I'd previously posted about how DHS-sponsored law enforcement "fusion centers" are utterly failing in their assigned goal, to help local law enforcement work with federal authorities to identify and prevent terror attacks. Instead, they seem to be just another pork barrel.

Now, Senator Tom Coburn has released (PDF) a damning report on the Urban ( Read more... )

Minnesota State Patrol has a "Drug Recognition Evaluation" course, intended to teach officers how to recognize individuals under the influence of various intoxicants. But, hey, experience is the best teacher, right? It's alleged that two officers involved with the program provided marijuana to individuals who had been lawfully detained during " ( Read more... )

Ever hear of "fusion centers"? They're what the DHS came up with after 9/11 to "close the gap" between federal and local law enforcement, to make sure that tips about potential terror plots got passed up the food chain in a timely manner. Except, since I'm blogging about it here, you can probably guess that that's not happening, according to a ( Read more... )

Have you heard about the physicist who got out of a "failure to stop at a stop sign" traffic ticket by writing a paper? In the paper, titled "The Proof Of Innocence", Dmitri Krioukov of UC San Diego's Physics Department argues that, due to the angle at which the officer viewed the supposed infraction, the high rate of his deceleration and re- ( Read more... )

Not content with taking what amounts to nude pictures of a large portion of travelers who enter into or travel within their country by air, the United States (via a recent 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court) has decided that their police can strip-search anyone who's arrested for any offense, no matter how innocuous, and without any of that silly ( Read more... )

Schools in Georgia were locked down yesterday after someone texted their friend "gunna be at west hall today". Except that (a) they didn't notice that auto-correct had changed "gunna" to be "gunman", and (b) they didn't check the number they sent it to ( Read more... )

A couple of months ago, I linked to a story about "Operation Fast and Furious", an ATF-DoJ operation to knowingly allow firearms (including handguns, assault rifles, and .50-calibre sniper rifles capable of cracking the engine block in most standard vehicles) to be smuggled into Mexico for use by drug cartels in shooting at each other, the Mexican ( Read more... )

A woman in Ohio is facing numerous charges after she got drunk at a wedding, picked a fight with her husband, and then sprayed her breast milk at officers responding to the call.

The article notes that she's a teacher specialising in "helping children with autism, ADHD and other disorders".

The city of Portland dumped 7.8 million gallons of drinking water from a reservoir after a passer-by was caught on video pissing into the water.
Cue a mass dump of water worth $28,500, a loss to which Portland Water Bureau will have to add $7,600 in "disposal fees ( Read more... )

A security researcher performing work on behalf of the municipal government for an unnamed US city managed to hack one of their cop cars, gaining full access to the DVR system "used to record and stream audio and video captured from gear mounted on the vehicle's dashboard." I wonder if he could also have gotten into the officer's front seat ( Read more... )