My story this week on disaster insurance comes correct with a sweet map and some charts detailing the history of disaster declarations in California since 1970. Who doesn’t like maps and charts?
Posts tagged Public Safety
Posted a follow-up today to our story last week on military-style equipment and local police in the United States. This one has a Texas connection. Don’t forget to search our database of surplus military gear given to law enforcement agencies in California by the millions.
Image: Air Force Sgt. Chris Hibben
Source cironline.org
My story today on the nation’s terrorist no-fly list …
The federal appeals court ruling last week on gay marriage in California overshadowed other potentially big news in the legal community. A quieter decision Wednesday by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has enabled Stanford University Ph.D. graduate Rahinah Ibrahim to clear another hurdle in her now years-long battle over the nation’s no-fly list, conceived to stop suspected terrorists from boarding airplanes.
The three-member panel ruled 2-1 that Ibrahim could continue to challenge [PDF] her 2005 detention at San Francisco International Airport, where police placed her in a holding cell for two hours. The ordeal eventually led to her being barred from re-entering the United States, a prohibition that continues today.
She’d arrived at the airport on Jan. 2, 2005, with her daughter and needed wheelchair assistance due to complications from a hysterectomy. The two were headed for Malaysia, where Ibrahim intended to present her doctoral research at a conference sponsored by Stanford. Instead, officers from the San Francisco Police Department placed her in handcuffs and gave no reason for why she was being held. The government generally does not disclose if or why an individual is on one of its many watch lists.
Capitalizing on one of the fastest-growing trends in law enforcement, a private California-based company has compiled a database bulging with more than 550 million license-plate records on both innocent and criminal drivers that can be searched by police.
The technology has raised alarms among civil libertarians, who say it threatens the privacy of drivers. It’s also evidence that 21st-century technology may be evolving too quickly for the courts and public opinion to keep up. The U.S. Supreme Court is only now addressing whether investigators can secretly attach a GPS monitoring device to cars without a warrant.
A ruling in that case has yet to be handed down, but a telling exchange occurred during oral arguments. Chief Justice John Roberts asked lawyers for the government if even he and other members of the court could feasibly be tracked by GPS without a warrant. Yes, came the answer.
Meanwhile, police around the country have been affixing high-tech scanners to the exterior of their patrol cars, snapping a picture of every passing license plate and automatically comparing them to databases of outstanding warrants, stolen cars and wanted bank robbers.
But when a license plate is scanned, the driver’s geographic location is also recorded and saved, along with the date and time, each of which amounts to a record or data point. Such data collection occurs regardless of whether the driver is a wanted criminal, and the vast majority are not.The units work by sounding an in-car alert if the scanner comes across a license plate of interest to police, whereas before, patrol officers generally needed some reason to take an interest in the vehicle, like a traffic violation.
See the rest of my story published this morning here.
Image: Steve Reed, Arden Fair Mall
After months of work, my reporting partner Andrew Becker and I are live with another story about the war on terror. A shorter version appears today on the Newsweek/Daily Beast site. The complete story can be found here, accompanied by a full package of amazing multimedia material assembled with help from our incomparable team at the Center for Investigative Reporting. There’s a map, a timeline and a slideshow of photos from our reporting trips to Chicago and Fargo. (Follow the center on Tumblr while you’re at it.) Here’s a glimpse of the story:
More than ever before, local police across the U.S. have transformed into small army-like forces using billions in grants from the federal government. With body armor and other tactical apparel, many officers now look more like combat troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan than cops on the beat. The list of equipment purchased by even small towns reads like a defense-contractor catalog: assault rifles, flash grenades, even tanks and surveillance drones. And they are expanding their stockpiles, despite, in many cases, the lack of an apparent need.
Source americaswarwithin.org
Anyone who’s gone on a road trip in the United States is familiar with the big welcome signs that greet them as they pass from one state to the next. Lawmakers in New Hampshire apparently have a different idea. They want to post exit signs leading into Massachusetts that warn their freedom-loving residents about the array of different state laws they’ll be forced to endure in the neighboring state.
Backers of the bill said it’s an idea worth looking at, and it would serve as a reminder that other states often have more restrictive laws than New Hampshire. … ‘You have to think about the fact that there is a huge amount of laws that change when you go from New Hampshire to Massachusetts,’ said Rep. Jennifer Coffey, R-Andover. ‘You don’t want to get caught on the other side of the line with illegal fireworks in an uninsured vehicle without your seat belt.’
Hat tip to the legal blog Volokh Conspiracy.
Image: Jimmy Wayne
Crime is continuing its historic downward trend in the United States, according to new figures released today by the FBI. Says Ohio State University law professor Douglas Berman in a blog post:
We could (and perhaps should) have a huge debate over whether and how much credit the Obama/Holder administration merits for the continued decline in crime rates over the past few years. But this amazingly great news on national crime rates confirms my view that calls from many on the right for AG Holder to resign are just a story about electoral politics and have nothing to do with effective criminal justice policies.
*A colleague pointed out that maybe I should have made the headline a little clearer. These resources were reportedly deployed to pursue the alleged armed thieves of six cows.
You’re gonna love this, Tumblr fans. Some cows went missing in North Dakota. Six in all. Here is what local authorities decided was necessary to search for said bovine:
- A SWAT team
- A bomb squad
- The highway patrol
- Deputies from three surrounding counties
- A Predator drone
Yes, a Predator drone. The LA Times is calling it “the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator.” But by no means is it the first time a drone, generally, has been used by local police in U.S. airspace, and it wasn’t the first time a Predator had been used in North Dakota. From the Times:
Local police say they have used unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force Base to fly at least two-dozen surveillance flights since June. … ‘We don’t use [drones] on every call out,” said Bill Macki, head of the police SWAT team in Grand Forks. ‘If we have something in town like an apartment complex, we don’t call them.’
Image: Joost J. Bakker
Video has surfaced online of the deadly SWAT raid earlier this month in Arizona that ended with police killing a military veteran. Jose Guerena was an honorably discharged Marine who served two tours in Iraq. There’s now a dispute over whether Guerena had any connection to criminal activity. Read more about the case on Wired’s Danger Room blog.
Budget shortfalls are forcing cities nationwide to cut services or come up with creative solutions for keeping police on the beat and buses on time. Berkeley County in West Virginia is using lottery revenues, but not the way you would expect.
A local named Randy Smith promised himself after ferocious blizzards last year that if he ever won the lotto, he’d buy snowplows for the community. Then it happened. Smith won nearly $80 million from the state lottery in August, so he kept the promise and bought snow-clearing equipment for six county fire departments. That wasn’t enough for the Good Samaritan, however. According to the local Herald-Mail newspaper:
Also thanks to Smith, a $150,000 mobile forensic law-enforcement unit to preserve and transport crime-scene evidence is now in the hands of the West Virginia state Police in Martinsburg and will be available for detachments in nine eastern counties. In addition, the Martinsburg City Police Department is getting a live-scan fingerprinting system and improvements to its firing range for a total gift of $100,000. … Popular in the community even before he became rich, he said his wealth has some good points and some not-so-good. He’s always bought lottery tickets and still does, Smith said. … He still lives in the same house he had before the lottery.
Image: Daniel Oines
