August Vollmer: The Forgotten Father of Community Policing

     In the modern-day struggle between the opposing models of law enforcement--community-based policing in which officers interact with citizens as public servants versus militaristic policing comprised of cops who see themselves as crime fighters in a hostile environment--the concept of community policing has lost out. The rise of police militarism parallels the escalating war on drugs aided by the growing fear of domestic terrorism. The emergence of shock-and-awe policing and zero-tolerance peace-keeping at the expense of police-community relations and the advancement of professionalized criminal investigation would have concerned August Vollmer, the now forgotten police administrator who envisioned an entirely different future for American law enforcement.

     In 1905 the citizens of Berkeley, California banded together to rid themselves of the prostitutes, gambling houses and opium dens operating openly in their town. The man they elected to do the job was a 29-year-old uneducated mail carrier who promised to clean things up. Reform candidate August Vollmer kept his campaign promises, and as a result rose from town marshal to chief of police, and, within a period of 16 years became president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) and one of the most influential police administrators in the country.

     During his law enforcement career Chief Vollmer introduced advances in police training, established concepts of effective personnel deployment, developed methods of dealing with juvenile offenders, established one of the nation's first fingerprint bureaus, maintained and used crime statistics and crusaded for the use of science in crime detection. Over the years he hammered out a theory of police professionalism later adopted by J. Edgar Hoover when he became director of the FBI in 1924.

     Vollmer did not believe in capital punishment and became skeptical of J. Edgar Hoover's efforts to rid America of the "Red Menace" in the late 1940s and early 50s. He spoke out against the KKK at the peak of its power. After Pearl Harbor he formed a committee to seek humane treatment for Japanese-Americans who were interred in prison camps. August Vollmer also spoke out against the so-called "third-degree" as an interrogation technique.

     In 1919, Vollmer placed an ad in the school newspaper at the University of California soliciting student applicants for jobs as police officers. Over the years hundreds of full-time college students applied for these positions. Vollmer's "college cops" included Walter Gordon, the department's first black officer, John Larson, the future inventor of the polygraph and V.A. Leonard who became a well-known writer and criminal justice educator.

     Hundreds of Vollmer's proteges became police administrators like O.W. Wilson who became chief of the Chicago Police Department. Others became forensic scientists, lawyers, military leaders and politicians. By the late 1940s at least 25 police chiefs around the country had served under August Vollmer.

     In 1924 Vollmer took leave of the Berkeley Police Department to reorganize and head the Los Angeles Police Department. There he established hiring standards and set up a crime lab and a crime records bureau. He formed a vice squad and created a bank robbery unit to combat the epidemic of bank hold-ups in the city. Notwithstanding his efforts to professionalize the Los Angeles Police Department, Vollmer was unable to eliminate the graft and political corruption that had become ingrained in the organization. After a year in Los Angeles where he lost political support for his reform agenda, Vollmer resigned in defeat. He had learned that big city police departments, unlike law enforcement agencies in college towns like Berkeley, were almost impossible to control.

     Following his retirement from the Berkeley Police Department in 1932 Vollmer visited Scotland Yard, the Surete in France and dozens of other European police departments. He wrote four books and continued to survey and reorganize troubled law enforcement agencies in the United States. He became a law enforcement professor at the universities of Chicago and California.

     In 1955, at the age of 79, Mr. Vollmer ended his life by shooting himself with his service revolver. Suffering from Parkinson's Disease and cancer, he didn't want to become a burden. His wife had predeceased him and they had no children. Before ending his life he called the Berkeley Police Department to report his own suicide. He had willed his papers and extensive criminal justice library to the University of California at Berkeley. His archives are located at the university's Bancroft Library.

Bad Blood at the Bolshoi

     In Russia they take ballet very seriously, perhaps too seriously. One would assume that the Bolshoi, the world's largest and most prestigious ballet company would be one place in this corrupt, crime-ridden country immune from criminal violence. But this was not the case. Professional and artistic rivalry in the Bolshoi world of dance was intense and vicious.

     Sergei Filin started dancing at the famous Moscow theater in 1988. He left the Bolshoi in 2007, returning in March 2011 as the artistic director of the ballet company. Filin's predecessor, Gennady Yanin, the target of threats and harassment during his tumultuous tenure had to step down after an artistic rival posted erotic photographs of him on the Internet. There were also incidents of performance sabotage including an alarm clock going off in the audience during a particular scene; a dead cat being tossed on stage in lieu of flowers; needles inserted into costumes; and broken glass planted in the tip of toe shoes.

     It seemed the artistic director of the Bolshoi, like the head of a Mafia family, was in constant danger of being unseated by a jealous, power-hungry challenger. Who would have guessed that behind the scenes these world-class ballet dancers were Tony Sopranos in tights?

     Shortly after assuming his role as artistic director Sergei Filin became embroiled in a variety of ballet disputes and feuds. One of the performers he crossed swords with was Nikolai Tsiskaridze, a famous principal dancer. In December 2012 someone scratched-up Filin's car, slashed his tires and hacked into his email account. The artistic director's tormentor/stalker also posted a derogatory Facebook page under Filin's name.

     The harassment became so intense friends of the 42-year-old Bolshoi director recommended that he hire a private bodyguard. (A big business in Moscow.) Filin, believing that the intimidation tactics would not become physical rejected the suggestion.

     At eleven o'clock Thursday night, January 16, 2013, when Sergei Filin opened the gate to his central Moscow residence, someone called out his name. A man wearing a face-mask emerged from the darkness carrying a bottle of acid which he threw into the artistic director's eyes. After the attack the masked assailant fled the scene on foot.

     The acid caused third-degree burns on Filin's face and partially destroyed his sight. There were plans to send him to Belgium for treatment, a process that could take up to six months. Police investigators in Moscow were working on the theory that the assault was work-related.

     In the fall of 2013 Bolshoi Ballet dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko was found guilty of ordering the attack on Sergei Filin. Two others were also convicted of the assault. All three defendants were sentenced to six years in prison.

     In May 2016 the authorities released Mr. Dmitrichenko on parole. While admitting that he had orchestrated the attack, Dmitrichenko told reporters that he had not intended his accomplices to use acid.

     The Bolshoi management, in November 2016 gave Dmitrichenko a pass to return to the site of the assault so he could practice. The building was also the place where his victim Sergei Filin practiced ballet.

    This case illustrates that in Russia ballet is much more important than criminal justice. In the United States, in a similar case, Tanya Harding following the assault of a fellow figure skater was thrown out of the sport even though she was not convicted of the crime.

Kosta Karageorge's Football Concussions, Depression and Suicide

     In 2009 Kosta Karageorge graduated from Thomas Worthington High School in Worthington, Ohio, a suburb north of Columbus where the 6-foot-5, 285-pound athlete wrestled and played football. After high school Karageorge continued his wrestling career at nearby Ohio State University.

     In the fall of 2014 the 22-year-old fifth year senior joined the Ohio State football team as a walk-on. The defensive lineman played in one game in which he recorded a single tackle against Penn State.

     During his football playing years Karageorge suffered several concussions, the last one occurring in September 2014.

     At one-thirty in the morning on Wednesday, November 26, 2014, Kosta Karageorge sent his mother what she considered a disturbing text message. He wrote that if he had been an embarrassment to the family he apologized, stating that his concussions had affected his behavior. Thirty minutes later Mr. Karageorge left his apartment on East 7th Avenue in Columbus. He told his roommates he was upset over an incident involving his girlfriend and needed to take a walk.

     Karageorge did not return to his apartment that morning and failed to show up for the six AM football practice. He left his wallet in his apartment and did not possess any form of identification. He was dressed that morning in black sweatpants, black Timberland boots and a dark hoodie with the letters FOC on it. He had a short beard and recently shaved his head.

     At five in the afternoon on the day Mr. Karageorge left his apartment and didn't return, his mother, after not hearing from her son all day reported him missing to the Columbus Police Department. His earlier text message and the fact he usually kept in daily touch with his family caused her concern.

     Columbus detectives traced the missing football player's cellphone through GPS technology to West 3rd and Elmwood Avenues in the Grandview Heights section of the city. Officers, however, did not find his phone. He could have walked to that neighborhood, taken public transportation or accepted a ride with someone.

     On Friday November 28, 2014, 150 volunteers distributed hundreds of posters around the city that featured a photograph of the missing student. A group of former Ohio State football players put up a $1,000 reward for information leading to his whereabouts.

     On Sunday November 30, 2014, five days after he went missing a searcher found Karageorge's body in a dumpster several blocks from his apartment. The authorities identified him by his tattoos. Detectives believed that he had used the handgun found near his body to shoot himself in the head.

     The Franklin County coroner ruled Kosta Karageorge's death a suicide.

The Isaac Tiharihondi Mass Murder Case

     Uganda native Israel Ahimbisibwe, after being ordained in the Episcopal Church of Uganda, came to the United States where he earned three masters' degrees and a Ph.D. His masters' degrees came from the Theological Seminary at Princeton University, Harvard Divinity School and Rice University in Houston where he earned his doctorate after completing graduate research at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

     The 51-year-old Reverend Doctor held the position of Vicar of the Redeemer Episcopal Church in Houston. He resided in a west Houston apartment complex with his 47-year-old wife Dorcus and their son Israel Ahimbisibwe Jr. who was five. Pastor Ahimbisibwe's 17-year-old son Emmanuel attended a private school in California. Isaac Tiharihondi, his 19-year-old son, graduated in 2014 from Houston's Memorial High School.

     Isaac told his father he joined the Marines and would report for duty on February 6, 2015. The pastor didn't believe his son, and this led to an argument and bad feelings between the two of them.

     On Sunday evening February 1, 2015 Redeemer church members Keever Wallace and his wife Brooke knocked on the pastor's apartment door after the vicar, his wife and their son failed to show up that morning for church. No one came to the door that morning and the pastor did not return calls to his cellphone.

     The next day, at nine in the morning, Brooke Wallace returned to the Ahimbisibwe apartment. When no one responded she contacted the manager of the complex who had a key.

     The building manager called the Houston Fire Department and waited for the arrival of the emergency personnel before entering the Ahimbisibwe apartment. When members of the fire department discovered three dead bodies inside the dwelling they notified the police.

     In one of the bathrooms Houston police officers found the bodies of the vicar, his wife and their 5-year-old son. The parents had been beaten to death with a lamp, a baseball bat and a hammer. The boy had been bludgeoned and stabbed in the neck and back.

     Investigators found no evidence of forced entry and no indication that the killer had taken anything from the apartment.

     On Wednesday February 4, 2015 in Jackson, Mississippi 350 miles from Houston, police arrested Isaac Tiharihondi, the vicar's 19-year-old son on a Texas warrant charging him with triple murder. Officers booked the suspect into the Hines County Detention Center in Raymond Mississippi where he would await extradition back to Houston.

     Isaac Tirarihondi had been staying at a Jackson Mississippi motel. His mother had told friends that she was worried about him. He had lied about the Marines and was depressed.

     On February 1, 2016 Isaac Tiharihondi pleaded guilty to three counts of capital murder. The judge, pursuant to the plea agreement, sentenced Tiharihondi to life in prison without the possibility of parole. On the day of his sentencing the unemotional killer remained silent as to why he had committed such a horrific crime. 

Christopher Evans Hubbart: The Pillowcase Rapist

     In 1969 when Christopher Evans Hubbart attended high school in Los Angeles he reached out and touched a woman's breast as she walked by him on the street. He touched several woman this way until he quickly evolved into a rapist. In the early 1970s the sexual predator drove around Los Angeles in the morning hours looking for women to rape.

     Hubbart had a simple criminal modus operandi: in residential neighborhoods he'd look for open garage doors that revealed that the man of the house had left for work. If Hubbart saw toys in the yard or in the garage he knew children were in the house. Hubbart believed that mothers protective of their children were more likely to submit to him without a struggle. As a calculating sexual predator Christopher Hubbart represented one of society's worst nightmares.

     Once inside his carefully chosen victim's home Hubbart bound the woman's hands and while he raped her held a pillow over her face. In 1972 the so-called "pillowcase rapist" sexually assaulted 26 women in Los Angeles County.

     Detectives identified and arrested Hubbart in 1973. He pleaded guilty and instead of being sent to prison for at least fifty years the judge sent him for sex offender treatment at the Atascadero State Hospital. At that time criminal justice practitioners in California thought they could rehabilitate anyone. As a result the state became a haven for sex offenders. 

     In 1979 after a team of therapists, counselors, psychologists and psychiatrists proudly proclaimed that the pillowcase rapist had been cured and was no longer a danger to society, these mental health experts decided to treat him as an outpatient. Mr. Hubbart must have been grateful for his clean bill of health and the chance to continue his career as a serial rapist.

     Within months of walking out of the state hospital Christopher Hubbart raped several women in northern California. Convicted in 1980, the judge sentenced him to prison instead of putting him back into the hands of counselors and therapists. But this was California, and in 1990, corrections experts released him on parole. As could be expected by anyone who knew anything about serial sex offenders, Hubbart re-offended. He raped a female jogger shortly after his release from prison.

      The authorities sent the pillowcase rapist back to prison. One would think that as a habitual rapist Mr. Hubbart was finally in prison for good. The parole authorities, obviously with warm spots in their hearts for serial sex offenders, released him back into society after three years behind bars.

     In 1996 while living in the Los Angeles County town of Claremont, California Mr. Hubbart told his parole officer that he felt he was losing control of himself. Later that year, pursuant to a new California law called the Sexual Predator Act, a judge committed Hubbart to the Coalinga State Hospital. The new law applied to serial sex offenders like Hubbart who were likely to re-offend. (Politicians in the state had grown tired of correction officials and mental health experts putting serial sex offenders back into society.)

     In May 2013 history repeated itself when a judge in Los Angeles County ordered Christopher Hubbart released from the state hospital. Once free he would come under the supervision of bureaucrats running the Forensic Conditional Release Program. Under this program, administered by the California Department of State Hospitals, Mr. Hubbart would receive free housing, continued psychological assessment, group and individual therapy and regular home visits. 

     Serial rapist Hubbart, under the release program, would be required to wear a GPS monitoring device. He would also be subjected to random drug testing, regular polygraph examinations and house searches. He was also prohibited from watching television shows and digital media that "acted as a stimulus to arousal." Under this program a security guard would be posted at his place of residence and he would not be allowed outside by himself at night. 

     In July 2013 District Attorney Jackie Lacey petitioned a state judge to block Hubbart's release from the state hospital on the grounds of public safety. The judge denied the request and the government appealed that decision. On August 25, 2013 the California Supreme Court affirmed the lower court's denial of the prosecutor's motion. The high court justices did not accompany their ruling with a written decision.

     Prosecutor Lacey, in speaking to reporters after losing the appeal, said, "We are now committed to working with law enforcement partners to ensure that all terms of conditions of release are strictly enforced. We will do everything in our power to keep all members of our community safe from harm."

     In July 2014 mental health authorities released the pillowcase rapist to his new home in Palmdale, California. Residents of this desert community northeast of Los Angeles were up in arms. A group of activists formed an organization called "Ladies of Lake LA Committed to Getting Hubbart Back into Custody". Members of the group held daily demonstrations in front of the rapist's house.

     The obvious problem with Hubbart's release was this: prosecutor Jackie Lacey could not guarantee that this serial rapist would not take off his GPS ankle bracelet and slip into the night and rape more women. The prosecutor knew this, the police knew it and so did the bureaucrats in charge of Hubbart's supervision.

    Sixty-three-year-old Christopher Hubbart had been kicked out of the state hospital to make room for younger rapists. The state was simply overrun with sexual predators. Christopher Hubbart's release had nothing to do with rehabilitation. Even the bureaucrats in California realized these people could not be fixed.

     In September and October 2014 Christopher Hubbart violated the conditions of his release by letting the power in his ankle monitor run low. Prosecutor Jackie Lacey charged Hubbart with parole violation and petitioned Judge Richard Loftus to send him back to the Coalinga State Hospital. Hubbart's attorney, public defender Christopher Yuen, argued that his client had not re-offended and that parolees routinely let their monitor batteries run down.

    At the parole revocation hearing on May 11, 2015 Judge Loftus ruled that Christopher Hubbart "was not a danger to the health and safety of others." As a result the rapist would remain free. The decision did not go down well with the citizens of Hubbart's neighborhood in Palmdale, California.

     On August 9, 2016, a Santa Clara County spokesperson announced that Hubbart had "failed to meet the terms of his release." As a result he was returned to the Coalinga State Hospital. The county official did not reveal how the serial rapist had violated the terms of his release. Hubbart's Palmdale neighbors were jubilant.

     In September 2024, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon, the well-known criminal friendly prosecutor, announced that Mr. Hubbart would be released from the state hospital and placed back into the community. This decision did not please the residents of the community where this serial rapist would live.

Releasing Green River Killer Gary Ridgway: Fanatics On the Bench

     Throughout the 1980s and 1990s the so-called Green River Killer Gary Ridgway murdered at least 71 teenage girls in and around Seattle and Tacoma, Washington. Police officers took the serial killer into custody in November 2001. Two years later, Ridgway, in order to avoid the death sentence pleaded guilty to 48 murders.

     Gary Ridgway is serving a life sentence without parole at the maximum security prison in Walla Walla, Washington.

      During the COVID-19 pandemic 1,000 "non-violent" criminals were released from Washington state prisons. But for advocates of the free-prisoner movement these releases were just the beginning. These "social justice" warriors wanted to use the coronavirus epidemic as an opportunity to release 11,715 Washington state inmates from the state's prisons. That number amounted to two-thirds of the Washington state prison population.

     Of the 11,715 criminals the social justice people hoped to see back on the street, 470 of them were violent criminals serving life sentences without parole and 5,272 of them were behind bars for crimes such as murder, rape, aggravated assault, kidnapping and child molestation.

     In March 2020, lawyers representing Washington's get-out-of-prison movement filed a petition with the state supreme court asking the justices to authorize the early release of any prisoner who was more than fifty years old, had a underlying health condition or had less than 18 months to go on his or her sentence. If a prisoner met any one of these conditions he or she would be eligible to walk free.

     Based upon this prison release criteria, serial killer Gary Ridgway met the requirement for early release. A man who had murdered 71 girls would be set free to murder again. Also eligible for release was Spokane serial killer Robert Yates. Between 1975 and 1988 Yates murdered at least 13 women.

     The Washington Supreme Court petitioners demanded the release of  qualifying prisoners regardless of what they had done, or if they posed a serious risk to public safety. And this included convicted serial killers Ridgway and Yates.

     In late April 2020 the Washington Supreme Court, in a 5 to 4 decision, rejected the early prisoner release petition.

     According to Spokane prosecutor Larry Haskell, even if the supreme court had authorized the massive release of prisoners serial killers Ridgway and Yates would not have been set free. Nevertheless, the four radical justices who voted in favor of this reckless petition should have been removed from the bench, disbarred and denied their pensions. 

The Levi Norwood Murder Case

     In 2020, 37-year-old Joshua Norwood lived in a home on Elk Road in Midland, Virginia with his 34-year-old wife Jennifer and their two sons, Wyatt, 6 and and 17-year-old Levi. The family had moved to Virginia from Maine in 2010. Mr. Norwood had been a sales representative. His wife Jennifer was a licensed nurses's assistant.

     At six o'clock in the evening of February 14, 2020, Joshua Norwood called 911 and reported that he had just arrived home and found that his wife and his 6-year-old son had been shot to death. Shortly after entering the house someone in the dwelling had shot and wounded Mr. Norwood in the head. Armed with his own gun he fired back. He didn't see the shooter but believed the bullet that struck him had been fired from the doorway leading into his basement. Mr. Norwood ran out of the house.

     The 911 operator dispatched an ambulance and officers with the Fauquier County Sheriff's Office to the scene.

     As Joshua Norwood was transported to a nearby hospital in stable condition, deputies, thinking that the other son, 17-year-old Levi Norwood may have been the shooter and was barricaded in the dwelling, surrounded the house.

     At ten-fifteen that night police officers forcibly entered the Norwood house. Inside they found the bodies of Jennifer and Wyatt Norwood but not Levi. They searched the house and did not find the murder weapon. 

     Officers placed the immediate neighborhood on lockdown and instituted a search for the five-foot-nine, 125 pound suspect with his hair dyed purple. Since the teen did not have access to a vehicle officers assumed he was on foot. 

     The next day, Saturday, February 15, 2020, a teenager meeting Levi Norwood's description was seen driving a 2007 red Toyota Camry that had been stolen that morning from a home about ten miles from the murder scene.

     At four o'clock that day a security guard at a Target store on Chapel Hill Boulevard in Durham, North Carolina caught a teenage boy with purple hair stealing hair dye, items of clothing and a backpack. The shoplifter was identified as Levi Norwood. The stolen Toyota was parked outside the store.

     Officers with the Durham Police Department ran Levi's name through a national fugitive database and learned that the teen was wanted in connection with a double homicide in Midland, Virginia. Police officers booked Livi Norwood into a local jail where he was held for extradition back to Fauquier County, Virginia.

     On Sunday, February 16, 2020, a television reporter questioned a Norwood family member named Victoria Eaton who said the violence at the Norwood house was not something she thought Levi Norwood was capable of, describing the act as "totally out of his character." She also said, " It doesn't make any sense" and noted that Levi had a difficult home life.

     Levi Norwood was a junior at Liberty High School in Bealton, Virginia. Local reporters spoke to several of his classmates who identified Levi's parents as racists who didn't like black people. Moreover, his father had been extremely upset over the fact Levi had been dating a black girl.

     In August 2022 Levi Norwood pleaded guilty to the first-degree murder of his mother and second-degree murder of his brother, Wyatt. The judge in January 2023 sentenced him to life in prison plus 40 years, but under Virginia law, because he was 17 at the time of the murders he would be eligible for parole in 20 years. 

The Alisha Noel-Murray Murder-For-Hire Case

     Omar Murray, a Jamaican-born ironworker resided with his wife Alisha Noel-Murray in a Brooklyn row-house owned by Alisha's mother. The couple, married three years, had moved into the Brownsville neighborhood in early 2012. Omar was thirty-seven. His wife, a home health aide with Visiting Nurse Service of New York was just twenty-five. A religious man, Omar regularly attended the Full Gospel Assembly of God Church in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn.

     On Sunday, February 24, 2013 as Omar Murray entered his Lott Avenue house at one in the afternoon he was approached by a man who shot him once in the chest. The victim stumbled into the house and collapsed in the entrance hallway. At the time of the shooting his wife Alisha was in the house recovering from surgery. She locked herself in her bedroom and called 911. Mr. Murray died a few hours after being rushed by ambulance to the Brookdale University Hospital.

     The next day New York City Detectives arrested three local men in connection with the murder. Dameon Lovell told interrogators that the dead man's wife had been his lover. Together they had come up with the idea of having Omar murdered in a staged robbery. The 29-year-old murder-for-hire co-mastermind said that Alisha Noel-Murray wanted to cash in on her husband's two life insurance policies.

     In 2009, shortly after they were married, the couple took out a policy with National Benefit for $530,000. Sometime later Mr. Murray's life was insured for an additional $150,000.

     Kirk Portious, a 25-year-old with a history of violent crime confessed to being the hit-man. The prosecutor charged Portious and Dameon Lovell with first-degree murder. The third man taken into custody, 22-year-old Dion Jack, drove the getaway vehicle. He was charged with hindering prosecution. The judge set his bail at $5,000. Portious and Lovell were held without bond in the jail on Riker's Island.

     Funeral services for the murder victim were held at the Full Gospel Assemble of God Church on Friday night, March 8, 2013. Omar Murray's widow, who had not been charged with a crime sat in the front pew chewing gum. Omar's uncle, in speaking to a New York Daily News reporter outside the Crown Heights church, said, "To see her [Alisha] sitting there with her crocodile tears makes me sick. We know she killed our Omar. Where is the justice?"

     Alisha Noel-Murray, to the same reporter, said, "I'm not hiding from no one....This is ridiculous."

     In June 2016 Alisha Noel-Murray was charged with first-degree murder in connection with Mr. Murray's death. Both life insurance companies refused to pay benefits on the ground local prosecutors had charged her as a murder-for-hire mastermind. She sued the National Benefit Life Insurance company and lost.

     Portious and Lovell awaited their murder trials while incarcerated on Riker's Island.

     In March 2017 Dameon Lovell pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for a 25 year to life prison sentence.

     On June 8, 2017, a jury in Brooklyn, New York found Alisha Noel-Murray guilty of first-degree murder. Dameon Lovell's testimony helped convict her. A week later a separate jury found Kirk Portious, the hit man, guilty of the same offense.

     The judge, in July 2017, sentenced Noel-Murray and her hit man to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The Forgotten Inmate

       The Dona Ana County Jail is in Las Cruces, New Mexico in the south central part of the state not far from the Mexican border. In August 2005 a driving while intoxicated and receiving stolen property arrestee named Stephen Slevin was placed into the 846-cot lockup. The 51-year-old, because of his history of mental illness was segregated from the jail population. For reasons that defy understanding, Mr. Slevin remained in solitary confinement until his release in June 2007. After having him in custody for 22 months, the local prosecutor dropped the charges against the so-called "forgotten inmate." (Had he been truly forgotten, the inmate would have starved to death. Since someone fed this isolated prisoner for 22 months jail personnel knew of his situation. So how did this happen?)

     The "forgotten" prisoner had entered the Dona Ana County Jail in relatively good health, mentally and physically. He left the place weighting 133 pounds with bed sores and rotten teeth. (During his incarceration he had pulled out his own abscessed tooth.) Slevin also walked out of the facility suffering from post-traumatic stress.

     Attorney Matthew Coyte in December 2008 filed a civil rights suit on Slevin's behalf against Dana Ana County, New Mexico. County authorities fought the suit but at Slevin's civil rights trial in March 2012 the jury awarded the plaintiff $22 million. Fighting the case had been an obvious mistake. The county appealed the award on grounds the damages were excessive.

     In March 2013 the Dona Ana County Board of Commissioners dropped the appeal and settled the case. The county agreed to pay the "forgotten inmate" $15.5 million.

     The settlement resolved the civil side of the case. But what about the criminal aspect of Slevin's 22-month wrongful imprisonment? The bureaucrats responsible for this man's ordeal were clearly guilty of a degree of reckless indifference that was criminal. But holding government employees responsible for malfeasance is extremely difficult. The nature of bureaucracy protects incompetent practitioners by making it almost impossible to pinpoint wrongdoing to any one person.

     Had Stephen Slevin been falsely imprisoned in a private sector facility corrections personnel would be serving prison sentences.

     If Mr. Slevin, months into his hellish confinement, had committed suicide this would have been a homicide case. The taxpayers of Dona Ana County had to foot the bill for this stunning example of governmental negligence, but no public employee was held criminally culpable for this inexplicable corrections fiasco. 

The Brady Oestrike Double Murder/Suicide Case

     In Grand Rapids, Michigan, 18-year-old Brooke Slocum and her boyfriend Charles Oppenneer, 25, were homeless. She was eight months pregnant. The couple frequently exchanged sex for food and a temporary place to stay. They hooked up with johns through the online service Craigslist. An Internet pay-for-sex arrangement brought them into contact with Brady Oestrike.

     The 31-year-old Oestrike, employed as a lineman for a utility company, resided in a suburb of Grand Rapids called Wyoming. Because he talked about killing people and having bizarre dreams many of his acquaintances considered him disturbed.

     On Saturday, July 12, 2014, Slocum, Oppenneer and Oestrike engaged in sexual activity at Oestrike's house. At some point that night the utility company lineman stabbed Charles Oppenneer to death and took Slocum prisoner.

     Hikers, on Wednesday July 16, 2014 came upon a headless corpse in nearby Gezon Park. A forensic pathologist identified the remains as Charles Oppenneer.

     The day following the gruesome discovery Mr. Oestrike strangled the pregnant teen to death. He stuffed her body into the truck of his car for later disposal.

     By now homicide detectives had identified Oestrike as a suspect in the murder and missing person case. At nine-fifteen on the night of July 17, 2014 uniformed police officers and investigators rolled up to Oestrike's house in Wyoming armed with a search warrant. The suspect saw them coming, jumped into his car and drove off.

     Following a brief chase Oestrike crashed his vehicle into a tree. When officers approached the wrecked car they found him dead. He shot himself in the head.

     Inside the dead man's trunk officers found Brooke Slocum's body. Her unborn baby was dead as well.

     A search of Oestrike's house produced several guns, ammunition, swords, knives and items that belonged to the murdered couple. Mr. Oppenneer's head was never found.