Md. police raid the wrong apartment, kick resident in groin before realizing their mistake

Associated Press | June 8, 2007

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) - Annapolis police raided the wrong apartment Wednesday night, using flash grenades and kicking a resident in the groin before they realized their mistake, police and the family said.

Police spokesman Hal Dalton said something must have gone amiss in the briefing beforehand. "We don't know how the mistake was made," Dalton said.

Silvia Bernal, 30, told The (Annapolis) Capital that about 15 officers burst through the front door of her apartment while she was cooking dinner about 8:20 p.m. She said the officers kicked her husband in the groin while she fled into a bedroom and barred the door with her body.

Then she said both of them were taken to the ground and handcuffed. The Capital said a police officer went outside and realized they had raided the wrong residence.

Dalton said they were supposed to have raided a different apartment and said the incident was regrettable.

Spa Cove apartment manager Latisha Marshall says there is a large dent in the front door. And she said there are two large black stains from the flash-bang grenades police deployed after entering the apartment.

When officers and the city's tactical squad went to the right unit, they said it was empty.

Video recording leads to felony charge
Posted by Matt Miller/The Patriot-News June 11, 2007 08:51AM
Categories: Courts, Crime, Cumberland County, Midstate

Brian D. Kelly didn't think he was doing anything illegal when he used his videocamera to record a Carlisle police officer during a traffic stop. Making movies is one of his hobbies, he said, and the stop was just another interesting event to film.

Now he's worried about going to prison or being burdened with a criminal record.

Kelly, 18, of Carlisle, was arrested on a felony wiretapping charge, with a penalty of up to 7 years in state prison.

His camera and film were seized by police during the May 24 stop, he said, and he spent 26 hours in Cumberland County Prison until his mother posted her house as security for his $2,500 bail.

Kelly is charged under a state law that bars the intentional interception or recording of anyone's oral conversation without their consent.

The criminal case relates to the sound, not the pictures, that his camera picked up.

"I didn't think I could get in trouble for that," Kelly said. "I screwed up, yeah. I know now that I can't do that. I just don't see how something like this should affect my entire life."

Whether that will happen could be determined during Kelly's preliminary hearing before District Judge Jessica Brewbaker in July.

No one seems intent on punishing him harshly.

"Obviously, ignorance of the law is no defense," District Attorney David Freed said. "But often these cases come down to questions of intent."

According to police, Kelly was riding in a pickup truck that had been stopped for alleged traffic violations.

Police said the officer saw Kelly had a camera in his lap, aimed at him and was concealing it with his hands. They said Kelly was arrested after he obeyed an order to turn the camera off and hand it over.

The wiretap charge was filed after consultation with a deputy district attorney, police said.

Kelly said his friend was cited for speeding and because his truck's bumper was too low. He said he held the camera in plain view and turned it on when the officer yelled at his pal.

After about 20 minutes, the officer cited the driver on the traffic charges and told the men they were being recorded by a camera in his cruiser, Kelly said.

"He said, 'Young man, turn off your ... camera,'¤" Kelly said. "I turned it off and handed it to him. ... Six or seven more cops pulled up, and they arrested me."

Police also took film from his pockets that wasn't related to the traffic stop, he said.

Freed said his office has handled other wiretapping cases, some involving ex-lovers or divorcing couples who are trying to record former partners doing something improper for leverage in court battles, he said.

Such charges have been dismissed or defendants have been allowed to plead to lesser counts or enter a program to avoid criminal records, he said.

The outcome hinges on whether the person had a malicious intent, Freed said.

Carlisle Police Chief Stephen Margeson said allowing Kelly to plead to a lesser charge might be proper.

"I don't think that would cause anyone any heartburn," he said. "I don't believe there was any underlying criminal intent here."

But Margeson said he doesn't regard the filing of the felony charge as unwarranted and said the officer followed procedures.

John Mancke, a Harrisburg defense attorney familiar with the wiretapping law, said the facts, as related by police, indicate Kelly might have violated the law.

"If he had the sound on, he has a problem," Mancke said.

Last year, Mancke defended a North Middleton Twp. man in a street racing case that involved a wiretapping charge. Police claimed the man ordered associates to tape police breaking up an illegal race after officers told him to turn off their cameras.

That wiretapping count was dismissed when the man pleaded guilty to charges of illegal racing, defiant trespass and obstruction of justice. He was sentenced to probation.

An exception to the wiretapping law allows police to film people during traffic stops, Mancke said.

Margeson said his department's cruisers are equipped with cameras, and officers are told to inform people during incidents that they are being recorded.

First Assistant District Attorney Jaime Keating said case law is in flux as to whether police can expect not to be recorded while performing their duties.

"The law isn't solid," Keating said. "But people who do things like this do so at their own peril."

Kelly said he has called the American Civil Liberties Union for help in the case.

His father, Chris, said he's backing his son.

"We're hoping for a just resolution," he said.

NRA, Democrats Team Up To Pass Gun Bill
After Virginia Tech Shootings, House Passes Bill To Strengthen National Background Check System

CBS | June 14, 2007

After 52 years in Congress, John Dingell knows it sometimes takes a "rather curious alliance," such as between the National Rifle Association and the House's most fervent gun control advocate, to move legislation.

That's what took place Wednesday when the House, by voice vote, passed a gun control bill that Rep. Dingell, D-Mich., helped broker between the NRA and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y.

With the NRA on board, the bill, which fixes flaws in the national gun background check system that allowed the Virginia Tech shooter to buy guns despite his mental health problems, has a good chance of becoming the first major gun control law in more than a decade.

"We'll work with anyone, if you protect the rights of law-abiding people under the second amendment and you target people that shouldn't have guns," NRA chief Wayne LaPierre told CBS News Correspondent Sheryl Atkisson

"As the Virginia Tech shooting reminded us, there is an urgent national need to improve the background check system" to keep guns out of the hands of those barred from buying them, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said.

The measure would require states to automate their lists of convicted criminals and the mentally ill who are prohibited under a 1968 law from buying firearms, and report those lists to the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS.

Seung-Hui Cho, who in April killed 32 students and faculty at Virginia Tech before taking his own life, had been ordered to undergo outpatient mental health treatment and should have been barred from buying the two guns he used in the rampage. But the state of Virginia never forwarded this information to the national background check system.

The House action came as a panel ordered by President Bush to investigate the Virginia Tech shootings issued its findings, including a recommendation that legal and financial barriers to NICS submissions be addressed.

Mr. Bush, in a statement, said the report made clear that better information sharing between federal and state authorities "is essential in helping to keep guns out of the wrong hands and to punish those who break the law." He said he was "closely following legislative efforts to strengthen the instant background check system."

The panel also urged federal agencies to expand programs to prevent school violence and said the Health and Human Services Department should focus on college students in its mental health public education campaign.

Virginia Tech President Charles Steger said the report disclosed "the deep complexities of the issues facing college campuses today" and would advance government scrutiny of issues related to safety vs. personal freedoms.

The House bill next moves to the Senate, where gun control advocate Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., says he is talking to NRA ally Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and there is a "very strong" chance of passage.

"When the NRA and I agree on legislation, you know that it's going to get through, become law and do some good," says Schumer.

The legislation requires state and federal agencies to transmit all relevant disqualifying records to the NICS database. It also provides $250 million a year over the next three years to help states meet those goals and it imposes penalties — including cuts in federal grants under an anti-crime law — on states that fail to meet benchmarks for automating their systems and supplying information to the NICS.

Virginia's Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine said Wednesday that in ordering state executive branch agencies to upgrade background check reporting last month he found that Virginia was one of only 22 states reporting any mental health information to the NICS. He said the House bill was “significant action to honor the memories of the victims who lost their lives at Virginia Tech.”
"Millions of criminal records are not accessible by NICS," said McCarthy, sponsor of the bill.

"I came to Congress in 1997, in the wake of my own personal tragedy, to help prevent gun violence," said McCarthy, who ran for office after her husband was gunned down on a Long Island commuter train in 1993. "Ten years later, I am more committed than ever to this cause."

McCarthy has been among the leaders in the largely futile efforts to legislate gun controls during the past dozen years of GOP control. The last major gun control bill, to ban some assault weapons, passed in 1994, the last year of a Democratic majority. In 1996, domestic violence offenders were added to the list of those barred from buying guns. However, a 1999 effort to close the gun show loophole on background checks after the Columbine school shootings was unsuccessful.

The NRA worked closely with Dingell, a gun rights proponent and senior House member, in crafting the new bill. The NRA insisted it was not gun control legislation because it does nothing to restrict legal rights to buy guns.

The NRA has supported the NICS since its inception in 1993, said Wayne LaPierre, the organization's executive vice president. “We've always been vigilant about protecting the rights of law-abiding citizens to purchase guns, and equally vigilant about keeping the guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally defective and people who shouldn't have them.”

The NRA did win concessions.

The bill would automatically restore the purchasing rights of veterans who were diagnosed with mental problems as part of the process of obtaining disability benefits. LaPierre said the Clinton administration put about 80,000 such veterans into the background check system.

It also outlines an appeals process for those who feel they have been wrongfully included in the system and ensures that funds allocated to improve the NICS are not used for other gun control purposes.

That wasn't enough for the Gun Owners of America, which said on its Web page that it was the only national pro-gun organization to oppose the McCarthy bill. "There are some seemingly pro-gun congressmen who are driven to get anything passed, just so they can say they did something about Virginia Tech," it said.

On the other side, Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said his group supported the legislation, noting that the Virginia Tech shootings "tragically demonstrated the gaps in the system that allowed a dangerous person to be armed."

He said he hoped Congress and the gun lobby would go a step further and extend background checks to all gun sales, not just those by licensed dealers covered by current law.