In news taken from the logs of Cape Ann’s police and fire departments:
Tag: law enforcement
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Colorado woman dies after ‘disturbance’ outside U.S. Forest Service office
Colorado officials are investigating the death of a woman in Grand County after witnesses spotted two men putting her body in a car, according to investigators.
Law enforcement responded to the U.S. Forest Service’s Sulphur Ranger District Office in Granby at about 12:05 p.m. Saturday, according to a news release from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
Witnesses told investigators about an unspecified “disturbance” outside of the northern Colorado office that morning and said they spotted two men placing a woman in a vehicle, according to the release. One of the men drove the victim to the Middle Park Health Emergency Room, across the street from the USFS office, witnesses said.
The woman, a 38-year-old Granby resident who has not been publicly identified, died from her injuries shortly after 1 p.m. Saturday, investigators said in the release.
It’s unclear how the woman was injured, who the two men were and whether her death is under investigation as a homicide. As of Sunday morning, no suspects had been publicly identified or arrested.
The Grand County Coroner’s Office will release the woman’s identity and cause of death at a later date.
This is a developing story and may be updated.
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Lowell High students released on bail after alleged armed robbery
LOWELL — Two Lowell High School students and two unidentified juveniles are facing several charges, including armed robbery, after police say they attacked a teenage boy and stole his backpack shortly after he stepped off a bus on Lincoln Street earlier this month.
Devonathan Thanongsinh and Fidell Chan, both 18, along with two 17-year-old boys whose names were redacted from Lowell Police reports due to their age, are accused of striking the victim in the face with a handgun that officers later recovered.
Police said they have not determined which suspect wielded the weapon.
The group also allegedly assaulted the victim’s 58-year-old grandfather when he tried to intervene in the attack.
According to an officer’s incident report, the assault occurred shortly after 3 p.m. on Dec. 5, when police were called to the 400 block of Lincoln Street for a report of a teen who had been attacked “by a group of kids” on the sidewalk.
When one of the responding officers arrived in the area, he saw a blue Mazda traveling the wrong way on a one‑way section of Lincoln Street and noticed a pickup truck farther up the road that appeared to have been involved in a crash. The Mazda, meanwhile, had heavy damage to its doors and tires, the report said.
The driver of the Mazda — later identified by police as Thanongsinh — attempted to maneuver around the cruiser but was unable to get by. The officer activated his lights and conducted a traffic stop.
“(Thanongsin) … denied being involved,” the officer said in the report. “I then asked what had happened to the vehicle in which he did not have an answer.”
The officer reported that three other “young male” occupants were inside the Mazda with Thanongsinh, including the two 17‑year‑old boys and Chan, who was seated in the rear driver’s‑side seat.
As the officer was speaking with the group, he was approached by a woman who said her son — whose name was redacted from the report — had just been assaulted by the four males in the Mazda.
According to the report, the woman told police she was inside her Lincoln Street home when she heard screaming outside. She tried calling her son, but he did not answer. Moments later, he ran into the house and told her he had been jumped.
Another family member approached the officer and said that one of the occupants of the Mazda had “used a handgun to pistol whip” the victim, the report said.
With that information, the officer told the four occupants to remain in the vehicle while additional units were called to the scene. At one point, one of the 17-year-olds allegedly opened his door and tried to get out despite the instructions.
The officer said in the report that he “commanded him to remain inside and to close the door in which he complied. I then further instructed all four occupants to remain inside and do not do anything too stupid. All complied.”
Once other officers arrived, the occupants were ordered out of the Mazda one at a time. None of them had weapons on them, according to the report, but officers spotted a handgun on the front passenger‑side floorboard in plain view.
The weapon turned out to be a 9mm loaded with a magazine containing nine rounds.
The victim later told police, according to the report, that he had just gotten off a bus with friends and was walking toward his home when a group approached him and struck him with a closed fist.
He also said he was hit in the face with a “hard object.”
He told police he could not identify his attackers because they were all dressed in black and wearing masks.
The teen said he “blacked out” during the assault, the report said. When asked whether he saw a gun, he said “I thought, I think I did,” but added he could not be certain.
A friend who had been walking with him told police he saw a gun as the group approached and immediately dropped his backpack and ran. Both his backpack and the victim’s were stolen and later allegedly found in the Mazda. The backpacks contained laptops and other personal belongings.
Police also interviewed the victim’s grandfather, who said he saw four males “punching and kicking” his grandson. He tried to intervene but said the group then turned on him, striking him multiple times in the nose and head and causing him to fall and feel as though he had been “knocked out.”
He said he was also unable to identify the attackers because they were dressed in black and wearing masks, according to the report.
After the alleged assault, the victim’s grandfather told police he saw the four attackers get into the Mazda and drive off. He said he got into his pickup truck and followed them around the block. As he did, the Mazda drove the wrong way onto Lincoln Street and allegedly struck a parked vehicle.
According to the report, the 58‑year‑old told officers he then positioned his truck to block the Mazda from leaving. The Mazda then is alleged to have struck his vehicle moments before the responding officer arrived on scene.
The officer said in his report that none of the four suspects claimed responsibility for the handgun found in the Mazda or for the assaults. He added that the incident “appeared to be a planned attack on the victims,” noting that surveillance footage showed the masked assailants punching both the teen and his grandfather before stealing the backpacks.
Both the teen and his grandfather were taken to Lowell General Hospital’s Saints Campus following the attack.
Thanongsinh and Chan, along with the two juveniles, were charged with masked armed robbery, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, carrying a firearm without a license, carrying a loaded firearm without a license, assault and battery, and assault with a dangerous weapon.
Thanongsinh also faces a charge of leaving the scene of property damage.
Because of their ages, the outcomes of the juveniles’ cases were not available in court records.
Lowell District Court documents show that Thanongsinh and Chan were arraigned on Dec. 8 and ordered held without bail pending 58A dangerousness hearings on Dec. 11, a proceeding used to determine whether a defendant poses a risk to the public.
The Middlesex District Attorney’s Office requested they be held without bail. However, after those hearings, a judge set bail for both men at $2,000 cash, which they posted the same day.
Court documents show that roughly 30 letters were submitted in support of Thanongsinh as part of his 58A dangerousness hearing, including one from a Lowell High School staff member who said the 18‑year‑old “excelled academically” in the classes he taught during Thanongsinh’s sophomore year and again now as a senior.
“Throughout the time I have known him, Devonathan has consistently demonstrated maturity, responsibility and strong character,” the staff member said in the letter. “He approaches his coursework with diligence and focus. His academic performance as a sophomore stood out among his peers.”
The letter described him as “polite, respectful, and genuinely well‑mannered,” adding that he “conducts himself with kindness and humility, and interacts positively with both classmates and teachers.”
“He may have made some poor decisions, but I believe his foundation of strong character and his family will help him atone for those lapses in judgment and become the productive adult I know he can be if given the opportunity,” the staff member concluded.
Court records show neither Thanongsinh nor Chan have criminal records.
As a condition of their release on bail, both Thanongsinh and Chan were ordered to remain in the custody of their mothers, continue with their high school educations, avoid all contact with the victims and witnesses, possess no dangerous weapons, abstain from drugs and alcohol, and comply with a 24/7 curfew and GPS monitoring.
According to court documents, Thanongsinh was brought back to court the day after his release for what was initially believed to be a curfew violation.
His attorney, Thomas Torrisi, stressed on Friday that the allegation was later determined to be unfounded, explaining that Thanongsinh had not left his home and that the issue stemmed from a GPS signal problem.
“They determined he had absolutely never left the house, so there was no violation found by the judge,” Torrisi said.
Torrisi added about the case that “we’re very much at the infant stages at this point.”
“There’s an awful lot that still needs to be done before we’re in a position to know the totality of the circumstances,” he said.
Chan’s attorney, Stephen Barton, was unavailable for comment.
The pair are scheduled to return to court for a pretrial conference on Jan. 20.
Follow Aaron Curtis on X @aselahcurtis, or on Bluesky @aaronscurtis.bsky.social.
Aaron Curtis
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3 officers wounded and suspect killed after domestic violence call in New York
Three police officers responding to a domestic violence call have been wounded, and a suspect killed in Rochester, New York
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Three police officers responding to a domestic violence call were wounded and a suspect was killed Friday night in Rochester, New York, according to officials.
“Multiple shots were fired” after Rochester Police Department officers responded, the city’s Police Chief David Smith said at a news conference. The suspect then fled and officers found the person again nearby, Smith said.
The three wounded officers were in the hospital. Details on their conditions were not released.
“This is always our biggest nightmare during this time of the year; these type of instances,” said Rochester Mayor Malik Evans.
He asked everyone to pray for the officers.
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Northern California city to reform police after racist texts scandal
SAN FRANCISCO — A Northern California city whose police department came under national scrutiny after it was revealed that some officers shared racist and sexist texts, used excessive force and falsified records has reached a settlement agreement to implement a series of reforms, officials announced Friday.
The City of Antioch, in the San Francisco Bay Area, will enhance police training programs, establish an independent review board to handle complaints and implement a warning system to identify problem officers, according to an agreement that settles a civil rights lawsuit filed in 2023.
“This agreement allows the Antioch Police Department to start with a clean slate and oversee officers’ conduct and make sure they are compliant with new standards,” said John Burris, who filed the complaint in federal court on behalf of residents who said they were targeted by Antioch police officers.
Earlier this year, 23 people who were part of the lawsuit reached a $4.6 million settlement with Antioch for monetary damages, Burris said. The city in January announced it would hire a consultant to update its policies, procedures and training on various topics as part of an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice.
“A lot of the bad apples are gone, in jail, retired or left on their own, and there is a new command staff that seems committed to bring about change,” Burris said.
Antioch City Manager Bessie Marie Scott said in a statement that the settlement agreement reinforces work already underway and “ensures sustainable transparency measures and updates core policies to modernize how APD continues to provide constitutional policing services to the residents of Antioch.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and county prosecutors in March 2022 launched an investigation into police officers in Antioch and Pittsburg, a neighboring city, over a broad range of offenses. As part of the investigation, officials released racist and obscenity-laden text messages shared by 45 Antioch police officers that shocked the community.
Officers referred to some suspects as “gorillas.” They also laughed and joked about harming people who apparently had surrendered or appeared to be asleep by setting a police dog on them or shooting them with a 40 mm “less-lethal” projectile launcher, according to a federal indictment against three former Antioch police officers.
Federal prosecutors charged Morteza Amiri, Eric Rombough and Devon Christopher Wenger, saying the three former Antioch police officers conspired between February 2019 and March 2022 “to injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate residents of Antioch, California” and later falsified reports about the encounters.
Wenger was sentenced earlier this month to seven years and six months in federal prison for conspiring to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate residents of Antioch using unreasonable force, conspiring to distribute anabolic steroids, and obstructing justice, federal prosecutors said.
Amiri, a former Antioch K9 officer, was sentenced in June to seven years in prison for maiming someone with his police dog, falsifying reports on that case and being part of a scheme to obtain pay raises from the Antioch Police Department for a university degree he paid someone else to obtain.
Rombough, accused of illegally shooting people with his launcher, pleaded guilty and became a government’s witness. He testified against both Amiri and Wenger in their separate trials, the East Bay Times reported. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 13.
Antioch, a city of 115,000 residents about 45 miles (72 kilometers) east of San Francisco, was once predominantly white but has diversified in the last 30 years.
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Advocates raise alarms after Wisconsin judge Hannah Dugan found guilty of obstruction
MADISON, Wis. — Defenders of a Wisconsin judge found guilty of felony obstruction for helping a Mexican immigrant evade federal officers raised alarms Friday about judicial independence and said they hope the conviction will be overturned on appeal.
A jury found Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan guilty on Thursday night after a four-day trial and six hours of deliberation. The jury found her not guilty of a misdemeanor concealment charge. No sentencing date had been set as of Friday morning. She could be sentenced to a maximum five years in prison.
The verdict was a victory for President Donald Trump, whose administration filed the charges against Dugan and touted her arrest earlier this year, posting photos of her being led away in handcuffs.
U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche praised the verdict on X, saying nobody is above the law, even judges.
The case inflamed tensions over Trump’s immigration crackdown, with his administration branding Dugan an activist judge and Democrats countering that the administration is trying to make an example of Dugan to blunt judicial opposition to the operation.
U.S. Attorney Brad Schimel, a former Republican Wisconsin attorney general and judge, denied the case was political and urged people to accept the verdict peacefully.
“Some have sought to make this about a larger political battle,” Schimel said. “While this case is serious for all involved, it is ultimately about a single day, a single bad day, in a public courthouse. The defendant is certainly not evil. Nor is she a martyr for some greater cause.”
Dugan’s defense attorney told the jury in closing arguments that the “top levels of government” were involved in bringing charges against Dugan. But prosecutors argued Dugan put her personal beliefs above the law.
“You don’t have to agree with immigration enforcement policy to see this was wrong,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Brown Watzka told the jury in closing arguments. “You just have to agree the law applies equally to everyone.”
Dugan did not testify. Dugan and her attorneys left the courtroom, ducked into a side conference room and closed the door without speaking to reporters.
Steve Biskupic, her lead attorney, later said he was disappointed with the ruling and didn’t understand how the jury could have reached a split verdict since the elements of both charges were virtually the same.
Dugan’s attorneys were expected to appeal the verdict.
A coalition of 13 advocacy groups, including Common Cause Wisconsin and the League of Women Voters Wisconsin, said “higher courts must carefully review the serious constitutional questions this case raises about due process, judicial authority, and federal overreach.”
Dugan was suspended as a judge after she was charged and the Wisconsin Constitution bars convicted felons from holding office. The Wisconsin Judicial Commission, which oversees disciplining of judges in the state, did not respond to a request Friday for information about what happens next in Dugan’s case.
On April 18, immigration officers went to the Milwaukee County courthouse after learning 31-year-old Eduardo Flores-Ruiz had reentered the country illegally and was scheduled to appear before Dugan for a hearing in a state battery case.
Dugan confronted agents outside her courtroom and after they had left led Flores-Ruiz and his attorney out a private jury door. Agents spotted Flores-Ruiz in the corridor, followed him outside and arrested him after a foot chase. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced in November he had been deported.
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‘We got him’: Brown University/MIT professor shooting suspect found dead in Salem, NH
SALEM. N.H. — Described by the FBI as a “highly dangerous individual capable of extreme violence,” Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente was found dead in a storage facility Thursday night.
Neves-Valente, 48, was a Portuguese national and former Brown University physics Ph.D. student. He was wanted in two states for fatal shootings at Brown University and of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor.
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By Jill Harmacinski | jharmacinski@eagletribune.com
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Police/Fire
In news taken from the logs of Cape Ann’s police and fire departments:
Rockport
kAmkDEC@?8m%9FCD52J[ s64] `gk^DEC@?8mk^Am
kAmkDEC@?8maib` 2]>]ik^DEC@?8m p >:?: 362E H2D 4@?5F4E65 2E E96 :?E6CD64E:@? @7 vC2?:E6 $EC66E 2?5 v@EE pG6?F6]k^Am
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kAmkDEC@?8m`i_e 2]>]ik^DEC@?8m p 3F:=5:?8 @? qC@25H2J H2D 4964<65 2?5 D64FC65]k^Am
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US rapper Wiz Khalifa sentenced by Romanian court to 9 months for drug possession
BUCHAREST, Romania — American rapper Wiz Khalifa was sentenced by a court in Romania on Thursday to nine months in jail for drug possession, more than a year after he took part in a music festival in the Eastern European country.
Khalifa was stopped by Romanian police in July 2024 after allegedly smoking cannabis on stage at the Beach, Please! Festival in Costinesti, a coastal resort in Constanta County. Prosecutors said the rapper, whose real name is Cameron Jibril Thomaz, was found in possession of more than 18 grams of cannabis, and that he consumed some on stage.
The Constanta Court of Appeal handed down the sentence after Khalifa was convicted of “possession of dangerous drugs, without right, for personal consumption,” according to Romania’s national news agency, Agerpres. The decision is final.
The decision came after a lower court in Constanta County in April issued Khalifa a criminal fine of 3,600 lei ($830) for “illegal possession of dangerous drugs,” but prosecutors appealed the court’s decision and sought a higher sentence.
Romania has some of the harsher drugs laws in Europe. Possession of cannabis for personal use is criminalized and can result in a prison sentence of between three months and two years, or a fine.
It isn’t clear whether Romanian authorities will seek to file an extradition request, since Khalifa is a U.S. citizen and doesn’t reside in Romania.
The 38-year-old Pittsburgh rapper rose to prominence with his breakout mixtape “Kush + Orange Juice.” On stage in Romania last summer, the popular rapper smoked a large, hand-rolled cigarette while singing his hit “Young, Wild & Free.”
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Police/Fire
In news taken from the logs of Cape Ann’s police and fire departments:
Rockport
kAmkDEC@?8m|@?52J[ s64] `dk^DEC@?8mk^Am
kAmkDEC@?8mai_g 2]>]ik^DEC@?8m p 3F:=5:?8 @? qC@25H2J H2D 4964<65 2?5 D64FC65]k^Am
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kAmkDEC@?8m$F?52J[ s64] `ck^DEC@?8mk^Am
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kAmkDEC@?8m`ic_ A]>]ik^DEC@?8m p C6A@CE H2D >256 23@FE C@25 4@?5:E:@?D @? |2:? $EC66E]k^Am
kAmkDEC@?8m`_i_g 2]>]ik^DEC@?8m p A@=:46 H6==?6DD 4964< H2D 4@?5F4E65 @? |2:? $EC66E]k^Am
kAmkDEC@?8meid_ 2]>]ik^DEC@?8m p >65:42= 6>6C86?4J 2>3F=2?46 EC2?DA@CE H2D 4@?5F4E65 7C@> $@FE9 $EC66E]k^Am
k9bm|2?496DE6C3JE96$62k^9bm
kAmkDEC@?8m|@?52J[ s64] `dk^DEC@?8mk^Am
kAmkDEC@?8mdi“ A]>]ik^DEC@?8m p7E6C 2 >@E@C G69:4=6 DE@A @? !:?6 $EC66E[ 2 4:E2E:@? H2D :DDF65]k^Am
kAmkDEC@?8maibh A]>]ik^DEC@?8m p 4@>>F?:EJ A@=:4:?8 42== H2D 4@?5F4E65 @? {:?4@=? $EC66E]k^Am
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Brown University shooting leaves students, community frustrated with official response
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The ongoing effort to find a man who walked onto Brown University ’s campus during a busy exam season and shot nearly a dozen students in a crowded lecture hall has raised questions about the school’s security systems and the urgency of the investigation itself.
A day after Saturday’s mass shooting, officials said a person of interest taken into custody would be released without charges, leaving investigators with little actionable insight from the limited security video they had recovered and scrambling to develop new leads.
Law enforcement officials were still doing the most basic investigative work two days after the shooting that killed two students and wounded nine, canvassing local residences and businesses for security camera footage and looking for physical evidence. That’s left students and some Providence residents frustrated at gaps in the university’s security and camera systems that helped allow the shooter to disappear.
“The fact that we’re in such a surveillance state but that wasn’t used correctly at all is just so deeply frustrating,” said Li Ding, a student at the nearby Rhode Island School of Design who dances on a Brown University team.
Ding is among hundreds of students who have signed a petition to increase security at school buildings, saying that officials need to do a better job keeping the campus secure against threats like active shooters.
“I think honestly, the students are doing a more effective job at taking care of each other than the police,” Ding said.
Kristy dosReis, chief public information officer for the Providence Police Department, said that at no point did the investigation stand down even after officials appeared to have a breakthrough in the case, detaining a Wisconsin man who they now believe was not involved.
“The investigation continued as the scenes were still active. Nothing was cleared,” said dosReis.
Police and the FBI on Monday released new video and photographs of a man they believe carried out the attack. The man wore a mask in the footage captured before and after the attack.
FBI Boston Special Agent in Charge Ted Docks said a $50,000 reward was being offered for information that would lead to the identification, arrest and conviction of the shooter.
Docks described the investigation, including documenting the trajectory of bullets at the shooting scene, as “painstaking work.”
“We are asking the public to be patient as we continue to run down every lead so we can give victims, survivors, their families and all of you the answers you deserve,” Docks told reporters.
While Brown University is dotted with cameras, there were few in the Barus and Holley building, home of the engineering school that was targeted.
“Reality is, it’s an old building attached to a new one,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha told reporters about the lack of cameras nearby.
The lack of campus footage left police seeking tips from the public.
Katherine Baima said U.S. marshals came to her door on Monday, seeking footage from a security camera pointing toward the street.
“This is the first time any of us in my building, as far as I know, had heard from anyone,” Baima said.
Students said the school’s emergency alert system kept them relatively well-informed about the presence of an active shooter. But they were uncertain what to do during a prolonged campus lockdown.
Chiang-Heng Chien, a 32-year-old doctoral student in engineering, hid under desks and turned off the lights after receiving an alert about the shooting at 4:22 p.m. Saturday in a campus lab.
“While I was hiding in the lab, I heard the police yelling outside but my friends and I were debating whether we should open the door, since at that moment the shooter was believed to be (nearby),” he said in a text.
Law enforcement experts say colleges are often at a disadvantage when responding to threats like an active shooter. Their security officers are typically less trained and paid less than in other law enforcement departments. They also don’t always have close partnerships with better-resourced agencies.
Often, funding for campus police departments is not a top priority, even for schools with ample resources, said Terrance Gainer, a former Illinois law enforcement official who later served as the U.S. Senate’s sergeant-at-arms.
“They just aren’t as flush in law enforcement as you would think. They don’t like a lot of uniformed presence, they don’t like a lot of guns around,” said Gainer, who is now a consultant. “Whether it’s Brown or someone else, a key question is, what type of relationship do they have with the local police department?”
At Utah Valley University, where conservative leader Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a shooter on a school building roof last summer, the undersized campus police department never asked neighboring agencies to assist with security at the outdoor Kirk event that attracted thousands, an Associated Press review found.
Providence has an emergency alert system, but it switched from a mobile app to a web-based system in March. The new system requires someone to register online to receive alerts — something not all residents knew.
Emely Vallee, 35, lives about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from Brown with her two young children. She said she received “absolutely nothing” in alerts. She relied instead on texts from friends and the news.
Vallee had expected to be notified through the city’s 311 app, but hadn’t realized that Mayor Brett Smiley phased out the app in March. Smiley said his administration sent out multiple alerts the day of the shooting using the new 311 system and has continued to send them.
Hailey Souza, 23, finished her shift at a smoothie shop just off-campus minutes before the shooting. Everything seemed normal and quiet, Souza said.
But driving home, she saw a boy bleeding on the sidewalk. “Then everyone started running and screaming,” she said. Souza said she saw a bystander rip off his T-shirt to help.
The shop Souza manages, In The Pink, is a block from the engineering building. One of the shooting victims, Ella Cook, was a regular at the store, Souza said. Cook had come in a few days earlier and said her last final was Saturday.
Souza later learned that police came by the store to tell her co-workers about an active shooter. But Souza never received an emergency alert. “Nothing,” she said.
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Wieffering, Tau and Slodysko reported from Washington. McDermott reported from Providence. Associated Press writers Kimberlee Kruesi and Matt O’Brien in Providence and Michael Casey in Boston contributed to this report.
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Arrest log
The following arrests were made recently by local police departments. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Massachusetts’ privacy law prevents police from releasing information involving domestic and sexual violence arrests with the goal to protect the alleged victims.
BILLERICA
• Michael Parker, 50, 67 Salem Road, Billerica; assault with dangerous weapon, intoxicated licensee carrying firearm.
• Katherine Marie Main, 41, unknown address; fugitive from justice on court warrant.
LOWELL
• Brian Cooper, 29, 17 Yarmouth Drive, Nashua, N.H.; warrant (unlicensed operation of motor vehicle), operating motor vehicle without license.
• Luis Oliveras, 65, 144 High St., Apt. 2, Lowell; operation under influence of alcohol.
• Emily Rogers, 33, homeless; warrant (shoplifting), trespassing.
• Kosall Deth, 44, 73 Fort Hill Ave., Apt. 2, Lowell; warrant (failure to stop/yield).
• Kenneth Eng, 21, 27 Hastings St., Lowell; warrant (operation of motor vehicle with suspended license), failing to submit motor vehicle for inspection.
• Kevin Sok, 32, 21 Main St., Dunstable; operating motor vehicle after license suspension, failing to submit motor vehicle for inspection.
• Nicholas Powell, 36, 301 Old Marshall Road, Dracut; warrant (failure to appear for unlicensed operation of motor vehicle).
• Daniel Ramos-Vallejo, 23, 35 Temple St., Apt. 19, Lowell; operating motor vehicle after license suspension, failing to submit motor vehicle for inspection.
• Thomas McGrath, 34, homeless; shoplifting, trespassing after notice.
• Mason Cruz, 30, 619 Gorham St., Apt. 2, Lowell; assault and battery on police officer, resisting arrest.
• Mary Foley, 45, 93 Berkeley St., Billerica; breaking and entering motor vehicle, disturbing peace.
• Teddy Buckley, 36, homeless; trespassing.
• Betsy Bettencourt, 60, homeless; two counts of trespassing.
• Peter Gichuhi, 44, homeless; public drinking.
• Kristen Butler, 25, 205 Farrwood Drive, Haverhill; warrants (failure to appear for two counts of trespassing, and shoplifting by asportation), trespassing.
• Bryant Dottin, 28, 18 Morton St., Lowell; warrants (failure to appear for unregistered motor vehicle, and suspended license).
• Divine Morse, 25, 271 E. Eighth St., No. 410, Boston; warrant (uninsured motor vehicle).
• J’Lohn Moro, 33, 590 Market St., Apt. 325, Lowell; shoplifting.
• Khaisone Sinlong, 30, 189 Walker St., No. 5, Lowell; operating motor vehicle without license, failure to stop/stop sign, warrant (malicious damage to motor vehicle).
• Michael Picardi, 38, homeless; warrant (possession of Class E drug).
• Joshua Rivera, 37, 57 Mount Vernon St., Lowell; warrant (distribution of Class A drug), trafficking in 18 grams or more of cocaine.
• Jeffrey Breitwieser, 38, homeless; assault on emergency medical technician or health care provider, trespassing.
NASHUA, N.H.
• Nathaniel Ciardelli, 32, no fixed address; criminal trespassing, theft by unauthorized taking ($0-$1,000).
• Dagoberto Vasquez Bamaca, 20, 46 Ledge St., Nashua; simple assault.
• Jack Pearson Smith, 20, 56 Furber Lane, Wolfeboro, N.H.; driving under influence.
• Trisha Morin, 40, no fixed address; nonappearance in court.
• Jorge Lewis Curet, 40, 92 Ledge St., Apt. 2, Nashua; stalking.
• Marion Smith, 49, no fixed address; theft by unauthorized taking ($0-$1,000), nonappearance in court.
• Cara Kulingoski, 48, no fixed address; warrant.
• Darryl Hudson, 43, 7 Van Buren St., Nashua; out of town warrants.
• Cameron Joseph Sousa, 21, 24 Gillis St., Nashua; nonappearances in court, suspension of vehicle registration, driving motor vehicle after license revocation/suspension, unregistered motor vehicle, operation of motor vehicle without valid license.
Staff Report
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San Diego OK’s historic $30M payout to family of teen fatally shot by police
The San Diego City Council approved one of the largest settlements for a police shooting in U.S. history on Tuesday — a $30 million payment to the family of a 16-year-old boy who was fatally shot by a San Diego police officer while running away from another shooting.
Konoa Wilson’s parents sued the city and the officer who shot him, San Diego Police Department Officer Daniel Gold, in connection with the teen’s shooting death on the night of Jan. 28. The council voted unanimously to pass the settlement.
According to the family’s lawsuit, the boy was fleeing gunshots fired at him by another person when he encountered Gold, who shot the boy twice in the back “instantly, without any warning.” Konoa was pronounced dead at a hospital less than an hour later.
“What happened to Konoa was a catastrophic failure of policing,” the Wilson family’s attorney, Nick Rowley, said in a statement. “A 16-year-old boy was running for his life. He was not a threat and not a suspect, yet he was shot in the back by a police officer who only saw him for one second before deciding to pull the trigger.”
The city of San Diego has agreed to a $25,000 settlement with a driver who accused the San Diego Police Department of violating his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure.
The settlement amount was disclosed in a San Diego City Council agenda posted on Friday and exceeds the $27 million the city of Minneapolis agreed to pay the family of George Floyd, whose May 2020 murder by a police officer who knelt on his neck sparked a nationwide racial reckoning, the Associated Press reported.
City Councilman Henry Foster III noted the Floyd murder in his statement on the Tuesday settlement.
“Where’s the progress? Where’s the protect and serve? Better yet, where’s the accountability?” he said. “As the father of a young Black man, this hurts. This could be my son. If only you could understand the fear I feel when my son leaves the house.”
He called on Mayor Todd Gloria and San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl to do better.
“Will you step up? Or will we see what we always see … business as usual?” Foster said. “I do ask the public to keep asking questions.”
The San Diego County District Attorney’s office said the case is still under review for potential criminal charges. San Diego police declined to comment on the settlement, but confirmed Officer Gold is on paid administrative duty and currently not on patrol.
In trolley station surveillance footage released by the police department earlier this year, Konoa can be seen running after another person pulls out a gun and opens fire on him at the station’s west platform.
Warning: Some of what you see in the video might be difficult to watch. Authorities released video of a police shooting that killed a 16-year-old boy on Jan. 28.
Gold and another officer were in the area responding to an unrelated report of an assault when the gunshots rang out.
The boy can be seen running down a corridor leading out of the station and emerging on Kettner Boulevard just as Gold was running towards the same corridor.
Body-worn camera footage shows the officer immediately fire on the teen at close range. Rowley said Gold shot the boy “before he even announced who he was.”
After he was shot, the video shows the boy screaming and running briefly before collapsing. Officers then began performing CPR on him and, while doing so, found a handgun concealed under the youth’s clothing near his right thigh, according to police.
There were no indications in the video that the teen fired his gun during the incident or was holding it when Gold, a two-year member of the police department, opened fire on him.
Rowley said the boy had the gun for self-defense, because he had recently been targeted and assaulted by gang members. The attorney said the gun was not believed to be loaded, but more importantly, was not brandished when he was shot.
The 16-year-old was shot and killed by a police officer last January. At the time, he was fleeing from someone firing shots at him at the Sante Fe Depot downtown. NBC 7’s Dave Summers reports.
“This settlement brings some semblance of accountability, but not closure,” Rowley’s statement continued. “You don’t get closure when your child is shot in the back for doing nothing wrong by the people who are supposed to be protecting him.
“We hope that Konoa’s story will send a message across the country: Cities will pay dearly when officers violate the law and take a life without justification. We expect the city of San Diego to ensure this never happens again.”
The boy was killed three months shy of his 17th birthday. In a statement, attorneys said he was “an only child, and his parents lost their only son.”
Police said the person who fired gunshots at Konoa — described only as a 16-year-old juvenile — was arrested just over a week later.
“I’m expressing my most sincere and deepest apologies for what is the deepest nightmare for any parent,” City Councilman Sean Elo-Rivera said at Tuesday’s meeting. “There’s no amount of money that can ever replace a child.”
Elo-Rivera demanded to know what would be done to prevent such shootings in the future, noting that the amount paid out of a public liability fund could and should go to other uses, not to preventable actions like the killing of Wilson.
Ashley Nicholes, a spokeswoman from Chief Wahl’s office, said the department was unable to comment on ongoing legal matters, but said Gold was still working with the department in an administrative capacity.
All shootings involving police undergo various levels of investigation, which are still ongoing in this case. The San Diego County Sheriff’s Office Homicide Unit investigates all SDPD shootings. Its report is then provided to the District Attorney’s Office, which determines if the officers bear any criminal liability for their actions.
The FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office also monitor the investigation and the SDPD’s Internal Affairs Unit will conduct an internal investigation into the actions of the officer, according to Nicholes.
The SDPD Shooting Review Board will evaluate the tactics used and the internal investigation will be reviewed by San Diego’s independent Commission on Police Practices.
In a city document, the settlement is described as “not an admission of liability by any party.”
An agenda item posted Friday said the settlement would be paid from the Public Liability Fund.
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Woman charged in unprovoked stabbing of tourist changing baby’s diaper in store
NEW YORK — A California woman changing her infant daughter’s diaper in the bathroom of the Macy’s Herald Square store in New York City was stabbed and injured by another woman in an unprovoked attack, police said.
The attack occurred Thursday afternoon at the store in Manhattan. The 38-year-old victim was stabbed in the back and arm and was being treated at a hospital for cuts and lacerations. She was expected to fully recover. Her 10-month-old baby was not injured.
A 43-year-old Tewksbury, Massachusetts woman was charged with attempted murder in connection with the attack and was due to make her initial court appearance on Friday. It was not known Friday if she had retained a lawyer.
Macy’s issued a statement saying it was “deeply saddened” by the attack.
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Here’s how Denver police fly drones to 911 calls, triggering fears about privacy and surveillance
In a windowless room at Denver police headquarters on a recent Thursday afternoon, Officer Chris Velarde activated a police drone to investigate a potential car break-in.
Officer Chris Velarde flies a drone and monitors live footage from its camera from Denver Police Department headquarters on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post) Several floors above, the drone launched from the roof and flew itself — essentially on autopilot — to the site of the call, reported as a man breaking into a car with a crowbar near the Santa Fe Arts District.
The drone whizzed along, 200 feet up, in a straight line across blocks, buildings and streets during the roughly mile-long flight from police headquarters at 1331 Cherokee St. Velarde didn’t pick up the Xbox video-game controller that manually pilots the drone until it reached the area of the call. Then he took control and trolled the block for the supposed break-in, watching live video footage transmitted from the drone on his computer monitor as he flew.
After a few moments, Velarde spotted two people jiggering the passenger-side window of a vehicle. He zoomed in on the pair, and on the car’s license plate. He ran the plate to see whether the vehicle was stolen; it was not. The people on the street didn’t look up. They didn’t seem to know a police drone was hovering above them, that they were being recorded and watched a mile away by officers and a reporter.
Two more people joined the pair at the vehicle’s window and Velarde made the call — this didn’t look like a vehicle break-in. More likely, someone had just locked their keys in their car. He cleared the call with 911 dispatchers and told them there was no need to send an officer to the scene. Then he sent the drone back to headquarters; it flew itself to the rooftop dock, landing autonomously on a platform stamped with bright blue-and-yellow QR codes.
The Denver Police Department began testing drones as first responders — that is, sending them out on 911 calls — in mid-October after signing up for two free pilot programs from rival drone companies Skydio and Flock Safety. The effort has raised concerns among privacy advocates, Denver politicians and the city’s police oversight group, particularly regarding the department’s contract with Flock, the company behind the city’s controversial network of automated license-plate readers.
Police see the drones as a way to speed up call-response times and provide more information to officers as they arrive on scene, improving, they say, both public safety and officer safety. If a drone arrives at a scene before officers, and the drone pilot can tell police on the ground that the man with the knife actually put down the weapon before the officers arrived, that helps everyone, police said.
“The more knowledge, information and intelligence that we can provide our officers on the ground, the better methods that they can use to respond to certain situations, which may cause them to not escalate unnecessarily,” said Cmdr. Clifford Barnes, who heads the department’s Cyber Bureau.
Critics say the eyes in the sky raise serious privacy concerns both with how the drones and the data they collect are used now, and with how they might be used in the future as the technology rapidly changes. They worry that the drones could create a citywide surveillance network with few legal guardrails, that the footage they collect will be used to train private companies’ AI algorithms or that police will misuse emerging AI capabilities, like facial recognition.
“When it comes to the decision of, are we going to use this thing that could potentially increase public safety, that will erode privacy rights — no one should get to decide the public is willing to give away our constitutional rights, except the people,” said Anaya Robinson, public policy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado. “And when law enforcement makes that decision for us, it becomes extremely problematic.”
Almost 300 drone flights in 55 days
So far, only Skydio drones have flown as first responders over Denver.
Denver police signed a zero-dollar contract with Flock — without public announcement — in August for a year-long pilot of drones as first responders, but the company has yet to set up its autonomous aircraft. Skydio, on the other hand, moved quickly to get drones in the air after Denver police in October signed a contract to test up to four of the company’s drones during a free six-month pilot.
Skydio’s drones can reach about a 2-mile radius around the Denver police headquarters. The company advertises a top speed of 45 mph with 40 minutes of flight time; Denver pilots have found the drones average around 28 mph and around 25 minutes of battery life per flight.
From the first flight on Oct. 15 through Tuesday, two Skydio drones flew 297 times, according to data provided by Denver police in response to an open records request. Most of those flights — 199 — were to answer calls for service; another 82 were training flights, according to the data.
Skydio drones also surveilled events — a function police call “event overwatch” — seven times, the police data shows. Overwatch might include flying over a protest to track where the demonstrators are headed and alert officers on the ground for traffic control, Barnes said. (The police data showed that all seven overwatch flights occurred on Oct. 18, the day of Denver’s “No Kings” rally.)
The drones flew to 29 calls about a person with a weapon, 21 disturbances, 20 assaults in progress, a dozen suspicious occurrences and 11 hold-up alarms, according to data from Denver’s 911 dispatch records. The drones also flew to 39 other types of calls, including reports of prowlers, fights, burglaries, domestic violence and suicidal people.
The most common outcome for a call was that the officers were unable to locate an incident or the suspect was gone by the time the drone or police officers arrived, the records show. Across about 200 calls for service that included drone responses, police made 22 arrests and issued one citation, the dispatch data shows.
When responding to calls for service, the drones reached the scene before patrol officers 88% of the time, the police data shows. A drone was the sole police response in 80 of 199 calls for service, or about 40% of the time.
Barnes said answering calls with solely a drone improves police efficiency.
“If an officer on the ground doesn’t need to respond, and the drone pilot is comfortable with cancelling the other officers coming, we can assign those officers to more important, more pressing matters, so call-response times come down,” he said.
That approach raises questions about what the drones (which are equipped with three different cameras and a thermal imager) can and can’t see, and how officers are making decisions about call responses without actually speaking to anyone at the scene, the ACLU’s Robinson said.
“Humans have bias,” he said. Drone pilots might be more inclined to send officers to a potential car break-in in a low-income neighborhood and more likely not to in a higher-income neighborhood, he said. Or they might miss something from above that they could have seen at street level.
Officer Chris Velarde flies a drone and monitors live footage from its camera from Denver Police Department headquarters on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post) But minimizing in-person police interactions with residents, particularly in over-policed neighborhoods, can also be a positive, said Julia Richman, chair of Denver’s Citizen Oversight Board, which provides civilian oversight of the police department.
“Where my head goes is the other outcome, where they roll up on those people who are trying to get keys out of the car and then they shoot them,” she said. “Actually, (the drone-only response) seems like a really good outcome.”
The oversight group has talked with Denver police over the last two years about developing its drone program, she said. The department created a seven-page policy to guide their use; the policy aims to ensure “civil rights and reasonable expectations of privacy are a key component of any decision made to deploy” a drone.
But Richman said she was surprised by aspects of the police department’s pilot programs despite the ongoing conversations with department leadership.
“What was never discussed, not once, was the idea of a third party running those drones or those drones being autonomous,” she said, referring to the drone companies. “What has changed with this latest pilot is the key features and key aspects that would create public concern had never been discussed with us.”
Both Flock and Skydio advertise autonomous features powered by artificial intelligence. Skydio uses AI for its autonomous flight paths, obstacle avoidance and tracking people and cars.
Flock, which also offers autonomous flight, advertises its drones as integrating with its automated license-plate readers. The license-plate readers — there are more than 100 around Denver — automatically photograph every car that passes by them. If a license plate is stolen or involved in a crime, the license-plate readers alert police within seconds.
Police Chief Ron Thomas and Mayor Mike Johnston defended the surveillance network as an invaluable crime-solving tool this year against mounting public discontent around how much data the machines collected and how that data was used — particularly around sharing information with the federal government for the purposes of immigration enforcement.
That privacy debate around Flock’s license plate readers unfolded in communities across Colorado and nationwide this year. In Loveland, the police department for a time allowed U.S. Border Patrol agents to access its Flock cameras before blocking that access. In Longmont, councilmembers voted Wednesday to look for alternatives to replace the 20 Flock license plate readers in that city.
Flock in August announced it was pausing operations with federal agencies over the widespread concerns.
When Denver City Council members, some driven by privacy concerns, voted against continuing Flock’s license-plate readers in May, Johnston extended the surveillance anyway through a free five-month contract extension with Flock in October that did not require approval from the council. Against that backdrop, Denver police quietly signed on for Flock’s drone pilot in August.
Barnes said the police department will not use any license-plate reader capabilities available on Flock drones. Such a feature would constitute “random surveillance,” which is prohibited under the department’s drone policy. The drones never fly without an officer’s direct involvement, he added.
The blue 2-mile-radius line seen on a computer screen shows the range of Denver police Skydio drones flown from Denver Police headquarters. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post) The policy also prohibits drones from filming anywhere a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy unless police have a warrant, and says officers should take “reasonable precautions … to avoid inadvertently recording or transmitting images of areas where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy.”
Denver police do receive search warrants to fly drones for particular operations outside of the drones-as-first-responder program. In October, a Denver police detective sought and received a warrant to fly a drone over a shooting suspect’s home in Cherry Hills Village to check whether a truck involved in the shooting was parked at the wooded property.
The warrant noted that when driving home from anywhere outside Cherry Hills Village, the suspect could not reach his house without passing by Flock license-plate readers, and that photos from those license-plate readers suggested the truck was at the property.
Denver Councilwoman Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez and Councilman Kevin Flynn both told The Post they were not aware of the police department’s Skydio drone pilot before hearing about it from the newspaper, even though they are both on the city’s Surveillance Technology Task Force. The new group began meeting in August largely to consider Flock license-plate readers, as well as other types of surveillance technology, Gonzales-Gutierrez said.
“We haven’t talked about it in the task force, and the charge of our work in the task force is to come up with those guardrails that need to be put in place for these types of technology being utilized by law enforcement,” she said. “I feel like they just keep moving on without us being able to complete our work.”
Police don’t need permission from the City Council to carry out the pilot programs, Gonzales-Gutierrez said, but she was disappointed by the lack of communication and collaboration from the department.
Flynn sees the potential of police drones, particularly in speeding up officer response times, which can sometimes be dismal in the far-flung areas of his southwestern district.
“If a drone can get there to a 911 call and it can help an officer at headquarters assess the scene before a staffed car could get there, I would love that,” he said.
But he wants to be sure they are used in a way that respects residents’ rights. He would not support using the drones for general patrolling or surveillance, he said.
“This pilot is an excellent opportunity to test all of those boundaries and see if there are ways to operate a system that can be very useful for public safety without crossing boundaries,” he said.”…And maybe we don’t keep using them. That is the point of a pilot.”
‘These are flying cops’
The Skydio drones film from the moment they are launched until they drop in to land.
When the drone is on its way to a call — flying at the 200-foot altitude limit set by the Federal Aviation Administration — its cameras remain pointed at the horizon. In Denver’s denser neighborhoods, the Skydio drones at that height flew among buildings, sometimes at eye-level with balconies, offices and apartment windows, according to video of four flights obtained by The Post through an open records request.
“What if someone is in their apartment unit in one of these giant buildings and they’re changing, and they have their window open because they’re way up high and they don’t think anyone is watching them?” Gonzales-Gutierrez said. “That is crazy.”
The drones buzzed over rooftop decks, balconies and elevated apartment complex pools, the videos show. On one trip, a drone flew past the Colorado State Capitol Building, recording three people on a balcony on the tower under the building’s golden dome. Another time, the drone pilot zoomed in on a license plate so tightly that the car’s small, decorative “LOVE” decal was clearly visible.
Flynn noted that a 200-foot altitude would put the drones well above most of the homes in his less-dense district, and that people on their porches or balconies aren’t somewhere private.
“If someone is out on a balcony, sitting there reading a book… generally speaking, if you are out in public there’s no expectation of privacy,” he said.
The Skydio drones recorded about 54 hours of footage in the first eight weeks of their operation, according to data provided by the police department. Police leadership opted to have the drones’ cameras on and recording whenever the drone is in flight to boost transparency about how the drones are being used, Barnes said.
“It makes sense to keep the camera rolling,” Barnes said. “Then, if there’s an allegation, we just make sure that footage is recorded and treated like digital evidence, uploaded to the evidence management platform so it could be reviewed as necessary. We’re just trying to make sure we establish that balance, being as transparent as possible.”
Drone footage unrelated to criminal investigations is automatically deleted after 60 days, he said. While it’s retained, it’s stored in an evidence system that keeps a record of anyone who looks at it. The drone unit’s sergeant, Brent Kohls, also audits the flight reports monthly. (Footage used in criminal investigations will be on the same retention schedule as body-worn camera footage, police said.)
Kohls noted it would be unusual for the drone footage to be viewed only by the pilot. The feed is often displayed on the wall of the police department’s Real-Time Crime Center as it comes in.
ACLU attorney Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the organization’s speech, privacy and technology project, would rather see police keep the recording off while flying a drone to a call, even if the camera is still livestreaming to police headquarters. In that scenario, a drone pilot might still see a woman tanning topless on her rooftop pool deck, he said, but the government wouldn’t then keep a recording of that privacy violation, amplifying it further.
“The thing we are really worried about is police start deploying drones as first responders for the majority of their calls for service and suddenly you have this crisscrossing network of surveillance all over the city,” Freed Wessler said. “You have the potential for a pervasive record of what everyone is doing all the time.”
Kohls said an officer flying a drone who spotted a different crime occurring while en route to another call would stop to report and respond to that secondary crime, just like an officer would on the ground.
“Absolutely, if an officer sees a crime happening, they’re going to get on the radio, alert dispatch to what they’re observing,” Kohls said. “Hopefully, if they have a few minutes of battery time left still, they can extend their time and circle or overwatch on that scene to provide hopefully life-saving radio traffic, whatever information they need to relay to dispatch to get other officers heading, or the fire department heading that way.”
State and federal laws have not yet caught up to how police are using drones, Freed Wessler said. The Fourth Amendment has what’s known as the plain-view exception, which allows police officers who are lawfully in a place to take action if they see evidence of a crime happening in plain sight.
“The problem here is we are not talking about police doing a thing we would normally expect them to do,” Freed Wessler said. “We are talking about police taking advantage of a new technology that gives them a totally new power to fly at virtually no expense over any part of the city at any time of day and see a whole bunch of stuff happening.”
A Denver police drone lands on its docking station on the roof of Denver Police headquarters in Denver, on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post) The Colorado Supreme Court drew a distinction between what a human police officer can see and what technology can do for surveillance in 2021, when the justices found that Colorado Springs police officers violated a man’s constitutional rights when they installed a raised video camera on a utility pole near his home to spy over his fence 24/7 for three months without obtaining a warrant.
Police have broad leeway to watch suspects without first getting a search warrant — like by peering through a fence or climbing the steps of a nearby building to look into a yard. But that’s different from using a subtle video camera to record a person 24/7 for months, the justices concluded.
So far, that’s the closest ruling in Colorado on the issue of drone surveillance, Freed Wessler said. Robinson, the policy director at the ACLU of Colorado, said lawmakers should act to regulate police drone use — either at the state or local level.
“These are flying cops,” said Beryl Lipton, senior investigative researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit focused on digital privacy. “That is another one of those slippery slopes.”
Aside from the legality of surveillance, another question is how the drone footage and flight data is used by the drone companies, Lipton said.
“We live in a time where all these AI-fueled companies have a real drive to integrate AI into everything, and they’re really hungry for new data,” she said. “And we have law enforcement helping to feed these companies in a way they don’t really understand.”
Under its current agreement with Denver police, Skydio doesn’t use drone footage to train its algorithm or improve its product. Flock spells out in its contract that the company can “collect, analyze and anonymize” drone footage, then use that anonymized footage to train its “machine learning algorithms,” and enhance its services.
Lipton added that technology is moving fast — Axon, a company that powers many police departments’ body-worn cameras — this month started testing facial recognition on its cameras to automatically alert a police officer if a person they’re encountering has a warrant out for their arrest.
Prisons are experimenting with “movement analysis” to automatically flag a person’s movements as potentially aggressive before the person perpetrates violence, she said.
“We are technologically at a place where it would not be hard for a drone to fly over an area and basically serve as a license-plate reader for humans,” Lipton said. “… Some of this analysis is just not being done because it is not publicly palatable yet. But it is not like it is technologically difficult for some of these companies.”
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Court blocks release of hundreds of immigrants arrested in Chicago-area crackdown
CHICAGO — A federal appeals court blocked the immediate release of hundreds of immigrants detained during a Chicago area immigration crackdown in a split decision Thursday that also allowed the extension of a consent decree outlining how federal immigration agents can make warrantless arrests.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments last week about the 2022 agreement governing how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement can arrest immigrants besides those being specifically targeted in an operation. The consent decree has been in the spotlight amid the Trump administration’s Chicago-area immigration crackdown that’s led to more than 4,000 arrests.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings, who found the government violated the agreement, ordered the release of more than 600 immigrants on bond, which the appeals court paused. Roughly 450 remain in custody, attorneys say.
In the 2-1 opinion, the appeals court said Cummings overstepped his authority on the blanket release of the detainees without assessing each case individually. The consent decree “carefully maps out what the district judge can or cannot order” to balance enforcement and public safety, according to the opinion. But the ruling also said the Trump administration wrongly categorized all immigrant arrestees as subject to mandatory detention.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys said they were disheartened by the ruling but glad the court upheld the extension of the agreement, which among other things requires ICE to show documentation for each arrest it makes. Federal judges elsewhere including in Colorado have also ruled to limit warrantless arrests.
Attorneys pushed for a quick decision, saying many are being deported without knowing their options. The hundreds of detainees, mostly from the Chicago area, were arrested from summer through the early weeks of the “Operation Midway Blitz” immigration crackdown in the fall. Attorneys have said they have collected information on hundreds of more people they believe were also improperly arrested.
“We will work tirelessly to ensure that people who were unlawfully arrested will be able to return to their families and communities as soon as possible,” said Keren Zwick with the National Immigrant Justice Center.
A message left Thursday for the Department of Homeland Security was not immediately returned.
The consent decree, which expired earlier this year, was extended until February. The federal government tried to challenge the extension in court.
The agreement was originally reached between immigrant rights groups and the federal government following a lawsuit over 2018 immigration sweeps. It applies to immigrants arrested in six states covered by the ICE field office in Chicago. Those states are Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky and Wisconsin.
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A Chinese whistleblower now living in the US is being hunted by Beijing with US tech
MIDLAND, Texas — Retired Chinese official Li Chuanliang was recuperating from cancer on a Korean resort island when he got an urgent call: Don’t return to China, a friend warned. You’re now a fugitive.
Days later, a stranger snapped a photo of Li in a cafe. Terrified South Korea would send him back, Li fled, flew to the U.S. on a tourist visa and applied for asylum. But even there — in New York, in California, deep in the Texas desert — the Chinese government continued to hunt him down with the help of surveillance technology.
Li’s communications were monitored, his assets seized and his movements followed in police databases. More than 40 friends and relatives — including his pregnant daughter — were identified and detained, even by tracking down their cab drivers through facial recognition software. Three former associates died in detention, and for months shadowy men Li believed to be Chinese operatives stalked him across continents, interviews and documents seen by The Associated Press show.
“They track you 24 hours a day. All your electronics, your phone — they’ll use every method to find you, your relatives, your friends, where you live,” Li said. “No matter where you are, you’re under their control.”
The Chinese government is using an increasingly powerful tool to cement its power at home and vastly amplify it abroad: Surveillance technology, much of it originating in the U.S., an AP investigation has found.
Within China, this technology helped identify and punish almost 900,000 officials last year alone, nearly five times more than in 2012, according to state numbers. Beijing says it is cracking down on corruption, but critics charge that such technology is used in China and elsewhere to stifle dissent and exact retribution on perceived enemies.
Outside China, the same technology is being used to threaten wayward officials, along with dissidents and alleged criminals, under what authorities call Operations “Fox Hunt” and “Sky Net.” The U.S. has criticized these overseas operations as a “threat” and an “affront to national sovereignty.” More than 14,000 people, including some 3,000 officials, have been brought back to China from more than 120 countries through coercion, arrests and pressure on relatives, according to state information.
“They’re actively pursuing those people who fled China. … as a way to demonstrate power, to show there’s no way you can escape,” said Yaqiu Wang, a fellow at the University of Chicago. “The chilling effect is enormously effective.”
The technology used to control officials at home and abroad over the past decade came from Silicon Valley companies such as IBM, Oracle and Microsoft, according to a review of hundreds of leaked emails, government procurements, and internal corporate presentations obtained exclusively by AP. This technology mines texts, payments, flights, calls, and other data to identify the friends and family of officials and their assets.
Among the agencies pursuing Li and his family is China’s economic crimes police, which hunts corruption suspects domestically and abroad. IBM said in internal slides that it sold the i2 surveillance software program to this Economic Crime Investigation Bureau, and procurement records show Oracle and Microsoft software was sold to that same division. Leaked emails show i2 software was copied by a former IBM partner, Landasoft, and sold to China’s disciplinary commissions, which investigate officials. None of the sales violated U.S. sanctions.
IBM said in a statement that it sold its division making the i2 program in 2022, and has “robust processes” to ensure its technology is used responsibly. Oracle declined comment, and Microsoft did not respond.
China’s State Council, Ministry of Public Security, National Supervision Commission, and Supreme People’s Court and Prosecutorate did not respond to faxed requests for comment. China’s foreign ministry told AP that Chinese authorities protect the rights of suspects, handle cases lawfully and respect foreign sovereignty.
“We urge relevant countries to drop double standards and avoid becoming a safe haven for corrupt officials and their assets,” it said.
Li’s story is a rare firsthand account from a former Chinese official. Beijing has accused Li of corruption totaling around $435 million, but Li says he’s being targeted for openly criticizing the Chinese government and denies criminal charges of taking bribes and embezzling state funds. A review of thousands of pages of legal, property, and corporate records, interrogation transcripts, and Li’s medical and travel files obtained exclusively by AP, as well as interviews with nine lawyers, support key parts of his story, showing distorted charges, blocked access to evidence, coercive confessions, and altered legal records.
Li drew ire because as a former official, he knew well and exposed the inner workings of local politics, including naming names. While in the U.S., he also started what he called the Chinese Tyrannical Officials Whistleblower Center.
“China places enormous emphasis on the political discipline of even former officials and (Communist) Party members,” said Jeremy Daum, Senior Fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center. “So when one becomes a vocal critic of the country’s leadership, it doesn’t go over well.”
At a pro-democracy gathering in California in 2020, Li said, he was tailed and questioned by a stranger who knew his identity. That November, an activist secretly working for Beijing asked Li to a meeting and added him to a dissident group chat monitored by China’s police, a 2025 FBI indictment later revealed. In June, an FBI letter identified Li as the possible victim of a crime involving an unregistered Chinese agent.
Both the FBI and the White House did not comment on Li’s specific case. But the White House said it pursues any violations of U.S. law, and the FBI told AP it considers China’s efforts to retaliate against people in the U.S. who exercise their rights “unacceptable.”
Li’s future in the U.S. is unclear. The Trump administration has paused all asylum applications. If he doesn’t return, he could face trial in absentia; if convicted and deported, he could face life in prison.
“Electronic surveillance is the arteries for China to project power into the world … each step that every one of your relatives takes is being monitored and analyzed with big data,” Li said. “It’s absolutely terrifying.”
Li, a stocky and well-built man who projects authority, rose through the ranks through the 1990s and 2000s, when China’s growing prosperity also brought corruption. Beijing formed a new “economic crime investigation bureau” and established what it called “Golden Tax,” “Golden Finance,” and “Golden Audit” systems to track businesses and officials across the country, using tech from Silicon Valley companies.
Li worked as a state accountant in his hometown, Jixi, in far northeastern China, where he signed off on contracts to purchase American technology. “Bulwark against corruption,” the local media dubbed him.
Li’s family prospered, investing in apartment complexes and renting out forklifts and bulldozers, raising questions over whether he used his position to enrich relatives. Li and his lawyers don’t deny conflicts of interest or civil violations, but say profits were made from legal, regular business operations and deny criminal charges of embezzlement and bribery.
The same technology to fight corruption was also used for surveillance. Police accessed banking records, financial transactions, “Golden Tax,” “Golden Finance,” and “Golden Audit” data along with their own digital policing systems to sift through the finances of wide swaths of the population.
Officials began deploying surveillance technology against each other. China’s former top security official was found to have wiretapped political opponents. And a former vice state security minister colluded with a businessman to leak tapes of a political competitor having sex with a mistress.
In June 2011, Jixi gained a new leader: Xu Zhaojun, a local party boss.
Months later, Li was named vice mayor of Jixi. He soon heard stories about Xu, his new boss.
In January 2012, Xu splurged on an extravagant family getaway to China’s tropical Hainan Island, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of public money on first-class tickets, lavish seafood dinners, and luxury suites, according to photos and receipts obtained by Li and seen by AP. They brought a maid, bought gold jewelry, and used the VIP airport terminal.
At first Li stayed silent. But Xu kept spending: Luxury cars. Clothes from Louis Vuitton. A high-roller trip to Vegas, with paid escorts and expensive watches.
Xu allegedly colluded with property developers to demolish an apartment complex, a culture center and a thriving shopping plaza for new construction, standing to earn millions in the process, documents show. More than 100 people complained.
But rather than investigate Xu, the Jixi authorities went after the protesters, and police said they were “strictly preventing” residents from complaining to the central government in Beijing, documents show.
The funds Li had earmarked for Jixi’s surveillance apparatus was being turned on ordinary people. He was aghast.
“It only became clear after I became vice mayor,” Li said. “From top to bottom, it’s all corrupt.”
It all changed in 2012, when Xi Jinping became China’s top leader.
Gifts of watches, cigarettes and high-end liquor were curbed. Private clubs shuttered, upscale restaurants closed. Banquets were canceled, red carpets rolled up, and thousands arrested.
Back in Jixi, Xu ordered more seizures: Investors wanted to privatize a funeral home. When staff discussed making formal complaints, Xu had some arrested.
Li knew the risks of reporting his boss were high. But in early 2013, Xi called on the party to catch “tigers and flies” in corruption — officials high-ranking and low.
Li gathered evidence: photos, memos, and piles of receipts. He typed out a letter about Xu, accusing his boss and his cronies of embezzling more than $100 million. “They’re not just greedy for the money of the living, but they also eat the money of the dead,” he wrote.
The daring gambit backfired at first.
The party demoted Xu but didn’t arrest him. Furious, Xu sought revenge, and Li found himself and his relatives the target of state scrutiny. Li’s family was threatened, and his siblings were fired from their government jobs.
But Li’s complaint against Xu had opened the floodgates, with accusations from others mounting. In August 2014, an official from Beijing asked Li for a meeting about Xu. They spoke well into the night.
Within a week, Xu was arrested. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Xu is in prison and could not be reached. Chinese authorities did not respond to a request for an interview with Xu.
Party officials asked Li if he wanted a new post. But he had lost faith in the party.
“I saw through the nature of the system,” Li said. “So I quit.”
In 2014 and 2015, the launch of operations Fox Hunt and Sky Net began ensnaring hundreds of former officials and their business partners abroad.
Beijing set up big data centers to track money and relationships and established an online portal to report “fleeing party members and government officials.”
A playbook emerged: Trawl through police databases to find transactions or property that could be deemed suspicious. Identify friends and family who could be coerced to confess. Then announce corruption charges.
A leaked photo of the internal police software used to hunt officials suggests the moniker “Sky Net” was inspired by an American movie, “The Terminator,” about a cyborg assassin that hunts humans.
At first, the U.S. government was open to cooperating with Beijing’s requests for information and extradition, said Holden Triplett, FBI attache in Beijing from 2014 to 2017. But soon, the U.S. realized China’s anti-corruption campaign was often about stifling dissent.
“It was such a low level of information, not even really evidence, it was not enough for us to take any action ever,” Triplett told AP. “What they tended to focus on were things that frankly were threatening to the state and threatening to the party potentially, or somehow would make the party look bad.”
In 2015, Washington complained that Chinese agents were flying to the U.S. and stalking targets without approval, including U.S. permanent residents. Agents brought night goggles from China, snapped photos and taped threatening messages on doors.
Marketing documents and a leaked copy of software used against officials fleeing abroad show how American technology enabled Beijing’s playbook.
IBM marketed i2 to Chinese police to allow them to flag officials based on the value of their assets and that of their families, according to a slideshow whose metadata identifies it as being from 2018. They customized financial software to add a function for Chinese officials to “sign off” on orders.
i2 was also copied by an IBM Chinese reseller, Landasoft, which developed its own software that drew connections to flag “suspicious individuals,” such as relatives connected to a targeted official. A leaked copy of Landasoft software showed one button was called “associated persons management.” Another showed special functions for Valentine’s Day and other holidays, when loved ones were more likely to call.
Landasoft systems flagged suspicious transactions and tracked suspected prostitutes or when two people of the opposite gender booked the same hotel room. Landasoft did not respond to a request for comment.
Monitoring and threatening family was key to getting back anyone who had fled.
“A fugitive is like a kite,” said Li Gongjing, a captain in the economic crime investigation division of the Shanghai police, in an interview with state media. “He may be abroad, but the string is in China, and he can always be found through his family.”
After Li quit the party, auditors trawled through his finances — usual practice for departing officials. Three years later, in 2017, they declared him clean.
The next year, Xi removed term limits, allowing him to rule for life. He used the anti-corruption campaign to sideline rivals and eliminate opposition.
Soon, even those who were hunting other officials fell victim to the government.
In 2018, Chinese police official Meng Hongwei was detained in Beijing, abruptly ending a two-year term as Interpol president during which the international policing organization issued hundreds of Red Notices requested by China. Red Notices alert global law enforcement to look out for a criminal suspect, upon request of a member country, but Interpol has spent years trying to prevent abuse of the system for hunting down political asylum-seekers.
In February 2020, agents came for Li’s friend and former deputy, district chief Kong Lingbao, who had criticized Beijing’s censorship of key information in the COVID-19 pandemic. A rival secretly recorded Kong saying during a private dinner that he could no longer work for the party. Kong was summoned to the local discipline inspection office and never came out: he was being investigated for “inappropriate remarks”.
Kong’s arrest prompted a friend to ring Li in Korea and warn him. That July, Chinese authorities opened an investigation into Li.
A month later, Li told The Epoch Times, a dissident Chinese publication, that he had quit the party, and portrayed himself as a dissident. He says he did not know he was under investigation at the time.
A week after the interview was published, strangers stalked Li at the unveiling of a sculpture dedicated to pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, asking menacing questions and tailing him by car. Agents identified the address of one of his safe houses.
In early September, the party publicly accused Li of embezzling “huge amounts” of state funds, paying money for sex and fleeing abroad. It was “only a matter of time”, authorities declared, before Li would be arrested.
“We advise all corrupt officials who have fled abroad, including Li Chuanliang, that no matter how cunning a fox is, it cannot escape the eyes of the hunter,” it said.
Official statements and interviews with four people familiar with Li’s case show Xi and the central government got directly involved after Li spoke out.
Beijing tapped phones, seized assets and installed cameras outside the homes of friends and family. Some detained were denied surgery or other medical care, even those recovering from heart disease, cancer, and other illnesses. Li’s aunt was released from a hospital in a vegetative state with bruises on her head and all over her body. Even the Li family grave was dug up.
Li’s friend, Kong, was sentenced to over a decade in prison for allegedly taking bribes. The party claimed he had watched porn and ignored his work, which they blamed for the spread of COVID in his district. Furious, Li kept speaking out.
In December 2020, a man from Shanghai posing as a private investigator approached Zheng Cunzhu, vice chairman of the dissident China Democracy Party. The man offered $100,000 in bribes for information on Li and promised more if he obstructed Li’s bid for asylum, Zheng said in an interview and a letter.
In February 2021, Li learned the Chinese government had asked Interpol to issue a Red Notice declaring to police worldwide that Li was a wanted man. Interpol retracted the Red Notice after Li filed a complaint.
Li began donning masks and hats in public and carrying multiple phones, wary of surveillance. He floated from safe house to safe house with Christians across the United States.
In October 2024, a Chinese court announced that Li was suspected of corruption totaling over 3.1 billion RMB, or roughly $435 million. The government claimed they seized 1,021 properties, 38 vehicles, and 18 companies belonging to Li and charged his relatives and associates with crimes related to Li. The lawyers who reviewed the case told AP there were serious anomalies with the charges.
Many of the lawyers Li has tried to hire were rejected, threatened, and put under surveillance. At least three were summoned by Chinese legal authorities. They were told Li’s case was “political” and important to leaders from Beijing, and warned against speaking publicly, according to memos viewed by AP.
“Once you get to the point that you’re criticizing the party, it’s no holds barred,” said Ryan Mitchell, a law professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “Resistance is punished.”
In a courthouse in China, Li’s friends and family faced legal proceedings tied to his corruption charges. A plainclothes officer outside stopped an AP reporter from taking photos, saying a “sensitive political case” was being heard.
“They didn’t show any evidence. Instead, they told a story,” one of the lawyers told AP, declining to be named because they were warned against speaking to the press. “They wouldn’t even show us the accusations.”
Authorities in Heilongjiang, where the proceedings were held, did not respond to a faxed request for comment.
Li is now cut off from friends and family, denied legal assistance and clueless even to the details of the charges against him. So he is once again resorting to speaking out — this time on YouTube.
Li acknowledges the situation seems hopeless. But he’s pressing on.
“Why am I speaking up?” he said. “Today, it’s me. Tomorrow, it might be you.”
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Independent investigative journalists Myf Ma in New York and Yael Grauer in Phoenix and AP journalists Serginho Roosblad in Texas, Garance Burke in San Francisco and Byron Tau in Washington contributed to this report.
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Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/.
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Quincy man arraigned in Route 128 rest stop shooting
SALEM — A Quincy man was arraigned Thursday in Salem District Court on seven charges related to a shooting that took place on Route 128 North about 11:30 p.m. on Monday, according to the Office of Essex County District Attorney Paul F. Tucker.
Thomas D. Perkins, 26, is charged with two counts of armed assault with intent to murder with a firearm, two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon, carrying a firearm without a license (second offense), possessing ammunition without a firearm ID car (subsequent offense), discharging a firearm near a highway, and defacing property.
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By Buck Anderson | Staff Writer
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