Alan Stamm ticklethewire.com BIRMINGHAM, Mich. — Elmore Leonard, the acclaimed crime novelist who died Tuesday morning, imagined characters who behave and sound like believable law breakers and law enforcers. His best-known plot stars include Raylan Givens, a deputy U.S. marshal on page and screen. Leonard, who died at 87 in his suburban Detroit home from…
By CHARLIE SAVAGE New York Times WASHINGTON — The federal government is making progress on developing a surveillance system that would pair computers with video cameras to scan crowds and automatically identify people by their faces, according to newly disclosed documents and interviews with researchers working on the project. The Department of Homeland Security tested…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com All Abdulbaki Todashev wants to know is what prompted an FBI agent to fatally shoot his son. The FBI won’t say what happened when an agent killed Ibragim Todashev, a companion of one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, at his Orlando apartment earlier this year. The Associated Press reports that the…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com Laura M. Laughlin, the top FBI agent in Washington state, says she continues to be discriminated against nearly two years after filing a gender discrimination suit against the bureau, McClatchy reports. Special agent-in-charge of the FBI’s Seattle field office, Laughlin contends in an updated legal filing that her gender has cost her…
Alaska-based serial killer Israel Keyes, who took his own life last year, is shown in a new video toying with the FBI about his alleged victims, Slate reports. At one point, Keyes says he’s unwilling to discuss details of the victims because he doesn’t want his mom to find out. Then he jokes with agents…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com Drug smugglers have shown no end to new ways to bring drugs into the U.S. On Tuesday, authorities said a Canadian scuba diver tried to smuggle $40,000 worth marijuana into the U.S. by swimming across St. Clair River in Michigan, the Lansing State Journal reports. The scuba diver, who has not yet…
