Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signs law to purge voters from permanent early voting list

[BumRushDaShow]

7. Seems the DA primary is a mud-slinging fest

with the FOP-backed Vega vs the "progressive"-backed Krasner. Vega has been very nasty and aggressive. I must have gotten a dozen mailers from his campaign as they are going "all out" on this. `IMHO although one might want a D.A. to be assertive in terms of building a good case and being persistent, Vega seems to want to keep doing the same thing over and over and focusing on conviction "stats", which basically entailed railroading innocent individuals, leading to a number of convictions eventually being overturned due to proof of coercion and other falsified evidence and information, resulting in the city spending millions in settlements.

The Philly Inquirer has been doing a multi-part series on it. Part 1 was here -

Losing conviction

Philly’s murder exonerations raise questions about decades of homicide investigations — and whether the misconduct alleged in those cases was part of a pattern that led to many more wrongful convictions.

by Samantha Melamed
Published May 7, 2021

(snip)

According to Crawley, who first made those claims in a civil lawsuit, Detective Angela Gaines kept her for hours and would not let her leave or speak to her mother. “Sit there and think about what could happen to your daughter,” she said the detective threatened. Gaines did not respond to requests for comment. Finally, exhausted and scared, worried for her 2-month-old daughter, Crawley relented. She went with detectives into a room with a video camera, to read aloud and sign what she said was a fabricated statement, that her brother had drawn his gun first. “She pushed me to say it,” Crawley said. “They treated me like I did it.”

The city settled with the family for $210,000 — though lawyers for the city, answering the Crawleys’ lawsuit, denied that detectives threatened the young woman, detained her against her will, fabricated statements, or covered up any misconduct.

Yet, Crawley’s claims are hardly unusual. She is one of at least 15 people over the last 30 years who have said in testimony, court filings, and complaints to police that Philadelphia homicide detectives threatened to take away their children if they did not provide a satisfactory statement. She is one of at least 62, many of them vulnerable due to youth, addiction, illiteracy, or disability, who have reported being held in isolation for hours, cut off from a parent or lawyer, in what was known around the criminal courthouse as “homicide hotel.” (At least two of those people were hospitalized, according to lawsuits, after being deprived of medications for diabetes and high blood pressure while at the unit.) And she’s among 81 who have said detectives fabricated statements or supplied false information.

Those are some of the claims revealed in a new Inquirer database that for the first time aims to compile such allegations into a single resource. It is based on court documents, public records, interviews, and other reporting. The Inquirer database includes 49 allegations of physical abuse, 64 of threats, and 28 of manipulation or destruction of evidence.

More: https://www.inquirer.com/crime/a/philadelphia-murder-exonerations-wrongful-convictions-20210507.html

Part 2 was published today (focusing on one particular cop who has racked up the coercive testimonies resulting in 7 convictions (so far) that were later overturned) -

Dozens accused a detective of fabrication and abuse. Many cases he built remain intact.

The Philly DA has stipulated to coercion by Detective James Pitts, who helped build seven murder cases that were dismissed, acquitted, or overturned. He remains in the Philadelphia Police Department.

by Samantha Melamed
Published 6 hours ago

(snip)

Seven murder cases Pitts helped build have fallen apart either before, during, or after trial — a pattern The Inquirer first began covering in 2013. At least six people who have named Pitts in lawsuits against the city have settled for a total of $1 million. According to court records, he has also been the subject of at least 11 citizen complaints and five internal investigations, and was twice accused of intimate-partner violence, once involving a woman who was a murder witness. During a 2011 trial, a witness also alleged that Pitts hit her inside the Stout Center for Criminal Justice after she’d finished testifying the night before; court proceedings on that allegation were conducted under seal. Pitts denied all of these allegations.

Just this month, a man was exonerated of murder a decade after he first claimed Pitts and his partner, Ohmarr Jenkins, coerced his confession during a long and violent interrogation.

Yet, dozens of convictions fraught with similar allegations about Pitts remain intact. An Internal Affairs probe that’s at least two years old has not yielded any public action. The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office has noted concerns, but has not committed to a full review of Pitts’ cases. As of 2019, Pitts was reassigned to the Delaware Valley Information Center, a counterterrorism hub, but he remains employed by the Philadelphia Police Department. A department spokesperson declined to comment.

In an interview, Pitts attributed the allegations to personal vendettas, the anti-police agenda of the DA’s Office, and the respective desperate desires of defendants to evade justice and of witnesses to avoid snitching. He added that he’s never had a finding against him by the Police Board of Inquiry, which makes disciplinary findings on sustained Internal Affairs complaints.

More: https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadephia-homicide-detective-james-pitts-losing-conviction-exonerations-murder-20210513.html

It's going to take a long time to fix a chronically broken system and try to deal with protecting witnesses who are afraid to come forward. As long as the "wrong people" are captured and run through the system for "statistics" purposes, the crimes have and will continue to occur because the ones who should have been arrested, are still out in the streets committing crime.

I think part of what happened is that over many decades, time and money was spent to clear out the "old" mafia crime syndicates and those have now been replaced with more "agile" crime syndicates, which are adept at using social media to facilitate their activities. Many of the mafia work involved federal investigations and IMHO, that needs to start happening here because I expect some of it (like drugs/gun-running) is happening interstate, and would fit with a federal response).