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NEWS > 26 November 2005

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WSU investigating police chief
Investigators at Washington State University are looking into allegations that campus Police Chief Steve Hansen may have used work computers to look at sexually explicit photographs, a school spokesman said Thursday.

"The investigation is nearly completed," said WSU spokesman Rob Strenge. "We could have a report as early as next week."

Hansen remains on the job, although he is reportedly in California this week, Strenge said. A voice mail message left at his office on Thursday was not immediately returned.

Few details about the investigation by WSU's Internal A... Read more

 Article sourced from

Boston Globe - United States
26 November 2005
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Police departments scaling bac

PROVIDENCE, R.I. --Police departments nationwide are scaling back long-standing policies requiring officers to carry their weapons around the clock, and a civil rights lawsuit brought by the mother of a slain black officer could hasten the trend.

So-called "always armed, always on duty" policies require officers to respond to crimes even when they're not working, and keep their guns with them at all times. The policy has been blamed in recent years for the deaths of a handful of officers killed when their colleagues mistook them for suspects.

But supporters say the policy is one of policing's oldest traditions -- and that arming off-duty officers protects them from crooks bent on revenge.

Such a policy is at the center of a $20 million civil rights lawsuit being heard this month in Providence, where Sgt. Cornel Young Jr. was shot dead five years ago by two white colleagues while he was off duty and trying to break up a fight.

Young's mother, Leisa Young, says the rookie officer who shot her son was not adequately trained to recognize colleagues who were off duty or in plain clothes.

According to the FBI, 43 police officers since 1987 have been killed by friendly fire. Some were caught in crossfire, or killed by firearms mishaps. A handful, like Young, were mistaken for criminals and shot by fellow officers.

"Our situation is the extreme example of what can go wrong," said Sgt. Robert Paniccia, the president of the Providence police union.

Young was eating a sandwich in a late-night diner on Jan. 28, 2000, when a fight broke out between two women. After the fight moved outside, someone pulled a gun, and Young ran out to intervene.

At the same time, Officers Carlos Saraiva and Michael Solitro, an eight-day rookie, say they pulled into the parking lot and saw the gunman.

As the gunman surrendered, they noticed Young, who was wearing baggy jeans, an overcoat and a baseball cap. He was carrying a gun.

"Drop the gun!" Saraiva and his partner screamed three times, they testified earlier this month.

Young did not drop the gun, they said, and they shot him.

Within minutes, Solitro watched another officer pull a police badge from the dead man's pocket.

The shooting marked Providence's first fatal case of mistaken police identity, but similar accidents have claimed lives elsewhere.

This year, an Orlando, Fla., police officer saw a man fire his gun outside the Citrus Bowl and shot him dead. The victim was a plainclothes officer working for the University of Central Florida.

In 2001, two uniformed officers shot and killed an undercover detective when he trained his gun on a suspected car thief in Oakland, Calif. In 1994, an off-duty police officer in New York City shot an undercover transit officer eight times in the chest. The transit officer survived.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police has called "always on duty" policies a costly tradition. The group, which has more than 20,000 members, recommends that off-duty officers who witness a crime call for assistance rather than pulling a weapon.

In Providence, carrying a gun is now optional for off-duty officers, who are encouraged instead to be good witnesses if they see a crime, Paniccia said.

The police union in Washington, D.C., won similar concessions after three off-duty black officers were shot and killed by on-duty officers in separate incidents, the last one in 1998, said Officer Gregory Greene, the union's chairman.

James Fyfe, the former deputy commissioner for training at the New York City Police Department, said officers in the city now use standard challenges and responses to prevent friendly fire accidents. Fyfe died of cancer this month, shortly after testifying by videotape at the Young trial.

He said every time New York officers confront an armed suspect, they are trained to yell, "Police, don't move!"

Upon hearing the challenge, off-duty and plainclothes officers know to halt and shout, "I'm on the job!" and are trained never to turn their hand or gun toward a uniformed colleague.

"Unless police officers are trained, they do stupid things on both sides of the coin," Fyfe said.

The Los Angeles Police Department allows its officers to carry their weapons off duty, but doesn't require it, department spokeswoman April Harding said.

David Klinger, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, formerly worked as a Los Angeles police officer and said he usually carried a gun off duty.

If police officers are properly trained, Klinger said he believes they should have the option of carrying a gun for their own protection.

"I don't want to be driving through the ghetto without a gun," he said. "What if some knucklehead I arrested spots me?"

Threatened officers instinctively focus on the perceived threat and tune out other information that could be crucial to split-second decision making, Klinger said. That's why it's important to have protocols in place to identify each other, and reinforce the procedures with training.

"If an officer has this tunnel vision, and all he sees is the gun, he may not see the badge hanging on the detective's chest," Klinger said.
 

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