The Face of America in Year 2015

[kscarbel2]

Missing 11-year-old child found in freezer

Associated Press / October 19, 2015

The body of an 11-year-old girl who had been missing since August 2014 was found on Sunday inside a locked freezer owned by her mother.

Officials from Child Protective Services (CPS) visited the West Bradenton, Florida, apartment of Keishanna Thomas last Friday, expecting to find five children between the ages of 2 and 15 years old. Instead, they only found four: Missing was 11-year-old Janiya Thomas, who had not been seen since August of 2014.

Keishanna Thomas would not divulge her daughter's whereabouts – even after being arrested and appearing before a circuit court judge. For her alleged refusal to cooperate, she was held on a contempt of court charge.

After noting her disappearance, police began an investigation to find Janiya.

At 7 p.m. Sunday, we received a phone call from a family member of Janiya Thomas, telling us the location where she might possibly be located," says police spokesman Lieutenant James Racky. "We went to that location and were told there that the body of the child may be in a freezer."

Keishanna Thomas and a male friend had previously moved the locked freezer to the home of Janiya's aunt and grandmother.

After Thomas' arrest, they broke the lock on the freezer and found the girl’s body.

Janiya had intestinal issues making her unable to control her digestion and bowel movements. It was quite serious – and could ultimately have been fatal. "That medical condition is the same one that killed her father," said Racky.

Authorities say that Keishanna Thomas was annoyed by her daughter's condition and locked her in the bathroom rather than allowing her access to other parts of the apartment.

Janiya was pulled from school in 2013. That same year, her mother told CPS that she had begun homeschooling the girl.

When asked how the girl celebrated her birthday last year, the child said Janiya just stayed in the bathroom. One child said the mother used a belt and punched Janiya.

One child told police that Thomas punished Janiya for soiling herself by leaving her inside a bathroom for long periods of time. When asked how long, the child said it was a week or so, with Janiya even eating in the bathroom. He said his mother slept in the front room so she could catch Janiya if she tried to sneak out at night.

The siblings of a missing 11-year-old Florida girl told child welfare investigators that they went to school one day and never saw their sister again, and one boy told them, "I think she is dead or something."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update:

Associated Press / October 27, 2015

The mother of a girl found dead in a freezer was accused of beating her five children for years in a home that at times was filled with rats and roaches, according to documents released Tuesday.

The documents, released by the Manatee County Sheriff's Office, show child welfare investigators visited the home of Keishanna Thomas 10 times amid allegations that she beat one of her children with an electric cord leaving welts, burned another child with bleach so badly her skin was discolored and left another child with 22 scars. Despite evidence of abuse, investigators wrote in their reports that the children were not in imminent danger.

One of the children was removed from the home in 2004, but she was later returned to her mother, whose criminal history includes arrests on charges of battery and drug possession, the documents say. Details about when and why that child was returned were not clear.

In September, another call came to the state's child abuse hotline, claiming Thomas beat her 12-year-old son for stealing candy. It was then that they discovered no one had seen her 11-year-old daughter Janiya for more than a year. Her siblings told investigators they came home from school one day, and she was gone; they presumed she was dead.

A padlocked freezer was left by Thomas and another man at the home of Janiya's grandmother, she and the girl's aunt told authorities. Inside was a body that officials confirmed on Monday was that of Janiya. The grandmother and aunt say they didn't realize what was inside.

Janiya's mother had initially been jailed on contempt and child abuse charges because she refused to talk about the girl's whereabouts. The contempt charge has been dropped, though she is jailed on a charge of abuse of a corpse.

It's unclear how the child died. Police say they need to do more testing.

The Department of Children and Families has removed Janiya's four siblings, and Secretary Mike Carroll said his agency is investigating whether anything could have been done differently to prevent Janiya's death. The sheriff's office is in charge of child welfare investigations in the area and handled the Thomas case for years. The agency did not immediately return emails seeking comment Tuesday.

But the documents released by the agency portrayed a violent family life, including six cases alleging physical injury to the children and two cases of family violence, as the single mother struggled to control her anger and appeared to take it out on the children.

"The mother is consistently uncooperative with (investigators), and she does not follow through with services when they have been offered and put in place. The children have become increasingly fearful of their mother and frequently feel unsafe in their home environment," investigators wrote after visiting the home last month.

But for years, investigators dismissed safety threats. In 2004, one of the children had 22 scars and said her mother beat her.

A few years later, a child who cannot use one arm had been hurt in a fall and appeared to have scratches on her face. But the girl was afraid to talk to investigators and said only that she fell.

Investigators came to the home again in 2012 after one of the children had burns on his arms and legs, but officials wrote "there are not negative implications based on signs of present danger."

Last year, one of the children said his mother pulled down his pants and beat him with an electric cord. A doctor who examined the child also found the marks were "abusive and consistent with being hit with an electrical cord."

Thomas said she hit the child with her hand and said the child had been lying and stealing. Investigators again filled out paperwork alleging the children were not in imminent danger.

Most recently, the girl's siblings told investigators Thomas punished Janiya for soiling herself by leaving her inside a bathroom for long periods of time. When asked how long, they said it was a week or so, with Janiya even eating in the bathroom. The mother slept in the front room so she could catch Janiya if she tried to sneak out at night.

When asked how the girl celebrated her birthday last year, the child said Janiya stayed in the bathroom. Another child said the mother used a belt and punched Janiya.

[kscarbel2]

Arizona father drowns wife, 3 toddler children

Associated Press / October 19, 2015

The deaths of two adults and three young children who were in an SUV that plunged into an Arizona lake are being investigated as a murder-suicide as police said Monday that the father of the toddlers deliberately drove the vehicle into the water.

Police spokesman Lt. Mike Pooley said 27-year-old Glenn Edward Baxter purposefully drove himself, his estranged wife and their children into Tempe Town Lake just after midnight Sunday.

A surveillance video from a nearby condominium complex showed the car being driven into the lake.

The video shows Baxter getting out of the SUV, walking down to the lake, then getting back in the driver's seat and driving the vehicle "at a high rate of speed" before it hits a curb and flips over into the water.

"This was not an accident. Mr. Baxter took deliberate action," Pooley said. "It's absolutely horrific what happened to those little kids and their mother."

Witnesses and officers jumped into the lake in a bid to rescue Baxter, 25-year-old Danica Baxter, and their three children, 1-year-old Zariyah, 2-year-old Nazyiah and 3-year-old Reighn.

The children's great-grandfather had expressed his doubts earlier that the deaths were accidental, saying the children's mother had declined her estranged husband's attempts at reconciliation because he hadn't addressed his anger management problems.

George Britt said it doesn't make sense that the early-to-bed-early-to-rise mother would take her children out for a ride just after midnight. "She is never up at that time of the night," Britt said. "Never, never."

Investigators believe Baxter and his wife met late Saturday night to talk about their children and an argument ensued.

Police found a handgun in the SUV, but it's unclear if Danica Baxter was being held against her will at the time of the incident.

The couple married in April 2012, and relatives said they separated several months ago.

Tamika Franklin, an aunt of Danica Baxter, described her as an excellent mother who adored her children. "Everything she did was for her kids. Her kids were her life. She would never do anything to hurt her kids," she said as she began to cry.

The parents and the two youngest children were pulled from the vehicle and brought to a hospital, where they later died. Investigators then determined the couple's oldest child was missing, and divers later retrieved the child's body from the still submerged vehicle.

[kscarbel2]

Why haven't these murderers been summarily sentenced to death? They savagely ripped away a 5-year-old child's god-given right to a lifetime on earth. Where is the justice? If you intentionally and criminally take a life, you lose your own.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Three Milwaukee men murder 5-year old girl

Reuters / October 20, 2015

Three black Milwaukee men accused of targeting the wrong house in a revenge shooting last year were charged on Tuesday in the death of a 5-year-old white girl as she sat on her grandfather's lap watching television, police said.

Arlis Gordon, 23, and Carl Barrett, 20, were charged with first degree reckless homicide and Paul Farr, 24, was charged with two counts of harboring and aiding a felon in the fatal shooting of Laylah Petersen in 2014, according to a criminal complaint filed in Milwaukee County Circuit Court.

Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn told a news conference the men were seeking revenge for a jury's acquittal in November 2014 of a man who was accused of killing Gordon's step-brother.

After the verdict, Farr drove Gordon and Barrett to a house where they thought the defendant's girlfriend lived, Flynn said. Gordon and Barrett got out of the car four blocks from the intended target and fired into the wrong house, he said.

The barrage of gunfire fatally wounded Petersen while she was sitting on her grandfather Robert Fogl's lap watching television in the living room, the complaint said.

Flynn pulled a large button with a photograph of the girl from his shirt pocket in announcing the charges on Tuesday.

"I've been carrying something around with me, and it's Laylah," Flynn said. "I'd like to think we can put her to rest now."

Barrett and Gordon could be sentenced to up to 60 years in prison if convicted and Farr up to 10 years in prison.

The men were arrested over the past week after police heard stories linking the three to the shooting. They are now in custody.

.

[kscarbel2]

New Mexico man murders 4-Year-Old

Associated Press / October 22, 2015

A New Mexico man has confessed to the road rage murder of a 4-year-old girl.

Tony Torrez, 32, was arrested Wednesday, a day after shooting Lilly Garcia on Interstate 40 in Albuquerque. The child was hit at least once in the head.

Alan Garcia had Lilly and son Isaac, 7, in the back seat of his red Dodge Ram pickup after picking them up from school. He was attempting to exit the highway to go to a grocery store, but Torrez's car crossed two lanes of traffic and blocked him.

Torrez pulled up alongside the Garcia’s pickup and fired multiple shots.

The family did not know the suspect.

"There were two children in this truck that this animal decided to open fire on just because he happened to get cut off on the freeway," said Tanner Tixier, a police spokesman.

The father pulled over after the shooting and together with a few nurses who stopped to help, gave Lilly first aid as they waited for medics.

When they arrived, they rushed her to hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

"To have your child in your hands in such circumstances is going to live with the father for the rest of his life," police Chief Gorden Eden said.

"This is a complete disrespect of human life. This is something that should not be happening in Albuquerque, New Mexico," said Eden.

Torrez is charged with an open count of murder, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, assault with the intent to commit a violent felony, shooting at or from a motor vehicle, child abuse, child abuse resulting in death and tampering with evidence.

He is being held on a $650,000 cash-only bond.

.

[Dirtymilkman]

Legal citizen? Legal gun owner?

[kscarbel2]

Legal citizen? Legal gun owner?

New Mexico abolished the death penalty in 2009. How then, do they expect to justly deal with murderers? Do the citizens of New Mexico actually want to use their tax money to incarcerate a cold-blooded murderer for life in prison? Really now, what's the point?

Until confirmed murderers (indisputable situations) are summarily executed, we will continue see our crime rate soar, and our quality-of-life plummet.

Until we put the fear of god into those with criminal will.....................

No American should fear for their safety in these United States. However, these are the times we now live in, with an excessively politically correct and thin-skinned society that hasn't the nerve to call a spade a spade, and take an eye for an eye.

Look at this man's cocky face (it speaks volumes). He wouldn't hesitate to pull his gun again tomorrow and shoot at another citizen. He and his values belong in Somalia, or one of the drug cartel-run Latin American countries.

[Dirtymilkman]

This is why I could never work in law enforcement. I would be locked up forever. There would be lots of guys like this no longer alive.

[kscarbel2]

Murder a child via starvation, literally torture, and the prosecution doesn’t seek the death penalty. What has become of justice in these United States?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pennsylvania couple starves son to death

Reuters / October 26, 2015

The trial of a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania couple who starved their 9-year-old disabled son to death, and of nearly did the same to a disabled daughter, is due to start on Monday.

Jarrod Tutko, Sr., 39, and Kimberly Tutko, 40, face criminal homicide and other charges over the death of their son, Jarrod, Jr., 9, last year and the abusive treatment of his sister, Arianna, 10.

The parents could face up to life imprisonment on the murder charge. The prosecution is NOT seeking the death penalty.

The Tutkos, lived with their six children, all but one of whom had some sort of medical or developmental problem, in Harrisburg.

Courts had previously taken away four other children from Kimberly Tutko.

Those children were fathered by another man.

On Friday, Aug. 1, 2014, Harrisburg police went to the house and found the decomposing body of Jarrod Tutko, Jr., who had died about four days earlier.

The nine-year-old suffered from Fragile-X Syndrome, a genetic disorder.

He was three-and-a-half feet tall and weighed less than 17 lbs because of starvation, an autopsy found.

His parents kept him locked in a third-floor room with no bed or lights, where he was prone to smearing himself and the walls with feces, authorities said.

The daughter, Arianna Tutko, was found in a second-floor bedroom in a coma and just hours from death, police said.

She recovered and was also taken away from their parents by the state.

.

[kscarbel2]

Hundreds of police officers lose licenses over sex misconduct

Associated Press / November 1, 2015

Flashing lights pierced the black of night, and the big white letters made clear it was the police. The woman pulled over was a daycare worker in her 50s headed home after playing dominoes with friends. She felt she had nothing to hide, so when the Oklahoma City officer accused her of erratic driving, she did as directed.

She would later tell a judge she was splayed outside the patrol car for a pat-down, made to lift her shirt to prove she wasn't hiding anything, then to pull down her pants when the officer still wasn't convinced. He shined his flashlight between her legs, she said, then ordered her to sit in the squad car and face him as he towered above. His gun in sight, she said she pleaded "No, sir" as he unzipped his fly and exposed himself with a hurried directive.

"Come on," the woman, identified in police reports as J.L., said she was told before she began giving him oral sex. "I don't have all night."

The accusations are undoubtedly jolting, and yet they reflect a betrayal of the badge that has been repeated time and again across the country.

In a yearlong investigation of sexual misconduct by U.S. law enforcement, The Associated Press uncovered some 1,000 police officers who lost their badges in a six-year period for rape, sodomy and other sexual assault; sex crimes that included possession of child pornography; or sexual misconduct such as propositioning citizens or having consensual but prohibited on-duty intercourse.

The number is unquestionably an undercount because it represents only those officers whose licenses to work in law enforcement were revoked, and not all states take such action. California and New York - with several of the nation's largest law enforcement agencies - offered no records because they have no statewide system to decertify officers for misconduct. And even among states that provided records, some reported no officers removed for sexual misdeeds even though cases were identified via news stories or court records.

"It's happening probably in every law enforcement agency across the country," said Chief Bernadette DiPino of the Sarasota Police Department in Florida, who helped study the problem for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. "It's so underreported and people are scared that if they call and complain about a police officer, they think every other police officer is going to be then out to get them."

Even as cases around the country have sparked a national conversation about excessive force by police, sexual misconduct by officers has largely escaped widespread notice due to a patchwork of laws, piecemeal reporting and victims frequently reluctant to come forward because of their vulnerabilities - they often are young, poor, struggling with addiction or plagued by their own checkered pasts.

Lawyers and even police chiefs told the AP that some departments also stay quiet about improprieties to limit liability, allowing bad officers to quietly resign, keep their certification and sometimes jump to other jobs.

"My God," J.L. said she thought as she eyed the officer's holstered gun, "he's going to kill me."

The AP does not name alleged victims of sexual assault without their consent, and J.L. declined to be interviewed. She was let go after the traffic stop without any charges. She reported her accusations immediately, but it was months before the investigation was done and the breadth of the allegations known.

She is one of 13 women who say they were victimized by a police officer named Daniel Holtzclaw. The fired cop, 28, has pleaded not guilty to a host of charges.

Each of his accusers is expected to testify in the trial that begins Monday, including one who was 17 when she said the officer pulled down her pink cotton shorts and raped her on her mother's front porch.

But on a June night last year, it was J.L.'s story that unleashed a larger search for clues.

A nurse swabbed her mouth. A captain made a report. And a detective got to work.

On a checkerboard of sessions on everything from electronic surveillance to speed enforcement, police chiefs who gathered for an annual meeting in 2007 saw a discussion on sex offenses by officers added to the agenda. More than 70 chiefs packed into a room, and when asked if they had dealt with an officer accused of sexual misdeeds, nearly every attendee raised a hand. A task force was formed and federal dollars were pumped into training.

Eight years later, a simple question - how many law enforcement officers are accused of sexual misconduct - has no definitive answer. The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, which collects police data from around the country, doesn't track officer arrests, and states aren't required to collect or share that information.

To measure the problem, the AP obtained records from 41 states on police decertification, an administrative process in which an officer's law enforcement license is revoked. Cases from 2009 through 2014 were then reviewed to determine whether they stemmed from misconduct meeting the Department of Justice standard for sexual assault - sexual contact that happens without consent, including intercourse, sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling and attempted rape.

Nine states and the District of Columbia said they either did not decertify officers for misconduct or declined to provide information.

Of those that did release records, the AP determined that some 550 officers were decertified for sexual assault, including rape and sodomy, sexual shakedowns in which citizens were extorted into performing favors to avoid arrest, or gratuitous pat-downs.

Some 440 officers lost their badges for other sex offenses, such as possessing child pornography, or for sexual misconduct that included being a peeping Tom, sexting juveniles or having on-duty intercourse.

The law enforcement officials in these records included state and local police, sheriff's deputies, prison guards and school resource officers; no federal officers were included because the records reviewed came from state police standards commissions.

About one-third of the officers decertified were accused of incidents involving juveniles.

Because of gaps in the information provided by the states, it was impossible to discern any other distinct patterns, other than a propensity for officers to use the power of their badge to prey on the vulnerable. Some but not all of the decertified officers faced criminal charges; some offenders were able to avoid prosecution by agreeing to surrender their certifications.

Victims included unsuspecting motorists, schoolchildren ordered to raise their shirts in a supposed search for drugs, police interns taken advantage of, women with legal troubles who succumbed to performing sex acts for promised help, and prison inmates forced to have sex with guards.

The AP's findings, coupled with other research and interviews with experts, suggest that sexual misconduct is among the most prevalent type of complaint against law officers.

Phil Stinson, a researcher at Bowling Green State University, analyzed news articles between 2005 and 2011 and found 6,724 arrests involving more than 5,500 officers. Sex-related cases were the third-most common, behind violence and profit-motivated crimes. Cato Institute reports released in 2009 and 2010 found sex misconduct the No. 2 complaint against officers, behind excessive force.

In Connecticut, William Ruscoe of the Trumbull Police began a 30-month prison term in January after pleading guilty to the sexual assault of a 17-year-old girl he met through a program for teens interested in law enforcement. Case records detailed advances that began with explicit texts and attempts to kiss and grope the girl. Then one night Ruscoe brought her back to his home, put his gun on the kitchen counter and asked her to go upstairs to his bedroom. The victim told investigators that despite telling him no "what felt like 1,000 times," he removed her clothes, fondled her and forced her to touch him - at one point cuffing her hands.

In Florida, Jonathan Bleiweiss of the Broward Sheriff's Office was sentenced to a five-year prison term in February for bullying about 20 immigrant men into sex acts. Because the victims wouldn't testify, Bleiwess' plea deal revolved around false imprisonment charges, allowing him to escape sex offender status. Prosecutors said he used implied threats of deportation to intimidate the men.

And in New Mexico, Michael Garcia of the Las Cruces Police was sentenced last November to nine years in federal prison for sexually assaulting a high school police intern. At the time, he was in a unit investigating child abuse and sex crimes. The victim, Diana Guerrero, said in court that the assault left her feeling "like a piece of trash," dashed her dreams of becoming an officer, and triggered depression, nightmares and flashbacks.

"It had never occurred to me that a person who had earned a badge would do this to me or anybody else," said Guerrero, who is now 21 and agreed to her name being published. "I lost my faith in everything, everyone, even in myself."

A 2011 International Association of Chiefs of Police report on sex misconduct questioned whether some conditions of the job may create opportunities for such incidents. Officers' power, independence, off-hours and engagement with those perceived as less credible combine to give cover to predators, it said, and otherwise admirable bonds of loyalty can lead colleagues to shield offenders.

"You see officers throughout your career that deal with that power really well, and you see officers over your career that don't," said Oklahoma City Police Chief Bill Citty, who fired Holtzclaw just months after the allegations surfaced and called the case a troubling reminder that police chiefs need to be careful about how they hire and train officers.

The best chance at preventing such incidents is to robustly screen applicants, said Sheriff Russell Martin in Delaware County, Ohio, who served on an IACP committee on sex misconduct. Those seeking to join Martin's agency are questioned about everything from pornography use to public sex acts. Investigators run background checks, administer polygraph exams and interview former employers and neighbors. Social media activity is reviewed for clues about what a candidate deems appropriate, or red flags such as objectification of women.

In the predawn hours of June 18, 2014, J.L.'s report made its way to Oklahoma City sex crimes detective Kim Davis. By that afternoon, Miranda rights were being read to Holtzclaw, an officer who had arrived out of the academy nearly three years earlier, a seemingly natural move for the son of a career policeman but one borne of deep disappointment.

The Oklahoma City Police Department refused to release Holtzclaw’s full personnel record.

J.L.'s accusations made Davis and a fellow detective curious about an unsolved report filed five weeks earlier in which an unidentified officer was accused of stopping a woman and coercing her into oral sex.

According to pretrial testimony, the detectives reviewed the names of women Holtzclaw had come into contact with on his 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift and interviewed each one, saying they had a tip she may have been assaulted by an officer. Most said they had not been victimized but, among those who said they were, other links to Holtzclaw were found, Davis said in court. The GPS device on his patrol car put him at the scene of the alleged incidents, and department records showed he called in to check all but one of the women for warrants, the detective testified.

By the time the investigation concluded, the detectives had assembled a six-month narrative of alleged sex crimes they said started Dec. 20, 2013, with a woman taken into custody and hospitalized while high on angel dust. Dressed in a hospital gown, her right wrist handcuffed to the bedrail, the woman said Holtzclaw coerced her into performing oral sex, suggesting her cooperation would lead to dropped charges.

"I didn't think that anyone would believe me," she testified at a pretrial hearing. "I feel like all police will work together."

All told, Holtzclaw faces 36 counts including rape, sexual battery and forcible oral sodomy.

Many of their allegations are similar, with the women saying they were accused of hiding drugs, then told to lift their shirts or pull down their pants. Some claim to have been groped; others said they were forced into intercourse or oral sex.

The youngest accuser said Holtzclaw first approached her when she was with two friends who were arguing and he learned she had an outstanding warrant for trespassing. He let her go but found her again later that day, walking to her mother's house. She said he offered her a ride and then followed her to the front porch, reminding her of her warrant, accusing her of hiding drugs and warning her not to make things more difficult than they needed to be. She claims he touched her breasts and slid his hand into her panties before pulling off her shorts and raping her.

When it was over, the teen said he told her he might be back to see her again.

"I didn't know what to do," she testified at the pretrial hearing. "Like, what am I going to do? Call the cops? He was a cop."

Victims of sexual violence at the hands of officers know the power their attackers have, and so the trauma can carry an especially crippling fear.

Jackie Simmons said she found it too daunting to bring her accusation to another police officer after being raped by a cop in 1998 while visiting Kansas for a wedding. So, like most victims of rape, she never filed a report. Her notions of good and evil challenged, she became enraged whenever she saw patrol cars marked "Protect and Serve."

"You feel really powerless," said Simmons, an elementary school principal in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Diane Wetendorf, a retired counselor who started a support group in Chicago for victims of officers, said most of the women she counseled never reported their crimes - and many who did regretted it. She saw women whose homes came under surveillance and whose children were intimidated by police. Fellow officers, she said, refused to turn on one another when questioned.

"It starts with the officer denying the allegations - 'she's crazy,' 'she's lying,'" Wetendorf said. "And the other officers say they didn't see anything, they didn't hear anything."

In its 2011 report, the IACP recommended that agencies institute policies specifically addressing sexual misconduct, saying "tolerance at any level will invite more of the same conduct." The report also urged stringent screening of hires. But the agency does not know how widely such recommendations have been implemented.

Experts said it isn't just threats of retaliation that deter victims from reporting the crimes, but also skepticism about the ability of officers and prosecutors to investigate their colleagues.

Milwaukee Police Officer Ladmarald Cates was sentenced to 24 years in prison in 2012 for raping a woman he was dispatched to help. Despite screaming "He raped me!" repeatedly to other officers present, she was accused of assaulting an officer and jailed for four days, her lawyer said. The district attorney, citing a lack of evidence, declined to prosecute Cates. Only after a federal investigation was he tried and convicted.

It's a story that doesn't surprise Penny Harrington, a former police chief in Portland, Oregon, who co-founded the National Center for Women in Policing and has served as an expert witness in officer misconduct cases. She said officers sometimes avoid charges or can beat a conviction because they are so steeped in the system.

"They knew the DAs. They knew the judges. They knew the safe houses. They knew how to testify in court. They knew how to make her look like a nut," she said. "How are you going to get anything to happen when he's part of the system and when he threatens you and when you know he has a gun and ... you know he can find you wherever you go?"

Though initially out on bond, Holtzclaw has been jailed since July after letting the battery in his ankle monitor go dead.

Holtzclaw coerced one woman into giving him oral sex. She cried as she spoke, sitting on a dirty couch in a rundown apartment where a blanket attached to the wall with thumbtacks blocked the sunlight. She talked of how afraid she was to go to police, of how images of her alleged attack haunt her. Enveloped in fear, she said she slipped further into drugs.

"I was getting high, but I wasn't feeling," she said. "I was too upset to feel anything."

In the Oklahoma City neighborhood that prosecutors say served as Holtzclaw's hunting ground, a narrow ribbon of road twists through a canyon of untended growth littered with black bags of stinking trash. Locals call the spot Dead Man's Curve.

On May 21, 2014, Holtzclaw told Syrita Bowen she could submit to oral sex and intercourse, or go to jail. She was convinced it was the cruel joke of some hidden-camera show until he insisted he was serious. She had been jailed many times before, and knew the math: a 15-minute ride downtown, two hours to be booked, up to a day of waiting to move to a cell, hearings drawn out over weeks or months.

She figured she could give him what he wanted in six minutes.

"God forgive me," she said, "that was the easiest thing for me to do."

Bowen agreed to have her name published, and initially she offered a steely front, contending no fear or sadness lingered from her alleged encounter with Holtzclaw. But, before long, tears flowed.

She has known poverty and addiction and imprisonment, and said she was repeatedly raped by a relative as a little girl. The violation she alleges now doesn't even rank as the worst thing to ever happen to her. But she said she thinks about it daily. There are no nightmares, she said, but reminders come in other ways.

Patrol cars seem to pass more often than they did before. Sirens are more jarring. And when a man in uniform goes by, she wonders what might happen.

[Outbehindthebarn]

Hundreds of police officers lose licenses over sex misconduct

Associated Press / November 1, 2015

Flashing lights pierced the black of night, and the big white letters made clear it was the police. The woman pulled over was a daycare worker in her 50s headed home after playing dominoes with friends. She felt she had nothing to hide, so when the Oklahoma City officer accused her of erratic driving, she did as directed.

She would later tell a judge she was splayed outside the patrol car for a pat-down, made to lift her shirt to prove she wasn't hiding anything, then to pull down her pants when the officer still wasn't convinced. He shined his flashlight between her legs, she said, then ordered her to sit in the squad car and face him as he towered above. His gun in sight, she said she pleaded "No, sir" as he unzipped his fly and exposed himself with a hurried directive.

"Come on," the woman, identified in police reports as J.L., said she was told before she began giving him oral sex. "I don't have all night."

The accusations are undoubtedly jolting, and yet they reflect a betrayal of the badge that has been repeated time and again across the country.

In a yearlong investigation of sexual misconduct by U.S. law enforcement, The Associated Press uncovered some 1,000 police officers who lost their badges in a six-year period for rape, sodomy and other sexual assault; sex crimes that included possession of child pornography; or sexual misconduct such as propositioning citizens or having consensual but prohibited on-duty intercourse.

The number is unquestionably an undercount because it represents only those officers whose licenses to work in law enforcement were revoked, and not all states take such action. California and New York - with several of the nation's largest law enforcement agencies - offered no records because they have no statewide system to decertify officers for misconduct. And even among states that provided records, some reported no officers removed for sexual misdeeds even though cases were identified via news stories or court records.

"It's happening probably in every law enforcement agency across the country," said Chief Bernadette DiPino of the Sarasota Police Department in Florida, who helped study the problem for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. "It's so underreported and people are scared that if they call and complain about a police officer, they think every other police officer is going to be then out to get them."

Even as cases around the country have sparked a national conversation about excessive force by police, sexual misconduct by officers has largely escaped widespread notice due to a patchwork of laws, piecemeal reporting and victims frequently reluctant to come forward because of their vulnerabilities - they often are young, poor, struggling with addiction or plagued by their own checkered pasts.

Lawyers and even police chiefs told the AP that some departments also stay quiet about improprieties to limit liability, allowing bad officers to quietly resign, keep their certification and sometimes jump to other jobs.

"My God," J.L. said she thought as she eyed the officer's holstered gun, "he's going to kill me."

The AP does not name alleged victims of sexual assault without their consent, and J.L. declined to be interviewed. She was let go after the traffic stop without any charges. She reported her accusations immediately, but it was months before the investigation was done and the breadth of the allegations known.

She is one of 13 women who say they were victimized by a police officer named Daniel Holtzclaw. The fired cop, 28, has pleaded not guilty to a host of charges.

Each of his accusers is expected to testify in the trial that begins Monday, including one who was 17 when she said the officer pulled down her pink cotton shorts and raped her on her mother's front porch.

But on a June night last year, it was J.L.'s story that unleashed a larger search for clues.

A nurse swabbed her mouth. A captain made a report. And a detective got to work.

On a checkerboard of sessions on everything from electronic surveillance to speed enforcement, police chiefs who gathered for an annual meeting in 2007 saw a discussion on sex offenses by officers added to the agenda. More than 70 chiefs packed into a room, and when asked if they had dealt with an officer accused of sexual misdeeds, nearly every attendee raised a hand. A task force was formed and federal dollars were pumped into training.

Eight years later, a simple question - how many law enforcement officers are accused of sexual misconduct - has no definitive answer. The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, which collects police data from around the country, doesn't track officer arrests, and states aren't required to collect or share that information.

To measure the problem, the AP obtained records from 41 states on police decertification, an administrative process in which an officer's law enforcement license is revoked. Cases from 2009 through 2014 were then reviewed to determine whether they stemmed from misconduct meeting the Department of Justice standard for sexual assault - sexual contact that happens without consent, including intercourse, sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling and attempted rape.

Nine states and the District of Columbia said they either did not decertify officers for misconduct or declined to provide information.

Of those that did release records, the AP determined that some 550 officers were decertified for sexual assault, including rape and sodomy, sexual shakedowns in which citizens were extorted into performing favors to avoid arrest, or gratuitous pat-downs.

Some 440 officers lost their badges for other sex offenses, such as possessing child pornography, or for sexual misconduct that included being a peeping Tom, sexting juveniles or having on-duty intercourse.

The law enforcement officials in these records included state and local police, sheriff's deputies, prison guards and school resource officers; no federal officers were included because the records reviewed came from state police standards commissions.

About one-third of the officers decertified were accused of incidents involving juveniles.

Because of gaps in the information provided by the states, it was impossible to discern any other distinct patterns, other than a propensity for officers to use the power of their badge to prey on the vulnerable. Some but not all of the decertified officers faced criminal charges; some offenders were able to avoid prosecution by agreeing to surrender their certifications.

Victims included unsuspecting motorists, schoolchildren ordered to raise their shirts in a supposed search for drugs, police interns taken advantage of, women with legal troubles who succumbed to performing sex acts for promised help, and prison inmates forced to have sex with guards.

The AP's findings, coupled with other research and interviews with experts, suggest that sexual misconduct is among the most prevalent type of complaint against law officers.

Phil Stinson, a researcher at Bowling Green State University, analyzed news articles between 2005 and 2011 and found 6,724 arrests involving more than 5,500 officers. Sex-related cases were the third-most common, behind violence and profit-motivated crimes. Cato Institute reports released in 2009 and 2010 found sex misconduct the No. 2 complaint against officers, behind excessive force.

In Connecticut, William Ruscoe of the Trumbull Police began a 30-month prison term in January after pleading guilty to the sexual assault of a 17-year-old girl he met through a program for teens interested in law enforcement. Case records detailed advances that began with explicit texts and attempts to kiss and grope the girl. Then one night Ruscoe brought her back to his home, put his gun on the kitchen counter and asked her to go upstairs to his bedroom. The victim told investigators that despite telling him no "what felt like 1,000 times," he removed her clothes, fondled her and forced her to touch him - at one point cuffing her hands.

In Florida, Jonathan Bleiweiss of the Broward Sheriff's Office was sentenced to a five-year prison term in February for bullying about 20 immigrant men into sex acts. Because the victims wouldn't testify, Bleiwess' plea deal revolved around false imprisonment charges, allowing him to escape sex offender status. Prosecutors said he used implied threats of deportation to intimidate the men.

And in New Mexico, Michael Garcia of the Las Cruces Police was sentenced last November to nine years in federal prison for sexually assaulting a high school police intern. At the time, he was in a unit investigating child abuse and sex crimes. The victim, Diana Guerrero, said in court that the assault left her feeling "like a piece of trash," dashed her dreams of becoming an officer, and triggered depression, nightmares and flashbacks.

"It had never occurred to me that a person who had earned a badge would do this to me or anybody else," said Guerrero, who is now 21 and agreed to her name being published. "I lost my faith in everything, everyone, even in myself."

A 2011 International Association of Chiefs of Police report on sex misconduct questioned whether some conditions of the job may create opportunities for such incidents. Officers' power, independence, off-hours and engagement with those perceived as less credible combine to give cover to predators, it said, and otherwise admirable bonds of loyalty can lead colleagues to shield offenders.

"You see officers throughout your career that deal with that power really well, and you see officers over your career that don't," said Oklahoma City Police Chief Bill Citty, who fired Holtzclaw just months after the allegations surfaced and called the case a troubling reminder that police chiefs need to be careful about how they hire and train officers.

The best chance at preventing such incidents is to robustly screen applicants, said Sheriff Russell Martin in Delaware County, Ohio, who served on an IACP committee on sex misconduct. Those seeking to join Martin's agency are questioned about everything from pornography use to public sex acts. Investigators run background checks, administer polygraph exams and interview former employers and neighbors. Social media activity is reviewed for clues about what a candidate deems appropriate, or red flags such as objectification of women.

In the predawn hours of June 18, 2014, J.L.'s report made its way to Oklahoma City sex crimes detective Kim Davis. By that afternoon, Miranda rights were being read to Holtzclaw, an officer who had arrived out of the academy nearly three years earlier, a seemingly natural move for the son of a career policeman but one borne of deep disappointment.

The Oklahoma City Police Department refused to release Holtzclaw’s full personnel record.

J.L.'s accusations made Davis and a fellow detective curious about an unsolved report filed five weeks earlier in which an unidentified officer was accused of stopping a woman and coercing her into oral sex.

According to pretrial testimony, the detectives reviewed the names of women Holtzclaw had come into contact with on his 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift and interviewed each one, saying they had a tip she may have been assaulted by an officer. Most said they had not been victimized but, among those who said they were, other links to Holtzclaw were found, Davis said in court. The GPS device on his patrol car put him at the scene of the alleged incidents, and department records showed he called in to check all but one of the women for warrants, the detective testified.

By the time the investigation concluded, the detectives had assembled a six-month narrative of alleged sex crimes they said started Dec. 20, 2013, with a woman taken into custody and hospitalized while high on angel dust. Dressed in a hospital gown, her right wrist handcuffed to the bedrail, the woman said Holtzclaw coerced her into performing oral sex, suggesting her cooperation would lead to dropped charges.

"I didn't think that anyone would believe me," she testified at a pretrial hearing. "I feel like all police will work together."

All told, Holtzclaw faces 36 counts including rape, sexual battery and forcible oral sodomy.

Many of their allegations are similar, with the women saying they were accused of hiding drugs, then told to lift their shirts or pull down their pants. Some claim to have been groped; others said they were forced into intercourse or oral sex.

The youngest accuser said Holtzclaw first approached her when she was with two friends who were arguing and he learned she had an outstanding warrant for trespassing. He let her go but found her again later that day, walking to her mother's house. She said he offered her a ride and then followed her to the front porch, reminding her of her warrant, accusing her of hiding drugs and warning her not to make things more difficult than they needed to be. She claims he touched her breasts and slid his hand into her panties before pulling off her shorts and raping her.

When it was over, the teen said he told her he might be back to see her again.

"I didn't know what to do," she testified at the pretrial hearing. "Like, what am I going to do? Call the cops? He was a cop."

Victims of sexual violence at the hands of officers know the power their attackers have, and so the trauma can carry an especially crippling fear.

Jackie Simmons said she found it too daunting to bring her accusation to another police officer after being raped by a cop in 1998 while visiting Kansas for a wedding. So, like most victims of rape, she never filed a report. Her notions of good and evil challenged, she became enraged whenever she saw patrol cars marked "Protect and Serve."

"You feel really powerless," said Simmons, an elementary school principal in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Diane Wetendorf, a retired counselor who started a support group in Chicago for victims of officers, said most of the women she counseled never reported their crimes - and many who did regretted it. She saw women whose homes came under surveillance and whose children were intimidated by police. Fellow officers, she said, refused to turn on one another when questioned.

"It starts with the officer denying the allegations - 'she's crazy,' 'she's lying,'" Wetendorf said. "And the other officers say they didn't see anything, they didn't hear anything."

In its 2011 report, the IACP recommended that agencies institute policies specifically addressing sexual misconduct, saying "tolerance at any level will invite more of the same conduct." The report also urged stringent screening of hires. But the agency does not know how widely such recommendations have been implemented.

Experts said it isn't just threats of retaliation that deter victims from reporting the crimes, but also skepticism about the ability of officers and prosecutors to investigate their colleagues.

Milwaukee Police Officer Ladmarald Cates was sentenced to 24 years in prison in 2012 for raping a woman he was dispatched to help. Despite screaming "He raped me!" repeatedly to other officers present, she was accused of assaulting an officer and jailed for four days, her lawyer said. The district attorney, citing a lack of evidence, declined to prosecute Cates. Only after a federal investigation was he tried and convicted.

It's a story that doesn't surprise Penny Harrington, a former police chief in Portland, Oregon, who co-founded the National Center for Women in Policing and has served as an expert witness in officer misconduct cases. She said officers sometimes avoid charges or can beat a conviction because they are so steeped in the system.

"They knew the DAs. They knew the judges. They knew the safe houses. They knew how to testify in court. They knew how to make her look like a nut," she said. "How are you going to get anything to happen when he's part of the system and when he threatens you and when you know he has a gun and ... you know he can find you wherever you go?"

Though initially out on bond, Holtzclaw has been jailed since July after letting the battery in his ankle monitor go dead.

Holtzclaw coerced one woman into giving him oral sex. She cried as she spoke, sitting on a dirty couch in a rundown apartment where a blanket attached to the wall with thumbtacks blocked the sunlight. She talked of how afraid she was to go to police, of how images of her alleged attack haunt her. Enveloped in fear, she said she slipped further into drugs.

"I was getting high, but I wasn't feeling," she said. "I was too upset to feel anything."

In the Oklahoma City neighborhood that prosecutors say served as Holtzclaw's hunting ground, a narrow ribbon of road twists through a canyon of untended growth littered with black bags of stinking trash. Locals call the spot Dead Man's Curve.

On May 21, 2014, Holtzclaw told Syrita Bowen she could submit to oral sex and intercourse, or go to jail. She was convinced it was the cruel joke of some hidden-camera show until he insisted he was serious. She had been jailed many times before, and knew the math: a 15-minute ride downtown, two hours to be booked, up to a day of waiting to move to a cell, hearings drawn out over weeks or months.

She figured she could give him what he wanted in six minutes.

"God forgive me," she said, "that was the easiest thing for me to do."

Bowen agreed to have her name published, and initially she offered a steely front, contending no fear or sadness lingered from her alleged encounter with Holtzclaw. But, before long, tears flowed.

She has known poverty and addiction and imprisonment, and said she was repeatedly raped by a relative as a little girl. The violation she alleges now doesn't even rank as the worst thing to ever happen to her. But she said she thinks about it daily. There are no nightmares, she said, but reminders come in other ways.

Patrol cars seem to pass more often than they did before. Sirens are more jarring. And when a man in uniform goes by, she wonders what might happen.

She should have bit it off. No trouble laying blame on the cop for that.

[kscarbel2]

Illinois mother allowed boyfriend to drown her 3 children

Associated Press / November 5, 2015

In horrifying detail, prosecutors described how three children, trapped in the back seat of their mother's car, screamed for help before they drowned in 4 ½ feet of water in an Illinois lake while their mother and her boyfriend escaped unharmed.

Amanda Hamm was convicted of child endangerment and served five years in prison for watching her boyfriend carry out a plot to drown her 6-year-old, 3-year-old and 23-month-old children in 2003 because they interfered with the couple's relationship and his sex-and-drugs lifestyle. He was convicted of first-degree murder and is serving a life sentence.

Now in a bizarre twist, Amanda Ware and her new husband are fighting to gain custody of three children — ages 5, 3 and 1 ½ — she had after leaving prison. They were taken away by child protection authorities last year after a doctor recognized Ware as the former Hamm.

A Cook County judge on Friday will decide whether the children of Amanda and Leo Ware were abused and neglected, even without evidence that they were physically harmed.

"This is a scary problem for all the people involved ... but most of all for the judge who has to decide whether to send these children home," said Bruce Boyer, director of the Loyola University child law clinic in Chicago, who's not involved in the case. "What's so difficult is that the likelihood of something going wrong may be low, but if does, the consequences are so high."

Under a legal concept called "anticipatory neglect," the court is not required to wait until a child is harmed before intervening if someone has harmed or endangered a child in the past, Boyer said, adding that such findings aren't unusual in child welfare cases. On the other hand, parents cannot be disqualified for custody solely because of their past if they prove that they're a capable parent.

But prosecutors and child protection authorities told Judge Demetrius Kottaras last week that, although none of the three living children has been physically harmed, there is direct evidence of current abuse and neglect. That includes domestic violence by Leo Ware against his wife and others, substance abuse and Amanda Ware's failure to follow treatment for mental illness, which created an injurious environment for the children.

In 2012, Chicago police responded to a domestic abuse call at the Ware's house after Leo Ware struck his wife. The next year, while she was pregnant, Amanda Ware sought an order of protection, saying she feared for herself and her children because Leo Ware was using crack cocaine and might become violent. Two weeks later, she had the order dropped.

Combined with the parents' histories, "this freight train of evidence is bearing down on three current children who must be protected," Assistant State's Attorney Joan Pernecke told the judge.

Attorneys for Amanda, 39, and Leo Ware, 49, said the children showed no signs of abuse and were healthy, even crying and taking off their shoes and socks to try to prevent child protection workers from taking them from their home last year. They also said no problems had ever been reported to the state Department of Children and Family Services until a doctor at a hospital where Ware gave birth recognized her.

Amanda Ware has a long history of depression and abusing drugs and alcohol, and 20 years ago told a mental health worker that she wanted to kill herself by driving into a lake, prosecutors said. During her 2006 trial, witnesses said she was abused and manipulated by boyfriend Maurice LaGrone Jr., who also terrorized her children — none of them his — including by putting one child's head in an oven and chasing a child with a knife. While he couldn't keep a job — and didn't want to watch the children while Ware worked — she bought him expensive clothes and jewelry, according to testimony.

Prosecutors at that time said she couldn't live without a man so was willing to sacrifice her children. When the couple wanted to move from Clinton, Illinois to St. Louis, Ware asked her mother to take custody of two of the children, but she said she could take only one.

Months later, the couple drove to nearby Clinton Lake, about 150 miles south of Chicago, where on Sept. 2, 2003, LaGrone drove the 1997 Oldsmobile Cutlass down a boat ramp, at some point jumping out with Ware.

Both claimed the deaths were an accident and that they tried but could not get the kids out. Rescuers eventually called by Ware said it took just two minutes to remove the bodies.

.

[kscarbel2]

Chicago gangs assassinate 9-year old

CNN / November 5, 2015

A 9-year-old boy shot and killed in a Chicago alley on Monday was the intended target of a gang-related shooting, Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said Thursday.

Tyshawn Lee was "lured" into the alley where he was killed, McCarthy said.

"This murder is probably the most abhorrent, cowardly, unfathomable crime I've witnessed in 35 years," McCarthy said at a press conference held at the crime scene surrounded by community leaders.

Two people suspected in the shooting belong to two gangs known to officials, McCarthy said. Police still need the public's help with information to be certain of whom to arrest, he said.

"We don't have that tidbit and we don't have that person that's putting us over the top to make this case that we can make an arrest on," McCarthy said.

Police are certain that fear in the community is playing a factor in keeping witnesses from stepping forward.

A reward for information leading to an arrest has grown to $35,000.

Police superintendent Garry McCarthy said the boy was targeted because father Pierre Stokes, 25, has connections to gang violence in the city.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update: Chicago Police have one of three gang members responsible for the murder of a 9-year-old boy who police say was lured from a playground and shot in the head because of his father's gang ties.

27-year-old Corey Morgan, a Chicago gang member with an extensive criminal history, has been charged with first-degree murder.

Police are looking for Kevin Edwards, as well as a yet unidentified third man, also involved in the shooting.

Police say Morgan was looking for targets after an October 13 shooting that killed his brother and injured his mother while they were in a car. Morgan later said he "was going to kill grandmas, mamas, kids and all," and that he and the other two suspects went out armed every day looking for targets, according to Cook County prosecutors at a hearing Friday where Morgan was denied bond.

The three men spotted Tyshawn in a play lot where he had climbed onto the swings after setting his basketball down beside him, prosecutors said. Investigators allege one man approached the boy, dribbled the basketball and handed it back to Tyshawn before leading him into an alley while the other suspects followed in an SUV.

One of the men shot the boy multiple times at close range, prosecutors said. One bullet cut through the boy's right thumb, suggesting he was holding his hands out to block the gunshots, according to an autopsy report.

Police say Morgan is a convicted felon with an extensive violent criminal history. He has a prior conviction for aggravated unlawful use of weapon and was sentenced to two years of probation. In a pending case, he was charged with unlawful use of a weapon by a felon.

.

[kscarbel2]

Louisiana police murder 6-year-old child

Associated Press / November 9, 2015

A Louisiana man had his hands up and posed no threat to the police who shot him and killed his six-year-old son last week, according to a judge’s description of body camera footage.

Two Louisiana police officers are charged with second-degree murder of the boy, Jeremy Mardis, and second-degree attempted murder of the father, Chris Few.

Louisiana state police head Colonel Mike Edmonson described the body camera footage as “the most disturbing thing I’ve seen”.

The officers, 32-year-old Derrick Stafford and 23-year-old Norris Greenhouse Jr, remained jailed on Monday with a $1 million bond.

State police say Stafford is a full-time lieutenant with the Marksville police department; Greenhouse is a full-time city marshal. Both were working part-time as deputy marshals in Marksville’s Ward 2 when Tuesday’s shooting broke out, state police said.

Chris Few remains hospitalized with bullet fragments lodged in his brain and lung. He has not yet been told his son is dead.

Greenhouse is the son of Norris Greenhouse Sr, an assistant district attorney in Avoyelles Parish. The district attorney, Charles Riddle, says the state attorney general will take over prosecution of the case.

The possibility that the officers could post bond and be released Monday, despite the murder charges, and the same day the boy is being buried, has shocked the country.

Jeremy Mardis, who was autistic, was buried Monday in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He had recently moved from Mississippi to Louisiana.

The boy’s death came in the midst of local infighting among various Marksville authorities with overlapping jurisdictions. Stafford, for instance, was a Marksville police officer who was moonlighting for the city marshal’s office, an agency that serves court papers in the area.

Marksville mayor John Lemoine said Stafford “apparently worked a full shift for us that day, and then that night went to work for the marshal’s office”.

Lemoine questioned the legality of the marshal and his officers enforcing laws – and firing their weapons – in Marksville city limits.

Marysville city attorney Derrick Whittington says Stafford had faced multiple lawsuits in his role as a Marksville police officer, and that in neighboring Rapides Parish he had been indicted on rape charges that were later dropped.

Update:

Police investigating the fatal shooting of a six-year-old autistic boy by two Louisiana state marshals are looking into whether one of the police officers had a grudge with the child's father.

Jeremy Mardis was shot five times in the head and chest as he sat in the passenger seat of his father Chris Few's car last week by police officers Derrick Stafford, 32, and Norris Greenhouse.

Investigators are exploring the possibility that Greenhouse had a personal issue with Few, after Few's fiancée Megan Dixon said Greenhouse had been messaging her on Facebook and coming to their home.

Ms Dixon has previously said she 'was the reason this all started', adding that she knew what happened in the moments leading up to the shooting.

Update:

A Louisiana grand jury indicted two deputy marshals on charges of second-degree murder on Thursday after a 6-year-old boy was killed last month during a volley of gunfire as the officers chased his father's car.

The officers, Derrick Stafford, 32, and Norris Greenhouse Jr., 23, also face charges of second-degree attempted murder in the wounding of the boy's father under the indictment returned by a grand jury in central Louisiana's Avoyelles Parish.

The two deputy marshals fired at least 18 times at the car during the Nov. 3 incident, wounding 25-year-old Chris Few and killing his son, Jeremy Mardis, who was buckled into the front passenger seat.

While local authorities initially said the deputy marshals were trying to arrest Few on a warrant when he fled by car, state police later said there was no record of a warrant. State police found no evidence that Few was armed.

Footage of the shooting was captured on a body camera by a third officer at the scene. The video was described by the superintendent of the Louisiana State Police, Colonel Mike Edmonson, as "the most disturbing thing I've seen."

Greenhouse was released from jail after posting $1 million bail. Stafford remains in jail because he cannot afford the $1 million bail. He has asked a judge to lower the amount.

.

[kscarbel2]

Particularly for those important jobs, there’s a lot to be said for character and integrity.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Secret Service officer arrested in child sex sting

CNN / November 12, 2015

A Secret Service officer assigned to the White House was arrested after he was caught in a sting sending naked pictures of himself to someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl from Delaware.

Lee Robert Moore turned himself in to the Maryland State Police Barracks on Monday, the same day the complaint was filed against him in the U.S. District Court for Delaware.

The complaint details a series of online chats between Moore, 37, and a Delaware State Police detective posing as a 14-year-old girl from Delaware.

Moore sent naked photos of himself to the undercover officer and requested to meet in person to have sex.

While being interrogated by law enforcement. Moore said that he sent some messages while on the job at the White House and admitted to sending messages to what he believed was an underaged girl and other underage girls on a mobile messaging service.

Moore was charged with the attempted transfer of obscene material to a minor, which carries a sentence of up to 10 years.

The event comes after a series of high-profile controversies for the Secret Service.

Julia Pierson, the Secret Service's first female director, resigned in October 2014, shortly after a man with a knife jumped the fence at the White House and made it deep into the White House before being caught.

About a half year later, this past April, the Secret Service leaked a copy of House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz's application to the agency. Chaffetz, who oversees the Secret Service as part of his duties, has been a sharp critic of the agency. An inspector general's report, released last month, found that the Secret Service leaked Chaffetz's failed application in retaliation.

[kscarbel2]

Pregnant New York woman murdered, baby cut from womb

Associated Press / November 21, 2015

A baby was cut from the womb of a 22-year-old woman who was nearly nine months pregnant by a childhood friend with a knife, and the suspect was arrested on a murder charge.

Angelikque Sutton was found in a pool of blood on Friday at an apartment in the Wakefield section of the Bronx.

The suspect, 22-year-old Ashleigh Wade, was taken into custody while screaming that the baby was hers. She was being held on murder, manslaughter and weapons charges.

The bloody crime scene baffled investigators, who ordered blood tests to confirm that the baby girl, named Genesis, belonged to Sutton, not the suspect.

Detectives discovered a knife and placenta in the blood-spattered apartment building when they responded to an emergency call from the Wade's boyfriend, who had been called to the scene.

The newborn was in good condition Saturday at a hospital, however Sutton died Friday evening.

Her boyfriend said the couple was supposed to be married on Friday and had been together for eight years, according to the Daily News of New York.

Briefed on the case by investigators, City Councilman Andy King said the victim had been strangled then stabbed.

[kscarbel2]

California man crushes baby to death

Associated Press / November 21, 2015

A California man has been found guilty of murdering a baby girl by stepping on her.

He told prosecutors that he felt a sense of relief after murdering the baby.

Daniel Ruiz of Hesperia killed one-year-old Scarlett by placing his foot on her chest and crushing her with the force of his 230-pound bulk while the baby's mother was out buying milk.

After crushing the baby, Ruiz flipped through channels on the television while Scarlett struggled desperately to breathe.

“The defendant stated that he actually felt better after stepping on the victim, as he sat there watching television,” Lead Deputy District Attorney Kathleen DiDonato said in a statement. “The whole time, Scarlett was behind him, lying on the floor trying to catch her breath. Fighting for her life.”

Ruiz had just gotten home from work on Aug. 28, 2013 when Scarlett's mother and Ruiz's girlfriend asked him to watch the baby.

Scarlett was propped up on a pillow on the floor when Ruiz committed the act that would end her life.

“Scarlett began gasping for breath," the statement reads. She then had what appeared to be a seizure.

When the mother returned home, Ruiz told her the child was having a seizure but that he didn't know why.

The women were gone no longer than 45 minutes.

Ruiz later told police what he'd done.

The 25-year-old was convicted Thursday on one count each of Second Degree Murder and Assault on a Child Causing Death.

His sentencing hearing is scheduled for Jan. 15, 2016 in Victorville Superior Court. He faces 25 years to life in prison.

.

[kscarbel2]

7-year-old girl raped and murdered at Kentucky football game

Associated Press / November 21, 2015

Police in Kentucky arrested on Friday a married father of five in the death of 7-year-old Gabriella Doolin whose body was found in a creek during a football game.

Doolin was reported missing around 7.40pm Saturday by her mother while they were at a football game at Allen County-Scottsville High School in south-central Kentucky.

A search began, and Gabriella's lifeless body was found about 25 minutes later in a creek in a wooded area behind the high school.

Timothy Madden, a 38-year-old construction worker, was arrested by Kentucky State Police Friday morning. He was charged with kidnapping resulting in the victim’s death, rape, sodomy and murder of Gabriella "Gabbi" Doolin, and is being held in lieu of a $1 million bond.

The Associated Press reported that Gabriella Doolin became separated from her mother in a crowd at a football game on Saturday evening (November 14). Her mother immediately reported the 7-year-old child missing.

After calling the child's name over the facility loudspeakers several times without results, the football game was suspended and a search was conducted by everyone in attendance. The child's body was found within 25 minutes.

A police report lists Gabriella Doolin's cause of death was strangulation and drowning.

Timothy Madden's DNA collected during the investigation matched that recovered from the child during the autopsy.

Update:

The oldest son of child murderer Timothy Madden has been arrested for making threats to police after his father was taken into custody.

Bradley Madden, 20, warned Scottsville, Kentucky, police that he was "coming for you" — among the private messages he sent to the department's Facebook page, Scottsville Police Chief Jeff Pearson said Tuesday.

The messages started last Saturday, the day after his father, Timothy Madden, 38, of Scottsville, was arrested by Kentucky State Police on murder, kidnapping, first-degree rape and first-degree sodomy charges in the death of Gabriella Doolin.

The messages with obscene comments and threats continued until Monday, Pearson said.

Another message from Bradley Madden said: "If u book my dad in and he does life u will do life watching ur back."

.

[kscarbel2]

Boy, 8, beat baby to death to stop her crying

AFP / November 11, 2015

An eight-year-old boy beat a baby girl to death to stop her crying while her mother was out partying at a nightclub, US police said Wednesday, charging him with murder.

The boy was one of several children left alone for hours in a Birmingham, Alabama home last month, in what experts said was a rare case of a child so young being prosecuted.

"Since becoming a police officer over 22 years ago, this is by far one of the saddest cases I have witnessed in my career," said Birmingham police spokesman Lieutenant Sean Edwards.

The incident happened at the home of a friend of the baby's mother, whom police have identified as 26-year-old Katerra Lewis.

She has been charged with manslaughter over what Edwards called "reckless" actions.

Police said Lewis left her one-year-old, Kelci, together with several children aged two to eight, while she and her friend went out to a nightclub.

The children -- six in total, were left unsupervised while Lewis and the friend were gone from roughly 11:00 pm until 2:00 am.

"It is believed that while the mother and friend were at the club, the eight-year-old viciously attacked the one-year-old because the one-year-old would not stop crying," police said.

"The one-year-old suffered from severe head trauma as well as major internal organ damage which ultimately led to her death."

The mother told police on the morning of October 11, a Sunday, that she found the baby unresponsive in her crib.

The girl was treated at the scene by first responders and was later pronounced dead at a children's hospital.

"This type of behavior, this type of irresponsibility on behalf of a parent is totally unacceptable," Edwards said of Lewis.

"No education, no school, no degree, no training can really prepare you for an eight-year-old committing a heinous crime like this."

The mother was released on $15,000 bail..

.

[kscarbel2]

Missouri 8th-graders stab woman to death at car wash, prop her body up for joyride

Associated Press / November 13, 2015

Two Missouri teenagers fatally stabbed a woman while she was vacuuming her car and then went on a joyride with her dead body propped up in the front seat.

The two boys, 13 and 14, stabbed 43-year-old Tanya Chamberlain in the face, neck, chest and hands on November 1 while she was at a local car wash vacuuming her vehicle.

The teens then took off in the vehicle with Chamberlain's dead body propped up in the front seat with her feet on the dashboard.

Police pulled over the swerving vehicle about 20 minutes later for what seemed like intoxicated driving.

The boys fled from the vehicle and police lost sight of both of them after a brief foot pursuit.

Inside the car, cops found a blood-covered pocket knife, possibly wrapped in Chamberlain's hair, in the backseat.

Surveillance video shows the eighth-graders exiting Quick Clean Car Wash wearing distinct hoodies that would later help police identify them as suspects.

After police released the surveillance footage, neighbors and parents of classmates were able to identify the boys as students at Bernard C. Campbell Middle School in Lee's Summit, a suburb of Kansas City.

It has not been determined if the boys will be charged as adults or juveniles.

.

[kscarbel2]

Houston mother stabs 2-month-old baby to death

Associated Press / November 17, 2015

Police have charged Rochelle Brown, 28, with capital murder in the stabbing death of her 2-month-old son Levi Thornton-Smith. She is being held without bond.

Brown threw the baby on the bed and returned with a knife.

The baby was stabbed several times in the torso.

According to court documents, Brown's sister tried to stop her from stabbing the child but was overpowered.

Houston police arrived at her apartment in the 10100 block of Windmill Lakes Blvd around 2 a.m. Tuesday. Police say they found knives and the infant boy in the living room with multiple stab wounds.

Brown is the mother of two other children aged 5 and 8 years old.

.

[kscarbel2]

Texas man murders 6 people

Reuters / November 19, 2015

A Texas man was charged on Thursday with killing six people, including a child, at an east Texas campsite over the weekend, prosecutors said.

William Hudson, 33, was charged with six counts of capital murder.

No motive has been released for the killings.

Carl Johnson, 76, and his daughter Hannah Johnson, 40, were found shot to death in a travel trailer on private property in Palestine, 100 miles (160 km) southeast of Dallas.

Police said the land belonged to Hannah's boyfriend Thomas Kamp, 46, whose body was found submerged in a pond behind Hudson's residence along with Hannah's 6-year-old son, Kade, and Kamp's two sons, Austin, 21, and Nathan, 23.

Hudson, whose family owns the property adjacent to the campsite, befriended the group during the weekend and helped pull a vehicle out of the mud with his tractor, according to police.

The tractor was later found with blood stains on it.

Johnson's wife, Cynthia, survived the killings by hiding in the woods for several hours before she was able to call for help and describe the suspect to officers, police said.

Hudson's bond is currently set at $2.5 million, according to jail records.

.

[kscarbel2]

Florida man executes his 5-month-old twin babies

Associated Press / November 18, 2015

On Friday, police say, 28-year old Gawain Rushane Wilson shot Megan Hiatt, 22, their five-month-old twins, Hayden Rose and Kayden Reese Hiatt, and Hiatt’s father, Travis James Hiatt, before turning the gun on himself at his home in Jacksonville, Florida.

Wilson forced Hiatt to hold their twin babies while he shot them.

Megan Hiatt, who is currently in critical but stable condition, was the only survivor. Hiatt was shot and lost part of a breast.

Police were called about 4 p.m. Friday and said they found bodies throughout the home on Shirley Oaks Drive in Oceanway. On Saturday, the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office identified those killed as twin babies Hayden and Kayden Hiatt, 49-year-old Travis James Hiatt (pictured below), and the gunman, 28-year-old Gawain Rushane Wilson.

Wilson had a criminal history of domestic violence.

He pleaded no contest to domestic battery charges in 2013 and was sentenced to one year of probation and was ordered to take a batterer’s intervention program. The victim in that case said Wilson choked her and threw her on a bed.

Last year, Wilson was accused of domestic violence in another incident with a different woman. He was served with a domestic violence injunction ordering him to keep away from that victim.

[kscarbel2]

Pregnant mother gunned down by thieves

Associated Press / November 23, 2015

Authorities charged two young men with murder on Monday in the fatal shooting of a pastor's pregnant wife during a home invasion in Indianapolis.

Amanda Blackburn, 28, was found partially nude, with her underwear nearby and her shirt pulled up, lying in a pool of blood on her living room floor.

She died the next day.

Her husband, Pastor Davey Blackburn, told police he had left the home's front door unlocked when he departed about 6 a.m. that morning to go to the gym and work out and returned home about 8:20 a.m. to find his wounded wife.

The couple's 15-month-old son, Weston, was at home upstairs in a crib but was not harmed in the attack.

Marion County Prosecutor Terry Curry identified the two men charged with murder as Larry Jo Taylor Jr., 18, and Jalen E. Watson, 21, both of Indianapolis, who face murder, burglary, theft and several other charges.

Taylor shot Blackburn three times, including once in the back of the head.

Watson also faces a murder charge because Blackburn was killed during a burglary in which prosecutors allege that he was involved.

Authorities have not confirmed whether Blackburn, who was 13 weeks pregnant, had been sexually assaulted even though she was found partially nude.

The two men entered the house that morning after they had robbed two other homes, including one in the same neighborhood. A third man involved in the burglaries remained outside in a Chrysler Sebring stolen from the first home burglarized that day. That man has [oddly] not yet been charged in the crimes, but Curry said he is being held on a parole violation in an unrelated case.

After the pair entered the Blackburn home, Watson left Taylor behind and drove away to ATMs in the stolen Sebring to try to use Blackburn's debit card to withdraw money.

Taylor told Watson and others that he had killed Blackburn, and shot her the first time after she charged at him. He said he shot her in the upper body "so he would not be scratched" as she approached.

The first significant break in the case came when DNA on a pink sweater stolen from a home near the Blackburn residence was found to match Watson's genetic profile in a national DNA database called CODIS. That sweater was found in the Sebring, which authorities said was used to move items taken during the burglaries.

Watson was released from prison August 6 after completing his second sentence for burglary within the past three years.

Taylor also faces misdemeanor public nudity and public indecency charges stemming from an unrelated June incident where he allegedly exposed himself to a woman in a parking lot.

.

[kscarbel2]

Ohio mother celebrates birthday by overdosing on heroin behind the wheel with 3-year-old son in the backseat

Associated Press / November 25, 2015

An Ohio man has saved the life of a mother who overdosed on heroin behind the wheel with the car engine running, while her 3-year-old son sat shivering and half-naked in the backseat.

Edwin Gates was on his way to put brakes on a church member's car when he got stuck waiting for a car to pull into traffic near the local AutoZone.

Gates waited and blew his horn before finally deciding to pass the car, but when he looked inside he saw a woman passed out.

Rebecca Cooper, 27, was slumped in the driver's seat. It was her birthday.

Gates said at first he thought she might have had a heart attack, and had his friend call 911 before checking her 'real low' pulse.

Gates then switched off the car's ignition and put it into park.

Cooper's engine was running and the car was in drive, her foot neither on the brake or gas pedal.

The only thing stopping the vehicle from rolling into oncoming traffic was a pot hole that had caught the tire on the car's passenger side.

Gates said he put the vehicle in park and switched the car's ignition off. That's when he saw the 3-year-old little boy, shivering without a shirt on in the backseat.

He put a coat over the boy and waited for the paramedics. Cooper was revived with Narcan, which is used to reverse the effects of overdoses from heroin and certain types of pain killers.

'By the grace of God that van didn't roll out into traffic,' Gates told WCPO. 'She could've been dead and the kid could've been dead too.'

Cooper has been charged with child endangerment and drug possession and was ordered to stay away from her son, who is now in her father's custody.

The mother faced the same charges three years ago, but the child endangerment charges were dropped her.

There have been 41 heroin-related traffic accidents in Cincinnati just this past year.

.

[kscarbel2]

Houston baby burned to death in oven

Associated Press / November 19, 2015

A Houston mother, Racquel Thompson, left her 19-month-old baby, two 3-year-old toddlers and 5-year-old son home alone so she could go out with her boyfriend to get pizza and pickup a prescription.

The two 3-year-old siblings put the 19-month-old little girl in the oven and turned it on.

The siblings say the baby J'Zyra Thompson, kicked the oven door while she was trapped inside.

The oldest sibling, 5, was asleep at the time.

Thompson said she attempted CPR, but the baby was already dead due to multiple burns.

Police say Racquel Thompson had left the children without informing a grandmother who also lived at the apartment complex.

Thompson told officials she often left the kids home alone to drive her boyfriend to work at a pizza place.

The three surviving children are in foster care, as CPS could not find suitable relatives to care for them.

Criminal charges are expected, though none have yet been filed.

The ex-boyfriend father of at least two of the children, Fredrick Price, said he hadn't been in contact with the children in months.

.