Onslow County, NC Sheriff Charges Couple with Felony Child Abuse

From the Associated Press via the Charlotte Observer of 9-1-09

Onslow County, NC Sheriff’s Deputies have charged a couple with felony child abuse after a pit bull dog chewed the toes off of a 4-month old baby’s foot.

The Sheriff’s Office said that the 1-year old pit bull chewed off all the toes on the child’s left foot while he was on a couch during the night.

Deputies say the child’s mother, Robie Lynn Jenkins, and her boyfriend, Tremayne Spillman, were dog-sitting for a man who had been arrested on a charge of illegal possession of a gun.

Jenkins told Deputies she was on medication and didn’t hear the child crying during the night while she slept in the same room. She said she didn’t discover the injury until she changed the child’s diaper Monday morning.

Deputies said that hospital officials said the child may lose his foot.

New police leader meeting with NC town’s citizens

Submitted by WWAY on 4 June 2009 – 12:10pm.

SPRING LAKE, N.C. — A citizens group that formed after a North Carolina town’s police chief resigned and two officers were arrested is meeting with the department’s new leader.

The group Citizens on the Move is holding a town hall meeting Thursday so citizens can talk to interim Chief Gregg Jarvies. Group member Winford Lee told The Fayetteville Observer the mayor and four of the town of Spring Lake’s aldermen also will attend.

Judicial officials in Cumberland County have said they won’t accept felony cases from the local police. The county sheriff has taken over patrols and investigations in the town near
Fayetteville.

Two senior police supervisors face charges ranging from kidnapping to larceny and embezzlement.

NC Deputy Sheriff Killed in Shootout

Authorities say one sheriff’s deputy has been killed and another shot in the neck during a shootout with a man in North Carolina.

The Lenoir County Sheriff’s Office says deputies received a call Tuesday night that a man drove a car down a wooded path and was shooting a gun near Grifton, about 75 miles southeast of Raleigh.

Det. Allen Pearson was shot as he confronted the man and died at the hospital. Det. Ryan Dawson was wounded and is being treated at Pitt County Memorial Hospital.

Officials say the suspect also was shot and taken to the hospital.

Deputies say the vehicle the suspect drove was registered to a woman in Craven County who has been found dead. Authorities did not immediately release the name of the man or the woman, or how she died.

Fla. man issued 50 traffic citations in one day

AP – This undated photo obtained Friday, Jan. 6, 2009 from the Palm Beach County, Fla. Sheriff’s Office shows …

BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. – Elvis has left the vehicle. A man was arrested on more than 50 traffic citations — all in one day. Police said Elvis Alonzo Barrett, 46, fled from police trying to stop him for a traffic violation Thursday morning. Police said he ran through red lights, crashed into another car and a fence. Police said they found crack cocaine and a crack pipe in his car.

Barrett faces several charges, including fleeing and eluding and reckless driving.

He was also issued more than 50 traffic citations on charges including speeding, running red lights, and not wearing a seat belt.

Police said Barrett has a lengthy criminal history and his driver license was suspended.

A phone number listed for him was not in service Thursday night

Handheld Fingerprint Scanners Used At Checkpoints

Courier Online
July 17, 2008

High tech gadget instantly reveals identities

Police officials are excited about a new high tech gadget that will make their jobs a little bit easier.

Through a Homeland Security grant, Los Angeles County purchased 500 mobile fingerprint scanning devices that can be used by officers in the field.

The device allows officers to identify people through their fingerprints who have previously been booked through the Los Angeles County penal system.

Roughly 200 scanners went to LAPD, and the rest were spread to agencies throughout the county. The Claremont Police Department only got one, but it has already been put to good use.

Police just picked up the machine last Thursday, and by Friday it helped them nab a potentially dangerous criminal. At a sobriety checkpoint on Indian Hill Boulevard, just south of the 10 Freeway, over 2000 vehicles were screened, resulting in 14 arrests. Two were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol.

Among those stopped at the checkpoint was a man who told police that he did not have his driver license. His car was pulled off to the shoulder, where police asked his identity.

“He supplied a name that we ran a records check on that came back with no match,” Claremont Police Captain Jenkins said.

Claremont Police Corporal Chris Bradley then put the department’s new gadget to use for the first time. The man’s index fingers were scanned right at the scene and 5 minutes later, the police had the information they needed.

“We were able to pull up all his real information; his name, date of birth and all that,” Corp. Bradley said. “And then we saw that he had a no-bail parole hold.”

Albert Dominguez, 26, of Chino, was a parole violator out on murder charges. He is now in custody in Los Angeles.

“The nice thing about this is, we were able to identify him right there out in the field,” Corp. Bradley said.

Created by Cogent Systems, the device normally runs about $1000 each. Law enforcement officials hope to eventually have one in every patrol vehicle, Cpt. Jenkins said. In the meantime, Claremont police will have to share their scanner until more funding for additional devices is available.

Police believe they will be particularly useful at checkpoints where identifying unlicensed drivers is a constant challenge.

“There’s always a number of identification issues at the checkpoints so this will be a big help,” Cpt. Jenkins said.

PA Legislator Proposes Tax To Pay For State Police Service To Municipalities With No Police Force

 According to an article in the September 26, 2008 Herald / Standard newspaper, PA State Representative John Pallone of Westmoreland County has proposed that residents of municipalities with populations of 10,000 or more and no local police force, be required to pay a tax of $100 per head to defray the costs of the PA State Police responding to calls for police assistance in those municipalities.

 Most of our readers from outside of PA do not understand that PA law, unlike many other states, does not require municipal governments in the Commonwealth to operate police departments.

 Amazingly, many of the municipalities that do not operate their own police forces are more than financially able to do so. In Westmoreland County, Hempfield Twp., which has no police force, has well over 40,000 residents making it the most populous municipality in the county & the largest geographically. In Fayette County, tiny Ohiopyle Borough with a population of under 225 residents employs a police officer while the Twp’s. of North Union, with a population in excess of 10,000, & South Union, which has an annual budget in the millions of dollars, do not employ a single police officer.

 Ironically, South Union Twp. did operate a full time police dept. at one time, but abolished it right about the time their Twp. exploded with economic development. S.U. Twp. is now the wealthiest municipality in Fayette County and the PSP Barracks in Fayette (the Uniontown Station) is the busiest in the entire Commonwealth.

 And, also unlike in many other states, Sheriffs in PA are not required by law to answer calls for police assistance when a given municipality does not operate it’s own police force. That responsibility falls to the PA State Police (PSP), an organization that is not well suited to responding to or addressing “local” problems.

 Further complicating the issue is the fact that in the Commonwealth of PA there are no “unincorporated” areas. Every citizen lives within a municipality; a Borough which is basically a mini city governed by an elected council and Mayor, a Township which is a fairly rural area governed by an elected Board of Supervisors or a City which is governed by an elected Council and Mayor.

 The issue came to the fore several years ago with the collapse of the bulk of steel mills & coal mines, the major employers in Southwestern PA. When the mills & mines closed many thousands of people were laid off, bankruptcy filings exploded, home foreclosures rose to previously unseen levels, and the tax bases of many municipal governments, which were predominantly dependent on real estate taxes, shrunk to all time lows causing elected officials to make budget cuts. Almost without fail those cuts were made by laying off police officers and in many municipalities, police departments were abolished altogether.

 Many of the municipalities that abolished their police forces looked to the Sheriffs of their counties for police protection, but county governments in PA are also predominantly reliant upon real estate taxes and were hit just as hard as the municipalities that were now seeking county help; meaning the Sheriffs were unable to provide help due to their own budget shortfalls.

 In addition to the Sheriffs not having the financial means to provide help to the municipalities, PA law does not require Sheriffs’ to act as law enforcement officers, although they can, and many of them were not inclined to get involved with answering calls for police assistance and making arrests as Sheriffs, unlike police officers, must get elected, and in general, an elected official does not gain many votes by arresting potential voters.

 Thusly, the task of providing routine police services to the affected citizenry fell to the Troopers of the PSP. The PSP was never intended to answer routine calls for police services such as neighborhood noise complaints & domestic disputes and they were & are ill prepared to do so.

 Possibly the greatest benefit of a municipality operating a local police force is that the officers that will enforce the laws spend a great deal of time in the community they patrol. They get to know the residents, good & bad, as well as the problems in the community. This allows the officers to apply their knowledge of the community when answering calls and deciding whether or not to make arrests while the PSP Troopers usually know very little about the residents of individual communities and the problems in that area causing them to make “black & white” decisions in a colorful world.

 The issue of funding PSP services to municipalities without their own police forces has been hotly debated and many different proposals to address the issue have been put forth.

 The idea to institute a “head tax” upon the residents of municipalities with 10,000 residents or more and no local police forces, as the latest proposal would do, should not be instituted.

 The PSP is funded by the Legislature which does not collect real estate taxes as  municipalities do. The state collects the bulk of it’s revenue through income and sales taxes, which are paid by most, if not all, Pennsylvanians including those that live in the targeted municipalities.

 Residents that live in municipalities that operate their own police forces pay the same rates of income & sales taxes to the legislature as do the residents of municipalities that do not operate their own police forces, but they do not receive the same amount of services from the PSP because they fund their own officers.

 In essence the residents of municipalities with their own police forces are subsidizing PSP services to the municipalities that choose not to provide their own police forces. This is just plain unfair.

 On the other hand, the residents of the non police municipalities are already paying for the services of the PSP and the legislature cannot charge twice for the same services. However, the legislature can & should provide for a state income tax deduction for residents that live in municipalities that fund their own police forces. This would provide relief to the residents of municipalities with their own police forces that have been subsidizing PSP services to the residents of “non police” municipalities while encouraging the elected officials in the “non police” municipalities to institute their own police forces.

 But, we believe the best way to address this situation is for the legislature, as is within their authority, to simply require that all municipalities provide local police services.  Municipalities that truly do not have the financial means to provide local officers, and there are many such situations, can join or contract with neighboring municipalities to form regional police departments as is already being done in several areas of the Commonwealth.

The Purpose of Police in a Free Society

By Jack Hays

 It is very easy for law enforcement officers to lose sight of their purpose; With 6 years of experience as a police officer I know this to be true. We often get caught in the vicious trap of trying to do all we can to get the bad guys off of the streets while at the same time trying to protect the good guys in a politically correct manner.

 it is nearly impossible, but somehow we must get the job done, and we do.

 It is not easy enforcing laws in a free society. It would be much easier enforcing laws in a society where the citizens have, what some would call a healthy, fearful respect, of men with badges on their chests. A society where the citizens know that you don’t dare step out of line or the police will show up and make an example of you for all to see. And, if you want to work in that type of society you only need to move to China, Cuba, or any one of several Eastern European countries where law enforcement officers are feared and the citizens step aside when they approach.

 In those societies police officers are looked upon as keepers making sure no one steps outside of the boxes their government masters have drawn for them and making sure that citizens who express displeasure with those same government masters are taken away for re-education before they corrupt their neighbors with crazy notions of freedom of speech and assembly.

 However, thank God we do not live in such a country; at least not yet, and a key determining factor in whether or not we ever will, falls on the shoulders of us, the law enforcers.

 We are the individuals that are on the street, among the people, our neighbors & families, applying the rules of civil society as laid down by our fellow employees of the people, legislators. And it is us that decides whether or not to write the ticket or make the arrest for whatever violation of law we observe or discover; It is our discretion (The reasonable exercise of a power or right to act in an official capacity; involves the idea of choice, of an exercise of the will, 94 N.W. 2d 810, 811).

 Our #1 job while serving our fellow citizens is to live up to our Oath of Office to “Support, Obey and Defend the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; and that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same… and I do further solemnly swear that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of law enforcement officer with fidelity”. We have all taken this oath, or something very similar to it, before we ever pinned that precious badge on our chests. But, how many of us ever really thought about and realized the significance of that oath we so willingly took? I fear not enough of us have.

 When we take the oath of office we swear before God that we will, above all else, support, obey, & defend our Constitutions. We do not swear to get the bad guy at all costs. We do not swear to be creative, without technically telling a lie, in our report writing to get the warrant. We do not swear to tell the Chief that the guy swung at us to justify cracking the guy with our flashlights, although those things do understandably sometimes happen. We swear an oath to uphold our Constitutions and the protections therein.

 The Constitutions we have all sworn to uphold are the very foundation of our uniquely American lives. Our Constitutions are the only thing standing between our way of life and the subservient lives of Cubans or the Chinese. Every time our Constitutions are violated our American way of life suffers. It especially suffers when it is violated by those of us that have sworn to uphold it.

 Our purpose as law enforcement officers, every time we put that badge on is to go out and preserve our uniquely American way of life by enforcing, or not enforcing, our laws in accord with our oaths to the Constitutions.

  We, I say we because those of us who are charged with enforcing the laws are subject to those same laws, as Americans, have a right to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” and when those rights are violated by someone who murders, steals, assaults, or kidnaps one of our fellow citizens we show up taking action to live up to our oaths by arresting the individual, depriving them of their liberty, pursuit of happiness, and possibly their life, for violating the rights of the victim(s), not technically killing the victim, but for violating the victim’s right to life.

 We also, as a result of our oaths to support, obey, & defend the Constitutions have a responsibility to not enforce, by exercising our prosecutorial discretion (defined as “The wide range of alternatives available to a prosecutor in criminal cases, including the decision to prosecute, the particular charges to be brought, etc… or not to prosecute (see Lafave, Arrest 72 (1965)), laws passed by the legislatures that violate our Constitutions. Consider this: “The general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, whether federal or state, though having the form and name of law, is in reality no law, but is wholly void, and ineffective for any purpose, since unconstitutionally dates from the time of its enactment, and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it. No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law and no courts are bound to enforce it” (16th American Jurisprudence, 256, 2nd edition).

 For example, say the town council adopts an ordinance, which our courts have defined as “A local law that applies to persons and things subject to the local jurisdiction” (see 90 F. 2d 175, 177) that says no one in the town is allowed to possess a gun for any reason and that law is put on the books in the town. We as law enforcement officers can rightly refuse to enforce the law because it is in violation of the 2nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, “…The right of the people to keep & bear arms shall not be infringed” and Article 1 Section 21 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of PA “The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the state shall not be questioned” that we took an oath to obey. 

 Our purpose in our free society is to insure that we, as citizens and law enforcers, remain free not just from molestation of our lives by the “bad guys”, but from those who would destroy our American way of life under the guise of lawmaking in our legislatures.