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At least 85,000 law enforcement officers across the USA have been investigated or disciplined for misconduct over the past decade, an investigation by USA TODAY Network found. Officers have beaten members of the public, planted evidence and used their badges to harass women. They have lied, stolen, dealt drugs, driven drunk and abused their spouses. Despite their role as public servants, the men and women who swear an oath to keep communities safe can generally avoid public scrutiny for their misdeeds. The records of their misconduct are filed away, rarely seen by anyone outside their departments. Police unions and their political allies have worked to put special protections in place ensuring some records are shielded from public view, or even destroyed. Reporters from USA TODAY, its 100-plus affiliated newsrooms and the nonprofit Invisible Institute in Chicago have spent more than a year creating the biggest collection of police misconduct records.
News Leader
Small-town mayors in Tennessee pushed back against legislation that would require government entities to post basic information, such as meeting agendas and minutes, on their websites. They said they don’t have the resources or the online expertise to provide the public with this information. As a result, Tennessee legislators deferred action on this legislation until next year. The requirement was added to House Bill 626, which aims to prevent people from using public records requests to harass government employees. As amended, the bill would enable government officials to get an injunction preventing people from making additional requests for free inspection of public records if they’ve already made 12 or more requests within the past year. Government officials would have to show these records requests weren’t made “for any legitimate purpose” and that these requesters “seriously abused, intimidated, threatened or harassed” a government employee.
MuckRock
A Florida judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked prosecutors from releasing hidden camera footage that allegedly shows New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft engaged in sexual acts inside a massage parlor. Palm Peach County Judge Leonard Hanser said Kraft’s right to a fair trial could be harmed if prosecutors release the video to media outlets, which requested the footage under Florida’s robust open government laws.
Reuters
Within weeks of the riots that ripped through Baltimore four years ago, the Maryland Transit Administration’s deputy police chief had pulled hours of dispatch records and compiled an email for colleagues — “RE: Mondawmin” — that outlined the earliest stages of the unrest in minute-by-minute detail. Throughout the timeline, Lt. Col. Fred Damron Jr. interspersed raw, emotionless radio chatter with his own commentary — recasting details through a law enforcement lens and in light of the harrowing realities he believed they foreshadowed. Damron, whose perspective conflicts with what some community members have said for years, then outlined a rapid series of events — including a Baltimore police skirmish line forming through the middle of the busy Mondawmin bus loop, and larger and larger numbers of youths arriving on the Metro line below. The email was one of a handful of MTA records related to the April 2015 unrest that the Baltimore Sun obtained from the MTA last week. The agency continues to deny access to its surveillance footage from that day. Combined, the records — which also include a written account of what the withheld footage purportedly shows — provide new insights into one of the most controversial and consequential moments in modern Maryland history.
The Washington Post
The death certificate of Boston mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger revealed that the notorious criminal died last year from “blunt force injuries of the head.” The document obtained by Fox News from the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources on Thursday showed that the 89-year-old was found dead on Oct. 30, 2018 at 8:21 a.m.
Fox News
One bad search on the government website for South Carolina’s capital city could’ve exposed an entire database. The city of Columbia site had a security flaw in its search tool, according to independent security researcher Arif Khan. The flaw let anyone view passwords for the website’s database and email protocol servers, creating a massive potential for abuse, Khan said on Thursday. The vulnerability made it possible for someone to “pull sensitive data out of the Columbia city government’s database,” Khan said. With access to the email protocol servers, an attacker could’ve also created spoof emails that looked like they’d come from the city government.
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 “The bill would enable government officials to get an injunction preventing people from making additional requests for free inspection of public records if they’ve already made 12 or more requests within the past year.”
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