by Kevin Bliss
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has dismissed about 45,000 charges in more than 30,000 drug cases prosecuted in the state due to misconduct by chemists Sonja Farak of Amherst drug lab and Annie Dookhan of Hinton drug lab.
Both were found to be falsifying records. Farak was also ...
by Kevin Bliss
The widespread use of social media to conduct unregulated, warrantless, long-term surveillance of individuals has become prevalent among the nation’s police departments. Officers have created Facebook accounts with false identities to follow targeted individuals without consideration for any clear investigative outcome.
Civil liberties groups question department policies ...
by Kevin Bliss
The U.S. Supreme Court made targeting by law enforcement of people based on race unconstitutional over 130 years ago, yet the practice still runs rampant in police departments nationwide, says Ezekiel Edwards, director of the ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project.
He said San Francisco has a particularly ...
by Kevin Bliss
Former Balch Springs, Texas, police officer Roy Oliver was recently found guilty of murder and sentenced to 15 years in prison. The outcome of this case is notable not only because Oliver is a white officer who responded to a call with his partner in suburban Dallas ...
by Kevin Bliss
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has dismissed about 45,000 charges in more than 30,000 drug cases prosecuted in the state due to misconduct by chemists Sonja Farak of Amherst drug lab and Annie Dookhan of Hinton drug lab.
Both were found to be falsifying records. Farak was also ...
by Kevin Bliss
A paper by Bowling Green State University (“BGSU”) researchers titled “Police Integrity Lost: A Study of Law Enforcement Officers Arrested” attempts to document police crime across the country, but it is incomplete because of lack of reporting.
For example, the paper reveals that from 2005 to 2011, ...
by Kevin Bliss
St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner has a list of 28 of the city’s police department officers whose cases her office will no longer accept, citing credibility issues. Already Gardner’s office has refused the prosecution of several cases, effectively preventing 2.5 percent of the police department’s workforce ...
by Kevin Bliss
Human rights watchdog organizations are alarmed over the new Speaker Identification Integrated Project (“SiiP”), a voice biometric database utilized by Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organization, for law enforcement purposes.
Created by Verint, a multinational biometrics company, SiiP is the result of a four-year project that marks ...
by Kevin Bliss
The Denver Post reported that it had found a cache of suppressed court cases in Colorado. More than 6,700 cases, mostly criminal (including some involving violent felonies), had been restricted from public access since 2013.
Many courthouse employees and law enforcement officials would not even acknowledge that ...
by Kevin Bliss
IBM and the New York Police Department (“NYPD”) collaborated on the development of the computer giant’s facial recognition technology, The Intercept has revealed. The program began in 2008 when IBM used the threat of possible terrorist activity post-9/11 to sell the program to the NYPD, and for ...
