Gee, who didn’t see this coming?

(Daily Mail) Police departments across the country that have spent years boasting about plummeting crime numbers are now scrambling to confront something many agencies have not seen in decades: more bloodshed.

Houston, St. Louis, New Orleans and Baltimore have all seen significant spikes in the number of homicides this year. The totals are up in other cities, too, including New York and Chicago.

“We’re in scary territory,” said Peter Scharf, a professor at Louisiana State University who tracks homicides in New Orleans.

In Los Angeles, the number of slayings dropped slightly, but the number of shooting victims jumped more than 18 percent. And in Milwaukee, a homicide on Wednesday put the total for the year at 84 – just two fewer than happened in all of 2014. (more…)

Late Friday a CCTV video from Don Carlos restaurant next door to Twin Peaks, was obtained by local station KCEN-TV media.

Screen shot of earlier witness video

Apparently the video arrived through email from the law firm of Clint Broden who represents Matthew Clendennen, a local biker arrested in the shooting.  According to KCEN:

The hour-and-a-half long video shows people running, then cops approaching Twin Peaks and crouching behind cars in the Don Carlos parking lot.  There [is] no audio.

Both Mr. Broden and McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna said they could not comment on the video because to do so would be a violation of a gag order in the case.

(more…)

Marilyn Mosby will be giving a speech at the NAACP convention in Philadelphia this weekend.  Her indulgent publicity tour continues – President Obama and Attorney General Lynch will also be in attendance.  Meanwhile….

BALTIMORE – Public interest in the prosecution of six Baltimore police officers charged in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray will not diminish enough to seat an impartial jury in the city in time for the officers’ October trials, their attorneys argued in a new court filing Monday.

Because of that, the attorneys wrote, the case should be removed from the city now — without waiting, as prosecutors have suggested, to see how the intense scrutiny of the case plays out.

“The feeling of unrest among city residents is still chillingly evident as violent crime continues to climb to the highest level in decades, police and community relations remain embattled, and Freddie Gray remains fresh in the minds of Baltimore City citizens,” the officers’ attorneys wrote. (more…)

A Texas judge in one of the Twin Peaks “Biker Gang” shooting cases has agreed to release CCTV video of Twin Peaks and Don Carlos resturarant to the defense. However, the judge has also barred the defense from sharing the video and now placed a gag order to stop the defense team from describing the video to the media.

The Prosecuting State Attorney is continuing the fight to hide the truth, block public scrutiny and avoid the deconstruction of the increasingly apparent fraudulent claims originally made by Waco Police surrounding the shooting itself.

WACO, TEXAS – A state district judge ruled Tuesday that a Dallas attorney can have a copy of a Twin Peaks franchisee’s video of the May 17 biker shootout, but the judge barred the release of the video to the public.

Judge Matt Johnson of Waco’s 54th State District Court also granted a prosecution request to place a gag order in the Matthew Alan Clendennen case, preventing attorneys on both sides, law enforcement officers and witnesses from discussing that case only in the media.

(more…)

A strange motion from a 2013 cop killer case in Virginia sniffs eerily similar to the beginning of a “Disparate Impact” defense.

In an otherwise ‘under-the-radar’ murder case involving a suspect named Russell E. Brown III, charged with killing Virginia State Police trooper Junius A. Walker, a defense motion surfaces that could potentially be alarming.  The defense team wants to investigate the racial composition of Dinwiddie County grand jury members:

Brown is charged with eight felony counts, including capital murder of a police officer, in the March 7, 2013, killing of Walker, 63, who was shot in his police cruiser on Interstate 85 after the officer rolled up to Brown’s vehicle stopped on the shoulder to see if Brown needed any help.

(Via Richmond.Com)  […] Capital-murder suspect Russell E. Brown III’s public defenders also want to investigate the composition of Dinwiddie County’s grand jury system over the past five years in an apparent effort to detect racial or selection bias in the grand jury process, according to recent court filings in the case.

(more…)

Dallas, Texas  — Clinton Broden of the Dallas based criminal defense firm Broden, Mickelsen, Helms & Snipes, LLP. announced that a hearing has been set on the City of McLennan’s motion to quash  the subpoena he issued to Twin Peaks for its surveillance video of the events of May 17, 2015.

The hearing is set before District Judge Matt Johnson in the 54^th District Court at 9:00 am on Tuesday, June 30, 2015.  Presumably a hearing will also be held at the same time on Broden’s motion to sanction the City Attorney’s Office for filing the frivolous motion to quash in the first place.

Broden continued to express bewilderment that the City of Waco believes it has the authority to stop the production of a video that is owned by the Twin Peaks franchisee and which the franchisee is ready, able and willing to produce.  “Everybody needs to understand that this video is the property of the Twin Peaks franchisee.  It is not the property of the City of Waco, theWaco Police or McLennan county.  It is private property,” said Broden. (more…)

This is one of those stories with multiple layers and angles for consideration embedded.

Summary:  Injured, innocuous (not black),  man wraps hand in towel and waves down a cop for help.  LAPD Cop gets out of vehicle shouting “put down the gun” (man never had gun) apparently anticipating a handgun under the towel.   Confused man unable to comply (man never had gun); without compliance cop draws weapon and shoots man four times, once in the head.  Now the man is really, really, injured – as the police roll him over in his blood (witness video) and handcuff him while waiting for ambulance.  Rushed to the hospital in critical condition – original hand injury now irrelevant to his bullet to head injury.

NBC Summary Here – Another Link HERE

(more…)

Waco Police refuse to provide public any information about the Twin Peaks shooting citing, in general, “ongoing investigation”.  Video, autopsies, forensic and ballistic information will likely be withheld until the trials of the arrested, perhaps several years away.

(Excerpts Via Waco Tribune) One month after the deadly May 17 shootout at Twin Peaks prompted the unprecedented mass arrests of 177 bikers, officials are releasing limited information and say disclosure of certain evidence, including videos of the incident, would compromise their investigation.

[…] Residents have called for police to release all videos of the shooting to the public in order to clear up conflicting tales about the events that transpired before and during the bloody melee. Waco police have declined, citing concerns that doing so would adversely affect their investigation.

Local officials sent the videos to the FBI for analysis. Swanton said the videos include images from at least one squad car dash camera, Twin Peaks restaurant surveillance cameras and a surveillance camera from the neighboring Don Carlos Mexican restaurant.

(more…)

A judge had given Mosby until June 26 to respond to three defense motions. In addition to the motion to remove her and her office from the case, defense attorneys have asked that the case be moved away from Baltimore and that it be dismissed because of “prosecutorial misconduct.” (link)

Baltimore’s Special State Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby’s office has responded to defense motion that she should be removed from prosecuting the Baltimore Six. (Full pdf motion below)

An astoundingly petulant, and ideologically-worded, rebuttal motion claiming the accused police officers and their attorneys distort facts in the hope “vitriol will trump logic.”

Notably absent, actually glaringly absent, from the motion is anything relating to a “rough ride” despite numerous references to the construct of negligence in reference to the transport of Freddie Gray.

This excerpt screams petulance -directed at a media audience- and is seriously lacking in any foundation toward the substance of the actual recusal motion itself: (more…)

Meh, I find myself uncomfortable with this. Mostly because we’re not particularly fond of the judicial system using optics and theatrics for public consumption. Such activity shows the growing influence of the Community Relations Service (CRS, Grande Lum) within the judiciary.

It was not a good thing when it was evidenced in Sanford/Orlando 2012/2013, it is not a good thing in Charleston 2015.