Penny Dean and Your Rights

Leo Lech owns a property parcel at 4219 South Alton Street in Greenwood Village, a sleepy suburban enclave tucked between Denver's bustling Tech Center and the scenic reservoir of Cherry Creek State Park. His quarter-acre plot rests near the end of a quaint cul-de-sac that fits every idyllic American stereotype: two-car garages, well-manicured lawns, the stars and stripes waving in front of each home.

While most houses on this block were built in the 1970s, Lech's is brand new: It received a certificate of occupancy in August after two years of construction.

The Los Angeles Police Department's response to demands that its officers' body camera footage be available to the media and the public has been simple and firm: No.

A news report from CBS' local affiliate showing what appears to be LAPD officers planting drug evidence during an arrest may challenge how long the department may be able to maintain that policy.

Twisted incentives? What are those?
Rod Rosenstein doesn't seem to have heard of them.

The Department of Justice has brought out the big guns to defend the largely indefensible law enforcement tool of civil asset forfeiture. In a remarkably deceptive Wall Street Journal piece, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein tries to use the Bernie Madoff fraud case to argue that civil asset forfeiture is an important tool to return stolen money to the victims of a crime:

The New York attorney general's first prosecution of a police officer for a fatal shooting ended yesterday with an acquittal.

While he was driving home from his shift one day last year, Officer Wayne Isaacs of the New York Police Department (NYPD) shot and killed the unarmed Delrawn Small in a road rage incident. According to a passenger in Small's car, Small believed Isaacs had cut him off and exited his car at a stop light to confront him. Video eventually revealed that Isaacs shot Small as soon as he walked up to Isaacs' car window. That contradicted what New York police said they initially believed, based largely on Isaacs' own statement: that Small had reached in through the window to punch Isaacs.

Police insisted the video did not provide a complete picture of what happened, but Isaacs was placed on "modified duty"—that is, his gun and badge were taken from him but he still got paid—when the video surfaced a week after the incident. Once he was officially indicted for murder and manslaughter last September, he was suspended with pay.

When a friend says, “I’ll hit you up later dog,” he is stating that he will call again sometime. He is not calling the person a “later dog.”

But that’s not how the courts in Louisiana see it. And when a suspect in an interrogation told detectives to “just give me a lawyer dog,” the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that the suspect was, in fact, asking for a “lawyer dog,” and not invoking his constitutional right to counsel. It’s not clear how many lawyer dogs there are in Louisiana, and whether any would have been available to represent the human suspect in this case, other than to give the standard admonition in such circumstances to simply stop talking.

The ruling by Louisiana’s high court could have serious implications for a suspect charged with raping a juvenile, because it will allow his subsequent incriminating statements into evidence at his trial, which is pending. And it clarified that requesting a canine attorney need not cause the police to stop questioning someone.

Two medical professionals said police swarmed their car Sunday night, handcuffed the newlyweds and pulled guns on their children before determining the family lived in the house a neighbor thought was being robbed.

“I totally think they racially profiled me,” said the father, Kelvin Fairley, a registered nurse who happens to be black. “They never would even tell me why they stopped me. From the moment they pulled us over, there were six to seven police cars. They immediately had their guns drawn.”

The shocking scale of knife crime in London was revealed today as new figures showed three people were killed or seriously injured in stabbings on the streets of the capital each day in 2016.

The Met statistics showed 60 people were stabbed to death last year, while 1,159 sustained serious injuries.

Imagine you’re up watching our late night news when you hear your back door rattling, then see a red laser pointed on your chest. One Portsmouth man claims that happened to him.

Brandon Watson said he was protecting his family when his wife heard noises in the back yard on January 3, 2013: “She said, ‘oh my gosh, someone is in the backyard.'” The noises got closer and then she heard the clicking of the backdoor handle.”

New York City cops claim they can't tell anyone how much cash they have seized from people under civil asset forfeiture laws – because its database is not up to snuff.

The US city's police department is being sued for snubbing a Freedom of Information request from the Bronx Defenders advocacy group, which had asked for figures on dosh seized by officers. America's asset forfeiture laws are highly controversial: cops can snatch goods, cash and gift cards simply on the suspicion the gear may be associated with crime.

Sensitive documents leaked after a data exposure at an upstate New York airport have revealed several major security lapses in recent years.

Dozens of files seen by ZDNet list a catalog of security failings over the past few years at Stewart International Airport, about 60 miles north of Manhattan, which serves hundreds of thousands of passengers each year, including high-profile guests and private charter flights.

The cache build up a unique picture of insider threats, breaches, and lapses that acknowledge the difficulty in keeping airside security to a high standard, even at smaller airports.