Someday kids in Lakewood, Colo. will become crotchety old men who complain about how kids have it easy, saying “Why, in my day, police used to come and pepper spray second graders if they got out of line.” [More]
law enforcement
NJ Cracks Down On Cops Juicing
By 1.11.11
After a damning Star Ledger investigation exposed how a local doctor was the steroid dealer for “hundreds” of New Jersey cops and firefighters, lawmakers there have put forth a bill to crack down on the practice. The law would add steroids to the list of drugs law enforcement is randomly tested for and personnel would need to get a health checkup before they could be prescribed anabolic steroids and growth hormones. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that the problem is not limited to the Garden State. [More]
55th Floridian Dies After Being Tased, Should They Be Banned? Tasers, That Is.
By 4.27.10
Derrick Humbert, 38, became the 55th Floridian to die from a Taser. He was riding his bicycle and officers asked him to stop. Instead, he rode around the corner and fled through a yard. The officers in pursuit tased him as he tried to scramble over a fence, shooting 50,000 volts of electricity into his body. 28 minutes later, he was in a coma in the ambulance, and was pronounced dead at the hospital. [More]
Sprint Served Customer GPS Data To Cops Over 8 Million Times
By 12.3.09
An Indiana University grad student has made public an audio recording of a Sprint employee who describes how the company has given away customer GPS location data to cops over 8 million times in less than a year. Ars technica reports that “law enforcement [officers] could log into a special Sprint Web portal and, without ever having to demonstrate probable cause to a judge, gain access to geolocation logs detailing where they’ve been and where they are.” Update: Sprint says the 8 million figure refers to individual pings of GPS data, and that the number of individuals involved is in the thousands. [More]
Suspicious Stain Removal Advice Sought From Home Depot
By 8.27.09
Sure, there’s probably a perfectly innocuous explanation why a woman called the Home Depot in Jacksonville, Illinois and asked how to remove a large quantity of blood from her carpets. But that doesn’t stop people’s imaginations from running wild, and didn’t stop the employee who took the call from alerting the police.
Mac Genius Reports Child Porn On Customer's Computer To Police
By 8.26.09
A man in Connecticut brought his computer to his local Apple Store for repair due to a software issue (likely a—gasp!—virus) but when he returned to pick it up, learned that the Mac Genius had reported him to the police after finding child pornography on the hard drive.
Did Turkish Police Beat Information Out Of A Suspect In The TJ Maxx Credit Card Case?
By 10.24.08
Christopher Soghoian over at Cnet is reporting that Turkish police may have used violence to get the encryption keys of one of primary ringleaders in the TJ Maxx credit card theft investigation. The suspect, Maksym Yastremskiy, is apparently a “major figure in the international sale of stolen credit card information.”
Go Daddy Refutes Censorship Claim
By 3.12.08
The reader who sent Go Daddy an email asking why they shut down RateMyCop.com received a response in which they emphatically denied any censorship—this was all about a customer exceeding his contracted server usage limits and nothing else, they say. Read their full response after the jump.
Go Daddy Shuts Down RateMyCop Watchdog Site
By 3.12.08
Yesterday, Go Daddy pulled the plug on RateMyCop.com, which has been criticized by law enforcement officials for allegedly putting police officers in danger by listing their names and in some cases badge numbers. Visitors can then add comments and post critiques or praise about specific cops in their area. The website collected its officer data via public information requests, and no personal information is used, nor are undercover agents revealed. Still, law enforcement officials are upset at the exposure. When the site’s owner, Gino Sesto, called Go Daddy, he was first told it was removed due to “suspicious activity,” but then the reason was changed by a supervisor to an exceeded bandwidth cap, which Sesto disputes. Update: Go Daddy responded to our reader’s email and said taking the site offline had nothing to do with censorship.
Comcast Law Enforcement Handbook Leaked
By 10.16.07
Comcast’s Law Enforcement Handbook (PDF) was leaked today and posted on Secrecy News.
