Charles Oliver
Dalton Daily Citizen
June 02, 2009 10:58 pm
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The International Brotherhood of Police Officers has asked the Atlanta Police Department to allow Sgt. Scott Kreher to return to work. Kreher was suspended after he said he wanted to beat Mayor Shirley Franklin over the head with a baseball bat because of a disagreement over how worker’s compensation claims are handled by the city.
The grass had grown to about a foot tall at a city park in Sandusky, Ohio, and John Hamilton grew tired of waiting for the city to mow it, so he took matters into his own hands and mowed it himself. The city didn’t appreciate his efforts. Police arrested him for disorderly conduct and obstructing official business.
Several weeks ago, I told you about a group of Philadelphia, Pa., narcotics detectives who were raiding immigrant-owned stores, supposedly to seize Ziploc bags, which they consider drug paraphernalia. The first thing they did in all of those raids was rip out the surveillance equipment, and store owners say that cash and other goods were missing after the raids. Later, the local newspaper looked at search warrant applications by those officers and found numerous violations of department policies. Then, the FBI announced it was investigating the officers. Now, several women have come forward independently and accused some of those officers of molesting them during drug investigations. The department’s internal affairs division says it is investigating those claims.
Israel Betancourt is a U.S. citizen, born in Texas in 1977. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps, is employed as an emergency medical technician and says he has voted in numerous elections. But when he tried to get a passport the State Department turned him down. Why? Betancourt was delivered by a midwife with a Hispanic last name. Some midwives have been convicted of forging birth certificates, so the State Department has told Betancourt, and many other people delivered by midwives, to provide voluminous other information — school records, medical records from their first five years, their mothers’ medical records — before they’ll issue a passport.
Smile and the world smiles with you, but you won’t get a driver’s license. The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles has become the latest state agency to ban people from smiling when their driver’s license photo is taken. State officials say it’s part of their effort to develop a facial recognition system that can compare people’s faces to their driver’s license photo to combat identity theft. They say smiling can confuse the software. You know, if the system can be defeated by the simple act of smiling, maybe they should wait a little bit before rolling it out.
In Arizona, the conservative Goldwater Institute has accused Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio of improperly reporting crime statistics to the FBI. They say the sheriff’s office has been burnishing its record by declaring cases closed even when they have made no arrest. The Institute reports that in 2008 just 18 percent of cases declared closed actually resulted in an arrest. The rest were “exceptionally cleared,” a category that is only supposed to be used when a suspect has been identified but is dead or cannot be extradited or apprehended. The sheriff’s office says the FBI reporting program is voluntary and not intended to mandate how they clear cases.
Gary Saunders was talking to his brother-in-law on a hands-free cell phone while driving when he was pulled over by a British police officer. The officer had apparently seen Saunders laughing at something his brother-in-law had said because he warned him that “laughing while driving a car can be an offense.” He questioned Saunders for half an hour before allowing him to move on.
Charles Oliver is a staff writer for The Daily Citizen.
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