“Prosecuting a woman for ’staring’ at a police dog is absurd,” said her lawyer. “People are allowed to make faces at police dogs and officers to express their disapproval. It’s constitutional expression,” said public defender Kelly Green, who represented Jayna Hutchinson. More: What’s up with police?

police, dogs, arrest

These pictures are mostly foolish, but here’s a small point: none of us had ever seen a cop pull over a cab — certainly not a cab with passengers — before this, so we were all rather curious about why. In front of us stood a question, an example of the many questions we all encounter every day, and it’s the kind of question that few of us would ever suggest going to the library to answer.

Later on we found Jason, who taught us a bit of history we probably should have known, and clearly could have taught us some more. But when asked about how he’d settle a bar bet, he said he’d likely go to Google. He noted that he’d look at the search results carefully, but admitted that he probably wouldn’t be found going to his library for answers.

cambridge, cambridge ma, future libraries, future library, information, information behavior, information seeking, lib20, libraries, library, library 2.0, massachusetts, police, question, questions, reference, reference information, sign, silly

The Washington Post reports two men in uniforms bearing “Homeland Security” insignia walked into a Bethesda library in early February, announced that viewing of internet pornography was forbidden, and began questioning patrons. The men asked one library user to step outside just before a librarian intervened. Then…

the two men [and the librarian] went into the library’s work area to discuss the matter. A police officer arrived. In the end, no one had to step outside except the uniformed men.

As it turns out, the men were legitimate homeland security officers, members of the county’s force, though it seems nobody was quite clear about why they were there.

Montgomery County’s chief administrative officer, Bruce Romer, issued a statement calling the incident “unfortunate” and “regrettable” — two words that bureaucrats often deploy when things have gone awry. He said the officers had been reassigned to other duties.

Thing is, regardless of your feelings about porn, please tell me how it relates to homeland security? Perhaps they’ve given up policing copyright?

abuse of authority, bethesda, bethesda md, civil liberties, homeland security, library, maryland, overstepping, police, porn

Two cops: he wanted a soda, she didn’t. She had the wheel, he had a Taser. Details from this Associated Press story:

HAMTRAMCK, Mich. — A police officer has been charged with using a Taser on his partner during an argument over whether they should stop for a soft drink.

Ronald Dupuis, 32, was charged Wednesday with assault and could face up to three months in jail if convicted. The six-year veteran was fired after the Nov. 3 incident.

Dupuis and partner Prema Graham began arguing after Dupuis demanded she stop their car at a store so he could buy a soft drink, according to a police report.

The two then struggled over the steering wheel, and Dupuis hit her leg with his department-issued Taser, the report said. She was not seriously hurt.

Hamtramck police union lawyer Eugene Bolanowski said he expected Dupuis to hire a private lawyer.

Hamtramck is a city of 23,000 surrounded by Detroit.

police, violence, taser, tasers, cop, cops, soda, silly, sad

Though we imagine the Dutch to be a rather unexcitable lot, I did anyway, it turns out they have a history of getting rowdy at football games (yes, if this all happened back in the States I be calling it “soccer”). So it can’t be so much of a surprise that fans rioted again in April. What is surprising is that mobile phone companies got involved in the investigation. This AP report tells the story:

Phone companies voluntarily handed over the mobile phone numbers of people who were in or around Feyenoord’s Kuip stadium on the day of the match — traceable using broadcasting masts in the area.

So that’s what the aGPS sticker on our cellphones is about.

Via Engadget.

tags: 5-0, agps, cell phone, cellphone, crime, engadget, feyenoord, football, gps, hooliganism, location aware, location aware technology, mobile, mobile phone, mobile phone companies, mobile phone numbers, police, police investigation, riot, rioting, rioters, sms, sms message, sms messaging, soccer

I’m entirely captivated by Mark Michaelson’s collection of mug shots on Flickr. It’s titled “Least Wanted” and he notes with little fanfare that they’re “Nobody famous.”

Some of the photos contain little histories, like this set from the 40s and 50s that includes conviction details — “30 days W. H.” for “selling obscene literature.” Another image shows rapid aging over a three year period starting in 1943. It’s part of a small collection of recidivist women of the 1940s.

For most of Michaelson’s images, however, there’s little to describe who these people are or why their photos became a part of public record. Each is its own little mystery, and it’s hard not to want to look at all 422.

tags: 1940s, accused criminal, arrest, crime, criminology, history, law enforcement, mug shot, mug shots, photos, police, police photo, police photos, recidivism, recidivist

Engadget yesterday had a story about the Mobile Plate Hunter 900, a device that mounts on police cars and scans 500 to 800 license plates an hour. More details are in the Wired News story, where LA County police commander Sid Heal notes that the system is hands-off: “It doesn’t require the [officer] to do anything.” The plates are automatically checked against a database of stole cars, and the patrolling officer when the system finds a match.

“We read them coming at us. We read them going by us. We read them parked,” said Mark Windover, president of Remington-Elsag, the developer of the system.

What the article didn’t say is if this is at all related to the license plate reader system by Andrew Bucholz that I reported on in February. At the time, I noted that I was surprised that there wasn’t yet a cameraphone service that would return details about a vehicle and driver based on a picture of the license plate.

Clearly, this is real. Welcome to the world of automated, pervasive surveillance.

tags: LA county, license plate, license plate reader, license plates, mobile, pervasive, police, police car, police cruiser, police state, scanner, surveillance