Dallas PD Hid Massive Data Deletion For Months From City Officials, District Attorney's Office

from the how-many-terabytes-can-be-swept-under-a-rug? dept

No one does a coverup like a cop shop. When a bunch of data -- including criminal evidence -- was deleted, the Dallas, Texas city council was pretty much the last to know about it.

On March 31, a city IT employee accidentally deleted troves of police data while transferring it to a new server. The deletion could potentially impact prosecutors’ ability to try the corresponding criminal cases. Top city officials including Broadnax and Police Chief Eddie Garcia became aware of the deletion, if not its scale, in April. It’s only in the last two weeks that the City Council and Dallas County District Attorney’s office learned about it.

That update was published by Dallas Magazine on August 19. That means those who did know didn't tell their oversight for nearly four months. Some of this delay is almost explicable. Almost.

The Dallas PD originally thought it could recover the data, so the unexpected data deletion originally didn't seem like a big deal. All the same, it would have made sense to inform the PD's city oversight of the issue, just in case it turned out the data was lost for good.

This lack of communication -- one that also kept the District Attorney's office out of the loop -- led to a city council meeting where the phrases "in hindsight" and "in retrospect" were thrown around by police officials. Hindsight and retrospect are pretty much useless in situations like these. It only prevents them from offering the same excuses the next time it happens. And let's hope it doesn't, because "troves of police data" is an understatement.

City officials discovered an additional 15 terabytes of Dallas police evidence and files from the city secretary’s office were missing during its ongoing audit of a massive erroneous data deletion, according to emails obtained Monday by The Dallas Morning News.

The city also fired an information technology employee Friday in connection with the lost evidence, according to the emails.

The discovery brings the total loss of files, as of Monday, to about 22.5 terabytes. The audit was initiated this month after Dallas County prosecutors learned an information technology employee improperly moved police evidence from a storage cloud to a local server resulting in the permanent loss of about 7.5 terabytes of information in April.

About 14 terabytes have been recovered from the botched data migration. And some of the files lost during the move from cloud storage to physical storage belonged to the city secretary's office, which means this total includes files that didn't come from the Dallas PD.

Despite not knowing the extent of everything lost until just recently, the Dallas Police Chief felt confident enough to claim the lost data did not include evidence about crimes against people. But the Dallas DA -- rightfully -- isn't taking this statement at face value, considering the DA's office was one of the last parties informed about the data loss. Multiple cases are now under review to determine whether they're affected by the terabytes of data that are, so far, unrecoverable.

And that review process means the people tasked with taking criminals off the street are, for the time being, putting accused criminals back on the street.

A murder suspect was released from the Dallas County jail earlier this month because prosecutors said on the day of his trial that they needed more time to make sure his case wasn’t among those impacted. Last week, the Dallas County Public Defender’s Office called for independent audits for 18 murder cases.

While the eye-grabbing part of this story is the botched migration that resulted in the deletion of 23 terabytes, the more concerning aspect is the part that involves the shielding of a data catastrophe until it was impossible to keep it hidden any longer. Mistakes happen, but the decision to exclude the city council and, more disappointingly, the prosecutor's office was deliberate. That shouldn't be excused even if PD officials firmly believed the data deletion was reversible. There was always the chance that it wasn't. People's lives and freedoms are on the line and the DA's office was kept out of the loop. This indicates the Dallas PD felt it was better to bury its 23-terabyte problem, rather than allow people affected by the sudden disappearance of evidence to find out about it.

Filed Under: dallas, dallas pd, data, deleting evidence, evidence

Forfeiture Case Shows Cops Don't Even Need Drug Dogs To Alert To Engage In A Warrantless Search

from the EXTREME-SNIFFING-ACTION! dept

Another magical drug dog case has surfaced, showing yet again why cops like having "probable cause on four legs" on hand to turn stops into searches and searches into seizures. This forfeiture motion [PDF] -- highlighted by Brad Heath -- starts with a stop and quickly devolves into ridiculousness.

A drug investigation involving investigators working with ONSET (Ohio Northeast Smuggling Enforcement Team) culminated in the traffic stop of one of the targets, Emmanuel Trujillo Trujillo. Already suspected of drug trafficking, the stop got a whole lot more interesting for officers once some loose cash was spotted.

Deputy Spires approached the pick-up truck and made contact with the driver, Trujillo Trujillo. While speaking with Trujillo Trujillo, Deputy Spires learned that he did not possess a valid driver’s license.

Deputy Spires observed a large amount of United States currency below Trujillo Trujillo’s feet on the floorboard of the pick-up truck and requested assistance from Franklin County, Ohio Sheriff’s Office Canine Unit Deputy Zach Cooper (“Deputy Cooper”) and his canine partner “Indy” to conduct an open-air sniff of the pick-up truck.

Roughly twenty minutes later, the drug dog arrived. And failed to do what the deputies wanted it to do.

Deputy Cooper arrived at the traffic stop at approximately 6:22 p.m. and approached the pick-up truck with canine Indy. Deputy Cooper noticed that Indy showed an extreme change in behavior when sniffing around the passenger side door and its open window. Indy’s sniffing increased as he stayed and intently sniffed the passenger side door area. As the team moved on, Deputy Cooper noted similar behavior from Indy when he approached the tailgate area of the pick-up truck.

There was no alert from Indy. Just a lot of sniffing. But even the lack of an alert wasn't going to keep these officers from searching Trujillo's vehicle. Since the four-legged cop wouldn't give them permission for a search, the deputies decided to give that permission to each other, with Indy's apparently implicit consent.

Deputy Cooper advised Deputy Spires that Indy did not indicate on a pure odor source, but he believed that Indy’s extreme sniffing behavior indicated that a narcotic odor was present within the pick-up truck.

And with that the search was on. The deputies discovered more cash, receipts for cash transfers, some paperwork from a Chase Manhattan account, and a non-contractor 1099 miscellaneous income form showing $27,815 in compensation to Trujillo. The search did not, however, turn up any drugs, despite the extreme sniffing allegedly demonstrated by the drug dog.

The deputies took $19,104 from Trujillo at this stop. From there, they went to Trujillo's storage unit and took another $32,050. Finally, law enforcement -- using information gleaned from this extreme sniffing -- searched Trujillo's house, where officers found even more cash as well as the drugs the deputies assumed they would find during their initial search of the truck.

And, as if to prove the deputies were right to assume the drug dog had meant to give them explicit permission to search the truck for drugs, there's this additional information in the forfeiture motion.

TFO Taylor changed gloves, obtained the bag containing the United States currency seized from the pick-up truck, and opened it. TFO Taylor took a MX908 test strip and wiped it on the rubber bands holding the currency together. TFO Taylor placed this test strip into the MX908 and received a positive result for the trace presence of cocaine.

So what? I'll bet if TFO Taylor borrowed some cash from someone in the HSI (Homeland Security Investigations) office and tested it, he would very likely have rung up another positive result for the trace presence of cocaine. This is an unlisted "feature" of most US currency. A positive test means nothing more than the bill tested has been in circulation.

This is a stop worth challenging. The deputies admitted they did not see an alert from the drug dog before engaging in a search. That means it's also a seizure worth seizing. And it's yet another data point showing cops love drug dogs because their mere presence at a stop can be converted into probable cause. Even better, these "partners" can't offer up testimony that might undercut assertions made by their handlers. Win-win. Apparently, the drug war needs all the wins it can get, even if certain combatants have to obtain them dishonestly.

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, civil asset forfeiture, drug dogs, emmanuel trujillo trujillo, evidence, legalized theft, ohio, onset

Appeals Court Says Police Ballistics Expert Can Be Sued Helping Wrongfully Imprison Two Men For More Than 17 Years

from the New-Haven-PD-just-as-fucking-culpable-for-this-atrocity dept

Judge Alex Kozinski noted back in 2015 there was an "epidemic of Brady violations" occurring during prosecutions in this country. "Brady" refers to the Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland -- one that established the right for defendants to have access to exculpatory evidence, creating an obligation for prosecutors and law enforcement to produce this evidence during trials.

Obviously, this hasn't been an absolute since this ruling. Prosecutors aren't interested in handing over evidence that undermines their cases. And cops are equally unwilling to produce evidence that undercuts their arrests, narratives, and coerced confessions.

Here's how it works out for defendants, according to Judge Kozinski, while excoriating an appeals court decision that basically blessed Brady violations as long as the government still presented some inculpatory evidence.

It effectively announces that the prosecution need not produce exculpatory or impeaching evidence so long as it’s possible the defendant would’ve been convicted anyway. This will send a clear signal to prosecutors that, when a case is close, it’s best to hide evidence helpful to the defense, as there will be a fair chance reviewing courts will look the other way, as happened here.

Grim stuff. But it's the way the government continues to play the game. That's highlighted in this recent decision [PDF] by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Fortunately, the court sides with the two men wrongly convicted of a robbery and murder. Unfortunately, that decision more than 17 years after the fact.

Here are the allegations:

After each serving more than 17 years in prison for a robbery and murder they did not commit, plaintiffs Vernon Horn and Marquis Jackson brought civil rights actions against the City of New Haven and law enforcement officials under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. As relevant here, plaintiffs alleged that police forensic examiner James Stephenson violated their due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment by withholding exculpatory ballistics reports in contravention of Brady v. Maryland.

And here's how police investigators developed their case against these two (at the time) teens, based on intuition not too far removed from the Sunday night quarterbacking of "Law & Order" viewers.

On January 23, 1999, Vernon Horn and Marquis Jackson went out on a Saturday night in downtown New Haven. The two teenagers met up with friends at the Alley Cat nightclub and then stopped by Dixwell Deli (the Deli), a 24-hour convenience store, at around 2:45 a.m. After purchasing a few items, they drove back to Jackson’s apartment several blocks away.

Around 3:30 a.m., three masked robbers burst into the Deli and opened fire. The shots hit an employee and a customer, Caprice Hardy, who died shortly thereafter. After stealing a cellphone from a store clerk and trying unsuccessfully to raid the cash register, the robbers fled the scene.

A few minutes after the robbery, Horn walked back to the Deli. This raised the suspicions of the lead detective on the investigation, who believed that perpetrators of homicides tended to return to crime scenes.

The police decided these two were the best fit for the robbery and murder charges. Nothing would dissuade investigators from this predisposition -- not even contradictory evidence. To ensure their preferred theory succeeded in court, the PD almost literally buried all evidence to the contrary.

Numerous pieces of evidence, however, suggested that a group of drug dealers in Bridgeport, Connecticut, not Horn or Jackson, was responsible for the murder-robbery. Call records for the stolen cellphone showed that four out of five calls made after the incident were to the Bridgeport drug dealers or their associates. Because the records did not support the case against Horn and Jackson, NHPD officers suppressed the records for nearly 20 years, hiding them in the basement of a detective’s house.

This is not even the issue being examined here, but let's read that last sentence again.

Because the records did not support the case against Horn and Jackson, NHPD officers suppressed the records for nearly 20 years, hiding them in the basement of a detective’s house.

What even the fuck, he asked professionally. HOLY SHIT.

But that's not even this issue here. The issue here is the supposed "ballistics expert," who also decided to not only bury exculpatory evidence, but whip up new "evidence" that supported the coerced confession the cops had obtained.

Here's how we get to this case. A police investigator with a theory unsupported by evidence sent casings to a forensic expert in hopes of obtaining a report indicating the bullets came from a Beretta linked to the nominal suspects. Unfortunately for him, the ballistics report disproved that speculative theory.

On February 3, 1999, defendant James Stephenson, the assigned firearms examiner, generated a General Rifling Characteristics Report (the 1999 GRC Report) that listed all firearm models that potentially matched the ballistics evidence, using a margin of error of +/- 2 thousandths of an inch. A Beretta handgun was not among the possible matches.

The first report handed to investigators and the prosecution noted the mismatch. This was noticed by the prosecutor preparing for the trial, who saw that the ballistics report didn't match up with assumptions made by police investigators. Rather than entertain the possibility it was the cops who were wrong, the prosecutor assumed it was the ballistics tech who had screwed up.

And, rather than stand by his original findings, the tech reran the test with a higher margin of error to ensure the Beretta cops and prosecutors wanted the murder weapon to be was included as a possible match.

On February 15, 2000, Stephenson generated a second GRC Report (the 2000 GRC Report). This time, using a larger margin of error of +/- 4 thousandths of an inch, the report listed multiple Beretta models as potential matches.

And he might have gotten away with it. But he failed to pass on these reports to the defendant -- not the one that said it wasn't a Beretta, nor the second pass which suddenly said it was a Beretta.

It took nearly twenty years to expose the ballistics examiner's malfeasance:

In 2018, as part of a re-examination of the case by the Connecticut Federal Public Defender’s Office, the NHPD produced the stolen cell phone’s call records and both the 1999 GRC Report and the 2000 GRC Report. After reviewing the belatedly disclosed evidence, the State’s Attorney’s Office successfully moved to vacate the judgments of conviction for both men. In or around April 2018, after serving 17 and 19 years in prison, respectively, Horn and Jackson were released.

These men lost a combined 36 years of their lives. The forensics examiner hasn't lost anything… yet. And yet, he insists he should be allowed to walk away from this lawsuit.

On appeal, Stephenson argues that: (1) he is entitled to qualified immunity because it was not clearly established by 1999 that “firearms examiners” had an obligation under Brady to turn over exculpatory evidence to the prosecutor; and (2) he is entitled to absolute immunity with respect to the 2000 GRC Report because he prepared it at the prosecutor’s direction.

Nope, says the court.

We disagree.

It was clearly established -- for at least seven years at that point -- that a police employee has similar obligations under Brady.

We disagree and conclude that a police forensic examiner, whether an analyst or technician fulfilling any of the roles associated with forensic analysis, in 1999 reasonably would have understood that he or she was required to turn over exculpatory information to the prosecutor.

As the analyst's own testimony pointed out, forensic techs are almost always former cops, at least in New Haven, Connecticut. And if police officers are subject to Brady obligations, it makes no sense to exclude former police officers who still work for the police department.

And there's no absolute immunity for the analyst either. He attempted to argue that the prosecutor's call with questions about the possibility of the murder weapon being a Beretta prompted his subsequent report. But he was never asked to perform another analysis or generate another report. He was only asked a question about the certainty of his conclusions. This means Stephenson can't hide behind the immunity afforded to prosecutors. And that means he will have to continue to defend himself and, hopefully, be held responsible for his role in stealing a combined 36 years of life from two teens.

Filed Under: 2nd circuit, ballistics, brady violations, evidence, marquis jackson, police, vernon horn, wrongful conviction

Lessons Learned From Creating Good Faith Debate In A Sea Of Garbage Disinformation

from the it's-possible dept

A few weeks ago, Elizabeth Dwoskin, Will Oremus and Gerrit De Vynck from the Washington Post published one of the most fascinating -- and in some ways, most important -- discussions of social media and dealing with "disinformation" that I've seen in a while. It touches on two things I've written about recently -- how the way we talk about disinformation is not helpful and the difficulty in determining how to deal with bad faith actors.

The WaPo article talks about a group on Facebook -- set up by concerned mothers -- that focuses on having thoughtful debate about vaccines -- an area that is fraught with misinformation, disinformation, utter nonsense, and propaganda. But where there may be legitimate causes for debate and concern. But the problem is that the space is so flooded with nonsense that it feels like any attempt to discuss stuff seriously quickly slides into the nonsense zone and everyone backs into their usual corners. But what this article notes is that it is possible to have a good faith debate on such topics, even with people who believe strongly in debunked nonsense. The real trick? Having strict rules and following them:

“The most important rule was ‘civility,’ ” Bilowitz said. “There are some groups online where people just yell at each other. We wanted to just be able to talk to one another without it getting that way.”

Vaccine Talk now has nearly 70,000 members, each of whom must gain administrators’ approval to join and commit to a code of conduct. Strict rules prohibit users from misrepresenting themselves, offering medical advice and harassing or bullying people. Another key rule: Be ready to provide citations within 24 hours for any claim you make. Twenty-five moderators and administrators in six countries monitor the posts, and those who flout the rules are kicked out.

So, there is heavy moderation going on in the group, but they're not just banning people who spout nonsense. They ask that they cite the evidence for such nonsense, and those who don't live up to the rules face consequences. It's not surprising that bad faith actors have trouble following the rules:

“Usually, the hardcore anti-vaxxers cannot follow the rules,” Bilowitz said. “They are usually spamming people with their commentary. I think it’s hard for them: They are basically coming out of an echo chamber.”

And the interesting bit is that this community seems to be working in actually convincing some skeptics:

Monica Buescher, a 32-year-old teacher in Vacaville, Calif., said she went “deep down the rabbit hole” of anti-vaccine misinformation when she had her second child in 2019. Convinced that shots were dangerous, she nonetheless wanted to hear the pro-vaccine side. She found her way to Vaccine Talk, which she said had a reputation among anti-vaccine groups as being “mean” for banning those who made claims without scientific evidence.

On Vaccine Talk, Buescher credits a handful of people with walking her through the scientific evidence and persuading her that routine childhood vaccines are safe and effective. Now, Buescher is helping her friends and family navigate conflicting information about coronavirus vaccines.

There are other examples as well.

Of course, the story also reinforces the idea that expecting the big companies to do all the moderation and enforcement themselves leads to questionable outcomes as well:

Vaccine Talk represents exactly the type of conversations Facebook says it wants to cultivate. But Bilowitz said the social network’s often clumsy and heavy-handed enforcement of covid misinformation policies has made their work more difficult. In June, Facebook temporarily shut down the group because someone posted an article deemed to be misinformation. But the poster had been seeking advice on how to rebut the article.

“We were just caught up in the algorithm,” Bilowitz said, “and felt there wasn’t a human in charge of the process.”

The article highlights how the constant drumbeat of people (including the White House) demanding that Facebook "do more" is often counterproductive.

“Facebook is attempting to shut down misinformation by shutting down all conversation entirely,” she said. “I strongly believe that civil, evidence-based discussion works, and Facebook’s policies make it extremely difficult for that to happen.”

There's a lot more in the article that is worth thinking about with regards to these debates about mis- and disinformation and how to deal with it. And it is notable that this is a successful, decently large community, that doesn't just shut down dissent, but rather simply requires those spreading it to back it up, and makes it clear that if you cannot, you face consequences. And it's also useful in highlighting how the general demands to put all the responsibility on big companies like Facebook can backfire.

I honestly think this article is one of the most important ones we've seen on various content moderation debates regarding misinformation, and I expect to cite back to it often.

Filed Under: anti-vax, content moderation, covid-19, evidence, rules, vaccines
Companies: facebook

GOP Hollowly Threatens To 'Shut Down' Telecom Companies For Cooperating With Legal January 6 Inquiries

from the good-luck-with-that dept

If you've spent any real time digging into Trump GOP era tech policies, you've probably noticed they're a jumbled mess of contradictions and inconsistencies, cloaked in a lot of performative propaganda. The same party that thought net neutrality (the FCC holding telecom giants vaguely accountable) was a government hellscape, pivoted on a dime to try and force the FCC into regulating social media companies. The same GOP that whines incessantly about "big tech" via performative populism, routinely runs for the hills any time somebody actually tries to rein in corporate power or implement genuine antitrust reform.

Of course in the mainstream press (in this context usually The New York Times, Axios, The Washington Post, Politico, and friends), the inconsistency of the GOP's policy platforms is never really explained. It's part of the "view from nowhere" disease that has infected mainstream U.S. political coverage, where everything is portrayed in a "he said, she said" frame of perfect symmetry, leaving your readers completely uncertain where the truth actually lies. It's driven by a fear of upsetting sources and advertisers, and results in a media that simply refuses to call a duck a duck (or bullshit bullshit) when urgently required.

That bubbled up again this week as the GOP bristled at the fact the committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob has been asking telecom and tech companies to retain relevant communications between lawmakers and organizers. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Signal, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile have all received requests. As Mike has noted there are concerns that the requests are worryingly broad, including troves of internal communications at the companies' themselves.

At the same time, many of the requests (especially those looking at the text message and call logs from telecom companies) are perfectly legitimate, and if investigators can find text messages showing coordination between the violent Capitol-assaulting mob, its organizers, and the GOP, that kind of seems arguably important in terms of a functioning democracy and avoiding even worse scenarios down the road. After all, guys like Jim Jordan are nervously babbling in interviews like this one for a reason:

Several GOP members seem particularly nervous about text messages and phone logs, and are now taking to television threatening to "shut down" telecom companies if they cooperate with the probe in any way whatsoever:

This is, of course, utterly nonsensical, zero calorie, idiot theater. Congress as a whole worships the ground companies like AT&T walk on, and the GOP in particular has never stood up to AT&T on any issue of substance. Ever. Why? Because AT&T's extremely politically powerful (thanks in large part to its cozy relationship with the NSA), and a major GOP campaign contributor. There's legitimately a 0.0% chance that AT&T or Verizon see any meaningful penalties for cooperating with legal requests, especially from a party with a thirty year track record of mindlessly kissing telecom's ass.

The GOP for years has opposed privacy protections and embraced expansive government surveillance. And its entire brand has been built on the worship of purportedly "free markets" without the imposition of government intervention. And the entire Trump GOP has been to take "political norms" in the alleyway and beat the ever loving piss out of them, repeatedly. Yet this morning we saw the Rupert Murdoch editorial pages pretending to care about both telecom privacy and (gasp!) "political norms":

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy also took to Twitter to threaten to shut down private companies for complying with legal information requests (you know, "free markets!" and all that):

Nobody's violating federal law. It's a valid inquiry into an extremely dangerous, precedent setting event. And "federal law" on privacy is weak in the first place largely courtesy of forty years of DC policy choices. There's just layers of gibberish here, particularly the pretense that the GOP gives two flying shits about rampant government surveillance or "political norms." If Congress is doing something illegal that violates privacy, anyone can sue to stop them. Instead, the GOP is having yet another toddler moment, engaging in hollow bullying to shut down private businesses they know they'll never actually follow through on.

As Ken White notes, one could argue that this kind of behavior, while likely not prosecutable, qualifies as corruption and obstruction of justice:

Granted, this most likely ends (like the mythical GOP support for "antitrust reform") with zero penalties for telecom companies, because there's nothing to penalize. Still, letting a bunch of mindlessly ambitious authoritarians try to overthrow elections with zero meaningful penalty sets a clearly dangerous precedent. As does threatening companies for complying with perfectly valid legal requests.

Shutting down AT&T is a non-starter, so what is the GOP going to do to "punish" telecom companies? Re-establish the FCC's ability to hold telecom monopolies accountable? Stop blocking efforts to impose broadband privacy rules? Finally start holding them accountable for fraud? Rein in their overly enthusiastic participation in our domestic surveillance program? Force AT&T and Verizon to close up shop and go home? Give me a break.

It's just empty-headed bullying by GOP lawmakers clearly nervous about what these requests could reveal about one of the dumbest yet most dangerous days in recent U.S. history. And yet courtesy of DC beltway press' "he said, she said" framing of the situation, a reader walks away from most terrible coverage of this dispute with the impression that the GOP's position here could be perfectly reasonable. ("Bob the authoritarian says a valid investigation into him is illegal, but his colleague Jane says that's not true. Who's right? Who knows?" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).

U.S. press outlets need to dramatically improve their ability to call out bullshit or this stuff is all going to get significantly worse. Bad faith bullshit only works when you refuse to identify it as clearly bad faith bullshit. Corruption thrives when your press is too timid to clearly call it corruption when required. And by and large the nation's biggest media outlets continue to fail painfully at the task of highlighting the GOP's hard right authoritarian swerve, or the bullshit faux-populist propaganda they're using to make it happen.

Filed Under: due process, empty threats, evidence, gop, investigation, january 6th, jawboning, kevin mccarthy, marjorie taylor greene, obstruction of justice, subpoena, telcos
Companies: at&t, verizon

Chicago PD Oversight Says ShotSpotter Tech Is Mostly Useless When It Comes To Fighting Gun Crime

from the but-that's-the-thing-it-says-it's-good-at-[confused-noises] dept

Gunshot detection tech provider ShotSpotter is fighting a PR battle on multiple fronts after more news surfaced that its analysts may alter detection records to fit police narratives and investigators' theories. Communications and court documents obtained by the Associated Press confirmed ShotSpotter allows law enforcement officers to request modifications to detection records. And the company apparently used to allow police officers to modify the data themselves.

In addition to its questionable handling of evidence, ShotSpotter is also shedding customers. Law enforcement agencies in some cities have decided it's not worth paying for a product that can't reliably detect gunshots. Cities that have dumped ShotSpotter have reported false positive rates as high as 75%.

ShotSpotter has fired back, claiming everyone reporting on its tech is wrong about its tech. It also claims it doesn't alter or allow alteration to reports submitted as evidence in criminal cases. Its assertions ring pretty fucking hollow in the face of all of this reporting, which relies on documents filed in court or obtained through public records requests. ShotSpotter's claims, however, are supported by nothing more than the company's own ineffective anger.

Now, there's even more evidence showing ShotSpotter isn't worth paying for. The Chicago PD's Inspector General has concluded its investigation of the tech the city pays roughly $11 million/year for. And it has found the tech doesn't seem to be worth the money.

The City of Chicago Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) Public Safety section has issued a report on the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD) use of ShotSpotter acoustic gunshot detection technology and CPD’s response to ShotSpotter alert notifications. OIG concluded from its analysis that CPD responses to ShotSpotter alerts can seldom be shown to lead to investigatory stops which might have investigative value and rarely produce evidence of a gun-related crime.

[...]

The CPD data examined by OIG does not support a conclusion that ShotSpotter is an effective tool in developing evidence of gun-related crime.

That's pretty damning. Compare and contrast with ShotSpotter's own irate statements in defense of its product:

[T]he ShotSpotter system is highly accurate at detecting outdoor gunshots and benefits communities battling gun violence.

Well, there's plenty of evidence out there saying the system isn't accurate. And this report [PDF] by the Chicago PD's oversight contradicts the second part of the company's claim. It isn't benefiting "communities battling gun violence." According to this investigation, only the rarest spotted shot leads to anything that might battle gun violence.

And, according to this investigation, the installation of the tech is actually causing more problems for areas of Chicago where gun violence is already an issue. ShotSpotter has given Chicago police officers yet another excuse to engage in suspicionless stops and searches. This is from the report:

In reviewing ISR [investigative stop report] narratives for mentions of ShotSpotter alerts, OIG also identified 10 ISRs (13.9%) in which reporting officers referred to the aggregate results of the ShotSpotter system as informing their decision to initiate a stop or their course of action during the stop, even when they were not responding to a specific ShotSpotter alert. For example, some officers during the reporting period identified the fact of being in an area known to have frequent ShotSpotter alerts as an element of the reasonable suspicion required to justify the stop. Other officers reported conducting “protective pat downs” following a stop because they knew themselves to be in areas where ShotSpotter alerts were frequent.

If there's a silver lining for ShotSpotter in this report, it's one that only benefits the tech provider, rather than Chicago residents. The Inspector General says it's possible there are more investigations linked to ShotSpotter detections, but it can't really tell because the Chicago PD's recordkeeping is a mess. What the IG sees is almost no connection between ShotSpotter reports and gun-crime investigations. But there's a slim chance this may be the PD's fault.

If this result is attributable in part to missing or nonmatched records of investigatory stops that did take place as a direct consequence of a ShotSpotter alert, CPD’s record-keeping practices are obstructing a meaningful analysis of the effectiveness of the technology.

And, if that's part of the problem, then that's on the Chicago PD if the city decides to stop paying $11 million a year for nothing more than additional rights violations by police officers.

Filed Under: chicago, chicago police department, evidence, shotspotter
Companies: shotspotter

Investigation Of ShotSpotter's Practices Is Raising Questions The Company's Angry Statement Really Doesn't Answer

from the bleeding-from-self-inflicted-wounds-always-sucks dept

Earlier this month, another courtroom challenge of evidence exposed another questionable alteration of a gunshot report by law enforcement tech supplier, ShotSpotter. In 2018, a man shot by police officers claimed in his lawsuit that ShotSpotter altered gunshot detection records at the request of law enforcement to back up the officers' narrative -- one that claimed he had shot at them first. No gun was ever recovered and the number of shots originally detected by ShotSpotter matched the number fired by officers, leaving them at least one shot short of their "he shot first" story.

This appears to have happened again. A man, apparently falsely arrested for a murder he didn't commit, was put in jail for eleven months based almost solely on ShotSpotter reports. The problem with the ShotSpotter report is that it kept changing. And again, the alterations made the report align with the presuppositions of law enforcement. The original detection didn't classify the "percussive noise" as a gunshot. This non-determination was manually overridden by a ShotSpotter "analyst" to be classified as a gunshot.

Months later, ShotSpotter relocated the detected noise from where it was originally "heard" to the intersection where the wrongfully-arrested man's car was captured by a nearby surveillance camera, allowing prosecutors to tie together their theory that the person they had already pinned the crime on had actually committed the crime. But, as soon as the wrongfully-arrested man challenged this evidence, prosecutors dropped the case, citing a lack of evidence.

This reporting on ShotSpotter's apparent alteration of reports to better fit law enforcement claims and theories angered ShotSpotter. The company issued an angry statement claiming Motherboard's article on its latest evidentiary… oddities… was bogus and possibly capable of "confusing" readers.

First, ShotSpotter forensic evidence is 100% reliable and based entirely on the facts and science. ShotSpotter has never altered the information in a court-admissible detailed forensic report based on fitting a police narrative.

Whether or not this statement is true is yet to be determined. Its follow-up assertions added more detail but really didn't do much to refute the claims made in the Motherboard article.

VICE’s article falsely alleged that in the Williams case in Chicago, Illinois, prosecutors withdrew ShotSpotter evidence because it would not meet scientific evidentiary standards due to having been altered. This is 100% false. In fact, no ShotSpotter evidence for this case was altered at any time. ShotSpotter forensic analysts evaluated the incident to create a court-admissible forensic report. Based on publicly available data and our understanding of this case, the prosecutor’s theory was that the defendant shot the victim in a car. ShotSpotter detected a gunshot in the area, and we have always publicly stated that ShotSpotter does not guarantee detection of gunshots that are in cars or inside buildings.

This assertion means nothing. The prosecutors relied on the ShotSpotter report -- the one containing a shot the company claims it can't reliably detect (and one that moved several blocks away from its originally-detected location as the case moved forward) -- right up until they couldn't. When the evidence was challenged, prosecutors walked away. That's not a vote of confidence for ShotSpotter's evidentiary value.

The Associated Press has taken a long, detailed look at this case and uncovered plenty of information that casts doubt on the company's assertions about its practices and the value of its sole product: sensors that detect gunshots and provide their locations to law enforcement. In the middle of it all is 65-year-old Michael Williams who spent 11 months in jail, arrested for a homicide he didn't commit. In fact, Williams drove the gunshot victim to the ER after he was shot by someone in an adjacent car.

The AP report says everything Motherboard said (and more) -- the same things ShotSpotter publicly denied in its angry statement.

An Associated Press investigation, based on a review of thousands of internal documents, emails, presentations and confidential contracts, along with interviews with dozens of public defenders in communities where ShotSpotter has been deployed, has identified a number of serious flaws in using ShotSpotter as evidentiary support for prosecutors.

AP’s investigation found the system can miss live gunfire right under its microphones, or misclassify the sounds of fireworks or cars backfiring as gunshots. Forensic reports prepared by ShotSpotter’s employees have been used in court to improperly claim that a defendant shot at police, or provide questionable counts of the number of shots allegedly fired by defendants. Judges in a number of cases have thrown out the evidence.

As for the claim the company never alters reports, especially at the request of law enforcement, the AP found that claim is complete bullshit.

ShotSpotter employees can, and often do, change the source of sounds picked up by its sensors after listening to audio recordings, introducing the possibility of human bias into the gunshot detection algorithm. Employees can and do modify the location or number of shots fired at the request of police, according to court records. And in the past, city dispatchers or police themselves could also make some of these changes.

The company remains unrepentant, even in the face of mounting evidence the tech is faulty and its detections can be set to manual override at the whim of "analysts" or law enforcement officers.

When pressed about potential errors from the company’s algorithm, ShotSpotter CEO Ralph Clark declined to discuss specifics about their use of artificial intelligence, saying it’s “not really relevant.”

Well, it was pretty "relevant" for Michael Williams, jailed for 11 months almost solely on the strength of a twice-altered ShotSpotter report.

As for the "analysts," there's a reason for the scare quotes. ShotSpotter -- in its defensive statement -- makes it appear it retains a host of skilled forensic technicians.

Our expert forensic analysts spend on average eight hours per incident to compile a court-admissible report using specialized tools that differ from those used for alerts. These reports are 100% exact on rounds fired, timing, sequence, and location of shots fired – something they can testify to in court under oath.

But ShotSpotter has made it clear it actually doesn't employ any forensic experts. It just has people it has hired as analysts who do not actually have the technical or scientific background to support the claims they make in court about the reliability of ShotSpotter evidence.

In court filings, ShotSpotter acknowledged: “Our experts are trained using a variety of ‘on the job’ training sessions, and transfer of knowledge from our scientists and other experienced employees. As such no official or formal training materials exist for our forensic experts.”

With experts like these, it's no wonder the court was given contradictory assertions by the company while aiding prosecutors in convicting a man for a crime he didn't commit. Prosecutors claimed Williams shot the victim in his own vehicle. ShotSpotter's own documentation and contract with the Chicago PD made it clear the tech could not reliably detect gunshots fired in vehicles or buildings. But when it came time to back the blue, ShotSpotter was there:

[T]he company declined to say at what point during Williams’ nearly yearlong incarceration it got in touch with prosecutors, or why it prepared a forensic report for a gunshot that allegedly was fired in Williams’ vehicle, given the fact that the system had trouble identifying gunshots in enclosed spaces. The report itself contained contradictory information suggesting the technology did, in fact, work inside cars. Clark, the company’s CEO, declined to comment on the case, but in a follow-up statement, the company equivocated, telling AP that under “certain conditions,” the system can actually pick up gunshots inside vehicles.

The "certain conditions" appear to be "whenever prosecutors need a little help."

ShotSpotter can keep being angry about how it's portrayed in the press. But it can't blame anyone else for its own missteps and failures. Not only does the company seem to overstate the reliability of its sensors, but admissions made in court make it clear the evidentiary value of its reports is, at best, extremely questionable.

Filed Under: evidence, police, shotspotter
Companies: shotspotter

Using The George Floyd Protests As An Excuse, Minneapolis Police Destroyed Evidence And Case Files

from the protests-are-now-free-passes-for-record-destruction-I-guess dept

Immediately following the murder of George Floyd by former-officer and current-convict Derek Chauvin, Minneapolis burned. Literally. Unchecked violence by cops provoked violence by some city residents, who looted businesses and, most provocatively, set the Minneapolis PD's Third Precinct building on fire.

While this happened, another precinct -- located nearly five miles away from the most intense protests -- decided now was the time to pursue some opacity.

As an unruly crowd besieged Minneapolis' Third Precinct headquarters last summer, officers on the other side of the city destroyed a cache of documents, including inactive case files, search warrants and records of confidential informants.

In a private police report, Minneapolis officer Logan Johansson disclosed that he and other investigators in the Second Precinct to the northeast decided to destroy the documents shortly after May 28 "in direct response to the abandonment of the Third Police Precinct in Minneapolis by city leadership."

If the Second Precinct fell, this sensitive information could wind up in the wrong hands, Johansson wrote. "The data contained in these files could put the lives of CIs or various other cooperating defendants at risk."

You know, files are portable. I mean, it's not as easy as feeding them to a shredder or burning them, but files can be moved because, at worst, they're on paper. At best, they're digital, meaning they can be moved almost anywhere without anyone having to lift more than a finger.

Ignoring this reality, the Second Precinct decided to use unrest in the city as an excuse to destroy a whole bunch of records that might have eventually "fallen into the wrong hands" as the result of, say, public records requests or court orders demanding the relinquishment of exculpatory evidence.

And the cops might have gotten away with it (at least for a bit longer) if it wasn't for those meddling… um… arrestees. Apparently, county courtrooms are also considered to be part of the "wrong hands" group.

Public defender Elizabeth Karp says the officers acted without oversight and against policy when they destroyed critical evidence in the charges against her client, 36-year-old Walter Power. Power is charged with a felony for allegedly selling drugs. Police collected evidence against him based on search warrants that were destroyed by the officers and through cellphone data that has since been lost, according to Karp's motions that ask the judge to throw out the case.

Hey, if you don't want someone to avoid doing the time, maybe don't do the crime. This has resulted in Power's lawyer asking the court to issue an order it shouldn't really have to issue: one that requires the Minneapolis PD to stop destroying evidence. It seems like an entity involved in law enforcement would want to keep as much evidence preserved at all times, since that's the pretty much the only thing it can use to get dangerous criminals off the street.

Or maybe the destruction of evidence just happened to be an unfortunate side effect of (possibly) destroying other, less-useful records.

Only about 1.5% of complaints filed against Minneapolis police have resulted in suspensions, terminations or demotions between 2013 and 2019, according to a CNN analysis of data from the city's Office of Police Conduct Review, which investigates complaints. That office, which is separate from the police department but works with officers to resolve complaints, received about 2,013 complaints against police within its jurisdiction in that time.

If complaints that garnered letters of reprimand are included, that rate of discipline rises to about 2.6%.

That's a whole lot of misconduct that appears to have been given a minimal amount of attention by the MPD's internal oversight. It would be kind of terrible if these underlying documents made their way into the public domain, so why not toss these records into the bonfire that theoretically might have been the end result of protests if the demonstrators made their way five miles northeast and duplicated their Third Precinct efforts.

Not to worry, Minneapolis residents. The Second Precinct is hard at work clearing itself of any wrongdoing!

Asked for comment Wednesday, Minneapolis police spokesman John Elder said the department is investigating. "We are conducting an internal investigation to understand what happened at the Second Precinct, how the decisions were made and whether there were broader issues with documents, records or files stored in our facilities during the riots," said Elder.

Doesn't seem like there's much to understand. Some cops saw one precinct building on fire and decided the best way to preserve records was to destroy them. The statement continues:

"Any disciplinary decisions would be made through the normal process after an investigation."

LOL OK. [Taps CNN report quoted above.] The "normal process" appears to be 2.6% wrist slap and 97.4% "officers did nothing wrong." Perhaps this time it will be different because this time there are more eyes watching the Minneapolis PD than ever before. But an internal investigation can be allowed to consume as many news cycles as needed to sweep it under the press-release-late-Friday-afternoon rug.

Filed Under: case files, destruction of evidence, evidence, george floyd, minneapolis, minneapolis police

Study Shows Blood Pattern Analysis Is Just More Guesswork Posing As Scientific Evidence

from the blood-suckers dept

Another form of evidence used in criminal cases is being called into question. The latest (via CJ Ciaramella) to receive the dubious honor of being designated "dubious" is blood spatter analysis. This brings it in line with a long list of other things long-considered (and, in too many cases, still considered) to be evidence worthy of introducing into a court of law, joining bite mark analysis, hair analysis, um… pair of blue jeans analysis... and even the old standby, DNA analysis.

The problem with all of these sciences is that they're mostly subjective. Sure, they look pretty science-y. A lot of math and charts and lab coats and computers are scattered all over the place. Inscrutable printouts are carried by expert witnesses with years of experience under their belts. They show up in court and make claims about certainty of matches or probability of X contributing to Y, much of which can't be easily contested because, as mentioned earlier, the results are open to interpretation.

Despite this, a lot of what's called forensic science still ends up being used as evidence in criminal cases, even though it's more accurate to refer to it as forensic guesswork. Blood spatter analysis is no exception. This study [PDF] for Forensic Science International says the lack of solid standards in the blood pattern analysis field have resulted in experts looking at the same blood patterns but all seeing something different.

We investigated conclusions made by 75 practicing bloodstain pattern analysts on 192 bloodstain patterns selected to be broadly representative of operational casework, resulting in 33,005 responses to prompts and 1760 short text responses. Our results show that conclusions were often erroneous and often contradicted other analysts. On samples with known causes, 11.2% of responses were erroneous. The results show limited reproducibility of conclusions: 7.8% of responses contradicted other analysts.

That's a problem. How big of a problem is unknown. Actually, a lot about this is unknown. Differing opinions on blood spatter evidence can turn a suicide into a homicide or turn a killing from an act of self-defense to a murder. There's actual freedom riding on these interpretations, so it's crucial they be correct. And yet no one in the field (or in the court system) seems too concerned about ensuring this evidence is correctly analyzed.

Although BPA has been admissible as expert testimony for more than 150 years, the accuracy and reproducibility of conclusions by BPA analysts have never been rigorously assessed in a large-scale study.

In 2009, the National Research Council condemned blood pattern analysis as "more subjective than scientific." Nothing changed. In 2016, it called for testing of error rates in criminal forensic science. Again, nothing changed. Small studies were performed but nothing on the scale of this one, which involved 75 practicing blood pattern analysts and 192 samples. The results are far from encouraging. In fact, they point to enough of a margin of error that this sort of analysis should be prohibited from being introduced as evidence until standards are developed and put into practice that eliminates the subjectivity on display here.

But, given the 150 years of use and the minimum of interest in developing standards, this will also likely lead to nothing changing. What this research does do, at least, is give defendants something to use to challenge questionable evidence and questionable statements by prosecutors' expert witnesses.

Filed Under: blood pattern analysis, blood splatter analysis, evidence, junk science