ORLANDO, Fla. — Inconsistencies in an Orlando police sergeant's testimony led to a mistrial and a deal that kept a drug suspect's record clean, Channel 9's Kathi Belich learned.
Court records show Circuit Court Judge Jenifer Davis lectured the Orlando Police Sergeant Frank Chisari, and had concerns about possible perjury.
Belich obtained the court records and asked WFTV legal analyst Belvin Perry if the testimony could be used every time Chisari takes the stand in court. Perry said defense attorneys could use the testimony in future cases to question the officer's credibility.
Davis told the prosecutor in the case if her office didn't follow up on the issue, the judge would.
Officials with the State Attorney's Office told Belich they will meet about the issue Friday.
Some legal cases do more than raise eyebrows — they push the legal envelope to change the law. Such is a federal case in Las Vegas now working its way through the courts. The question is whether federal agents can disrupt service to a house and then, masquerading as helpful technicians, gain entry to covertly search the premises in hopes of finding evidence that might later justify a search warrant.
The defendants in this case are not your everyday Americans. They are, in fact, Chinese gamblers who were staying in Las Vegas at Caesar's Palace earlier this year.
Caesar's, and other gambling casinos, thrive on these high-rollers and provide them with free villas, butlers and other services. But in this case, at least one of the high-rollers had been tossed out of Macau for running an illegal sportsbooking operation. That fact made the Nevada Gaming Commission and the FBI suspicious that the high-rollers were doing the same thing here.
Suspicions, however, aren't enough for a search warrant. So, according to court papers filed by defense lawyers late Tuesday, the FBI came up with a plan: Working with a computer contractor for Caesar's Palace, the agents first tried to get into the villas by delivering laptops and asking to come in to make sure the connections worked.
The butler, however, wouldn't let them in. Tape from the secret cameras worn by the agents clearly shows the butler blocking their way.
"I just want to make sure they can connect before I leave. Can we just make sure they can connect, OK?" the agent asks.
"The thing is, you can't go in there right now," replies the butler.
When that ploy failed, the agents came up with "another trick," according to defense lawyer Tom Goldstein: "We'll dress up as technicians, we'll come inside, we'll claim to be fixing the Internet connection — even though we can't, 'cause we broke it from outside — and then we'll just look around and see what we see."
A Phoenix police officer was arrested and booked into jail on Tuesday, accused of pulling a gun on people during an apparent road-rage incident while transporting prisoners.
Jeremy Sweet, 51, has worked for the department's Central Booking Unit for about seven years. On Monday at about noon, he was transporting several prisoners in an unmarked vehicle when he became involved in a "traffic altercation" at about Central Avenue and Lincoln Street, police say.
During the altercation, Sweet is alleged to have pulled out his handgun and pointed it an the occupants of another vehicle. Some of the prisoners in Sweet's vehicle were said to have witnessed the incident. A citizen who also saw what happened called 911 to make a report.
An investigation led to today's arrest, according to Sergeant Trent Crump, Phoenix police spokesman. Crump later told a reporter that Sweet had "lectured" the other driver while pointing his gun.
Police are seeking one count of felony aggravated assault in the case.
more here
A former Arizona state senator has come forward, stating that a police officer threatened to kill him for doing nothing more than honking at an unmarked van that was about to cause a traffic accident.
Armando Ruiz explained to local KPNX that while he was driving to church for a Monday evening event, with a fellow-churchgoer, Monica Rivera, police officer Jeremy Sweet, 51, cut him off in traffic. Ruiz, naturally, honked at the unmarked van.
But after honking and swerving to avoid an accident with the reckless police officer, Ruiz, who spent nine years in the state House and one year in the Senate, found himself looking down the barrel of a gun.
Sweet responded to the honk by slowing to 10 mph, allowing Ruiz to pass. Then he tried to “ram” the former senator.
When he failed to ram Ruiz off the road, Officer Sweet pulled up along side of the vehicle, pointing a handgun at them through the window.
“As I turned around and I looked at him, I just saw that gun with his arm sticking right at us,” Ruiz said.
“I looked at the gun, I looked at the edge, the barrel of it. And in my mind, I said, ‘This is an officer’s weapon,’” he continued.
“Then I looked up his arm and I saw the city of Phoenix police patch. And I said, ‘This is a police officer.’ And I could see the glare of his badge.”
“He was just looking for any flinch on my part, any flinch on Monica’s part, any reason to shoot us,” he added.
Rivera said that the officer had “put his finger on the trigger,” and looked intent on firing.
He didn't care about that child. If you want to kill a child you feed them MCDs everyone knows that- except you since you don't have kids obviously. SMH tryna give that kid obesity and diabeetus WTF.
He didn't care about that child. If you want to kill a child you feed them MCDs everyone knows that- except you since you don't have kids obviously. SMH tryna give that kid obesity and diabeetus WTF.
RIP to that cop. There is a difference between decent people trying to make a living, and disgruntled shit head cops taking out there frustration on everyone.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A traffic stop along Interstate 40 is raising new questions about your constitutional rights. Among the questions: what happens to your right to say "no" to a search when police are looking for cash?
The traffic stop occurred west of Nashville, along a stretch of interstate in Dickson County that's become well-known for a controversial practice known as "policing for profit."
For three years, our investigation has documented how drug interdiction agencies in that area target out-of-state drivers. Those agencies fund their operations under a state law that lets them seize cash from drivers based on the suspicion that it's drug money.
"It seems like Nazi Germany, you've got to have the paperwork and the proper authorities to come through Tennessee," said San Diego resident Ronnie Hankins.
Hankins and his wife Lisa had been on the road for days back in May, after attending a family funeral in Virginia, when they got stopped on the westbound side of I-40. It came right after they passed an interdiction agent with the 23rd Judicial District Drug Task Force.
Lisa was driving.
"I told her we are going to get pulled over," Ronnie remembered.
"What made you think he was going to stop you?" NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked.
"Because we had out-of-state license plates and my wife is Hispanic."
After separating Lisa from her husband, supposedly so he could write her a warning ticket for a traffic violation, dashcam video shows that the agent began repeatedly questioning her about what was inside the car.
Then, he had a favor to ask.
"You say there's not anything illegal in it. Do you mind if I search it today to make sure?" the officer asked.
Lisa responded, "I'd have to talk to my husband."
She told NewsChannel 5 Investigates, "I just feel like he was harassing me, you know, wanting me to say yes that he can search my car."
The agent continued, "I am asking you for permission to search your vehicle today -- and you are well within your rights to say no and you can say yes. It's totally up to you as to whether you want to show cooperation or not."
So why not say yes?
"I mean there was no reason for him to search my car," Lisa said.
The interdiction agent told her that he was asking "because I do believe that you are not being honest with me."
The agent didn't believe their story that they had been to a funeral for Ronnie's grandfather, even though a quick search of the Internet would have proved they were telling the truth.
"You have to either give me a yes or no," he continued. "I do need an answer so I can figure out whether I need a dog to go around it or not."
Lisa recalled, "I was getting upset because he kept on asking me over and over. I said you have no reason to search my car."
That's when a second agent brought out a drug dog to sniff around their car.
"If that dog does not hit, they don't get to search your car?" NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked.
"No," Ronnie answered, "there is no probable cause."
But that's exactly what happened.
The interdiction agent told Ronnie, "We've ran a dog, and the dog's alerted on the vehicle. So we are going to be searching it, OK? And whatever is in there we are going to find in just a second."
Ronnie was furious.
"There's never been any drugs in the vehicle and never will be," he insisted.
It turns out that the man whom the task force stopped knows a thing or two about law enforcement himself. He's a federal police officer at the Marine Corps Air Station-Miramar in San Diego.
The Associated Press
Published Tuesday, November 11, 2014 1:57PM EST
Last Updated Tuesday, November 11, 2014 9:35PM EST
SAO PAULO, Brazil -- Brazilian police killed more than 11,000 people between 2009 and 2013 for an average of six killings a day, a public safety NGO said Tuesday. The study by the Sao Paulo-based Brazilian Forum on Public Safety said police nationwide killed 11,197 people over the past five years, while law enforcement agents in the United States killed 11,090 people over the past 30 years.
"The empirical evidence shows that Brazilian police make abusive use of lethal force to respond to crime and violence," the report said.
There were 416 people killed last year in Rio de Janeiro state, giving it the highest per-capita rate for 2013.
The study also said 50,806 people were killed in all homicides last year, about one person every 10 minutes.
Nearly 70 per cent of the homicide victims were black and more than half were ages 15 to 29, it said.
In addition to using excessive force, Brazilian police frequently execute suspects, said Bruno Paes Manso of the University of Sao Paulo's Center for the Study on Violence. He called it "a practice rarely investigated."
SAN JOSE -- Ammir Umar was yanked out of his pre-calculus class at Evergreen Community College three years ago on suspicion of selling people empty boxes stuffed with wood he claimed contained TVs, and locked up for almost a month.
The 18-year-old faced more than six years in prison on grand theft and other charges. But prosecutors released Umar 29 days later and dropped the charges after he proved he'd been working at Wal-Mart at the time and that the sworn affidavit by the lead investigator contained misleading statements.
Now, the San Jose City Council is poised Tuesday to approve paying Umar and his lawyers $190,000 to settle a lawsuit he filed claiming those statements by Sgt. Craig Storlie led to his false arrest and imprisonment.
"I hope this is a wake-up call for SJPD," said Umar, 22, who now works at a car rental agency and hopes to open a body shop someday. "I was terrified. I told them I had nothing to do with it and they said, 'If you keep lying, you'll do more time.' "
Storlie is currently one of the two officers in charge of the Police Department's Internal Affairs unit, which investigates allegations of misconduct against cops. He also is one of two chief investigators in the rape-allegations case against officer Geoffrey Graves.
Federal prosecutors have called a private attorney's attempts to convince Maryland U.S. District judge James Bredar to dismiss a federal civil-forfeiture case against $122,640 in alleged drug cash a "sanctimonious," "spurious," "scurrilous," "scorched Earth tactic" that is a "manufactured horror." But the attorney, C. Justin Brown, who has presented to Bredar a compelling factual argument that prosecutors knowingly and intentionally produced a faked drug-dog certification*—a document that the government itself described as "bogus" in internal communications—as a central piece of evidence in the case, isn't backing down.
"This is not a case in which the Government unintentionally conveyed incorrect information—and is now accepting responsibility for it," Brown wrote in a brief filed yesterday. "Rather, this shows that the Government believes it is proper to conduct discovery in this manner, and it will continue to do so in the future. Here, the two sides have a fundamental difference of opinion about what is right and what is wrong."
The three men gathered in a Los Angeles warehouse, bringing a 12-gauge shotgun, a .38 revolver, zip ties for handcuffs and a duffel bag to carry the 20 to 25 kilograms of cocaine, worth more than $500,000 wholesale, they expected to steal.
The men had criminal records, were broke and were dazzled by their imminent wealth. They met with a drug courier who had offered to help them rip off his suppliers. Those guarding the cocaine shipment would be armed, he had warned, so come ready for gunplay.
As the crew made final preparations, federal agents pounced. The stash house and the cocaine were imaginary, and the “courier” an undercover agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Though the drugs were fictitious, the three were charged with conspiracy to distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine — which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years — and faced an additional mandatory five years for bringing guns.
“Stash-house stings” like this one in 2013 have sent more than 1,000 of the country’s most “violent, hardened criminals” to prison, sometimes for terms of decades, according to the bureau, which has made a specialty of the ruses. The agency says it has conducted about 365 of these stings over the last decade, removing from the streets career criminals who are “willing to kill and be killed,” with less risk to agents and neighbors than raids on real stash houses.
But this year, the judge in this Los Angeles case dismissed the charges against two of the defendants on the rarely invoked grounds of “outrageous government conduct.” Judge Otis D. Wright II of Federal District Court described the bureau in his March decision as “trawling for crooks in seedy, poverty-ridden areas — all without an iota of suspicion that any particular person has committed similar conduct in the past.”