March 06, 2010
Calif. gang officers targeted a third time
An apparent pipe bomb was found next to an officer's car
Associated Press
HEMET, Calif. — A dangerous device found near an officer's car may be the third effort to booby trap gang enforcement officers, police said Friday.
"Right now it is believed that it is related to the other incidents, yes," Lt. Duane Wisehart said. "Somebody's apparently declared war on us."
A gang task force officer who went to a convenience store found a suspicious device next to his unmarked car at around 9 a.m., police said.
Authorities closed down the street and evacuated some businesses while a Riverside County sheriff's bomb squad examined the device.
The device, which was found to be "legitimately hazardous" and dangerous to officers, was rendered safe by the sheriff's team, Wisehart said. Details were not immediately released.
Investigators were trying to determine whether the device was planted next to the car at the convenience store parking lot or whether it may have been attached to the car at the officer's home and come loose.
The gang enforcement unit in Hemet, a desert city 85 miles east of Los Angeles, has been targeted twice by bizarre efforts to harm its members.
On Dec. 31, someone drilled a hole in the roof of the unit's headquarters and diverted a natural gas line from a heater, filling it with the flammable gas.
The booby trap was discovered before anyone was hurt.
Last month, a gun rigged to shoot when the headquarters security gate was opened sent a bullet whizzing past an officer. Again, nobody was hurt.
No arrests have been made.
After the last attempt, Wisehart said the gang unit was being moved to an undisclosed location and reviewing security measures.
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Saturday, February 20, 2010
NM officer sues to end K-9 'find and bite' practice
The officer wants K-9s to bark at suspects instead of biting them
By Scott Sandlin
Albuquerque Journal
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — In November 2006, Albuquerque police officer George Gabaldon and a fellow officer pulled over a truck on Candelaria that had careered around a corner in the wrong lane, nearly hitting Gabaldon's police cruiser head-on.
The truck was riding on its rims, and it turned out to be stolen.
Although Gabaldon called for backup to make the arrest of the two men he had seen inside the truck, he told a judge Wednesday that he didn't expect an APD canine unit to show up.
And Gabaldon certainly didn't expect that he would be the one that "Doc" sank his teeth into, sending him to the hospital with a severe bite wound and keeping him off the job for weeks.
Now, Gabaldon is in court with his attorneys looking for two forms of relief that face significant legal hurdles.
He wants District Judge Alan Malott to say that the state Workers Compensation Act isn't binding in his case, because the city knowingly created the hazard of a dog trained to find and bite.
And he wants the judge to order the city to change its policy so that dogs are deployed wearing muzzles and trained to bark at suspects instead of gripping them with their teeth.
Malott heard testimony from Gabaldon and a police dog expert hired by his attorneys Wednesday during the first day of a hearing. Testimony is expected to conclude today.
Malott is not expected to rule on the issue for several weeks.
The city argues that the workers comp act is the exclusive remedy for workers injured in the course and scope of their employment -- limiting the employer's liability.
The state Supreme Court carved out an exception in 2004 for injured workers who can show intentional or deliberate acts their employer knew would almost certainly result in serious injury or death.
The city argues that was not the case in the acts leading up to Gabaldon's injuries, which led him to be treated at a hospital emergency room, spend weeks virtually immobilized, then devote months to physical therapy for deep tears in his calf muscle.
The city also says the Supreme Court's 2004 opinion recognized that workers such as firefighters and police may incur injuries because they do work that "require being in situations which may be dangerous and unpredictable."
The deployment of the dog was done with "just cause," Deputy City Attorney Kathryn Levy said in written briefs.
Gabaldon's lawyers, Brad Hall and Sam Bregman, counter that "A police dog bite is not an 'accident.' Defendants have deliberately created this risk. ... Law enforcement does not need biting dogs ... and the practice should stop."
Vanness Bogardus, a former Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department sheriff's deputy and canine handler, testified that both the Los Angeles Police Department and the sheriff's office improved safety and dramatically reduced litigation when they changed their policies and eliminated the "find-and-bite" method of deployment.
Bite night
APD's use of police dogs has come under scrutiny before.
In 2002, the city lost a federal civil rights lawsuit after a police dog attacked a 16-year-old. The teen was unarmed and hiding from police at a Northeast Heights schoolyard in 1999 when the police officer unleashed the 80-pound Belgian malinois to find her. The dog clamped down on the teen's right leg, causing injuries that resulted in three surgeries.
In the Gabaldon case, "Doc" was unleashed to find a suspect hiding in the vehicle but failed to obey commands and bit Gabaldon.
That should come as no surprise, Gabaldon said, since the intent is for the dog to bite after being unleashed, without a muzzle, and given an order to "find."
The 1999 West Mesa High School graduate who served with attack forces of the 101st Airborne division in the first days of the Iraq war in 2003, squirmed uncomfortably as he relived the police dog incident in court.
Here is his version of the events:
After the two suspects had been taken into custody, Gabaldon had his gun drawn and attention focused on the passenger side door of the suspect vehicle to make sure no one else was inside.
A canine officer arrived, and Gabaldon heard the dog barking and running. It never went to the truck, however, but instead went to Gabaldon's police car, nibbled once at his lower leg, then bit hard into his right calf.
When the handler arrived and gave an order, the dog brief ly loosened its grip before taking a second bite that felt as though "it went all the way up into my arm."
He briefly considered shooting the dog -- and now wishes he had -- but it would have created "a huge officer safety issue." Besides the puncture wounds, Gabaldon had gashes from where the dog tried to pull him down.
After the handler finally got the dog off him, Gabaldon said he lay on the pavement, bleeding.
In the aftermath, Gabaldon said he spent about seven weeks on disability, unable to walk for a while -- and then only with crutches. He couldn't get the city to pay for his torn pants, and his 7-months'-pregnant wife got dropped from his insurance, he said.
Cramping and numbness in his leg continued long after he'd been ordered back to work, Gabaldon testified.
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Thursday, February 25, 2010
Supreme Court gives police more leeway with suspects
Questioning can resume after passage of time
USA Today
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that investigators may resume questioning a suspect who invoked his Miranda right to a lawyer after the suspect has been out of police custody for 14 days.
The 7-2 decision scales back a 1981 Supreme Court decision intended to protect suspects from police badgering to talk and to safeguard the rights established in the 1966 Miranda v. Arizona ruling.
Justices John Paul Stevens and Clarence Thomas did not join the decision establishing the 14-day rule, but they voted with the rest of the court to reinstate the conviction of a Maryland man convicted of child sexual abuse.
Michael Shatzer was in prison on a different sexual-abuse crime in 2003 when a police detective tried to question him about allegations that he had abused his 3-year-old son. Shatzer invoked his right not to talk without a lawyer, and the detective left. Two-and-a-half years later, another detective, who had obtained additional information about the abuse allegations, returned to the prison to question Shatzer.
Shatzer waived his Miranda rights, and after first denying that he ordered his son to perform oral sex on him, incriminated himself, including by saying, "I didn't force him."
A trial judge rejected Shatzer's request that the statements be kept out of trial, and he was convicted of sexual child abuse. A Maryland appeals court reversed, relying on the 1981 Supreme Court case of Edwards v. Arizona, which generally requires all interrogation to stop once a suspect asks for a lawyer. It presumes once the suspect invokes his Miranda right, any future waiver of the right when police return is not likely to be voluntarily.
The Maryland appeals court had said the passage of time could not end the protections of Edwards v. Arizona and the concerns about police badgering.
In reversing the state court, the justices said the 2 1/2-year lapse eliminated the chance that Shatzer would have been coerced to talk. Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that once a suspect has been released from an interrogation and returned to his "normal life" -- even, in this case, when the suspect was still in prison -- there is little reason to believe the choice to talk was coerced.
Scalia said the justices needed to set -- for future cases -- a minimum time for a break from custody and they had determined that 14 days was sufficient. "That provides plenty of time for the suspect to get re-acclimated to his normal life, to consult with friends and counsel, and to shake off any residual coercive effects of his prior custody," Scalia said.
The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers had told the justices that allowing new interrogations might give police an incentive "to badger suspects through repetitive catch-and-release tactics."
"When you have a two-week merry-go-round that the police can now run, there has to be a concern that if the guy invokes the right to counsel and the police keep coming back, that right doesn't mean much," Stanford University professor Jeffrey Fisher, a member of the association, said Wednesday.
Thirty-seven states and the U.S. Justice Department sided with Maryland, which had sought to reinstate Shatzer's conviction.
Objecting to the 14-day rule, Stevens said that time might not always be enough to protect a suspect who said he does not want to talk without a lawyer present. He said a suspect could "feel that the police lied to him and that he really does not have a right to a lawyer."
Thomas said the new rule of Maryland v. Shatzer was unnecessary. He found 14 days "arbitrary" and said there was no need for police to wait once custody had ended.
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Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Supreme Court backs police on questioning subjects
The Court approved a rewrite of the Miranda rights warning, despite complaints
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday approved Florida's version of the well-known Miranda rights warning, despite complaints that it wasn't clear a suspect could have a lawyer present during questioning.
The court's 7-2 decision restoring Kevin Dwayne Powell's conviction is the first of several it will make this year clarifying exactly what the long-established Miranda rights require police to do.
Powell was convicted of illegally possessing a firearm after telling police he bought the weapon "off the street" for $150 for his protection. Before his confession, Powell signed a Miranda statement that included the words, "You have the right to talk to a lawyer before answering any of our questions. If you cannot afford to hire a lawyer, one will be appointed for you without cost and before any questioning. You have the right to use any of these rights at any time you want during this interview."
The Florida Supreme Court overturned the conviction, saying police did not explicitly tell him he had a right to a lawyer during his police interrogation.
But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the court's majority, said Powell was given enough information.
"Nothing in the words used indicated that counsel's presence would be restricted after the questioning commenced," Ginsburg said. "Instead, the warning communicated that the right to counsel carried forward to and through the interrogation."
Ginsburg praised a different version of the Miranda warning, one used by the FBI, which says in part, "You have the right to talk to a lawyer for advice before we ask you any questions. You have the right to have a lawyer with you during questioning."
"Different words were used in the advice Powell received, but they communicated the same essential message," she said.
Justice John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer disagreed with the majority's reasoning. Stevens wrote that the Florida warning "did not reasonably convey the right to talk to a lawyer after answering some questions, much less implicitly inform Powell of his right to have a lawyer with him at all times during interrogation."
Miranda rights have been litigated since they first came into being in 1966. The courts require police to tell suspects they have the right to remain silent and the right to have a lawyer represent them, even if they can't afford one.
The court has two more Miranda decisions pending, including whether officers can interrogate a suspect who said he understood his rights but didn't invoke them, and whether a request for a lawyer during interrogation can expire after a lengthy period of time.
The case is Florida v. Powell, 08-1175.
