These are the lyrics Cameron posted:

I’m not in reality, So when u see me (expletive) go insane and make the news, the paper, and the (expletive) federal house of horror known as the white house, Don’t (expletive) cry or be worried because all YOU people (expletive) caused this (expletive).

(Expletive) a boston bominb wait till u see the (expletive) I do, I’ma be famous rapping, and beat every murder charge that comes across me!”

It should be pretty obvious that these lyrics were not intended to be a threat. As Tim Cushing of the blog Techdirt observes:

When I reread his words, I don’t find him threatening to kill anyone. He says he’ll “go insane” and make “the news, the paper, the (expletive) federal house of horror the White House.” “Go insane” is not the same thing as threatening violence and its takes a lot of willingness to see something that’s not actually there to believe it does. Sure, D’Ambrosio mentions both the White House and the Boston bombing, but simply throwing those words into a sentence (and filling the rest out with expletives) doesn’t turn this into a credible threat, or at least not one that should result in a 20-year sentence.

By all means, the police should be willing to investigate perceived threats, but putting this into context (your average profane, overdramatic, attention-seeking, rap fan teenager) should have resulted in little more than a discussion about the possibility that word dumps like this could have negative consequences or legal repercussions.

Earlier today, D’Ambrosio was finally given a court hearing to determine whether or not he could post bail and be freed from jail.

Several free speech advocates went to the courthouse where D’Ambrosio’s hearing was taking place to stage a small protest. They were asked to leave even though they had every right to be there. They complied anyway, but were then harassed again by officers of the Salem Police Department. You can see video here:

If you’d like to contact the Salem Police Department to demand that they stop harassing free speech activists, I’ve included their contact information below:

• Business 978-744-0171
• Non-Emergency Request for Police 978-744-1212

You should also click here and sign the petition to get Cameron D’Ambrosio’s ridiculous charges dropped.

Update (same day as the original post): I just got the following additional information from the person who uploaded the videos (via Twitter): “there were only 2 activists present w/ only 1 of whom stood on the forbidden sidewalk vs 6 pd & the Sargent returned to complain about being filmed w/o consent & threatened to take the camera.” Apparently the Sergeant has never heard of Simon Glik.

Thanks for reading. Salem police harass free speech activists is a post from Massachusetts Cop Block

While there are plenty of exceptions, it’s so common to see mainstream media outlets produce shoddy journalism on police technology and tactics. There are so many lazy reporters who, when they cover some controversial issue in policing or some new technology being developed or utilized by police, simply talk to some police officers or representatives of the company developing the new technology, and uncritically regurgitate whatever it is they happen to say.

I reviewed an article like this earlier this week. This front-page puff piece in The MetroWest Daily News, which was was filled with colorful pictures of six police dogs and featured little bios for each them, was based entirely on interviews with the police officers who worked with the dogs. Not a single person who was critical of the use of police dogs was interviewed.

While I was doing some research, I stumbled upon another sloppy, one-sided article about new “SWAT robots” which being developed by a company in Maine and tested by the Massachusetts State Police (“‘SWAT robots’ soon to protect US first responders,” Associated Press, April 18, 2013). Although the article is over a month old by now, I still thought it was worth discussing especially considering it was written by the Associated Press and has been published in newspapers across the United States.

According to the article:

Sanford Police Chief Thomas Connolly, who heads a regional tactical police squad that has trained with the device, said the robot can be a valuable tool for police in dangerous situations.

“It can provide police with a huge tactical advantage,” he said.

Police nationwide regularly find themselves dealing with standoffs and kidnappings.

Last week, a heavily armed man held firefighters hostage for hours in his suburban Atlanta home before the Gwinnett County Police SWAT team stormed the house and killed the gunman. No firefighters were hurt.

Gwinnett County Cpl. Jake Smith said the SWAT robot looks like it would be useful as a safe way to approach a barricaded person. But he didn’t know how cost-effective the $98,000 price tag would be.

Robots are nothing new in law enforcement.

Bomb squads use remote-controlled robots to locate and defuse explosive devices. Camera-equipped robots are used for surveillance to keep officers out of harm’s way.

Police have been known to use robots with articulated arms to lift police shields in front of windows of houses to shield officers from gunshots fired from inside the home, said Corey Luby, of the National Tactical Officers Association, a Doylestown, Pa., organization representing patrol and special operations officers. Police also use armored vehicles as shields to get close when hostages are being held or a suspect is barricaded inside a structure, he said.

But the SWAT robot, dubbed the “SWAT Bot,” is the first robotic device Luby has seen that’s designed for specifically for ballistic shield purposes.

“It’s another life-saving tool,” Luby said. “I’d rather see a robot get hurt than a person.”

A team of officers from the Southern Maine Response Team tactical squad demonstrated in a mock drill Thursday how the robot works, with six officers walking behind the mobile bulletproof shield while approaching someone playing the role of an armed suspect.

The machine also has attachments that allow it to knock down doors or drag away cars.

So, according to the Associated Press, who only bothered to speak with representatives of the company that developed these “SWAT Bots” and police officers who have tested them, the only reason police would want these $98,000 robots which are capable of smashing down doors and dragging away cars is to keep police officers safe when they are trying to apprehend dangerous criminals.

But why should we believe that?

Whenever police adopt a new tactic or technology, they always give reasons that seem impossible to object to. The new tactic or gadget will enhance “officer safety,” it will make it easier for police to apprehend violent criminals, to prevent terrorist attacks, etc., yet police always end up using that technique or technology for purposes other than they were originally intended for.

One of the best examples is the SWAT team itself. SWAT teams were first developed in the 1960′s in order to respond to high-stakes crisis situations involving armed perpetrators who were very likely to put up violent resistance — hostage situations and bank robberies being two examples. However, SWAT teams quickly became widespread. According to a recent USA Today interview with Peter Kraska, a criminologist whose work focuses on police militarization, SWAT teams were deployed only about 2,000 to 3,000 times per year in the early to mid 80′s. That number has shot up to about 70,000 and 80,000 per year in the present.

When a SWAT team is deployed, they generally rely on a frightening tactic known as the “no-knock” raid. The purpose of a no-knock search is to surprise the occupants of a building and subdue them with an overwhelming show of force before they have an opportunity to react. Police converge on a building — usually in the middle of the night — then smash the door in with a battering ram or explosives. They either announce their presence only a few seconds before breaking the door down or do not announce it at all (hence “no-knock”). After breaking in the door, police will sometimes throw potentially lethal incendiary devices called flashbang grenades into the home with the ostensible purpose of confusing and disorienting the occupants. They then storm the building and force everyone to the ground at gunpoint, handcuff them, and search the premises.

The main reason for the dramatic increase in SWAT deployment is that SWAT teams are used to serve routine search or arrest warrants especially for drug suspects. SWAT teams have even been used to investigate things as mundane as suspected underage drinking and unlicensed barber shops. Although data on this is hard to come by, it appears that a huge percentage of people targeted in these raids are not guilty of anything. According to a government study about SWAT teams in Maryland, more than one third of SWAT raids conducted in the state during 2010 failed to end with even a single arrest. SWAT teams are now seen by many police as part of normal, routine police work — not something to resort to in emergencies.

The journalist Radley Balko, who has tirelessly written about SWAT teams and no-knock raids, concludes that police

are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.

– Radley Balko, “Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America,” Cato Institute, 2006, pg. 1

In Massachusetts, there have been numerous completely avoidable tragedies associated with the use of these paramilitary police units. In a recent column about the drug war in Boston, Radley Balko summarizes several of these cases:

In 1988, Boston Det. Sherman Griffiths was shot and killed during a police raid on a residence they suspected was occupied by Jamaican drug dealers. The suspected shooter, 34-year-old Albert Lewin was acquitted three years later after a series of investigations revealed widespread corruption and perjury within the department. In the raid that ended one of their colleague’s life, one BPD sergeant admitted in testimony that he had fabricated the informant whose alleged tip led to the raid in the first place. Waiting to establish probable cause — in other words, respecting Lewin’s constitutional rights — was too time consuming. Sources in BPD told the Globe that “enormous public pressure on police to arrest drug dealers . . . has led some detectives to find ‘workable’ solutions to what police see as unworkable constitutional requirements for warrants.”

The Lewin/Griffiths case also brought to light that Boston narcotics cops were routinely falsifying search warrants in drug cases — which means they were routinely raiding homes without probable cause. A Boston Globe review of 350 drug warrants found that fabrication of informants, exaggeration of probable cause, and boilerplate language was common. By one estimate, the number of drug warrants served by Boston police jumped from around 300 in 1985 to more than 3,000 by 1990.

The problem wasn’t just in Boston. In a federal trial held at about the same time, a Philadelphia narcotics cop admitted that he and his colleagues fabricated informants on hundreds of search warrants. These warrants then authorized violent forced-entry raids on private homes.

City officials, judges, and prosecutors had little interest in holding them accountable. One former high-ranking BPD officer had at one point hired an attorney to look into the growing problem of falsification of drug warrants, and to discipline officers found to have lied or used boilerplate language on such warrants, but his efforts were thwarted by the police union.

As the Boston Globe noted in a 1990 article, the residents of the city didn’t seem particularly concerned either — these raids on innocent were being conducted in mostly poor, mostly minority neighborhoods. “I don’t think the electorate is too concerned with the rights of drug dealers,” one criminologist told the paper.

And so the raids went on. In 1995, the Rev. Accleyne Williams, a 75-year-old retired minister, died of a heart attack after struggling with 13 members of a masked, heavily armed Boston SWAT team that stormed his apartment on such a raid. The police later revealed that an informant had given them incorrect information.

Doctors later concluded that Williams had literally been scared to death. One BPD source told the Boston Globe that was entirely the point. The raid team, for example, wore black ski mask hats to terrify their suspects. “The psychological impact of confronting a masked face with a shotgun pointed at you can be devastating,” the source said.

According to the Boston Herald, “a warrant authorizing the raid was approved by Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Mary Lou Moran, even though the application supporting the warrant did not specify which apartment on the building’s second floor was to be targeted. It also failed to provide corroboration of the confidential informant’s tip that a Jamaican drug posse operated out of the building.” In fact, the police officer who signed the affidavit for the warrant swore that the informant was trustworthy, even though he had previously falsely implicated a friend in a shooting three years earlier.

Another police source told the Herald: “You’d be surprised at how easily this can happen. An informant can tell you it is the apartment on the left at the top of the stairs and there could be two apartments on the left at the top of the stairs . . . You are supposed to verify it, and I’m not making excuses, but mistakes can be made.”

Another Boston Herald investigation later discovered that three of the officers involved in the Williams raid had been accused in a 1989 civil rights suit of using nonexistent informants to secure drug warrants. The city had in fact just settled a suit stemming from a mistaken raid five years earlier. According to witnesses, one of the officers in that raid apologized as he left, telling the home’s terrified occupants, “This happens all the time.”

–Radley Balko, “Boston And Militarism: The Modern Drug War,” The Huffington Post, May 3, 2013

We could also point to the police in Fitchburg who, in December, 1996, conducted a drug raid at the apartment of a suspected cocaine dealer. During the raid, officers tossed two incendiary “flashbang” grenades into the apartment. The grenades landed on a couch and started a fire that destroyed the entire apartment complex, placing the two dozen residents in mortal danger and leaving them displaced from their homes for the holiday season. None of the officers responsible for the fire were ever criminally charged. In fact, three of them were given “Community Service Awards” by the Massachusetts Police Association for the courage they supposedly showed during the fire (see Ric Kahn and Zachary R. Dowdy, “‘Iron fist’ of policing SWAT team use questioned,” The Boston Globe, May 11, 1998).

We also have the example of the Framingham Police Department, who conducted a deadly drug raid in 2011. During the raid, one officer shot and killed Eurie Stamps, a 68-year old man, while he submissively lay on the ground, waiting to be handcuffed. Stamps was not the target of the raid and was not suspected by the police of committing any crimes at all. The police and district attorney labeled the shooting as an “accident,” no charges were pressed against the officer who was responsible, and he was allowed to return to his job.

Given that SWAT teams and tactics themselves have been wildly abused, should we expect to start seeing “SWAT Bots” used in completely inappropriate situations? Will these robots supposedly created for violent standoffs be used for routine police work? Will they be used to smash down the doors of people suspected only of nonviolent, victimless offenses? The officers interviewed by the Associated Press didn’t indicate that they would, but we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be comforted by that.

Are there any state laws or department policies regulating how these robots may be used by police to ensure that they’re not deployed in inappropriate situations? If not, will police refrain from purchasing these robots until these laws and policies have been put in place? Will police departments be transparent about how often these robots are deployed and why? It would’ve been nice if the Associated Press had asked questions like these.

We might also consider that when there is a large protest, police frequently bring all kinds of high-tech gadgets and weaponry to issue extrajudicial punishment against anyone and everyone attending the protest. One example is the “Long Range Acoustic Devices” (or “LRAD”), a sound-based weapon that is capable of indiscriminately inflicting permanent hearing-loss. The Boston Police Department actually deployed an LRAD at Occupy Boston. The device was never used to attack demonstrators, but many felt BPD was intentionally displaying it as an intimidation tactic. Another example would be so-called “rubber bullets” which are actually metal bullets that have been coated with rubber. These bullets are often depicted by police and the media as being “non-lethal” weapons which are suitable for “crowd control” despite that fact that there have been numerous documented cases of people being killed by them.

Even when police are using these types of “crowd control” weapons to respond to actual violence, they cannot necessarily be trusted to use them appropriately. In Massachusetts, we have the example of Victoria Snelgrove, a 21-year old student who was shot to death with a “bean bag round” (another supposedly “non-lethal” weapon) by a Boston police officer who was firing indiscriminately at crowds of revelers after the Red Sox pennant victory in 2004.

After Snelgrove’s death, a commission was formed to investigate what had happened. The Boston Globe summarized the commission’s findings as follows:

The failures that led to Snelgrove’s death began with planning. Claiborne and his team did not examine possible scenarios for the night or issue guidelines for the use of force when preparing for the event, the Stern panel said. Both were recommended after James Grabowski was killed during the 2004 Super Bowl celebrations and for the Democratic National Convention.

The planning team also ignored advance intelligence that revelers would probably gather on Lansdowne Street and did not place specially trained riot police there, instead stationing them at Kenmore Square and near Northeastern University.

When Lansdowne Street flooded ”wall to wall” with celebrants after the game ended about midnight, officers not adequately trained in crowd control became “outnumbered and outflanked,” the report said. The commander in charge of police operations around the ballpark, Deputy Superintendent O’Toole, then incorrectly issued pepper-pellet guns to officers he knew were not certified to use the gun and took one himself, even though he, too, was not certified, the report said.

O’Toole, no relation to the commissioner; Patrolman Samil Silta, and Officer Rochefort Milien, the only officer certified to use the gun, started firing at fans on the back of the Green Monster.

The report cites one witness account that Robert O’Toole fired as if hoping the pellets hit intended targets. The two other officers fired their weapons indiscriminately, continuing even as people were climbing down.

Two people were shot in the face, 24-year-old Cambridge resident Paul Gately and Boston College student Kapila Bhamidipati. The injuries were not reported to headquarters, which could have alerted police to problems with the FN303, the report says.

Robert O’Toole, meanwhile, tried to hand his gun to Officer Steven Gil, saying, ”Stevie, are you certified on this?” Gil said no and refused to take the weapon. The commander then gave the gun to another officer, who said he was also uncertified. O’Toole replied, ”Just pull the trigger,” the report said. That officer did not fire the weapon and is not facing discipline.

A short time later, after officers had cleared much of the crowd from a section of Lansdowne Street, Milien fired two quick shots at a man he said had been throwing bottles. One of the pellets struck Snelgrove in the eye. The panel concluded that Milien fired so quickly he probably did not have time to aim properly.

An officer at the weapons supply truck on Brookline Avenue, Patrolman Thomas Gallagher, failed to treat the returned weapons as evidence, not tracking who had fired which weapon.

– Donovan Slack, “Snelgrove panel rips police,” The Boston Globe, May 26, 2005

To truly appreciate the unbelievable negligence displayed by numerous officers in the Boston Police Department, all of which contributed to Snelgrove’s death, you’d have to read the entire report yourself.

Although Snelgrove’s family was paid $10 million in a settlement with the manufacturer of the weapon police used to kill her, none of the officers responsible for her death were criminally prosecuted.

So, will these “SWAT Bots” be used for “crowd control” at the next major protest in Massachusetts? Once again, we have no indication that they will be, but it’s still important to ask questions like this in advance because we need to set limits on what kinds of weapons police have access to, when they use them, and how they use them.

The fact is, police in Massachusetts and the rest of the country have been responsible for many horrific tragedies and they are frequently not held accountable for them. Whenever police say that they need new weapons to protect themselves from dangerous criminals, this is the context that we should view every single one of their claims in. We can’t allow police to constantly stockpile new, dangerous weapons without considering the danger they pose to the public nor should we tolerate it when the mainstream media enables them by publishing poorly-researched propaganda pieces.

Thanks for reading. Can Massachusetts police be trusted with new “SWAT Bot?” is a post from Massachusetts Cop Block

Yesterday, The MetroWest Daily News published a story by Jessica Trufant about how, in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, many police departments in the region are expressing interest in acquiring police dogs (Jessica Trufant, “Police dogs in big demand in MetroWest forces,” The MetroWest Daily News, May 19, 2013). As is common in the mainstream press, this shoddy article uncritically presents misleading and outright false claims by government officials as fact.

The article is based almost entirely on the author’s interviews with Ken Ballinger, assistant deputy superintendent of the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Department and leader of its K9 unit, and Dwane Foisy, president of the Massachusetts Police Work Dog Association, both of whom stress the importance and legitimacy of police dogs and assure us that these dogs are well-trained:

Many of [Ken Ballinger's] trainees, including Ashland Officer Chris Alberini and his German shepherd partner Dax, helped in the manhunt following the Boston bombings on April 15, which again has heightened awareness of the value and effectiveness of dogs in assisting officers both during and after such crises.

…

A second-generation K9 handler, Ballinger 20 years ago never imagined that dogs in 2013 would be sniffing out contraband cell phones in prisons, or wearing cameras to stake out buildings before raids.

But Ballinger has seen a drastic increase in the use of dogs and the sophistication of training, as case law and public opinion have shifted to treat K9s as legitimate police tools.

He expects a greater presence of K9s before and during large public events, despite some pushback from privacy rights advocates who may consider the use of dogs unlawful searching.

“Standards for privacy are high in Massachusetts, but the standard of reasonableness reflects the world we live in now,” Ballinger said. “A dog walking around and sniffing you is a lot less intrusive than a cop grabbing you and shaking you like a leaf.”

…

“There’s nothing in modern technology that will be more accurate or sensitive than a dog’s nose,” Ballinger said.

…

There is no state oversight or registry for the approximately 300 police dogs in the state, but [Dwane] Foisy said training and annual certification through a reputable organization or police or sheriff’s department is essential to the integrity of K9 units.

“When you go into court, you need to have the paperwork and justification for how you know what your dog is telling you is correct, and that’s through training and maintenance,” he said.

The dogs are trained in just one area of detection, such as narcotics, explosives or cadavers, which Foisy said legitimizes the dog’s expertise and minimizes risk.

…

The concept behind the training is the same as when Ivan Pavlov in 1903 studied conditioned response in salivating dogs – repetition, non-verbal communication and food.

Ballinger said detection is “all based on a chain of events for the dog,” which is conditioned to know what to do based on the handler’s actions.

Dax, for example, knows to sniff for narcotics when his handler, Alberini, puts a certain collar on him.

Training begins with imprintation – when the dog spends several weeks learning a set of smells, such as the most common drugs or explosives in the area it serves.

Chelsea K9 officers Tom McLain and Ed Noftle said their explosive-detecting shepherds are now trained on up to 42 odors, including TNT, C4 and smokeless powder, while they started off with less than a dozen.

The dog and handler then focus on high-volume repetitive behavior, taught by Plymouth County’s K9 unit using food and real explosives or narcotics of varying purity and quantity.

By going through a chain of commands over and over again, the dog is trained to associate each command with what it needs to do to get the reward.

The only time a food-trained dog, like Dax, eats is when it successfully carries out a task, linking its ability to complete a duty with satisfying its hunger.

“We used to train with toys, but not every dog needs to play. Every dog needs to eat, though,” Ballinger said, adding that the dog remembers what it did wrong “if it’s going to sleep hungry.”

Trufant apparently did not bother to ask these police officers any tough questions. She reiterated Ballinger’s claims that police dogs “helped in the manhunt following the Boston bombings,” but how did they help? They didn’t prevent the bombings from happening nor did they locate the perpetrators, so what exactly did they do? How do the police she interviewed know how accurate their dogs are? Do they track how often their dogs give them false positives? Do they retire a dog if it gives too many false positives? Trufant didn’t bother asking these or any other questions that might cast doubt on the use of police dogs.

We do learn that there is “some pushback from privacy rights advocates who may consider the use of dogs unlawful searching,” however, Trufant did not actually interview any of these privacy advocates nor did she look into any empirical research on the efficacy of police dogs.

Had she looked into research on police dogs instead of mindlessly regurgitating the claims of several police officers all of whom have a direct interest in perpetuating the idea that these dogs serve a legitimate purpose, she would have found that police dogs have incredibly low success rates (they give false positives more often than not) and that it’s incredibly easy to manipulate a police dog into “signalling” its handler.

This really shouldn’t be surprising to anyone. When a police dog “signals” its handler, all its does is sit down or bark. Dogs are not people. They can’t say “I smell marijuana in that guy’s car” or “that guy has a bomb.” Dogs sit down and bark all the time, for all kinds of reasons, so these so-called “signals” are, by their nature, completely ambiguous.

When a police dog “signals” its handler, it may be doing so because it actually smells drugs or explosives. But it may smell food. Or maybe it’s just excited. A police dog also might “signal” its handler because it knows that doing so makes its handler become happy or excited. After all, dogs have been bred over thousands of years to please their human masters. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I were to find out that many police officers take advantage of this fact and intentionally cue their dogs to “signal” them whenever they happen to feel like searching someone. It’s not hard for someone to get a dog they’ve spent a lot of time with to sit down or bark, so we can’t really rule this possibility out.

Unless we develop mind-reading devices for dogs, we will never be able to say for certain what a police dog is thinking when it “signals” its handler. Therefore, searching someone based on the “signal” of a dog is completely arbitrary.

Although this one-sided article doesn’t address any of the concerns about police dogs, it actually does spell out the real reason that police want these dogs:

With more than 20 years as a K9 officer, Foisy, who works for the Berkshire County Sheriff’s Department, said he saw an upswing in bomb-detecting police dogs after 9/11, but then the demand dropped off. He said bomb dogs might not be realistic for small departments, because calls for suspicious packages peak after an attack, but then trail off.

“When you have a narcotics dog, they’re making seizures of narcotics and money, and there’s a return on the investment,” Foisy said. “With explosives dogs, you may not get calls for service very often.”

Isn’t the honesty refreshing? Police do not want these dogs to keep people safe, they want police dogs because they can be used as a pretext for seizing money from people involved in the drug trade. This loot can then be used by the police departments to pad their budgets.

The people of Massachusetts have shown that they are fed up with the government’s war of drugs. Voters have passed two ballot initiatives in recent years, one decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana and another legalizing marijuana for some medical uses, and the state’s drug testing lab scandal has undoubtedly left many people cynical. Even if the majority of the public isn’t completely against the drug war yet, public opinion is shifting and more people want limits put on this massive, inhumane, and wasteful social engineering program.

Unfortunately, police seem to be lagging behind public opinion.

There are literally millions of violent crimes and property crimes in the United States that go unsolved every year. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting statistics for 2011 show that in Massachusetts, 28,219 violent crimes (these include murder, nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) were reported to the police, but police only arrested suspects in 11,512 cases (or 40.8%). 148,790 property crimes (burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson) were reported to the police, but police only arrested suspects in 18,428 cases (or 12.4%).

If police took all of the limited resources they currently use aggressively seeking out victimless offenders and instead put them to use trying to solve violent and property crimes, we’d probably be a lot safer.

But, as I explained, it’s not really about safety.

Thanks for reading. Massachusetts police to acquire more drug and bomb sniffing dogs is a post from Massachusetts Cop Block

More details here:

The criminal complaint charges Officer Kershaw with hindering a firefighter who was trying to put out the fire, a felony punishable by up to five years in state prison, but not less than 30 days of incarceration. She will also be arraigned on misdemeanor charges of assault on a police officer, disorderly conduct, and threatening to commit a crime.”We have investigated it, it’s unfortunate, and we will take appropriate action,” Chief Hanavan said this week when asked for comment.

In separate police reports, Tisbury police officers Jason Marathas and Joseph Ballotte said Ms. Kershaw repeatedly interfered with firefighters by trying to enter the house as smoke poured out the windows. She said she was concerned about a pet chicken inside.

Ms. Kershaw swore and screamed at the responding police officers who tried to get her away from the active fire scene, according to the police reports. Also according to the reports, she struck Officer Marathas on his arm, and she repeatedly threatened to kill both officers.

The two officers reported that Officer Kershaw showed apparent signs of intoxication.

The complaint file included a letter from Fire Chief John Schilling to Chief Hanavan, dated May 13, in which the fire chief described the incident.

“Throughout the course of this incident, Ms. Kershaw repeatedly attempted to gain access to her chicken pen, inserting herself into the middle of an active fire scene before being stopped by fire personnel,” Chief Schilling said. “At times, Ms. Kershaw appeared to resist their verbal directives and had to be physically assisted from the scene. It was a very disappointing turn of events to have to address these kinds of issues from an ‘off duty’ officer, especially since her actions distracted from our efforts to effect a timely resolution to the incident.”

Officer Kershaw is currently on paid medical leave from the police department following an injury she sustained when she struck a tree while driving her police cruiser on November 20, 2012.

She has had a contentious relationship with the department and the town. In 2009, she filed a sexual harassment claim with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. She is currently suing the town and the department for employment discrimination in Dukes County Superior Court. In the lawsuit, she alleges the department and her fellow officers have retaliated against her for pursuing legal action.

Thanks for reading. Tisbury officer accused of interfering with firefighter, threatening police is a post from Massachusetts Cop Block

More information about the bookie’s testimony here and here:

“He said he would have no problem killing me if he had to. The guy’s a (expletive) animal,” said Robert Russo of Arlington, who claims he quit the gambling life on Jan. 2, 2012, two days after federal agents put Analetto behind bars.

…

Russo, 34, recalled over nearly five hours on the witness stand how he was suicidal, weighed 350 pounds and was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt in the summer of 2011 when Analetto, 49, of Belmont — and “the first and only” cop he’d ever had as a customer — stepped out from behind his betting alter ego “Big Red” and said, “ ‘What if I offer to help you?’ “ Russo said. “That’s kind of how the ball got rolling.”

Analetto, he said, fronted him $24,000 in cash to be partners. The officer demanded payments of $500 a week, plus a 20-percent cut of Russo’s commission, and insisted on using bizarre code words like “fish” to mean money. Within weeks, Russo testified their relationship took a “brutal” turn.

“There was no rest with him. Every conversation was him yelling at me and belittling me,” he said. “He wanted things his way. He was basically controlling me. I was his puppet.”

Thanks for reading. State trooper convicted of extortion is a post from Massachusetts Cop Block

This video of Boston-based attorney Harvey Silverglate explaining what to do if the FBI wants to interview you was first published a few years ago, but it’s been getting shared quite a bit recently. The video is definitely worth watching, so I decided to add it to the “Know your rights” page.

I also recommend Silverglate’s recent editorial in The Boston Globe which touches on many of the same issues as the video.

Thanks for reading. Harvey Silverglate: Protecting yourself from FBI manipulation is a post from Massachusetts Cop Block

Thanks for reading. Springfield police officer pleads guilty to improper storage of a firearm is a post from Massachusetts Cop Block

As I said in another blog entry earlier today, one of my goals with this website is to expand and improve this database. Today, I spent much of my day reviewing police misconduct stories for 2013. As with the old 2009 and 2010 reports, I used research by the NPMRP. I also reviewed the Twitter feed of Myong Joun, a Massachusetts-based attorney who specializes in police misconduct. Joun frequently posts news articles about police misconduct and I found 7 stories that were missed by the NPMRP in his Twitter feed. I also found another recent misconduct story that hasn’t been picked up by NPMRP yet. (I emailed NPMRP about these stories so they can add the stories to their database too.)

All the 2013 reports have been added to the database. I also temporarily pulled all 2009 and 2010 reports. I will be adding reports for 2012 next, then 2011, then I will go back and review all the old reports and re-add them to the database. And, of course, I will also continue to add more 2013 reports as they come in.

If you know of a police misconduct story that occurred during the past year, please check the database to see if it’s been added yet. If not, please send me a link to a news story about the incident. I can be reached on Twitter or Facebook or you can email me using the “Contact” page.

Thanks for reading. Police misconduct database updated is a post from Massachusetts Cop Block

The officer is still facing charges for an incident earlier this year in which he allegedly shot up the wall of a hotel room he was staying in and threatened police with his firearm during a seven-hour standoff (Source: The Lowell Sun).

Thanks for reading. MBTA police officer pleads guilty in domestic violence case is a post from Massachusetts Cop Block

While it was probably good that I took a break, I occasionally thought about starting the site back up again. I even felt a little guilty sometimes for not being involved with activism. The feelings became a little stronger recently and I started getting more serious about resuming work on the site. Shortly after the Boston marathon bombing and the subsequent police manhunt, I finally decided it was time.

I felt genuinely creeped out as I watched the TV coverage of the manhunt and saw the thousands police officers – with their black and camouflage body armor, their military-grade weapons, their armored personnel carriers – moving through Boston and surrounding towns and cities. Some of the scenes I was watching looked more like occupied Iraq than Boston.

I was relieved when the police finally caught Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on April 19, but I still felt uneasy. The talking heads I was listening to on TV proclaimed the cops to be heroes, but I knew that even if the police arrest the occasional terrorist, the United States still has problems with police brutality, misconduct, and corruption, not to mention the fact that even many of the “legal” things police do – like locking people up for victimless “crimes” – cause society a lot more harm than good. I also expected that the marathon bombing would produce the typical demands from the government officials and the media that ordinary people must permanently give up more of their freedoms in exchange for so-called security.

With these things in mind, I felt I could no longer in good conscience refrain from participating in activism of some kind and I decided to resume work on Massachusetts Cop Block. I want this website is to be a tool for anyone who lives or works in Massachusetts and is interested in police accountability. Just to give you an idea of the direction I want to take the site in, here are the projects I am currently working on or planning:

• The other day, I started a “Know your rights” page. I plan to post all kinds of educational material on this page to help people understand and protect their rights during encounters with the police. So far, all I have is links to a few videos (which are great, by the way), but I expect to add lots more material to this page in the future.
• Another thing I want to work on is improving the site’s police misconduct report database.

  The old reports were all taken from David Packman’s National Police Misconduct Reporting Project which has since been taken over by the Cato Institute. I’d really like to clean up these old reports quite a bit. When I’m done, all reports will be in complete sentences with no abbreviations (they were originally written for Twitter) and some will be expanded with more details or re-written entirely. Many of the sources for the old reports are now dead links, so I will replace them with links to other news stories. In some cases, I will also replace source articles with more comprehensive and/or more credible sources. Also, I will be using direct links instead of shortened links for the sources to decrease the chances of link rot.

  In addition to re-working the old reports (which only covered 2009 and 2010), I’d also like to add reports for 2011 to the present.

  I hope to add all new misconduct reports to the blog as I find out about them and then periodically update the database to keep it current.

• I’m also interested in tracking all police shootings that take place in Massachusetts using media reports. Before I can start, I need to figure out the criteria for what stories go into the database and what kind of info gets tracked. I also need to find the best method for collecting data (which media outlets I should search, which search terms to use, etc).If I do work on this project, I would not start collecting data until July at the earliest (so I would have data for half the year) or possibly October (so I would have data for the quarter).
• Finally, I appreciate it when people share information with me. If some have information about a police misconduct incident, a threat to civil liberties, or something along those lines, please send it to me. Also, if you’re planning some sort of event like a Flex Your Rights video showing, a CopWatching meetup, or anything that you think readers of this site will be interested, you can send it to me and I’ll try to help get the word out. I can be reached on Twitter or Facebook or you can email me using the “Contact” page.

Thanks for reading.

Thanks for reading. Massachusetts Cop Block is back is a post from Massachusetts Cop Block