New York City taxpayers will pay $75 million to settle a class action lawsuit against the New York Police Department over its issuing of nearly 1 million legally baseless criminal summonses over several years because they were under pressure to meet quotas. The summonses were later dismissed for lack of evidence. The settlement must be approved by U.S. District Judge Robert W. Sweet.
The suit was filed in a federal court in 2010 on behalf of people who were hit with 900,000 court summonses that were later dismissed because of legal deficiencies. The settlement would allow people issued court summonses for offenses such as trespassing, disorderly conduct and urinating in public to receive a maximum of $150 per person per incident for their trouble.
The lawsuit argued police were routinely ordered to issue summonses “regardless of whether any crime or violation” had occurred to meet quotas. It cited claims by two whistleblower officers who said they were forced into quotas by precinct superiors. The quota allegations were denied in the settlement agreement.
Under the agreement, the city said the NYPD must update and expand training and guidance reiterating to officers and their superiors that quotas are not allowed, and officers must not be mandated to make a particular number of summonses, street stops or arrests.
A total of $56.6 million would be set aside, and individual payments could end up lower if more claims are made. Any funds not paid go back to the city, which is also paying $18.5 million in legal fees. Possible class members would be notified through social media and other advertisements.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs called it the largest false-arrest class-action lawsuit in city history. The 2010 lawsuit includes summonses filed from 2007 through at least 2015. About one-quarter of the summonses issued during that time frame were dismissed for legal insufficiency, according to data in the lawsuit. Legal insufficiency is not necessarily a lack of evidence but may be that an officer wasn’t clear enough in explaining why someone was ticketed.
The class action suit came amid a growing outcry over the NYPD’s encounters with minorities. The lead plaintiff in the case, Sharif Stinson, said he was stopped twice outside his aunt’s Bronx building in 2010 when he was 19 and was given disorderly conduct summonses by officers who said he used obscene language. The officers didn’t specify what the language or behavior was, and the tickets were dismissed.
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Lawmakers quietly closed the investigation into the lead poisoning of the water system in Flint, Michigan in December 2016. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s findings blamed state officials, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) and the EPA.
The Flint water crisis began when the city’s unelected emergency manager, appointed by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, switched the source of Flint’s drinking water from the Detroit system to the corrosive Flint River to save money. The water corroded Flint’s aging pipes, causing poisonous levels of lead to leach into the drinking water. The impoverished city was under state control at the time.
Between 6,000 and 12,000 children were been exposed to drinking water with high levels of lead and they may experience a range of serious health problems.
The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Jason Chaffetz, issued two separate letters announcing that the investigation was finished and that Snyder was without guilt because it was the Environmental Protection Agency’s fault Flint’s water source was shifted to a contaminated source. After the April 25, 2014 switch to Flint River water from back-up to temporary primary source, city residents began complaining about their water’s color, taste, and odor.
Thirteen people have been charged in the Flint Water Crisis and its cover-up. Former MDEQ employees Michael Prysby and Stephen Busch were charged with misconduct in office, conspiracy to tamper with evidence, tampering with evidence, a treatment violation of the Michigan Safe Drinking Water Act, and a monitoring violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act. Former city water plant operator Michael Glasgow was charged with willful neglect of office, a misdemeanor, and felony tampering with evidence. Glasgow accepted a plea deal with prosecutors, admitting to filing false information about lead in Flint water and agreeing to cooperate in other prosecutions.
Liane Shekter-Smith was charged with misconduct in office and willful neglect of duty; Adam Rosenthal was charged with misconduct in office, conspiracy to tamper with evidence, tampering with evidence, and neglect; Adam Cook was charged with misconduct in office, conspiracy to engage in misconduct in office, and neglect of duty. From the MDHHS, Nancy Peeler, Corinne Miller, and Robert Scott were charged with misconduct in office, conspiracy to commit misconduct in office, and willful neglect of duty.
On December 20, 2016, false pretenses, conspiracy to commit false pretenses, willful neglect of duty and misconduct in office charges against former Emergency Managers Darnell Earley and Jerry Ambrose; and false pretenses and conspiracy to commit false pretenses charges were filed against former Flint Utilities Administrator Daugherty Johnson and former Flint Department of Public Works director Howard Croft. Many residents are outraged that Governor Rick Snyder has survived the investigation unscathed since some of the officials charged reported directly to him.
The closing of the investigation came as Flint Mayor Karen Weaver told residents they should still not drink the water. The city’s lead pipes have not yet been replaced.
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has decided to drop a series of lawsuits to buy plots of lands in Hawaii after public backlash. Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan purchased the 700-acre waterfront estate on Kauai for $100 million in 2014. They filed a series of eight lawsuits to buy out several hundred people’s stake of 13 plots on eight acres partitioned during the 1850s.
Many of the plots of land involved in the suits are “kuleana lands” which were granted to native Hawaiian tenant farmers between 1850 and 1855 and hold special rights including access, agricultural uses, gathering, water and fishing rights.
The suit was met with heavy criticism by some Hawaiians including hundreds who planned to protest outside Zuckerberg’s estate. The suits would have forced hundreds of residents, including Native families, off their land in order to make his Hawaiian beachfront property as private as possible.
He initially defended the move, saying the purpose of the quiet title action was to identify property owners who were unaware of their stake in the land. “Quiet title actions are the standard and prescribed process to identify all potential co-owners, determine ownership, and ensure that, if there are other co-owners, each receives appropriate value for their ownership share,” Zuckerberg’s lawyer, Keoni Schultz, said earlier in January.
Zuckerberg published a letter in the local Hawaiian newspaper The Garden Island saying it was clear the decision to file the suits over his ownership of the beachfront property on the island of Kauai was a mistake. Zuckerberg said he initially misunderstood the quiet title process and hoped to work with the community to find a better solution.
“To find a better path forward, we are dropping our quiet title actions and will work together with the community on a new approach,” he said. “We understand that for native Hawaiians, kuleana are sacred and the quiet title process can be difficult. We want to make this right, talk with the community, and find a better approach.”
“Upon reflection, I regret that I did not take the time to fully understand the quiet title process and its history before we moved ahead. Now that I understand the issues better, it’s clear we made a mistake,” he said. “The right path is to sit down and discuss how to best move forward. We will continue to speak with community leaders that represent different groups, including native Hawaiians and environmentalists, to find the best path.”
In June 2016, Zuckerberg faced criticism for building a 6 foot stone wall enclosing his 700 acre property. Many residents said it blocked breezes and obstructed ocean views. Others argued that while it is his right to build on his property-it did not feel very neighborly.
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Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán pled not guilty in a U.S. federal court in New York City. His attorneys had fought his extradition in part by citing discrimination against Mexicans. His court appearance came just one day after his extradition from Mexico and he is being held without bail. Guzman, 59, arrived at Long Island’s MacArthur Airport Thursday night after being taken from prison in the city of Juarez, in the northern state of Chihuahua, where his Sinaloa cartel rules.
He is accused of running the world’s largest drug-trafficking organization. There are 17 criminal charges against him, carrying a minimum sentence of life behind bars. Guzman is accused of money laundering, drug trafficking, kidnapping and murder in several US cities, including Chicago, Miami and New York. Charged in a total of six U.S. jurisdictions, Guzman will faced his first set of charges in Brooklyn on a combined indictment from New York and Florida.
While leading the Sinaloa cartel, Guzman is believed to have been running the world’s largest transnational cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine smuggling operation. More than 100,000 people have been killed during a decade-long drug war in Mexico. A U.S. attorney says the government is seeking a $14 billion forfeiture order as part of its prosecution of the notorious Mexican drug kingpin.
According to his indictment and court filings, Guzman grew and sold poppies for heroin as a young boy. His drug trafficking career that began in the 1980s and he came to dominate Mexican smugglers by the speed with which he was able to move drugs into the United States.
After partnering with Colombian producers, they shared in profits of U.S. distribution markets, moving cocaine and other drugs through tunnels under the U.S. border as well as planes, yachts and even a submarine, employing a crew of violent hit men known as“sicarios” and corrupting Mexican officials.
The indictment charges Guzman with running the massive drug trafficking operation that laundered billions of dollars and oversaw murders and kidnappings. Prosecutors agreed to not seek the death penalty as a condition of the extradition of Guzman, who’s the convicted leader of the Sinaloa cartel.
Guzman had maintained control and expanded his drug trafficking empire through two prison terms in Mexico. He has escaped twice from a maximum security prison in Mexico, once in a laundry cart and a second time in 2015, through a mile-long tunnel dug into the shower in his cell. He was captured a year ago, just six months after his last escape. Mexican officials say a secret interview with US actor Sean Penn helped locate the world’s most wanted drug baron. US officials have refused to say where El Chapo will be held while awaiting trial, but they vowed to prevent any further escapes.
US attorney for New York’s Eastern District, Robert Capers, told reporters the trial will likely be long and that more than 40 witnesses were ready to testify. US prosecutors assured Mexican officials that El Chapo would not be executed in order to secure his extradition, Capers said. Mexico opposes capital punishment. “Guzman and the Sinaloa cartel had a veritable army, ready to war with competitors and anyone Guzman deemed to be a traitor,” US prosecutors said. He was known to carry a gold-plated AK-47 rifle.
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The Justice Department have announced that Chicago police officers routinely violate civil rights, target communities of color with excessive force and maintain a “code of silence” to hinder investigations into abuses. After a 13 month investigation, the Department of Justice has concluded that there is reasonable cause to believe that the Chicago Police Department engages in a pattern or practice of use of excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.
The investigation began in December 2015 after the release of a video showing the death of 17-year-old African American Laquan McDonald, who was shot 16 times by white police officer Jason Van Dyke. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel agreed in principle to negotiate a consent decree for a federal monitor to oversee the Chicago Police Department.
The Chicago Police Department has a legacy of corruption and abuse. The over 161 page report came to light as the department grapples with skyrocketing violence in Chicago, where murders are at a 20-year high, and a deep lack of trust among the city’s residents.
The report cited unchecked aggressions such as an officer pointing a gun at teenagers on bicycles suspected of trespassing; officers using a Taser on an unarmed, naked 65-year-old woman with mental illness; officers purposely dropping off young gang members in rival territory. The report stated that after officers used excessive force, their actions were practically condoned by supervisors, who rarely questioned their behavior. One commander interviewed by the Justice Department said that he could not recall ever suggesting that officers’ use of force be investigated further.
Chicago is among nearly two dozen cities — including Cleveland; Ferguson, Mo.; and Seattle — where the Justice Department has pushed for wholesale changes to police practices.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Mayor Emanuel presented the report at the federal courthouse in downtown Chicago. They laid out the steps the city had committed to take to remedy the problems. Lynch said the Justice Department had reviewed thousands of documents, conducted extensive interviews, and discovered widespread evidence that the Police Department was sorely in need of reform. It does not train officers properly, fails to properly collect and analyze data, and has little support from the community, the report said.
The report described a broad lack of oversight within the department. “We found that officers engage in tactically unsound and unnecessary foot pursuits, and that these foot pursuits too often end with officers unreasonably shooting someone — including unarmed individuals,” the report said. “We found that officers shoot at vehicles without justification and in contradiction to C.P.D. policy. We found further that officers exhibit poor discipline when discharging their weapons and engage in tactics that endanger themselves and public safety, including failing to await backup when they safely could and should; using unsound tactics in approaching vehicles; and using their own vehicles in a manner that is dangerous.”
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President Obama has commuted more sentences than any other president in U.S. History. He recently commuted the sentence of some high profile prisoners. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, Puerto Rican independence activist Oscar López Rivera and retired U.S. Marine Corps General James Cartwright had their sentences commuted as part of more than 200 commutations issued on January 17th.
Chelsea Manning is now set to be freed on May 17, after Obama shortened her sentence from 35 years to seven. Manning is already the longest-held whistleblower in U.S. history. Manning leaked more than 700,000 classified files and videos to WikiLeaks about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and U.S. foreign policy. While serving her sentence she has seen long stretches of solitary confinement and has been denied medical treatment related to her gender identity. She attempted to commit suicide twice last year.
Puerto Rican independence activist Oscar López Rivera has been imprisoned for almost 35 years with a lot of that time served in solitary confinement. In 1981, López Rivera was convicted on federal charges including seditious conspiracy—conspiring to oppose U.S. authority over Puerto Rico by force. In 1999, President Bill Clinton commuted the sentences of 16 members of the FALN, but López Rivera refused to accept the deal because it did not include two fellow activists, who have since been released. Under Obama’s commutation order, López Rivera will be released on May 17th as well.
U.S. Marine Corps General James Cartwright also received a pardon. Last year, Cartwright, a retired U.S. Marine Corps general with 40 years of service behind him, admitted that he lied to the FBI during an investigation into who leaked classified information to a New York Times reporter. The top secret information leaked, was about Stuxnet, a secret U.S. cyberwarfare operation against Iran. He was due to be sentenced this month. Cartwright’s defense team had asked for a year of probation and 600 hours of community service, but prosecutors had asked the judge overseeing his case to send him to prison for two years.
President Obama granted another 330 commutations on the last day of his presidency, January 19th. The majority of the sentences commuted Thursday were for nonviolent drug offenses. Throughout his presidency, Obama has granted 1,715 commutations—more than any other president in U.S. history. Of those, 568 inmates had been sentenced to life in prison.
In Obama’s second-term, he had made great effort to try to remedy the consequences of decades of excessive sentencing requirements that he said had imprisoned thousands of non-violent drug offenders for too long. To be eligible for a commutation under Obama’s initiative, non-violent offenders had to have been well behaved while in prison and already served 10 years, although some exceptions to the 10-year rule were granted.
Obama personally reviewed the case of every inmate who received a commutation. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said the administration reviewed all applications that came in by an end-of-August deadline which was more than 16,000 in total.
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