Phoenix Sex Crimes Detective Says Justice Not Being Done for Young Victims

Posted by Vladimir Gagic on June 28, 2011

In a recent news story by KPHO Channel 5 Phoenix, Reporter Peter Busch reports that a detective with the Professional Standards claims Phoenix Police has failed to properly investigate hundreds of viable sex crimes cases.  

Dana Lindsey, a detective with the Professional Standards Bureau... said the department has failed for years to address an "excessive number of open cases" within the Child Crimes Squad.

According to detective Lindsey, there are about 587 open cases that Phoenix Police has failed to properly investigate.  One detective in particular has gained Det. Lindsey's ire, "Lindsey points out that one detective, Alan MacIver, had 116 cases that had been open for more than 30 days".  This story comes on the heels of other major embarrassments by Arizona law enforcement.  There was a recent story on how the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office has failed to properly investigate numerous violent and sex crimes in El Mirage, and even more disturbing, how rogue Phoenix Police officers may have killed one of their own officers, Sgt. Sean Drenth, in an attempt to cover up Phoenix Police corruption.  

Of course, there is also the notorious Youtube video in which a uniformed Phoenix Police Officer tackles a 15 year old girl, as reported by Michelle Ye Hee Lee of the Arizona Republic:  

Patrick Larrison, a six-year member of the force, has been put on administrative leave pending criminal and internal investigations... An officer [Larrison] responding to the scene approaches her from behind as she is walking, shoves her into a wall and knocks her off her feet.

The worst part of the youtube attack video is that there was another office on the scene who did not report the attack, and it only came to the attention of the Phoenix Police because the video was posted anonymously on youtube three months later. Despite that point, Phoenix Police held a press conference where they had the insensitivity to claim they did not want to the public to think professional misconduct is only punished if exposed publicity.  

[Phoenix Police Spokesman] Sgt. Trent Crump: “What we do not want is for people to find it online and think that is the normal course of business for the Phoenix Police Department,”

Yet that is exactly what happened.  As I have stated before, it may be time for a civilian police commission to oversee the Phoenix Police department.   History points out that in a democracy, when our civil servants fail us, the best solution is democratic oversight.  And I can't imagine a better way to ensure that democratic oversight than to have the Phoenix Police department supervised by members of the community. 

Arizona Drug Crimes: Possession for Sale and Personal Possession

Posted by Vladimir Gagic on June 22, 2011

One of the biggest punitive distinctions in criminal law in Arizona is the difference between personal possession of drugs and possession for sale.  And like many other areas of the law, while the consequences between the two charges are very, very different, the facts distinguishing between the two are not. 

Why is the difference between personal possession of drugs and possession for sale so important?  The main reason is that if the state convicts you of possession for sale, the state thinks you are a drug dealer. On the other hand, if the state convicts you of personal possession the state thinks you are probably just a user. Under proposition 200 and 302, the Arizona referendum laws, in most circumstances, if you are convicted of a first or second drug possession for personal use, you will not go to prison or even jail.   However, proposition 200 and 302 do not apply to possession for sale.  Thus, even if it is your first offense, if the state convicts you of possession for sale, you can go to prison. 

So while the punitive consequences are clear, the facts that distinguish between possession for sale and personal possession are not.  That is even more so in cases where a drug user buys drugs by the "Costco method": in bulk to save money.   That is because if the police catch someone with a large amount of drugs, they will assume that large amount is too much for personal use.  Other facts that the police rely on include whether or not the person had a scale, ledger, and things like plastic bags with drugs individually wrapped for quick distribution. The main method of proving possession for sale is by the use of expert witnesses.  In Arizona, that usually means the case detective testifying in his or her expert opinion the drugs were for sale, not personal possession.  It is up to the defense at that point to discredit the case detective or have their own expert rebut the case detective. 

DUI in Phoenix: Do I Have to go to Jail?

Posted by Vladimir Gagic on June 17, 2011

How tough are the laws when someone gets a DUI in Phoenix? I remember a few years ago reading in the New York Times, how New York state planned on increasing the penalties for a drunk driving conviction in New York.  This was in response to an accident in which a drunk mother went in the Holland tunnel the wrong way and killed a number of children, all because she was driving drunk.  The thing that caught my attention was the fact the New York Times was stating that with the new laws, New York state would have some of the most severe drunk driving laws in America.  That caught my attention because the severe reforms New York was considering had already been the law for Arizona DUI cases for at least a decade. 

Among other things, Arizona is one of the few states that requires at least 24 hours in jail for any drunk driving conviction.  That means that even if you have a pristine driving record and have had any sort of traffic violation or criminal conviction in your life, speeding tickets, parking tickets, anything at all, and you are convicted of a DUI, you will go to prison for at least 24 hours. 

For example, former baseball player Mark Grace was just recently arrested for a DUI. 

Diamondbacks television announcer Mark Grace was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence on Memorial Day.

The Scottsdale police report says Grace, 46, was stopped by an officer shortly after 1 a.m. on May 30 after he made a wide right turn from 71st Place onto Shea Boulevard and was weaving within his lane.

If the city of Scottsdale convicts Mr. Grace of a DUI, that means despite Mr. Grace's fame, clean driving record, and publicity, he will do at least 24 hours in custody.  And 24 hours means exactly that: 24 hours.  If you have served 23 hours before release, that would not qualify as time served 24 hours because it was not a full 24 hours.  Defendants who are convicted of a misdemeanor DUI usually serve the sentence in Tent City; but some other locations include Glendale city jail for Glendale DUI defendants, Scottsdale city jail for all Maricopa County DUI defendants, and Tempe City jail for Tempe DUI defendants.   Phoenix DUI defendants serve their jail time at Tent City. 

Why the Hague Tribunal and Mladic Arrest Make War More Likely

Posted by Vladimir Gagic on June 13, 2011

Ratko Mladic is at the Hague War Crimes Tribunal.  Some people seem to think that is very good news.  I am not one of those people.  As low as my opinion is of the domestic American criminal justice system- the same one with the highest incarceration rate in the world- I have an even lower opinion of the Hague Tribunal.  

For one thing, it seems rather clear that the motivation behind the Hague Tribunal is political.  How else would one explain the fact the refusal to investigate possible NATO war crimes during NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia with the trite argument it had no jurisdiction because Yugoslavia was not a member of the UN at the time? And political motivation behind war crimes tribunals is nothing new.  It seems Gen. MacArthur used the Tokyo Tribunal to scapegoat Tojo and thus exonerate the very guilty Emperor Hirohito because the US needed a strong, stable Japan in the struggle against the USSR.  

That unfortunate trend of using claims of justice for political purposes continues. For one thing, the United States, which is the organizing force behind the Hague Tribunal, fixates on legalistic, technical defenses when it or its allies are the alleged culprit, but when an adversary is the putative culprit, international justice takes a broad approach and tends to blend means with ends.  

By way of specifics, when the Bosnian Serb army was fighting the Bosnian government, the fact that Bosnian Serb forces were accused of war crimes made, in the eyes of the Clinton Administration, the entire Bosnian Serb war effort illegal.  That is, the ends not only did not justify the means, but the means delegitimized the end entirely, which was the war against the Bosnian government. There was a blurring between how the Bosnian Serb Army was fighting the war and whether they had the right to fight it all. That, as far as I know, has never happened before and it is the very definition of politicizing justice.   The political end is indistinguishable from the military means. 

Contrast that with the Iraq war in which the way the United States fought that war- a stated effort to limit civilian casualties- justified not only the resulting death of civilians, which was possibly in the hundreds of thousands, but also justified the end itself: the war. In other words, the means justified the ends. From what I heard from American and English politicians who supported the Iraq war, the fact the United States and UK were fighting under well defined rules of conduct seemed to justify the war itself.  That, as far as I know, has never happened before either. 

These points are not trivial.  The stated purpose of the Hague Tribunal is to break the cycle of violence by applying individual guilt to the proven guilty, and just as importantly, exonerate the innocent.  Instead, when the Tribunal, and international justice in general, works is a calculating manner, it becomes a aggravating force, not a civilizing one.  And thus, future wars and violence are more probable, not less so. 

For anyone interested in a different view point of the Yugolsav wars, different from typical corporate media, I suggest the book Unholy Terror: Bosnia, Al-Qa'ida, and the Rise of Global Jihad (Zenith Press, 2007) by US Naval War College Professor John Schindler, and the news watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has quite a bit of good material here.  

One of the saddest points of the Mladic case and ICTY is that the presiding judge of the tribunal who appointed Mr. Mladic his attorney is from Turkey.  Even Turkey has killed tens of thousands of Kurdish civilians without repercussion and still has not acknowledged the Armenian genocide, it is an entitled member in good standing with the ICTY.  Go figure. 

University of Arizona History Professor David N. Gibbs has a book "First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia", and an interview here. 

Finally, Susan Woodward wrote the seminal book "Balkan Tragedy", which makes the signficant point the Yugoslavia disaster was in part the result of a Great Game, not between England and Russia over India, but between the United States and Germany over the future of the Balkans. 

Schapiro Group Sex Trafficking Study is Junk Science?

Posted by Vladimir Gagic on June 05, 2011

Regardless of which side one may belong to on the political spectrum, conservative, liberal, socialist, or moderate, every politician can agree on certain points.  The nation should be secure from foreign threats, the economy should grow, and sex trafficking is evil.  Certainly, I would hope no serious politician would disagree with any of those points.  But like any other political issue, once you have defined the problem, there could be debate about how serious the problem actually is. 

When it comes to sex trafficking, that is a problem that comes up in underdeveloped nations like in South Eastern Europe and Africa, right? Wrong, according to the Schapiro Group and Deborah Richardson, the chief program officer of the Women's Funding Network.

"An independent tracking study released today by the Women's Funding Network shows that over the past six months, the number of underage girls trafficked online has risen exponentially in three diverse states," Richardson claimed. "Michigan: a 39.2 percent increase; New York: a 20.7 percent increase; and Minnesota: a staggering 64.7 percent increase.

That story made a lot of news across the nation.  Of course, one could see why when the obvious implication of the study is that the number of underage prostitutes, and the business of underage prostitution is expanding exponentially.   This major study comes on the heels of the recent craigslist debacle in which attorneys general from across the United States forced the online classified site to remove its infamous sex ads.

But there could be serious methodological problems with the Schapiro study; that is, there is very good reason to think that is not good science, but even worse, junk science.  Bad science is science flawed because of poor methodology.  Junk science is that, but with a political motive behind the flaws.  It could also be neither bad science or junk science, just not science at all.  In other words, the reputed flaws of the study might not based on a particular bias, but just on the fact science cannot extend readily to sociological issue. That is what critics like Nassim Taleb refer to scientism, or comically, as "physics envy".   For more details on the Schapiro study and its flaws, see this article in the Phoenix New Times from writer Nick Pinto. 

The fact there is every reason to think sociology and science do not readily mix is even more reason why I hope Arizona state courts soon adopt the Daubert standard for scientific evidence, particularly in sex crimes prosecutions. 

 

Dr. Lewis Underwood Arrested for 11 Counts of Sexual Exploitation of a Minor

Posted by Vladimir Gagic on June 02, 2011

It is very disturbing when we hear in the news that the police have charged someone with child molestation or possession of child pornography.  It is even worse when it is a person in position of authority like a priest, police officer, or possibly worst of all, a doctor.    According to the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, however, that is exactly what happened in Anthem. 

An Anthem doctor faces additional counts of sexual exploitation of a minor after being arrested six months ago.  Dr. Lewis Underwood, a naturalistic doctor, was taken into custody in December by Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office deputies on child molestation charges and has been behind bars since then.

According to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, "MCSO Sex Crimes Unit discovered more than 88,000 photographs and 1,500 videos depicting child pornography", and he is now facing 11 charges of Sexual Exploitation of a Minor (Arizona Revised Statute 13-3553).   For more details on this story, see Alicia E. Barrón's story on AZFamily. 

Certainly, these allegations are serious and deserve attention from law enforcement, particularly if the images are more than mere pornography and are evidence of illegal activity.   Having said that though, it is surprising that the Maricopa County Sheriff's would devote these immense resources to what is now mere possession of child pornography, while at the same time there were plenty of actual violent and sexual crimes occurring in West Phoenix devoid of any attention from the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.  

I can't help but wonder if Sheriff Joe Arpaio would rather devote resources to a case surely to generate publicity- catching a doctor with child pornography- rather than the old-fashioned, not so glamorous police investigation of serious allegations in El Mirage.   My point is not that Dr. Lewis Underwood did not deserve investigation, only that other older cases in El Mirage maybe should have come first.