A 45-year-old wheelchair-bound man who allegedly robbed a Space Coast Credit Union branch on Merritt Island this afternoon was arrested minutes later near the parking lot of a FLORIDA TODAY office a block away from the bank, the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office said.
Merritt Island resident Christopher Reed was arrested about 4:20 p.m., about 10 minutes after the bank was robbed, according to investigators.
Investigators said Reed, who is a paraplegic confined to a motorized wheelchair, entered the bank on the 400 block of Fortenberry Road on Merritt Island, and demanded money, after telling the employees that he was armed with an explosive device.
“He left the bank with an undisclosed amount of money,” according to Brevard County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Vic DeSantis.
The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects, the state police chief acknowledged yesterday.
olice Superintendent Terrence B. Sheridan revealed at a legislative hearing that the surveillance operation, which targeted opponents of the death penalty and the Iraq war, was far more extensive than was known when its existence was disclosed in July.
The department started sending letters of notification Saturday to the activists, inviting them to review their files before they are purged from the databases, Sheridan said.
“The names don’t belong in there,” he told the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. “It’s as simple as that.”
The surveillance took place over 14 months in 2005 and 2006, under the administration of former governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R). The former state police superintendent who authorized the operation, Thomas E. Hutchins, defended the program in testimony yesterday. Hutchins said the program was a bulwark against potential violence and called the activists “fringe people.”
Sheridan said protest groups were also entered as terrorist organizations in the databases, but his staff has not identified which ones.
“Using conservative rough projections, the Commission estimates the annual costs of the present system ($137 million per year), the present system after implementation of the reforms … ($232.7 million per year) … and a system which imposes a maximum penalty of lifetime incarceration instead of the death penalty ($11.5 million).”
–California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, July 1, 2008
Recent Cost Studies
* A 2003 legislative audit in Kansas found that the estimated cost of a death penalty case was 70% more than the cost of a comparable non-death penalty case. Death penalty case costs were counted through to execution (median cost $1.26 million). Non-death penalty case costs were counted through to the end of incarceration (median cost $740,000).
(December 2003 Survey by the Kansas Legislative Post Audit)
* In Tennessee, death penalty trials cost an average of 48% more than the average cost of trials in which prosecutors seek life imprisonment.
(2004 Report from Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury Office of Research)
* In Maryland death penalty cases cost 3 times more than non-death penalty cases, or $3 million for a single case.
(Urban Institute, The Cost of the Death Penalty in Maryland, March 2008)
* In California the current sytem costs $137 million per year; it would cost $11.5 million for a system without the death penalty.
(California Commission for the Fair Administration of Justice, July 2008)
GALVESTON — About 1,000 prisoners and a full jail staff remained in the Galveston County Jail on Galveston Island this morning, even as the island began to be battered by the onslaught of Hurricane Ike.
The reason for not evacuating the prisoners is a security issue and cannot be discussed, sheriff’s spokesman Maj. Ray Tuttoilmondo said.
“The prisoners and their safety and well-being are paramount and it will be handled,” Tuttoilmondo said.
Any decision to move the prisoners would be kept secret for security reasons, as happened before Hurricane Rita in 2005, he said.
“We did this during Rita and no one knew until it was absolutely done,” Tuttoilmondo said.
The prisoners were in the jail as of 10 a.m. today, leaving little time to transfer them to the mainland. Hurricane-force winds are expected to strike the island later today, making exit across the causeway to the mainland difficult.
Tuttoilmondo declined to say how many deputies were at the jail, but said a full jail staff and relief shifts remained on duty at the lockup at 57th Street and Broadway.
He also declined to discuss measures the Sheriff’s Office would take to make sure the prisoners and jail staff remained safe if a storm surge floods the jail.
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Police arrested 102 protesters in downtown Minneapolis early Thursday following a concert by the rock group Rage Against the Machine, raising to more than 400 the number arrested in demonstrations related to the Republican National Convention.
Police blocked off an intersection as they processed those arrested. Young people sat on a sidewalk, their backs against a building, or stood quietly in line, their hands in plastic cuffs behind their backs.
Protesters calling for an end to the Iraq war urged others to join their march Thursday night outside the convention as John McCain accepts his party’s presidential nomination on its fourth and final night.
The Anti-War Committee denounced the increased presence of police in riot gear and acts of “intimidation” in the streets of St. Paul.
In a warmup to the main protest, about 50 college and high school students staged an anti-war rally at the Capitol at midday Thursday. Eight police officers watched the rally from afar, with most leaning against their cars. None wore riot gear.
Organizers said they were trying to put on a safe, nonviolent event for the whole family. When a musician singing and playing a guitar uttered a profanity, she was chastised by the crowd and quickly promised to clean up her language.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty blamed the violence this week on a small group of “anarchists, nihilists, and goofballs who want to break stuff and hurt people.”
“They need to be dealt with,” Pawlenty said in an interview with WCCO-AM of Minneapolis. “When you want to break stuff and hurt people, you can’t do that.”
St. Paul was quieter on Wednesday, the convention’s third day, when four women from the peace group CodePink were arrested after crawling under a fence a couple blocks from the Xcel Center where the convention is being held. They were released.
Who will protect us from the protectors?
Sometimes things get out of hand. And, usually, there is a group of people whose occupation it is to protect us from those situations. But as was the case on Monday night in Minnesota, the people who are supposed to protect us got a little bit out of hand themselves.
On Monday night, three colleagues of mine from the Kentucky Kernel were arrested while documenting the protests outside the Republican National Convention. Photographers Ed Matthews and Britney McIntosh, along with photo advisor Jim Winn were all arrested and charged with rioting. Matthews and McIntosh were both charged with felonies, while Winn was charged with a misdemeanor.
Nothing indicates that any of the three were actually participating in the protests, much less violating any laws that would warrant their arrest. The police officers subdued the Kernel staff members with the use of pepper spray and the threat of a gun, certainly unnecessary given that all evidence suggests that Matthews, McIntosh and Winn were not actually breaking any laws. Regardless, we cannot know whether or not they were acting inappropriately, as they are still incommunicado in the Ramsey County Adult Detention Center. If convicted, Matthews and McIntosh would face a minimum sentence of one year in jail and a $3000 fine. Perhaps the bright spot in all of this is that at least we know what they have been charged with.
MUNICH (Reuters) - Young men who die suddenly after being arrested by the police may be victims of a new syndrome similar to one that kills some wild animals when they are captured, Spanish researchers said on Tuesday.
Manuel Martinez Selles of Madrid’s Hospital Gregorio Maranon reached the conclusion after investigating 60 cases of sudden unexplained deaths in Spain following police detention.
In one third of the cases, death occurred at the point of arrest, while in the remainder death was within 24 hours, Selles told the annual meeting of the European Society of Cardiology.
All but one of the casualties were male and their average age was just 33 years, with no previous history of cardiovascular disease.
“Something unusual is going on,” Sells said.
Just why they died remains a mystery but he believes young men, in particular, may experience surges in blood levels of chemicals known as catecholamines when under severe stress.
Adrenaline is one of the most abundant catecholamines.
“We know that when a wild animal is captured, sometimes the animal dies suddenly,” he said.
“Probably when these young males are captured it is very stressful and their level of catecholamines goes very high and that can finish their life by ventricular fibrillation (cardiac arrest).”
**UPDATE:
Goodman has been charged with “conspiracy to riot” and released. Her producers, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, are still in custody.
Associated Press photographer Matt Rourke and Democracy Now! TV and radio show host Amy Goodman were among those arrested Monday at an anti-war march coinciding with the first day of the Republican National Convention.
Rourke was swept up as police moved in on a group of protesters in downtown St. Paul, the scene of scattered violence and vandalism by protesters, some of whom described themselves as anarchists.
Goodman was arrested as she tried to prevent two colleagues from being arrested, a producer for her show said.
David Ake, an AP assistant chief of bureau in Washington, said he was concerned by the arrest of Rourke, a Philadelphia-based photographer.
“Covering news is a constitutionally protected activity, and covering a riot is part of that coverage,” Ake said. “Photographers should not be detained for covering breaking news.”
Democracy Now! producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar were arrested while they carried out their journalistic duties, Democracy Now! said in a statement. Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Holli Drinkwine said Goodman was arrested on a misdemeanor but she didn’t know the charge. She did not immediately have any information about the other three.
Police said late Monday they had arrested 163 people at the march, with more expected. Most of the estimated 10,000 people in the march were peaceful, but small groups totaling about 200 broke windows, taunted police, slashed tires and harassed delegates.
Rourke took photos throughout the day showing police shooting tear gas at protesters. Evan Vucci, another AP photographer, was with Rourke but did not see him get arrested.
“The police had pushed the protesters into a parking lot where they had police coming from all sides to encircle one area,” Vucci said. “Once they got all the protesters into this one parking lot they kind of rushed and arrested all the protesters in there.”
Vucci said he was picked up from behind, thrown down, and kicked in the ribs by police before being handcuffed. He said he avoided being arrested after showing an officer his press credentials.
“I don’t think the police officers were targeting journalists,” Vucci said. “The group they were going after was a pretty aggressive group, and I think they’d had enough of them. … I think the cops were amped up.”
A video of Goodman’s arrest posted on YouTube shows her begging police not to arrest her before being taken away in handcuffs.
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