Thursday, April 26, 2007

A culture of corruption in the Atlanta PD?

The NYTimes today:

After the fatal police shooting of an elderly woman in a botched drug raid, the United States attorney here said Thursday that prosecutors were investigating a “culture of misconductâ€Â� in the Atlanta Police Department.

In court documents, prosecutors said Atlanta police officers regularly lied to obtain search warrants and fabricated documentation of drug purchases, as they had when they raided the home of the woman, Kathryn Johnston, in November, killing her in a hail of bullets.

Narcotics officers have admitted to planting marijuana in Ms. Johnston’s home after her death and submitting as evidence cocaine they falsely claimed had been bought at her house, according to the court filings. [...]

Asked how widespread such practices might be, Mr. Nahmias said investigators were looking at narcotics officers, officers who had once served in the narcotics unit and “officers that had never been in that unit but may have adopted that practice.”

Dirty Atlanta cops cop a plea

You’ll remember the lying cops in Atlanta who shot and killed a 92-year-old woman during a badly botched drug raid last November. Today they copped a plea:

Former Atlanta Police Officers Greg Junnier and Jason Smith both pled guilty in Fulton County Superior Court Thursday to a series of reduced charges in connection with the botched drug raid that left an elderly Atlanta woman dead.

Junnier and Smith pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter, violation of oath, making false statements and criminal solicitation. Smith pled guilty to the additional charge of perjury.

How egreious was their crime?

The charges followed a Nov. 21 “no-knock” drug raid on the home of Kathryn Johnston, 92. An informant had described buying drugs from a dealer there, police said. When the officers burst in without warning, Johnston fired at them, and they fired back, killing her.

Fulton County prosecutor Peter Johnson said that the officers involved in Johnston’s death fired 39 shots, striking her five or six times, including a fatal blow to the chest.

He said Johnston fired only once through her door and didn’t hit any of the officers. That means the officers who were wounded likely were hit by their own colleagues, he said. [...]

Assistant U.S. Attorney Yonette Sam-Buchanan said Thursday that although the officers found no drugs in Johnston’s home, Smith planted three bags of marijuana in the home as part of a cover story.

The case raised serious questions about no-knock warrants and whether the officers followed proper procedures.

Via Michael at Gay Orbit who points to Radley Balko who provides this map of Botched Paramilitary Police Raids.

Help Brandon Wirtz beat Stephen Colbert!

Tired and cranky, I linked to the Colbert Greatest Living American Google Bomb last night and went to bed.

Today in comments Brandon Wirtz stopped by:

Sure support the easy candidate… I’m the under dog in this race but I’d like your vote… I may not have Colberts’ Looks, Money, or legions of followers but I at least came to visit your web site.  Did Colbert do that?

Hell no!

So I clicked on over to Brandon’s place to learn more about his quest to become the Google-designated Greatest Living American:

Stephen Colbert is out to steal my thunder as Greatest Living American.  So I’m actively going to try and Foil Him.  I may not have his legions of people, but this is about SEO,[*] and his followers don’t have my friends Google Rank.

I may not be qualified to be the Greatest… but I am a Great Living American, and that is not that far off of Greatest Living American.  Even if I can be in the top 10 links, I think that should be worth something.

As the screenshot above (click to enlarge) demonstrates, Brandon has made it to the #2 spot. (Look ma, no quotes!) His hometown paper reported Tuesday that he had 50 links; I see 31 in Technorati right now - and that he snagged a prestigious Lost Remote link.

You’ve got my nod Brandon. I do watch Colbert most every night and I look forward to the day you knock him from his heady perch! I’m happy to do my small part to help. And while I’m at it, Steve Safran is the Laziest Man in America…

* For the laymen among us, SEO is Search Engine Optimization. 

Chocolate mockolate

Connoisseurs: Don’t meddle with chocolate:

“They are trying to pull one over on us,” said Cybele May, 40, publisher of CandyBlog, on which she has encouraged more than 200 people to write the FDA to protest what she calls “mockolate.” “What they are asking for is permission to confuse the consumer for what we readily accept as chocolate.”

Gary Guittard, fourth-generation owner of Guittard Chocolate Co., wants to keep chocolate from the dark side, too. He has enlisted the support of high-end companies such as billionaire Warren Buffett’s See’s Candies to fight the big chocolate makers.

“The process of this thing going through, it wasn’t transparent, and it needs to be brought out into the light,” said Guittard.

Brad Kinstler, chief executive officer of Carson, California-based See’s, is siding with Guittard in the confections controversy.

“If the margarine manufacturers could call their product butter instead of being required to call it margarine, wouldn’t it strike the consumer as being odd?” said Kinstler, whose company sold 30 million pounds of sweets last year.

Remember the chocolate manufacturers manufactured “citizens” to support this change. Real citizens can fight back here: dontmesswithourchocolate.com

Making media is hard to do

I agreed with it when I read it. Kyte.tv sent me back to quote it. A bored Kevin Drum on why v-logging kind of sucks:

...in reverse order of importance.

1. The first objection is the most obvious one: it’s so slo-o-o-o-w. A 20-minute v-log usually contains remarkably little content amidst all the interruptions, verbal tics, and hemming and hawing. I prefer my bloviating in more concentrated form. On a related note, v-logs are also almost impossible to scan, which I find endlessly annoying. I can scan a 3,000 word article in little more than a minute or so if I’m looking for a particular passage.

2. V-loggers tend not to think out their arguments very well before turning on the camera, which means that I usually have to sit and watch for 20 minutes as they slowly and painfully piece it together. On a purely selfish basis, I’d rather that they spend the time it takes to hone their argument and write it down in a form where I can read it quickly, instead of blathering aimlessly and forcing me to spend the time to pick out the wheat from the chaff.

3. Finally, I just don’t get it. There’s a reason political blogging has become popular: it’s a genuinely different medium compared to other forms of political writing. Its combination of short takes, easy hyperlinking, interactivity (with other blogs and with blog commenters), constant updating, and accessibility by ordinary writers makes it unique. You can do things with a blog that you just can’t do on an op-ed page or a magazine, and that’s inherent in the medium.

V-logging, by contrast, is just TV. It’s literally the same thing that you see on PBS or CNN or Fox, except less professional. It just doesn’t bring anything new to the table.

As good a time as ever to quote Sturgeon’s Law, “Ninety percent of everything is crud.” (Does anyone know the coinage of its corollary, “one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure?") As we slam user generated content, let’s keep in mind what the content industry has given us. I expect the ratio of good to bad from YouAndMe TV to be just as good.

Kyte.tv

Nice PR machine or no, I missed the Monday launch. Online video and social networking. SFChronicle:

Kyte.tv allows you to upload photographs or video, add music or text, then broadcast your show, all from a mobile phone or personal computer. You can also live “life stream,” by programming your mobile phone to take pictures at regular intervals that create a stop-motion film on Kyte.tv.

Viewers can log on, contribute to your channel, and talk with you and others via live chat. They also can sound off in opinion polls that you set up. You can embed your channel on your Web site, blog or MySpace page, wherever you want people to watch.

SEE ALSO: Read/Write Web, “What makes Kyte compelling, are its mobile and social tools.”

Easy file sharing

New Geek Blog:

Pros:

• You can set the time limit after which the file expires !!
• No registration required !!
• Very Clean and simple interface !!
• Download URL is neat and tiny !!

Cons:

• The file size is limited to only 100MB :(
• No file hosting for forever!! (Max is 1 week) :(

Verdict:

• Good !!

URL:

• http://www.senduit.com/

Now Enjoy !!

TRY ALSO: YouSendIt and GigaTribe