New York
Official: Undercover cop present at bike rally
NEW YORK – Authorities are investigating whether an undercover police officer present at a motorcycle rally witnessed a violent confrontation between an SUV driver and a swarm of bikers and didn’t immediately report it, a law enforcement official said Saturday.
The officer came forward several days after the Sept. 29 rally to say he was present, according to the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The officer has an attorney, and internal affairs detectives are trying to determine whether he witnessed the assault on the SUV driver, the official said.
New York Police Department spokesman John McCarthy said a detective had been stripped of his gun and badge pending the outcome of an internal affairs investigation.
McCarthy said internal affairs was investigating the case and looking into whether any off-duty officers may have been present.
Connecticut
Newtown voters accept $50 million for new school
NEWTOWN, Conn. – Newtown voters have accepted a $50 million grant from the state of Connecticut to build a new Sandy Hook Elementary School, the site of last year’s school massacre.
The unofficial results Saturday were 4,504 for the grant offer and 558 against. The vote was essentially a formality since a task force of Newtown officials decided in May in favor of a plan to tear down the school and build a new one. Sandy Hook students have been attending classes at a school in neighboring Monroe.
State lawmakers had set aside the money to help the town build a new school to replace the one where a gunman killed 26 people last December. Connecticut officials said the state was willing to allocate all of the $50 million to the new school.
Washington, D.C.
Use of force in police chase to be investigated
WASHINGTON – Police in Washington are reviewing the use of officers’ deadly force in the killing of a woman who tried to ram her car through a White House barrier, a shooting her family says was unjustified.
The investigation will reconstruct the car chase and shooting, which briefly put the U.S. Capitol on lockdown, and explore how officers dealt with the driver and whether protocols were followed.
Senate Sergeant at Arms Terrance Gainer said he was confident the officers “did the best they could under the situation.” Police guarding national landmarks must make fast decisions without the luxury of all the facts, especially when a threat is perceived, he said.
Capitol Police Chief Kim Dine maintained that his officers acted “heroically” to protect the community.
Still, the family of 34-year-old Miriam Carey called the shooting unjustified, and some deadly force experts agree it merits scrutiny.
Louisiana
Coast prepares for Tropical Storm Karen
NEW ORLEANS – Tropical Storm Karen stalled off the Louisiana coast Saturday night as a weakened system that still threatened to bring strong wind and heavy rain to vulnerable low-lying areas.
The National Weather Service said Saturday evening that the storm was stationary but still expected to move across or near the southeast Louisiana coast late Saturday or early Sunday, then track eastward and lose strength. It had spent the day either stalled or moving slowly.
The town, roughly 60 miles south of New Orleans, remained under a mandatory evacuation order Saturday evening amid worries that the only mainland road in and out might get swamped with water.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami discontinued tropical storm watches across much of the Gulf Coast, including metro New Orleans, but a portion of southeast Louisiana remained under a tropical storm warning.
Arizona
Chief of department that lost 19 firefighters leaves job
PRESCOTT, Ariz. – The chief of the Arizona fire department that lost 19 wildland firefighters in June says he is being forced out of his job.
Prescott City Manager Craig McConnell told The Daily Courier that Chief Dan Fraijo is leaving by “mutual agreement” effective Nov. 15.
Fraijo disagreed.
“Mutual? No,” he said. “There’s an agreement that when I was hired that said, at any given time, either side could give 30 days’ notice and I would leave or could leave.”
Fraijo oversaw the city’s regular fire department and the Granite Mountain Hotshots, the nation’s only specialized Hotshot crew run by a city. Nineteen of the crew’s 20 members died June 30 in a wildfire in nearby Yarnell.
An investigative report by a team of national experts released last month found proper procedure was followed in the worst firefighting tragedy since Sept. 11, 2001. The report, however, found communications lapses, including a 33-minute gap in radio traffic from the Hotshots crew in the hour before they died. It did not determine if the tragedy was avoidable.
Associated Press
