All Articles Tagged "police"
Ratchet News: Elderly Couple Steals Cop Car to Get It On
A Florida couple was arrested on a charge of grand theft auto after stealing a police car to have sex in it. Alexander Pratt, 59, and Clara Pearson, 53, reportedly jumped into the unmarked car after they saw the keys in the ignition. But within minutes of the theft they were stopped by officers and arrested.
Despite the hefty charge, Pratt said he had no regrets because he wanted to “go to have intimate relations with Pearson.” This couple isn’t just dumb, they’re old and dumb.
A lot of couples like to experiment with sex in a public place, but stealing a cop car takes the cake. Instead of sex, this couple just got sacked. I want to admire them for keeping their spark, but this has SMH written all over it.
Have you ever gotten busted trying to get it on in public?
Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.
More on Madame Noire!
- Making It: Stars Who Were Once Homeless
- Is His Appetite for Adult Films Killing Your Relationship?
- Ask The Luv Coach: “I’ve Got Drama With My Male Best Friend’s Girl”
- 10 Ways To Be A Better Friend
- 7 Silly Ways You Are Ruining Your Relationship
- Light Skinned Women: Let Go of the Guilt
- Should They Have Stayed? Flames Before The Fame and Fortune
Police Track Gangs Online
(The Star Ledger) — Keith Williams and Karim Sampson, a pair of Bloods gang members known to Trenton authorities, thought they had a snitch in their midst. So in April of 2008, authorities allege, they planned to kill him. ”If I had my wifey (gun), I’d get it done,” Sampson told Williams, according to court records. “But you’ve got (a gun), so it’s on you.” The men knew they had to hurry, court records show. Their victim — 20-year-old fellow Blood Arrel Bell — was planning a trip. ”He’s supposed to be going to New York for two weeks. I can’t risk him not coming back,” Sampson said. ”Then that (expletive) ain’t coming back,” Williams replied. “We’ve got 48 hours.” This conventional crime has a new age twist. Authorities didn’t use a wiretap to capture the conversation between Sampson and Williams, and they didn’t stitch it together from eyewitness accounts. The two gang members wrote it all down in a series of MySpace messages, according to court records, where they discussed the killing of another human being in between “LOL”s.
Ticket-Fixing Inquiry Grows Into Scandal on Police Leaks
(New York Times) — Early one morning last September, more than 50 members of the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau gathered in Lower Manhattan during a continuing investigation into widespread ticket-fixing by New York officers. They were briefed and divided into teams, and then they piled into cars and vans bound for all 12 precinct station houses in the Bronx and others around the city to seize copies of tens of thousands of summonses. But almost as soon as the Internal Affairs teams set out — and long before the first one arrived at its target station house — their plans were exposed by a betrayal that some investigators suggest is far more insidious than the ticket-fixing itself, according to a person with knowledge of the events of that day a year ago. A union official was captured on a wiretap telling a union colleague who was under scrutiny in the case that he had received a call from someone in the Internal Affairs Bureau, and that the caller had warned him that the investigators were on the way, the source said. The call came shortly after the teams headed out toward the precincts.
Atlanta Ups Camera Surveillance
(AJC) — Plans to put Atlanta’s public spaces under camera surveillance will move forward this week with the opening of a state-of-the-art video monitoring center. Whether it’s good that Atlanta is joining other big cities in the video surveillance race depends on your comfort level with being watched more often by police. The downtown “Video Integration Center,” funded by a mix of private donations and public money, has already given Atlanta police links to more than 100 public and private security cameras. Talks are underway to link up with more cameras at CNN Center, Georgia State University, the Georgia World Congress Center and MARTA, along with cameras in Buckhead.
Parole Board Swamped with Troy Davis Petitions
(AJC) — The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles on Thursday was given petitions with more than 663,000 names of people asking that Troy Anthony Davis be spared from being executed next Wednesday, saying there is too much doubt he killed a Savannah police officer in 1989. Davis’ supporters, led by Amnesty International and the Georgia chapter of the NAACP, appeared at the board’s offices and handed over 15 boxes filled with petitions, Amnesty Laura Moye said. The board, which will hear Davis’ clemency petition Monday, also was given letters signed by more than 1,500 legal professionals, more than 3,300 religious leaders, 26 death-row exonerees and 110 relatives of murder victims asking for Davis’ execution to be halted.
Exclusive: Activists Pursue Justice for Black Man Killed By Uncertified Georgia Cop
Melvin Williams
Last year, East Dublin, GA police officer Jeffrey Deal pulled into a driveway behind the parked car of one Melvin Williams. Deal’s police dashboard video shows no evidence of the traffic violation the officer claims Williams committed, nor anything like a pursuit. It does show the officer running to the drivers side of the parked car, and shouting just off camera. Williams backs into the picture, throwing punches at the officer. The officer backs out of camera range. Williams follows. A shot is heard. Williams falls, the top of his head coming to rest just inside the frame. Officer Deal is heard saying “I shot one.”
The local district attorney quickly ruled the killing justifiable. But emerging facts around the police killing of Williams, a young and unarmed black man, have called into question the police powers and legal status of hundreds of Georgia officers and could pave the way for legal challenges leading to thousands of their arrests.
Like most states, Georgia requires police officers to complete yearly trainings in the use of deadly force and other subjects to retain their police powers. An investigation by Rev. Kenneth Glasgow of TOPS, The Ordinary Peoples Society, on behalf of the victim’s family discovered that Officer Deal and most of his department, including Chief William Leutke had legally forfeited their police powers due to non-compliance with these laws.
“We kept after the local DA,” Glasgow told The Atlanta Post, “until he called in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. GBI confirmed that five of East Dublin’s 8 police officers, including its chief were out of compliance with state training requirements, some of them for all of 2010 and years at a time before that. Chief Leutke turned out to be a habitual offender, either violating or requesting waivers from the law five or six times since the 1980s.
“When officers are out of compliance the beginning of a calendar year, they lose their police powers,” Glasgow pointed out. “They ought to lose public confidence and trust as well. We take this very seriously.”
So did Georgia’s Peace Officer Standards Training Council (POST), the agency that enforces police training requirements. At a September 7 hearing, Chief Leutke offered a litany of excuses for himself and his officers. “We’re just an eight man department,” he testified under oath, “not even a secretary to help out…” Some of the paperwork certifying his and his subordinates’ coursework, he claimed, had been mailed on time, even if POST received it far too late. When an incredulous hearing officer asked if the chief was saying his stuff got lost in the mail, Leutke’s attorney doubled down on his client’s childish excuse.
“With the US Postal Service,” he offered, palms up, “anything is possible.”
Chicago to Publish Crime Stats Online
(AP) — Long a city with a reputation for withholding information, Chicago now wants to make public every crime over the past 10 years — a highly unusual move among the nation’s major police departments. Starting Wednesday, millions of crime statistics dating to 2001 will be posted online in a searchable database. It will be updated daily, providing fodder for residents to evaluate their own neighborhoods, academics to study crime and techie types to create websites or apps. The release is the latest attempt by the administration of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who took office in May, to make city dealings more open and counter Chicago’s reputation for entrenched systemic corruption and backroom deals. Chicago officials recently posted online the salaries of city employees, city contracts and lobbying data, with more information expected in coming months.
C.I.A. Examining Legality of Work With Police Dept.
(New York Times) — The Central Intelligence Agency has opened an internal inquiry into whether its close cooperation with the New York Police Department in the decade since the Sept. 11 attacks has broken any laws prohibiting the agency from collecting intelligence in the United States. During his first Congressional testimony as the C.I.A. director, David H. Petraeus said Tuesday that the agency’s inspector general had begun to investigate its work with the Police Department “to make sure we are doing the right thing.” Mr. Petraeus said the inquiry began last month, but gave few details about its scope.
Chicago Police Go on Record Warrant Blitz
(Chicago Tribune) — Traveling one behind the other on a gray early morning through the Far South Side, three unmarked squad cars pulled up quietly in front of a two-story apartment house — one of dozens of similar stops Chicago police Sgt. Sam Dickerson and his team of eight officers made last week. This time Dickerson and the other plainclothes cops, all from the gang-enforcement unit, were looking for a 21-year-old man wanted on a misdemeanor domestic battery charge from October 2010. When he answered the officers’ knocks on his front door, he was almost immediately placed in plastic flex-cuffs, and the team waited for a squadrol to take him to a nearby station. Although “warrant missions” are routine, this man was one of several hundred people targeted last week in a three-day roundup of fugitives never conducted on such a large scale by Chicago police, officials said.
Preparing for 2012, Chicago Police Create Counterterrorism Unit
(Chicago News Cooperative) – As the city prepares to host two international summits next year, and with the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks approaching, the Chicago Police Department is creating a counterterrorism unit, which will bolster security and incorporate lessons from academic research and from New York City’s counterterrorism tactics. The threat of terrorism is a real concern for Chicago officials, with world leaders expected at both the Group of Eight and NATO summits here next year. The city has been home to violent extremists and the target of terrorist plots: David C. Headley of Chicago helped to plan the deadly November 2008 attacks in Mumbai, and documents taken from Osama bin Laden’s compound in May included plans to attack the city.
