LA County Sheriff's Department Hired Officers With Histories Of Misconduct

Despite background investigations that revealed wrongdoing, incompetence, or poor performance, the department still hired dozens of problem applicants in 2010, internal records show.
By Robert Faturechi and Ben Poston

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department hired dozens of officers even though background investigators found they had committed serious misconduct on or off duty, sheriff's files show.

The department made the hires in 2010 after taking over patrols of parks and government buildings from a little-known L.A. County police force. Officers from that agency were given first shot at new jobs with the Sheriff's Department. Investigators gave them lie detector tests and delved into their employment records and personal lives.

The Times reviewed the officers' internal hiring files, which also contained recorded interviews of the applicants by sheriff's investigators.

Ultimately, about 280 county officers were given jobs, including applicants who had accidentally fired their weapons, had sex at work and solicited prostitutes, the records show.

For nearly 100 hires, investigators discovered evidence of dishonesty, such as making untrue statements or falsifying police records. At least 15 were caught cheating on the department's own polygraph exams.

Twenty-nine of those given jobs had previously had been fired or pressured to resign from other law enforcement agencies over concerns about misconduct or workplace performance problems. Nearly 200 had been rejected from other agencies because of past misdeeds, failed entrance exams or other issues.

Several of those with past misconduct have been accused of wrongdoing since joining the department, including one deputy who was terminated after firing his service weapon during a dispute outside a fast-food restaurant.

David McDonald was hired despite admitting to sheriff's investigators he had a relationship with a 14-year-old girl whom he kissed and groped. He was 28 at the time.

"I was in love," he said in an interview with The Times. "I wasn't being a bad guy."

McDonald had been fired from the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department amid allegations he used excessive force on prisoners. A fellow deputy told a supervisor that he didn't want to work with McDonald because he harassed inmates.

L.A. County sheriff's officials made him a jail guard, a decision that surprised even McDonald.

"How can you put me back in the jails when I already had a problem there?" McDonald told the newspaper.

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DIY Law Enforcement in Cash-Strapped Oregon County

"They will not send an officer out, so we are on our own totally," says Sam Nichols, co-founder of Citizens Against Crime. CAC is a group of around 20 armed volunteers who have been conducting routine patrols in and around O'Brien, Oregon since last summer. CAC patrols "are always a minimum of two people," says Nichols, precisely because they want to avoid the kind of thing "that happened in Florida, the case where Zimmerman shot the boy."

Why are the citizens of O'Brien patrolling their own streets? Josephine County is a rural area in south western Oregon with serious budget problems. Back in 1916, the federal government bought up millions of acres of land that had been owned by the railroads. The move left 18 Oregon counties without a significant source of property tax revenue. To make up for the lost taxes, the feds began giving the Oregon counties a share of the timber revenues in 1937. The program worked until environmental regulations severely curtailed logging in Oregon. By 1998, timber revenues had dropped to just a third of what they were in 1989. Temporary federal timber subsidies filled the gap, but those subsidies were phased out last year.

This year, Josephine County slashed its public safety budget from $20 million to less than $9 million. As a result, the county was forced to release 39 prisoners, including people charged with assault, burglary and rape. Only three sheriffs patrol Josephine County, an area larger than Rhode Island, and those sheriffs only respond to life-threatening calls.

The self-reliant folks who live in Josephine County aren't likely to raise their own taxes any time soon, but lots of citizens are willing to do their part to deter criminal activity. Sam Nichols and the other members of Citizens Against Crime strap on guns, turn on flashing lights mounted on their vehicles and keep an eye out for suspicious activity. Former deputy sheriff Carol Dickson maintains a Facebook page called To Catch a Thief as a kind of virtual neighborhood watch program. The page currently has more than 1600 followers.

"Some people are taking the law into their own hands, which obviously scares the heck out of me," says Josephine County Sheriff Gil Gilbertson. But because of the severity of Josephine County's budget problems, Gilbertson isn't complaining too loudly. As he puts it, "law enforcement in this community is weak at best."

Approximately 6.5 minutes.

Produced by Paul Feine and Alex Manning.

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This is how law enforcement should be run by volunteer citizens not by donut coffee chugging police who rip off the taxpayer when you see their salary. so if a citizen takes the law into their own hands it scares the hell out of him.but cops doing the same?

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Gary Raney: The Slave-Catching Sheriff of Ada County, Idaho

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If Idaho had been part of the Union in 1850, and Ada County Sheriff Gary Raney had occupied that office at the time, he would have dutifully arrested any black man or woman identified as an escaped slave. Oh, sure, Raney may have expressed agonized reluctance as he did so -- but that reluctance would have been rhetorical window-dressing for his pious invocation of the sacred responsibility he had to submit to the "law of the land."

This is the inescapable logic of the position Raney has taken in an op-ed column published this morning in the Idaho Statesman.

"I have been asked many times in the past couple of weeks whether I will uphold my oath to defend the Constitution and proclaim an intolerance of federal action against the Second Amendment," Raney writes. Many others have indulged that pressure and now we see Oregon sheriffs, Wyoming legislators and others making hollow promises to protect you from the intrusions of the federal government."

"I did not swear to uphold just part of the Constitution," Raney continues, before tacitly promising to do that very thing. You see, the Constitution, on Raney's construction, "includes the right to keep and bear arms, but it also includes the `supremacy clause' that says that every state shall abide by the laws passed by our Congress."

Actually, that right is not included in the Constitution; it exists independent of that document or any other government charter, and no government has the moral right or delegated authority to take it away. What Raney asserts here is the idea that the existence of that right is contingent on government approval, and thus can be nullified by government. From this perspective, the only part of the Constitution that matters is the supremacy clause, at least as people like Raney pretend to understand it.

"So, despite the fact that I personally oppose some of the gun control measures currently under consideration, my oath requires me to uphold the laws that are passed by our federal and state representatives," summarizes Raney. The same would have been true, of course, of the Fugitive Slave Act -- which was properly enacted and enforced as the "law of the land" despite the heroic efforts of people in some cities and states to nullify enforcement of that abominable measure.

Give Raney whatever credit is due to him for his candor: Like the other sheriffs who have pledged not to carry out unconstitutional federal gun confiscation measures, Raney receives federal subsidies -- but unlike his pro-Second Amendment colleagues, Raney is forthright about the fact that he is merely a servile tool of the federal leviathan state. He will confiscate firearms from innocent people if ordered to, but at least he won't have to walk back any promises he had made to protect their rights.

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he Sheriff is either lying or ignorant. The ?supremacy clause? he refers to does NOT stipulate that federal law trumps state law. In fact, it means quite the opposite. The Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Section 2) stipulates the following:

the U.S. Constitution-not the federal government-is supreme; that the U.S. Constitution and all laws made in harmony with it ?shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby??.

TRANSLATE: every State not only MUST obey the U.S. Constitution but also enforce it against any federal conspirator in Congress, who by defrauding those that he pretends to represent, also violates it.

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall NOT be infringed."
~2nd Amendment

In other words, it's illegal to pass a law that restricts gun ownership. That is what the "shall not be infringed" part means. Congress MUST pass an amendment that revokes the Second Amendment in order to restrict ANY guns. They CANNOT muster the support for such an amendment. Therefore, they are attempting to do what is illegal, passing laws which infringe on the right to bear arms.
Fact is, the CCW laws are illegal.
The laws which restrict convicted felons from possessing guns are illegal.
The laws which restrict persons convicted of domestic violence from possessing guns are illegal.

ALL of these laws ARE ILLEGAL.

Get it?

It is the Sheriff that is breaking the law. Not We the People.

Sheriff Raney is a disgrace to the founders and the citizens of Ada County.

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2013/01/25/2425376/i-uphold-all-of-the-constitution.html#storylink=cpy

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Mesa County Police Have Been Using Drones For Years, Still Coming Up With Rules On Use

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The march towards drones becoming a common tool for domestic law enforcement agencies seems inevitable and some people aren't happy about it. We've already covered the backlash against one artist who satarized New York City's drone program. San Diego, for their part, valiantly refused to honor an FOIA request on their domestic UAV program because they determined on their own that there wouldn't be a public benefit to the disclosure. MuckRock thought that was a dodge not afforded San Diego under FOIA rules, but San Diego again declined to say anything at all about the program.

"Sorry, citizen, but Detective Iron Death-Spy is very, very shy."

Image source: CC BY 2.0

But one thing that has generally been accepted is that law enforcement agencies were required to operate these drones under very strict guidelines and within very strict geographic boundaries. It would appear, for Mesa County, Colorado at least, that may not be universally true. The EFF's Drone Census project has uncovered that Mesa County has two UAVs and can operate them without many of the restrictions in place elsewhere.

The MCSO must abide by standard FAA restrictions on domestic UAV flights, which cap flights to below 400 feet and preclude night flights or operating over "populated areas, heavily trafficked roads, or an open-air assembly of people." But MCSO's drone authorization includes no geographic restrictions: effectively, the agency can fly its UAVs anywhere in Mesa County. This freedom has allowed the agency to log dozens of operational missions since fall 2010. MCSO flight logs indicate that its UAV team has logged more than 160 flight hours on its drones since January 2011.

So, whereas other UAV programs are restricted to flying over areas where they could chiefly assist in locating missing people in difficult to surveil areas, Mesa County can fly them anywhere within their jurisdiction without any limitations beyond the somewhat vague-sounding "populated areas, heavily trafficked roads" or the open air above a large assembly of people. That can leave a great deal of sky to buzz around with less of the oversight I think is desperately needed in programs like this.

Now, just to be clear, these drones do not carry arms. They are used for imaging. Then again, as the creep continues, the rules keep shifting towards greater use and application, so it wouldn't be fair to slam anyone concerned that someday we may indeed see armed UAVs over our skies. Equally worrying is this:

MCSO has been using drones operationally for two years, but the department has no written drone policy outlining the uses for which its officers may deploy UAVs. Ms. Barnes writes that MCSO is "currently in the process of drafting a written policy for the use of our unmanned aircraft."

Well, that's just peaches. Military-style technology deployed domestically without any official policy for its use. I feel so warm and fuzzy inside.

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and the government can,t understand why such a large potion of the population is pissed at them.

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Fatal Police Shootings Up 70 Percent in Los Angeles County

by Tim Lynch

From the Associated Press:

The number of suspects killed by police in Los Angeles County has risen nearly 70 percent in 2011 over the previous year.

The Los Angeles Times reports Sunday that 54 people were killed by law enforcement in 2011 countywide. In about two-thirds of the cases, the person was armed with a gun, knife or other weapon. In 12 cases, the person was unarmed.

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck says the majority of shootings are legitimate responses to serious threats. He says police have become more adept at responding quickly to violent situations.Fatal police shootings this year, however, have fallen back to 2010 levels.

The increase in police killings come at a time when murder rates have fallen to historic lows ? 612 homicides were recorded countywide last year.

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the 12 just ran up againest your typical brainwashed,myopic,pigs!It,s cheaper to pay for a dead person than a live one is how they are trained.

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"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened..." - Winston Churchill

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Pima County Attorney sides with SWAT in fatal raid

TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) - The Pima County Attorney's Office has cleared the SWAT team of any wrongdoing in their use of deadly force against Jose Guerena. The 26-year-old former Marine was shot and killed May 5 while Pima Co. Sheriff's SWAT was serving a search warrant on his home.

A report by the Attorney's Office sided with the SWAT team, saying when they opened fire on Jose Guerena, they weren't breaking the law. SWAT's attorney Mike Storie told KGUN9 News he wasn't worried about any criminal charges being filed.

"This is no surprise to me. I fully expected this, it's the correct result," Storie said.

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I am a law abiding citizen. I vote conservative every time I have that choice. I support our soldiers and police in almost all they do. This, however, is criminal and we need more controls on these Swat teams and those that command them. If you are a hammer then everybody looks like a nail to you. These men should never be used to serve warrants except in the most dire circumstances. If justice was really to be served these men would do hard time along with whoever authorized this travesty. I would also fire all those who exonerated these men. I am sick and tired of what are supposed to be public servants covering up for each other to the detriment of the citizens they should be protecting and serving. Something needs to be done quickly or you boys are going to lose the support of the people. I think you have already lost their trust.

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"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened..." - Winston Churchill

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