It takes a pretty weird string of coincidences to turn a Google Street View car into a potential witness for the prosecution. But that’s what has happened here.
Street View is pervasive. Some may also call it intrusive. Millions of miles are logged by drivers and pedestrians, year after year. And while those efforts to map the planet may occasionally surface things ranging from the bizarre to the beautiful to the possibly dangerous, the cameras aren’t there to capture events. They’re there to capture places.
But sometimes these places also contain events. In what has be one of the luckiest breaks for criminal investigators anywhere, a Street View car managed to drive past an apparent crime scene at precisely the right time, as ABC (Australia’s version) reports:
Police in northern Spain say a Google Street View image has helped them make arrests in a murder investigation.
The image shows a man loading a bag, which police suspect contained human remains, into a car.
Presumption of innocence aside, the Google Street View image depicts something that looks absolutely like someone putting a body into the trunk of a car:
And that’s not the only Street View image being used in this investigation. There are a couple of others, including what appears to be the suspect hauling the (alleged) body down a street in a wheelbarrow.
This all seems pretty daring for broad daylight, but let’s look at the facts. First of all, no one expects a Google Maps car to be driving around this particular neighborhood. The images were captured in the incredibly small town of Tajueco in Spain. And by small, I mean it’s home to barely over 100 people.
Second, this was a return trip for Google, but the company’s last visit occurred nearly 15 years ago. So, the chances of having an inadvertent witness traversing the small town’s even smaller streets would normally be almost zero.
But everything worked against the suspect here. Not only was Google roaming the streets, but its cameras passed by at exactly the moment the “large object” (as some news sources refer to it) is being placed in the trunk of this car. And the camera passes close enough the average viewer can make several (adverse) assumptions about the “large object,” most notably that the larger part of the large object looks a lot like a human body, especially when paired with the smaller part, which looks exactly like a human head.
Suddenly, after a year where the murder case had gone from front-and-center to the backburner, presumably en route for the cold case files, investigators suddenly had a usable lead — one that has resulted in two arrests and discovery of the body (well, body parts) which had apparently been buried without permission in a nearby cemetery.
While most of us are content to use Google Street View to familiarize ourselves with unfamiliar areas or, perhaps, to see what our old neighborhoods now look like, others are using this service to solve crimes and locate suspects. There are more “witnesses” than ever of things happening in public areas (and “private” areas, for that matter) — something to keep in mind the next time you decide to transport a corpse in broad daylight on a public street. If you aren’t careful, your next vanity search is going to return some extremely surprising results.
How should we feel when an AI journalist operation falsely accuses someone of murder? How about if the person falsely accused is a public figure? I know there are some questions lately about where liability should land when an AI system hallucinates, but here it seems pretty clear who is at fault: a nonsense peddling AI sludge factory called “Hoodline” run by a company called Impress3.
We’ve written multiple times about the growth of absolutely horrible AI sludge journalism, in which crappy (often legacy) news sites are replacing reporters with terribly written, prone-to-lying, AI journalists, with apparently zero editorial review. As I’ve said, I do think there are places where generative AI tools can be useful in journalism, but it’s not in writing stories independently without any review. Indeed, I use AI tools to interrogate everything I write (including this article, which the AI didn’t much like) before I then have a human editor review it.
But apparently, some others don’t much care, including “Hoodline.” We actually mentioned them a few months ago in one of our stories about AI sludge news sites.
A few days ago, I was reading the news recommended by Google News, and a story caught my eye, claiming that the San Mateo County DA had been charged with murder!
This seemed like it would be really big news! Especially in San Mateo County where I live. And I hadn’t even heard anything about it. The article starts out by claiming again that the San Mateo DA had been charged with murder.
Following a preliminary hearing, San Mateo County District Attorney John Caisiano Thompson, age 56, is being held to answer on all charges related to the alleged murder of a woman in his residence despite the victim’s body remaining unfound. According to an official X account from the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office, Thompson was apprehended after a collaborative investigation by the DA’s Office and the East Palo Alto Police Department, which initially began as a search for a missing person.
When I first read this, I wondered if the San Mateo County DA’s office had handed this off to another DA to avoid the conflict of interest. But there was nothing of the sort discussed in the article. Indeed, the more I read through the article, the more it became clear that this wasn’t actually the San Mateo County DA at all. It was just some guy they arrested a while back finally being charged.
Yes, there’s a little tiny “AI” next to the byline of the reporter, which should have clued me in. But I wasn’t even looking at the byline, and even if I had, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the little “AI” icon.
So, what happened? Well, the Nafnlaus account on Bluesky figured it out.
Haha, I can tell exactly what happened here!Left: The original post.Right: Rendered as plaintext for the AI to parse
It was, in fact, trying to make a story out of a tweet by the San Mateo County DA’s ExTwitter account. But when the AI parsed it, it merged the name of the account “San Mateo County District Attorney” with the start of the tweet, which begins with the guy being charged. So merged together, it looks like that name is the DA.
When parsed, looks like:
And the AI is too stupid to notice this or to do a simple look-up to realize the San Mateo County DA is actually Stephen Wagstaffe. You know, the kind of thing a human might actually check.
Anyway, this is yet another reason why this is not the right way to be using AI in journalism. It makes me wonder why Google is featuring a site like Hoodline in Google News when it publishes this kind of nonsense. This should also alert people that any site run by Impress3 is not at all trustworthy, especially Hoodline.
Never underestimate the coercive power of law enforcement. Officers were so convinced Thomas Perez Jr. had murdered his “missing” father, they spent 17 hours torturing him into confessing to a crime no one had actually committed.
Perez Jr. initiated this. He called the police to report his father was missing, mistakenly assuming they’d help him, rather than hurt him. That initiated nearly a full 24-hour day of extreme coercion by so-called “investigators.” Perez was concerned because his father had taken the dog for a walk around 10 pm on August 7, 2018 but had never returned home.
According to court records, detectives told Perez that his father was dead, that they had recovered his body and it now “wore a toe tag at the morgue.” They said they had evidence that Perez killed his father and that he should just admit it, records show.
Perez insisted he didn’t remember killing anyone, but detectives allegedly told him that the human mind often tries to suppress troubling memories.
At one point during the interrogation, the investigators even threatened to have his pet Labrador Retriever, Margosha, euthanized as a stray, and brought the dog into the room so he could say goodbye. “OK? Your dog’s now gone, forget about it,” said an investigator.
The officers not only leveraged the family dog against Perez, they ignored his medical and mental health issues. They refused to allow him access to medication to treat his high blood pressure, asthma, and depression. They actually laughed as they watched him suffer through immense anguish as they threatened to kill his dog and continued to insist he was a murderer.
This is from last June’s decision denying qualified immunity to the police officers:
At one point while they are telling him to confess, he starts pulling at his own hair, hitting himself, making anguished noises, tears off his own shirt, and nearly falls to the floor. During this episode, the officers laugh at him and tell him that he is stressing out his dog.
They also straight up lied to him. They told him his father’s body had already been found. But that would have been impossible because Perez’s father wasn’t dead. It was only after Perez’s sister located their father and informed the police of this fact.
Perez’s nightmare ended shortly after police got a phone call from his sister, who said their father was alive and well. He had actually walked to the train station in Fontana and rode the line to Los Angeles County to visit a relative and then took a bus to visit a female friend, Steering said. Perez Sr. later went to the airport to await a flight to Oakland to visit his daughter.
Police picked up the father at the airport and brought him to the Fontana station.
Somehow, that still didn’t end the cops’ interest in Perez. They obtained a warrant to search Perez’s house for evidence of an “assault” of an “unknown victim.” This was apparently justified by the discovery of blood during the execution of another warrant (the blood was later determined to be the result of Perez’s father’s blood tests for his diabetes” and the cops’ dog’s supposed “detection” of the odor of a “corpse” in the house).
Since cops like these ones tend to believe the first or easiest-to-nab suspect must be the guilty party, Fontana (CA) residents will now be paying $900,000 to cover the tab of officers — three of whom are still employed by the PD — who tortured a man into confessing to a crime that never actually happened.
And it’s not as though these cops ever admitted to doing anything wrong, despite the fact that the interrogation was captured on film, making it impossible to deny they did the awful things they did to Perez. Instead, they thought they should be allowed to walk away from this lawsuit because (in their own words) no reasonable officer would understand that torturing a man, accusing him of crimes that never happened, threatening to kill his dog, and denying him access to needed medication might be a violation of his rights.
From last June’s decision, which says things you’d think no one would actually have to say to law enforcement officers:
There is no legitimate government interest that would justify treating Perez in this manner while he was in medical distress, since the FPD already had two warrants to search his person and property, and he was already essentially in custody and unable to flee or tamper with any evidence.
[…]
Perez’s substantive due process right against psychological torture of this nature was “clearly established” at the time of the incident, to a degree that “every reasonable officer would have understood that what he was doing violates that right.”
That’s the only reason the city is paying. And it’s only getting around to it now, after managing to drag out litigation for nearly another entire year. But there was no way putting this case in front of a jury would have ended with an exoneration of the involved officers. So, to save them and their apparently ongoing careers, the city has graciously decided city residents should pay for the sins of city employees.
Huntsville, Alabama police officer William Darby was the only officer on the scene who felt a suicidal man needed to be murdered. And he was the last to arrive, uninvited, to a scene apparently under control, handled by two other officers who were doing an admirable job de-escalating the situation.
Darby made his decision to kill in eleven seconds. He immediately escalated upon arrival, shouting his first instructions at Officer Genisha Pegues to point her weapon at the suicidal man. The man, Jeffrey Parker, never threatened or moved towards the officers. Instead, he sat in a chair pointing a black-painted flare gun at his own head. For the crime of threatening his own life, Darby took Parker’s life. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to prison.
The appeals court ruled that Madison County Circuit Judge Donna Pate should have instructed the jury to decide the case from the perspective of a reasonable police officer.
“The opinion confirms our position that police officers are under a different standard when it comes to a self-defense situation,” said Robert Tuten, one of Darby’s defense attorneys. “It’s different than the average person because police are expected to go into dangerous situations as part of their job.”
The 62-page reversal [PDF] recounts most of the case’s facts before coming down on the side of the officer. The court’s failure to explicitly instruct the jury to put themselves in the shoes of a “reasonable officer” is apparently a reversible error.
But this doesn’t mean Darby will end up without a conviction by the time the second trial concludes. There was plenty of testimony from “reasonable” officers. Those testifying on Darby’s behalf claimed a person’s refusal to drop a gun justifies deadly force, even if the weapon never moves, is never aimed at officers, and other officers who had been at the scene far longer never felt compelled to shoot the suicidal man.
So, it will come down to which officers can be considered to have the most “reasonable” perception of the situation that ended with Darby’s unprovoked shots. This is what the officers already on the scene reasonably perceived before being interrupted by a far more unreasonable officer.
Officer Pegues testified that she “could feel the tension just rising” (R. 612) when Darby entered the residence, so she began to plead with Parker to put his weapon down. However, despite the officers’ commands and pleas, it was undisputed that Parker “[n]ever move[d] [the weapon] from his head” (R. 614), and, seconds after entering the residence, Darby shot and killed Parker while Parker was still seated on the couch. When asked if she had felt threatened by Parker, Officer Pegues testified that Parker “did not threaten [her]” (R. 613) or behave “in a threatening manner” (R. 614), that he did not “do anything to make [her] believe he wanted to do anything other than commit suicide” (id.), and that she “didn’t think [he] was an imminent threat … to … anyone … but himself.” (R. 628.)
It’s extremely unusual to have a cop testify against another cop. But Darby’s actions that day ensured this happened twice.
Officer Beckles’s testimony was consistent with Officer Pegues’s testimony. According to Officer Beckles, although Parker refused to put his weapon down, he did not “show any hostility” or “aggression” toward the officers (R. 661), “didn’t make any overt action to” indicate that he “was about to point [his weapon] at [the officers]” (R. 658), and appeared to have the intent to harm only himself. (R. 661-62.) In fact, Officer Beckles testified that he “definitely thought … things were going in a direction [they] needed … to go” before Darby arrived. (R. 659.) Officer Beckles did testify that, if Parker had continued to refuse to put his weapon down, at some point the officers “were probably going to have to end up … terminating that threat.” (R. 660.) However, Officer Beckles testified that “at [no] time during this event did [he] feel the need to take deadly force action.”
The problem here was Darby, the previously-convicted murderer. His appearance on the scene created tension that hadn’t previously existed. His first shouted directions were aimed at another officer, rather than the supposed “threat” he felt he needed to “terminate” moments after arriving.
There were two professionals on the scene. And then there was Officer Darby. This is from his own tesitimony:
Well, I see this so I give her a verbal command, ‘Point your gun at him,’ and I said it loudly. I said it to be heard. And you have to raise your voice to cut through the intensity of that situation. I yelled loud enough to where she could hear me through the intensity of this situation and the radio going on and who knows what was going through her mind: ‘Point your gun at him. He can shoot you.’ And she listened to me for a second, because she knew and she raised her gun. But it was – it was for less than a whole second. And I couldn’t believe it. I saw her raise her gun and then she put it down and she’s in the house and she puts her hand up in front of her and she says, ‘No, he’s right here in front of me.’ So right now my fear is through the roof.
The officers felt safe enough to lower their weapons. But then Darby arrived, bringing with him intensity and fear no other officer felt. Then he killed someone because he alone felt that was the “reasonable” option.
We’ll have to see what the second jury does with this information, but it appears Darby was the unreasonable person here. He was the last to arrive and the first to act. And the first thing he did was try to project his fear on the officers who were de-escalating a situation where only one person was threatened with physical harm: the suicidal man holding a gun (and not even a real one) to his own head.
This is not to say the court isn’t right to declare this a reversible error. But let’s hope this doesn’t result in the jury deciding the only officer being “reasonable” is the one who decided the only acceptable conclusion was killing someone rather than trying to save them.
Last August, cable giant Charter Communications (Spectrum) was slapped with a $7 billion lawsuit after one of the company’s cable technicians murdered an 83-year-old customer after hours. The lawsuit (pdf) claims that Charter had eliminated a more rigorous screening process when they merged with Time Warner Cable, letting the employee and his history slip through the cracks.
By September, that tally had been dramatically reduced to $1.1 billion by a jury. This week the cable monopoly managed to strike a settlement with the family for $262 million, all of which will be covered by insurance. Still, the courts found that Charter was responsible for gross negligence, and had forged documents to try and force the family out of the court system and into binding arbitration:
“Charter Spectrum attorneys used a forged document to try to force the lawsuit into a closed-door arbitration where the results would have been secret and damages for the murder would have been limited to the amount of Ms. Thomas’s final bill,” the law firm said.
The problem was several fold: one, these companies’ executives were so fixated on growth for growth’s sake and pleasing Wall Street, they routinely failed to scale their investment into customer service. They also really adored using a series of low-quality, low-cost subcontractors both for the cost savings, and because the layered proxy relationships often offered reduced liability for fuck ups.
US cable broadband customer service has improved some in the years since, but not by much, as there remains little incentive to meaningfully improve thanks to market failure and federal regulators that generally lack the courage to stand up to monopolies with any consistency.
The cable sector still has some of the lowest customer service ratings in any industry in America, a true feat in a country where banks, insurance companies, oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, and airlines exist.
It’s rare to see a cop charged with murder. Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was not only charged but convicted (!) of murder after kneeling on the neck of George Floyd for nearly 10 minutes, and for three minutes after another officer told Chauvin he could no longer detect Floyd’s pulse.
Officer Chavin — an anomaly in terms of criminal justice — now has company. Five Memphis police officers have been fired and charged with multiple crimes, including second-degree murder, for the brutal beating that ended the life of Tyre Nichols. Here are their names:
The Memphis Police Department on Friday identified them as Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills, Jr., and Justin Smith. They range in age from 24 to 32 and each served on the department for about 2 1/2 to five years.
And it was murder. The footage above, released by the Memphis PD, was captured by a nearby pole camera. It shows the clearest objective view of the violence inflicted on Nichols by these officers. It shows an officer kicking him three times in the face while he’s restrained on the ground. It shows officers holding him up while another strikes him in the back with a baton. It shows officers holding Nichols with his hands restrained behind them while another officer repeatedly punches him in the face.
It shows the cops dragging Nichols’ nearly lifeless body across the concrete and propping it up against the door of a cruiser. It shows them milling around, refusing to render aid. It shows so-called “first responders” arriving at the scene and refusing to respond to the clear medical emergency. It shows more than 20 minutes elapse before any aid is rendered, during which Nichols repeatedly slumps over on his side, only to be propped up again by cops attempting to make things look less medically serious than they actually are.
If you still have the stomach for more, the Memphis PD has also posted body cam recordings. But be warned, those videos have audio. Not only will you hear the clear distress in Nichol’s voice, but you’ll hear the blows being rained on him, the officers’ laughter, and their attempts to exonerate themselves by saying things to each other about guns being grabbed, etc.
It’s not clear when Memphis PD officials decided to actually watch this footage, but its initial news release is full of exonerative copspeak that attempts to blame the victim and refuses to discuss the acts of violence committed by the officers.
Compare the descriptions above with the innocuous-sounding statement released by the PD:
Here’s the most relevant part of that statement, in case you’re unable to see/read the embed:
On January 7, 2023, at approximately 8:30 p.m., officers in the area of Raines Road attempted to make a traffic stop for reckless driving. As officers approached the driver of the vehicle, a confrontation occurred, and the suspect fled on foot. Officers pursued the suspect and again attempted to take the suspect into custody. While attempting to take the suspect into custody, another confrontation occurred; however, the suspect was ultimately apprehended. Afterward, the suspect complained of having shortness of breath, at which time an ambulance was called to the scene.
“Ultimately apprehended” is the brutal beating. “Complained of having shortness of breath” apparently refers to Nichols’ beaten body repeatedly slumping to the ground as he lost consciousness. To the MPD’s credit, it did fire the officers and it did leave this exonerative horseshit tweet intact, perhaps as a reminder to itself to get all the facts in before issuing statements.
“This is not just a professional failing. This is a failing of basic humanity toward another individual,” Davis said in the video, her first on-camera comments about the arrest. “This incident was heinous, reckless and inhumane.”
So did Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy, who charged the officers not only with second-degree murder but with aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct, and official oppression. But Mulroy is also saying things that suggest he’s not wholeheartedly backing these prosecutions. Bringing a stack of charges makes it easier for juries to hand down convictions for lesser crimes, which means murder convictions are a lot less likely. And he’s saying things like this, which suggests he’s still trying to put as much distance between the heinous acts and the indicted officers as possible:
After Nichols was stopped, there was “an altercation” in which officers doused the motorist with pepper spray, and Nichols tried to flee on foot, Mulroy said, describing what followed in highly elliptical terms.
“There was another altercation at a nearby location at which the serious injuries were experienced by Mr. Nichols,” the prosecutor said.
What the fuck. Serious injuries are only “experienced” by people injured by inanimate objects. When humans injure other humans, the people performing the injury are normally called assailants or otherwise pointed to as the origin of the injuries. But when it’s cops doing the injuring, somehow assault just becomes something that happens to people without any intervention from law enforcement officers.
The Nichols family viewed the police footage on Monday with their attorney, Ben Crump, who compared it to the 1991 videotaped Rodney King beating by four police officers whose acquittal of criminal charges the following year sparked several days of riots in Los Angeles.
Well, we all know how that turned out. Four cops faced serious criminal charges. All were acquitted of assault charges. Three of the four were acquitted of excessive force charges, with the last one resulting in a hung jury.
The fallout from this beating continues. Two sheriff’s deputies who were at the scene have been suspended pending an investigation. Both arrived after the beating, but neither deputy rendered aid or attempted to provide any assistance to the beaten man.
The unit that housed the five fired MPD murder suspects has been disbanded. The so-called “Scorpion” team (it stands for [brace yourself and your soon-to-be-rolling eyes] “Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods”) was formed to crack down on violent crime. But it appears to have actually encouraged it. Violent criminals assaulted a man in the street January 7th, ultimately killing him. And it’s only the most visible expression of the unit’s, shall we say, “controversial” tactics.
Will this be the cop crime that prompts serious reform efforts? Probably not. I mean, none of the others have managed to move the dial much. Soon this too will become part of law enforcement’s sordid history, something we can point to as an outward symptom of inner rot, but the kind of rot law enforcement agencies and their powerful supporters are more than happy to live with, if not actively encourage.
Jeff German, a forty-year veteran investigative reporter residing in Las Vegas, Nevada, was murdered earlier this year, allegedly by a local government official whose actions had received recent criticism in articles bylined by German.
A prosecutor told a judge last Thursday that Telles left his own cellphone at home and waited in a vehicle outside German’s home until the attack. It was characterized as a planned response to articles that German wrote about “turmoil and internal dissension” in the county office that handles the property of people who die without a will or family contacts.
After articles appeared in May airing claims of administrative bullying, favoritism and Telles’ relationship with a subordinate staffer, Telles lost his bid for reelection in the June primary. County lawmakers also appointed a consultant to address complaints about leadership in the office.
The murder of a journalist in the United States isn’t unheard of, but it’s still fairly uncommon, at least when compared to the killing of journalists in other parts of the world. This relative rarity means shield laws — meant to protect journalists’ sources and source materials from government snooping — have rarely been tested, at least as far as criminal investigations go.
The prosecution of Robert Telles is taking things in a dangerous direction, as Alanna Madden reports for Courthouse News Service. Although Nevada has one of the most robust journalist shield laws (one made even stronger after the state’s top court extended this protection to independent journalists), the law has (fortunately) never been tested quite like this.
Police matched Telles’ DNA under German’s fingernails, located evidence in his home and identified his car near the crime scene, and since his arrest on Sept. 7, Telles has remained jailed without bail for murder. However, Telles has pleaded not guilty, and the defense and prosecutors are attempting to access German’s seized property.
The state law definitively protects journalists who are still alive. Those who are deceased or, in this case, murdered, don’t appear to be quite as covered. There may still be some coverage, but it’s unclear what it covers, who can invoke it, or how it will be applied to the German’s possessions and recordings, which are being targeting by both prosecutors and Telles’ defense team.
“What’s interesting about this situation is the fact that number one, the journalist’s phone was seized, in part at least, to investigate his murder,” said professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota Jane Kirtly. “And number two, that the Nevada shield law does not explicitly seem to protect the notes and other documentary materials of people once they have died. The statute does make reference to former journalists. So, I suppose an expansive interpretation of that might include somebody who has passed away.”
Since no one seems to know exactly how the judge handling the case will read the law, German’s employer is doing what it can to protect information gathered by the murdered journalist. It has filed a motion indicating it retains legal possession of German’s finished and unfinished work, including everything used to create that work. It then had to go back to the court to request an emergency protective order after law enforcement threatened to search German’s devices by October 4 if no court order had been obtained.
The injunction was granted but the presiding judge has ordered all parties to reach some sort of agreement. The Las Vegas Review-Journal says any agreement approved by all parties would let the government do things the state’s shield law says it can’t. Here’s George Freeman of the Media Law Center paraphrasing the current conundrum:
“It would be tragic and backward if, after a journalist gets murdered by a government official who he’s about to do a story on, the same government that the murderer was part of, is able to get the confidential records and information from the murdered journalist,” said Freeman.
Should a shield law prevent the prosecution from gathering evidence that might secure a conviction simply because the victim was a journalist? Should someone accused of a crime involving a journalist be restricted in their defense by a law that might provide access to exculpatory evidence? Can the government be trusted to not abuse its access if it’s granted? And will permission to search in this case encourage the government to ignore the shield law if it can plausibly argue a journalist is either close enough to a criminal act to justify a search or a victim of crime necessitating the search of their possessions?
All of this is up in the air at the moment. And there are no easy answers. While it may be easy to blithely state the government doesn’t need this access, any denial would have to extend to the person accused of a crime, which would implicate their rights to a fair trial. But neither should this tragedy give the government (and a former government employee) a blank check to root around in a journalist’s protected work material simply because he’s no longer living.
Whatever the solution ends up being, it has to be better than the one proposed by the judge handling the murder trial, which would give the Metro PD full access as part of the so-called “taint team.” Loading a taint team up with cops doesn’t do much to limit the chance of abuse. The team should be far more impartial and not composed of current members of law enforcement. The newspaper has suggested a two person taint team composed of the judge and a former district attorney — neither of whom should have any reason to root around for information they shouldn’t have access to.
Above all, everyone involved needs to remember that unique tragedies tend to result in bad laws and bad rulings. First and foremost, the victim was a journalist. And that should be the watchword as the prosecution moves forward. Serving the cause of justice should be no excuse for introduction of new injustices.
The problem was several fold: one, these companies’ executives were so fixated on growth for growth’s sake and pleasing Wall Street, they routinely failed to scale their investment into customer service. They also really adored using a series of low-quality, low-cost subcontractors both for the cost savings, and because the layered proxy relationships often offered reduced liability for fuck ups.
US cable broadband customer service has improved some in the years since, though the sector still has some of the lowest customer service ratings in any industry in America (think about the competition the sector has for that title, for a moment).
Case in point: a court ruling this week required that Charter Communications (which uses the brand name Spectrum) will have to pay $1.1 billion dollars after a Charter tech murdered an 83-year-old woman in her home after trying to steal her credit cards.
The lawsuit claims Charter weakened its screening process during its merger with Time Warner Cable:
According to the complaint, brought by the victim’s family, Charter got rid of an employee screening program put in place by Time Warner Cable when Charter purchased the MSO in 2016.
The plaintiffs also said that a cursory look at Holden’s background would have revealed his history of firings for forging documents and harassing coworkers.
The case also revealed that Charter apparently forged a document to try and force the family away from the courts and into binding arbitration:
The jury also found that “Charter knowingly or intentionally committed forgery with the intent to defraud or harm Plaintiffs,” Renteria wrote. The family’s attorney previously said that “Charter Spectrum attorneys used a forged document to try to force the lawsuit into a closed-door arbitration where the results would have been secret and damages for the murder would have been limited to the amount of Ms. Thomas’s final bill.”
On the plus side, $1.1 billion is a lot lower than the whopping $7.37 billion Charter was originally on the hook for. Charter says it plans to appeal, claiming the “crime was not foreseeable.” And while the lawsuit states the tech had been fired several times for forging documents and harassing coworkers, Charter claims a criminal background check “showed no arrests, convictions, or other criminal behavior.”
Given the inalienable protections this country has determined are essential to democracy, the United States has only tolerated limited violence against journalists. Most of this violence is perpetrated by law enforcement officers who feel a fully functioning democracy demands they greet documentation of their acts with force or unjustified arrests.
You don’t have to be a Trump fan to consider journalists dangerous. All you have to be is on the wrong side of history — even if it’s only hyper-local history. The rhetoric against journalists has increased over the past few years, resulting in public statements by elected officials that make it appear they wish they were presiding over regions in, say, China. Or Turkey.
Portraying journalists as dangerous has finally claimed a victim. And the alleged perpetrator appears to be someone who would never espouse Trump’s anti-journalistic views, much less vote for him. But when elections are on the line, journalists are the first against the wall. Here’s Lara Kote, reporting for Politico:
Police in Las Vegas have charged a local elected official with murder in connection with the stabbing death of Jeff German, an investigative reporter with the Las Vegas Review-Journal who had spent the last few months exposing misdeeds and turmoil in the official’s office.
Clark County Public Administrator Robert Telles, a 45-year-old Democrat, was taken into custody on Wednesday after police conducted a search in his home. On Thursday, Sheriff Joseph Lombardo told reporters Telles had been charged with murder after authorities found a positive match for Telles’ DNA with the genetic material found underneath German’s fingernails.
German had been digging into Telles’ apparent misconduct, including allegations of bullying, favoritism, and an inappropriate relationship with another government official. At the time of his alleged murder, German was in the process of obtaining records from the public administrator’s office.
Telles, the murder suspect, recently lost his reelection attempt. But while still in office, he had repeatedly attacked the long-time investigative journalist on Twitter, calling him a “bully” and referring to his investigative reporting as “smear pieces.”
For these slights (and Telles’ recent loss at the polls), it appears the former county official felt the journalist needed to be killed. There’s an apparent motive. And there’s also plenty of evidence.
Surveillance footage from Friday morning, the day of the killing, showed an individual in a long-sleeved orange T-shirt with reflective strips and a broad straw hat that covered the face. Police later recovered a similar hat from Telles’ home that had been cut into pieces, as well as a pair of shoes that matched those worn by the suspect in the video, which had also been cut, likely to destroy evidence, authorities said.
Police said surveillance video showed the killer leave the crime scene before returning a few minutes later in a maroon GMC Yukon Denali — which matched the description of a car registered to Telles’ wife.
Maybe something will come out in court that alters the narrative. Maybe there was motive above and beyond what appears to be little more than a government official deciding a Murder One count was the best way to deter future reporting about alleged misconduct. But, for now, these are the facts and allegations we have to work with. And it doesn’t say anything positive about the current relationship between public officials and the members of the public who are crucial to government accountability.
And while major U.S. cable companies have made some small inroads with their historically abysmal customer service, apparently there’s still some work to be done. Charter Communications (which sells service under the brand Spectrum) recently found its name in headlines due to an uncharacteristically massive $7.37 billion verdict handed down against the company after one of its technicians murdered an 83-year-old customer.
The employee had taken to robbing customers as a side gig. The lawsuit (pdf) claims that Charter had eliminated a more rigorous screening process when they merged with Time Warner Cable, letting the employee and his history slip through the cracks:
According to the complaint, brought by the victim’s family, Charter got rid of an employee screening program put in place by Time Warner Cable when Charter purchased the MSO in 2016.
The plaintiffs also said that a cursory look at Holden’s background would have revealed his history of firings for forging documents and harassing coworkers.
Again, U.S. cable company customer service is some of the worst in the United States. Cable giants routinely rank worse than nearly any other industry (an incredible feat if you stop and think about all the terrible companies in the United States), and even government agencies like the IRS.
There are usually several reasons. These companies are all so consolidation and merger crazy they’ve expanded at a breakneck pace for years. Rarely are they willing to spend the money to ensure customer service scales with that growth. They’re also keen on using a chain of low-cost, legally firewalled subcontractors to ensure they’re not liable for substandard repair and install work.
And, of course, when you’re the only broadband option in town, your local monopoly means you don’t really have to try very hard. So, as a result, Comcast and Charter often… don’t. The result isn’t always murder, but it happensmoreoften than you’d think.
