March 10, 2016 

By Jim Salter 

Associated Press 

 

Ferguson city leaders could end a potentially costly lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice as early as this month, now that the federal agency has assured them its plan to overhaul the city’s embattled police and court system won’t create an unmanageable financial burden, the mayor said Monday.

 

City council members were concerned Ferguson might go bankrupt trying to implement changes outlined in the agreement, which stemmed from a scathing DOJ review of city operations that included allegations of routine civil rights violations against black residents. The investigation came after the fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, whose death helped spark the Black Lives Matter movement.

 

In a letter to city leaders dated Friday, Vanita Gupta, head of Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, clarified financial details of the plan — including that the city wouldn’t be required to provide pay raises to its police officers, a provision that could have cost nearly $1 million. Gupta also said Ferguson could avoid litigation by signing the original agreement and notes the possibility of technical assistance and grant money for Ferguson.

 

“We feel like we're going to be in that cost range that we can afford,” Mayor James Knowles III said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We now have in writing from the DOJ that they will take very seriously these cost issues with us.”

 

Knowles said the City Council will meet Tuesday to tentatively approve the agreement. A final vote is expected March 22. The DOJ declined to comment Monday.

 

The Ferguson City Council rejected the agreement after a city analysis indicated the cost could reach nearly $4 million in the first year alone. Instead, the council approved an amended agreement that included seven provisions aimed mostly at keeping costs in check. Attorney General Loretta Lynch filed suit a day later, saying the vote amounted to a rejection of a settlement that had been negotiated for months with a team from Ferguson.

 

The agency began investigating Ferguson amid the fallout after Brown, who was black and unarmed, was fatally shot by a white Ferguson police officer in August 2014. The officer, Darren Wilson, was cleared of wrongdoing and resigned in November 2014. The Justice Department issued its report four months later, and within days the city’s police chief, municipal judge and city manager had resigned.

 

In her letter, Gupta noted that “it is not uncommon for financial or staffing challenges to arise” when implementing such DOJ agreements.

 

“Provided those challenges are genuine, approached in good faith, and not pretexts for non-compliance, we are committed to working with jurisdictions to overcome those challenges,” she wrote.

 

Knowles said the letter serves as a legal document that Ferguson could take to a judge if costs of the agreement cause financial hardship.

 

Even without mandatory police pay raises, the agreement doesn't come cheap. Ferguson must provide additional training for police, hire a monitor to oversee improvements, and incur other costs.

 

“We feel moving forward that we’re in a strong position to be successful in this consent decree,” Knowles said. “So we’re excited to be able to put this to bed and move past it, and continue to work with our residents, our law enforcement and others to really build the premiere policing agency in St. Louis (County).”

Category: News

March 10, 2016 

Staff and Wire Report 

Last week, California Attorney General Kamala Harris launched a criminal investigation into the sheriff’s department for the death of Mitrice Richardson, whose body was found 11 months after being released from an L.A. County jail in 2010. The decision came three months after Harris initially decided no such investigation was necessary. Representatives from the AG’s office declined to give a reason for the change.

 

“We cannot comment further on the specifics of this review, as it is ongoing,” a spokesperson told the Daily News via an emailed response to their inquiry.

 

Richardson disappeared in 2009, after L.A. County Sheriffs released her from custody in the wee hours of the morning on September 17. She had been dining at a restaurant in Malibu when staff there noticed she was acting erratically. Law enforcement was called after she refused to pay her bill.

 

She was arrested on “suspicion of not paying for the meal” and possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, according to police reports at the time.

 

At the time of her detainment, her belongings including her phone, purse and money were inside of her car, which had been towed. The sheriffs detained her for a number of hours but eventually determined she was okay to be released. However, her mother, who had been contacted at the time, told the sheriffs that Richardson was suffering from a severe bipolar episode and asked if they could detain her until she was able to pick her up from the jail.

 

They initially agreed. However, the sheriffs later reported that Richardson refused and they had to let her go because she was an adult. She was released without money, identification or a cell phone.

 

The 24-year-old’s remains were found August 10, 2010 near Malibu Canyon. Detectives at the scene reportedly had removed the mummified body before forensics experts could perform an examination, against the coroner’s orders. Then L.A. County Sheriff, Lee Baca defended his team, saying that he believed they handled the case within the parameters of standard procedure. Both her parents filed wrongful death lawsuits against the department in 2011 and were awarded $450,000 each.

 

Recently, Baca and the department came under fire for engaging in various corrupt practices. Baca pleaded guilty to probing corruption and civil rights abuses. Department officials said they are fully cooperating with the investigation. 

Category: News

March 03, 2016 

By LARRY O'DELL 

Associated Press 

 

A hospital orderly pleaded guilty Wednesday to abducting and killing two Virginia college students, wrapping up a mystery that began in 2009 when one of the women disappeared from a Metallica concert. The other young woman, 18-year-old Hannah Graham, vanished five years later under similar circumstances, after a night of partying with friends.

 

Along the way, investigators solved a 2005 rape case and used DNA evidence to tie all three cases to Jesse LeRoy Matthew Jr.

 

In a plea deal, prosecutors dropped a capital murder charge that could have resulted in the death penalty and Matthew agreed to a sentence of four consecutive life terms. Those are in addition to the three life terms he was already serving for the rape.

 

A statements of facts filed with Matthew's plea agreement said autopsies determined that Graham had a broken nose and likely died of suffocation or strangulation, while 20-year-old Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington suffered a broken arm, broken ribs and a skull fracture.

 

"We cannot comprehend the selfish and inhumane action that took place that evening and we anguish over the suffering Morgan experienced that night," Morgan's father, Daniel Harrington, said in court.

 

Matthew, 34, looked directly at family members during the hearing but showed no emotion — casting his eyes downward whenever the victims' families referenced the brutality.

 

Graham's mother, Susan Graham, described her daughter as "the most optimistic person we know" and said she misses her daughter's smile, her quick wit and snuggling up with her on the couch with a cup of tea and a favorite DVD.

 

She was a straight-A student bound to accomplish great things. And she did — just not in the way people expected. Hannah enabled police to capture a predator who had been "hiding in plain sight in Charlottesville for years," her mother said.

 

"She is a heroine," Susan Graham said.

 

Matthew, given a chance to speak in court, asked his attorney to speak for him. Douglas Ramseur said his client wanted to convey that "he is very sorry for what happened and he loves his family very much."

 

After the hearing, the Matthew family broke its year-and-a-half of silence, sending Matthew's uncle, the Rev. Louie Carr, to the microphone at a press conference. Carr expressed the family's sorrow for the victims' families and said "it's hard to understand how a gentle soul" could commit such crimes.

 

Graham and Morgan were young women in vulnerable straits when they vanished in Charlottesville five years apart, and their disappearances stoked fears about sexual assaults and campus safety at a time of rising national scrutiny.

 

Harrington had been drinking alcohol from a flask when she stepped out of the Metallica concert and could not get back in. According to the statement of facts, witnesses would have testified at trial that they saw Harrington thumbing for a ride near where a cab driver matching Matthew's description was working that night. Matthew worked as a cab driver before becoming an orderly at the University of Virginia hospital.

 

Harrington's black T-shirt, with the name of the rock band Pantera on it, was discovered, and DNA from it would prove crucial to connecting the cases.

 

In September 2009, Graham had dinner with friends and attended parties off campus before deciding to walk home alone. She was captured on surveillance video walking unsteadily. She texted a friend that she was lost.

 

Additional video showed Graham crossing Charlottesville's downtown pedestrian mall, then leaving a restaurant with Matthew, his arm wrapped around her. According to the statement of facts, witnesses would have testified that Matthew repeatedly made unwanted advances toward women while bar-hopping the night of Graham's disappearance.

 

Matthew grabbed one woman's bare foot over her objections after she took off her boots because her feet were hurting, the statement says, adding that she would have testified that Matthew told her: "A woman who takes care of her feet takes care of everything else."

 

Graham's disappearance prompted a massive search and gripped the Charlottesville campus in fear, prompting female students to walk with friends or a group at night.

 

Graham's body was found five weeks later on abandoned property in Albemarle County, about 12 miles from the Charlottesville campus and 6 miles from where Harrington's remains had been found years earlier.

 

After police named Matthew a person of interest, he fled to a beach in Texas. Police found a map indicating he was headed for Mexico.

 

Matthew was charged in Graham's disappearance and his cheek was swabbed for a DNA sample. That sample connected Matthew to the 2005 rape, which in turn linked him to Harrington through the DNA found on her black T-shirt, authorities have said.

 

Matthew was also accused of raping students in 2002 and 2003 at Liberty University and Christopher Newport University, where he had played football. But those cases were dropped when the women declined to press charges.

Category: News

March 03, 2016 

Staff and Wire Report 

 

“I’m incredibly honored to have the endorsement of the California Democratic Party in the U.S. Senate race, and I’m so proud of the support our campaign has received from every corner of our state,” said California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who overwhelmingly won the California Democratic Party’s endorsement this past weekend at the California Democratic Convention. Harris is the first statewide candidate in a competitive primary to win the party’s endorsement since 2010. She earned 78 percent of the vote, well over the 60 percent threshold needed to win the party’s endorsement.

 

“We know there is more that unites us than divides us,” she said, “and I’m grateful to the Californians who joined together to send that message this weekend.”

 

Throughout the three day convention, Harris met with delegates in the hallways of the San Jose Convention Center and in caucus meetings, speaking about topics ranging from labor to education to the environment and women’s issues. During the African American caucus, she was presented with the Good Works Award for her service to California as Attorney General.

 

On Saturday, she spoke to over 3,000 enthusiastic Convention attendees, many who waved Kamala Harris for Senate signs. During her speech she talked about the “Politics of Poison” that have permeated the race for the Republican nomination, and called on Democrats to stand together and accept the challenge President Obama reminded us of: the challenge to be a more perfect union.

 

Harris became the 32nd Attorney General of California in 2011. Before that, she served in Alameda County, California as deputy district attorney for eight years, beginning in 1990. In 1998, upon finishing her term as D.A., Harris took the lead as managing attorney for the Career Criminal Unit in San Francisco’s D.A. office.

 

Harris was born in Oakland, raised by a doctor mother and economics professor dad. Her parents split up when she was young, leaving her and her sister primarily in the care of their mother.

 

“My parents were both graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley,” Harris recalled via a written bio on her campaign website.

 

“I grew up with a stroller’s-eye view of the civil rights movement, and often I joke that as a child I was surrounded by adults marching and shouting for this thing called justice. My younger sister, Maya, and I grew up around adults who were committed to service and community involvement…”

 

Harris credits civil rights era attorneys like Thurgood Marshall and Charles Hamilton Houston as her inspiration. Their work, she said, was an example of how to fight effectively “for the voiceless and for justice”.

 

As a Northern California attorney, Harris set out to take a different approach toward crime. She repeatedly “challenged the false choice that we must either be “soft” or “tough” on crime, and set forth a new vision for public safety that focuses on prevention, combating recidivism, and addressing the root causes of crime, rather than just treating its symptoms,” she wrote.

 

“This endorsement is a big milestone on a very long road to the general election in November,” she said during her convention speech.

 

“I look forward to visiting more communities across the state to speak with Californians about how we can work together to repair the ladder of opportunity that is broken for far too many families.

 

“We need to ensure that every child receives a high quality education; every student attends college without being intimidated by the cost; and every Californian finds work that allows them to make ends meet.

 

“In addition to these issues, I’ve also prioritized reforming our broken criminal justice system, increasing transparency between law enforcement and communities by making data available to the public, and passing comprehensive immigration reform.”

 

Said fellow Democrat, Super­visor Mark Ridley Thomas, “The overwhelming endorsement of Kamala Harris by fellow democrats is further evidence that the state Attorney General is prepared to lead and best represent Californians in the U.S. Senate.”

 

“Fabulous news — even though, given her credentials, I’m not surprised,” said Sentinel Publisher Danny Bakewell Sr.

 

“We as a community need to make sure that she is elected to serve in the United States Senate.  She is the best we have and she deserves to serve and represent us.”

 

Added State Senator Isadore Hall, “I’m proud to endorse Attorney General Kamala Harris for United States Senate. She’s a fearless, tenacious and driven leader who will be a real force on behalf of all Californians in the U.S. Senate. As Chairman of the California Legislative Black Caucus, I was pleased to be one of the key delegates to support Attorney General Harris for the California Democratic Party's endorsement at this weekend's state convention. I know she’ll make the California Democratic Party, grassroots activists, and all Californian’s proud as our next Senator.”

 

“Kamala Harris is a proven champion for California’s families and is known for delivering the results our communities so desperately need,” said Los Angeles City Council President Herb J. Wesson, Jr. “Harris’ leadership and tenacity are the exact qualities the Golden State needs in a Congressional representative…”

Category: News

Page 380 of 1617