Thursday, July 26, 2012

BBC News - US justice department faulted for nepotism

BBC News - US justice department faulted for nepotism

US justice department faulted for nepotism

Logo of the US Justice Department The department has previously faced scrutiny for a botched gun-tracking operation

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Eight high-ranking employees of the US justice department improperly sought to hire relatives, an inquiry has found.
Seven of the employees violated federal law restricting employment of relatives and the eighth broke a federal ethics standard, the report found.
The department's inspector general found two directors in the management division hired each other's children.
It is the third time in eight years that the department has been cited for improper hiring practices.
The investigation began after a former justice department employee brought allegations to a congressman in 2010.
'Multiple false statements' According to the report, the inspector general's office found that human resources assistant director Pamela Cabell-Edelen had tried to get her daughter hired to various positions, including changing a vacancy announcement to improve her chances.
Her daughter was hired as secretary to facilities director Edward Hamilton in November 2009.
The report also charges that Ms Cabell-Edelen, who retired from the department last year, made "multiple false statements" to investigators.
Shortly after, Mr Hamilton began advocating for his son's hiring to a position within the division.
The investigation found two other justice management division employees improperly advocated for the hire of each other's family members.
Several others also discussed hiring family members.
Human resources director Rodney Markham was found "negligent in his duty to exercise effective oversight", especially given the two prior investigations into hiring practices.
Mr Markham was also faulted for improperly trying to get jobs for his cousin and nephew.

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Wednesday, July 25, 2012

MLB Notebook: Dunn on path to join elite company | MLB.com: News

MLB Notebook: Dunn on path to join elite company | MLB.com: News

I love Adam Dunn and Alex Rios and Jake Peavy.  They all took a beating last year from the sports writers, the fans just about everyone who thought they were washed up.  Look at them now, leading the White Sox to the divisional lead.  Does that translate to a Pennant in Chicago, maybe not because their pitching is suspect.  But for the big three, congratulations you deserve it.

Mother of 3 becomes second fatality in deadly park shooting - chicagotribune.com

Mother of 3 becomes second fatality in deadly park shooting - chicagotribune.com

Mother of 3 becomes second fatality in deadly park shooting

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Merrill Park
Merrill Park in the 2100 block of East 96th Place on Tuesday, July 24, 2012. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune / July 25, 2012)
A mother of three young children became the second person to die from a gang-related shooting at a Southeast Side park that also left a 17-year-old boy dead, authorities said this morning.
The woman, Janeen Hancock, 34, was pronounced dead at ohn H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County at 7:35 p.m. Tuesday, nearly an entire day after two males sprayed gunfire across Merrill Park near 96th Place and Merrill Avenue in the Jeffery Manor neighborhood on the Southeast Side.
Hancock, Alixi Johnson, 17, and two others were enjoying the warm, humid night in the small neighborhood park at about 10:18 p.m. when at least two gunmen exited a gangway and fired dozens of rounds, striking all four people, Chicago police said.
Police recovered more than 50 spent bullet casings that were a mix of handgun and rifle rounds, authorities said.
Hancock, who was with her aunt in the park, was shot in the abdomen and thigh. She was still talking and didn't appear to be seriously hurt at first, her brother, John Hancock, told the Tribune on Tuesday.
By the time she reached the hospital, however, her condition had nose-dived and she was placed on life support, her brother said. At the time, relatives decided not to share Hancock's condition with her three children, all under the age of 10, said Hancock, 25.
Johnson, who was struck in the chest, was rushed to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where he was pronounced dead, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.
Law enforcement sources said that at least two factions of the Gangster Disciples street gang have been feuding in the area recently.
John Hancock cursed the people who shot into the crowd, which he said was made up mostly of women.
"The gangs said if we're up here, anyone could die," Hancock said. "That's how they feel."
An autopsy for Hancock is scheduled for this morning, a medical examiner's spokeswoman said.

c.r.e.a.m. ( The three MOST honest minutes in television...)

c.r.e.a.m. ( The three MOST honest minutes in television...)

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Holder announces New Orleans police reforms | Fox News

Holder announces New Orleans police reforms | Fox News

Holder announces New Orleans police reforms

A court-supervised agreement Tuesday to overhaul the New Orleans Police Department will require the troubled agency to implement the most sweeping police reforms ever negotiated by the Justice Department.
Attorney General Eric Holder joined Mayor Mitch Landrieu in announcing the signing of a federal consent decree designed to clean up a police force that has been plagued by decades of corruption and mismanagement. The department came under renewed scrutiny following a string of police shootings in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The 124-page agreement spells out a series of strict requirements for overhauling the police department's policies and procedures for use of force, training, interrogations, searches and arrests, recruitment and supervision.
Holder said the agreement is the most wide-ranging in the Justice Department's history and resolves its allegations that New Orleans police officers have engaged in a pattern of discriminatory and unconstitutional activity.
"There can be no question that today's action represents a critical step forward," Holder said. "It reaffirms the Justice Department's commitment to fair and vigorous law enforcement at every level."
Landrieu estimates the city will pay roughly $11 million annually for the next four or five years to implement the reforms. He expressed confidence that the agreement will produce "the new NOPD."
"There is no problem here that cannot be solved," he said. "We can and we must change, and we now have a clear roadmap forward."
A federal judge must approve the agreement and oversee its implementation. Among its provisions:
-- All officers will be required to receive at least 24 hours of training on stops, searches and arrests; 40 hours of use-of-force training; and four hours of training on bias-free policing within a year of the agreement taking effect.
-- All interrogations involving suspected homicides or sexual assaults will have to be recorded in their entirety on video. The department also will be required to install video cameras and location devices in all patrol cars and other vehicles within two years.
-- The department will be required to completely restructure the system for paying officers for off-duty security details, develop a new report format for collecting data on all stops and searches and create a recruitment program to increase diversity among its officers.
-- The city and Justice Department will pick a court-supervised monitor to regularly assess and report on the police department's implementation of the requirements.
-- The city and police department can ask a judge to dissolve the agreement after four years, but only if they can show they have fully complied with its requirements for two years.
The Justice Department has reached similar agreements with police departments in Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Oakland and Detroit. But the scope of the New Orleans consent decree is billed as the broadest of its kind and includes requirements that no other department has had to implement.
For instance, the agreement requires officers to respect that bystanders have a constitutional right to observe and record their conduct in public places. Its "bias-free policing" provisions, which call for creating a policy to guide officers' interactions with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender residents, also are believed to be unprecedented for a police department's consent decree.
Holder said Landrieu and Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas didn't wait for the agreement to be signed before instituting reforms.
"The problems that we have identified were many years in the making and preceded this current administration," Holder said. "They are wide-ranging and they are deeply-rooted. Sustainable reform will not occur overnight, but we can all be encouraged that it is already happening here thanks to the leadership of Mayor Landrieu, Chief Serpas and so many others."
Tuesday's announcement comes on the eve of President Barack Obama's visit to New Orleans. Obama is scheduled to deliver a speech at the National Urban League's annual conference on Wednesday.
Last year, the Justice Department issued a scathing report that said New Orleans police officers have often used deadly force without justification, repeatedly made unconstitutional arrests and engaged in racial profiling. The report also found that the department has long failed to adequately protect New Orleans residents because of numerous shortcomings, including inadequate supervision.
At the time, Landrieu said many of the problems identified by the report were exposed by Katrina but existed for years before the storm smashed levees and plunged the city into chaos.
Rafael Goyeneche, head of an independent police watchdog group in New Orleans, said previous efforts to reform the department lacked the teeth and the strong federal oversight of a consent decree. The city will have to spend millions of dollars to implement the reforms, paying for training, equipment and oversight costs, Goyeneche said.
"This is going to be a living document that will shape the future of not just the New Orleans Police Department but of the entire criminal justice system, probably for the next eight to 10 years," he said. "This is not going to be an inexpensive item for the city to absorb."
The Justice Department's civil rights division also launched a series of criminal probes focusing on police officers' actions during Katrina's aftermath.
The investigations resulted in charges against 20 officers, including five who were convicted last year of civil rights violations stemming from deadly shootings of unarmed residents on a New Orleans bridge less than a week after the 2005 storm's landfall.
The officers convicted in the Danziger Bridge shootings were sentenced to prison terms of up to 65 years. Five others pleaded guilty to engaging in a cover-up plot that included a planted gun, phony witnesses and fabricated reports.
Goyeneche, president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, said prior reform efforts merely "drove some of the problems underground for a period of time."
"It didn't really remove them. It didn't change the systemic culture of the police department," Goyeneche said.
Mary Howell, a New Orleans attorney who has frequently represented victims of police abuse, cautioned that the consent decree will not be a permanent solution to the department's longstanding problems.
"Consent decrees have lives of their own, too, and they end at a certain point," she said. "Everything we do now needs to be geared towards the day when we no longer have that direct federal oversight."
Keith Twitchell, the head of the Committee for a Better New Orleans, a community organization, said the consent decree was long overdue but won't necessarily result in a reduction in crime.
"Crime is just a symptom. We still have to find the cause," he said. He said improving schools and the economy must be priorities in the city's efforts to combat crime.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/07/24/holder-announces-new-orleans-police-reforms/#ixzz21aGnSHaJ

Monday, July 23, 2012

Songs I Love / He's Always Been Faithful Sara Groves

Songs I Love / He's Always Been Faithful Sara Groves

Sara Groves Invisible Empires EPK | Truli

Sara Groves Invisible Empires EPK | Truli

A video interview with Sara Groves talking about her song writing, her career, and her family.  I am privileged to have had the ocassion to share my testimony as it applies to her grandparents and great grandmother on stage in Milwaukee and Springfield, MO.