When the newspaper gets it wrong

The story's title in Friday's Star Tribune reads:

"Suspect is mistakenly released before burglary charges filed"

Mistake?

The last paragraph of the story says, "She was arrested Tuesday and booked into the Hennepin County Jail to await charges on three burglaries. But because of a clerical error, she was released Thursday 12 minutes before a judge signed and filed the documents charging her with the crimes."

Clerical error?

Let me educate Tim Harlow, the reporter, how this works. A person is arrested by the police on "probable cause," in this case burglary. The time someone can be held on probable cause is 36 hours, starting at midnight the night of the arrest or 48 hours from the time of arrest if a judge has not reviewed the case. The purpose of this probable cause hold is to give the police time to investigate the case and present the case to the city or county attorney for them to charge out the case. If the city or county attorney doesn't believe there is a case the suspect gets released. The longest a person can be held without a formal charge is the 36 or 48 hour probable cause time. This is a protection for citizens to protect them from indefinite confinement without being charged.

When the police arrest someone on probable cause they are given a copy of the PC (probable cause) form with the time on the form that the PC time is up. Usually the jail gives a courtesy call to the arresting agency the day before letting them know that a detainee's PC time is coming up the following day. Finally when the PC time is up the jail calls the county and city attorneys offices to see if charges are pending. If they are the person remains in custody, if not they get released 36 or 48 hours expired. Thousands of people arrested on a probable cause hold get released 36 or 48 hours expired every year. This is a common place event.

The burglar released in Tim Harlow's story's 48 hours expired at 10:15 A.M., she was released at 11:43 A.M., ample time to have her charged.The time we could legally detain the inmate without charges was up, and the Minneapolis Police FAILED to present the case to the county attorney in time.

So if there was a "clerical error" it was on the side of the MPD, not the jail as it would appear to the average reader. We simply followed all of the rules in place to give the police time to get the case charged and the ones to protect citizens from wrongful detention. This was no "mistake," this was the only legal option the jail had in a lawful society. A society that doesn't allow a citizen to be held indefinately without a charge, there are time limits and those limits were up.

Annual Stewards Training

October 25th was another excellent stewards training put on by Teamsters Local 320 and the IBT.

Topics included a talk on Contract Costing by Jim Kimball, IBT Director, Economics and Contracts. He included an excellent presentation on how we got into the "bailout" mess this country and the global economy is in.

The Roles and Responsibilities of a Steward by Shawn Ellis, IBT Central Region Training Coordinator

D.R.I.V.E. presentation

Grievance Determination

Law Enforcement Issues

Overview of Public Employee Law (PELRA)

As always this was very informational and useful training and it's always great to meet with some of the other stewards of our 11,500 member local.

Former Chicago cop arrested for torturing inmates in custody

Ex-Chicago cop arrested in ’90s torture scandal

AP-CHICAGO - A former high-ranking Chicago police official was arrested Tuesday on charges he lied when he denied that he and detectives under his command tortured murder suspects.
A federal indictment unsealed Tuesday accuses former police Lt. Jon Burge of perjury and obstruction of justice for statements he made in 2003 when answering questions related to a civil-rights lawsuit.

The arrest capped a long-running controversy over allegations that beatings, electric shocks and death threats were used against suspects at Burge's Area 2 violent crimes headquarters.

Full Story

If ever there was an argument for corrections officers running jails rather then cops with a vested interest in an investigation this is it!

Just emailed in!

Chicago Sheriff (Cook Co) stops performing forclosure evictions!

Cook County Sheriff's Press Release

Wednesday, October 08, 2008 — With Cook County on pace to conduct a record number of evictions this year – and an unprecedented number of evictions due to mortgage foreclosures – Cook County Sheriff Thomas J. Dart announced Wednesday he is suspending all foreclosure evictions.

The move comes as a result of the growing number of evictions that involve renters – most of whom are dutifully paying their rent every month, only to later learn their landlord has fallen behind on mortgage payments and the building has gone into foreclosure. While mortgage companies are supposed to conduct a basic due diligence investigation before requesting an eviction – identifying all occupants – sheriff’s deputies are regularly finding no work done by the mortgage company in advance, leaving the identifying work to deputies working at taxpayer expense.

“These mortgage companies only see pieces of paper, not people, and don’t care who’s in the building,” Dart said. “They simply want their money and don’t care who gets hurt along the way. On top of it all, they want taxpayers to fund their investigative work for them. We’re not going to do their jobs for them anymore. We’re just not going to evict innocent tenants. It stops today.”


Dart - believed to be the first sheriff of a major metropolitan area to take such a step - said he wants a safety net to be established either by the judiciary or state Legislature, to protect those most harmed by the mortgage crisis.

Specifically, he wants mortgage companies to be forced to provide sufficient information to the Sheriff’s Office in order to conduct an eviction. That will provide greater notification to tenants that their building is in foreclosure and will require mortgage companies and their attorneys to do more leg work in advance of an eviction.

Because the banks aren’t doing that now, more than 1/3 of all trips by sheriff’s eviction teams results in finding nobody home to verify who lives there or finding someone other than the mortgage-holder.

Last year, Dart pushed a bill before the Legislature that would have required mortgage companies to identify any children or senior citizens living in a unit before requesting an eviction. Dart hoped to link those vulnerable residents with social service agencies, but banking and real estate industry lobbyists killed the bill.

Foreclosure filings have steadily climbed in Cook County since 1999 and the number of foreclosure evictions has almost tripled in just two years.

In 1999, there were 12,935 mortgage foreclosure cases filed in Cook County. Noticeable increases came in 2006, when 18,916 were filed and last year, when 32,269 were filed. This year, Dart projects more than 43,000 to be filed.

Dart said his office is on pace to conduct evictions stemming from mortgage foreclosures at 4,500 properties this year. That compares to just 1,771 in 2006.

“The people we’re interacting with are, many times, oblivious to the financial straits their landlord might be in,” Dart said. “They are the innocent victims here and they are the ones all of us must step up and find some way to protect.”

U.S. citizens betrayed, U.S. becomes socialist nation

President Bush, the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives voted today to become a socialist nation and no longer follow free market capitalism by voting to bailout Wall Street using $700 billion tax payer/citizen dollars. These same criminals in recent years have made it harder for U.S. citizens to declare bankruptcy and free themselves from personal debt, but felt no shame in taking the same citizens dollars to bail out Wall Street which has now gone from a free market to a government owned and controlled market.

An interesting aside, when the House originally voted down the bailout oil fell below $100 a barrel. I predict that with the losses of these greedy bastards being paid by stealing from the citizens they'll reward us by running up the price of oil again, while all of the asshole politicians will spend the next month before the election promising to bring them down.

These are the few friends of the people who voted according to their constituents overwhelming letters, emails and phone calls not to support Bush's criminal bailout of Wall Street:

Minnesota's Friends who voted against the bailout:

Representative Michelle Bachmann
Representative Tim Walz
Representative Collin Peterson

Minnesota's traitors to the people and free market capitalism (voting for the bailout) :

Senator Amy Klobuchar
Senator Norm Coleman
Representative John Kline
Representative Jim Ramstad
Representative Betty Mccollum
Representative Keith Ellison
Representative James Oberstar

Non -Minnesota readers of this blog can click here to see how their Representatives voted.

National Traitors:

President Bush
Senator John McCain
Senator Barack Obama

TRAITORS, WE WILL REMEMBER YOU IN NOVEMBER!

Economic Reality

-The job market began to deteriorate even before the financial crisis reached a more serious stage two weeks ago.

-Over the past year, the average weekly pay of rank-and-file workers — roughly 80 percent of the work force — has risen only 2.8 percent, according to the new numbers. Inflation has been running at about 5 percent a year, which means that the most workers have taken an effective pay cut over the past year. (New York Times)

-For most working families, the economy has been in a meltdown for quite some time: they have seen their jobs outsourced, their wages decline, their benefits disappear, their homes foreclosed and the American Dream becoming more remote. (Change to Win)

And millionaires want the workers of America to bail them out? These are the same people that are actively working against labor!