STRANAHAN: When you’re talking about this bail reform movement, what it means, and of course stop me if I’m wrong and tell me if I’m exaggerating — but it means in some cases criminals are being brought in and put right back on the street.

BETH: Within minutes.

DOG: Within minutes.

BETH: Literally the police officers are still inside doing paperwork when the perpetrator is basically let out the door.

DOG: Alleged perpetrator.

BETH: Mmmmm, okay, alleged.

STRANAHAN: And so when we’re talking about the dismantlement of law and order under Obama, this is what I’m talking about.

BETH: Yeah. There’s no teeth, law enforcement’s hands are basically tied. I think they’re far more reluctant to even arrest anybody because it takes them, like I said, more time to do the paperwork then it does to bring them down. But the bigger issue is there’s no accountability and there’s no deterrent, there’s no repercussion, there’s no one looking for these people when they fail to appear. Basically, they’re going to be clogging up the docket so bad there’ll be no efficiency whatsoever in our court systems. Christie went out and he duped his entire state basically and said, “This is only gonna cost a couple of million dollars.” The cost is so expensive now, it’s over $22 million. Most of the counties can’t even afford to implement this policy, and they’ve got small business people dying on the vine there and it’s counterproductive to the economy.

STRANAHAN: And how is letting those criminals back out on the streets working out for the poor?

DOG: Well of course the poor will be poor, but they’re stealing trying to get money.

BETH: But they’re releasing them back into the poor communities. They’re not releasing them into our communities. So in reality he’s re-victimizing the very people that he claims to be helping.

One topic discussed was the so-called “Parole Reform Movement,” which they say was bankrolled by billionaire institutional left funder George Soros, as well as leading libertarian funders the Koch Brothers. The ideologically driven approach to belittle justice has resulted in a revolving door for criminals, said the two bail enforcement agents.

BETH: The Koch Brothers, the Arnold Foundation, The Manhattan Project, the Innocence Project, you know there’s a lot of groups donating quite a bit of money into these things. Harvard donated $1 million, which is very disturbing to me — a school of high learning and you think that they would understand that, again, people aren’t in jail because they’re poor. And basically the most unnerving thing about this whole thing, that we have taken away the voice of the victims. The victims absolutely have no voice — and they have no protection. They think that these guys are gonna go to jail and they’re gonna stay in jail, and they’re safe at least for the night — but not in New Jersey.

DOG: And we’re not talking about graffiti or urinating in public — none of that. We’re talking about first degree burglary, domestic violence, rape of an intoxicated person.

BETH: — giving a gun to a known gang member…

As an example of this ideological influence, take Katharine Huffman, Board Chair of the bail reform movement group Justice Policy Institute, whose biography says:

Ms. Huffman began her legal career as a civil-rights litigator and Soros Justice Fellow at the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia.

Dog and Beth had harsh words for former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie:

BETH: Christie’s been awful. He has drank the kool-aid, obviously. But, he’s destroying New Jersey. And not that New Jersey was crime-free to begin with, but now it’s so overrun with crime that you got police chiefs coming out, lieutenants coming out, you got Facebook popping up New Jersey’s bail reform failures. There are so many people so concerned. There was a police chief that basically came out and told his citizens, “I can’t keep you safe. I have to let these guys go by mandate.” And you get Christie on the line about it, or you get him on any type of a radio show or whatever, and he tries to blame the bail bondsman and say, “They’ve been picking on the poor…” If they’re poor, then how could they afford the bail bondsman to begin with?

On the other hand, they had high praise for Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who was recently a speaker at the closing day of CPAC. Dog and Beth both appreciate Clarke’s approach to law and order, which they see as in line with the Trump presidency.

MARLOW: So let’s get into your connection with Sheriff Clarke. You’ve been a big advocate for him, he’s considering a Senate bid, talk to us about that.

DOG: Sheriff Clarke is strong law and order. A very fair man. He’s been the Sheriff of Milwaukee for many years, and we love him. And when you get that way, you go to one mountain and you get to the top, there’s another mountain to climb. So he’s the toughest Sheriff, he’s strong law and order. He needs not just to be in one state; we need him nationally.

MISSED CHANCES – THE GERALD BOYES CASE

Gerald Boyes Jr. missed two meetings with his parole officer.

It was his second time on parole for robbery in Florida. He’d been sent back to prison before because he kept getting arrested. A warrant was issued.

Little else happened — until detectives were called to his father’s home in rural Kentucky this past April.

His father had been bludgeoned with a hammer in the back yard. His father’s longtime partner lay dead on the floor inside, surrounded by blood.

Detectives tried to reach Boyes to inform him of the deaths. They grew suspicious when he didn’t return their calls, said McCracken County, Kentucky, Sheriff Jon Hayden.

A quick check revealed that Boyes was wanted for a parole violation in Florida. McCracken County Detective Captain Matt Carter and his partner were driving to Florida to try to find Boyes when one of them ran his name through a database that includes the names of people who sell items at pawn shops. Boyes, they said, had just sold his father’s distinctive Harley Davidson wallet — which was missing from the crime scene.

They made a U-turn and began driving north, toward the pawn shop outside Chicago.

“That was huge,” Carter said. “That was one big piece of evidence that tied him to the double homicide and also gave us his whereabouts.”

He said that same database also showed that Boyes had pawned jewelry near Chicago a week or two prior — within days of his violation warrant being issued.

“I don’t really have faith in the system at all. There were some serious missteps there.”

The database, Carter said, is updated frequently. It might have been possible to find the Chicago-areas sale before the killings.

Florida parole officers don’t have access to that database, which is run by a private company. Hayden said he paid about $1,200 for his officers to access it during one year.

Boyes’ supervising officer, who was also responsible for monitoring more than 50 other people, “did not have knowledge the offender was in the Chicago area at the time,” said Alberto Moscoso, spokesman for the Florida Department of Corrections.

Records from the department show that Boyes’ parole officer did a records check to see if Boyes had been arrested again. They show she visited his home and left a voicemail on his cell phone. They show no other efforts to find him until April 16 — when he died in a confrontation with police in Antioch, Illinois.

“I don’t really have faith in the system at all,” said Don Potter, Boyes’ stepbrother. “There were some serious missteps there.”

Police found Boyes in a rental car near a bar in northern Illinois. Officials said police fired on Boyes as he raised a gun to his head and fired a single shot.

Had he survived, Sheriff Hayden said, he “absolutely” would have been charged in the double killing.

CHAPTER 2

IN PENNSYLVANIA, SIMILAR STORIES

There have been similar cases in Western Pennsylvania.

Frederick Harris III, who’s awaiting trial on charges that he dismembered his mother and her husband, eluded arrest on a parole violation warrant for about nine months prior to the 2014 killings.

That same year, Kerrese Lawrence, who was on probation for a drug charge, was arrested for new crimes and bailed out. Officials encountered him multiple times in court and during a police stop but didn’t detain him. Instead, they scheduled violation hearings — one of which he skipped.

That spring, police charged him with killing his pregnant girlfriend. They obtained a warrant after the woman’s death.

It took Allegheny County officials about 82 days on average to catch probation or parole violators under their supervision, according to a Post-Gazette analysis of court data. It was slower than all but five counties in the paper’s analysis.

Statistics show that people who commit crimes often reoffend. About three out of every four people arrested on a felony had prior arrests, according to one study of state court data published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Yet there is little research looking at probation and parole violators and the time it takes agencies to track them.

Studies dating back to at least the 1980s have shown that the swiftness and certainty of punishment are key to reducing new crimes.

University of Wyoming professor Eric Wodahl found in research published in recent years that, if handled correctly, punishments that involve community service or electronic monitoring can be just as effective as jail time.

“Immediacy does matter,” Wodahl said of consequences. “For them to be the most effective, they need to be certain that it’s going to happen.”

Allegheny County Sheriff’s Sgt. Doug Clark logs locations the deputies visit each day, noting where they found fugitives and where they struck out.

The Allegheny County Adult Probation Office does not have anyone dedicated to finding violators. Instead, it relies on the county sheriff’s office to track them down.

But the sheriff’s office also has to track down people wanted on other warrants issued by the courts — such as those issued for people who skipped their trials or dodged hearings for failing to pay child support.

Estimates put the number of outstanding warrants somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000, but Sheriff William P. Mullen said he’s never received a reliable number.

The sheriff’s office has 12 deputies and three supervisors dedicated to finding fugitives. It’s common for them to get pulled to help guard courtrooms when others are on vacation, especially during the summer, when some veteran officers can take three weeks off. The sheriff said shifting some deputies from the fugitive offices to courtrooms reduces overtime.

“We’re really scrambling to stay under budget,” he said.

Police officers can also arrest people on probation violation warrants. All officers have access to a national database that tracks warrants, but Mullen said officers in some local departments fail to run those checks on people they encounter. It’s not unheard of, he said, for deputies to arrest someone on a violation warrant and learn that they had interactions with other officers a few days prior.

The sheriff said he’s pushed for the creation of a county-wide database that would allow his detectives to see more information about stops made by other departments.

But such a system wouldn’t completely solve the problem. Fugitives can leave the county or state.

CHAPTER 3

WHEN FUGITIVES CROSS STATE LINES

Antonio Covington eluded arrest on a Georgia probation violation warrant for five months, despite being arrested in North Carolina where he was known to spend time.

Authorities never found him — until police suspect he killed a man in Charlotte, N.C.

He’s not the only example of someone who left the state and became a repeat offender elsewhere. A man wanted on an Illinois parole violation warrant was charged this spring with shooting a man in Iowa. A Pennsylvania man eluded authorities for three years despite multiple arrests in North Carolina.

Delays sometimes occur when people are sentenced in one county and supervised in another.

These stories highlight the ways in which probationers and parolees avoid detection by leaving the states in which they were convicted — sometimes with little effort to hide their identity.

Covington’s Georgia case dates to July 30, 2013, when someone called 911 to report that a man was driving erratically. A police officer stopped the car and found multiple drugs and guns, which Covington was prohibited from owning.

Covington later pleaded guilty to gun and drug violations, and a Gwinnett County judge ordered him to spend time at a drug treatment facility and then participate in an aftercare treatment program as a condition of probation.

Covington got kicked out of the aftercare program July 7, 2015 “due to non-attendance.” A probation officer obtained a warrant a month and a half later.

Delays sometimes occur when people are sentenced in one county and supervised in another. Covington’s latest address was in Fulton County, about a half hour away. Violation paperwork for someone supervised in Gwinnett County would have to be completed by a Gwinnett County officer, according to Georgia officials.

In the interim, Covington was arrested in North Carolina for illegally possessing a prescription drug and posted bail in the case. The Georgia probation violation warrant makes no mention of North Carolina or his new arrest.

Bert Flewellen, a spokesman for the Georgia Department of Community Supervision, said he was not permitted to discuss individual cases under state law.

He said probation officers do have the resources to conduct records checks on the people under their supervision and do so “at random, for-cause, and at designated milestones during supervision.”

Probation officers can file additional paperwork in court if they learn of new arrests after a violation warrant has been issued. That paperwork was not filed in Covington’s case.

Covington appeared again March 31 of this year, when police say surveillance cameras spotted him and another man dumping 19-year-old Ernest Cash Jr. at a Charlotte, North Carolina, hospital. Cash, who had been shot, died the next day.

Police later charged Covington and another man with killing Cash.

CHAPTER 4

HOW TO CATCH A FUGITIVE

The probation department in Hennepin County, Minn., one of the top-performing jurisdictions, is run by a former law enforcement officer.

“What keeps me up at night is whether or not [violators] are out committing a crime, so this is a very high priority for our department,” said Chester Cooper, who worked for years in the local sheriff’s office before he joined the Department of Community Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Cooper and his predecessor created a position that exists in few others departments: They have one officer whose sole job is to work with other local agencies to track violators.

Probation Officer Beth Heidmann, who works in Hennepin County, Minn., spends her days collecting background information on probation and parole violators and coordinating their arrests with local agencies. (Courtney Perry for the Post-Gazette)

Officer Beth Heidmann works out of the local sheriff’s office. Each day, she gathers a list of fugitives and digs through their case files, social media accounts and other sources to find leads on their whereabouts. She passes the information along to other officers who will do the actual arrests.

She has access to dozens of members of the sheriff’s office, members of a federal fugitive task force and anyone she can contact at other departments.

Here, it takes officials an average of 43 days to arrest someone on a county probation violation warrant.

“I’m concerned about the 43, so we need to work on that,” said Cooper, the director, after he learned the results of the Post-Gazette analysis.

Before Heidmann’s position existed, the office relied on two officers with few resources to catch the fugitives. Cooper and his predecessor abandoned that system out of concerns for the officers’ safety.

That system rejected in Minnesota is similar to one that is currently being used in Pima County, Ariz., where officials take more than twice as long to capture fugitives on average.

Ken McCulloch, director of field services for Pima County Adult Probation, said he didn’t think it was fair to compare his department to many others in the country. Pima County officers can arrest people without a warrant and often issue warrants when they don’t know the whereabouts of someone they’re supervising, he said. Hennepin County officials said they like to reserve warrants only for people whose whereabouts are unknown or who are especially dangerous.

“What keeps me up at night is whether or not [violators] are out committing a crime.”

Among the people tasked with finding fugitives in Pima County is Officer Mark Echavarry. He’s part of a two-person team that works to arrest people who are being supervised for domestic violence cases. Their positions are grant-funded and their resources are limited.

Echavarry and his partner work alone in an old, rusted sedan that was seized as part of a prior investigation. They don’t have lights and sirens. They don’t have bars in the back of the car, so if anyone fights arrest they have to call local police to take them to jail.

He spends some of his time tracking down violators, but also has to juggle meetings and compliance checks. They also have to do background work before heading out on cases.

On one day in May, he only had time to make one stop, where he caught a probation violator. But he had at least four new warrants waiting for him when he returned to the office.

Echavarry says he’s asked for more resources in the past but hasn’t received them.

“It’s a sticking point with us,” he said.

CHAPTER 5

FAILURE TO ISSUE WARRANTS QUICKLY

While research shows rapid consequences can help prevent probationers or parolees from committing new crimes, officers will at times hold off on filing warrants. They hope the people they are supervising will start following the rules again and avoid jail.

But that doesn’t always work.

Francisco Fernandez, 23, missed a drug test in November, officials said, and met in person with his probation officer the following month. Fernandez, who was on probation for a drug case, then missed four more drug tests and moved without the permission of his probation officer, according to court records.

“Jumping on that warrant immediately, for a relatively low-level offender, may not get the benefit.”

He later told a police officer “he hasn’t reported because he wanted to get his [medical] marijuana card first,” according to a police report.

The Pima County Adult Probation Department’s policy gives officers 90 days to try to locate many probationers after their last face-to-face contact with them. For people who have been deemed especially likely to reoffend, the window is tighter — three days.

“Jumping on that warrant immediately, for a relatively low-level offender, may not get the benefit,” McCulloch said, noting that some people might need time to get sober or do other things for their well-being.

One hundred seventeen days passed before an officer filed a request to revoke Fernandez’s probation.

During that time, the officer visited addresses for Ferndandez, left a voicemail for him and sent him a certified letter.

A week after the request, on April 12, the court issued the warrant. Warrants like the one issued to Fernandez normally go to the department’s absconder team. Fernandez’s officer decided to hold onto the warrant because he “was hearing things that the probationer was in the vicinity and might turn up,” McCulloch said. “Looking at the case notes, I don’t see any [indications] that he was checking other residences or physically following up.”

Police found Fernandez April 27, when they responded to a call that a 7-year-old boy had been shot at an apartment building. The boy, the nephew of Fernandez’s girlfriend, survived.

Fernandez gave differing accounts of the shooting during an interview with police. During the last one, he said, “I think the gun was loaded and I accidentally pulled it,” according to a police report.

McCulloch said he was comfortable with the way his officer handled the Fernandez case.

“He was kind of doing a wait and see thing.”

The Washington, D.C.-based civil rights organization bringing the lawsuit is hopeful that it could not only topple the “money bail” system in San Francisco, but also across the state.

“State law actually requires City and County of San Francisco to use the generic bail schedule,” said Phil Telfeyan, head of Equal Justice Under Law. “Our lawsuit is focused on San Francisco, but the impact could be broader.”

‘People are faced with this coercive choice: Go into tremendous amounts of debt, plead guilty to a crime you may not have committed or wait in jail and lose everything that’s dear and meaningful in your life.’
Chesa Boudin
San Francisco Deputy Public Defender
The suit (read below) was initially brought on behalf of two women arrested in San Francisco this week, but Telfeyan is asking the court to certify a class action on behalf of “all arrestees unable to pay for their release pursuant to Defendants’ fixed bail schedule who are or who will become in the custody of the City and County of San Francisco.”

Prosecutors discharged the cases against both named plaintiffs — Riana Buffin and Crystal Patterson — meaning they were both released and aren’t currently facing charges, said Telfeyan and the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office.

Buffin was arrested Monday under suspicion of grand theft. She stayed in jail for two days until her case was discharged. Patterson was arrested Tuesday under suspicion of assault with force causing great bodily injury. Her case was also discharged — a matter of hours after she paid a bail agent $1,500, or 1 percent of her $150,000 bail.

Because she made that deal, she owes the bail agent a full 10 percent of the bond, or $15,000.

“Had she been able to wait another six hours or 12 hours in jail,” Deputy Public Defender Chesa Boudin said, “she wouldn’t have had to go into debt. The problem that we see in Ms. Patterson’s case and in so many of my clients’ cases is that people are faced with this coercive choice: Go into tremendous amounts of debt, plead guilty to a crime you may not have committed or wait in jail and lose everything that’s dear and meaningful in your life.”

A district attorney’s spokesman said prosecutors are awaiting further investigation into both cases in order to pursue charges.

The president of the California Bail Agents Association called the lawsuit “misleading.”

“We’ve already seen in California the crime rates have gone up,” said Maggie Kreins, who is proprietor of Maggie’s Bail Bonds in Long Beach in addition to heading the association. “It’s getting scary out there, and they’re making it so nobody’s going to be held accountable for anything anymore.”

Kreins said bail agents have a proven record of “bringing people back to court, and bringing justice to victims.”

“When these individuals don’t go to court, who’s going to go look for them?” she said. “The taxpayers are going to have to pay two or three times to arrest the same person.”

But in San Francisco, there’s widespread agreement among law enforcement leaders for doing away with the “money bail” system.

Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi filed a declaration in support of the lawsuit and joined Telfeyan and Boudin in announcing it. He said between 75 and 85 percent of San Francisco’s jail population is pretrial at any given time. About one-third are there because they can’t afford $5,000 bail.

Mirkarimi said if people are not a safety or flight risk but are nonetheless taken from their families and their jobs, “this furthers the destruction and ruination of people and families in San Francisco.”

Former Chief Deputy Sheriff Vicki Hennessy — who is challenging Mirkarimi for the top job — said in an email to KQED that “the current system is inherently unfair.”

District Attorney George Gascón said he’s been working for years to replace the monetary bail, “not only in San Francisco but more broadly, hopefully around the state.”

“Money bail doesn’t necessarily deal with risk,” he said. “You can have people that are very risky but are financially capable of posting bail, and they’re going to get released. And you’ve got people on the other end that may not be a risk, but they may not have the monetary ability to post bail, and they remain in custody for days, weeks and sometimes longer.”

Gascón said he’s been working with the Laura and John Arnold Foundation to develop a predictive tool that could inform judges about the likelihood any given arrestee would reoffend, hurt someone or fail to show up for his or her court date. He hopes to introduce the system into San Francisco courts by early next year. He said he wasn’t in support of ditching “money bail” without a comprehensive system to replace it.

“Just simply taking money without a validated risk assessment tool would be a horrible mistake,” he said.

via – http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2015/10/29/class-action-suit-against-san-francisco-seeks-to-end-use-of-cash-bail-system

The bill is similar to one that was passed by New Jersey last year, he said, and could reduce the annual operating costs of many of the state’s lock ups; housing fewer inmates should, in theory, save taxpayers money.

The idea behind it is simple- free up some of the jails’ bed space by allowing low-risk, low-level offenders to be released without needing to post bail bonds.

Prosecutors disagree with that theory and say it’s a bad, bad idea.

Less likely to go to court

Defendants who are released without needing to post bail bonds have a much higher failure to appear rate than those who do, thy said, and when the failure to appear rate climbs, that leads to increased court administrative costs.  It also leads to an increase in warrants and that can strain the resources of police departments.

They believe that many of the state’s pre-trial inmates are behind bars for a reason; they have either re-offended or have violated their previous terms of release.

Law enforcement officials agree that while a bail, and jail reform is needed, this is not the way to do it.

Rewarding the rich, punishing the poor

Some allege the current bail system unfairly targets poor defendants, most of whom can’t afford to post bail.  When someone is charged with a low-level crime but can’t afford to post bond, they are often held behind bars for weeks or months on end.

This can lead to a loss of income and in many cases, the loss of a job. Proponents of bail reform say that passing it

The conversation surrounding reform

Another component of the mix relates to public safety; while freeing up bed space may save taxpayers some money there is concern that the mass release of pre-trial defendants could lead to upticks in crime rate.

On the other hand, county jails say they are expecting a mass budget shortfall before the close of 2015 and are already asking the legislature to support emergency funding for their facilities.   The governor said he doesn’t support the request.

The risk assessment proposal

Supporters of the bill say this won’t be a wide-reaching get out of jail free card for all pretrial defendants.  Each will need to be evaluated to determine whether their release will pose a risk to public safety and whether they are likely to return to court when they are supposed to.

Although it’s still too soon to know whether the bill will pass, supporters say that if nothing else, it’s spurred some healthy discussion.

via – thebailblog.com

It’s time for the commission chairman to step down, and for new leadership to shake up the commission and its approach to its duties. The City Council and the mayor also have to be held to account about the sad state of affairs.

Yesterday’s major shock was the decision by federal prosecutors to throw out charges against Gerard Puana, uncle of the wife of Police Chief Louis Kealoha. Puana had been accused of stealing the mailbox from the chief’s former house in Kahala, following an investigation by HPD.

The move, according to news reports, was taken after prosecutors reviewed evidence collected by Puana’s attorney, Alexander Silvert, who has publicly alleged police misconduct in the case.

According to the Star-Advertiser:

Silvert said he met with prosecutors following the mistrial because he and Puana decided to put their faith and trust in the integrity of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. “We presented our entire case, from top to bottom, to the prosecutors,” Silvert said. He said that included evidence he and investigators from his office uncovered during their own investigation.

Silvert said he also told federal prosecutors what eight of the jurors told him after Kobayashi had discharged them.

“All eight had said to us that after they saw the videotape (of the theft), they had already decided (Puana) was not guilty,” Silvert said.

Here’s the top of the title page from the docket of Puana’s federal court case, stamped simply, “Closed”.

But the story isn’t that simple.

The dismissal is a big deal on its own. But prosecutors went further, dismissing the case “with prejudice,” meaning that charges cannot be refiled, and asking the FBI to review the evidence, presumably to consider whether crimes were committed by police.

According to Hawaii News Now:

“This is the first time I’ve ever seen this happen,” says legal expert Ken Lawson, a University of Hawaii law professor, “The prosecution… not just dismissed it, but dismissed it with prejudice. And ‘with prejudice’ means not only are we dismissing your case, but we’re never bringing it back.”

Lawson is not involved with this federal trial, but has worked many federal cases in various states.

“There’s cause for great concern,” he says, “If I’m the chief of police, I’ve got a lawyer now.”

Prior to yesterday’s dismissal, there was a flurry of communications between prosecutors and attorneys, all of which were sealed and unavailable for public inspection. Click here for a list of documents filed with the court under seal since the December 4, 2014 mistrial, which was caused by Kealoha’s unsolicited disclosure of information about Puana’s history during his trial testimony. Observers say it was a rookie error, and unusual for an experienced police officer.

Instead of expressing concern about the unusual turn of events, which puts HPD in a very bad light, Police Commission Chairman Ron Taketa came out sounding like a spokesman for Chief Kealoha rather than the head of a panel which is supposed to provide independent oversight of the police on behalf of the public.

Without seeing any of the evidence that prompted the about-face by federal prosecutors and another federal investigation of HPD, Taketa used the opportunity to vouch for the chief.

The Star-Advertiser reported:

Police Commission Chairman Taketa said he believes the commission’s hands are tied in making public statements about the mistrial because a federal investigation is underway and because the department has rules about releasing personal information about police employees, including the chief.

And if the chief were found guilty of any wrongdoing, any discipline would likely be confidential because the case is considered a personnel matter.

Taketa added, however, that the commission holds the chief to a higher standard than other city employees and that he has been forthcoming with the commission, alerting it to his family dispute.

“He was honestly sincere about apologizing for what he said,” Taketa said. “He just admitted that it was error and it was spur of the moment and he regretted it.”

He continued: “The mistrial was the furthest thing from his mind as to what he wanted coming out of that trial. There’s actually in my opinion no reason to believe that he would have benefited from a mistrial.”

At minimum, I would have expected someone in Taketa’s position to express serious concern about the extraordinary circumstances and pledge to take action if the evidence, or the FBI probe, reveals departmental misconduct.

Instead, we had the chairman singing the chief’s praises, as if none of the other events of the day had taken place.

Taketa, the financial secretary and business representative for the Hawaii Carpenters Union, was first appointed to the police commission back in about 1990, and served for at least 15 years, and was appointed again in 2011. It would appear that his relationship is far too cozy with HPD to exert any real oversight.

Via ilind.net

Terlecky got away by catching a Greyhound bus to Miami.

The police in his new hometown know that Terlecky is a fugitive, and they have tried repeatedly to return him to Philadelphia — both before and after he was convicted of having sex with two other underage girls in Florida. As recently as November, police handcuffed Terlecky and called Philadelphia authorities to tell them their fugitive had been found.

But just like every time before, the authorities in Philadelphia refused to take him back.

Across the United States, police and prosecutors are allowing tens of thousands of wanted felons — including more than 3,300 people accused of sexual assaults, robberies and homicides — to escape justice merely by crossing a state border, a USA TODAY investigation found. Those decisions, almost always made in secret, permit fugitives to go free in communities across the country, leaving their crimes unpunished, their victims outraged and the public at risk.

Each fugitive’s case is chronicled in a confidential FBI database that police use to track outstanding warrants. In 186,873 of those cases, police indicated that they would not spend the time or money to retrieve the fugitive from another state, a process known as extradition. That’s true even if the fugitives are just across a bridge in the state next door. Another 78,878 felony suspects won’t be extradited from anyplace but neighboring states.

Few places are immune. Police in Philadelphia, Atlanta and Little Rock — all among the nation’s highest-crime cities — told the FBI they wouldn’t pursue 90% or more of their felony suspects into other states. Los Angeles police said they would not extradite 77 people for murder or attempted murder, 141 for robbery and 84 for sexual assault.

The FBI refuses to say who or where those fugitives are. But USA TODAY identified thousands of them using records and databases from courts and law enforcement agencies. Among the fugitives police said they would not pursue: a man accused in Collier County, Fla., of hacking his roommate’s neck with a machete during a fight over two cans of beer; a man charged with drawing a gun on a Newport News, Va., store manager during a robbery, and even one of the men Pittsburgh identified as among its “most wanted” fugitives.

Such fugitives should be among the easiest targets in the nation’s fragmented justice system. The police typically don’t hunt them; instead, they wait for officers to come across them again, during traffic stops or when they’re arrested on new charges.

More often than not, the suspects are found locked up in another city’s jail.

But if that jail happens to be in a different state, local law-enforcement officials regularly refuse to get them because they don’t want to pay the cost or jump through the legal hoops required to extradite them. That process can be either swift or surreal: In many cases, it costs no more than a few hundred dollars, but it can also require months of paperwork and the signature of both states’ governors.

The police let them get away instead.

Even Terlecky, wanted in Philadelphia for a first-degree felony, was surprised. “Why would they not extradite on a felony warrant?” he said in an interview. His only guess: “This wasn’t a case where I forcefully grabbed the kid. That’s the only reason I’m thinking why they won’t push to bring me back.”

Thomas Terlecky talks about the charges he’s facing, why he fled Philadelphia, and why officials there won’t take him back.Brad Heath, Jennifer Harnish, Shannon Rae Green, Steve Elfers

Terlecky said that in the 17 years he has been a fugitive, he has lost count of how many times Florida police threw him in jail in hopes of returning him to Pennsylvania. But the arrests all end the same way. In November, Miami-Dade police detained him after he was pulled over for an obscured license plate. A few hours later, Philadelphia officials “asked that (he) be released” because they were unwilling to travel beyond Pennsylvania’s neighboring states to get him, according to police records. An officer drove him home.

Terlecky is wanted on charges that he had what prosecutors called “consensual” sex with a 14-year-old girl in a downtown Philadelphia hotel in 1996, a felony because of her age. He was convicted of having sex with two other girls in Florida — one 14, the other 15 — in the years that followed and is now a registered sex offender. Terlecky said in interviews that he is innocent of the Philadelphia charges, that he fled because he was afraid of being locked up awaiting a trial, and that he would gladly go back if he could be assured that he would not spend time in jail.

Prosecutors said they didn’t chase Terlecky because the woman he is accused of assaulting was uncooperative.

“That’s not true,” the woman said when USA TODAY contacted her this year. She asked not to be identified to protect her privacy.

Her father took her to court on her 15th birthday to testify against Terlecky at a preliminary hearing. “We walked out of there with our heads held high thinking he’s going to jail for what he did to me,” she said. It was the last she heard of the case; she assumed Terlecky was in prison.

Pennsylvania’s Victim Advocate, Jennifer Storm, said victims need to be informed whenever officials choose to let a defendant get away. “It is alarming that there are victims who are further harmed by denying them the opportunity for justice, restitution and safety,” she said.

The woman Terlecky is charged with assaulting said no one told her that he fled Philadelphia or that prosecutors there had decided not to pursue him as long as he stayed in Florida, where he started a general contracting business that he said counts police officers among its customers.

“He got away with it,” she said when she found out. “That makes me sick to my stomach. It’s disgraceful.”

via - www.usatoday.com

“We don’t have the death penalty, so no matter how reprehensible the activity the person is engaging in, we do not summarily execute people,” said University of Hawaii at Manoa criminology professor Meda Chesney-Lind. “The police have to reassure us all that that is not what is happening. We can learn from these incidents so that they won’t be repeated.”

In back-to-back cases a week apart, drivers in their 50s were killed in close range by multiple shots from July 24 to Aug. 6.

In each case, the Honolulu Police Department called the slain men murder suspects. The shooters — police officers — were stopping a threat, they said.

Chesney-Lind and other Honolulu criminology experts are decrying the killings, questioning the police version of events, and calling for more information, openness and accountability from HPD.

When shootings have occurred, top HPD officials have routinely defended the actions of officers — even before internal investigations have begun.

The department has declined numerous requests from the Honolulu Star-Advertiser for interviews on the criticisms leveled against it, providing only email responses to some questions about the following three shootings:

» July 24: A police sergeant shot at a man driving a stolen car on Red Hill, but the man got away. Police identified the man a month later as the same man shot and killed by police Aug. 6.

» July 30: A six-year HPD veteran shot and killed Richard Nelson, 52, of Manoa, on Kuhio Avenue. Nelson, drunk at the time, tried to flee in his car and nearly struck the officer who was investigating him for rear-ending a bus.

» Aug. 6: James Koa Pickard Jr., 51, was seated in a stolen car parked at a Pacific Palisades house when three officers approached to arrest him. Police said he drove toward an officer in front, hit a police car, and reversed toward two officers behind. He then drove forward toward one of the officers, and two officers fired seven shots through the side and front windows at Pickard, who died at the scene. The officers have 18, 11 and four years of service, but it’s unclear who fired the shots.

“Our goal is never to have a fatality, but sometimes we are put in situations where we have to use lethal force,” HPD Chief Louis Kealoha said at a news conference following the Pacific Palisades shooting. He warned the public that failure to comply with an officer’s command to stop may place the officer’s life and the community in danger.

Officers are taught to aim for “center mass” (chest area) to stop the threat, he said, calling the use of deadly force in the case appropriate.

An accidental shooting occurred on Aug. 12, just one week after the Pacific Palisades incident when a police lieutenant at a 7-Eleven store in Pearl City approached a stolen car with his gun drawn. The lieutenant was knocked to the ground, and was seriously injured when the driver reversed with his car door open.

The gun accidentally discharged. Police later said the officer was dragged and opened an attempted murder investigation. The driver and his passenger fled, and were never caught.

The officer received injuries that were not life-threatening injuries and remains on injured leave.

Are officers trained to get out of the way of a fleeing vehicle? What is the procedure? Those are questions Chesney-Lind said police should have to answer.

“By standing in front of automobiles, that may not be the best way to handle the situation,” she said. “This could either get an officer mowed down by a vehicle or we get officers pulling guns and shooting at people in vehicles.”

Chesney-Lind said criminalizing people killed in police encounters, such as using the term “murder suspect” is verbal gymnastics.

“We don’t have the death penalty for drug offenses or car theft or finding someone in a stolen car,” or just being drunk as in the case of Gregory Gordon, the soldier killed in Waikiki surrounded by police cars in 2013, she said.

Chesney-Lind called for a thorough and public review, and said Honolulu should have an independent review commission.

HPD needs to be answerable to the public and the process should be more transparent, Chesney-Lind said.

In an op-ed piece in the Star-Advertiser on Aug. 17, David Johnson, a UH professor of sociology, said Honolulu police have shot and killed eight people in the last five years (or 1.6 per year), which is, per capita, about double the national average of “justifiable killings” by police.

In 11 years — from 2004 to 2014 — Honolulu police shot and killed 13 people, an average of a little over one a year. This year, two were killed in eight months.

Part of the problem is the department is not providing training in how to handle “in-your-face confrontation,” said Dorothy Goldsborough, who teaches criminology at the UH-Manoa and Chaminade University. Psychological training should be taught in a college environment, she said.

“The chief of police has always wanted to raise the civil service requirement for police officers from a high school to at least an associate’s degree, with specifics on learning community policing,” said Goldsborough, who was a professor to Kealoha.

In the 1930s, she said, “police walked on the street in major cities with no guns, with only billy sticks,” adding, “Now they have to wear a vest to protect themselves from being shot. Something is wrong.”

She blames easy access to guns, including for people with criminal intent.

“(Police) are reacting to a situation because it developed around them,” she said. “He’s fearful, with no psychological, sociological training, and he doesn’t know how to circumvent this kind of situation.”

During a news conference after the Kuhio Avenue shooting, police Maj. Lester Hite, commander of the Criminal Investigation Division, said: “It’s a split-second decision. Officers make them all the time. At that time, the officer determined the best choice of action was to fire.”

Police said after every major incident, the details are reviewed to see whether changes should be made to training or in other areas.

Former police officer Aaron Hunger, who says police are taught how to word reports to protect the police department from liability in police shootings by writing: “‘He drove at me, so I shot him five times in the chest,’ rather than, ‘He fled from me, and I shot at him five times in the chest.’”

Hunger, who was a Miami Dade (Fla.) police officer in the 1990s, is a criminal justice instructor at the University of Hawaii-West Oahu. He asked his students which statement best describes a video clip of an officer chasing Nelson in Waikiki before fatally shooting him: 1) The driver appears to be driving at the officer; or 2) The driver appears to be fleeing from the officer.

Of the 32 students, 31 thought the officer’s use of force appeared inappropriate, and that the driver appeared to be fleeing from the officer, not driving at the officer.

That officer was investigating Nelson for rear-ending a bus with his car, and was stopped on Kuhio Avenue when the officer spotted an open liquor container inside and he refused to get out.

Police said Nelson made a U-turn on busy Kuhio Avenue, hitting a tree and nearly striking pedestrians.

The officer pursued him on foot. After again refusing to comply, Nelson reversed his car, and nearly hit the officer, police said. That’s when the officer fired five shots through Nelson’s open window, and struck him in the torso multiple times, apparently at close range.

With no one controlling it, the Jetta sped down Kuhio, losing its engine block and ended up on the sidewalk.

In October 2013, the “driving at police” allegation got a 35-year-old burglary suspect arrested on five counts of first-degree attempted murder for striking and injuring officers in his attempt to flee in a truck stolen from a home near Alvah Scott Elementary School in Aiea. Police shot him, but he survived.

Prosecutors charged the suspect, Amery Kahale-Sugi­mura, with property and drug crimes, but not attempted murder.

The police shooting in Ferguson, Mo., of an unarmed African-American teen underscores a soaring trend of violence against the public in police departments across the country, according to Trends Journal publisher Gerald Celente.

A recent analysis in the publication — “Police Violence Against the Public Soars” — outlines incidents where “trigger-happy” cops showed no restraint in using excessive firepower and violence for simple acts like routine traffic stops.

But unlike the Missouri teen shooting, there was no public outcry and no parents who spoke publicly to ask questions about the deaths in Honolulu. The dead men were in their 50s and their parents are either elderly or deceased.

Irmagard Pickard said her family has been reluctant to speak out about the police shooting that killed her son in the Pacific Palisades case, in part because the media had dredged up so much of his criminal past, as far back as nearly 30 years ago.

“We just want to know the name of the police officers (who shot her son),” she said. “Their family and they need prayers also.”

James Pickard left behind a son, three daughters, seven grandchildren, as well as his parents and two sisters.

Police said the man shot at by a police sergeant July 24 in Red Hill fleeing in a stolen car was Pickard, after learning his identity about a month later.

Richard Nelson’s mother, his only living parent, declined to speak with the Star-Advertiser about his death on July 30, when he was shot multiple times by a police officer.

via - www.staradvertiser.com

David Johnson, a UH Professor of Sociology who specializes in the study of criminology, law and social policy, addressed the issue of police accountability in an op-ed which appeared in Sunday’s Star-Advertiser (“Accountability must accompany police power“).

Police in Honolulu have shot and killed eight people in the past five years. This is, per capita, about double the national average of “justifiable killings” by police. As this newspaper has reported, police protocol in lethal force cases is “wholly internal” (“HPD transparency, oversight lacking,” Our View, Aug. 13). The names of officers who use lethal force are not released to the public, and neither are the results of the police department’s own internal investigations — unless someone is fired.

Civil Beat has also reported extensively on the lack of routine accountabilitywhen it comes to Hawaii’s police.

So I wondered whether the Honolulu Police Department provides information to assist someone who wants to file a complaint about a police officer’s actions or report unprofessional behavior.

I turned to the HPD website (http://honolulupd.org/).

It’s a pretty extensive site with lots of diverse information. the site map has more than 50 links to different kinds of information. You can read about the department’s history, get a list of former chiefs, see the patrol districts, learn about each police division, read statistical reports, get information on domestic violence, and read the department’s annual reports. You can get info on the police activities league, get a calendar of police events, learn about the Ride-Along program or the Police Museum, etc., etc.

What you won’t see is a direct link to information on complaints about police officers.

On my second time through the site, you can find the basic complaint procedures if you first click on the link titled simply “FAQ” for “frequently asked questions.”

And there, down at #4 in the list: “How do I file a complaint on an officer.”

A notarized statement is required as part of the police union’s collective bargaining agreement. Links to the forms are listed here under the Professional Standards Office section.

If you wish to remain anonymous, your complaint will be reviewed and/or investigated in accordance with the collective bargaining agreement and departmental policy.

You may mail a notarized statement to the above address or you may appear in person and a statement will be taken by a Professional Standards Office detective and notarized at that time. Be sure to bring a proper identification card (state ID, driver’s license, passport, etc.). [emphasis added]

Information about the Police Commission and its complaint process is also buried. You first have to click a link, “Department,” and then the last of five tabs, “Commission.” Of course, if you didn’t already know that one of the duties of the commission is to investigate charges by the public against the department or any of its officers, then you wouldn’t know that “Commission” would yield useful information.

And when I browsed the commission’s most recent annual report, I found the “Complaint Classification Guidelines,” essentially a list of do’s and don’ts of police behavior.

The report also contains some statistics regarding complaints, but nothing regarding the substance of complaints, even those that have been sustained following an investigation.

As Professor Johnson wrote in his op-ed:

In Hawaii, police accountability is all but absent because the Legislature has caved in to pressure from the State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers (SHOPO), the union that represents the state’s four city and county forces. Public reporting requirements for police in Hawaii are far more limited than those in most states. Under an exemption SHOPO received in 1995, police are merely required to send the Legislature an annual summary of cases in which an officer has been suspended or discharged for misconduct. Each summary is only a few words long, and there are no names, places or dates.

Not a good situation. The police should be accountable, and far more transparent.

Via - www.ilind.net

In remarks prepared for delivery Monday to the American Bar Association in San Francisco, Holder said he is mandating a change to Justice Department policy so that low-level, non-violent drug offenders with no ties to large-scale organizations, gangs or cartels won’t be charged with offenses that impose mandatory minimum sentences.

Mandatory minimum prison sentences — a product of the government’s war on drugs in the 1980s — limit the discretion of judges to impose shorter prison sentences.

Under the altered policy, the attorney general said defendants will instead be charged with offenses for which accompanying sentences “are better suited to their individual conduct, rather than excessive prison terms more appropriate for violent criminals or drug kingpins.”

Federal prisons are operating at nearly 40 percent above capacity and hold more than 219,000 inmates — with almost half of them serving time for drug-related crimes and many of them with substance use disorders. In addition, 9 million to 10 million prisoners go through local jails each year. Holder praised state and local law enforcement officials for already instituting some of the types of changes Holder says must be made at the federal level.

Aggressive enforcement of federal criminal laws is necessary, but “we cannot simply prosecute or incarcerate our way to becoming a safer nation,” Holder said. “Today, a vicious cycle of poverty, criminality and incarceration traps too many Americans and weakens too many communities. However, many aspects of our criminal justice system may actually exacerbate this problem, rather than alleviate it.”

“We need to ensure that incarceration is used to punish, deter and rehabilitate — not merely to convict, warehouse and forget,” said the attorney general.

Holder said mandatory minimum sentences “breed disrespect for the system. When applied indiscriminately, they do not serve public safety. They have had a disabling effect on communities. And they are ultimately counterproductive.”

Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rand Paul, R-Ky., have introduced legislation aimed at giving federal judges more discretion in applying mandatory minimums to certain drug offenders.

Holder said new approaches — which he is calling the “Smart On Crime” initiative — are the result of a Justice Department review he launched early this year.

The attorney general said some issues are best handled at the state or local level and said he has directed federal prosecutors across the country to develop locally tailored guidelines for determining when federal charges should be filed, and when they should not.

“By targeting the most serious offenses, prosecuting the most dangerous criminals, directing assistance to crime ‘hot spots,’ and pursuing new ways to promote public safety, deterrence, efficiency and fairness — we can become both smarter and tougher on crime,” Holder said.

The attorney general said 17 states have directed money away from prison construction and toward programs and services such as treatment and supervision that are designed to reduce the problem of repeat offenders.

In Kentucky, legislation has reserved prison beds for the most serious offenders and refocused resources on community supervision. The state, Holder said, is projected to reduce its prison population by more than 3,000 over the next 10 years, saving more than $400 million.

He also cited investments in drug treatment in Texas for non-violent offenders and changes to parole policies which he said brought about a reduction in the prison population of more than 5,000 inmates last year. He said similar efforts helped Arkansas reduce its prison population by more than 1,400. He also pointed to Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Hawaii as states that have improved public safety while preserving limited resources.

Holder also said the department is expanding a policy for considering compassionate release for inmates facing extraordinary or compelling circumstances, and who pose no threat to the public. He said the expansion will include elderly inmates who did not commit violent crimes and who have served significant portions of their sentences.

Via bigstory.ap.org