Back to Basics

U.S. House Democrats are ignoring calls by Republican lawmakers for them to offer an apology to the New York City Police Department for backing an amendment that effectively rebuked the NYPD over its counterterrorism surveillance and investigative techniques.

GOP lawmakers believe the House Democrats should apologize to the New York Police Department's commissioner, Ray Kelly, and to the officers involved in counterterrorism and intelligence gathering. Photo credit: NYPD Press Office

The formal rebuke of the NYPD, which failed to pass this week on a mostly party-line vote, would have punished the 40,000-member law enforcement department by prohibiting funding for police and security organizations engaged in alleged unconstitutional or unlawful discrimination.

GOP Rep, Peter King (R-NY) — chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee – and Rep. Bob Turner (R-PA) called the vote shameful, while several police officials told the Law Enforcement Examiner that the Democrats “stayed true to form.”

“The Democrats obtain campaign contributions from groups like CAIR and other Islamic organizations and they in turn protect them from the ‘big bad cops,’” said one anonymous police officer who works in the NYPD’s Arson & Explosion Unit.

While the amendment would apply to any jurisdiction in the nation, Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) who sponsored the legislation made it clear that he was targeting the NYPD, especially those divisions and units tasked with combating terrorism.

“Holt did not even have official information on the allegations made against the New York cops. He was using stories gleaned from news organizations, such as the Associated Press, and complaints made by groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations — a group that always complains whenever cops attempt to protect Americans from radical Islamic terrorists,” said former New York police detective and military intelligence officer Mike Snopes.

“Holt practically scolded the NYPD saying they infiltrated neighborhoods because they were Muslim,” Snopes said. “That congressman sitting safely in his heavily guarded workplace should be praising the NYPD.”

In an official statement promulgated on Saturday by Reps. King and Turner, the congressmen rebuked Holt for his “politically-motivated” statements and condemned Democrat congressmen for supporting the amendment — the measure failed on a 232-193 vote, with only Democrats supporting it.

“We are utterly dumbfounded and shocked that after such a slanderous attack, the overwhelming majority of congressional Democrats and the entire Democratic leadership voted for the Holt amendment and against the NYPD,” Rep. King said. “The Democrats owe New York and the NYPD an explanation for their shameful surrender to political correctness.”

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and city officials, as well as King and Turner, have defended the department’s tactics as effective and perfectly legal. Their tactics also have not been found to be unconstitutional, meaning Holt’s amendment might not have had much practical effect on the NYPD’s funding.

Holder and Democrats screaming for blood?

New York’s Police Commissioner Ray Kelly — arguably the best police commander in that city’s history — continues to defend the tactics, calling them legal and necessary. But groups such as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) are practically screaming for blood, said former NYPD police detective Sid Franes.

“What the NYPD officials did in New York and New Jersey, they’ve also done overseas in countries such as the United Kingdom, India, Indonesia, and others,” said Franes. “They are collecting intelligence not investigating and arresting suspects. And they’re not using drones to spy on American citizens the way the feds do,” he added.

If I ever have the chance to write a dictionary, I’ll have a picture of Attorney General Eric Holder right next to the definition of the word “gall”. Holder is easily the most anti-law Attorney General in my lifetime. His Justice Department has repeatedly decided to enforce some laws and not others, to enforce some laws against some people but not against others, and sometimes to ignore the law completely.

With Operation Fast and Furious, he crossed a line I don’t know that the Department of Justice has ever crossed. He put guns in the hands of known killers. On purpose. And yes, I know it’s not been proven that he gave the order, but the DoJ is his responsibility and what it does is on him. That’s what being in a position of responsibility is all about. So it makes me see red when he puffed up his chest and put out a statement as blatantly wrong as he did over the holiday break.

The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund today released preliminary fatality statistics for 2011, which show a 13 percent increase in the number of federal, state and local officers who died in the line of duty, from 153 in 2010 to 173 in 2011.  The data shows that 68 officers lost their lives in firearms-related incidents, 64 officers were killed in traffic-related incidents and 41 deaths were attributed to other causes.

“This is a devastating and unacceptable trend.  Each of these deaths is a tragic reminder of the threats that law enforcement officers face each day – and the fact that too many guns have fallen into the hands of those who are not legally permitted to possess them,” said Attorney General Eric Holder.  “Departments across the country have mourned the loss of too many dedicated colleagues and friends, but my colleagues and I at the Justice Department are determined to turn back this rising tide.  I want to assure the family members and loved ones who have mourned the loss of these heroes that we are responding to this year’s increased violence with renewed vigilance and will do everything within our power – and use every tool at our disposal – to keep our police officers safe.”

The families of Special Agent Brian Terry and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata would dispute that strongly.

Here’s the thing. Holder put this statement out to honor dead police officers. His department is directly responsible for the death of two American police officers and he had the temerity to talk about how bad it is that illegal guns kill cops. If he has a single molecule of dignity left in his body, he’d resign right now, crawl on his hands and knees to those murdered by Operation Fast and Furious guns, and beg their forgiveness.

But he won’t because he doesn’t, so Republicans (and any Democrats who still cherish the Rule of Law) have to make sure he pays for the misery caused by his unconscionable actions. Fast and Furious needs to be on the lips of every GOP Presidential candidate, should come up in every single debate (no matter whether the MSM moderators bring it up), and the GOP itself ought to put out a raft of commercials that demand a full accounting.

FOXY KNOXY: Amanda Knox endured not only uncertainty for two years, but she was subjected to the incompetence of the Italian detectives who investigated her alleged murder of another student. Credit: Police Times Magazine

The judges and jury have overturned American citizen Amanda Knox’s conviction for murder of Meredith Kercher, in one of the most controversial international crime cases in the new millennium.

The 24-year old Knox appealed her December 2009 conviction regarding the death the 21-year old British student with whom she shared a cottage in Italy.

Originally convicted, Knox was sentenced to 26 years imprisonment in Italy. However, except for a defamation of character conviction — for accusing a totally innocent man of killing Kercher — she is free.

SLOPPY POLICE INVESTIGATION

When Amanda Knox became a free woman in Italy after more than two years of being the main character in one of the most analyzed crime stories in the new millennium, one factor involved in her acquittal: sloppy police work especially the crime scene investigation and analysis.

For example, the positive results of the preliminary blood examination at the crime scene did not take into account the frequent false-positives inherent with the use of luminol.

A wide range of domestic and industrial substances that might be mistaken for hemoglobin in the forensic luminol test for blood were examined. The substances studied were in the categories of vegetable or fruit pulps and juices; domestic and commercial oils; cleaning agents; an insecticide; and various glues, paints and varnishes. In a few cases the brightly emitting substance could be distinguished from blood by a small but detectable shift of the peak emission wavelength.

One of the first responsibilities at a crime scene is to prevent the destruction or contamination of evidence. Security measures must be initiated to prevent unauthorized persons from entering the crime scene or the immediate area. This includes members of the news media who may appear on the scene.

Detectives and officers must not touch, move or pick up objects or disturb in any manner articles, marks or impressions that may have been left by the criminal. Others must be prevented from altering or contaminating the area, as well.

Investigators should maintain this rigid security until all measurements have been made; the scene has been thoroughly searched for fingerprints, tool marks and the like; and all evidence has been collected.

EVIDENCE COLLECTION

Although various investigative guides can help a criminal investigator assess the value of evidence that may be found at a crime scene, the selection and collection of these items remains a question of individual judgement.

This personalized approach to the task of gathering evidence often leads to the common error of overlooking or disregarding the importance of the less obvious physical traces left by a criminal.

The investigator must develop a sensitivity to these things that may be out of place or do not appear to “belong” regardless of their size or appearance — mud on a rug, lipstick stains on a glass in a bachelor’s apartment, a cigarette stub found in the ashtray of a known pipe or cigar smoker, cloth fiber hooked on a torn window screen, etc.

Huey Attack Helicopter with .50 caliber machine gun. Credit: Military.com

The New York City Police Department possesses the capability to shoot down any type of aircraft if the city experiences a 9/11-type of attack in which commercial airliners or other aircraft are used as Kamikazes.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told CBS TV news program 60 Minutes that the force had the “device and training” for such an attack and “would have some means to take down a plane in an extreme situation.”

Police sources later admitted the NYPD owns a Barrett .50 caliber machine gun, which is fitted to a police helicopter for extra security such as when a U.S. president visits the city. The .50 caliber is used in Iraq and Afghanistan mounted on U.S. military Humvees and helicopters.

A few months after 9/11, when the new Mayor, Mike Bloomberg, moved into City Hall, new Top Cop Ray Kelly created a counterterrorism operation second-to-none. The NYPD’s Intelligence Division, Special Operations Division, Emergency Services Units (SWAT), and other police units underwent advanced training in terrorism and counterinsurgency operations.

Overseas, NYPD detectives routinely work with Britain’s Scotland Yard and other foreign police agencies in an intelligence-gathering capacity in an effort to run an intelligence operation independent of the CIA, NSA and other federal agencies.

For example, during the terror attacks in London’s transit system, the Tubes, NYPD detectives were at the crime scenes collecting intel on the attacks and attackers.

While most New Yorkers — and Americans in general — find the NYPD’s capability of bringing down a plane that could cause hundreds — even thousands – of deaths, there are some who find this scenario disturbing.

“I’ve said it for many years, we are slowly but surely militarizing our local police departments,” said former NYPD police detective Sidney Francis. “What’s next? Smart bombs to go after drug dealers? Drones to take out suspected mobsters?”

Another law enforcement executive, this one in New Jersey, is also upset with this latest revelation. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, he questions President Barack Obama having military personnel behaving more like police officers — including giving terrorists Miranda warnings on the battlefield. “They aren’t sworn police or peace officers,” he said.

The New Jersey commander believes that while soldiers behave like cops in Iraq and Afghanistan, police officers may sometimes behave like military special forces teams. “We’re cops. We’re not Navy SEALs or Green Berets. We’re cops out here working to protect and serve our fellow citizens.”

The modern law enforcement apparatus is an impressive thing. It’s no longer about men with clubs standing on street corners and cracking heads. Law enforcement is a scientific endeavor encompassing everything from high end forensic sciences to sociology and psychology. It’s a field of ideas now, and it suffers from the same malfeasance of ideas that every other aspect of Western culture does.

The modern police force does not enforce laws out of some abstract sense of justice, its only goal is the social good. And the social good calls for not enforcing laws, as often as it calls for enforcing them. Law enforcement does not exist for the sake of law, but for social stability, and how to achieve that social stability is still a matter of debate.

Law enforcement guidelines often call for forbearance in situations where enforcement would aggravate the violence. These situations almost invariably involve violence originating from a racial or ethnic group. During race riots, police officers may be told to stand by and observe the situation, because their intervention would only worsen the problem. The Crown Heights Pogrom and the London riots are both examples of this philosophy at work.

If you want to understand why the same police who have no trouble cracking heads at left wing and right wing protests– will occasionally turn into pussycats when a racial group takes to the streets, this is why. The doctrine they are operating under says that cracking down on racial violence will only lead to a bigger explosion. So will talking about it.

The same guidelines are in place for Islamic terrorism and the latest counter-terrorism strategy out of the White House applies the absurdities of community policing, with its emphasis on partnerships with the community responsible for the violence, to the Jihad. Again there are numerous warnings about the dangers of radicalizing Muslims through overly strong law enforcement.

In the name of social stability laws go unenforced and two systems of justice take hold. One for groups that are notorious for perpetrating violence– and the other for everyone else. And the violence only increases.

The United States has been going through this wringer for half a century. Calls for tough on crime laws warring with social appeasement strategies. Tough on crime is the official approach after the public made it clear that politicians who took the “Blame Society” line would pay a price at the ballot box. But social appeasement hasn’t gone away, it’s just less open.

Community Policing

There are two defining roles for modern law enforcement. The social worker and the obsessive tyrant. And the modern law enforcement apparatus usually combines both of these. The two roles emerge out of two approaches.

The first approach is Community Policing with a strong emphasis on empowering community groups to deal with the social issues, and once the social issues are taken care of, crime will go down. Law enforcement works with community leaders, which allows those leaders to delineate the areas where police and federal law enforcement will go, and the types of crimes they will address.

Government money funds social programs run by community leaders, bribing them to tackle those social problems.

There is a widely accepted argument among economists that if you want to eliminate corruption, raise salaries and then punish and fire those caught engaged in corruption. This piece at Fox Business seems related.

. . . . A report released this week by the County of Los Angeles Office of Independent Review makes a strong, albeit anecdotal, argument that complaints against sheriff’s deputies have increasingly turned from “minor theft-type allegations” to allegations of more-serious financial crimes, because…well, times are tough and they have bills to pay, too.
Last year, the Los Angeles County Sheriff got hit with a $100 million budget cut. So now deputies can’t get the extra pay they came to depend upon, says the report, which was first reported by the Los Angeles Times.
“Four or five years ago, most deputies who wanted to work overtime to earn extra money …could generally do so quite easily,” the report reads.
“While some deputies worked overtime…to earn extra money to save for leaner times,” the report says, “other deputies may have adopted a lifestyle beyond that which their regular salary afforded.
“Regrettably, the current financial crisis…may have contributed to the rise in poor decision-making…”
The report cites examples without mentioning names of the accused.
Mirroring the times, two deputies are under federal indictment for alleged mortgage fraud–taking out loans that exceeded the sales prices of homes they flipped. One faces 40 years in prison, the other 105, the report said.
Other cases involved insurance fraud:
One deputy allegedly set his car on fire. “In addition to the three vehicles he owned, the deputy had a home with a substantial mortgage and three credit cards with balances of over $1,000 each,” the report noted.
Another staged a burglary. Another ditched his car in Mexico and claimed it was stolen.
Until recently, fallen deputies were more likely to be accused in petty offenses such as shoplifting, said Michael Gennaco, chief attorney for the oversight office that produced the report, but financial pressures have led to larger frauds. . . .

While this technology’s ability to be abused is concerning, it does make it easier to catch criminals who are on the run.

Fueled by federal grants, high-speed cameras that can automatically read up to 30 license plates a second and check them for violations or law enforcement alerts are scanning more streets and highways across Massachusetts this year.

The Executive Office of Public Safety and Security doled out $500,000 in federal highway grants earlier this year to 26 police departments for automatic plate readers, which can be stationary or mounted on a cruiser on patrol.

Some MetroWest and Milford-area cities and towns already had the high-tech scanners. Those that won grants are now using plate readers or will be soon.
“In real time, it’s just a great opportunity,” said Ashland Police Chief Scott Rohmer, whose department bought a plate reader last year. “With the technology, it’s just another tool to allow the officer to be better at their job and process information faster.”

Framingham and Franklin are among area departments now using the cameras, which are clearly in demand. Ninety-eight police departments applied to the state’s public safety office for a grant to buy one this year.

Milford and Marlborough recently got the scanners in the second round.

“It searches for people who are wanted, it searches for vehicles that aren’t registered or insured, so in the long run, it protects the public,” Milford Chief Tom O’Loughlin said. “For me, it’s like other equipment – radios and radar. We have the LoJack trackers. We just a week or so ago tracked a stolen car from Bellingham. It’s another tool that can be used by patrol officers.” . . .

Automatic plate readers also record information on the dates, times and locations of the plates they scan, according to an IACP report.

This information could help with criminal investigations, such as placing the same car at multiple bank robberies or break-ins, authorities say. But collecting the information on all citizens – even law-abiding ones – is what worries privacy advocates. . . .

“We would prefer that they not keep it at all unless it pertains to an ongoing criminal investigation,” Crockford said, adding that the ACLU hopes to work with the state to draft a data policy that protects people’s privacy. . . .

Thanks to Jeff Yager for the heads up on this story.