Washington, D.C., after he allegedly waved a firearm at a group of people, said Cathy Asato, a Metro Transit Police spokeswoman.
Asato said the group was running into the Silver Spring Metro Station when they told a Metro Transit Police Officer on duty that a man had threatened them with a gun. The group pointed in the direction of the suspect, and the officer pursued him, arresting Patterson at an undisclosed location, said Asato, who did not know where the original alleged confrontation between Patterson and the group began. Patterson, formerly convicted of a felony robbery, was charged with two counts of first-degree assault and carrying a deadly weapon as a felon, Asato said.
The Silver Spring Citizens Advisory Board, a residents group that advises the county government on issues including public safety, was meeting in the civic building just a few hundred feet away at the time of Monday’s assault, with County Councilwoman Valerie Ervin (D-Dist. 5) of Silver Spring in attendance. When told of the incident, Ervin vowed to arrange a meeting with Peterson Cos., county police and county government employees operating the civic building and plaza to make sure all groups cooperate to secure the new plaza area, which replaced the popular artificial turf field.
For Hill, who said he frequently walks from his home to downtown Silver Spring, that meeting may be occurring too late. His sense of safety is already lost.
“I’ve never seen anything remotely close to this,” Hill said. “… I’m not going to come here again or walk here again if these punks are harassing people.”
Source:Washington Post
Teens armed with Tech-9 shoot at security officer www.privateofficer.com
Tulsa Okla July 15 2010 A security guard shot at a young man or boy after that person pointed a gun at him at a Tulsa apartment complex Tuesday night, police said.
The suspect ran, and it wasn’t apparent whether he had been shot.
As he ran, he dropped a “Tech-9 style submachine gun” with an extended magazine in the parking lot, police said.
Officer Scott Murphy estimated that the gun had a 30-round clip of amunition.
Police were called about 11:15 p.m., and the weapon remained on the ground as they investigated Tuesday night.
The apartment complex is near 64th Street and Newport Avenue.
Police have been targeting the area of 61st Street and Peoria Avenue in recent weeks to address reported spikes in gang and drug problem.
Store security officer injured twice in a week www.privateofficer.com
Newswatch 16 has learned the guard was hurt while stopping a would-be theft at the Gerrity’s on North Keyser Avenue in Scranton.
Police said the suspect blew dye into the guard’s face. The suspect is in custody.
Last week the same guard was slashed in the arm by a woman police said tried to steal meat from the Gerrity’s on Meadow Avenue in Scranton. That suspect is also behind bars.
