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August 2017
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Deputy Who Rear-Ended Driver At 104 MPH Had Horrendous Service Record, Received Almost Zero Discipline

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Normally, I wouldn't grab an isolated story about police misconduct and present it here. The misconduct is indeed serious -- an officer involved in high-speed crash that left another man critically injured -- but one cop doing something dumb is barely even newsworthy these days.But the more you read about this law enforcement officer, the worse it gets. And it starts with Deputy Brandon Hegele nailing a smart car driven by a sixty-year-old man while Hegle was travelling 100+ MPH towards a suspect he'd already been told repeatedly not to pursue.The dashcam video (which can be viewed at the link above) shows Hegle weaving in and out of traffic. It then shows the accident victim safely executing a U-turn… well, would have safely executed a U-turn if Deputy Hegle hadn't been driving at over 100 MPH without his lights or siren on.Hegele got lucky. The other driver, not so much.

That crash was into the rear of a Smart car driven by Harry Deshommes. While Hegele did not suffer any serious injuries, Deshommes had to have his spleen removed and suffered from a skull fracture, a traumatic brain injury, a broken left arm, a broken back, several broken ribs and a broken pelvis, according to CBS 12. Deshommes’ Smart car reportedly rolled several times after impact.
Deputy Hegele was placed on unpaid leave after the accident. HOLD YOUR APPLAUSE.Well before that critical crash, the sheriff's office documented several traffic-related incidents in the deputy's career, starting early on, Internal Affairs records show.Let the record[s] show that Deputy Hegele:
- backed into a parked cruiser- fell asleep at the wheel, hitting a median and causing more than $1000 worth of damage- rear-ended a car at an intersection, causing $4000 worth of damage- rear-ended yet another car, causing $12,000 worth of damage
And, finally, the coup de grace of Hegele's super-shitty law enforcement driving career (not including the event above):
Failed to report a crash until hours after it happened and once he had replaced the car’s flat tires. Investigators believe Hegele attempted to respond to a robbery call and hit either a curb or a sidewalk that slashed two of his tires. The report said Hegele called to let dispatch know he was having issues with his vehicle and to put him out of service, but did not say what happened. Then, he called another deputy to bring him spare tires, went to a restaurant for dinner and then called a sergeant nearly two hours after the incident happened to report the damage.
In most of these cases, Hegele only received a written reprimand. In a couple of them, he was suspended without pay -- for a total of two days between both incidents. Hegle has lost his driving privileges twice, for a total of 120 days.But there's even more:
Other than traffic crashes, Hegele has been cited numerous times for “indifference to policies and procedures.”In 2012, Internal Affairs investigators said in the first three months of the year Hegele had 72 calls for service he responded to. Of those, 52 cases required log entries by the deputies to document the case to go along with a case number. Hegele only submitted nine, according to records.
There was a chance to send Hegele packing before he did any more damage. He failed a vehicle inspection for leaving his personal weapon in the patrol car, wedged between the seat and the console with a bullet missing. The weapon was "clearly visible" from outside the vehicle. Hegele couldn't explain why a bullet was missing but said he put the gun there to keep it away from his 4-year-old daughter while he was moving. Also inside the vehicle? A signed Miranda rights waiver card, wholly separated from the investigation file it apparently went with.Instead of being fired, the department gave Hegele -- who at that point had already been involved in five car accidents and multiple Internal Affairs investigations -- a "last chance:" 15 days suspension and a transfer. The only upside of this "last chance" was the agreement revoked Hegele's option to challenge any future for-cause firings, which is what should follow his latest accident.Hegele is now on trial for reckless driving, which is extremely lenient considering the number of charges he could face for his actions. Undoubtedly, he will be leaving behind a bunch of frustrated, angry co-workers who likely cannot understand why someone so toxic was allowed to pollute their ranks for so long.But if anything's going to prevent future Hegeles, it's his agency realizing it's far too lax when it comes to handing out punishment for misconduct. Hegele managed to rack up several thousand dollars-worth of damages in his career, along with whatever collateral damage accrued from his sloppy habits and policework. In return, he received some stern paper-waving and two unpaid days off. Calling that "absurd" makes the word "absurd" as meaningless as "literally." It's horrendous and inexcusable. Hegele may be on his way out, but if Palm Beach County Sheriff's Department wants to be taken seriously, it will be sending a lot of supervisors and officials packing as well.

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posted at: 12:00am on 23-Aug-2017
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Australian Gov't Accessed Domestic Metadata Thousands Of Times, Shared Some Of It With China

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The Australian government has released its latest report [PDF] on its domestic metadata collection efforts and it has a bit of surprising news in it. Josh Taylor and Paul Farrell of Buzzfeed report the Australian government isn't keeping all the domestic metadata it's hoovered up to itself. It's sharing it with several other countries, including one surprising name:

There were a total of 23 disclosures of information from the Australian Federal Police to enforcement agencies in other countries in that year. In addition to China, Australia handed over metadata to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Serbia, Switzerland, Solomon Islands, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Argentina, Slovenia, Canada, Germany, Singapore, Indonesia, the United States of America, Papua New Guinea, the Republic of Ireland, Netherlands, Spain, and France.
China's the odd one here and it only makes the list of Australian data-sharing partners because Australia has a distinct interest in extraditing criminals from China for prosecution. A 2007 mutual assistance treaty laid the groundwork for the handover of Australians' metadata, but this appears to be the first time Australia has actually done so.The spokesperson for the Australian Attorney-General's office says this is perfectly fine. In fact, Australia has already handed over metadata to Hong Kong, so why not China? Everyone's rights are being looked out for by the Australian government… according to the Australian government. This is from AG George Brandis' office:
"Given the global nature of serious transnational and organised crime, effective international cooperation is critical. Any cooperation, including with China, is subject to safeguards to ensure compliance with our international human rights obligations."
Adding a twist to this data-sharing arrangement is there might not have been any metadata to share in the first place. The government actually had to put a law in place demanding ISPs retain metadata for the government for an extended period of time… just in case the government decided it needed it. Left to their own devices, ISPs would have dumped the data as soon as practical (read: ran out of interested private partners). Now they're obliged to keep it… just in case Australia wants to hand it over to known humans rights violators like the Chinese government in exchange for extradition.There are other discomfiting details in the latest report. Last year, 33 authorizations were made to collect metadata on Australian journalists -- all of them coming from a single agency, the Western Australia Police. This low-key surveillance of journalists also comes courtesy of the same law changes that compelled ISPs to retain this metadata in the first place. As Taylor and Farrell report, the concessions made to pass the law limited the number of agencies with access to the data, but allowed law enforcement to target journalists -- provided they secure something called a "journalist information warrant," which is done in secret and allows the government to grab the information without the target being notified.Overall, the government accessed Australians' metadata (which may include web browsing history) thousands of times, mostly for banal reasons. Selling data retention to the public and hesitant legislators meant talking a lot about terrorism and child exploitation, but the numbers show those requests are far outnumbered by normal law enforcement work.
Of these requests, 57,166 were related to illicit drug offences, 25,245 requests were for homicide offences, and 4,454 requests were made to assist terrorism investigations.
For an outlay of $66 million in metadata costs (paid to ISPs, reimbursing 80% of their compliance costs), the government netted 366 arrests in 2015-16. This raises the question of how often metadata is accessed just because it can be accessed or for purely speculative reasons.

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