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.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Fletcher: Lies, all lies against me!
By Greg Reeves
Kansas City lawyer Michael Fletcher (left) is mad as heck at the lawyers and judges who got him suspended last week from practicing in federal court.
He's so mad he sued them this week in Jackson County Circuit Court for libel, slander, mental distress, etc.
Fletcher was suspended for three years because of allegedly race-baiting witnesses and other offensive behavior in court.
The suspension puts him in a world of hurt, because he has a history of winning big judgements in race-related lawsuits, and most such cases are in federal court.
The story today by incredibly well-informed and careful Star reporter Dan Margolies gives these details:
- Fletcher attracted scrutiny for abusive litigation tactics, including race-baiting witnesses and epithet-strewn tirades against opposing counsel.
- Four judges found Fletcher’s allegations (in one case) to be inaccurate, misleading, impertinent, inflammatory or scandalous.
- Fletcher allegedly tried to stiff a cabbie for a $40.58 fare in 2002 and ended up calling a Kansas City police officer "Jew boy" 21 times - on videotape. He later apologized.
Margolies writes: "Former Kansas City Municipal Judge Deborah A. Neal dismissed a theft charge against Fletcher over the cab incident. Neal in May pleaded guilty to a mail fraud charge and is awaiting sentencing."
Alabama prisons: Ollee ollee in free
By Greg Reeves
If 40 Missouri prison inmates had escaped in the past 11 months, we think Missourians would raise a holler.
Well, 42 Alabama prison inmates have escaped since October 2004. But that's good news, relatively - 71 escaped the year before.
This caught our attention after Kansas City police said yesterday that an escaped killer from Alabama might be in our area.
Decatur (AL) Daily News reporter Chris Paschenko tells Crime Scene KC that Bond was among three convicted killers who have escaped Alabama prison work-release programs this year. Alabama Gov. Bob Riley has announced a review, Paschenko said.
Another recent Alabama escapee was shot to death by police in Georgia. And concern about holes in the Alamaba prison system has been in the news for years.
KCPD: Escaped killer on the loose
By Greg Reeves
Carl Brad Ward (left) is an escaped killer from Alabama thought to be in the Kansas City area.
Ward and another man, Kenneth Long, stabbed an Alabama woman to death in her home in 1990 and stole her jewelry.
The men were sentenced to life in prison. Long died in prison of a heart attack in 2003. But Ward escaped Sept. 7 from a warehouse outside the Alabama prison where he had been working, under supervision.
The Birmingham News said Ward fled in a prison employee's gold 2001 Mitsubishi 3000 GT. Authorities are trying to figure out how Ward got the worker's car keys, the paper said.
Ward is 40, 5'7" or 5'8", 162 pounds, brown hair, brown eyes. Call the TIPS Hotline 474-8477. Police haven't said why they thought Ward might be in this area.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Federal prosecutions 1986-2005: Where's the politics?
By Greg Reeves
Our previous posts (1, 2) on new data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) spelled out TRAC's findings on changing priorities in federal prosecutions.
Here's TRAC's count of total federal prosecutions under four presidents. We can't exactly tell the Democrat from the Republicans, or the Republicans apart.
Our main question: What happened from 1997 to 1998 that woke the feds up?
Prosecutions under Bush: Weapons cases up, drug cases down
By Greg Reeves
We described earlier the organization whose logo is pictured to the left - the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).
TRAC gets gigabytes of data from federal agencies describing staffing levels, spending and agency priorities. Today TRAC released its study of prosecutions under President George W. Bush.
In short, prosecutions on weapons and immigration charges are up, while cases for drugs and white-collar crime are down, TRAC said.
Here, from TRAC's report, are the findings:
- Immigration cases more than doubled from FY2000 to FY2004 -- 16,724 to 37,854, and are now the largest single prosecution category - outpacing even drug cases. But many of the immigration cases come from one federal district where lots of minor immigration charges are filed, TRAC said.
- Drug cases rank second - 30,988 in 2004. These cases have declined in number under Bush, TRAC said, and figures for the first half of this year indicate the drop is continuing.
- Weapons cases, third largest category, started on an upswing under President Clinton and has continued under Bush, jumping from 5,490 in 2000 to 10,937 in 2004, TRAC said.
- White-collar crime cases dropped 10 percent from 2003 to 2004 after remaining steady since 2000, TRAC said. There were 8,626 such prosecutions in fiscal 2004.
