News Story
FBI Releases Training Video on Notifying Family Members of Loved One’s Death
By Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com It’s one of the most difficult parts of the job – telling family members they’ve lost a loved one. To better train law enforcement and first responders on handling the notification of family members of a death, the FBI joined up with Penn State University to create a no-cost website. The…
Los Angeles County Reaches Civil Rights Agreement with Justice Department
By Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com Less than two years after prosecutors discovered a pattern of racial discrimination, the nation’s largest sheriff’s department reached a sweeping agreement Tuesday with the Justice Department to restore civil rights. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved the deal 4-1 after patterns of abuse were found, including unlawful stops and…
AG Loretta Lynch Tested with Baltimore Riot, Releases Plan of Action
By Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com New Attorney General Loretta Lynch received her first big test after riots broke out in Baltimore this week. Lynch, the first black female attorney general, released a statement soon after violence broke out, examining what happened and “going beyond the criminal civil right investigations” launched last week by her predecessor Eric…
Resignation of DEA Administrator Offers Fresh Opportunity for Reform
By Bill Piper Huffington Post Bill Piper is the director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. The resignation of the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Michele Leonhart, comes as no surprise to those of us working to reform the agency. The DEA is a bloated, wasteful, scandal-ridden bureaucracy charged with the…
FBI Employee Killed Outside of His Home in Virginia; Suspect in Custody
By Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com Authorities are investigating the fatal shooting of an FBI police officer outside his home in Stafford County, Virginia on Monday morning. Details were still unclear this morning but the Washington Post reports that a Prince George County man was charged with first-degree murder soon after the shooting. The officer’s identity has…
FBI’s New Special Agent in Charge of Cincinnati Office is Angela Byers
By Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com The new head of the FBI’s Cincinnati Field Office has a rare opportunity. Angela Byers, who recently became the new agent in charge of the office, joined the bureau in 1986, just 14 years after the bureau began to allow women to become agents. When J. Edgar Hoover was the director,…
Prosecutors: FBI Had Legal Right to Track New York Assemblyman by Cell Phone Tower
By Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com Federal prosecutors said FBI agents did not violate the law by tracking a New York assemblyman using cell phone tower data, The Times-Union reports. Assemblyman William Scarborough had no reasonable expectation of privacy because he was using a cell tower, which prosecutors argued is essentially a business record. The Queens Democrat…
Charles Lutz: Things Aren’t What They Seem When It Comes to the Forced Retirement of the DEA’s Michele Leonhart
Charles Lutz is a retired DEA Senior Executive. This column was written for ticklethewire.com By Charles Lutz Things in Washington are seldom what they seem. The media has portrayed the forced retirement of DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart as the result of agents in Colombia holding parties with prostitutes paid for by Drug Cartels, and the…