By Greg Reeves
U.S. District Court Judge Howard Sachs has laid the hammer down on former KC Municipal Court Judge Deborah Neal (left), giving her 28 months in prison - above the normal sentencing guidelines.
(If you think the picture looks dated, you're right - it's from Neal's first days on the bench, in 1996 - the latest picture The Star has!)
Neal, 54, turned her judge's seat into a cash machine from attorneys, prosecutors charged. All told, she collected nearly $36,000 from 17 attorneys and three bonding companies, said U.S. Attorney Todd Graves.
Neal's guilty plea in May drew local coverage, a single mention from the White Collar Crime Professors blog, a few mentions in various gambling publications (Neal blamed her behavior on a gambling addiction) - and not much else, from what we can find.
In an unusual move, however, Sachs said he would release a redacted version of the pre-sentence investigation in Neal's case to the public.
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Friday, September 30, 2005
KC homicides 2005 v. 2004
By Greg Reeves
Today's big story on homicides has:
- A detailed list of 44 unsolved homicides
- A detailed list of 47 solved homicides
Nationally, no official figures are available yet for homicides to date this year. The FBI in June made preliminary 2004 crime statistics available (PDF) under its Uniform Crime Reporting program.
Brooks: KCPD plays no favorites in probing homicides
By Greg Reeves
The big story today on KC homicides - up 32 percent this year - caused us to dig out a Sept. 23 question-and-answer session we did with City Council member and mayor pro tem Alvin Brooks (left).
Brooks, a Kansas City police officer 1954-1964, has long been in the forefront of combating violent crime, especially homicides, in the city.
He founded the Ad Hoc Group Against Crime in 1977and has worked closely with community groups and police on the crime problem.
We called Brooks because the death of Damon White was in the news - and White's family had complained in the past that police neglected his murder because he was "poor, black and gay."
Here's Brooks' take on the question:
Q. Are police even-handed in the way they investigate homicides in the city?
A. I believe so, yes. Very much so. it’s almost like an obsession when one goes unsolved.
It does bother me that just a little over 50 percent of the homicides this year have been solved.
Q. Clearance rates have gone down from past years, haven't they?
A. We are unlike cities of comparable size. The city of Memphis - my cousin’s the former police chief there – has about an 80%-90% clearance rate. Kansas City, Kan., the same; Wichita too.
You keep wrestling with the why. But when you have four or five (homicides) back to back, that really stretches things out. They've assembled a cold-case file, but you have to drop the cold cases to deal with the hot ones.
I get these calls all the time from folks both black and white, 'because we’re poor, because we’re black'. I have not found in my years of working with the police department, since I left the police department and since I started working with them in 1977. that there is a disparity in the manner, or that one case is more important.
Missouri inmates more likely born to lose than to win
By Greg Reeves
When it comes to tattoos that spell out a purpose in
life, Missouri prison inmates pick "born to lose"
nearly seven times more often than "born to win". "Born to raise
hell" runs a close second as a tattooed statement of meaning.
Here are the "born to" stats of inmate tattoos:
Continue reading "Missouri inmates more likely born to lose than to win" »
Ongoing drama of the NOPD
By Greg Reeves
Just a short interlude to muse on the New Orleans Police Department, based on the news today that a dozen NOPD officers are under investigation for looting during Hurricane Katrina.
Four officers have already been suspended, and one reassigned.
The department has a history of violence and corruption:
Two former NOPD officers (pictured here) are on death row:
- Antoinette Frank (above left) gunned down three persons in the robbery of a Vietnamese restaurant, complaining that "one bitch got away".
- Len Davis (above right) killed a woman who had filed a brutality complaint against him. He cheered when the hit man called him with the news.
Other cases:
- After an NOPD officer was killed in 1980, his colleagues rampaged through a black section of town, killing four and injuring dozens. Some of the victims were tortured, including mock executions.
- In the late 1990s, 11 officers were convicted of accepting nearly $100,000 from undercover agents to protect a cocaine supply warehouse containing 286 pounds of cocaine.
Top tattoos of Missouri prison inmates - Part II
By Greg Reeves
Our post nine days ago about the most popular tattoos of Missouri prison inmates has been bouncing around the blogosphere, even though Crime Scene KC hasn't been advertised to anyone yet.
We've made the Chicago Sun-Times, something called einnews, this blog and our favorite, stumbleupon.com. The post also drew 13 comments. A sample:
- "Cross, rose and heart are 1-2-3... I think that's sweet."
- "What a stupid ass survey. How is this information important at all? I guess if I ever went to prison, I would know what all the "popular" tattoos were in order to fit in. Oh and "bunny"??? BUNNY? Who the hell did this survey? A woman?"
- "I have a feeling that "BUNNY" means playboy bunny. Its a very popular tattoo among the ladies. Note that they did not specify gender, these are stats from all inmates; male and female."
- "There is an ongoing study in Russia regarding prison tatooing and it's meaning in the criminal underworld. It is much more like Yakuza tattooing in that it specifically identifies the criminal as such. I am guessing this is not the case here in the states? Unless Unicorns are specifically from women's prisons..."
- "Tears = # of tears correlates with number of people tattoo-ee has killed."
This tells us Missouri prison inmate tattoos are a matter of great public interest - or at least curiosity - so we plan to draw more from the 68,430 different tattoos in our Missouri inmate database.
