Wolfcom Decides It Wants To Be The First US Body Cam Company To Add Facial Recognition Tech To Its Products

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the taking-one-for-the-surveillance-team dept

Axon says it won’t do it. Ring, less believably, says it won’t do it. Some federal agencies want everyone to do it. But here’s an actual tech company willing to do it: toss facial recognition tech into its cameras.

Wolfcom, a company that makes technology for police, is pitching body cameras with live facial recognition to law enforcement groups across the United States, OneZero has learned.

[…]

Wolfcom claims to have sold body cameras to at least 1,500 police departments, universities, and federal organizations across the country. It has been developing live facial recognition for the Halo, Wolfcom’s newest body camera model, according to documents and a video obtained by OneZero through public records requests.

Opposition to facial recognition tech appears to be increasing. But Wolfcom knows its market and its purchasers — law enforcement agencies — aren’t among those demanding moratoriums or outright bans of the tech’s use in law enforcement equipment. Wolfcom would be the first company to blend body cameras and facial recognition AI, moving it ahead of all the other companies that have only discussed it.

Right now, the AI isn’t actually live. The marketing video suggests it is but those testing it — including a few law enforcement agencies — are currently limited to uploading photos from body cameras for the company to match against its database. Or whoever’s databases. It’s not entirely clear what Wolfcom is using to match faces to names.

“Let’s say a police officer in Arizona two months ago had taken a photo of this guy. It would recognize that and then tell our officer, ‘Hey, you know what? This guy was in Arizona for maybe battery against a police officer,’” Lieutenant Jose Hernandez, of the Los Lunas Police Department, told OneZero. However, it’s not clear which databases the Wolfcom software would be searching or whether it would be able to access information from multiple police departments.

Everyone loves a surveillance tech company with an air of mystery about it. About the only thing Wolfcom is doing right is not promising sky high accuracy rate for its unproven product when pitching it to government agencies. That’s the end of the “good” list. Agencies who have been asked to beta test the “live” facial recognition AI are being given free passes to use the software in the future, when (or if) it actually goes live.

Right now, Wolfcom’s offering bears some resemblance to Clearview’s: an app-based search function that taps into whatever databases the company has access to. Except in this case, even less is known about the databases Wolfcom uses or if it’s using its own algorithm or simply licensing one from another purveyor.

None of these unanswered questions are preventing Wolfcom from pitching “live” facial recognition to its law enforcement user base. If it can find a way to tie this in, it will become the industry leader. And that’s not necessarily a good thing, now that legislators are beginning to question the negative side effects of this technology.

Filed Under: body cameras, facial recognition, police
Companies: wolfcom

Sen. Wyden And Rep. Khanna Introduce Bill That Would Protect Journalists And Whistleblowers From Bogus Espionage Prosecutions

Legal Issues

from the you-know,-the-protections-they're-already-supposed-to-have dept

Two consecutive administrations have engaged in wars on whistleblowers. President Obama used the Espionage Act to punish more whistleblowers and leakers than all other previous administrations combined. President Trump promised to “drain the swamp” and reverse all the damage he believes Obama had done to this nation. Apparently that doesn’t include ejecting yes men from prominent government positions or scaling back Obama’s anti-whistleblower activities.

Now that it’s clear Bill Barr’s DOJ is just an Oval Office lapdog, Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Ro Khanna are trying to do something to protect journalists who receive and report on leaked documents and other whistleblower activity.

The Espionage Act Reform Act [PDF] would strengthen protections for journalists and whistleblowers, shielding them from vindictive prosecutions for engaging in acts protected by the First Amendment and (supposedly) by the federal government itself.

A FAQ [PDF] released with the bill makes it clear the new law would not prevent legitimate deployment of the Espionage Act to prosecute government employees who hand government secrets to those not authorized to receive them, as well as foreign spies and other agents of foreign powers.

What it would do is keep journalists from being prosecuted under the law and make it easier for whistleblowers to bring their concerns up through the proper channels. Here’s what the bill does:

? Protects journalists who solicit, obtain, or publish government secrets from prosecution.
? Ensures that each member of Congress is equally able to receive classified information, including from whistleblowers. Currently, the law criminalizes the disclosure of classified information related to signals intelligence to any member of Congress, unless it is in response to a “lawful demand” from a committee. This puts members in the minority party and those not chairing any committee at a significant disadvantage.
? Ensures that federal courts, inspector generals, the FCC, Federal Trade Commission, and Privacy & Civil Liberties Oversight Board can conduct oversight into privacy abuses.
? Ensures that cybersecurity experts who discover classified government backdoors in encryption algorithms and communications apps used by the public can publish their research without the risk of criminal penalties. It is up to governments to hide their surveillance backdoors; academic researchers and other experts should not face legal risks for discovering them.

This will prevent this administration (and the ones that follow it) from targeting whistleblowers and journalists — something the Trump administration has been openly doing. It will also open up the official channels, making it easier for whistleblowers to take their concerns to Congress, rather than forcing them to navigate a complicated maze of deterrents with the omnipresent threat of prosecution hanging over their heads.

The protections for security researchers is also a welcome addition. Researchers often become the subject of legal threats and criminal charges just for doing the important work of ensuring data and systems that should be secured are actually secure.

Of course, this bill is being sent into hostile territory. The administration certainly doesn’t want to see whistleblowers and journalists protected, and neither do far too many legislators. But if it does become law, it will reset the status quo — turning the Espionage Act back into the law it was always supposed to be: something to wield against foreign spies and federal employees seeking to do harm to the nation, rather than those who actually wanted to make America better by reporting on wrongdoing.

Filed Under: doj, espionage act, free speech, journalism, leaks, ro khanna, ron wyden, whistleblowers

AI Company Has Access To Pretty Much Every Piece Of Surveillance Tech The State Of Utah Owns

Privacy

from the good-time-was-had-by-all-surveilled dept

A stash of documents obtained from Utah government agencies has exposed another surveillance tech purveyor who’s threatening to disrupt privacy for unquantified law enforcement gains. Banjo is the innocuous name the company does business under, led by a CEO sporting a ZZ Top beard and an urban camo sports coat.

The public this is going to affect wasn’t cut in on the deal. But nearly everything their tax dollars pay for was. Banjo’s proprietary panopticon — with servers located on Utah government property — draws from nearly every piece of surveillance tech already deployed by cities and law enforcement. Banjo’s contribution is the algorithms it drops on top of all of this:

The state of Utah has given an artificial intelligence company real-time access to state traffic cameras, CCTV and “public safety” cameras, 911 emergency systems, location data for state-owned vehicles, and other sensitive data.

The company, called Banjo, says that it’s combining this data with information collected from social media, satellites, and other apps, and claims its algorithms “detect anomalies” in the real world.

This isn’t surveillance creep. This is a surveillance sprint.

Banjo has installed its own servers in the headquarters of the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT), a civilian agency, and has direct, real-time access to the thousands of traffic cameras the state operates. It has jacked into 911 systems of emergency operations centers all over the state, according to contracts, emails, and other government documents obtained by Motherboard using public record requests, as well as video and audio recordings of city council meetings around the state that we reviewed.

There’s more to it than this long list. Banjo also pulls in data from social media, autonomous vehicles, flight info, and “data signal ingestion for IoT sensors.” Anything that crosses the internet or the state’s government intranets is converted into data points for Banjo’s thirsty software.

The state of Utah has already agreed to sprinkle Banjo’s surveillance dust over all 29 counties in the state, as well as its 13 largest cities and 10 other cities that have the misfortune of being deemed “significantly relevant” to the state’s spyware deployment plans.

Banjo promises a mixture of predictive policing and real-time alerts, with an eye on the worst crimes of course. Banjo’s reps and executives talk a lot about how much child abduction this thing could stop — or at least bring to an end quickly. But there’s nothing on the record showing Banjo has done any crime prevention or crime solving, despite the breadth of its access and the state’s explicit blessing of its unproven tech.

Banjo also literally unbelievably claims it can do all of this without engaging in massive amounts of privacy violations. It says it anonymizes all data it scoops up from dozens of sources, pointing cops at crime, rather than people. First of all, anonymization is a myth that has been debunked several times. Second of all, this:

Banjo’s pitch to Utah from the beginning has been that it finds crime without identifying criminals. It looks for cars without looking for who is inside the cars. It detects riots and protests without telling cops who is at them. It detects drug use hotspots without identifying the drug user. Patton often mentions his company has patented technology to strip PII from publicly available data, but patents Motherboard found do not go into detail about how that is done.

Pitching its product, Banjo talks a lot about child abductions, mass shootings, acts of terrorism… all the things we always hear about when law enforcement wants to extend its reach and grasp. Plenty of surveillance tech has been purchased using these noble goals, only to be deployed to do normal crime stuff like seek out drug dealers and robbery suspects. Meanwhile, the sacrifices made in the name of public safety haven’t resulted in net public safety gains, and mass shootings (in particular) still routinely go unthwarted, no matter how much round-the-clock surveillance is in place.

Banjo says it will save lives — the only metric it claims to care about. So far, it can’t even seem to solve crimes.

While it’s still very early days for its implementation in Utah, we have no idea whether it has been useful in the real world. [Attorney General Chief of Staff Ric] Cantrell couldn’t identify a single case that Banjo’s technology had helped on. A public records request sent to Utah’s Highway Patrol requesting any case reports in which Banjo was used returned no documents. Police departments who have signed up for Banjo told Motherboard that they have not actually used it.

While it’s true the state won’t know how effective Banjo is until it deploys it, that doesn’t explain its willingness to deploy it all over the state before it has any idea how well it’s going to work and what negative side effects turning everything into fodder for surveillance software might produce. That’s incredibly irresponsible and it indicates the state clearly didn’t factor residents’ concerns into the equation.

Filed Under: facial recognition, law enforcement, privacy, social media, surveillance, utah
Companies: banjo

FISA Court Bans FBI Agent Who Lied To The Court About Carter Page

Legal Issues

from the are-you-accepting-applications-for-FISA-court-moderators? dept

The FBI’s inability to rein in its agents is causing it more pain. The Inspector General’s report released late last year showed agents performed some very selective editing of probable cause to unlawfully prolong the FBI’s surveillance of former Trump adviser, Carter Page.

Omitting evidence agents had on hand that Page was not acting on behalf of a foreign power, agents repeatedly extended FISA wiretaps, allowing FBI spooks to continue unjustified domestic surveillance. If you like your Deep State Conspiracy, you can keep it.

But the most probable motivating factor isn’t FBI agents’ personal dislike of Donald Trump. It’s more likely their all-encompassing love of surveillance. The FBI (along with the NSA) has abused the FISA court for years, allowing both agencies to perform domestic snooping under the guise of securing the nation from foreign threats. An agency that’s willing to pursue “lying to a federal agent” charges when it’s unable to find anything else to go after targets with is one that’s willing to engage in surveillance long after it knows continued snooping will fail to uncover evidence of criminal activity.

The FBI has already been told to revamp its warrant request procedures to ensure this abuse doesn’t happen again. More significantly, the Inspector General has recommended one FBI official for prosecution after emails were altered to hide wrongdoing from the IG and (presumably) the FISA court. The FISA court went so far as to question nearly everything the FBI has brought to it, given the evidentiary cherry-picking uncovered by the IG’s investigation.

In what is possibly a first in FISA court history, the court has banned certain FBI agents from submitting warrant applications to the court. Charlie Savage reports on the latest federal embarrassment.

A secretive federal court on Wednesday effectively barred F.B.I. officials involved in the wiretapping of a former Trump campaign adviser from appearing before it in other cases at least temporarily, the latest fallout from an internal inquiry into the bureau’s surveillance of the aide.

Judge James Boasberg’s order [PDF] accepts the FBI’s suggested FISA surveillance remedies, but goes further by offering one of the judge’s own: the booting of agents shown to have lied to the court to continue surveillance of Carter Page. He also accepted a recommendation from an appointed adversarial party — FISA expert David S. Kris — who suggested the FBI agents who submit affidavits sign those affidavits themselves (rather than field supervisors who may have no idea about the particulars of the request). This makes those agents directly responsible for the factual content (or lack thereof) of the assertions made to request (or extend) wiretaps.

Boasberg’s ban goes further than the agents implicated in the latest FBI/FISA bullshittery. Anyone else who fucks up will find themselves on Boasberg’s ban list as well.

Judge Boasberg’s new order also directed that no Justice Department or F.B.I. officials “under disciplinary or criminal review relating to their work on FISA applications shall participate in drafting, verifying, reviewing or submitting such applications to the court.”

This won’t completely fix the FBI’s reluctance to engage honestly with courts. But it will at least head off future abuse of the FISA court for the time being. The only other thing limiting the FBI’s malfeasance is Congress itself. Another renewal of surveillance powers is playing out against this backdrop, giving finger-to-the-administration’s-wind politicians reasons to bypass a clean reauthorization of (abused) powers. Politically popular reforms may be on the way. While we’d rather see bipartisan recognition that we handed federal agencies way too much power after the 9/11 attacks nearly 20 years ago, we’ll also take what we can get — especially when these restrictions will roll over into the next administration.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, carter page, fbi, fisa court, fisa warrants, rubber stamp, surveillance

ACLU Sues ICE Over Its Deliberately-Broken Immigrant 'Risk Assessment' Software

Legal Issues

from the can't-really-call-it-an-'option'-if-there-are-no-alternatives dept

A couple of years ago, a Reuters investigation uncovered another revamp of immigration policies under President Trump. ICE has a Risk Classification Assessment Tool that decides whether or not arrested immigrants can be released on bail or their own recognizance. The algorithm had apparently undergone a radical transformation under the new administration, drastically decreasing the number of detainees who could be granted release. The software now recommends detention in almost every case, no matter what mitigating factors are fed to the assessment tool.

ICE is now being sued for running software that declares nearly 100% of detained immigrants too risky to be released pending hearings. The ACLU’s lawsuit [PDF] opens with some disturbing stats that show how ICE has rigged the system to keep as many people detained as possible.

According to data obtained by the New York Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act, from 2013 to June 2017, approximately 47% of those deemed to be low risk by the government were granted release. From June 2017 to September 2019, that figure plummeted to 3%. This dramatic drop in the release rate comes at a time when exponentially more people are being arrested in the New York City area and immigration officials have expanded arrests of those not convicted of criminal offenses. The federal government’s sweeping detention dragnet means that people who pose no flight or safety risk are being jailed as a matter of course—in an unlawful trend that is getting worse.

Despite there being plenty of evidence that immigrants commit fewer criminal acts than natural-born citizens, the administration adopted a “No-Release Policy.” That led directly to ICE tinkering with its software — one that was supposed to assess risk factors when making detention determinations. ICE may as well just skip this step in the process since it’s only going to give ICE (and the administration) the answer it wants: detention without bond. ICE agents can ask for a second opinion on detention from a supervisor, but the documents obtained by the ACLU show supervisors depart from detention recommendations less than 1% of the time.

The negative effects of this indefinite detention are real. The lawsuit points out zero-risk detainees can see their lives destroyed before they’re allowed anything that resembles due process.

Once denied release under the new policy, people remain unnecessarily incarcerated in local jails for weeks or even months before they have a meaningful opportunity to seek release in a hearing before an Immigration Judge. While waiting for those hearings, those detained suffer under harsh conditions of confinement akin to criminal incarceration. While incarcerated, they are separated from families, friends, and communities, and they risk losing their children, their jobs, and their homes. Because of inadequate medical care and conditions in the jails, unmet medical and mental-health needs often lead to serious and at times irreversible consequences.

When they do finally get to see a judge, nearly 40% of them are released on bond. ICE treats nearly 100% of detained immigrants as dangerous. Judges — judges employed by the DOJ and appointed by the Attorney General — clearly don’t agree with the agency’s rigged assessment system.

There will always be those who say, “Well, don’t break the law.” These aren’t criminal proceedings. These are civil proceedings where the detained are tossed into criminal facilities until they’re able to see a judge. This steady stripping of options began under the Obama administration but accelerated under Trump and his no-release policy.

ICE began to alter its custody determinations process in 2015, modifying its risk-assessment tool so that it could no longer recommend individuals be given the opportunity for release on bond. In mid-2017, ICE then removed the tool’s ability to recommend release on recognizance. As a result, the assessment tool—on which ICE offices across the country rely— can only make one substantive recommendation: detention without bond.

The ACLU is hoping to have a class action lawsuit certified that would allow it to hold ICE responsible for violating rights en masse, including the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause. Since ICE is no longer pretending to be targeting the “worst of the worst,” the agency and its deliberately-broken risk assessment tool are locking up immigrants who have lived here for an average of sixteen years — people who’ve added to their communities, held down jobs, and raised families. These are the people targeted by ICE and it is ensuring that it is these people who are thrown into prisons and jails until their hearings, tearing apart their lives and families while denying them the rights extended to them by our Constitution.

Filed Under: algorithms, bail, ice, immigrants, risk assessment, software
Companies: aclu

Court Tells Cop That A Person Invoking Their Rights Isn't Suspicious Behavior

Legal Issues

from the your-rights-will-be-respected-at-the-discretion-of-the-government-apparently dept

To some cops, there’s nothing more inherently-suspicious than the invocation of rights. It appears they believe only guilty people do this. The innocent have no need for rights because if they have nothing to hide then they have nothing to fear.

It takes a court to remind officers that rights are rights everyone has, whether or not they’re guilty of anything. This case deals with an officer who treated someone’s invocation of his rights as the Constitutional approval he needed to search him. He was wrong. (via FourthAmendment.com)

It all started with a traffic stop that really wasn’t a traffic stop. Two officers staking out a “high-crime area” decided to follow a van that drove by them. After discovering the plate on the van actually belonged to a Chevy Silverado, the officers decided to initiate a stop. But it was too late. The van had already reached its destination and was parked in a driveway. The officers pulled up behind it and parked, exiting their car to speak to the driver. By the time they did this, the passenger, Antonio Arrington, had already exited the vehicle and headed towards the house.

While passengers can be questioned and searched in vehicles during traffic stops, Arrington was no longer in the van when the cops pulled up behind the vehicle to perform their “stop.” Arrington argued the officers had no reasonable suspicion to detain him and question him — acts that led to the discovery of drugs and a weapon.

Arrington is right, the court says [PDF]:

The Court agrees and makes two critical findings: (1) by the time Fryt initiated the traffic stop, Arrington was no longer a passenger in the van, was on private property doing nothing suspicious, and should never have been subject to an investigation in connection with the traffic stop; and (2) even if Arrington was still a passenger when the traffic stop was initiated, Norris admitted the only focus of his investigation was to investigate Arrington for other criminal activity. For this, he did not have the reasonable, articulable suspicion necessary for a continued investigatory detention.

The court says the traffic stop (such as it were) was justified. And that could have encompassed Arrington if he had still been in the vehicle. But the Supreme Court’s Rodriguez decision doesn’t just affect drivers. It also affects passengers. The speedy, but unrelated, criminal investigation is still a violation of rights, even if did not “unreasonably” prolong the stop. It’s the expansion that’s the problem.

In sharp contrast to Stepp, this Court knows exactly what Norris – the backup officer – was doing: he admittedly did not ask any questions about the traffic investigation. While not prolonged by the addition of time, the original traffic investigation was certainly unreasonably expanded. Rodriguez cautions that the reasonableness of the stop depends on what the police officer in fact does. Rodriguez, 575 U.S. at 357 (citing Knowles, 525 U.S. at 115-17). Norris – in fact – engaged in an investigation unrelated to the traffic stop.

Officer Norris tried to argue he did have reasonable suspicion to detain Arrington.

In concluding that Arrington was engaged in criminal activity, Norris testified that he relied upon only three things: (1) Arrington attempted to divert attention from himself by speaking loudly; (2) Arrington would not tell Norris what was in his pockets; and (3) Norris noticed an “irregular bulge” in Arrington’s pocket.

But the first of those three things was Arrington loudly telling the officer to leave him alone because he (correctly) knew his rights.

Officer Norris did not testify that Arrington became noticeably more nervous as time progressed. In fact, Arrington’s agitation with officers seemed to result from his repeated requests that they terminate his encounter when he informed them that he understood his legal rights.

That’s not acceptable, says the court.

Just as numerous courts have stated nervousness cannot be a reliable indicator of criminal activity, loudly asserting one’s right to terminate an encounter with officers does not provide reasonable suspicion for continued investigation of suspected criminal activity.

And, in a but-for-video twist, Norris’ own body camera made it clear the officer’s sworn assertions about Arrington’s behavior during the stop were untrue.

While Officer Norris testified that Arrington failed to comply with his commands, body camera video indicates otherwise. Arrington adhered to officers’ requests: (1) for his name; (2) for his relation to the property owner; (3) to see items in his pocket; and (4) to lift up his sweatshirt so officers could see that he did not have a weapon concealed in his waistband. This sequence of events substantially discounts the assertion that Arrington failed to follow basic commands or attempted to divert Norris’ attention from his pockets. Accordingly, the Court gives little weight to this in the reasonable suspicion calculus.

Everything seized during this stop is now gone, as if it had never been discovered. Considering this end result, the officer would have been better off listening to Arrington and deciding not to violate the rights he correctly invoked. Reasonable suspicion only exists when it’s reasonable, and here it was anything but.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, antonio arrington, law enforcement, police, rights, suspicious behavior, traffic stop

Orange County DA's Office Shrugs Off Sheriff's Deputies Falsifying Evidence Reports [UPDATED]

Legal Issues

from the boldly-adding-zero-accountability-to-zero-accountability dept

UPDATE: The Orange County DA’s office has issued this correction:

There is misinformation in this story. Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer has reopened the criminal investigations into the 17 deputies referenced in this post.

This post says that there was a decision to not charge those deputies. That is not accurate as the review is ongoing.

This is the reporting from The Appeal, which has apparently not received the same statement from Spitzer’s office:

Between 2017, before the first audit began, and October 2018, the sheriff’s department referred 15 deputies to the district attorney’s office for criminal investigation as a result of filing false reports, according to the DA’s response to Voice of OC reporter Nick Gerda’s public information request. But by the end of January 2019, the DA’s office had decided not to prosecute any of the deputies, according to a motion filed last month by Scott Sanders, an assistant public defender. Two additional deputies were later submitted and also rejected for prosecution, several months later.

Original post follows:

If this were a private business, it would have collapsed under the combined weight of its unhappy customers and its own incompetence. But it isn’t. We realize you don’t have a choice in your law enforcement provider and all that.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department is a mess. It has been a mess for years. Some of its corruption was exposed five years ago, when an investigation by lawyers in a murder trial uncovered multiple occasions where the department had buried exculpatory information or refused to hand it over to defendants. This resulted in Orange County DA’s office (including all of its 250 prosecutors) being kicked off the high-profile murder trial. The Sheriff’s involvement was the strategic housing of jailhouse informants to illegally coax information out of defendants awaiting trial.

The problems uncovered here were made worse when the Sheriff’s Department shredded documents ahead of a DOJ investigation and then-Sheriff Sandra Hutchens claimed the omissions made by deputies during testimony were honest mistakes — the unfortunate result of the officers supposedly not knowing what they could and could not discuss about the Department’s informant database in open court.

The same office “inadvertently” collected thousands of recordings containing privileged conversations between defendants and their lawyers. The department claimed a “software glitch” resulted in this windfall of rights violations.

Evidence-handling continues to be a problem for this department. Last year, it managed to anger one of its best friends — the Orange County DA’s office — by constantly booking in evidence in an untimely manner. The root cause? Very succinctly, the DA’s office said the Sheriff’s evidence-handling protocols had “no system of accountability.”

The audit of the department’s extremely faulty booking process continues. And, as Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg reports for The Appeal, it’s uncovering even more lax handling of criminal evidence.

Deputies booked evidence days, and sometimes weeks, after it was purportedly collected, according to an internal audit, which examined thousands of police reports filed between 2016 and 2018. Thirty percent of evidence was “booked out of policy,” according to a slide presentation describing the first audit’s findings. A second audit found that deputies had claimed to have collected evidence that was never booked.

Some deputies were far worse than others. One deputy in particular appeared to have set the curve the rest of the department was graded on.

In one investigation, the department found that Sheriff’s Deputy Bryce Simpson falsely claimed he booked evidence in 74 cases, according to a motion Sanders filed last month. In 56 of those cases, no evidence was booked at all, and in 18 only some of the evidence he reported was booked.

Another young go-getter, Deputy Joseph Atkinson, claimed evidence had been booked in 26 cases where no evidence could be located. This included seven cases where Atkinson claimed to have booked drugs, leading one to wonder what actually happened to those drugs.

And yet, as angry as the DA’s office was with the Sheriff’s Department late last year, nothing has been done to introduce any more accountability into a system that clearly has none. The department referred 17 deputies to the DA’s office for criminal investigation. The DA’s office has decided none of these public servants should be punished for abusing the public’s trust.

This isn’t DA Todd Spitzer’s fault. He defeated the former DA by running as a reformer. And while he has expressed his vast displeasure with the department’s booking procedures, his office still decided none of the first 17 deputies referred to him for falsifying records should be criminally charged. That’s not much of a reform and it’s not going to change the culture that led to this situation. It’s going to cost the DA a lot of criminal cases. Maybe once his office bleeds enough, he’ll finally start taking this seriously.

Filed Under: corruption, evidence reports, orange county, orange county sheriff's department