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Gulf Shores AL police arrest 12 people for counterfeiting www.privateofficer.com
- Leena Angel Haidar, 18, of Picayune, Miss.
- Andrea Joselyn Alvarez, 19, of Norcross, Ga.
- Gage Skyler McElroy, 19, of West Beach, Fla.
- Charles Daniel Paryag, 20, of Duluth, Ga.
- Ronald Jay Metzger, 20, of Duluth, Ga.
- Griffin Joseph Goralnik, 19, of Berkley Lake, Ga.
- Cody Dewitt Bartley, 36, of Huntsville, Texas.
- Christopher Scott Boudreaux Jr., 20, of Duson, La.
The owner of the apartment, Devin Bonald Boutwell, 24, of Burris, La., was not home when the other arrests occurred but a warrant was issued for his arrest, according to Gulf Shores police. Woodruff said Boutwell was arrested Monday on charges of first-degree forgery and unlawful possession of a controlled substance. All of the individuals were booked into the Baldwin County Corrections Center in Bay Minette. Morgan, Strick, and Alexander were each released on $10,000 bail. And all of the other suspects except Bartley, Boudreaux Jr., McElroy and Boutwell were released as well, according to jail records. Woodruff said no more arrests are expected in the case that is also being investigated by the U.S. Secret Service. Under Alabama state law, first-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument and first-degree forgery are a Class B felony that can result in up to a 20-year prison sentence and a fine of up to $30,000. Unlawful possession of a controlled substance is a Class C felony that carries a prison sentence of 1-10 years and a fine of up to $15,000.
Source :AL.com
Kentwood Co-Op employees charged with organized retail theft www.privateofficer.com
Missing items ranged from horse and cattle feed to milk replacer, herbicides and a 16-foot galvanized gate.
Agriculture Commissioner Mike Strain and the parish sheriff’s office say more arrests are possible.
Booked only on the theft charge were Amos Floyd Womack III, of Kentwood, Darrell Sanders Jones, of Kentwood, Robert N. Hutchinson Jr., of Tangipahoa, and Michael Samuel Trabona, of Amite.
Strain said Tuesday employees Oscar Joey Sharp, of Kentwood, and Michael Stewart, of Fluker, also were booked with simple burglary, and employee Fredrick Shropshire, of Magnolia, Miss., as a principal to simple burglary.
Source:AP
Former Anniston Police officer charged with murder www.privateofficer.com
Anniston AL July 25 2012 A former warrants officer for the Anniston Police Department was in custody in Mississippi Monday in connection with two Calhoun County shootings that led to a manhunt and security lockdowns at the police department and City Hall.
Frederick Boyd, 43, surrendered to officials in Meridian, Miss., before noon Monday, hours after the Anniston Police Department and the Calhoun County Sheriff’s Office issued warrants for his arrest in two early morning crimes. Boyd faces a murder charge in the Monday morning shooting death of his wife and an attempted murder charge from an incident in Hobson City the same morning.
Calhoun County Chief Deputy Matthew Wade said deputies responded to a call on Martin Luther King Drive in Hobson City around 7 a.m. Monday. A man, identified as a family member of Boyd, said the suspect knocked on his door and opened fire on him. After the man said he shot back, Boyd left the scene in a black GMC Yukon sports utility vehicle, Wade said.
Wade said deputies were going to Boyd’s residence on Chatwood Drive in Saks to question him when they learned of a second shooting that morning at the home already under investigation by the Anniston Police Department.
Anniston police Lt. Fred Forsythe said Boyd was the suspect in the death of his wife, Cormella Boyd, 41.
Police reports state that the Saks shooting occurred between 6:30 a.m. and 7 a.m. and the Hobson City shooting occurred at 7:10 a.m.
Police placed City Hall and the police department’s headquarters on lockdown Monday morning, with officers with assault rifles stationed outside the buildings. Anniston Police Chief Layton McGrady said Boyd had not made direct threats against either building. Police Lt. Shane Denham said the measures were a precaution police took because of Boyd’s history with the department.
Boyd left the police department in August 2011, after a 17-year career. Before his resignation, Boyd’s supervisors had transferred him from serving warrants to a desk job within the warrants division, taking in reports, Denham said.
“There were issues that made us transfer him,” Denham said, noting he wasn’t at liberty to elaborate on what those specific “issues” were. “We really didn’t know what we wanted to do with him.”
The same month that he resigned, Boyd, who is black, filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the department claiming he was repeatedly harassed and denied promotion due to racial discrimination. That month, Anniston City Councilman Ben Little provided The Star with a DVD containing 50 pages of documents recounting Boyd’s experiences with fellow officers and several audio recordings alleged to be proof of racial comments aimed at Boyd.
The audio files were mostly indecipherable.
In November, the EEOC ruled there was not sufficient evidence to prove the police department had discriminated against Boyd.
By 10 a.m., news of the shooting in Saks had spread, and family members had gathered near the blocked-off street. None would discuss the matter with reporters. Two neighbors told a reporter they had seen police officers arriving on the scene prior to 8 a.m. Both men said they didn’t know Boyd personally, but one said he knew the man used to work as a police officer.
Forsythe said that, judging from the time frame, it’s likely Boyd left his house in Saks, went to Hobson City and drove to Mississippi afterward. Forsythe said police are investigating the motive behind the shootings.
Wade said Calhoun County deputies were on their way to Meridian Monday afternoon to extradite Boyd.
Source:Anniston Star
Jackson, Miss., public schools agree not to handcuff students to poles or other objects www.privateofficer.com
Jackson MS May 27 2012 Jackson, Miss., public schools will no longer handcuff students to poles or other objects and will train staff at its alternative school on better methods of discipline. Mississippi’s second-largest school district agreed Friday to the settlement with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which had sued over the practice of shackling students to a pole at the district’s Capital City Alternative School.
The suit was filed in June 2011 by Jeanette Murry on behalf of her then-16-year-old son, who has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. It said staffers routinely restrained students for hours for offenses as minor as dress code violations, forcing them to eat lunch while chained to a stair railing and to shout for help when they needed to go to the bathroom.
The settlement, approved by U.S. District Judge Tom Lee, says all district employees will stop handcuffing students younger than 13, and can only handcuff older students for crimes. In no case will employees shackle a student to a fixed object such as a railing, a pole, a desk or a chair.
“It’s apparent there were severe problems that we hope now are being addressed and will be alleviated,” Lee told lawyers in court Friday, just before signing the settlement order.
Troubles at the alternative school helped spark the proceedings that have jeopardized the accreditation of the entire 30,000-student district.
Nationwide, a report from the U.S. Department of Education showed tens of thousands of students, 70 percent of them disabled, were strapped down or physically restrained in school in 2009-10. Advocates for disabled students say restraints are often abused, causing injury and sometimes death.
Currently there are no federal standards, although legislation is pending in Congress. The U.S. Department of Education says Mississippi is one of 13 states with no statewide rules governing restraints.
The law center’s Vanessa Carroll said after Friday’s hearing that she hoped the settlement would improve a “profoundly dysfunctional school culture.”
“We hope with this settlement agreement, the district and school will both take a more positive approach to student discipline,” she said.
Carroll said the executive director of Mississippi Families as Allies for Children’s Mental Health will serve as a district-paid monitor as part of the settlement. Joy Hogge will check compliance in quarterly reports for two years. Under the settlement, the district also agreed to record every time handcuffs or other restraints are used.
Jackson schools’ chief lawyer JoAnne Shepherd told Lee that the district has told employees at the alternative school to stop using restraints.
“We’re looking forward to improving that environment,” she said. “We think the agreement will help us.”
The law center agreed to pay its own legal costs. In-house lawyers defended the district. Shepherd said she didn’t have an estimate of what the training and monitoring would cost.
National experts have said seclusion and restraint should be used only in emergencies when there’s a threat of someone getting hurt. But people who aren’t properly trained resort to restraints when students get out of control, they say.
The settlement says the district must tell the principal and vice principal at the school that they will be fired if they use fixed restraints.
The district has 60 days to implement to the settlement.
Carroll said the law center filed an administrative complaint with the state in September 2010, which helped spark the state’s investigation of special education in the district.
Shepherd, rejected a connection between the lawsuit and accreditation proceedings, saying they are “totally different.”
State officials recently agreed to give Jackson until November to fix special education problems. If the district doesn’t satisfy the state, it’s supposed to lose state accreditation.
The suit also reinforces criticism of alternative schools statewide. A 2009 report by the American Civil Liberties Union found that such schools “overemphasized punishment at the expense of remediation.” That report urged that alternative schools focus instead on “intensive services delivered by a well-qualified staff in a highly structured but positive environment,” so that students could return to and succeed at regular schools.
Student shot to death on Mississippi State University campus www.privateofficer.com
STARKVILLE, Miss. March 26 2012 (AP) – A 21-year-old student was shot to death in a Mississippi State University dormitory, though the killing appears to be isolated and there is no indication others may be in danger, officials said Sunday.
University president Mark Keenum said Sunday in a statement on the school’s website that the killing of 21-year-old John Sanderson of Madison, Miss., was the first time a student had been shot on the campus. Keenum said officials could reveal few other details because of the ongoing investigation.
University spokeswoman Maridith Geuder said police received a call about the shooting at Evans Hall around 10 p.m. Saturday. Sanderson was taken to Oktibbeha County Hospital, where he died.
Three male suspects fled the building in a blue Crown Victoria. No arrests have been made.
Shortly after the shooting, the university began sending a series of text message alerts to students. Police officers stepped up patrols to make sure the campus was safe, Keenum said.
The four-story Evans Hall holds about 300 male students and is located on the north side of campus. The campus of about 20,000 students is located in a rural area in the northeastern part of the state, about 125 miles northeast of Jackson.
The school’s website says the campus is located in a low-crime area, and that emergencies are rare.
Police find man asleep while 8 year old drives truck www.privateofficer.com
BATON ROUGE, LA Aug 1 2011(AP) – Louisiana state police say an 8-year-old boy was driving a pickup truck down an interstate while his drunken father slept in the passenger seat.
Troopers say the man’s 4-year-old daughter was in the back seat when the truck was stopped Saturday morning in Livingston Parish.
The child’s driving was so erratic that it alarmed motorists, who called authorities. The children have been handed over to Louisiana Child Protective Services.
The father, 28-year-old Billy Joe Madden of Hattiesburg, Miss., was booked into the Livingston Parish Jail on charges including Child Desertion and Allowing a Minor to Drive. It was not clear Saturday afternoon if he had an attorney.
Security officer shot during robbery www.privateofficer.com
Police said that two men in a dark-colored, older model Mercedes-Benz approached the owner and security guard as they were leaving the building, police said. The robbers demanded money and then shot the security guard in the lower back, police said.
The men then fled the area and was not located.
The guard has been identified as Clarence Hogan, 66, from Jackson.
His injuries are not life-threatening according to authorities.
No one has been arrested.
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