SALEM — A Lynn man was arrested on three counts of distributing cocaine following a joint operation by Salem and Lynn police last Thursday.
On Dec. 18, the Criminal Investigation Divisions (CID) of the Salem and Lynn police departments completed a lengthy joint investigation with the arrest of Derrick Poe of 46 Mall St., Apartment 4, in Lynn, on three counts of distributing a Class B substance.
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BOSTON — Massachusetts corrections officials say they’re making progress curbing the amount of illegal drugs being smuggled into the state’s prisons.
A report released Wednesday by the Massachusetts Department of Correction said a multiagency task force created to intercept contraband in state correctional facilities investigated 26 cases that led to arrests and the seizure of millions of dollars worth of synthetic cannabis, heroin and opioids.
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KEARNY, N.J. — A man in New Jersey accused of killing a man with a bow and arrow and then barricading himself for hours and setting fires inside a house was charged Monday with murder.
The 44-year-old was arrested Sunday afternoon at the house in Kearny, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) west of New York City, once the fires were put out and following a brief standoff with police. The Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office said the man exited the home armed with knives.
The Kearny Police Department was first notified Saturday at 6:45 p.m. of an injured man near an intersection. Officers later determined the 45-year-old man from nearby Harrison had been struck by arrow. He was taken to a hospital, where he died.
The man accused of killing him was charged with murder, arson and two gun-related crimes. More charges are expected.
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.
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.
BOSTON — Sen. Ed Markey is renewing criticism of federal authorities for “inhumane” conditions at a Burlington ICE facility where people detained on immigration violations are held before being transferred to other locations.
In a letter to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Boston acting Field Office Director David Wesling, Markey said after a meeting with him and other officials Dec. 11 he “continues to be alarmed by the allegations of overcrowding and inadequate conditions” at the Burlington facility, “as well as by ICE’s arrest dragnet.”
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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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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.”
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.
___
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.
Federal authorities said Monday that they foiled a plot to bomb multiple sites of two U.S. companies on New Year’s Eve in Southern California after arresting members of an extremist anti-capitalist and anti-government group.The four suspects were arrested Friday in the Mojave Desert east of Los Angeles as they were rehearsing their plot, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said during a news conference. Officials showed reporters surveillance aerial footage of the suspects moving a large black object in the desert to a table. Officials said they were able to make the arrests before the suspects assembled a functional explosive device.In the criminal complaint, the four suspects named are Audrey Illeene Carroll, 30; Zachary Aaron Page, 32; Dante Gaffield, 24; and Tina Lai, 41. They are all from the Los Angeles area, Essayli said.Officials did not describe a motive but said they are members of an offshoot of a group dubbed the Turtle Island Liberation Front. The group calls for decolonization, tribal sovereignty and “the working class to rise up and fight back against capitalism,” according to the criminal complaint.The term “Turtle Island” is used by some Indigenous peoples to describe North America in a way that reflects its existence outside of the colonial boundaries put in place by the U.S. and Canada. It comes from Indigenous creation stories where the continent was formed on the back of a giant turtle.Officials also found “Free Palestine” flyers at the desert campsite where the suspects were working with the bomb-making materials.The charges against each suspect include conspiracy and possession of a destructive device. Essayli said additional charges were expected in coming weeks.The four suspects’ attorneys did not immediately return requests for comment, and The Associated Press was unable to reach family members. AP also sent Turtle Island Liberation Front’s social media accounts messages asking for comment but did not get a response.Alleged plot had multiple targetsEssayli said Carroll last month created a detailed plan to bomb five or more business locations across Southern California on New Year’s Eve. He declined to name the companies but described them as “Amazon-type” logistical centers.“Carroll’s bomb plot was explicit,” Essayli said. “It included step-by-step instructions to build IEDs… and listed multiple targets across Orange County and Los Angeles.”The plan included planting backpacks filled with complex pipe bombs that were set to be detonated simultaneously at midnight on New Year’s Eve at five locations, according to officials and the criminal complaint. New Year’s Eve was identified as an opportune time in the plan that stated “fireworks will be going off at this time so explosions will be less likely to be noticed,” according to the investigation.The eight-page handwritten plan titled “OPERATION MIDNIGHT SUN” stated more locations could be added. The locations were identified as property and facilities operated by two separate companies tied to activities affecting interstate and foreign commerce, according to the complaint.Two of the group’s members also had discussed plans for future attacks targeting Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and vehicles with pipe bombs in 2026, according to the criminal complaint.Carroll noted “that would take some of them out and scare the rest of them,’” according to the complaint.The plans were discussed both at an in-person meeting with members in Los Angeles and through an encrypted messaging app, Essayli said.‘Bomb-making components’ found at campsitePhotos included in the court documents show a desert campsite with what investigators said were bomb-making materials strewn across plastic folding tables.The suspects “all brought bomb-making components to the campsite, including various sizes of PVC pipes, suspected potassium nitrate, charcoal, charcoal powder, sulfur powder, and material to be used as fuses, among others,” the complaint states.The plan included instructions on how to manufacture the bombs and also how to avoid leaving evidence behind that could be traced back to the group, officials said. The suspects recently had acquired precursor chemicals and other items, including purchases from Amazon, according to the complaint.The FBI moved in last week as they rehearsed the attack in the desert near Twentynine Palms, California, officials said.“They had everything they needed to make an operational bomb at that location,” Essayli said.Authorities issued search warrants and found posters for the Turtle Island Liberation Front at Carroll’s home that called for “Death to America,” and “Death to ICE,” Essayli said. In Page’s residence, police found a copy of the detailed bomb plan, he added.Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said while federal and local officials disagree on the Trump administration’s immigration raids, they come together still to protect residents. The LAPD does not stop people or take action for any reason related to immigration status, and it doesn’t enforce immigration laws, a practice that has been in place for 45 years.“The successful disruption of this plot is a powerful testament to the strength of our unified response,” McDonnell said.The suspects were taken into custody without incident. They were scheduled to appear in court in Los Angeles Monday afternoon.___Watson reported from San Diego. Associated Press journalists Jessica Hill in Las Vegas and Graham Lee Brewer in Norman, Oklahoma, contributed to this report.
LOS ANGELES —
Federal authorities said Monday that they foiled a plot to bomb multiple sites of two U.S. companies on New Year’s Eve in Southern California after arresting members of an extremist anti-capitalist and anti-government group.
The four suspects were arrested Friday in the Mojave Desert east of Los Angeles as they were rehearsing their plot, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said during a news conference. Officials showed reporters surveillance aerial footage of the suspects moving a large black object in the desert to a table. Officials said they were able to make the arrests before the suspects assembled a functional explosive device.
In the criminal complaint, the four suspects named are Audrey Illeene Carroll, 30; Zachary Aaron Page, 32; Dante Gaffield, 24; and Tina Lai, 41. They are all from the Los Angeles area, Essayli said.
Officials did not describe a motive but said they are members of an offshoot of a group dubbed the Turtle Island Liberation Front. The group calls for decolonization, tribal sovereignty and “the working class to rise up and fight back against capitalism,” according to the criminal complaint.
The term “Turtle Island” is used by some Indigenous peoples to describe North America in a way that reflects its existence outside of the colonial boundaries put in place by the U.S. and Canada. It comes from Indigenous creation stories where the continent was formed on the back of a giant turtle.
Officials also found “Free Palestine” flyers at the desert campsite where the suspects were working with the bomb-making materials.
The charges against each suspect include conspiracy and possession of a destructive device. Essayli said additional charges were expected in coming weeks.
The four suspects’ attorneys did not immediately return requests for comment, and The Associated Press was unable to reach family members. AP also sent Turtle Island Liberation Front’s social media accounts messages asking for comment but did not get a response.
Alleged plot had multiple targets
Essayli said Carroll last month created a detailed plan to bomb five or more business locations across Southern California on New Year’s Eve. He declined to name the companies but described them as “Amazon-type” logistical centers.
“Carroll’s bomb plot was explicit,” Essayli said. “It included step-by-step instructions to build IEDs… and listed multiple targets across Orange County and Los Angeles.”
The plan included planting backpacks filled with complex pipe bombs that were set to be detonated simultaneously at midnight on New Year’s Eve at five locations, according to officials and the criminal complaint. New Year’s Eve was identified as an opportune time in the plan that stated “fireworks will be going off at this time so explosions will be less likely to be noticed,” according to the investigation.
The eight-page handwritten plan titled “OPERATION MIDNIGHT SUN” stated more locations could be added. The locations were identified as property and facilities operated by two separate companies tied to activities affecting interstate and foreign commerce, according to the complaint.
Two of the group’s members also had discussed plans for future attacks targeting Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and vehicles with pipe bombs in 2026, according to the criminal complaint.
Carroll noted “that would take some of them out and scare the rest of them,’” according to the complaint.
The plans were discussed both at an in-person meeting with members in Los Angeles and through an encrypted messaging app, Essayli said.
‘Bomb-making components’ found at campsite
Photos included in the court documents show a desert campsite with what investigators said were bomb-making materials strewn across plastic folding tables.
The suspects “all brought bomb-making components to the campsite, including various sizes of PVC pipes, suspected potassium nitrate, charcoal, charcoal powder, sulfur powder, and material to be used as fuses, among others,” the complaint states.
The plan included instructions on how to manufacture the bombs and also how to avoid leaving evidence behind that could be traced back to the group, officials said. The suspects recently had acquired precursor chemicals and other items, including purchases from Amazon, according to the complaint.
The FBI moved in last week as they rehearsed the attack in the desert near Twentynine Palms, California, officials said.
“They had everything they needed to make an operational bomb at that location,” Essayli said.
Authorities issued search warrants and found posters for the Turtle Island Liberation Front at Carroll’s home that called for “Death to America,” and “Death to ICE,” Essayli said. In Page’s residence, police found a copy of the detailed bomb plan, he added.
Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said while federal and local officials disagree on the Trump administration’s immigration raids, they come together still to protect residents. The LAPD does not stop people or take action for any reason related to immigration status, and it doesn’t enforce immigration laws, a practice that has been in place for 45 years.
“The successful disruption of this plot is a powerful testament to the strength of our unified response,” McDonnell said.
The suspects were taken into custody without incident. They were scheduled to appear in court in Los Angeles Monday afternoon.
___
Watson reported from San Diego. Associated Press journalists Jessica Hill in Las Vegas and Graham Lee Brewer in Norman, Oklahoma, contributed to this report.
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.
• 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).
• 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).
• 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.”
