Archive
Oklahoma police chief killed in motorcycle crash www.privateofficer.com
The Oklahoma Highway Patrol says 60-year-old Tommy Reed died after the motorcycle he was riding veered off state Highway 36. Troopers say Reed was thrown from the motorcycle in the Sunday evening accident.
Reed was the only police officer in the town of about 460 in southwestern Comanche County. County Sheriff Kenny Stradley said his office will provide law enforcement for the town.
Reed’s survivors include his wife – Mary – two daughters and a grandchild.
Police officer arrested in hit-run that left security officer in coma www.privateofficer.com
Washington Township NJ Sept 10 2011 A Police Department officer is charged after a man was hit by a car and seriously injured in Winslow Township last month.
Vance Banks, 27, a security guard at a nearby hospital was critically injured. Police say he remains in a coma.
Officer Kelly Gunderson is charged with leaving the scene of a motor vehicle crash.
Winslow police say Gunderson contacted them the day after the accident and said she thought she struck a deer with her car.
She had been suspended with pay while the investigation was on-going and will now be suspended without pay since charges have now been filed in the case.
Gunderson began her career in the Washington Township Police Department after serving in the United States Air Force from 1990 until 1995. She then worked as a Special Officer in the department from 2005 until 2006 and was hired full time in April 2006.
Gunderson turned herself in for the accident, but she hadn’t been charged for a two-week period.
The accident happened on August 19th on the 500 block of Sicklerville Road, in Sicklerville, N.J.
Mississippi high school football player dies during game www.privateofficer.com
GAUTIER, MS Sept 10 2011 – A D’Iberville High School football player went into cardiac arrest while playing in the weekly school football game and died on arrival at a local hospital.
Authorities have identified the player as Latrell Dunbar.
He passed away at Ocean Springs Hospital Friday night just before 10:30pm, according to Harrison County Schools Superintendent Henry Arledge.
Dunbar reportedly stopped breathing three times and had to be revived on the field. He was given CPR on the field before the medics arrived.
D’Iberville was playing at Gautier. The #18 running back was a senior at D’Iberville High School.
Sweet Home high school teacher arrested for sexual abuse www.privateofficer.com
Sweet Home police detectives arrested Michael Joseph Morrell, 28, following a two-week investigation. According to a release from Chief Bob Burford, Sweet Home School District officials had learned of sexual contact allegations between the teacher and a female juvenile and made a report to police.
Morrell was the chaperone last April for a group of about a dozen Sweet Home students who attended a scholastic competition in Portland. According to the investigation, a 17-year-old female student from Lebanon attended with the group.
The group spent three nights in a Portland motel. The charges allege the Lebanon girl shared the motel room and bed with Morrell for two of the nights, and that later, the two had sexual contact on at least four occasions.
Morrell is being lodged at the Linn County Jail. Detectives have served search warrants for Morrell’s home and work computers.
Morrell joined the school district in August 2008 as a full-time business teacher, Superintendent Don Schrader said. He has also taught computers and finance and was an adviser to the Future Business Leaders of America club.
Morrell also served last year as president of the Oregon Business Education Association and has taught part time at Linn-Benton Community College in the Business Technology Department.
He is currently on paid administrative leave pending completion of the district’s investigation.
Schrader sent a memo to teachers and staff on Wednesday outlining the situation.
“To the district’s knowledge, none of the criminal charges filed against Mr. Morrell involved students currently enrolled in the district or none occurred on district property,” Schrader wrote, adding that the Sweet Home Police Department was contacted immediately and the district took steps to ensure that during the investigation Morrell would not be around students at school.
Sweet Home police are continuing to investigate and speaking to past students who may have knowledge of this or other occurrences.
Read more: http://democratherald.com
Security reports naked man in apartment complex parking lot www.privateofficer.com
FORT MYERS Fla Sept 10 2011 — Lee County Sheriff’s deputies arrested a Collier County man Friday after he was seen walking naked through an apartment building parking lot to get cigarettes out of his vehicle.
Early Friday morning, Lee deputies arrested Ethan Garrett Gross, 21, who lives on the 6700 block of Friendship Lane in Golden Gate Estates. He is facing charges of being publicly intoxicated, causing a disturbance.
A security guard for Coastal Village Apartments, 19401 Skidmore Blvd., Fort Myers, stated that he observed a drunk man walking naked through the parking lot. He says he tried making contact with Gross but he just walked past him like he didn’t hear him. He then followed the naked man to his friend’s residence, only to find that Gross went to the wrong apartment. The guard called deputies to report the indecent exposure.
Coastal Village Apartments is a housing development for students located near Florida Gulf Coast University.
Gross told deputies he was staying at a friend’s apartment, waiting to go to a concert later today. He says he didn’t think anyone would see him walk to his truck naked to get his pack of cigarettes.
According to deputies, when they asked Gross how much he had to drink, he said three glasses of Captain Morgan rum.
Source:naplenews.com
Hospital employee charged with identity theft www.privateofficer.com
“Darn right, I was mad,” Baughman, 72, said. “I never thought I’d be the victim of identity theft.”
A heart valve replacement at Methodist Hospital in February 2010 put Baughman squarely in the cross hairs of thieves accused of pillaging the hospital’s files of cancer and transplant patients for birth dates, Social Security numbers and other information used to buy luxury cars and designer clothes.
Methodist Hospital employee Shantel Moore, 29, appeared in court Friday, charged with organized criminal activity, a first-degree felony. She is accused of taking personal information from patients at the hospital beginning in October and continuing through May.
Representatives for Methodist Hospital would not comment on Moore’s employment status and would say only that she had a “non-clinical position.”
Patients whose information has been affected are being contacted and offered free credit monitoring for the next year, according to a statement issued by the hospital.
Moore is suspected of participating in the scam with her fiancé, Antoine Williams, and Patrick Reed. Both men also have been charged. The trio face a possible sentence of life in prison if convicted.
The group is accused of taking out more than 50 short-term loans around Houston to pay for a Maserati Quattroporte, a BMW 6 Series convertible and designer clothes that included Gucci belts.
Investigators said Williams told them that he and Moore opened many accounts and took out many loans.
Reed, who works at an oilfield company, told police the loan applications showed his work address and phone number so he could verify the information when lenders called.
Baughman and four other victims have been identified so far, but the investigation is continuing, said Harris County prosecutor Ed McClees.
Baughman said a $400 “payday” loan and an account for Internet and cable service were opened in his name in November.
Source:chron.com
Roswell Police arrested teacher for sexual assault of student www.privateofficer.com
ROSWELL, N.M. Sept 10 2011 – Roswell Police have been investigating David Lawrence for some time now for allegedly having sexual relations with a student.
Thursday morning he turned himself in and was booked into jail.
Lawrence, 48, is charged for his alleged contact with the 16-year-old student at Goddard High School.
The teacher and coach is charged with one count of criminal sexual contact with a minor.
One former Goddard student who graduated last year said Lawrence had been a topic of conversation when she was a student..
“Even when I went to school, they would always say that he was you know, no offense or anything, but perverted, you know with the girls because he was always touching them and talking to them a lot,” Concepcion Ortega recalled.
Other Goddard students who were interviewed by police said the same thing.
In the criminal complaint, those students also told police about the close relationship Lawrence had with one female student in particular, the alleged victim in this case.
One 16-year old said, “It has been a prolonged thing, and they’ve kissed and had the touching and…(the victim told her) they’ve had sexual intercourse.”
Another girl said, “She’d seen a lot of things like walking by her; he will slap her butt, like it is so discreet, no one really notices,” of the relations she observed between the student and Lawrence.
Ortega said she also suspected it.
“It seemed very suspicious, but I knew it was going to end up being that girl, because when I was in 12th grade last year, I would always see her hugging him,” Ortega said.
Lawrence has taught health classes at Goddard since 1995, and in that class he taught sex-ed.
He also coached boys soccer.
“I just think that it was very inappropriate, especially since for health class, he was the one telling us not to have sex or STDs and stuff like that, and he’s doing that with a student,” Ortega said. “That’s just very gross and disrespectful, especially to the students because he’s supposed to be the role model and instead he’s doing things with the student.”
Lawrence was put on paid leave on Aug. 26 when the Roswell Independent School District learned of the criminal investigation.
The superintendent’s office said in a written statement, “Parents and the community should know that RISD takes these types of allegations very seriously. RISD will be reviewing the matter closely and will respond accordingly to it’s policies and applicable law.”
Lawrence was booked Thursday morning at the Chaves County Detention Center on a $250,000 bond.
The courts dropped it to $100,000 cash or surety, which he posted and was released.
A Roswell police spokesperson declined to comment on whether the alleged victim was cooperating with investigators.
The District Attorney’s office said if prosecutors can prove Lawrence had sex with the girl, they will charge him with rape of a minor, but the case is still under investigation.
Source:KRQE
Fresno kidergarten teacher charged with drug offenses www.privateofficer.com
FRESNO, Calif.Sept 10 2011 — A Fresno Unified Teacher who taught kindergarten for more than two decades, has been arrested on drug charges.
53-year-old Dorothy Ramirez was arrested Wednesday with a man who deputies say robbed three men at gunpoint. Detectives also say the longtime teacher at Easterby Elementary had meth amphetamines and a weapon on her when she was arrested.
Parents at Easterby picking up their kids were stunned to learn what detectives say Ramirez had in her classroom Wednesday. She was taken into custody with 2 grams of meth and throwing knives.
Dorothy Ramirez is a very familiar face on campus at Easterby Elementary in Southeast Fresno. She taught kindergarten for 25 years.
Thursday parents picking up their kids almost couldn’t believe the charges the longtime teacher was arrested on. “It’s kinda scary though. Lucky my kids didn’t come across it or get their around her purse or anything like that. So, but, I’m kinda like wow, you know,” said Nick French.
Fresno County Sheriff’s Detectives say Ramirez was arrested along with 28-year-old Joseph Frago. Deputies took the pair into custody during a traffic stop Wednesday, not long after they say Frago picked Ramirez up from her school.
Frago was arrested for armed robbery, possession of meth amphetamine, possession of marijuana for sales, probation violations, and weapons charges. Ramirez is now facing charges of felony child endangerment since deputies discovered she had drugs and a weapon with her while on campus.
“They learned that Ramirez had the meth amphetamine with her, in her purse, in her classroom. Her purse had been there on the floor below her desk — clearly accessible to the children in her class,” said Chris Curtice with the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office.
Fresno Unified issued a statement saying quote “The Fresno Unified School District takes these allegations extremely seriously and the employee was immediately placed on administrative leave following her arrest.”
One parent who didn’t want to be identified said she felt something just wasn’t right about the teacher. “I mean I had my child removed from that class last year, and that was it. I mean I told my husband from the moment I saw her there was just something kinda weird about it.”
Ramirez bailed out of jail early Thursday morning. Frago is still in custody. Sheriff’s investigators say it’s still unclear whether Ramirez was under the influence of drugs when she was arrested.
Source: KFSN
Henrico County teacher charged with sexual battery of child www.privateofficer.com
Neil J. French, 43, of the first block of Barker Avenue, was being held today on charges of taking indecent liberties with a person less than 18 years of age while in a custodial or supervisory relationship and aggravated sexual battery of a child under age 13.
Police today said French was arrested Thursday as a result of an alleged incident that occurred while French was employed as a teacher by the Henrico school system.
Henrico schools officials did not respond to repeated attempts today to determine French’s status with the school system or to confirm where he was employed at the time of the alleged offenses.
Source:richmond times dispatch
Arizonia man charged with assaulting police dog www.privateofficer.com
Glendale AZ Sept 10 2011 A man at a Glendale apartment was taken into custody last Thursday after he reportedly punched a police dog and then attempted to bite the handler, according to a court document.
Glendale police responded to the apartment near 83rd Avenue and Pinnacle Peak Road after 33-year-old John Kroll, of Peoria, locked himself in a closet with a baseball bat and a knife, a court document said.
A woman and her 11-year-old son were in the apartment at the time of the incident.
After not complying with several commands, authorities sent a K-9 into the closet to retrieve Kroll. He apparently kicked and punched the dog and at one point, attempted to bite the dog handler’s right thigh, the court filing said.
It took several officers to hold down Kroll so that he could be handcuffed.
He was treated by paramedics at the scene, and then taken to Maryvale Hospital in Phoenix.
Kroll was later booked into the Glendale City Jail. Police recommend charges of burglary, assault, resisting arresting and harming a work service animal, the documents said.
Source:www.azcentral.com
Copper Mountain security-police capture wanted man after chase www.privateofficer.com
COPPER MOUNTAIN, Colo.Sept 10 2011 — A man wanted on a domestic violence case was arrested as he tried to run away from police in Copper Mountain on Sunday evening, authorities said.
Christopher Lawhorn, who uses the alias Chris Farwell, was wanted on one felony and two misdemeanor warrants from a domestic violence case in Idaho Springs, said Summit County spokeswoman Tracy LeClair.
Summit County deputies attempted to arrest Lawhorn as he was working in the basement of The Edge employee housing facility at Cooper Mountain
As officers approached Lawhorn, he turned and ran, slipping out of his shirt to escape the grasp of one deputy, and then sprinted up the ski slope behind the Copper Lodge, LeClair said.
A deputy shot Lawhorn three times with beanbag rounds, but he continued running uphill, LeClair said.
A K-9 unit was called in to help Frisco police officers and Copper Mountain security guards flush Lawhorn out and take him into custody.
At the time of his arrest, Lawhorn was carrying a knife, and two shotguns were retrieved from an apartment where Lawhorn had been staying, LeClair said.
Lawhorn was treated at Summit Medical Center before being transported to the Summit County Jail.
In addition to the outstanding warrants, Lawhorn was charged with resisting arrest. His bond has been set at $29,250.
Source:thedenverchannel.com
Arrests made at Colorado University mega-party at apartments www.privateofficer.com
Fort Collins CO Sept 10 2011 The fight at the center of the CSU-oriented mega-party at a Fort Collins apartment complex apparently began when a party-goer pushed the head of the private security detail into the pool.
Alan Burke, owner of Big Al’s Security Team, then jumped out of the pool and charged into the crowd, fists flying, according to police and witnesses.
Police on Thursday cited Burke with false reporting and assault in connection with the Aug. 27 party at Campus Crossings at Ram’s Pointe that sent 10 people to the hospital and drew more than 2,000 attendees.
While police have not yet released the formal reports about the incident in which four Colorado State University students were arrested, police spokeswoman Rita Davis on Thursday provided the first concrete details about what happened.
Police on Thursday also announced they were citing the apartment complex’s owners for holding a “nuisance party,” dropped charges against one student and changed the kind of charges being faced by another.
Burke, 27, was not initially cited by police. That changed after investigators reviewed video taken by the complex’s security system. Reached Thursday afternoon, Burke declined to comment before talking to his attorney.
According to witnesses, Burke attacked the man who pushed him into the pool, and then several other people joined in the scrum.
“We have evidence that shows that one of the individuals pushed Burke into the pool and then when he got out, he then went after an individual and a fight occurred,” Davis said. “The video did not support the accounts that Burke had provided previously.”
Videos posted to YouTube and Facebook by partygoers show thousands of swimsuit-clad people dancing to a DJ, jumping in the pool and drinking. Organizers promoted the event as “the biggest pool party of the year.” The party ended as 10 people were treated and transported by Poudre Valley Hospital EMS workers for conditions ranging from alcohol-related illnesses to lacerations. As students were vomiting and passing out, security team members called police for help.
“There was just a huge fight,” the caller told the 911 dispatcher, saying there were seven or eight men fighting in the pool. “We need dispatch here as soon as possible.”
In a statement released after the party, the owners said they took measures to ensure safety, including hiring a security team. The company called the party a “long-standing tradition” and said it regretted the outcome this year.
On Thursday, the company, Campus Apartments, received a municipal nuisance party ticket, which carries a potential $1,000 fine, and gives the city the ability to recoup the as-yet untallied costs of dealing with the party. Davis said the complex’s owners have cooperated with police during the investigation, including turning over the video recordings.
Davis said a police review of those recordings prompted investigators to drop charges against Daniel James Rosselot, and to change the charges faced by CSU football player James Skelton to harassment, from third-degree assault. CSU football player Zachary Tiedgen faces a disorderly conduct charge, while CSU student Dillon James Lawrence was cited for interfering with a peace officer, and an open-container violation.
“(The apartment complex) shared apartment-complex video that they had of the incident. That provided additional perspective about what transpired,” Davis said. “They had video that provided illumination. The videos didn’t support some of the charges, but supported other charges.”
CSU athletics officials declined to comment, saying they were withholding comment until more information is available. The police reports from the incident have not yet been completed and released publicly. Neither Skelton nor Tiegden have been publicly disciplined by the team.
Source:AP
Eagle’s Lodge secretary arrest for embezzlement www.privateofficer.com
Warsaw IN Sept 10 2011 A man is accused of stealing more than $25,000 from a local Eagles Lodge when he was secretary there.
Carl Rensberger is charged with two counts of felony theft.
Warsaw police say that for 2 years, he was taking the money for personal use, including cash from a private ATM on the Eagle’s Lodge property on West Center Street.
The charges come after police did an audit on the funds.
Rensberger was arrested and taken to jail on Thursday. He was being held on $5,000 bond.
According to police, this is the third major employee related theft investigated by Warsaw detectives in the past 6 months.
The former circulation manager of the Warsaw Times Union and the former executive director of the Kosciusko Board of Realtors were already arrested in separate incidents and their cases are pending.
Source:wndu.com
Las Vegas police officer shot during fraud incident at Wal-Mart www.privateofficer.com
LAS VEGAS NV Sept 9 2011 — A Las Vegas police officer is lucky to be alive and can thank his bulletproof vest for saving his life after being shot three times at a Wal-mart early Friday morning. The shooting happened just before 4:30 a.m. at the Wal-mart on Rainbow Boulevard near Spring Mountain Road.
Investigators say a man and a woman were trying to use a stolen credit card to buy large amount of items. Metro was notified and when they got to the store and officers confronted the pair.
While trying to take the man into custody, police say the suspect pulled out a handgun from his waistband and starting firing toward officers, hitting one three times. Officers returned fire and killed the suspect.
“Policing is a dangerous job and, you know, they came out here to the Wal-mart and it turned into a shooting and one of us was hit,” said Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie. “But thank God he’s here and he’s going to be back out here working at some point in time.”
The female was taken into custody.
When officers involved in the shooting inside the Wal-mart entered the store, they had no idea what they were walking into. But when shots rang out, the bullet, aimed for an officer’s heart, didn’t take his life only because of bulletproof vests.
“It doesn’t stop the rounds of ammunition, it more captures or catches it because that energy still transitions. It’s called blunt force trauma into the human body, so you still know you got shot. It definitely causes issue and potential trauma to the internal organs and obviously the soft tissue — the skin is obviously gonna get completely bruised,” said J. Chapin with Discount Firearms.
Chapin is a former police officer in California. He says bulletproof vests are classified by the amount of protection they provide. Sheriff Gillespie says the vests save the officer’s life.
“His injuries are not life threatening but he was shot multiple times, hit in his left arm as well as in the chest area,” he said. “Thank God he was wearing a bulletproof vest, because that vest did exactly what it’s supposed to do.”
Metro says their officers are fitted for their own personal bullet-proof vests while they’re in training. A firearms safety instructor says the impact of the bullet can cause extensive internal damage on the body. Thankfully, that was not the case Friday morning.
Source:8NewNow.com
1 Man crime spree lands man in jail www.privateofficer.com
25 year old Eddie Austin was booked into the Hamilton County Justice Center around 3 a.m. Friday. He is charged with kidnapping and aggravated robbery.
Police were called to a home in the 2500 block of Montana Avenue near Haus Lane around 11 a.m. Thursday. Family members tell Local 12 the victim, an older man who suffered past brain damage, was getting some personal belongings and papers from a van in their driveway, which they were preparing to sell. The van no longer runs properly.
While the victim was at the van, a man with a gun approached him and told the man he needed to steal the van so he could rob a bank. The victim told the gunman that the van didn’t run and asked the gunman to spare his life and take the family’s working vehicle instead.
The suspect tied the victim up with duct tape, taped his mouth shut, and put the victim in the van. The suspect then spotted the victim’s nephew and told the nephew that he would kill his uncle if anyone called police. The suspect took off in the family’s black Pontiac, but stopped before he left and went back to check that the door’s of the van, where the victim was tied up, were locked.
Family members then freed the victim and called police. The stolen car was recovered later in the day.
A few hours later, a maintenance man named David Dye was robbed, and his car stolen from an apartment complex on Harrison. “As I turned around there was somebody standing there with a gun he already had it stuck in my face. Did you think he was going to hurt you? Yeah honestly I did.”
David Dye says he’s not sure if Austin is the man who robbed him, because the suspect was wearing a mask. “Next thing I know he grabbed my arms told me to tape em together.. He put em behind my head.”
He taped his feet together too…then dragged him across the carpet into a closet, causing rug burns on his chest.
Moments after Dye’s attack, police say a security guard was nearly abducted at this bank down the street. Police didn’t give any details, but are looking into the possibility that Austin was also involved in those two attacks but he does not face any additional charges at this time.
Philly school security still wait for their jobs or unemployment benefits www.privateofficer.com
But what has made matters worse, he said, is the fact that he can’t collect unemployment because of a letter the district gave him that says he could be brought back at any time.
But with a roughly $35 million budget gap, and threats of more cuts to jobs and programs, district officials say they have no immediate plans to call back any of the 190 officers laid off last month.
“It’s not our fault you can’t hire us,” Rogers said referring to the district. “What are we supposed to do in the meantime? I can’t pay my rent. I have to eat.”
At the end of June, officials sent all 250 of the district’s per-diem officers letters of “reasonable assurance,” leaving open a chance they might be rehired.
But if officers did not receive written notices asking them to return by the end of August, that means they’re “laid off unless notified otherwise,” said district spokesman Fernando Gallard. Only 60 people got such notices, he said, adding that the district saved about $3 million from the cuts.
School police union president Michael Lodise said officials then denied the remaining officers’ requests for layoff notices and have unjustly kept them on the payroll as active employees.
“If they were active, they should be getting a check,” he said, “If you know you’re not going to bring them back, why can’t they collect unemployment?”
“They just want to dangle us by a string,” said Darren Friend, a per-diem officer assigned to West Philadelphia High School.
Gallard said that the decision to grant unemployment lies with the state Department of Labor and is based on an employee’s record. To reach a decision, a claims examiner must gather information from both the employer and employee, said Labor Department spokesman Christopher Manlove. He added that an employee is eligible for benefits if he is not likely to return to the job.
Lodise – who doesn’t represent the officers but negotiates on their behalf – described their situation as “sad.”
“We try in every contract talk to do everything we can for them,” he said. “We don’t have any control over it.”
For example, to receive health benefits and a boost to their current pay, the officers have to work in one school for at least 60 days, and then work at that school or another one for 30 more days.
Benefits kick in after the officer reaches the 90-day mark – as long as he doesn’t miss a day – and only last until the end of the current school year.
Rogers, 54, who was last assigned to the Performance Learning Center, an alternative school in Southwest Philadelphia, said the whole setup is wrong.
“They don’t care about us,” he said. “But we do just as much work as the full-time police officers.”
Still, he said he reported for work even after he hurt his back while breaking up a fight at Overbrook High School last June.
“That’s the kind of worker I am,” he said. “I didn’t like missing any days.”
He added: “We’re human, too. We live, we breathe, we hurt. We just want to be treated fairly.”
Source:philly.com
Former Chicago police officer sent to prison for arranging murder of officer www.privateofficer.com
Chicago IL Sept 10 2011 A former Chicago police officer was sentenced Thursday to 12 years in prison after admitting he arranged for the murder of another officer.
Jerome Finnigan was a former member of the now-disbanded Special Operations Section. He admitted that during his time on the elite squad, he stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from suspected drug dealers. Finnigan told Judge Blanche Manning he took responsibility for his actions, but he was a good cop who did what he had to do to keep the streets safe.
“My bosses knew what I was doing out there. It was not an exception; it was the rule,” Finnigan said.
Finnigan pleaded guilty in April to plotting a murder as well as filing fraudulent tax returns. The murder-for-hire plan was against another Chicago police officer who was expected to testify against Finnigan in state court. Other officers on the squad have since pleaded guilty to charges similar to Finnigan’s in state and federal court. Finnigan’s attorney Marc Barnett told reporters after sentencing that the work of a police officer — especially for those who go after drug dealers — can sometimes alter a person’s view of reality.
“When you see individuals making all that money, and they’re laughing at you all the time and they’re getting away with it and they’re making millions, after a while it gets very difficult to remain honest and true. And you just come up with justifications why you can do what you’ve gotta do,” Barnett said.
But federal prosecutors said whatever good Finnigan did in the past, or the amount of stress he was under, doesn’t outweigh the “horrendous” acts he committed.
“When you don’t follow the law, when you treat citizens the way they treat citizens, it impacts the community’s trust of the police department. And when the police department doesn’t have the trust of the community, it can’t do its job,” said Brian Netols, assistant U.S. Attorney.
Finnigan has already served four years in the Metropolitan Correctional Center.
Source:WBEZ
Citizen arrest lands arrestor behind bars www.privateofficer.com
WEST JORDAN, Utah Sept 10 2011Friends and family say he was just trying to do the right thing by getting an alleged child sex offender off the streets. But instead, 25-year-old Brett Adams faces aggravated kidnapping for making a citizen’s arrest Tuesday.
“We hand delivered a pedophile to the cops and he’s in trouble for it. I just don’t see the justice in that,” says the mother of two children who says her children were sexually abused by her former boyfriend.
The woman, who went by the name of Lynn on Fox 13, says her ex-boyfriend, 24-year-old Kasey Beatty, sexually abused her 2-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son.
“How could you do this to my kids, how could you do this to the two most important things to me, two angels,” said Lynn.
Lynn says she turned to her friend Brett Adams and told him about the alleged abuse. Beatty soon asked Lynn and Adams to meet in The Home Depot parking lot. When they confronted Beatty about the alleged abuse inside Lynn’s car, they say Beatty lashed out.
“That’s when Brett grabbed his arms and said he was under citizen’s arrest and zip-tied him,” says Lynn.
Lynn says Adams did not pass himself off as a police officer confronting Beatty, but he was armed when he made the citizen’s arrest.
With Beatty in the car, Lynn says she drove to the West Jordan Police department and reported the alleged abuse. Beatty was taken into custody, but to Lynn’s surprise, so was Brett Adams.
Police say according to state law the arrestor has to “witness” a crime in order to make a legal citizen’s arrest. They say Adams did not witness anything and now faces aggravated kidnapping charges.
“If they felt that an offense occurred, honestly they could have just called us and we would’ve investigated it and this all would have been a non-issue on their part,” says West Jordan Police Sgt. Drew Sanders.
Beatty is being held here on a $100,000 bond and is facing two first degree felony charges of sodomy of a child. Adams is being held on a $50,000 bond.
“I understand that we should have taken different steps but we helped to get a pedophile off the streets,” Lynn said
Source:Fox13
Security finds dead body on Miami lightrail www.privateofficer.com
Miami Fla Sept 10 2011 Metromover service on the Inner Loop in downtown Miami was temporarily suspended early Thursday morning after a man’s body was discovered in one of the cars.
At about 5:30 a.m., a passenger alerted Miami-Dade Transit that a man appeared to be nonresponsive inside a Metromover vehicle at the Government Center station, said Karla Damian, spokeswoman for Miami-Dade Transit.
A security guard summoned paramedics, who confirmed the man was dead.
Miami-Dade police believe the man was homeless and died from natural causes.
Authorities shut down the Inner Loop between the Government Center, Miami Avenue and Knight Center stations.
A free bus shuttle ran between these stations.
Webb County TX Constable Commits Suicide www.privateofficer.com
Laredo TX Sept 10 2011 While members of the Laredo and Webb county community are mourning the loss of a constable adorned by many, police say that they classified his death as a suicide.
Today police have answered a few more questions about Constable Tino Juarez’s death.
Investigators say at this point all evidence shows that Juarez died of a self-inflicted wound to the chest. But authorities across Webb County today chose not to think about how constable Tino Juarez died. They chose to think about how he lived.
“He was always smiling and always happy.”
“He was always very professional very caring family oriented one of the things I took at is how committed he was to the community.”
“You see him at church crossing you would see him at the school.”
Always involved and very caring.
His career in law enforcement spanned over 40 years.
Juarez was found in his north Laredo home with a gunshot wound Wednesday night.
He was pronounced dead at a local hospital.
Black ribbons now adorn the constable precinct four building, a sign of mourning for a man so many loved.
“He’s going to be greatly missed icon in law enforcement community.”
Those who worked with him and knew him well say his legacy of service and kindness will not be forgotten.
“That’s the way I want to remember him. Somebody has a problem went to Tino and Tino solved it for them.”
Although police say right now the evidence shows the gunshot wound was self-inflicted the investigation is still not over.
The Laredo police department says Constable Tino Juarez’s life legacy is the best testament to the kind of person he was.
They say our loss is heavens gain.
The family has also shared details of funeral service arrangements.
The viewing and funeral will all be held on Saturday morning September 10th at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church on Del Mar.
The viewing will begin at 8:00 a.m. and funeral mass at 10:00 a.m.
A procession will follow.
People are being asked to be patient as a high number of guests are expected to attend to pay their respects.
