Page 2 of 7 FirstFirst 1234 ... LastLast
Results 11 to 20 of 63

Thread: Department of Corrections

  1. #11
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Quote Originally Posted by elsie View Post
    I could say a lot on this, but Heidi would ban me for sure.
    I wouldn't ban for a first infraction!
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  2. #12
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2013
    Posts
    1,122

    Convicted murderers mistakenly released from Florida prison

    ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Two men convicted on murder charges were mistakenly released from a Florida prison with forged documents, authorities said.

    Joseph Jenkins and Charles Walker were released separately from a prison in the Florida Panhandle in late September and early October, the Orange County Sheriff's Office said. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement learned about the mistake Tuesday.

    "These two individuals are out. They shouldn't be, and we want to get them back in custody," sheriff's office spokesman Angelo Nieves said. "This shouldn't have happened, but it did, and our concern is to get these individuals into custody."

    Walker was serving a life sentence on a second-degree murder conviction stemming from a 1999 slaying in Orange County. Jenkins was serving a life sentence for a 1998 first-degree murder conviction in the killing of an Orlando man.

    The Florida Department of Corrections says the men were released from the Carrabelle prison according to protocol. However, their releases were ordered based on forged documents filed through the Orange County Clerk of Courts to alter their sentences.

    "I don't know how it happened," corrections spokeswoman Jessica Cary said Wednesday.

    In a statement, Corrections Secretary Michael Crews said his agency is "conducting a vigorous and thorough review of releases that were based on modified court orders received from Orange County to ensure that there are no other inmates who have been released based on falsified documents."

    State and local authorities are searching for the men and investigating how they got released.

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...rison/3000111/

  3. #13
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2013
    Posts
    1,122
    Judge Perry: Escaped killers 'had some help'



    Chief Judge Belvin Perry's signature was forged on a pair of fraudulent orders that freed two Orlando-area killers — both lifers — from a North Florida lockup in an astounding paperwork prison break that has sent shockwaves across Florida.

    Law-enforcement officials are hunting for Charles Bernard Walker and Joseph Ivan Jenkins, both 34, after they left the Franklin Correctional Institution in the Panhandle within two weeks of each other because of fabricated documents authorizing their release.

    Ninth Judicial Circuit Court officials said the phony paperwork contains the forged signatures of at least two judges and members of the State Attorney's office — including Jeff Ashton, officials said.

    "I strongly believe they had some help," Perry told the Orlando Sentinel today. "It is unlikely [the documents] were produced by the inmates."

    He doesn't know who helped.

    At least three investigations — including a criminal probe — are ongoing to figure out what happened.

    The orders to release the inmates were filed with the Orange County Clerk's office and were carefully crafted to appear legitimate, complete with the county seal, letterheads and outlined in a format common to the court documents filed regularly at the clerk's office.

    It is unclear how they were filed.

    Perry said it is clear whoever manufactured the paperwork had some "elementary knowledge" of computers and "these folks spent a lot of time doing this."

    Law officers said they think at least one killer — they didn't say which one — may be in Orange County but think both could be in the region because their crimes happened here.

    DOC: Everything seemed normal

    Joseph Jenkins went free Sept. 27.

    He was serving a life sentence for a first-degree murder of a father of six in Orlando committed in 1998.

    Charles Walker walked away Oct. 8.

    He was supposed to be locked up for life for a second-degree murder conviction in Orange County in 1999.

    Officials at the Franklin Correctional Institution in the Panhandle were duped into thinking the men's sentences had been reduced because of the counterfeit paperwork, state investigators said.

    "Everything came the way it normally comes," said Misty Cash, Florida Department of Corrections spokeswoman. "Our department followed every protocol and did everything we are supposed to do."

    Questions remain about what review protocols are in place within the state prison system.

    Walker and Jenkins were released because corrections officials didn't realize paperwork from the Orange County Clerk of Courts was forged, said Department of Corrections spokeswoman Jessica Cary.

    It is unclear at what point officials found the mistake.

    The documents in question were motions to correct a so-called "illegal sentence" that supposedly written and filed by a prosecutor in the State Attorney's Office.

    Walker's Oct. 7 motion argued that he should never have been sentenced to life imprisonment because he was only found guilty of third degree murder — causing the unintentional death of person while committing a non-violent crime — not second degree.

    He asks for a 15-year modified sentence and the forged documents granted it.

    In Jenkins' Aug. 30 motion, he also claims his charges were also incorrectly classified because of filing errors on the part of prosecutors and his sentence was excessive.

    The order granting a 15-year amended sentence was also granted.

    Perry spotted "obvious subtleties"

    Orange County Clerk of Courts spokeswoman Leesa Bainbridge said the orders looked like they came from Judge Perry's office and were processed normally.

    Clerk employees do not read the thousands of documents they receive daily but direct them to the appropriate agencies.

    The judge's order modifying any prisoner's sentence would be sent via fax, email or mail to the Department of Corrections, where it is read and executed, she said.

    Perry learned of the fakes Tuesday afternoon, saying "obvious subtleties" caught his immediate attention. The cases were never assigned to him, never came across his desk and contained inconsistent language.

    "I've never seen the State Attorney file a motion to correct an illegal sentence," he said.

    Orlando criminal-defense attorney Richard Hornsby said he thinks the creation and execution of the forged documents was an elaborate plan involving someone with deep knowledge of the law.

    "I am pretty confident that whoever drafted these is either a lawyer, has a law degree or works in the criminal justice system," Hornsby said. "Clearly someone knew what they were doing."

    Hornsby said the motions were so specific that someone copying and pasting the legalese from a document in another case is not likely.

    The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which is investigating the case to determine how this happened, was not notified of the releases until Tuesday.

    The Orange County Sheriff's Office said it notified the public as soon as it learned about the inadvertent releases.

    Walker's victim: 'Charles shot me'

    Corrections officials are checking the orders of other inmates to make sure they are correct, Cash said.

    Walker was sent to prison in the April 1999 shooting death of 23-year-old Cedric Slater, who had been bullying and threatening.

    The killer told investigators he fired three shots intending to scare the man but instead, shot Slater dead.

    "Charles shot me. Call the police. Don't let me die," Slater told a friend as he was dying in a friend's apartment. Walker shot him near Ivey Lane in the Washington Park neighborhood.

    Jenkins was one of two Apopka men found guilty in the shooting death of Roscoe Pugh, 28, in September 1998.

    Pugh was a father of six.

    According to a prosecutor, Jenkins and his cousin, Angelo Pearson, planned a home invasion at Pugh's house.

    Pearson, 39, is serving a life sentence at the Wakulla Correctional Institution annex in Crawfordville.

    On Wednesday night, the Florida Department of Corrections website listed Walker and Jenkins as having been released, and incorrectly showed a 15-year prison sentence for each.

    Orlando police are helping to search for the men, who both have extensive criminal histories. Cash said they investigating what, if any, connection the two escapees have to one another other.

    Anyone who sees them should call 911.

  4. #14
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2013
    Posts
    1,122
    2 killers registered as felons after their escape

    ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -- As authorities search for two convicted killers freed by bogus paperwork, questions linger about who created the legitimate-looking documents that exposed gaps in Florida's judicial system.

    Within days of walking out of prison, Joseph Jenkins and Charles Walker, who had been sentenced to life, traveled about 300 miles to a jail an Orlando and registered as felons. They signed paperwork. They were fingerprinted, and they were even photographed before walking out of the jail without raising any alarms. Had one of the murder victim's families not contacted prosecutors, authorities might not have known about the mistaken releases.

    "We're looking at the system's breakdown, I'm not standing here to point the finger at anyone at this time," Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said Friday as he appealed to the public to help authorities find the men. He said he believed they were still in the central Florida area.

    In light of the errors, the Corrections Department changed the way it verifies early releases and state legislators promised to hold investigative hearings to figure out how the documents - complete with case numbers and a judge's forged signature - duped the system.

    Jenkins was released Sept. 27 and registered at the Orange County jail in Orlando on Sept. 30. Walker was set free Oct. 8 and registered there three days later.

    Felons are required to register by law. When they do, their fingerprints are digitally uploaded to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and a deputy at the jail verifies that they don't have any outstanding warrants, said jail spokesman Allen Moore.

    By registering as the law required, they likely drew less attention.

    "If there's no hit that comes back, they're free to go," said Isaiah Dennard, the Florida Sheriff's Association's jail services coordinator.

    If felons do not register, a warrant is put out for their arrest, Dennard said.

    The sheriff said there had been some sightings of the men, and "most" of their families were cooperating, but he didn't go into specifics about either detail. Police were offering a $5,000 reward for help and billboards were going up in the area.

    Authorities learned about the mistaken release when one of the murder victim's families notified the state attorney's office. Dennard said victims' families are automatically notified when a felon is released, typically by a computer voice-generated phone call.

    It's not clear exactly who made the fake documents ordering the release or whether the escapes were related. Authorities said the paperwork in both cases was filed in the last couple of months and included forged signatures from the same prosecutor's office and judge. Both orders also called for 15-year sentences.

    "There's reason to suspect that these aren't the first occasions," Demings said later of the releases.

    The state Department of Law Enforcement and the Department of Corrections are investigating the error, but so far have not released any details.

    Chief Circuit Judge Belvin Perry said there were several red flags that should have attracted the attention, including that's it uncommon for a request for sentence reduction to come from prosecutors.

    The Corrections Department said on Friday it verified the early release by checking the Orange County Clerk of Court's website and calling them.

    Corrections Secretary Michael Crews sent a letter to judges saying prison officials will now verify with judges - and not just court clerks - before releasing prisoners early.

    Sen. Greg Evers, who chairs the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, said he spoke to Perry on Friday and that the judge will offer a proposal in which judges review all early release documents before court clerks send them to prisons.

    "They're working on some fail safe plans," said Evers, a Pensacola Republican. "If the court administrator put these plans in place throughout the state it will solve the problem."

    New measures were implemented in the Palm Beach County Clerk of Courts Office after workers there thwarted the release of a burglary suspect from forged paperwork in 2011. The changes included only accepting judge's orders from the judge's assistant and to treat them especially carefully, said Cindy Guerra, chief operating officer for the office.

    "That situation in Orlando, that just doesn't happen here," said her colleague, Louis Tomeo, the office's director of criminal courts. "Our clerks, I venture to say, would have picked up on that easily."

    As the Florida court system transitions into a paperless era, special email accounts have been set up for judges. The deadline to go completely electronic is February, though it has already been moved back several times.

    Across the country, prisoners have had varying success trying to escape using bogus documents. In 2010, a Wisconsin killer forged documents that shortened his prison sentence and he walked free, only to be captured a week later. In 2012, a prisoner in Pennsylvania was let out with bogus court documents, and the mistake was only discovered months later.

    Jenkins, 34, was found guilty of first-degree murder in the 1998 killing and botched robbery of Roscoe Pugh, an Orlando man.

    State Attorney Jeffrey Ashton said he learned Jenkins had been released when Pugh's family contacted his office. They reviewed the paperwork and found that it was a fake, then notified law enforcement.

    Later, they discovered Walker's release documents were also fake.

    "It is now clear that the use of forged court documents to obtain release from prison is an ongoing threat which all law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, court clerks and prison officials must address and stop," Ashton said.

    Walker, 34, was convicted of second-degree murder in a 1999 slaying in Orange County. He told investigators that 23-year-old Cedric Slater was bullying him and he fired three shots intending to scare him.

    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...STAKEN_RELEASE

  5. #15
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Escaped Florida inmates arrested in motel

    Florida authorities arrested two convicted murderers Saturday evening who had been on the lam after being released from prison with forged documents, a state agency said.

    Charles Walker and Joseph Jenkins were taken into custody "without incident" at 6:40 p.m. at Panama City's Coconut Grove Motor Inn, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said.

    Members of that agency and the U.S. Marshals Service found and detained the two men, the agency said.

    Authorities have been searching for Walker and Jenkins, both 34, after investigators discovered forged motions to reduce their respective sentences and forged court orders granting the requests.

    Earlier Saturday, family members of both men appealed for them to turn themselves in to authorities.

    "We just want you to surrender yourself to someone you trust who will bring you back in safely," Walker's mother, Lillie Danzy, said at a news conference outside the Orange County Sheriff's Department in Orlando.

    Jenkins' uncle, Henry Pearson, echoed the plea, urging the men to give their families some peace.

    Both families denied any knowledge in the escape plan, telling investigators and reporters the first they learned of the releases were in telephone calls from the Franklin Correctional Institution with news they could pick up their family member.

    Danzy appears to have questioned the call, telephoning the prison twice to make sure it was legitimate.

    "The family believed their prayers had been answered," a spokeswoman for Danzy said.

    The two men, according to family members, disappeared shortly after their return.

    In September 1998, Jenkins killed Roscoe Pugh Jr. during a home-invasion robbery attempt.

    Six months later, Cedric Slater was gunned down on an Orlando street corner -- shot dead, a jury determined, by Walker.

    Both killers were convicted and sentenced to life behind bars without the possibility of parole within two years of their crime. While it's not known whether they knew each other, they were at the same prison in North Carrabelle in Florida's Panhandle.

    Jenkins left there on September 27, and Walker left on October 8, according to authorities. They had motions indicating the sentences had been reduced as well as court orders granting the request. Investigators later discovered these documents were forged.

    The legal-looking documents contained bogus reproductions of several key players' signatures, including those of the Orlando-area State Attorney Jeffrey Ashton or the assistant state attorney and Judge Belvin Perry. They bore the seal of the Orange County clerk of court's office.

    Prosecutors first learned about what happened after a member of Walker's family contacted them, Ashton said.

    An October 8 letter from the Department of Corrections to Slater's mother, Evangelina Kearse, notified her a "court order and amended sentence caused (Walker's) sentence to expire."

    "Please be aware that recent actions causing the release of this offender are beyond our control. Nevertheless, we apologize for the delay in this message," it said.

    Both Walker and Jenkins appeared to play by the rules after their release. They both went to the Orange County jail to register as felons -- Jenkins on September 30, Walker on October 11 -- as required by law.

    While their releases may have initially seemed legitimate and innocuous, the two convicts later were classified as escapees.

    Read more: http://www.wyff4.com/news/national/E...#ixzz2iDOmSy64
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  6. #16
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217

    California’s De-Incarceration Experiment Fuels Public Safety Fears

    It was at one of the most popular tourist destinations in Los Angeles that public safety came face-to-face with what one legal scholar has called “probably the greatest de-incarceration experiment in American history.”

    During a visit to the Hollywood Walk of Fame on June 19, Christine Calderon, 23, spotted three transients displaying signs asking for money with four-letter insults and a smiley face. One of those transients, Dustin Kinnear, had only been on the streets for a couple of months after being released from state prison as part of the historic “realignment” of California’s correctional system that was passed by the Legislature in March 2011. Kinnear was — in the official parlance — an Assembly Bill 109 post-release supervised person.

    After Calderon took a picture of the transients with her cellphone, it was Kinnear who allegedly jumped on her and stabbed her to death. The apparent provocation? She had refused the transients’ demand that she pay them a dollar for the picture.

    Kinnear, 26, is now awaiting trial for murder, a charge that could send him back to prison for life. To critics of AB 109, his case is a glaring example of the deficiencies of a law they believe has endangered public safety by moving California away from incarceration and toward rehabilitation of felons in a judicially-imposed effort to relieve prison overcrowding. As a result of the law, about 18,000 offenders who in past years would have been in either prison or jail are not serving time behind bars.

    “This is an experiment with people’s lives,” said Michael Rushford, president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.

    AB 109 allows non-violent, non-serious, and non-sex offenders to be supervised at the county level after their release from prison instead of reporting to state parole officers. It also mandates that individuals sentenced to non‐serious, non‐violent or non‐sex offenses serve their sentences in county jails instead of state prison. Most parole violations, moreover, are now served in county jail rather than prison.

    Last January, a dozen bills were introduced in the Legislature to reform realignment. Only one of those, a measure that sends sex offenders who remove court-ordered GPS monitoring devices to county jail for 180 days, became law, but Rushford and others see momentum building for additional legislative reform or a ballot initiative.

    “Crime and public safety issues are surfacing in California today,” Mark Baldassare, president of the Public Policy Institute of California, recently said.

    But a MintPress investigation suggests that the concerns over AB 109 may be misplaced or exaggerated. While violent crime increased 3.4 percent and property crime went up 7.6 percent between 2011 and 2012, the increases in violent crime “appear to be part of a broader upward trend also experienced in other states,” the PPIC concluded in an October report. Crime rates remain at historically low levels.

    Incidents like the slaying of Christine Calderon have grabbed the headlines, but they can be blamed at least in part on the abbreviated rollout of realignment, which left county probation departments with little time to ramp up for the influx of released inmates.

    “This was new,” said Carol Lin, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County probation department. “This was building an airplane in flight.”


    Judicial hammer comes down

    California did not volunteer to host any experiment in correctional philosophy. It was dragged there, unwillingly, by federal judges who found that conditions in its prisons violated the constitutional rights of inmates and that judicial action was required to force the state to remedy the problem.

    The judicial hammer came down in August 2009 when a three-judge court, after a 14-day trial, ordered California to reduce its prison population to 137.5 percent of the prisons’ design capacity within two years, amounting to a reduction of 38,000 to 46,000 inmates. In upholding the order in May 2011, a 5-4 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court said the degree of overcrowding in California’s prisons was “exceptional.” Prisons designed to house just under 80,000 inmates were crammed with a population almost double that, with as many as 54 prisoners sharing a single toilet.

    “Without a reduction in overcrowding, there will be no efficacious remedy” for the unconstitutional conditions, the majority said.

    In a dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia said the majority had affirmed “what is perhaps the most radical injunction issued by a court in our nation’s history.”

    California Gov. Jerry Brown was no less critical of the three-judge panel’s order, calling it “a blunt instrument that does not recognize the imperatives of public safety, nor the challenges of incarcerating criminals, many of whom are deeply disturbed.”

    But even before the Supreme Court issued its decision, he proposed lowering the inmate population by sentencing certain felony offenders to county jail and replacing parole supervision with probation for many offenders. Underlining the state’s move away from the incarceration model, he also canceled $4.1 billion in previously authorized prison-construction bonds that would have added another 53,000 prison beds.

    At the governor’s urging, the Legislature — with relatively little debate — passed AB 109 on March 17, 2011, and the law went into effect only seven months later, opening the prison doors to thousands of inmates who would no longer be subject to the rigorous supervision of parole officers but would instead report to probation officers more accustomed to interviewing pretrial detainees and supervising minor offenders.

    “There’s a cultural difference between the two agencies,” Lin noted. “Parole is not about rehabilitation … It’s more about ‘tail and nail.’”

    One of those AB 109 inmates, or PSPs, was a man who, according to his mother, had been in and out of mental health facilities since age 5, had a lengthy criminal record including seven arrests for assault with a deadly weapon, and had begun roaming the streets of Hollywood in 2008.


    ‘Egregious and outrageous’

    According to police, Dustin Kinnear came to Hollywood from Tucson, Ariz., after a court ordered him to undergo mental health treatment. Between November 2010 and December 2012, he was arrested for, among other things, hitting a guard at a Subway sandwich shop in Hollywood on the head with a broomstick, defecating in public, and assaulting his girlfriend with a knife and brass knuckles.

    “We have a young man who is bipolar, paranoid, schizophrenic and epileptic,” his attorney told a judge in September 2011.

    Kinnear served various short jail terms before a judge in December 2012 sentenced him to three years in state prison on probation violations related to the assault on his girlfriend. But because of credits for his jail stints, that sentence was drastically reduced and he was released on April 6. A little more than two months later, he allegedly stabbed Christine Calderon to death.

    “It happened at 8 o’clock at night, in a tourist area,” said Joel Bellman, spokesman for L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. “It’s egregious and outrageous at every level.”

    By that time, several other AB-109 offenders had been accused of high-profile violent crimes. In December 2012, Ka Pasasouk allegedly shot four people to death outside a boarding home in the L.A. suburb of Northridge; in April, Tobias Summers was charged with kidnapping a 10-year-old girl from her Northridge home. An analysis of the first year of AB 109 releases to L.A. County found that more than 30 percent of the 11,000 inmates placed under county supervision during the year were rearrested for crimes including 16 murders, 23 attempted murders and 205 robberies, along with other less serious crimes.

    “The governor’s failed realignment program is a proven threat to public safety which has overwhelmed probation departments and local law enforcement agencies statewide,” Supervisor Michael Antonovich said in response to the Summers case.

    Crime victim advocate Marc Klaas called AB 109 a “felon dump,” and the founder of Army of Angels, a coalition of child advocates, urged repeal of the law. With the Calderon slaying adding to the outrage, the L.A. County supervisors approved Yaroslavsky’s motion ordering the probation department and other agencies to provide a full report on the chronology of relevant events from Kinnear’s release to the murder.

    The agencies responsible for AB-109 offenders “must determine whether current laws or procedures are adequate to protect against any of the possible gaps in the AB 109 process,” Yaroslavsky said.

    That chronology was redacted from a version of the report that was made public in August. However, a copy of the timeline obtained by MintPress details a convoluted tale of bureaucratic missteps beginning with county probation not receiving Kinnear’s file from the state corrections department until the day before his release. That, apparently, was far from unusual. After AB 109 went into effect, Lin recalled, “FedEx was dropping off state prison files [when] the offenders were at the door.”

    Between April 10 and May 29, the timeline shows, Kinnear repeatedly failed to report to his probation officer in the San Fernando Valley and was arrested for providing a false ID to a police officer and for battery. At the direction of the probation department, he served three “flash” incarcerations at the Twin Towers jail, where he was evaluated by mental health specialists and assured officials that, on his release, he would live with friends and seek employment.


    Communication breakdowns

    Due apparently to a delay in updating court records, the probation department was not aware of Kinnear’s false ID arrest. The department was also not informed of the May 26 battery arrest until three days later — by which time Kinnear had served his time in jail and was back on the streets of Hollywood. According to the report, Kinnear’s parole might have been revoked and he might have been returned to state prison if not for these inter-agency communication breakdowns.

    “[T]he department is struggling with integrating the multiple data systems maintained by multiple law enforcement agencies that would allow us to more efficiently flag a new arrest by [an AB 109] offender,” the report said.

    The report also found that the department’s response to Kinnear’s “frequent noncompliance events” was “less than optimal” given his many issues.

    “The county probation department dropped the ball,” Bellman told MintPress in an interview. “They never really went after him … The [Los Angeles Police Department] were the only ones doing their jobs.”

    Attorney Donald Specter heads the Prison Law Office and represents the inmates whose lawsuits ultimately forced California to address prison overcrowding. In October, he won another victory when the Supreme Court refused to hear Gov. Brown’s appeal of the three-judge panel’s order to release another 9,600 inmates. The state has until April to comply.

    According to Specter, rehabilitation is a rational — and cost-effective — alternative to expanding prison construction and locking up more offenders.

    “You really can’t build your way out of the problem,” he said. Brown’s revised 2013-14 budget allocated $107 million to county probation departments for AB-109-related costs. Local supervision of offenders is “much cheaper and more effective than prison,” Specter said.

    In its October report, the Public Policy Institute of California found that between 3.5 and seven times as many crimes would be prevented by spending an additional one dollar on police rather than on prison incarceration.

    “[S]afer and smarter approaches to corrections and crime prevention are within reach,” it recommended. “As the realignment process continues to unfold, the state — and the counties — should look to a variety of ways to effectively, and cost-efficiently, handle their public safety responsibilities.”

    Two years after local governments were thrust into the experiment of realignment, there are signs that they are adjusting to the law and trying to improve their enforcement of it. The Los Angeles County probation department, which is responsible for about one-third of all AB-109 offenders, has created a “complex case committee” to ensure that cases of of ex-cons who don’t report to probation officers don’t fall through any cracks. Other proposals include expanding residential and outpatient programs for offenders with mental health disorders and seeking state funding for mobile response teams that could serve the AB 109 population.

    “Dustin Kinnear is not a good example of AB 109 in general,” Lin insisted.

    http://www.mintpressnews.com/califor...-fears/175938/
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  7. #17
    HaroldKrieg
    Guest

    Whistleblowing On Las Vegas Nevada Parole And Probation Officer Michael VanDyke

    What happens when a Las Vegas Nevada Parole and Probation Officer goes bad? You report him. That is what I (Harold Krieg) am doing. I am exercising my rights under the 1st Amendment of the United States Constitution – Freedom of Speech, by whistle-blowing on Las Vegas, Nevada Parole and Probation Officer Michael VanDyke. Officer Michael VanDyke’s office address is Nevada Department of Public Safety Division of Parole & Probation 215 East Bonanza Road, Las Vegas, Nevada 89101. Officer VanDyke’s office phone number is 702-486-4000.

    You have to realize that Officer VanDyke did what I say below, because he saw that Hispanic Catholic Steven Crain was writing a book about all the injustice that he (Steven) has had and continues to endure over nearly 15 years, and that his (VanDyke) name and other Nevada and Las Vegas, and Clark County government, police and other officials were going to named in Steven’s book in a negative way. And Officer Michael VanDyke thought one way to prevent Steven from continuing to write this book, would be to arrest Steven. Certainly, by arresting Steven Crain, on September 4, 2014, Nevada Parole and Probation Officer Michael VanDyke violated Steven Crain’s Constitutional rights under the 1st Amendment – Freedom of speech. See Clark County District Court Case 00C166673.

    Case 00C166673 is a case that stems from, actually innocent, Steven Crain being falsely charged, wrongfully prosecuted for a crime (alleged attempted lewdness with a minor). Regina Hyman filed the charges against Steven Crain was because Steven Crain refused to baby sit for Regina Hyman’s daughters for free. Regina Hyman even admitted that she has a history of making similar accusations against other men (both in Nevada and California) if men don’t give her things for free, and/or do things for free for her. In fact Prosecutors (Clark County District Attorney and the Nevada Attorney General) gave Regina Hyman immunity from her (Regina) multitude of drug charges so that Regina and her minor age daughter LaGina would provide perjured testimony against Steven. Truth be told LaGina had vaginitis and there was no evidence proving Steven committed any crime, just hearsay.

    According to LaGina Hyman’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/lagina.hyman.3/about) LaGina Hyman lists her address as 1113 Pierre Street, Manhattan, Kansas 66502. LaGina Hyman lists her phone numbers 785-323-7345 and 785-579-4645. In Junction City/Geary County, Kansas, LaGina Hyman was arrested and charged with aggravated domestic assault and battery in October of 2012. Currently LaGina Hyman works as a CNA at Stoneybrook Health Center in Manhattan, Kansas.

    Prior to Officer Michael VanDyke being assigned to be the Parole and Probation Officer to my best friend (Steven Crain), Steven Crain had several other Las Vegas, Nevada Parole and Probation Officers who, for years, did not make it an issue that Steven Crain did not go to counseling, nor did they make it an issue that he could not afford to pay the monthly probation fees (since Steven was rarely able to get a job, because of his wrongfully coerced/pressured felon conviction – Alford Plea). When Steven was able to pay the fees, he did. Yet, in order to make a name for himself, and for other selfish and bad reasons, Officer VanDyke had Steven Crain arrested on September 4, 2014.

    Regarding counseling – Officer VanDyke ordered Steven Crain to call up counselors, from a list of 9, and go there. The problem is that these counselors, all financially contracted with the State of Nevada Parole and Probation office, have a multi step program and in order to advance from Step 1 to Step 2, you must admit to the crime, even though you are actually innocent. This is a violation of the 5th of the United States Constitution. If you do not admit to the crime, despite the fact you are actually innocent, you are considered to be uncooperative/non-compliant. This policy is practiced by RedRock Psychological Health as well as John Pacult, as well as Alyson Shainker. To anyone who is reading this, would you admit to a crime you did not commit. RedRock Psychological Health’s office is located at 6402 South McLeod, Suite 5, Las Vegas, Nevada, and their phone number is 702-222-3275.

    When a company/person violates someone’s rights under the United States Constitution, that company/person therefore wars against the United States. Thus that company/person thereby commits a treasonous act/treason.

    Regarding – probation fees – If you are unable to pay, because of lack of finances, you can write to the Nevada Parole Board and asked to have the fees waived. See Nevada Revised Statute (NRS) 213.1076(2).

    On the morning of May 6, 2014, Steven Crain went to the Las Vegas branch of the Nevada Parole and Probation to see his current Parole Officer Michael VanDyke, for his monthly appointment. My best friend Steven Crain was told by Officer VanDyke to write a letter to obtain a meeting with the Nevada Parole Board in order to not have to go through counseling won’t have to take any more polygraph tests, be released from the provision of lifetime supervision, and to waive fees. Officer Van Dyke instructed Steven to address it to Officer Michael VanDyke, and that Officer VanDyke said he (VanDyke) would then forward the letter to the Nevada Parole Board. None of the 6 letters were ever forwarded to the Parole Board, instead Officer VanDyke kept crossing out parts of the letters and having Steven re-type them. Officer VanDyke figured Steven would get tired of re-typing the letters, then going back to give Officer VanDyke the revised letter, that Steven would just give up. People who know Steven know he doesn’t give up, especially when injustice is being done to him. See the attached Letters. In fact, after Steven gave Officer VanDyke the last letter, Officer VanDyke told Steven the he (VanDyke) would not give the Parole Board the letter, since it, in VanDyke’s mind, would be a waste of the Parole Board’s time.

    Also on May 6, 2014, Officer VanDyke told Steven that in order to get off lifetime supervision, Steven has to apply via the Nevada Parole Board, not the Courts, since Nevada Parole and Probation does not have to listen to the Courts, since the Courts have no authority/jurisdiction, and that in Officer VanDyke’s mind/opinion Nevada Parole and Probation is more powerful than any Courts. Officer VanDyke’s statement is a clear contradiction to NRS 176.0931(3).

    Nevada Parole Officer Michael VanDyke even went as far as to tell RedRock Psychological Center therapist Alyson Shainker to lie and say that Steven Crain said he (Steven had threatened to physically go after the alleged victim (LaGina) and her mother (Regina). Anyone who knows Steven knows he is not the type who would go after someone, in the way Ms. Shainker said. Steven Crain was writing a book, and both Regina and LaGina’s names were mentioned, as were specific people from the Clark County District Attorney’s office, Nevada Attorney General’s office, Clark County Judges, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Detectives, John Pacult, Diane Williams, Nevada Parole and Probation (including but not limited to Officer Michael VanDyke) etc. Ms. Shainker perjured statements both to Officer VanDyke and the Court are a violation of NRS 199.130. Office Michael VanDyke knew there was no strong criminal case against Steven and that is why he (VanDyke) got Ms. Shainker to lie by telling her (Shainker) that if she (Shainker) doesn’t say that Steven Crain told her (Shainker) that he (Steven) was going to physically go after (Regina and LaGina) Nevada Parole and Probation and the Prosecutors would have no case against Steven Crain.

    When Steven Crain went to his monthly appointment, on the morning of September 4, 2014, to see Officer Michael VanDyke at the Las Vegas branch of the Nevada Parole and Probation, Steven was arrested for violating his lifetime supervision conditions (not paying fees and not going to counseling). Both of which is what Steven Crain listed in his May 6, 2014, May 19, 2014, and May 29, 2014 letters, that had Officer VanDyke did what he promised to do, Steven would no longer have to do that. See Las Vegas Regional Justice Court Case No. 14F11754X.

    At the Justice Court Case Hearing on September 22, 2014, Office Michael VanDyke committed perjury (NRS 199.145), when VanDyke said he only saw the last letter, Steven wrote. Officer VanDyke’s statement is a lie, since there are copies of the letters, showing the x-ing out of various parts of the letters, that Officer VanDyke made. Officer VanDyke also committed perjury when in court he (VanDyke) said that Steven’s Petition for Habeas Corpus case was closed. It was not. See United States District Court – District of Nevada Case No. 2:14-cv-01056-GMN-NJK and 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Case No. 14-72940.

    Case No. 14F11754X has been transferred to Clark County District Court (Case No. C-14-301073-1) Department 9 – Judge Jennifer Togliatti. Steven Crain’s jury trial has been pushed back from originally January 5, 2015, to mid March 2015.. Steven’s attorney is Steven Altig. Mr. Altig’s address is 601 South 7th Street, Las Vegas, Nevada 89101, and his phone number is 702-474-7827. Mr. Altig is extremely thorough, leaves no stone unturned, and in the courtroom, Mr. Altig is a tiger.

    Even though Steven Crain and his attorney invoked the 60 day rule, Steven’s jury trial starts on January 5, 2015. Officer Michael VanDyke’s lies, vendetta, and retaliatory actions, and perjury have destroyed Steven’s recent Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years plans with his 20 year old daughter. And since Steven had just started a new job in June 2014, Officer VanDyke retaliation (18 USC 1513) against Steven has caused Steven to lose his (Steven) job, which Steven loved and worked hard at. Do you know how hard it is to get a job when, even though you are actually innocent and waiting for your Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus to be granted, you have to check the “yes” box when asked are you are felon.

    This is the second time Nevada Parole and Probation have arrested Steven. The first was in 2006, when, even though Steven had passed 3 polygraph tests (proving Steven did not do what they arrested him for in the year 2000), the Nevada Parole and Probation appointed psych counselors (John Pacult and Diane Williams) said Steven was being non-compliant because Steven would not admit to a crime he did not commit. Steven’s attorney then was Steven Wolfson (current Clark County District Attorney). That 2006 case was dismissed since then private attorney Steven Wolfson argued that it is not a crime for Steven to not want to admit to a crime he (Steven) did not commit.

    Here it is over 8 years later and Nevada Parole and Probation and the Psychology counselors (paid by Nevada Parole and Probation) are doing the same thing again to my best friend Steven Crain.

    It pains me and Steven’s 20 year old daughter that Steven is currently incarcerated in Clark County Detention Center and will be until the end of his trial, and has been since September 4, 2014, all because of the lies, vendetta, vindictiveness, retaliation of Nevada Parole and Probation Officer Michael VanDyke against Steven Crain.

    Officer VanDyke is also obstructing justice, against Steven Crain, since Proper Person Steven Crain has a pending Habeas Corpus case, and because of Officer VanDyke having Steven incarcerated, Steven is unable to file updated informational documents, nor is Steven able to contact attorneys to represent him, in his Habeas Corpus case. Since Steven is currently incarcerated, and Steven could file documents, Steven’s Habeas Corpus case has been denied.

    One has to wonder how many others, that are on parole and probation, and assigned to Officer Michael VanDyke, have been wronged by Officer VanDyke.

    Clearly, what Nevada Parole and Probation Officer Michael VanDyke, Nevada Parole and Probation, Nevada DPS, and RedRock Psychological Health Center have done to Steven Crain is a violation of 18 USC 241 – Conspiracy against rights.

    If you are bothered about Officer Michael VanDyke’s wrong-doings then contact Lieutenant Leslie “Jack” Peeler, Nevada Department of Public Safety (DPS), Office of Professional Responsibility, jpeeler@dps.state.nv.us, Work: 775-687-8389, Cell: 775-720-1629. Lieutenant Peeler called me (Harold) on December 10, 2014, at 1:46 p.m., to say that they are investigating this matter and Officer VanDyke. That is just DPS’s way of saying they are doing something, when in fact they are not.

    The more people know about what they could unjusticely experience, the less that these injustices will happen.

    In the movie “Network” a reporter told everyone to stick their heads out a window and yell, “I’m not going to take this anymore.” I want each of you readers to do the same. Also contact the Nevada State Senators and Assemblypersons, in your district, and tell them the same.

  8. #18
    Senior Member Frequent Poster joe_con's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2014
    Posts
    292
    Corruption is rampant in Nevada Law enforcement, Surprised you don't mention this guy named Lemcke I believe he used to be a corrections officer up at Ely State Prison.

  9. #19
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    Is "LaGina Hyman" a real name?

  10. #20
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Toronto, Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    20,875

    Sex offenders 'marked men' in California prison as many are killed at higher rate

    California prisoners are killed at a rate that is double the national average – sex offenders account for a disproportionate number of victims, according to report

    Shortly after 2 am on 6 April 2010, a guard at Salinas Valley State Prison noticed Alan Ager’s cellmate trying to stuff something under a mattress. It was Ager, blood trickling from his mouth and a cloth noose tied around his neck.

    The convicted child molester died 10 days later without regaining consciousness, his death earning his cellmate a second life sentence.

    California
    state prisoners are killed at a rate that is double the national average – and sex offenders like Ager account for a disproportionate number of victims, according to an Associated Press analysis of corrections records.

    Male sex offenders made up about 15% of the prison population but accounted for nearly 30 percent of homicide victims, the AP found in cataloging all 78 killings that corrections officials reported since 2007, when they started releasing slain inmates’ identities and crimes.

    The deaths – 23 out of 78 – come despite the state’s creation more than a decade ago of special housing units designed to protect the most vulnerable inmates, including sex offenders, often marked men behind bars because of the nature of their crimes.

    In some cases, they have been killed among the general prison population and, in others, within the special units by violence-prone cellmates. Officials acknowledge that those units, which also house inmates trying to quit gangs, have spawned their own gangs.

    Corrections officials blamed a rise in the prison homicide rate on an overhaul meant to reduce crowding. As part of the effort, the state in 2011 began keeping lower-level offenders in county lockups, leaving prisons with a higher percentage of sex offenders and violent gang members.

    Violence and homicides won’t decline unless the state goes well below the prison population level set by the courts– 137.5% of the system’s designed capacity, said James Austin, president of the JFA Institute, a Washington, DC, consulting firm that works on prison issues.

    “Until the state gets its prison population below 100%of capacity, you’re going to have this,” he said.

    Overall, 162 California prisoners were killed from 2001 to 2012, or 8 per 100,000 prisoners – double the national average over the same time period and far higher than that of other large states, including Texas, New York and Illinois, according to federal statistics.

    Officials in Oklahoma mainly blamed gang violence for giving that state the nation’s highest long-term prison homicide rate, 14 per 100,000, although a quarter of its inmate homicide victims in the last decade had convictions for sex crimes.

    In California, from 2012 to 2013, the most recent years for which data were available, the rate rose to 15 per 100,000, according to a report by a federal court receiver, though corrections officials said the number of deaths dropped last year.

    Department spokeswoman Terry Thornton would not comment on the possible reasons for California’s long-term trend of inmate homicides.

    The problem is most acute with sex offenders. Last fall, the corrections department’s inspector general reported that so many homicides occurred in the “increasingly violent” special housing units reserved for vulnerable inmates that the department could no longer assume that inmates there could peacefully co-exist.

    The report looked at 11 homicide cases that were closed in the first half of 2014 and found that 10 victims were sensitive-needs inmates. Using corrections records, the AP found that eight of them were sex offenders.

    The inspector general recommended the reinstatement of a policy dropped 15 years ago that required potential sensitive-needs cellmates to fill out a compatibility form before they are housed together and that inmates with a history of violence toward cellmates should be housed alone.

    Thornton said the report led to an ongoing review of the policy of housing most prisoners, including vulnerable inmates, two to a cell.

    Experts said the state could better protect sex offender inmates by separating them into their own facilities. Prison gangs, though made up of inmates often convicted of heinous crimes themselves, have long made it a practice to target sex offenders.

    “They’re going to clean up anybody on that yard with ‘hot charges,’” said former inmate Todd Siefert, referring to any crime against a woman or child, including a sex offense. The very lowest rung is reserved for child molesters.

    Seifert said he was confronted by white supremacist inmates less than a half-hour after he arrived at the California Institution for Men in Chino in 2004 and was severely beaten by a half-dozen fellow inmates for his sex crime involving a woman.

    Corrections department spokesmen in Illinois, New York and Texas said the targeting of sex offenders is not considered a problem there. Some states have stricter protocols for keeping sex offenders away from other inmates.

    Those participating in Maine’s rehabilitation therapy program are housed separately, and none has been injured or killed in the decade it has been in existence, said Dennis McNamara, executive director of the Counseling and Psychotherapy Center Inc., which runs the program.

    However, only about 11 percent of the state’s inmate sex offender population is in the treatment program, corrections spokesman Scott Fish said in an email. Of four Maine inmates killed behind bars since 2001, two were sex offenders.

    In Massachusetts, state policy calls for sex offenders to be placed in a “therapeutic community” that offers intensive treatment aimed at changing their behavior, preventing relapses and preparing them for eventual release.

    The state had a high-profile inmate homicide in 2003, when John Geoghan, a former Roman Catholic priest whose sexual abuse conviction sparked a widespread abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, was killed by a fellow inmate who claimed he was chosen by God to kill pedophiles.

    Adding to the problem in California, the department identified nearly 100 gangs that formed in sensitive-needs units, said Matthew Buechner, a special investigator who trained other corrections officials on problems with prison gangs until he retired last fall.

    In Ager’s case, the 5-foot-4, 135-pound inmate was kept in special housing when he first entered the prison system at San Quentin. But he was housed with general-population inmates soon after his transfer to Salinas Valley because officials there decided he didn’t need extra protection.

    Ager, 63, was housed with Clyde Leroy Beaver, a convicted murderer who has spent the last four decades in prison. Beaver pleaded guilty to murder in Ager’s slaying and got another life sentence that Ager’s son considers essentially meaningless.

    A federal judge ruled in March that Ager’s family failed to show that prison officials acted with deliberate indifference.

    “The very day they let him into the yard, he was filing complaints, ‘Get me the hell out of here,’” said Ager’s son, Daniel. “’This is not safe. I’m going to get killed out here.’”

    http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...ifornia-prison
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

Page 2 of 7 FirstFirst 1234 ... LastLast

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •