By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

An FBI agent caught on video assaulting a much smaller teenager and then pointing a gun at the victim remains on active duty despite an assault conviction stemming from the incident.

FBI Agent Gerald Rogero was off-duty outside of a high-rise apartment building in Chevy Chase, Md., when he struck the 15-year-old in the chest.

Rogero then pulled out a gun and placed the teen under arrest.

“If I have to shoot you, I will,” he said. “Don’t make me shoot you.”

Rogero, who served as a chief in the FBI’s counterterrorism division for nearly 20 years, was found guilty last week of second-degree assault, The Washington Post reports. 

Sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 20.

“At the end of the day, we are here because of the defendant’s conduct, off duty, while armed,” Assistant State’s Attorney John Lalos said.

Rogero’s attorney argued that the agent should be allowed to carry a gun.

“It’s clear that in order for him to continue to be an FBI agent, he needs to be armed 24 hours a day,” Marlon Griffith said.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

DETROIT –– A former Detroit Public Schools official who pleaded guilty last month to defrauding schools in Chicago is accused of illegally steering a $40 million book deal to DPS, according to court records obtained by the Detroit Free Press. 

The records show that Barbara Byrd-Bennett, who was the accountability officer for DPS from May 2009 to June 2011, had a conflict of interest and lied about her relationship with the book publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

While she worked later at Chicago Public Schools, Byrd-Bennett helped steer $23 million in no-bid contracts in return for $2.3 million in kickbacks and bribes.

She pleaded guilty last month in the Chicago Public Schools case.

A search warrant for her AOL account uncovered the new allegations.

The FBI believes there is “probable cause” that Byrd-Bennett committed theft, fraud and conspiracy while working for DPS.

DPS officials said they are cooperating.

“Detroit Public Schools takes seriously any allegations of misconduct against its employees and/or vendors,” DPS spokeswoman Michelle Zdrodowski wrote in an e-mail. “As with any matter where there are allegations of misconduct, DPS investigates internally and works cooperatively with the law enforcement agency handling such matters.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

Newly released records show that members of the Wu-Tang Clan were investigated by the FBI for allegedly ordering the murder of two men in 1999, Billboard reports.

The documents stem from a federal trial of two Staten Island drug kingpins, who may have been murdered in retaliation for robbing Wu-Tang founding members RZA and Raekwon’s family members.

The drug kingpins, who are brothers Anthony and Harvey Christian, were found guilty last October of running a major drug-dealing operation.

One of the defendant’s lawyer requested police files related to Wu-Tang Clan’s alleged involvement in the murder of two men.

“These reports seem to suggest someone else was liable for those murders. I’m not suggesting that Wu-Tang committed these crimes. The FBI did,” Anthony Christian’s lawyer Michael Gold told theStaten Island Advance. “What I’m trying to ascertain is their stated belief in an official file that Wu-Tang ordered this homicide.”

The information was shocking.

“A couple of weeks before the Boo Boo [Estella］shooting, Uncles (the street name of drug supplier-turned-informant Paul Ford) told Humphreys about a Blood named Boo Boo who just came home from jail,” the filing reads. “He stated that Boo Boo had robbed RZA’s little brother and had also gotten into something with the Christian brothers.”

It continues, “Uncles was talking about Boo Boo and said that he had just come home and robbed RZA’s brother and that they would likely come after him for that. Humphreys believes Uncles was referring to members of Wu Tang.”

FBI Director James Comey

By Liz Peek
Fiscal Times

When it comes to criminal justice reform, whom are you going to believe? James Comey, the nation’s top cop, or politicians eager to curry favor with the black community?

FBI chief James Comey earned himself a summons to the Oval Office last week by telling the truth about the war on crime. President Obama suggests that racial bias has led to too many black men being locked up and vows to combat “disparities in the application of criminal justice.” Comey argues that tough policing in minority neighborhoods has saved thousands of black lives and that the recent upsurge in homicides may reflect the “YouTube” effect — making police officers nervous to do their jobs. The good news is that Comey, imbued with an impressive independence streak, has another 8 years to serve. Even though Obama could presumably pressure him to resign, he can’t fire him.

Democrats and Republicans alike have hopped aboard the criminal justice bandwagon, noting the large incarceration rate in the United States and the disproportionate number of prisoners of color. Hillary Clinton hit a common theme when she noted in a speech last spring, “It’s a stark fact that the United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, yet we have almost 25 percent of the world’s total prison population.” She fails to note that the disparity stems fromhigher crime rates. Homicides in the U.S. run seven times the rate in other developed countries, according to a 2011 study from the Harvard School of Public Health and the UCLA School of Public Health.

Clinton also gets it backwards with her next statement: “The numbers today are much higher than they were 30, 40 years ago, despite the fact that crime is at historic lows.”

Many would suggest that crime is at historic lows because so many criminals have been put behind bars. Comey made that case recently, speaking at the University of Chicago Law School. He reminds us that not so long ago, urban crime, especially in minority neighborhoods, was horrific. In New York City, 2,000 homicides a year was considered the norm in the 1980s and 1990s; last year there were 328.  As Comey notes, “White people weren’t dying; black people were dying. Most white people could drive around the problem. If you were white and not involved in the drug trade as a buyer or a seller, you were largely apart from the violence.”

To read more click here. 

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

It was a tense moment for a DEA agent who was trying to arrest a drug suspect.

The suspect tried to remove a gun from the agent, causing the weapon to fire as the suspect and a female suspect fled in a hotel parking lot near JFK Airport on Tuesday, the New York Post reports. 

A witness saw the incident unfold and initially thought the agent was the aggressor as the female suspect screamed.

“He was running after her and she was running back towards the Hampton Inn parking lot. He jumped and tackled her here behind the car, like a football tackle,” said Tyesha Davis, 29.

“I ran over and started hitting him, saying, ‘Get off her!’ He reached in his shirt and pulled out a badge and said, ‘Stop, I’m a DEA officer.’”

“I asked, ‘Who is she?’ and he said, ‘She’s a drug trafficker, I’m making an arrest,’” Davis continued.

The man who tried to wrestle the gun away from the agent was still at large Tuesday night.

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