SUPES COULD VOTE TUESDAY ON LASD OVERSIGHT COMMISSION….& THE CONTRACT TO HIRE THE SAME ELECTRONIC MONITORING FIRM THAT ORANGE COUNTY FIRED
The LA County Supervisors may vote on Tuesday about whether they should create a civilian commission to oversee the Los Angeles Sheriff’s department.
(And on the subject of oversight, no word yet on the whether an Inspector General has been hired to oversee the sheriff’s department, although we do know there were candidates interviewed earlier this month.)
Oh, and also back on the agenda is that iffy contract to rehire the same company for electronic monitoring that Orange County fired for incompetence.
More on all this when we have it.
SOME 3-STRIKERS HOPING FOR RELEASE AFTER THE LAW WAS REFORMED, HAVE FOUND THAT CERTAIN “NON-VIOLENT” THIRD STRIKES, ARE CONSIDERED “VIOLENT” AFTER ALL (IT’S COMPLICATED.)
The LA Times Jack Leonard has the story. Here’s a clip:
After nearly two decades behind bars, Mark Anthony White saw a chance for freedom last year when California voters softened the state’s tough three-strikes law.
Within weeks of the election, White asked a judge to reduce his 25-years-to-life sentence under the ballot measure, which allows most inmates serving life terms for relatively minor third strikes to seek more lenient sentences.
White would have walked free if his request had been granted. But a San Diego County judge refused to reduce White’s sentence. The judge ruled that the 54-year-old prisoner’s last crime, being a felon in possession of a firearm, made him ineligible for a lighter punishment.
A year after state voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 36, judges around the state are handing down conflicting decisions on whether prisoners given life terms for gun possession can qualify for shorter sentences.
The ballot measure specifically excluded prisoners whose third strikes were either violent or serious, or who during the commission of their last crime were armed with a firearm or deadly weapon.
Whether someone convicted of simply possessing a firearm was in fact armed during the commission of a crime is a more complicated legal question than it might appear.
18-TON LEFTOVER IRAQ WAR MILITARY ARMOURED TRUCKS COMING TO A POLICE AND/OR SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT NEAR YOU
They’re humungous, they’re distressingly tippy, they’re “intimidating,” and they’re free. But are they needed?
(When Radley Balko wrote about the militarization of America’s police forces in his book The Rise of the Warrior Cop, this is the kind of thing he meant.)
The AP has the story. Here’s a clip:
Coming soon to your local sheriff: 18-ton, armor-protected military fighting vehicles with gun turrets and bulletproof glass that were once the U.S. answer to roadside bombs during the Iraq war.
The hulking vehicles, built for about $500,000 each at the height of the war, are among the biggest pieces of equipment that the Defense Department is giving to law enforcement agencies under a national military surplus program.
For police and sheriff’s departments, which have scooped up 165 of the mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, or MRAPS, since they became available this summer, the price and the ability to deliver shock and awe while serving warrants or dealing with hostage standoffs was just too good to pass up.
“It’s armored. It’s heavy. It’s intimidating. And it’s free,” said Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple, among five county sheriff’s departments and three other police agencies in New York that have taken delivery of an MRAP.
AN LAPD COLD CASE REVISITED—WITH MUCH HOPE….AND AN AMBIGUOUS CONCLUSION
Twenty-two years ago, Sheriff’s Department investigators thought that they likely had their man in the case of the murder of a married LAPD officer’s girlfriend (who was the wife of another LAPD cop). But they could make no arrest.
Twenty-two years later, a new sheriff’s detective opened the cold case.
The LA Times’ Joel Rubin has the melancholy and intriguing interactive story.
Here’s a clip. (But you have to read the whole thing to find out what happens!)
She was both a sister and wife of Los Angeles cops, and worked as a clerk for Police Chief Daryl Gates. Nixon was one of the LAPD’s rising stars, on his way to taking over a coveted position as the chief’s official spokesman.
Their affair began on a spring day in 1985 when they checked into a Holiday Inn. Browne left her husband a few weeks later.
For three years they met regularly, often at her house during the day. At night, he’d go home to his wife in Pasadena.
Then, one morning, Browne was found beaten and strangled on her bathroom floor.
The crime scene was outside the Los Angeles city limits, so it fell to the L.A. County sheriff’s department to investigate. Detectives looked at Nixon as a suspect, but they gave up on the case without filing charges. Nixon, who over the years has maintained his innocence, worked another decade before retiring and moving to Oregon.
Twenty-two years after the killing, in 2010, Robert Taylor, a cold case investigator in the sheriff’s office, reopened the file.