Transparency News 12/1/17

Friday, December 1, 2017


State and Local Stories

In advance of the filing this week of two authoritative reports on what happened in Charlottesville on Aug. 12, a city councilor says he has his own investigative report on the police response to what unfolded that day.  In an interview Wednesday, Bob Fenwick, who has shared his videos and a narrative report about the rally on the website august12.space, said he takes exception to recent comments James W. Baker, the director of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, made about the city’s handling of the rally.
The Daily Progress

Former Loudoun detective Mark McCaffrey, who lost a $6.35 million lawsuit against Loudoun County Sheriff Mike Chapman (R) and the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, filed an opening brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond Monday to appeal the ruling. The original lawsuit was filed in July after McCaffrey claimed he was wrongfully terminated from his position after supporting Chapman's Republican primary election challenger for sheriff in 2015, Eric Noble. The former LCSO detective said his termination violated the U.S. and Virginia constitutions.
Loudoun Times-Mirror

The Alexandria city manager’s report moved from the end of the City Council meetings to the start of the meeting. That’s it. But the item that was seemingly going to be approved without much discussion at the tail end of the Nov. 28 City Council meeting turned into a spat between Mayor Allison Silberberg and Vice Mayor Justin Wilson. The agenda item was a revised order of business of Council Meetings, but before it was approved Silberberg noted that its contents should be read so the public is aware of the change. There was no objection from the council, but then Silberberg mentioned a change in the council procedure from January this year. The council had voted in support of a change requested by Vice Mayor Justin Wilson to limit the number of public speakers signing up at the start of the meeting to 15. Silberberg had expressed open disdain for the move, calling it draconian and anti-democratic. Silberberg used the city manager agenda item to once again express her dislike of the change, prompting backlash from other members of the council. Wilson, who announced a week earlier that he would be challenging Silberberg for mayorship in the Democratic primary, fired back that the rules limited public comment to 30 minutes and limiting speakers to 15 was an effort to keep to that timetable. While Silberberg noted that the limit had never been strictly enforced, the original motion was prompted by the sharp lengthening of public comment periods in the past year to over an hour.
Alexandria Gazette Packet

King William supervisor Dave Hansen can receive a renewed concealed carry permit, a circuit court judge ruled Wednesday. The decision comes after his application was denied because school board members reported finding a gun at a board meeting in February 2016 they believed was his. King William School Board members Kathy Morrison, Steven Tupponce and Lindsay Robinson testified Hansen attended a board budget meeting Feb. 8, 2016 in Hamilton-Holmes Middle School. At the conclusion of the regular meeting, the board went into closed session to discuss a personnel matter. Hansen and two other members of the public left the meeting at that time, Morrison said. The School Board members at the meeting recalled a brown vest was left behind in Hansen’s chair when he exited the room. “I saw what I thought was a gun” in the vest, Tupponce said.
Daily Press



National Stories
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The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital rights advocacy group, is suing government agencies for information on tattoo recognition technology being developed to assist law enforcement. The EFF filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) on Thursday against the Department of Commerce, the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which are collaborating on the new technology. The group is concerned that tattoo recognition programs raise concerns about privacy violations and could infringe on First Amendment rights to free expression.
The Hill

The top Republican and Democrat in the Wisconsin Assembly Tuesday vowed to ensure there would be no sexual harassment in their house but said they would always oppose releasing the results of investigations into such allegations. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has sought the results of a still unreleased investigation into the conduct of former Assembly Majority Leader Bill Kramer, a Republican who in 2014 was convicted of two misdemeanor counts of fourth-degree sexual assault. Senate Chief Clerk Jeff Renk has already denied an open records request by the Journal Sentinel for the results of personnel investigations in the Senate.
Governing

The conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch on Thursday released 29 pages from an FBI investigation into the 2016 tarmac meeting between former President Bill Clinton and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch. The account appears to show officials were more concerned about the leak than the meeting itself. The report said FBI officials sent a flurry of emails over the story about the meeting that ran in New York's Observer. The officials reportedly wrote, “we need to find that guy” and reached out to the FBI offices in Phoenix in hopes to prevent “further damage.” The report said all names on the emails were redacted and there is no documentation showing concern over the meeting itself.
Fox News

A member of the Charleston County, South Carolina, School Board told the district superintendent in June it would be a "common courtesy" for her to help get his child into a prestigious public magnet school. The Rev. Chris Collins, the longest-serving member of the nine-person board, sent at least six emails to Superintendent Gerrita Postlewait between January and June 2017 discussing his child's application to the Charleston County School of the Arts, according to documents obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request.
The Post and Courier

When data goes missing, researchers take notice. On Tuesday, a research alliance representing two professional associations of criminologists lodged a formal statement of concern with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and acting FBI Director Christopher Wray over a number of data tables that were missing from the FBI’s 2016 Crime in the United States report. FiveThirtyEight obtained a copy of the letter, which was signed by Peter Wood, chair of the Crime & Justice Research Alliance, a joint project of the American Society of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and which called for the FBI to “immediately revise the 2016 report to make this data available.”
FiveThirtyEight