The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/)
Prosecutors can play the critical role in reforming the justice system—if they’re willing to go beyond their traditional roles as tough law enforcers. In a TCR Special Report, two former prosecutors explain in separate commentaries how that can happen.
Officer Mohamed Noor, who fatally shot Justine Damond last week, graduated in 2015 from the city’s accelerated police cadet program. Before turning to law enforcement, Noor had worked as a hotel manager and in property management.
The driver of the Iowa-registered 18-wheeler is expected to face federal human-trafficking charges in Texas after nine illegal immigrants in his rig died amid the searing heat of San Antonio. Advocates say the tough new policies of the Trump administration are pushing illegal immigrants to attempt increasingly dangerous journeys into the U.S.
The Post-Dispatch reports that officers used paper and tape to cover up cameras monitoring a police office in a light rail commuter station. The county police boss said he would look into the allegations, which he implied were prompted by “politics and infighting.”
Andrzej Duda unexpectedly vetoed a proposed law that would have allowed him to dismiss Poland’s Supreme Court judges in favor of his handpicked replacements. Tens of thousands of Poles protested the proposal, which was seen as part of the country’s drift back toward authoritarian rule.
Rioting began on July 23, 1967, after a late-night police raid on a “blind pig,” an illegal after-hours club. Over five days, 43 people were killed, 1,200 injured and 7,200 arrested. The Free Press says, “We can now recognize that Detroit in 1967 was a city of deep divisions that permeated every level of public life.”
The prosecutor in Staten Island has brought criminal charges in more than 240 overdose cases. The prosecutions are difficult, hinging on evidence that a dealer knew the risks of the drugs yet provided them anyway.
Palestinians were outraged when Israel installed metal detectors at entrances to the al-Aqsa mosque, known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif and revered by Jews as the Temple Mount. The security measures were added after two Israeli police officers were shot dead there on July 14.
USC said it is moving quickly to fire its former med school dean, Dr. Carmen A. Puliafito. But for 15 months, the school stonewalled Los Angeles Times inquiries about his alleged drug use.
Florida has agreed to pay $1.1 million in legal fees for the failed 2011 “Docs vs. Glocks” law, which barred doctors from talking to patients about gun ownership. And a federal judge in Kentucky has awarded $223,000 in fees to attorneys for same-sex couples who were denied marriage licenses in 2015 by Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis.
Anyone arrested in New York City is entitled to three phone calls. One of them ought to be to 1-833-3-GOODCALL, a 24-hour hotline started in the Bronx last fall that links an accused criminal to public defenders.
The American Bar Association says the the proposed legislation “offends deeply rooted principles of federalism where public safety is traditionally the concern of state and local government.”
The president’s lawyers are exploring ways to limit or undercut special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and discussing Trump’s authority to grant pardons to aides, family members and even himself in connection with the probe.
Judge Sam Benningfield in rural White County, Tenn., has offered the 30-days-off deal for two months. Sixty men and women have signed up. The ACLU says the idea is unconstitutional.
The city once labeled “Paradise Lost” as drug-driven murder spiked to 300 a year in the 1980s had just 26 homicides in the first six months this year. Police and community leaders cite several reasons, including a citizenry fed-up with gun violence that has grown more willing to engage with law enforcers.