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California probation officers overwhelmed with GPS monitoring alerts
Electronic monitoring was supposed to help Los Angeles County deal with the influx of thousands of felons moved out of California’s prison system to ease overcrowding. The nation’s largest probation department strapped GPS ankle monitors on the highest-risk of those convicts, expecting the satellite receivers to keep tabs on where they spent their days and…
Read MoreMentally ill California prison inmate dies after being pepper sprayed
As California prison officials began looking into the September death of a breathing-impaired inmate who had been pepper-sprayed by a guard, they found themselves facing unusual interference and oversight from above, according to documents from an internal corrections investigation obtained by The Sacramento Bee. A corrections psychologist whose duties included a review of the Sept.…
Read MoreVirginia Beach Public Works Director keeps job while on military leave
The head of Virginia Beach’s second-largest department hasn’t been to work in nearly three years and keeps volunteering for military service instead of returning to his $150,000-a-year job. Since deploying in June 2011 – days after a city auditor’s report recommended that he be fired – Public Works Director Jason Cosby has become vested in…
Read MoreAltercations, assaults costly problems for teachers, tax payers
Jones is one of hundreds of city educators whose violent and traumatic encounters with students have led them to seek — and often receive — compensation for mental and physical injuries, a Baltimore Sun investigation of workers’ compensation claims has found. Those claims provide a behind-the-scenes look at violence that is rarely documented in school…
Read MoreFunctional and financial concerns for proposed radio communications network in Monroe County
It’s a firefighter’s worst nightmare: Trapped inside a smoke-filled basement, he radios for help. But he can’t get a signal. He speaks, but his colleagues and dispatchers hear nothing. Monroe County leaders and fire district officials agree that no firefighter should ever wind up in such a desperate position. But they are still working out…
Read MoreNYPD denies FOIA request for department FOIA guide
The New York Police Department’s Freedom of Information Law Unit is refusing to release its FOIL guide. Yes, you read that right. Public records request service MuckRock asked for the document in late December. Last week a lieutenant in the department’s records unit denied the request, calling the guide “privileged as an attorney-client communication.” You…
Read MoreBehind the Story: The Boston Globe’s 4-year battle for secret settlement records
Boston Globe reporter Todd Wallack thought it would be a simple, short-term project to look into settlements made between the state of Massachusetts and some of its employees. After all, he’d done the same thing in California, uncovering an agreement between UC Davis and one of its administrators to avert a nasty lawsuit. But the…
Read MoreEmail shows effort to shield bin Laden photos
According to the Associated Press, “A newly-released email shows that 11 days after the killing of terror leader Osama bin Laden in 2011, the U.S. military’s top special operations officer ordered subordinates to destroy any photographs of the al-Qaida founder’s corpse or turn them over to the CIA.” When the AP initially asked for emails…
Read MoreFamily wants DNA testing after FBI admits error in 1983 murder case
During the 26 years that James Preston spent incarcerated for murder, he always told his family that he didn’t commit the crime. Now, the FBI says their analyst’s testimony about key hair evidence in the case exceeded the boundaries of science, raising the possibility that Preston, who died in custody, was wrongfully convicted if not,…
Read MoreHeroin overdoses increasing in suburban and rural areas
Heroin, long a scourge of inner cities, has infiltrated suburbia and rural towns and is claiming the lives of an increasingly younger, middle-class and white male clientele at an alarming rate. But new statistics compiled for the Democrat and Chronicle by the office, which investigates suspected drug-related deaths across the region, show that more often than not…
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