Gangsters in Blue

• Chicago judge rules the Illinois eavesdropping law unconstitutional.
• Lede of the day.
• Ta-Nehisi Coates on the death of Andrew Breitbart.
• Supreme Court will decide whether to take case to determine if states can force home health care workers to pay union dues.
• Florida deputy poses as power worker to search homes without a warrant.
• There’s distracted driving, and then there’s distracted driving.
• Headline of the day.

• Three very good posts from Jacob Sullum illustrating the absurdity of hate crimes laws: one, two, and three.
• Coming to California: A new law inspired by a dead person.
• The U.S. Secretary of Transportation enjoys driving around to find drivers talking on their cell phones, then honking his horn at them.
• Federal court bars Mississippi from putting children in solitary confinement.
• U.K. police raid the wrong house after stolen iPhone pings to the wrong address: “Nottingham Police refused to reimburse Kerr for the repairs to his door — because officers ‘reasonably believed’ an offender was in the house.”
• The state of Utah has stopped the family of Matthew Stewart from raising funds for his defense. They say the family must first get a permit.
• Two years after he was stopped and illegally searched, Raleigh man just wants an apology. He hasn’t received one.

• How to make hard-to-obtain Sudafed from readily available street meth. (PDF)
• L.A. may stop criminalizing tardiness. That seems like a good thing.
• Attempted puppycide.
• The drones are coming.
• Horrible prosecutorial overreach of the week.
• Teller (of Penn & Teller) reveals his secrets.
• “Two cops, an ax, and many questions.”
•  Here’s a nice story for you.

• Man handcuffed to a bench, pepper sprayed, severely beaten in Tioga County, New York jail. No criminal charges.
• How Target knows your kid is pregnant.
• Good liberals should send their kids to a crappy public school to show their support for crappy public schools. Or something.
• Not sure what to make of this one. Except that if the roles were reversed, it seems unlikely that he’d be facing charges.
• An interactive map showing where the Simpson family has traveled.
• Headline of the day.
•  “I said, ‘F—- you, you son of a bitch, now it’s my turn.’”

• Betsy Philips of the Nashville Scene has a couple kind write-ups of my talk last night at Vanderbilt.
• Police dog bites jogger. Outcome considerably different than if the headline had been “Dog Bites Police Jogger.”
• A Day for Loving.
• Osabam bin Laden loved Whitney Houston.
• Bon Iver and Bonny Bear.
• Stranger breaks into home, folds the laundry, sweeps the floor, cooks some chicken and onions.
• Here’s a good piece on eyewitness identification. In the lead anecdote, the eyewitness points to a juror as the murderer. They convict the guy, anyway.
• As the federal government scolds you for eating snack food . . . it is also subsidizing potato chip companies.
• Interesting take on the crime rate — it could be significantly higher if there were more of an effort to document crimes committed in prisons.
• Cop caught on tape telling a suspect he can “make up” evidence to frame him for a robbery.

• The police union defending deputy in a shooting was able to shield him from questioning for nearly two weeks.
• Space Nazis.
• Judge allows prosecutors to seize a defense attorney’s phone. The affidavit to get the warrant for the seizure was sealed, and the investigation is secret.
• The Frank Lloyd Wright doghouse.
• “False Fears About a Nuclear Iran”
• Via the comments, This American Life looks at those drug stings in which attractive young cops pose as high school students, flirty with teen boys, then talk them into buying pot.
• Weird Internet thing.
• Baltimore PD has told its police officers that they can no longer arrest citizens for recording them while on the job. So instead, it looks like they’re threatening to arrest camera-wielding citizens for “loitering.”

Illinois moved once step closer to making it legal to record police officers in public. But not before some absurd protestations from law enforcement organizations.

From the Chicago Tribune:

The Illinois Fraternal Order of Police warned the bill could scare witnesses who fear their conversations at a crime scene would be monitored by organized crime.

From Gatehouse news service:

“Because of the Illinois eavesdropping statute, officers cannot record that conversation without a court order. This is not leveling the playing field,” Coughlin said. “This is giving more rights to private citizens to collect evidence of a crime than officers have.”

One concern of law enforcement groups is that the legislation would allow criminals and gang members to record the police’s interactions with potential witnesses and informants.

“It may have a chilling effect on victims coming forward if they know that a person that’s not a member to that conversation can come up and record whatever they say to the police,” Coughlin said.

The Illinois law already provides an exception for police to record conversations in public, which is why some police departments in the state can require officers to wear microphones on their uniforms.

As for the mob or gang members or al-Qaeda recording witness conversations with cops, police already have the authority to secure a crime scene. And if you’re talking to a potential witness against the mafia, I’m not sure why you’d be doing it in an open, public space, anyway. It isn’t as if this new law gives anyone permission to put bugs in squad cars or police stations.

In the past, prosecutors and the police unions have claimed allowing the recording of cops could pose a threat to homeland security, and may make cops hesitant about shooting people.

To his credit, Chicago police superintendent Gary McCarthy supports the new law.

• Photography Is Not a Crime blogger Carlos Miller was recently arrested at an Occupy Miami rally. The police deleted the videos on his camera. He has since recovered them. So who at the police department will now be charged with a crime for attempting to destroy Miller’s videos?
• NYPD’s shooting of Ramarley Graham is looking more and more like a murder.
• Headline of the day.
• Arizona. Just. Arizona.
• That “Detroit Comeback” commercial from the Super Bowl wasn’t actually filmed in Detroit.
• Anonymous Obama administration official suggests the journalist who broke the “double tap” drone story probably supports al-Qaeda.
• Former prosecutor, frequent fabricator, and serial slanderer Wendy Murphy, best known for going on cable news and making shit up . . . apparently teaches journalism seminars at Poynter.
• Congressman duped by The Onion.
• Woman stopped, searched, arrested, convicted, and now faces a year in jail after driving from Mississippi to Alabama to buy cold medicine.

• Iran is planning to execute a Canadian-born software developer because his product was used by a pornographic website. (NOTE: Per the comments, the Guardian article linked in the Reason post actually say the Iranian high court quashed the death sentence. But it has since been reinstated.)
• More on how Stephen Colbert’s Super PAC isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. 
• Judge allows Houston residents to become party to lawsuit between the city and a red light camera contractor.
• Feds end criminal investigation of Lance Armstrong, but “sources close to the investigation” continue to smear him in the press, anyway. Don’t hold your breath waiting for a criminal investigation into who is leaking grand jury testimony.
• Houston TV station bites on the vodka-soaked tampon story. Favorite quote from alleged expert on teen drinking habits: “More often than not, it’s happening in a lot of the Houston area.” More often than not? What could that possibly mean?
• Attempted puppycide.
• French court fines Google for providing a free map service, which is apparently an anti-competitive act of aggression against French companies that charge money to use their maps.

• Maiz Szalavitz takes questions from Reddit about “tough love” anti-drug boot camps for teens.
• Seems like this would be the ideal situation for the Taser. Instead, the dog-walking guy gets the Taser, and this kid gets a bullet.
• San Francisco man who was wrongly convicted and spent 18 years in prison sues over the use of perjured testimony in his case.
• Another TSA agent arrested for stealing from passengers.
• Facebook is the new heroin.
• The fruit fly chuckles at your inadequacy.
• Surveillance drone industry wants to “paint a more positive picture” of government spying on its citizens.
• Guy loses a bunch of weight, no longer diabetic. Starts a website to help others do the same. He’s now under criminal investigation for providing nutritional advice without a license. This is in North Carolina, the same state that went after a guy last year for practicing engineering without a license when he did some math for a citizens’ reports requesting a couple traffic lights.