Category: Hoaxes Sollecito etc

Twenty Ways To Smarten Up American Police Systems

Posted by Peter Quennell

Uploaded a year ago; 600,000 views now

1. Wider Context

Again and again we see US police in serious shortfall, in major part because of this globally unique arrangement.

There are about 18,000 state and local police agencies in the US. These generally fall into the following categories: state police, county police, county sheriffs, municipal police, and special district police.

Resultant problems? Generally low pay, difficulty in recruitment and retention, on-average poor training, amateurish elected or politically-appointed leadership, huge problems in nation-wide modernizing, and almost complete absence of learning from other countries. 

Cops shoot hundreds annually, and are very widely mistrusted. Gun ownership is incessantly on the rise in part because of this situation.

2. Uvalde Texas Case

There is ONE important bright-spot development; the growing torrent of recordings from the huge array of cellphones and CCTVs and police bodycams and police-car-windscreen cams. The Uvalde case highlights that.

Eighteen months ago, nineteen elementary-school children and two adults were killed by yet another heavily armed mass murderer.

The lack of preparedness at the school and the (frankly cowardly and uncaring) local law-enforcement response have been enormously criticized. It will take years for full correction and the planned building of a (vastly enhanced) new elementary school.

At bottom is a 53-minutes Frontline analysis of thousands of hours of bodycam and other recorded evidence by the American Public Broadcasting Service.

Highly worth reading is this 20-point online analysis by highly regarded police trainer Lt Dan Marcou. In summary:

1. Believe it can happen! One officer shared, “None of us ever thought the situation would happen here.”

2. Train realistically, regularly and together!

3. Communication is a critical component of tactical success.

4. Immediately move toward the threat, identify the threat and stop the threat!

5. Manage your fear.

6. An active shooter in a room with victims and potential victims is an immediate emergency.

7. An inner perimeter should contain only the problem and the solution to the problem.

8. The first rule in breaching is to check to see if the door is unlocked!

9. You can’t wait for ballistic shields to be brought to the scene during an active killing in progress.

10. If you have no distractive device, improvise.

11. Know the layout in advance.

12. Someone needs to take command immediately.

13. For large events establish a command post and learn to use the incident command model.

14. If you can’t solve the problem don’t impede someone who can.

15. If you are not the cavalry, step aside when the cavalry arrives.

16. Pre-practice room entries/clearing even if you are not SWAT.

17. Shoot accurately under stress.

18. There should be a staging area.

19. Realize that once the threat is over, there is an incredible amount of work to be done, such as [examples].

20. Realize everyone processes incidents like this differently.

Maine US Mass Shooting: Awesome Systems Brought Into Play - After A Major Systems Failure

Posted by Peter Quennell

Overview

The impressive briefing above took place in Maine last Saturday.

Well above par for such things. The body of a mentally-disturbed killer of 18, a highly trained ex-military marksman, had just been discovered inside the trailer of an 18-wheeler overlooked in the first search of a likely area.

He had a gunshot wound to the head - from a military style weapon designed to quickly kill many people in combat.

The lead briefer is the Maine equivalent of the head of a national public-safety entity like Scotland Yard or the Carabinieri or FBI.

Exceptional here is his vivid description of just how many seemingly excellent systems were brought into play after the fact. One can readily list 3 or 4 dozen.

However… In fact the mass shooting had been easily preventable.

Previously he had VOLUNTARILY committed himself to a psychological facility, but after only a few days he was released without further monitoring. And his family had WARNED the police about him.

See Monday’s headlines: 

Click for Post:  Maine gunman spoke ‘aggressively’ of guns, former co-workers say, as more warning signs emerge

Click for Post:  Maine shooter’s family warned cops he was armed and dangerous FIVE MONTHS before massacre

Click for Post:  Suspect’s family warned police months before massacre

Click for Post:  Cops Warned of Maine Shooting Suspect’s Declining Mental Health in May

Click for Post:  Cops were sent to Maine gunman’s home weeks before massacres amid concern he ‘is going to snap and commit a mass shooting’

Click for Post:  Maine gunman’s family contacted police months before massacre, sheriff says

Yet again the US’s plague of thousands of way-too-often under-funded, badly-trained, badly-managed, badly-connected local police forces is causing outrage.

Contrast with eg Italy.

US Justice Systems Much In The News: #1 Lethality Assessment Protocol

Posted by Peter Quennell

Maryland State training video, similar to many

1. Context

Too many US justice systems are locked in stone because of for example this:

There are 17,985 police agencies in the United States which include municipal police departments, county sheriff’s offices, state troopers,and federal law enforcement agencies.

Compare that to for example Italy where the forces are essentially two: the polizia and the carabinieri.

Plus US laws are often badly written. Plus most judges and prosecutors are elected or politically appointed, and so tend toward a hard line. Plus forced plea-bargains are endemic. Plus for-profit prisons lobby to keep the prisoner numbers enormous. 

And there are all those guns of course. Right now police recruitment is at a crisis point in many small towns which can only afford to pay peanuts - in the Gabby Petito murder case local cops were making an average of below $50,000.

Compare that with the median family income of the US: $74,580. In part this is because most Americans don’t much like or trust their cops and resent paying so much for them. (Generally inferior US education is also essentially locally funded on a shoestring.)

2. Lawsuit

The family of Gabby Petito are suing the Moab Utah police in part for not implementing a key system now saving many lives elsewhere. The state-level Lethality Assessment Protocols as described for Maryland above.

According to the family’s attorney, Moab City Police did not use a Lethality Assessment Protocol (LAP) when they spoke with Petito and her boyfriend Brian Laundrie, during a traffic stop in August 2021.

The attorney said Moab police had agreed to implement the LAP in 2018, but that “Moab was not doing anything to employ the LAP at the time … Moab responded in Gabby’s case.”

The subject of a Lethality Assessment Protocol is the basis for [new state-level law] S.B.117 [for all forces].  The bill requires[all] Utah law enforcement agencies to ask a series of questions during a domestic violence call. The questions help determine whether the victim is at risk of lethal violence.

At Moab, Gabby was never asked those questions and a day or two later was murdered.

In fact Moab police has a domestic violence advisor on the force. There was/is a strong rule that she MUST be brought in. She would have asked those questions.

But the cops at the traffic stop who misread the situation ignored this.

See This UK Lawyer Exceptionally Adept At Managing And Explaining Systems

Posted by Peter Quennell

Explanation

Law is the framework, part of the rules of the game, for all higher-level systems.

Globally, regionally, nationally, and so on down. Not that most politicians are especially good at managing or designing systems, unfortunately.

In fact, many of the problems in the world happen or worsen because most politicians come from legal backgrounds. They almost invariably get zero experience or training of systems creation in their law-school or bar-exam preparation.

So it is blind leading the blind at the top of most western governments. (You knew that, right?!)

Politicians are creating law that defines systems and their frameworks amateurishly and top-down, which is muddled and often damaging. This irritates the affected populations - and thus one gets Trump-type and Boris-type situations (both fret at systems, delighting those similar.)

The English courtroom lawyer (barrister) seen here seems unusually adept at systems - Dan ShenSmith’s “Black Belt Barrister” screen-name is explained thus in his resume (taekwondo is itself a bunch of systems).

Privately, Daniel is a 6th Dan Black Belt in the Korean martial art of Taekwon-Do and POLARM Close-Quarters Combat Skills. He teaches local clubs voluntarily and on specialist combat courses for the British Army and Special Forces.

The current Prince Harry lawsuit against the Mirror newspaper group in London is also all about systems - newspaper journalist and editing systems, growing-up systems, civil-lawsuit systems, and so on - and how they matched up with the relevant past law (some of the law has changed somewhat).

Under a newish and admirable civil-law procedure (system), Prince Harry’s case against the Mirror had to be presented in the form of a witness statement in court several months ago. He claimed in court Monday to be the sole or main writer.

In his case it was 55 pages long and is highly worth reading, not least for a telling 118 mentions of his former flame Chelsy Davy.

Dan ShenSmith’s smart chat with a lawyer chum in the video at top is about the nature and claims made in Harry’s statement, and how the Mirror Group’s formidable chief barrister, King’s Counsel lawyer Andrew Green, has systematically made it look ridiculous.

He has used a number of good systems in court (not least amazing research) to portray Harry’s statement as the product of some very poor systems.

BREXIT is also an example of a failing system, meant to correct for the EC systems that BREXIT proponents falsely claimed were failing. Dan ShenSmith could be very useful on a UK team to correct that own-goal muddle.

Solitary Confinement Rate In US Prisons Many Times The Global Average

Posted by Peter Quennell

Overview

The US has four percent of the world’s population - and over 20% of all prisoners in the world.

Right now it has locked up 664 per hundred thousand. The closest any other western country comes is 129 in the UK. The rate in Italy is 89. 

While this is finally being pushed down a bit, not least for cost, the total in solitary confinement in recent years has gone spiraling through the roof. Over 80,000 right now.

Any prison superintendent can order it; in almost all other countries it requires the Minister of Justice (as in Italy) or at minimum some senior judge. 

A couple of cases we’ve paid attention to are now shaking up public awareness of this.

• One was Alex Murdaugh in South Carolina, just convicted of killing his wife and son, who might “for his own protection” be in solitary for the rest of his life.


• The other is Bryan Kohberger in Idaho, suspected killer of four students now awaiting trial, who “for his own protection” probably faces the same.

Solitary in the US not only means zero interaction with any other human being. It also means no TV, no books, and lights on at all times.

As the BBC video explains, American prisoners might face staring at the walls for 30-40 years, and a complete mental breakdown more likely than not.

Cellphones May Have Boosted Justice More Than Anything In History

Posted by Peter Quennell

Drone footage of the scene of the crime

Overview

At the Knox & Sollecito trial in 2009, the cellphone evidence may well have been a game-changer for the unanimous jury.

There was a ton of it and it remorselessly demonstrated who was doing what and when despite the defense’s contrary claims. Hence all the smoke blown over the DNA.

With techniques and capacities forever gaining ground, professionals say cellphones are dissuading or putting away a lot more criminals than DNA has ever done.

Kohberger, the Washington State doctoral student charged with killing four Idaho students, has found his telling cellphone movements plotted sufficiently to fill a small book. 

A high-profile American trial has just concluded, that of prominent South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh, convicted of killing his wife and one son. He was handed two life sentences without parole to be served end-to-end. 

Whereupon three jurors have explained on national TV that above all it was Murdaugh’s voice on a video on his murdered son’s cellphone, evidence late in coming because the Apple phone had to be cracked, that proved he was there at the scene of the crime at the precise time.

Murdaugh really floundered on the stand trying to explain this one.

His own cellphone call to 911 in the video above also reeked of false claims. Scroll down here for some excellent YouTube comments.

Did The State Department Offer Assurances To Knox She Never Would Be Extradited?

Posted by Ergon

US Sec of State Kerry (discussing Snowden) really needs extraditions to work

1. Overview

This is the first of two posts on the real source of an increasing flow of anonymous but seemingly official State Department claims that Knox’s extradition is not in the cards

2. The Current Italy/US Extradition Treaty

As repeatedly explained here by posting lawyers the Italy/US treaty is deliberately written to exclude any politics.

If either nation has arrived at a guilty verdict of someone currently in the other nation by following its own laws, then the other nation deliberately has no legal option but to extradite them to serve their term.

So far neither nation has ever refused to do what the treaty says and so far politics has never intervened. That helps both nations in pursuing other extradition cases around the world.

3. Claims By An Anonymous Source

“Will Amanda Knox Be Dragged Back to Italy in Murder Case?” This was by Nina Burleigh in a cover story in Newsweek on March 19, 2015 quoting an anonymous source.

A State Department source tells Newsweek that diplomats in both Italy and the U.S. expect an extradition request to be denied: “I don’t think either Italy or the U.S. wants a major burr under our saddle in terms of relationships between our countries, and this would be that, if the Italians pushed it.” If they do, the source adds, there “is not any way” the U.S. will arrest Knox, nor will it have her declared a fugitive.

The elected Italian government in Rome is separate from the judiciary, and traditionally the two branches do not have warm relations. “I know the Italian government was rolling its eyes” over the prospect of the case reaching this phase, the State Department source says, adding that Rome faces “a real political problem” if the judiciary requests extradition. The American diplomat predicts the Italian court won’t ask to extradite.

It seems that ever since Amanda Knox was wrongfully acquitted by the Hellmann appeals court of Perugia in 2011 we have been inundated with unsourced reports that “the United States would never extradite Amanda Knox.

Going back several years to the Daily Mail, Guardian, The Express and various American media, they all seemed to be reading from the same script:

• She hadn’t received a fair trial.


• American public opinion would “˜never allow her to be sent back”.


• The Secretary of State would quietly prevail upon his counterpart in Italy to not request extradition.

And, as the final appeal of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito came up to the last stretch it seemed that these same hacks were repeating the same talking points, even though much has changed since 2011.

These were the basic points, reported over and over in the main stream media till it almost seemed like a guarantee. So I have been looking for the last three years to verify the truth of that. And, who made that promise, if any were made? These were the basic parameters of my search, and I had to tune out the background noise of “˜double jeopardy” and “˜dueling extradition experts”.

Then I had to look for the “˜unnamed source” quoted in all the news reports.

These possibilities came up: 

• WA US Senator Maria Cantwell spoke to her colleague Sen. John Kerry of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who spoke to his brother in law David Thorne, the former US Ambassador to Rome, who passed on a quiet message to the Italian Foreign minister. But would they ever speak on or off the record to reporters or like it very much if it was going to be bruited about?


• Mid-level Friends Of Amanda Knox like Anne Bremner and Judge Heavey had received vague assurances from Senator Cantwell; somehow extrapolated as iron clad guarantee that Knox would never be extradited, never mind there has not been any precedent I can find that would apply to a similar case like this.


• Someone in the Department of Justice and/ or State is feeding them shite.


• The FOA are making it all up. That last was my favourite, given that they are led around by people like Steve Moore, Bruce Fischer, and J. Michael Scadron.

4. My Search For The Truth

This has been an interesting journey, and as always, things seem to just come together at the last moment. It has helped that I have been watching diplomatic activity up-close all my life.

My father was in the Pakistani Foreign Service stationed in London, so, shortly after I was born, lived in the UK from age 0-3, then with the Pakistan Embassy in Tokyo from age 3-8. We were a cosmopolitan group of embassy brats going to St. Mary’s International School.

My friends were American, Iranian, Turk, Indian, East German, Canadian, New Zealand, points all over. Their parents were all diplomats and I made lifelong friends. My father could have received a posting as assistant to the ambassador to Washington D.C. after that but fate prevailed as he’d been stationed out 8 years and had to be rotated back to Pakistan.

Since that time I kept in touch with my friends and also developed this passion for International Relations and Geopolitics. Traveling to the US and other countries but also meeting over the internet, made many more friends at various levels of the State Department. Saw the changes there as respected career diplomats got replaced by interest groups and major donors to political parties. Such only went to choice postings, of course, but not second or third world countries, so I had many interesting discussions with them over the years.

The Wikileaks cables were a revelation as Embassy intercepts showed the thousand different ways diplomacy led to but also tried to prevent, war. I’d been reading them ever since they first came out so started searching for links to secret discussions with Amb. Thorne. Couldn’t find anything except what already was reported, so reporter Andrea Vogt’s FOI request find was a goldmine:

NEWLY RELEASED EMBASSY CABLES SHED LIGHT ON STATE DEPT HANDLING OF AMANDA KNOX CASE

By Andrea Vogt

FEBRUARY 13 “Newly released state department documents show the U.S. Embassy in Rome declared the Amanda Knox matter “Case Closed” in a cable to Washington just days after the American’s clamorous 2011 acquittal.  The memo reveals wishful thinking on the part of some U.S. diplomats, who were only too eager to see the thorny case come to a clean close.”

In Update March 23, 2015 posted today, Andrea Vogt says this:

In a 2011 Italian embassy cable released as part of several Freedom of Information Act requests I’ve filed on this case (first published Oct 11, 2011) [US] diplomats in Italy mistakenly thought Knox’s acquittal in 2011 would bring to a close this complex and divisive international case. Italy’s Court of Cassation would prove them wrong, overturning her Perugia acquittal and ordering a second appeal in a different venue (Florence) which ended last year with a guilty verdict.

So is a political fix being attempted or already in? See my Part Two Conclusion to be posted next.

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Frontpage Comments

By Peter Quennell on the post 'Knox Lie-A-Thon #4: How Myriad Past Lies About "Forced Confession" Are Sinking Her Now'.


Posted 13 June 2024. Vivianna’s cheerful comment above is the 47th and final one posted…

By Peter Quennell on the post 'Knox Lie-A-Thon #3: Nailing New Lies In Florence Court On June 5th #1'.


We are moving along, to a repost of our most detailed and incisive post ever…

By Peter Quennell on the post 'Knox Lie-A-Thon #3: Nailing New Lies In Florence Court On June 5th #1'.


See this puzzling remark from the statement of Sollecito’s above to Moscatelli and Napoleoni early…

By Peter Quennell on the post 'Knox Lie-A-Thon #3: Nailing New Lies In Florence Court On June 5th #1'.


Sollecito wittingly or unwittingly asserted that Knox met Patrick on the night, which was a…

By Peter Quennell on the post 'Patrick In Mail-On-Sunday: "I Fired Foxy Knoxy For Hitting On Customers"'.


Sollecito unwittingly asserted that Knox met Patrick on the night, which was a main reason…

By Peter Quennell on the post 'Knox Lie-A-Thon #3: Nailing New Lies In Florence Court On June 5th #1'.


More on this directly above in a long and very telling November 2007 interview, really…

By Peter Quennell on the post 'Knox Lie-A-Thon #3: Nailing New Lies In Florence Court On June 5th #1'.


An example from how Knox smears Patrick several times in her book.

Those who have…

By Peter Quennell on the post 'Knox Lie-A-Thon #3: Nailing New Lies In Florence Court On June 5th #1'.


Very smart catch by James. KrissyG has obtained for us Knox’s full statement and it…

By Peter Quennell on the post 'Amanda Knox Again Found Guilty of Criminal Slander; Our Further Explanation Of Why'.


Right on Collen Barry. The post on media linked to in the box now at…

By KrissyG on the post 'Amanda Knox Again Found Guilty of Criminal Slander; Our Further Explanation Of Why'.


Colleen Barry of AP is a disgrace.  She is supposed to be a professional accredited…