Former Ohio police chief commits suicide at club www.privateofficer.com

MASSILLON OH Aug 9 2010 — Former Navarre Police Chief Scott Bauschka died Friday of an apparent suicide, six months after resigning amid a Stark County Sheriff’s Department investigation.

Bauschka, 43, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head at the Army-Navy Club at 1008B Ninth St. SW, according to authorities.

Bauschka was pronounced dead at the scene at 4:17 p.m., said Harry Campbell, Stark County Coroner’s office investigator. An autopsy was to be performed today, but Bauschka’s death appears to be a suicide, Campbell said.

“There is nothing to suggest it is anything other than that,” Campbell said.

The shooting occurred just before 4 p.m.

A handful of people were inside the club at the time of the shooting, said Massillon police detective Jason Greenfield. A pistol was recovered at the scene, he said, and several witnesses have been interviewed. The incident remains under investigation, said Greenfield, who declined further comment.

Bauschka, a 1985 Washington High School graduate, had been a member of the Navarre police force for more than 15 years and was named police chief in 2000. He resigned in February after unidentified village officials requested a Sheriff’s Department investigation. Authorities have declined to disclose the reason for the probe. Bauschka’s computer was seized as evidence during the investigation.

Information gathered by the Sheriff’s Department had been turned over to the Stark County Prosecutor’s office, but the investigation remained open.

“The thing is I love the guy, he was my boy,” Navarre Mayor Robert Benson said Friday.

Benson said he hadn’t talked to Bauschka in some time, but the former chief recently sent him a photo of his new granddaughter.

Benson believes Bauschka was working in security in the Akron area.

According to Benson, Bauschka is divorced and has a stepdaughter, a teenage son and daughter and one grandchild.

Bauschka’s father, Dave, is a former Massillon police officer. Bauschka’s parents are believed to live out of state.

Current Navarre Police Chief Dennis Albaugh said he had not spoken to Bauschka since he stepped down in February.

“He kind of lost contact with everybody when he resigned,” Albaugh said.

It was Bauschka who hired Albaugh in 2003.

“He was a good officer … he taught me quite a bit in the job,” Albaugh said.

The Drug Abuse Resistance Education program was a priority to Bauschka throughout his career, according to Albaugh.

Former Navarre Councilwoman Pat Winkhart recalled when Bauschka would patrol the village on his bicycle.

“I’m so sad for his family. We need to keep all in his prayers,” Winkhart said. “… He was excited to be a grandpa.”

Childhood friend Clay Spangler, of Massillon, was at a loss to explain Bauschka’s death.

“He was just over at my house two weeks ago playing cards. He was a good guy … everybody loved him,” Spangler said.
Source:Cleveland.com

L.A. deputy sheriff sentenced to prison for smuggling drugs www.privateofficer.com

Los Angeles CA Aug 9 2010 The inmate’s request seemed fairly benign inside the teeming, violent Los Angeles County jail. He wanted Sheriff’s Deputy Peter Paul Felix to smuggle him in some decent food.

The deputy knew he was breaking the rules, but he obliged. What started with hamburgers and pizza led to steadily more requests until the inmate asked Felix to perform another favor: smuggle in a marijuana package in exchange for about $600.

That delivery into the Castaic jail would be the first in a months-long series of drug carries the deputy made, netting thousands of dollars in the process. Inmates goaded Felix to bring them more, telling the young deputy that he wasn’t the only officer smuggling drugs, and that they respected him because he was from the “hood.”

The case underscores the Sheriff’s Department’s struggles to keep drugs out of the nation’s largest county jail system. Deputies confiscate drugs from inmates on a regular basis — and have done so for years. But Felix’s crime and other recent cases reviewed by The Times offer a window into the elaborate schemes used to breach jailhouse security for major profit.

Earlier this year, Deputy Devin McLean admitted in an interview with a sheriff’s investigator that she had smuggled heroin hidden in a toothpaste container into jail, according to a district attorney’s office memo.

McLean said she was given the drugs by her then-boyfriend, a former inmate she had met while working at the North County Correctional Facility in Castaic. McLean explained that she carried the drugs into the jail in her backpack and then delivered the heroin inside a bedroll to an inmate, the memo stated.

Prosecutors declined to file criminal charges against McLean, saying that they did not have enough evidence to corroborate her statement at a trial. She has been relieved of duty with pay pending the outcome of an internal investigation. Her attorney declined comment.

In March, a federal grand jury indicted an employee of a private company that delivers food to the jails for allegedly smuggling more than 100 grams of heroin into the North County Correctional Facility. That amount would easily get 150 users high, one expert said.

Angelica Mora, 40, was allegedly part of a drug ring whose members communicated in code using jail telephones. Another defendant, the operation’s drug supplier, also oversaw other criminal activities for a Los Angeles street gang and the Mexican Mafia, a notorious prison gang, according to court records. Mora, the supplier and several other defendants accused in the scheme have pleaded not guilty.

In June, a Beverly Hills attorney was charged with trying to smuggle heroin to inmates in a courthouse lockup.

A drug-sniffing sheriff’s dog discovered a bag containing 14.25 grams of the narcotic, enough for 20 or more hits, in an area of the downtown L.A. courthouse where only the attorney, Michael Inman, 48, was waiting, authorities said. He has pleaded not guilty.
Sheriff’s records show a steady increase in drug seizures across jail facilities over the last several years, with 370 last year compared to 270 in 2006.

“This is just what we know, how much is going on that we don’t know about?” said Lt. Greg Thompson of the department’s custody investigative services unit. “But we think we have a handle on it.”

He said some drug-runners have stuffed narcotics into tennis balls and flung them over walls at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility.

“People have nothing to do but think here,” he said. “And they’re pretty imaginative.”

Sheriff Lee Baca said depression and anxiety among inmates creates a huge demand for drugs.

“People incarcerated are looking for some form of psychological support,” Baca said. “Drugs seem to do that for most people who are addicted.”

Despite the busts, drugs make their way in, sometimes with lethal consequences.

On Christmas Day last year, a 22-year-old murder suspect was found in distress in his cell at Men’s Central Jail and began spitting up blood. Another inmate told authorities that Marlon Martinez had snorted an entire spoonful of brown liquid believed to be heroin, according to a coroner’s report. The Mexican national was allegedly holding the heroin for one or more other inmates.

Martinez died soon after paramedics attempted to revive him.

Felix’s defense attorney, Spencer R. Vodnoy, said his client knew little about the drug operation he was aiding, including who was behind it. Felix, he said, believed that he was transporting marijuana and had no idea that the deliveries included heroin.

The lawyer said Felix was unwittingly drawn in by the inmates when he agreed to give them unauthorized food.

“He wanted to be liked, he wanted to please people,” Vodnoy said. “That’s a nice thing in most people, but in a sheriff’s deputy that was a huge personality flaw.”

Felix initially refused requests to transport drugs, his attorney said. But he feared that the inmates might tell jail managers what he had already done and that he would lose his job, Vodnoy said. And though he was never directly threatened, the deputy began to fear for his family’s safety after inmates told him that they recognized him from his days playing baseball growing up in Baldwin Park, Vodnoy said.

He told sheriff’s investigators that he was paid $600 or $700 for his first delivery of marijuana and that he smuggled drugs into the jails on three other occasions, according to a probation report in the case. He was paid $2,000 to bring one package, and another job brought him $4,000, the probation report said.

“It seemed like a quick buck in the beginning, and then they kind of started asking for more,” Felix told investigators, according to the report. “I really didn’t want to. The first time it was OK, I guess, but after, they kept egging me on.”

To those involved, Felix was known by the code name “Jackie O” and was a crucial cog in a sophisticated scheme.

His “handler,” according to records, was inmate Terance Warner, an aspiring Mexican Mafia affiliate with a history of selling drugs behind bars. In telephone exchanges monitored by investigators, Warner directed several women on the outside to get drugs into the jail through Felix, prosecutors alleged.

Some of the monitored communications were later shown to include phone conversations between the women and associates of the Mexican Mafia.

From inside jail, Warner allegedly directed his wife, Latisha Nichole Rubalcaba, to collect several thousand dollars from inmate accounts that are set up by the Sheriff’s Department. The accounts are generally used by relatives of inmates to give loved ones money to buy snacks, phone cards and other cheap items at jailhouse concession stores.

But in one three-month period in 2008, more than $38,000 was withdrawn from Warner’s account, court records say. It is not clear if all of that money came from drug sales. Inmates are not allowed to carry cash, but officials said payments for drugs are sometimes made through intermediaries depositing cash into the accounts of jailhouse dealers.

Prosecutors accused Warner, 28, of directing another woman, Monique Ciara Garcia, to drop off drugs to Felix in a Baldwin Park parking lot in October 2008.

Garcia was carrying more than 161 grams of heroin, almost 25 grams of meth and roughly 50 grams of marijuana, enough to fill a large sandwich bag, when she met Felix. She also brought $5,100 in cash as payment for the deputy. The narcotics were intended to be smuggled inside the jail where Felix worked, according to a felony complaint.
The drugs were particularly valuable in jail, where prices are dramatically higher than outside, according to court records in the federal case against the food supply company employee. Based on a federal agent’s estimate in that case, Felix’s delivery would have been worth well over $75,000 behind bars.

The deputy was driving away with the cache of drugs — and his kickback — when authorities stopped him. He resigned from the department shortly after the arrest. He had been on the job for about two years.

Last week, Felix was led from a Los Angeles courtroom in handcuffs after a judge sentenced the former deputy to four years in prison. Warner, Rubalcaba, Garcia and another accomplice were sentenced to two years in prison.

Sheriff’s officials say new rules prevent inmates from making large money transfers like Warner’s. The department now caps accounts at $900, and limits transfers to third parties to $300 a week.

Felix’s attorney suggested that the department begin random searches of jail deputies for drugs and other contraband to deter similar misconduct.

“These guys are master manipulators,” Vodnoy said of some inmates. “Unfortunately for my client, they got the right guy — a guy who might be susceptible.”
Source:LA Times

Lee Holmes, named 2010 Missouri SRO www.privateofficer.com

Jefferson City MO Aug 9 2010 Lee Holmes, school resource officer at Jefferson City’s Lewis and Clark Middle School, has been named the 2010 Missouri School Resource Officers Association Officer of the Year.

Fellow police officers and members of the school staff nominated Holmes, who is in his fourth year as a resource officer.

Lewis and Clark Principal Bob Steffes said, “Officer Holmes’ greatest attribute is his ability to build meaningful relationships with those in our school community. We also know that Lee’s first priority is the safety of students and staff.”
Source:News Tribune

Hotel robber accidentally shoots- kills self www.privateofficer.com

ATLANTA, Ga.Aug 9 2010 — Police said the investigation of a shooting at a south Atlanta hotel Sunday took a strange turn after they watched surveillance video of the incident.

Originally, they believed the hotel clerk got in a gunfight with would-be robbers and killed one of them. Now, they believe the robber may have actually shot and killed himself.

Maj. Keith Meadows said a gunman tried to rob the Travelodge Hotel at 2788 Forrest Hills Drive near Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Sunday.

The hotel clerk was shot in the stomach during the course of the attempted robbery and was transported to Grady Memorial Hospital. He was in stable condition.

Police originally believed that when the robber pulled his gun on the clerk, the clerk grabbed his own weapon and the two exchanged gunfire. Late Sunday night however, investigators told Channel 2 Action News reporter Ryan Young that that’s not exactly what happened. Young learned that only one gun was found at the scene and investigators told him that the hotel surveillance video of the incident shows that when the robber pulled his gun back, he actually shot and killed himself.

Authorities are still looking for a man believed to be the gunman’s accomplice.
Source:WSBTV.com

Border towns not happy with new security bill www.privateofficer.com

EL PASO, Texas Aug 9 2010 — On its face, the new border security bill past last week in the Senate looks like real progress. It provides $600 million for border security, including $176 million for 1,000 new Border Patrol agents, $39 million for Customs and Border Protection to keep the current level of officers and $29 million more for 250 new CBP officers at ports of entry.
http://www.kfoxtv.com/news/24559132/detail.html

But El Paso County Sheriff Richard Wiles said you have to look at what is not in the bill.

“Our response to these border issues are being paid for solely by local tax payers,” said Wiles.

He said there is no money for local law enforcement like the sheriff’s office and El Paso Police Department.

“My employees are pulled away from their normal job, they’re pulled out of neighborhoods, in order to address issues that are directly related to the border,” he said.

He said they are addressing issues like drug smuggling and human trafficking and more common crimes committed by undocumented immigrants.

“So they should come in and identify what portion of my deputy’s job is dealing with border issues, and then provide me with the funding to hire additional staff to help do those things and keep deputies in the neighborhoods,” Wiles told KFOX.

U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez agreed with Wiles and supported a bill in the House that included funding for local law enforcement. The funding was stripped out of the Senate bill that passed last week.

“I am extremely disappointed that the Senate chose to remove from this border security funding bill those millions of dollars that would have gone directly to these agencies,” said Rodriguez in a statement to KFOX.

But Rodriguez still supported the Senate version of the bill.

“I now call on my colleagues in the House to pass this new and fully funded version of the bill on Tuesday when we reconvene in Washington,” he said.

Rodriguez told KFOX while he is disappointed the local funding is not in the bill, approving the border security bill is the right thing to do.
Source”KFOX14

OFFICER DOWN- MISSISSIPPIE- OFFICER GLENN AGEE

Patrolman Glen Agee
Jackson Police Department
Mississippi
End of Watch: Friday, August 6, 2010

Biographical Info
Age: 31
Tour of Duty: Not available
Badge Number: Not available

Incident Details
Cause of Death: Gunfire
Date of Incident: Friday, August 6, 2010
Weapon Used: Gun; Unknown type
Suspect Info: Apprehended

Officer Glen Agee was shot and killed by a fleeing prisoner.

He and another officer had arrested the man for aggravated assault and domestic violence and were transporting him to the Hinds County Detention Center. During transport the prisoner complained he was having trouble breathing, and the officers lowered the window in the patrol car.

Despite being handcuffed behind the back and belted in, the man was able to escape from the patrol car when it stopped at a red light. He fled into the woods with both officers in pursuit.

Several agencies and a helicopter joined in the search and located the suspect approximately 45 minutes later. Officer Agee was found a short time later suffering two gunshot wounds to his face.

Officer Agee had served with the Jackson Police Department for only two months and had previously served with the Jackson State University Police Department.

Agency Contact Information
Jackson Police Department
PO Box 17
Jackson, MS 39205

Phone: (601) 960-1217

Please contact the Jackson Police Department for funeral arrangements or for survivor benefit fund information.

WYOMING-OFFICER DOWN Chief Bill Bauer www.privateofficer.com

Chief of Police William T. (Bill) Bauer
Wyoming Police Department
Illinois
End of Watch: Friday, August 6, 2010

Biographical Info
Age: 36
Tour of Duty: 12 years, 7 months
Badge Number: Not available

Incident Details
Cause of Death: Automobile accident
Date of Incident: Friday, August 6, 2010
Weapon Used: Not available
Suspect Info: Not available

Chief William Bauer was killed in an automobile accident two miles east of Camp Grove in Marshall County.

At about 11:30 am, Chief Bauer was traveling eastbound on County Road 1050 North when a southbound vehicle on County Road 250 East entered the intersection, pulling into his path. Chief Bauer suffered fatal injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene. He was en route to an Illinois Valley Crime Commission executive board luncheon in Hennepin at the time of the accident.

Chief Bauer had served with the Wyoming Police Department for over 7½ years and for the past year was also the acting chief of the Bradford Police Department. He had previously served as a part-time officer with the Henry, Princeton and Sheffield police departments for five years.

Agency Contact Information
Wyoming Police Department
108 E Williams Street
Wyoming, IL 61491

Phone: (309) 286-6090

Please contact the Wyoming Police Department for funeral arrangements or for survivor benefit fund information.

San Antonio officers injured in copper theft incident www.privateofficer.com

San Antonio TX Aug 9 2010

With the help of River Walk hotel guests, police arrested a man suspected of stealing copper from the roof of an abandoned building downtown Sunday morning.
The arrest came after a search that injured two police officers.

A police dog found the man, Ricardo Cardeans, 33, hiding under floorboards in a former shoe store in the 100 block of Soledad Street around 9:30 a.m., police said. He was being held at Bexar County Jail on burglary and theft charges. Bail was set at $15,000.

During the hour-long search for the suspected thief, an officer broke his ankle while scaling a wall on top of the former Solo Serve building, said Sgt. John Cooley.

Another officer required stitches on a cut to his finger, a police report said.

The search began around 8:15 a.m., when guests staying on the 20th floor of the Holiday Inn San Antonio Riverwalk spotted Cardeans allegedly stealing copper wire and called police.

“Because of them, we were able to relay real time information to the officers on the quadrant,” Cooley said.

Woodsboro resident Mary Welfel, 50, was having coffee with her husband on a bench on the River Walk when she heard people shouting from the hotel balconies to officers.

“I saw cops climbing on the back side of buildings, over gates and fencing,” she said, “and I thought for a second we were watching ‘Reno 911!’ live.”

Welfel and others gathered at East Houston and Soledad streets to watch the San Antonio Fire Department’s heavy rescue crew retrieve the injured officer, who was lifted off the 40-foot roof and delivered to an awaiting stretcher by firemen on a large ladder. The bicycle patrol officer, whose name was not immediately released, was taken to Baptist Medical Center in good condition, Cooley said

It’s extremely precarious up there; there are lots of exposed pipes and plumbing,” he said. “It could have been much worse.”
Later, as Welfel passed officers who had detained the suspected thief, she gave media a “thumbs-up” signal.

The suspect had taken off a white tank top witnesses saw him wearing, and was barefoot. As officers detained him in the street, a group of people on a Segway tour passed by, craning their necks beneath helmets to see what had caused the commotion.

“I think it’s a successful thing that the police officers stopped him,” said Raymond Medina, 22, who watched the scene transpire from Soledad Street.

Cooley said police were searching the building the man was found hiding in for a backpack that witnesses saw him wearing. He’s expected to face one count of theft of copper, but could face other charges, police said.