A powerful New Jersey businessman has been accused of Mafia-like behavior in order to enrich himself and his associates on the taxpayer's dime. But is it all that different from business as usual?

At a press conference this week, New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin announced a 13-count indictment, with charges including racketeering and extortion, against six defendants—chiefly George Norcross III, whom the New Jersey Monitor referred to as "a Democratic kingmaker widely regarded as New Jersey's most powerful unelected person." In an impressively bold move, George Norcross attended the press conference and sat in the front row, apparently even refusing to switch seats when asked by someone from Platkin's office.

According to the indictment, George Norcross has "led a criminal enterprise" since 2012, whose members "would extort others through threats of economic and reputational harm" in Camden, New Jersey. Specifically, in 2012–13, George Norcross and other indicted co-conspirators "used their political influence to tailor New Jersey economic development legislation to their preferences."

The Economic Opportunity Act of 2013 expanded the state's existing economic development grant programs, allowing a developer to claim "a credit of up to 35 percent of its capital investment, or up to 40 percent for a project located in a Garden State Growth Zone," defined as "the four New Jersey cities with the lowest median family income"—which would include Camden, the state's poorest city. The credits were intended to bring companies to the state or keep them from leaving. Recipients could claim the credits or sell them to other New Jersey taxpayers.

In 2019, The New York Times found that before that law passed, one attorney "was allowed by lawmakers to edit drafts of the bill in ways that opened up sizable tax breaks to his firm's clients." That attorney's firm was Parker McCay—whose CEO was George Norcross' brother, Philip Norcross, who is also indicted. The indictment alleges that after the law passed, Philip Norcross told a group of people, "We re-wrote a tax credit law…that says in essence, if you come to Camden, we're going to give you one hundred percent tax credit for all capital and related costs" over 10 years. "It will cause real havoc, it's unlimited."

Once the law passed, according to the indictment, the defendants "extort[ed] and coerce[d] others" in order to obtain their property along the Camden waterfront, "then occupied the properties they obtained interests in and sold the tax credits they obtained for millions of dollars."

George Norcross also apparently leaned on members of the Camden city government—including then-Mayor Dana Redd, who is also indicted—to pressure owners and developers to sell by denying necessary building permits or publicly disparaging them.

In one given example, George Norcross allegedly threatened a developer who refused to sell, saying he would "f**k you up like you've never been f**ked up before." City officials also denied him a permit to redevelop another site he owned, at Philip Norcross's insistence.

In the end, that developer apparently sold the rights to tax credits that eventually totaled $240 million, for a fraction of that amount. On one property, he sold credits for $1.95 million that would eventually total $18 million.

If this all sounds like a plot from The Sopranos, well, it basically is: For much of its run, the mobsters at the center of that show made money from a waterfront rejuvenation project in Newark, obtained through underhanded dealing with a crooked state official and which afforded plenty of no-show jobs and opportunities for graft.

The allegations against George Norcross are shocking, and yet also unsurprising. After all, the entire affair originated with a state economic development program, which already bears at least a passing resemblance to a Sopranos-style racket.

In 2019, The New York Times found that "over five years, 12 companies threatened to leave New Jersey" for New York—with each company even listing the exact same office complex as its intended destination—"unless the state provided tens of millions in tax credits." In each case, the New Jersey government agreed, totaling over $100 million in taxpayer money, and each company stayed. But the Times found that "nearly all of the 12 companies never seriously considered moving to New York." The leasing agent for the New York office complex even acknowledged, "We are aware that often times the tenant has no intention at all of relocating."

State economic development incentive programs are often sold on these sorts of "but for" incentives—as in, but for this tax break or grant, this company would go elsewhere. But these are rarely actually the deciding factors in a company's decision: In a 2018 paper, Timothy Bartik of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research found that "typical incentives probably tip somewhere between 2 percent and 25 percent of incented firms toward making a decision favoring the location providing the incentive. In other words, for at least 75 percent of incented firms, the firm would have made a similar decision location/expansion/retention decision without the incentive."

Companies lobby for state-level handouts, even if they were likely to set up shop in that state anyway. And even by the state agencies' own numbers, the expenditures are rarely worth the cost.

"Beyond the state-specific political ramifications, the case also highlights a persistent problem in corporate subsidy programs that extends well beyond New Jersey: They're too easily corruptible, and they create a vicious feedback loop between political actors and politically connected corporations," writes Pat Garofalo in the Boondoggle Substack. "There's a very clear connection in academic literature between corporate subsidies, political donations, and ultimately corruption."

The George Norcross case, Garofalo writes, "highlight[s] the nexus between corporate tax handouts and corruption that is very often there but not usually this blatant."

Ultimately, the entire affair would just be a lurid story but for the fact that it involved hundreds of millions of dollars in state incentives which will ultimately be borne by New Jersey taxpayers.

The post N.J. Businessman Indicted for <i>Sopranos</i>-Style Economic Development Racket appeared first on Reason.com.

The job of the prosecutor is to hold the public accountable. But when the tables are turned—when the prosecutor is the one who allegedly flouted the law—it is, paradoxically, enormously difficult for victims to achieve recourse. Lawyers yesterday sparred at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit over one such barrier preventing someone from suing a former assistant district attorney accused of misconduct so egregious that one judge on the 5th Circuit described it last year as "utterly bonkers."

At the center of the case is Ralph Petty, whose yearslong career included work as both an assistant district attorney and a law clerk—at the same time, for the same judges. In practice, that means his arguments as a prosecutor were sometimes performance art, because, as a law clerk, he had the opportunity to draft the same rulings he sought in court. It doesn't take a lawyer to deduce that the set-up presents troubling implications for due process.

One of Petty's alleged victims, Erma Wilson, would like the opportunity to bring her civil suit against him before a jury. In 2001, she was convicted of cocaine possession after police found a bag of crack on the ground near where she and some friends were gathered. Law enforcement offered to let her off if she implicated the guilty party; she said she didn't know.

Years later, that conviction continues to haunt her. Most notably, it doomed any chance of her fulfilling her lifelong dream of becoming a nurse, because Texas, where she lives, does not approve registered nursing licenses for people found guilty of drug-related crimes.

Wilson's conviction coincided with the beginning of Petty's dual-hat arrangement in Midland County, Texas. Though he was not the lead prosecutor on her case, she alleges he "communicated with and advised fellow prosecutors in the District Attorney's Office" on her prosecution while simultaneously working for Judge John G. Hyde, who presided over her case, giving him "access to documents and information generally unavailable to prosecutors." (Hyde died in 2012.)

"Further undermining confidence in Erma's criminal proceedings, Petty and Judge Hyde engaged in ex parte communications concerning Erma's case," her lawsuit reads. "Consequential motions, such as Erma's motion to suppress, were resolved in the prosecution's favor throughout trial. And despite the weak evidence against her, Erma's motion for a new trial was not granted. Any of these facts by itself undermines the integrity of Erma's trial. Together, these facts eviscerate it." 

Typically prosecutors are protected by absolute immunity, which, as its name implies, is an even more robust shield than qualified immunity. But that issue is not before the 5th Circuit, because Wilson must overcome another barrier: Someone who has been convicted of a crime may not sue under Section 1983—the federal statute that permits lawsuits against state and local government employees for alleged constitutional violations—unless "the conviction or sentence has been reversed on appeal or otherwise declared invalid," wrote Judge Don Willett for the 5th Circuit in December. "The wrinkle here is that Petty's conflicted dual-hat arrangement came to light only after Wilson had served her whole sentence."

But Willett—the same judge who characterized Petty's alleged malfeasance as "utterly bonkers"—did not appear happy with his own ruling, which he said came because his hands were tied by precedent. He invited the 5th Circuit to hear the case en banc, where all the judges on the court convene to reconsider an appeal, as opposed to a three-judge panel (the usual format for evaluating cases).

The court accepted. "The defendants say that [Wilson is] forever barred from invoking that federal cause of action or any other federal cause of action unless she first persuades state officials to grant her relief. If they never do, she can never sue," Jaba Tsitsuashvili, an attorney at the Institute for Justice who is representing Wilson, argued yesterday. "In most circuits, that argument would be rejected, and rightly so."

At the center of the case is Heck v. Humphrey (1994), a Supreme Court precedent that, as Willett noted, forecloses Section 1983 relief for plaintiffs alleging unconstitutional convictions if his or her criminal case was not resolved with "favorable termination." The catch: Most federal appeals courts have established that Heck does not apply when federal habeas relief is no longer available, as is the case with Wilson. The 5th Circuit is an exception.

Perhaps soon it won't be. Yet even if the judges agree with Tsitsuashvili's interpretation of the law, Wilson is not in the clear. She will then have to explain why Petty is not entitled to absolute immunity, which inoculates prosecutors from facing such civil suits if their alleged misconduct was carried out in the scope of their prosecutorial duties. It is nearly impossible to overcome. But Petty may not be a candidate for it, because his malfeasance was technically not committed as a prosecutor. It was committed as a law clerk.

Should Wilson be granted the privilege to sue, it will be the first time an alleged victim of Petty's gets a tangible chance at recourse. There was, of course, the fact that he was disbarred, but defendants whose trials were marred by Petty likely take little comfort in that, particularly when considering it came in 2021—two years after he retired.

The post Can This Woman Sue the Rogue Prosecutor Who Allegedly Helped Upend Her Life? appeared first on Reason.com.

Former vice cop Andrew Mitchell has been sentenced to 11 years in prison after pleading guilty late last year to two counts of deprivation of rights under color of law and one count of tampering. Mitchell, who was employed for many years as a police officer in Columbus, Ohio, is accused of picking up sex workers and sexually assaulting them.

This week, a federal judge sentenced him to the maximum prison sentence recommended by prosecutors, plus a fine of $300 and five years of supervised release.

It's something, at least.

But his victims will receive no restitution payment. And last year, Mitchell walked on much more serious charges involving the killing of Donna Castleberry.

Castleberry's Death

Mitchell fatally shot the 23-year-old while she was trapped in his unmarked police car. He later claimed he killed Castleberry in self-defense after she stabbed him in the hand.

"Donna entered the front passenger door of Mitchell's vehicle and sat in the passenger seat next to Mitchell," according to a civil complaint against Mitchell filed by Castleberry's sister. "Mitchell than [sic] drove her to secluded location at or near South Yale Avenue, Columbus, Ohio in an alley and parked his vehicle in a manner which would prevent Donna from exiting the vehicle."

The Franklin County Coroner's Office called the death a homicide, and a grand jury indicted Mitchell on homicide and involuntary manslaughter charges. But a jury couldn't reach a verdict in the first trial, leading a Franklin County Common Pleas Court judge to declare a mistrial. And a jury returned a verdict of not guilty in the second trial, despite the multiple holes in Mitchell's story.

Mitchell also faced a civil lawsuit from a Jane Doe who alleged that in 2017, Mitchell told her he would arrest her for outstanding warrants but also said "give that pretty ass up and you won't go to jail." According to Doe's complaint, Mitchell handcuffed her to the backseat of the car and then raped her, then picked her up and did it again the following year. In 2022, the plaintiff in the Jane Doe case dismissed the case and it's not clear why. It's also unclear whether this Jane Doe is one of the women Mitchell is accused of detaining in the federal case.

The Federal Case

In 2019, federal prosecutors accused Mitchell of picking up sex workers on false pretenses and then trapping them in his car and sexually assaulting them. He was charged with nine criminal counts, including multiple counts of deprivation of rights under color of law and multiple counts of tampering with a witness, victim, or informant.

Mitchell told one victim "he was a police officer and acted as if he were doing a check for any outstanding warrants on the victim," then "used this ruse to handcuff the victim to the doorknob of his vehicle," according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office last December. "He drove the victim to a nearby parking lot with multiple dumpsters and forcible [sic] held and detained the victim against her will before dropping her off at her boyfriend's residence." Mitchell picked up another victim and "began discussing the victim's rates for sexual activity before announcing that he was an officer with the vice unit and said she was going to jail," according to prosecutors. "Mitchell kidnapped the victim and drove her to Lindbergh Park, holding her against her will."

That's the activity to which Mitchell pleaded guilty, along with removing and destroying potential evidence from a rental apartment he owned. (Specifically, he disposed of and bleached potential evidence "so the FBI could not gather evidence if they came to search it," per his pleas.)

But this isn't the whole story.

Prosecutors initially accused him of sexually assaulting the two women he picked up, and though this was not mentioned as part of the announcement of Mitchell's plea, prosecutors explain why in a sentencing report.

Mitchell's lawyers "objected to all references to sexual assault…within the presentence report as the negotiated plea agreement and accompanying Statement of Facts did not stipulate to the occurrence of any sexual activity," notes the government's sentencing memorandum. "The plea agreement was the result of significant negotiation in the face of a potentially very difficult trial for both sides. While both victims have been cooperative with law enforcement and indicated a willingness to testify, they both also indicated a strong preference for this case to be resolved short of trial. This dilemma led to this resolution and the need for a factual determination of this issue to be done at sentencing."

Nonetheless, "the evidence supports a finding that sexual assaults occurred," the government stated. "While Mitchell continues to deny any sexual involvement with these women, there is no explanation for [his] admitted behavior" of handcuffing one victim to a doorknob or taking one victim to a secluded park and detaining her there unless "more was going on than just Mitchell abusing the powers of his badge to only detain someone. "Further, significant evidence corroborated the testimony of the victims that Mitchell took advantage of the depravation of their liberty to further assault and sexually victimize them."

More Victims? 

Castleberry and the two victims in the federal case are almost certainly not the only women that Mitchell preyed on.  "Mitchell intimidated and hindered at least three other additional victims from communicating with law enforcement and the ongoing grand jury looking into his illegal conduct," the government alleges in its sentencing report.

Prosecutors also note the vulnerability sex workers face when a cop is their assailant.

"Mitchell purposely targeted [sex workers] in the belief that their complaints of assault and sexual compromise would not be believed by law enforcement suspected of being too aligned with one of their own," the government claims.

"Throughout the FBI investigation, female interviewees explained their doubts and hesitation in reporting Mitchell due to fears of retaliation and being disbelieved. Mitchell routinely used this dynamic to his advantage as both a police officer (and a landlord) in seeking sexual conquest and control while ignoring the law he was sworn to uphold."

Columbus Vice

"Andrew Mitchell betrayed his oath, the values of the Columbus Division of Police and the trust of our community. He used his position to target and exploit some of the most vulnerable in our community. We hope the close of this dark, painful chapter brings some measure of peace to everyone he wronged," the Columbus Division of Police said in a statement last December.

Mitchell isn't the only member of the Columbus Division of Police to have faced misconduct allegations in recent years, though the accusations against him were by far the most serious.

Members of the vice unit improperly arrested Stormy Daniels in 2018.

Two of the cops involved in Daniels' arrest—Steven G. Rosser and Whitney R. Lancaster—were arrested on federal criminal charges unrelated to the Daniels case but also involving strip clubs. Lancaster was acquitted at trial but Rosser was found guilty of conspiracy against rights. Rosser was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison.

Columbus police temporarily disbanded the vice squad in 2019 and had the FBI's public corruption task force look into it.

Police replaced the vice squad with something called the Police and Community Together (PACT) Unit, which was meant to be more transparent and accountable. The PACT page on the city of Columbus website now says "page not found."

These days, "prostitution arrests are made by uniformed PACT officers in marked cruisers," reported Columbus Monthly. "'PACT also has a policy to not trap or block women in their vehicles. If an individual wants out of the vehicle, they let them out,'" former Deputy Police Chief Jennifer Knight told the publication.

The post Cop Who Dodged Sentence for Killing Sex Worker Gets 11 Years for Abducting More Sex Workers appeared first on Reason.com.

In December 2022, the Albuquerque Police Department (APD) received a tip that officers assigned to the APD's DWI unit were getting paid to make cases disappear. The tipster specifically mentioned Honorio Alba, one of several officers who would later resign amid a burgeoning corruption scandal featuring that very allegation. Yet an internal investigation found no evidence to substantiate the tip.

That episode, recently revealed by City Desk ABQ, helps explain why evidence of longstanding corruption within the DWI unit did not come to light until the FBI began looking into it. "We're dealing with stuff that we anticipate started decades ago, and we've done a lot of things that have got us to this point," Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina said at a press conference in February. "But we will continue to dig and look and leave no stone unturned and make sure that we get to the bottom of this."

It seems like the department left plenty of stones unturned when it had a chance to clean its own house before the feds stepped in. Instead of telling the FBI about the alleged corruption, the APD apparently did not take the situation seriously until after it heard from the FBI.

In October 2023, 10 months after the APD's Criminal Intelligence Unit launched its fruitless probe, the FBI informed Medina that it was investigating the DWI unit. The following month, Albuquerque's Civilian Police Oversight Agency received a letter from a local court official who said Alba reportedly had pulled over a speeding, flagrantly drunk driver and, instead of filing charges, referred him to a specific local defense attorney.

The FBI investigation became public knowledge after agents executed search warrants at that attorney's office and the homes of several officers in January 2024. Local news outlets began looking into DWI cases that had been handled by Alba and his colleagues. They found suspiciously low conviction rates that somehow had eluded the APD's investigators in 2022.

In response to the corruption allegations, the Bernalillo County District Attorney's Office dropped some 200 DWI cases, saying it could not rely on the testimony of the cops who had made the arrests. KOB, the NBC affiliate in Albuquerque, reported that Alba, who was honored as "Officer of the Year" by the New Mexico chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving last July, was the arresting officer in many of those cases.

KRQE, the local CBS affiliate, looked at DWI cases filed during the previous six years. It found that Joshua Montaño, a 19-year veteran, "was named as the officer in at least 36 cases" in which the defendants were represented by Thomas Clear, the lawyer whose office the FBI had searched. Nearly 90 percent of those cases "ended in dismissals."

City Desk ABQ examined "85 DWI cases dating back to 2017" involving Clear and Alba, Montaño, or two other members of the DWI unit, Harvey Johnson and Nelson Ortiz. It found that 14 percent of the cases ended with trial convictions or plea deals, which was "much lower than the Metro Court average of 56% convictions in DWI cases over the same years." The other 86 percent were dismissed, typically because officers did not show up at pretrial interviews or hearings. The "vast majority" of the defendants were arrested by Alba or Montaño.

Why didn't the APD discover any of this back in 2022? Acting Sgt. Jon O'Guin "started gathering information but—after looking through officer activity—didn't turn up any evidence," City Desk ABQ reports, citing a five-page "intel file" that it obtained through a public records request.

According to the tipster, APD spokesman Gilbert Gallegos told City Desk ABQ, three bars in Northeast Albuquerque were alerting police to intoxicated patrons so they could be nabbed after they drove away. "They were targeting individuals, who then could get their cases dismissed," Gallegos said, describing the tip. "So they would arrest and charge them and then get their cases dismissed and there would be some sort of payment for that."

In response to that tip, City Desk ABQ says, O'Guin examined "the activity of the seven officers who were on the DWI unit at that time, including Alba, Johnson and Montaño." But his investigation apparently was limited to the specific allegation, as opposed to the general claim that officers were helping arrestees avoid charges in exchange for payoffs.

In December 2022, the officers' activity "did not show any obvious indicators that would match the allegations of the information received for the initial complaint in regards to increased activity in the areas of the three locations mentioned in NE Albuquerque," O'Guin wrote in the intel file. "All officers' CAD [computer-aided dispatch] activity showed what would appear to be normal traffic stops and requests for assistance responses across the city." The same was true, he said, for October and November.

That summary of O'Guin's investigation is dated January 2024, by which point the FBI had collected enough evidence to obtain search warrants. "When the allegations were relayed from the FBI, the detective was asked to update the file with documentation of the work that was initially done," Gallegos explained. "So that part of the report was dated January 2024, when he provided that information."

Given the timing, O'Guin's gloss may have been deliberately self-exculpating. In any case, he evidently never thought to look at what was generally happening with the DWI cases that Alba et al. handled. If he had, he would have discovered the same curious pattern that reporters found after the FBI raids. Those high dismissal rates reinforce the allegation that these officers, after stopping drivers for DWI, would "get their cases dismissed" in exchange for "some sort of payment."

No corruption charges have been filed yet. But Alba, Montaño, Johnson, Ortiz, and Lt. Justin Hunt all resigned after they were placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of another internal investigation, this one prompted by the FBI probe and the letter to the Civilian Police Oversight Agency. On Tuesday, APD spokesman Daren DeAguero, a 15-year veteran who served in the DWI unit from 2014 to 2018, joined the line of exiting officers.

DeAguero resigned the same day he was scheduled to be interviewed by internal investigators. "Due to the current situation of receiving a letter of investigation with very little time to obtain adequate representation," he wrote in a memo to Medina, "I unfortunately will be ending my employment [with] the Albuquerque Police Department effective April 30, 2024."

Montaño was more expansive when he resigned on March 20. "When I was put on administrative leave, I thought there would be an opportunity for me to talk to the department about what I knew regarding the FBI's investigation," he wrote. "I thought there would be a time [when] I could disclose what I knew from within APD and how the issues I let myself get caught up in within the DWI Unit were generational. I thought there would be a time where I could talk about all the other people who should be on administrative leave as well, but aren't."

Montaño said he ultimately decided against cooperating with APD investigators. "In order for me to talk to the City about what I knew," he wrote, "I needed to not be the City's scapegoat for its own failures." He complained that Medina "has made it seem like there are just a few bad officers acting on their own." That is "far from the truth," Montaño said.

Among other things, the FBI reportedly is investigating claims that officers deliberately missed court dates, resulting in the dismissal of DWI cases. But according to Montaño, "officers all know that our attendance, or non-attendance, at Court is watched over and monitored." While "I take responsibility for my actions," he said, the responsibility for the alleged misconduct extends up the chain of command and more than a few years back in time—probably "decades," according to Medina himself.

"There is a much bigger story here," Montaño's lawyer, Thomas Grover, told City Desk ABQ. "If Officer Montaño is a cinder block in this saga, there's a whole wall to address. It goes outward and upward."

The post A Year Before Albuquerque's Police Corruption Scandal Made Headlines, an Internal Probe Found Nothing appeared first on Reason.com.

Despite bribing San Francisco city officials for 18 years and being convicted of corruption, developer Sia Tahbazof, 73, was given only probation by U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston. He was "fined" $75,000, though, a good example of the old adage that to the rich, the fine is a price. — Read the rest

The post No prison time for developer who bribed city officials for 18 years appeared first on Boing Boing.

Last July, the New Mexico chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) picked Honorio Alba Jr., a member of the Albuquerque Police Department's DWI unit, as "Officer of the Year." A few months later, Albuquerque's Civilian Police Oversight Agency received a letter about "questionable conduct" by Alba. Instead of arresting an intoxicated driver who nearly caused a crash while speeding and subsequently drove onto a curb, Alba reportedly had referred him to a specific local attorney. That letter triggered a corruption investigation, and last week Alba resigned prior to a scheduled interview with his department's internal affairs division.

Alba was one of five Albuquerque officers who were placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the internal probe and a related FBI investigation. Another officer, Lt. Justin Hunt, resigned a few weeks ago. The FBI is looking into allegations that Alba and his colleagues got paid to make DWI cases disappear by failing to testify. Although no charges have been filed yet, FBI agents have executed search warrants at cops' homes and at the office of Thomas Clear, an Albuquerque attorney who specializes in DWI cases.

Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina has promised to "leave no stone unturned and make sure that we get to the bottom of this." But Medina himself is the subject of an internal investigation that he requested after he broadsided a car last month, severely injuring the driver. Medina's fishy account of that incident is apt to reinforce the public distrust generated by the corruption scandal.

In response to the corruption allegations, the Bernalillo County District Attorney's Office dropped some 200 DWI cases, saying it could not rely on the testimony of the cops who had made the arrests. KOB, the NBC affiliate in Albuquerque, reports that Alba was the arresting officer in many of those cases. KRQE, the local CBS affiliate, looked at DWI cases filed during the previous six years. It found that another cop who was placed on leave, Joshua Montaño, "was named as the officer in at least 36 cases" in which the defendants were represented by Clear, and "nearly 90% of those cases ended in dismissals."

Speaking in general terms about the corruption investigation at a February 2 press conference, Chief Medina noted that DWI cases often are dismissed when officers are unavailable to testify, an outcome that defense attorneys can make more likely by seeking trial delays. "Systems that struggle, systems that have loopholes, are really open to corruption," Medina said. "We're dealing with stuff that we anticipate started decades ago, and we've done a lot of things that have got us to this point. But we will continue to dig and look and leave no stone unturned and make sure that we get to the bottom of this."

That promise of transparency and accountability was undermined two weeks later, when Medina ran a red light and collided with a car that had the right of way. On Saturday, February 17, according to a press release from the Albuquerque Police Department (APD), Medina "was headed to a news conference in his unmarked department issued vehicle"—a pickup truck—"with his wife." They were in the left turn lane on Alvarado Drive NE at the intersection with Central Avenue when they "witnessed two individuals fighting." They "then saw one of the individuals pull out a gun," and "shots were fired." Since "Chief Medina and his wife were in the direct line of fire," he "took evasive action through the intersection to get his vehicle away from the gunfire."

The official account describes what happened next without reference to Medina's culpability. "A gold Mustang was traveling eastbound on Central and continued forward as Chief Medina was entering the intersection," it says, "and the vehicles collided."

Medina gives a more detailed account in a video he recorded a few days after the crash. "When we were driving down Central," he says, "I noticed that there could possibly be a homeless encampment on Alvarado north of Central." He took a detour and drove past the encampment, planning to call an underling about it. At the intersection of Alvarado and Central, he stopped for a red light. "My wife stated, 'Look, those two homeless individuals are about to get into a fight,'" he said. "My wife stated, 'gun, gun.' I looked up, and I could hear that a shot had been fired, and I saw an individual that was holding a firearm pointing it at another individual who was directly in line with my wife."

Medina decided "the best thing I could do was get my wife out of the way and regroup and see what the best response would be." He claims he proceeded with care. "I looked to my left, and the intersection was cleared," he says. "I thought that…the car was going to pass before I got there, and it did not. And unfortunately, I struck the vehicle. The occupant of the other vehicle was injured, and it's just another sign of how gun violence sometimes impacts our community."

Former Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White, a former crash investigator, was skeptical of that self-exculpating story after examining surveillance video of the accident. "It's clear by the video that that wasn't the case," he told KOAT, the ABC affiliate in Albuquerque. "He cuts off a vehicle immediately. That's westbound on Central. Had to slam on its brakes. You can see that. And then he bolts across what is potentially one of the busiest roadways in the state of New Mexico and broadsides a car."

As White sees it, "the chief was not looking" because "he was distracted by something." He added, "I don't mean the shooting" because Medina was "already across the intersection" at that point.

Tom Grover, a local attorney who represents police officers accused of misconduct, sees several possible policy violations. In an interview with KOAT, "Grover said some of the violations the chief could be in trouble for include having his wife in the car and taking police action, not having his radio turned on and not turning on his lights and siren" when "he ran the red light."

Medina also belatedly activated his body camera. "My camera wasn't on at the beginning of this incident," he says in the video. "I think that everybody's been held accountable for cameras, and I wanted to make sure that I was investigated…Did I have time to turn this on? Was it proper for me to have it on before then?"

KOAT notes that "some say officers have been fired for similar conduct." In 2017, for example, an Albuquerque police officer "was rushing with lights and sirens to a call of a man armed with a machete when a car pulled out in front of him. The person driving that car died in the crash. The city fired the officer and paid more than $3 million in a civil suit." In 2013, a 21-year-old woman died after another Albuquerque officer "sped through a red light at Paseo Del Norte and Eagle Ranch, hitting her car." The city paid $8.5 million to settle a lawsuit by her family. The officer was convicted of careless driving and sentenced to 90 days in jail.

Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller appeared unfazed by Medina's seemingly similar conduct. "Whether it's our city or the individuals that he helped, or potentially the lives that he saved because of the shooting that was happening," Keller said after the crash, "we all owe him a debt of gratitude today and every day."

This week the Albuquerque City Council rejected a proposal for an independent task force to investigate the incident. The members who voted against the idea noted that Victor Valdez, the former judge who has been charged with investigating the crash as the APD's superintendent of police reform, does not report to the chief.

"I would hope that there is no bias, but it appears like there possibly could be," said City Councilor Renee Grout, one of four council members who favored the task force. "We just need to have some accountability. We need to have transparency. I don't think that it would hurt to have this outside investigation. I think it would help the community have better trust in our APD force."

The post New Mexico MADD 'Officer of the Year' Resigns Amid DWI Corruption Scandal appeared first on Reason.com.

"I'm just floored and shocked," Rankin County, Mississippi, Sheriff Bryan Bailey said last August after five of his former deputies admitted to punching, kicking, tasing, torturing, and humiliating two men during an unlawful home invasion the previous January. "This is a perfect example of why people don't trust the police, and never in my life did I think it would happen in this department."

According to an investigation by The New York Times and Mississippi Today, however, Bailey had plenty of reasons to think something like this would happen in his department. Similar things had been happening in Rankin County "for nearly two decades," the Times reported in November.

"Narcotics detectives and patrol officers, some [of whom] called themselves the Goon Squad, barged into homes in the middle of the night, accusing people inside of dealing drugs," the paper said. "Then they handcuffed or held them at gunpoint and tortured them into confessing or providing information."

The Times and Mississippi Today corroborated "17 incidents involving 22 victims based on witness interviews, medical records, photographs of injuries and other documents." Those cases almost always involved "small drug busts," and the accusers "described similar tactics." Deputies "held people down while punching and kicking them or shocked them repeatedly with Tasers." They "shoved gun barrels into people's mouths." Three people "said deputies had waterboarded them until they thought they would suffocate," while "five said deputies had told them to move out of the county."

Although the federal charges that drew national attention to police brutality in Rankin County involved two black victims, Bailey's deputies were equal-opportunity abusers. They "appear to have targeted people based on suspected drug use, not race," the Times said. "Most of their accusers were white."

The deputies' pattern of abuse was reflected in complaints and lawsuits. "More than a dozen people have directly confronted Sheriff Bailey and his command staff about the deputies' brutal methods," the Times noted, and "at least five people have sued the department alleging beatings, chokings and other abuses by deputies associated with the Goon Squad."

Bailey said he had never heard of the Goon Squad and had no reason to think his deputies were abusing their authority. "Nobody's ever reported that to me," he said in August, and he "never, ever could've imagined" that the five convicted deputies, who included a man he said he knew "well" and had chosen as investigator of the year in 2013, were capable of "these horrendous crimes."

Bailey, who was reelected in November after running unopposed, rejected calls for his resignation. "I'm going to fix this," he promised. "I'm going to make everyone a whole lot more accountable."

The post Sheriff Who Presided Over Violent 'Goon Squad' Tries To Play Dumb appeared first on Reason.com.

Taking crazy pills: Former President Donald Trump said last evening that the civil fraud verdict that will force him to pony up $355 million for inflating his net worth to banks is actually "a form of Navalny" and "a form of communism or fascism."

When asked about the Russian state's imprisonment and killing of dissident Alexei Navalny, Trump responded: "It's happening here." The indictments are "all because of the fact that I'm in politics," in his telling.

He made these comments last night during a Fox News town hall. On Truth Social, his own alternative social media platform, Trump said, "the sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country."

Alexei Navalny, who was reported dead on Friday, served as an opposition leader in a state that disallows opposition and legitimate voting. Navalny garnered a massive following—more than 6 million YouTube followers, for starters, with at least one video viewed 130 million times—by doing legitimately good journalism digging into the kleptocratic, repressive Putin regime. Navalny offered normal Russians legitimate, well-sourced explanations for why they are so poor: their leaders consistently abdicate responsibility, choosing to enrich themselves. Their leaders are content with everyday people living in squalor and dysfunction, as long as they stay comfortable.

Running for office, and cutting through the state's propaganda, made him so disfavored by the regime that he went into exile. Navalny returned to Russia in 2021 with full awareness that he would be locked up but a devout belief that he ought to continue his work domestically, displaying courage in the face of certain persecution. And sure enough, he was locked up, then sent to an even more remote prison camp called IK-3, in Kharp, which is in the Arctic Circle. His death there was reported last week, but the opposition movement will not die with him. "In killing Aleksei, Putin killed half of me, half of my heart and half of my soul," said his widow, Yulia, "but I have another half left—and it is telling me I have no right to give up."

Trump, on the other hand, misrepresented his net worth to banks, defrauding lenders (who…still had a responsibility to do due diligence, a fact ignored in much mainstream media reporting of the case). "Trump claimed his apartment in Manhattan's Trump Tower was 30,000 square feet, nearly three times its actual size," writes Reason's Jacob Sullum. "He valued Mar-a-Lago, his golf resort in Palm Beach, based on the assumption that it could be sold for residential purposes, which the deed precluded." But "[New York Attorney General Letitia] James was not able to identify any damages to lenders or insurers," writes Sullum, and "the striking absence of any injury commensurate with the punishment lends credibility to Trump's reflexive complaint that he is the victim of a partisan vendetta."

Both things can be true, that Trump attracts politically motivated ire—which attorneys general and judges are wrong to indulge—and that he also did something wrong by inflating his net worth. But he's a far cry from Navalny—Trump enjoys self-dealing more than fact-finding and truth-telling—and the way this went down, via the court system, where Trump had the right to defend himself, is a far cry from how "justice" gets dispensed in Russia—by Putin, in penal colonies, via murders of anyone whose beliefs threaten the man in charge.

Scenes from New York: Nobody asked for this.

What are we doing as a city?? pic.twitter.com/iaEBWGPMmh

— Cynical (@CynicalNYK) February 18, 2024

QUICK HITS

• "Clinical psychologists with the Department of Veterans Affairs faced retaliation and ostracization at work after they publicly opposed a gender-inclusion policy that allows men to access women's medical spaces within the VA," reports National Review.
• RFK Jr.'s "origin story makes this like Odysseus returning to the manor, stringing the bow, this is that iconic moment," said Bret Weinstein on Joe Rogan's podcast. If you say so, Bret.
• Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton just announced a lawsuit against El Paso's Annunciation House, an NGO in charge of a shelter network for migrants, for "facilitating illegal entry to the United States, alien harboring, human smuggling, and operating a stash house." But going after charities that help migrants—whatever you think of the behavior they engaged in to get here—seems like a wrongheaded stunt.
• I do not think this is true or that there's much evidence for it:

do you want a black pill?

like… a really really black pill?

George Carlin would be pro-censorship if he were alive today b/c he didn't actually love free speech, he just fucking hated Christians

— PoIiMath (@politicalmath) February 20, 2024

• "The enormous contrast between [Alexei] Navalny's civic courage and the corruption of [Vladimir] Putin's regime will remain," writes The Atlantic's Anne Applebaum. "Putin is fighting a bloody, lawless, unnecessary war, in which hundreds of thousands of ordinary Russians have been killed or wounded, for no reason other than to serve his own egotistical vision. He is running a cowardly, micromanaged reelection campaign, one in which all real opponents are eliminated and the only candidate who gets airtime is himself. Instead of facing real questions or challenges, he meets tame propagandists such as Tucker Carlson, to whom he offers nothing more than lengthy, circular, and completely false versions of history."
• Related: People were arrested for laying flowers in memory of Navalny.

People being arrested in Moscow for laying flowers for Navalny. pic.twitter.com/8YnLpHcB0s

— Eleanor Beardsley (@ElBeardsley) February 17, 2024

• Wow:

NEW: California's Legislative Analyst's Office says the state's budget problem has grown by $15 Billion.

LAO says because of weak revenue collections so far, the state's deficit could reach $73 Billion. https://t.co/oz83vntalh

— Ashley Zavala (@ZavalaA) February 20, 2024

• We live in the stupidest simulation:

I dunno if he qualifies as a "hero" lol this ain't exactly Normandy https://t.co/C3fXsLcnkZ

— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) February 21, 2024

The post A Form of Navalny appeared first on Reason.com.