School tells cop: leave uniform, gun at home
He’s not the type of armed man on campus you’d expect parents to be concerned about, but apparently a police officer dropping off his daughter at school was just too scary for some parents in Mesa, AZ, according to KSAV Fox 10 News…
And the school principal actually called that officer to ask him not to wear his uniform on campus ever again. The issue was that other parents were concerned because he had a gun.
The officer, who works for the Coolidge Police Department, is a parent of a kid that goes to Entz Elementary School in Mesa.
As might be expected, the request made by school officials to not wear his uniform and gun on campus shocked and upset a lot of people.
All Officer Scott Urkov did was drop his daughter off at her school. Little did he know that what he was wearing that day would lead to a call from the principal, who later apologized “if she offended him.” While some parents weren’t too keen about an officer with a gun on campus, others say their kids would feel a lot safer, KSAZ reported.
ATF sting misplaces millions in cash, smokes
Some people often wonder if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is really the gang that can’t shoot straight. They do seem to make unusual headlines.
ATF agents acting without authorization conducted dozens of undercover investigations of illegal tobacco sales, misused some of $162 million in profits from the stings and lost track of at least 420 million cigarettes, the Justice Department’s inspector general said on Sept. 25, according to the Associated Press.
In one case, ATF agents sold $15 million in cigarettes and later turned over $4.9 million in profits from the sales to a confidential informant—even though the agency did not properly account for the transaction.
The ATF’s newly-appointed director, B. Todd Jones, said the audit covered only selected, “historical” ATF investigations between 2006 and 2011, and said the agency had tightened its internal guidelines since then.
The audit described widespread lack of ATF oversight and inadequate paperwork in the agency’s “churning investigations,” undercover operations that use proceeds from illicit cigarette sales to pay for the ATF’s costs. The audit came as a new blow to a beleaguered agency still reeling from congressional inquiries into the ATF’s flawed handling of the Operation Fast and Furious weapons tracking probes in Mexico, as well as a long history of screw-ups.
“ATF’s guidance regarding churning investigations lacked breadth and specificity, and managers at ATF headquarters as well as managers and special agents at ATF field offices often disregarded it,” Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz wrote in the 53-page audit.
Jones said the agency has adopted most of the procedures recommend by the IG. While accepting responsibility for “management and oversight lapses that allowed those deficiencies to develop,” he insisted that “the report’s findings do not reflect current ATF policy or practice in this area.” Reviewing three-dozen ATF undercover cigarette stings between 2006 and 2011, the IG found that one of those stings did not have any approval, either from the ATF or the Justice Department. In that 2009 case, ATF officials allowed a tobacco distributor working as an ATF confidential informant to keep $4.9 million in profits from cigarette sales to criminal suspects. ATF officials justified the move by explaining the $4.9 million covered the informant’s expenses.
But the IG said the agency failed to “require the informant to provide adequate documentation to support or justify those expenses.”
An adult at 18? Not anymore in UK
Adolescence no longer ends when people hit 18, according to updated guidelines being given to child psychologists in the United Kingdom, if not yet reported in other countries.
The new directive is designed to extend the age range that child psychologists can work with from 18 years old up to 25, according to the Daily Mail online.
It is hoped the initiative will stop children being “rushed” through their childhood and feeling pressured to achieve key milestones quickly, the BBC reported.
There are now three stages of adolescence, according to the BBC report: early adolescence that ranges from 12 to 14 years, middle adolescence from 15 to 17 years, and 18 and over is classed as late adolescence.
It has been introduced because research now suggests the brain continues developing through and past teenage years, well into a person’s mid-twenties and thirties.
This means that some of the methods and practices used in child psychology could also apply, and help, older people.
It wasn’t just kids, it was the town police
A New York man, frustrated when his pro-Second Amendment sign kept disappearing, was surprised when the hidden camera he set up revealed the culprit to be a local cop.
Jon Gibson, of rural Lake Lincolndale, about 50 miles north of New York City, told FoxNews.com he set up a hunting field camera near the sign, which reads “Protect the Second Amendment,” and features the silhouette of an assault rifle, after two mysteriously vanished. A third sign disappeared before the camera finally captured the sign stealer—a police officer from the nearby Somers Police Department.
“It was pure shock to see,” Gibson said to FoxNews.com about first seeing the video recorded on Monday. “He had a huge smile on his face as he’s kicking down the sign.
“I was in total disbelief to see such criminal behavior from a law-enforcement officer,” Gibson Aid.
Somers Town Supervisor Mary Beth Murphy later said the police officer was justified in taking Gibson’s pro-Second Amendment signs as the city of Somers determined it was located on “public property,” Town Supervisor Mary Beth Murphy later told TheBlaze.
However, the man’s attorney, Richard Bombardo, of Syracuse, strongly refuted the claim, telling TheBlaze “that’s not what the law says.” To that effect, the attorney said he and his client, Gibson, will “probably” file a federal civil rights lawsuit.
