After first claiming it was unable to do, Dallas P.D. has fired Amber Guyger, the officer who forced her way into a neighbor's apartment and killed him, supposedly under the impression that it was her home and that he was an intruder.

Dallas Police Chief U. Reneé Hall terminated Police Officer Amber Guyger, #10702, during a hearing held September 24, 2018.

An Internal Affairs investigation concluded that on September 9, 2018, Officer Guyger, #10702, engaged in adverse conduct when she was arrested for Manslaughter.

Officer Guyger was terminated for her actions. She was hired in November 2013 and was assigned to the Southeast Patrol Division.

Under civil service rules, Officer Guyger has the right to appeal her discipline.

Guyger is trouble, but has received an alarming degree of special treatment since killing Botham Jean. Read the rest

Charged with paying a 16-year-old girl for sex at a hotel in Austin, Texas, Cody Wilson was bailed Sunday and is a free man again—at least for now. The BBC reports that Wilson, famous for promoting 3D-printed gun plans, was arrested by Taipei police and returned to the US over the weekend. KHOU 11 filmed him leaving jail and hopping into a cab.

Wilson’s attorney Samy Khalil of Gerger, Khalil & Hennessy released a statement late Sunday evening.

“We are glad that Cody is back in Texas again where we can work with him on his case. That’s our focus right now, representing our client and preparing his defense.”

It’s been a long journey back for the accused 3D-printed gun designer.

Authorities say the 30-year-old flew out to Taiwan after a friend told him he was being investigated for allegedly paying $500 for to have sex with a 16-year-old girl he contacted online.

Surveillance video shows Wilson checking in to a Taipei hotel Thursday. That’s where police finally arrested him on Friday.

How can this guy call himself a Libertarian? You go to Thailand, not Taiwan: just ask Elon! Read the rest

When Vancouver tech retailer NCIX went bankrupt, it stopped paying its bills, including the bills for the storage where its servers were being kept; that led to the servers being auctioned off without being wiped first, containing sensitive data -- addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, passwords, etc -- for thousands of customers. Also on the servers: tax and payroll information for the company's employees. Read the rest

(Funny, as soon as I started typing these words I got a phone call from a telemarketer.) According to a new study, half of the 50 billion mobile phone calls that will be made in 2019 will come from scammers. I wish only half the calls coming to my phone were from telemarketers trying to cheat me. I think about 90% of my calls are spam. I use Nomorobo and Jolly Roger to stem the flow, but plenty of the crooked calls still make their way past these filters.

From First Orion:

There are a number of techniques scammers use to get people to pick up the phone, but the most popular method is known as “Neighborhood Spoofing,” which happens when a scammer disguises their phone number and displays it as a local number on a user’s caller ID. For example, a scammer may spoof their phone number to match the area code and 3-digit prefix of the person they are targeting and ultimately increase the likelihood of someone answering.

Not only is this tactic harmful towards the person being called, the owner of the phone number used to make the call is often subjected to return calls from the recipient of the scam call. These return calls come as surprises since the owner of the number used to make the scam call is not aware a call was ever placed from their number, leading to frustration and confusion amongst all parties.

Third-party call blocking apps are largely ineffective when it comes to detecting spoof calls since they can only black-list against known scam numbers, not legitimate numbers that are momentarily hijacked by scammers.

A redacted version was "read" to CNN, it reports. Brett Kavanaugh, who has signalled willingness to both overturn Roe v. Wade and to immunize the presidency from indictment or prosecution, is Trump's pick for the vacant Supreme Court seat. Christine Blasey Ford is the California professor who claims he tried to rape her when she was 15 and he 17. An excerpt:

Kavanaugh physically pushed me into a bedroom as I was headed for a bathroom up a short stair well from the living room. They locked the door and played loud music precluding any successful attempt to yell for help.

Kavanaugh was on top of me while laughing with REDACTED, who periodically jumped onto Kavanaugh. They both laughed as Kavanaugh tried to disrobe me in their highly inebriated state. With Kavanaugh's hand over my mouth I feared he may inadvertently kill me.

From across the room a very drunken REDACTED said mixed words to Kavanaugh ranging from "go for it" to "stop."

At one point when REDACTED jumped onto the bed the weight on me was substantial. The pile toppled, and the two scrapped with each other. After a few attempts to get away, I was able to take this opportune moment to get up and run across to a hallway bathroom. I locked the bathroom door behind me. Both loudly stumbled down the stair well at which point other persons at the house were talking with them.

Remember that this is a transcript of a phone conversation and may not be the verbatim text of Ford's letter. Read the rest

Internal emails show that the Berkeley, California Police Department (BPD) talked of building a “counter-narrative” on social media against anti-fascist protesters as BPD tweeted out their names and mugshots, then boasted of retweets and “engagement” metrics when mugshots went viral. This amounts to cops doxxing protesters and high-fiving each other over it. That's creepy, and seems like an obvious abuse of power, if not also an abuse of the law. Read the rest

One of Trump's border officials told Politico that the administration is planning to permanently bar Canadians who invest in or start legal cannabis businesses in the US or Canada from entering the USA. Read the rest

Nathan Matthias, 35, may have been inebriated when he fired a shotgun inside his apartment to defend himself against imaginary clowns who had illegally entered his residence. The Pennsylvanian gentleman will now spend five years in prison.

From the police report:

Police were dispatched at 9:40 a.m. for a report of a man shooting a gun inside his home. When officers arrived, they found Matthias standing next to the house holding a shotgun and ordered him to put the gun on the ground.

Matthias told police that two small clowns were running around his apartment and he had shot at them.

The house was searched and no one was found inside Matthias' apartment. A resident in the first-floor apartment when Matthias fired the shotgun was not injured.

Police noticed that Matthias' eyes were bloodshot and asked him if he had been drinking. Matthias told investigators he had been drinking the previous night and had yet to go to bed. Police found a bottle of vodka in his pocket.

While being questioned outside, Matthias pointed next door and said he still saw clowns on the neighbor's roof, but officers did not see any.

[via]

Image: nito/Shutterstock Read the rest

President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, is pleading guilty to two criminal charges under plea deal terms to include his cooperation as a witness in the investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Read the rest

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the UK spy agency GCHQ acted illegally when it engaged in mass-scale domestic surveillance of every Briton's electronic communications, a programme that was revealed by documents supplied to journalists by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. Read the rest

A Portland, Oregon-based romance novelist has been charged with a crime she once wrote about. Read the rest

What kind of person shoots a firefighter? We don't know yet, because the identities of two hunters, charged by the FBI with chasing down and shooting at two Australian firefighters and two local police officers working with the US Forest Service in Washington state, haven't been released.

From The Age:

Fairfax Media has been told the hunters pursued the four across a ridge, despite being warned they were in a restricted area and should leave.

One of the local officers is understood to have used his phone to record a last message to his family, so concerned was he about the two hunters in pursuit.

However, all four managed to find cover and were later safely airlifted out of the area.

Image: Australian fightfighters in Washington state/Facebook. Read the rest

Jason Boek swerved his truck in front of an Uber driver at 2 a.m., forced him to pull over, then approached his vehicle while claiming to have a pistol and threatening to shoot. Boek was stalking a woman and under the mistaken impression she was a passenger in the vehicle. The Uber driver, Robert Westlake, pulled his own gun and shot Boek once, killing him.

Given the violent threat and the dangerous circumstances, no-one's in trouble: Westlake even performed CPR and called 911, to no avail. But here's the local sheriff to put the unique stamp of Florida on it all:

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said Mr Boek was a "goofball".

"Here's a message for the hotheads of the community: don't do that stuff," the sheriff said.

"Good people carry guns and they will shoot you. A lot. Graveyard dead."

Dr. Tom Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention between 2009 and 2017, was arrested today on charges of forcible touching, sex abuse, and harassment. Frieden allegedly groped a woman in October. She reported the assault in July. Frieden also served as New York City Health Commissioner.

[via ABC]

Image: Geoffrey Cowley/Wikipedia This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Read the rest

A 12-person jury in Texas found Shafeeq Sheikh, a former physician at Baylor College of Medicine, guilty of raping a heavily sedated patient. The jury recommended that Sheikh receive no prison time, and state law compelled the judge to comply.

From Fox News:

DNA evidence was collected from a rape kit — but it took two years for charges to be filed against Sheikh. The DNA collected from the former doctor’s cheek swab match those in a rape kit.

Surveillance video also captured Sheikh on the floor where the woman’s room was located. He used his badge to swipe onto her floor at least 12 times that night.

“He sought her out. He chose her to prey on,” Assistant District Attorney Lauren Reeder said during Friday’s sentencing. “You know he’s the type of man who would go in multiple times, testing the waters, seeing how far he could go and get back to his normal business after that.”

“You know he’s the kind man of who walked around for two years before he was charged with this… knowing what he did,” she added.

In court, Sheikh insisted that the sex had been consensual. Sheikh’s lawyer Stanley Schneider told the jury it should feel sorry for Sheikh: “The dreams of a man, the childhood dream to become a doctor, were shattered by his conduct. He destroyed his own dreams. What he has done to himself and his family is punishment. They are serving his sentence with him. His children are serving his sentence with him.” Read the rest

In secret court proceedings, the U.S. government is trying to force Facebook to help wiretap Messenger. Facebook has declined, so the Justice Department is asking a judge for an order of contempt. Read the rest

When scammers get inside of the networks of financial institutions, they sometimes stage "cashouts" where they recruit confederates around the world to all hit ATMs at the same time with cards tied to hacked accounts and withdraw the maximum the ATMs will allow; but the wilier criminals first disable the anti-fraud and withdrawal maximum features in the banks' systems, enabling confederates to drain ATMs of all the cash they contain. This is called an "unlimited cashout." Read the rest