Georgia deputy sheriff considered hero in rescue
The Augusta Chronicle
When she first saw Sgt. Stephen Shunn, Mildred Martin couldn't figure out why there was a stranger inside her house. But he's a deputy, and her house was on fire. Shunn had seen the smoke as he was driving by on his way to his second job and pulled over to help. Martin wasn't yet aware of the fire, which had already engulfed her roof and would gut her home of 55 years. Shunn, moonlighting on a day off from the Aiken County Sheriff's Office, didn't know if anyone was in the house, but went around it, opened a side door and went inside, where he found the 79-year-old Martin.More

Sheriff's department pulls together for Haitian officer
WNEM
Deputy Prisnor Pascal is getting some help from his coworkers to go search and care for family still struggling in earthquake-ravaged Haiti. Pascal, originally from Haiti himself, moved to Genesee County from the island nation over a year ago. When fellow deputies learned of his losses, they donated vacation and personal time so he could head to the devastated country.More

In Philadelphia, cops mobilize aid as hospitals save lives of victims
Philadelphia Daily News
Thirteen Haitian-American Philadelphia police officers, so moved by last week's devastating earthquake, urged top brass to let them go to Haiti to help in the epic rescue and humanitarian relief efforts. But Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and others convinced them that they could do much more here. Ramsey assigned them for 30 days to lead a citywide drive for critically needed donations to save lives in their ancestral home of nearly 4 million.More

Sheriff's department to add license plate and eye scanning technologies
Columbia Daily Tribune
New technology introduced by the Boone County Sheriff’s Department is a step forward for Mid-Missouri counties building criminal databases. A $200,000 COPS — or Community Oriented Policing Services — technology grant will fund license plate and iris scanners for patrol vehicles and the Boone County Jail. The grant is a small chunk of a $1.45 million grant awarded to the Central Missouri Criminal Justice Information System, which will receive a total of $4 million in grants by 2012. The system is made up of seven Mid-Missouri counties that in 2009 began receiving federal grant money through the U.S. Department of Justice to upgrade information technology systems. More

Budgets cuts for New Jersey sheriffs' departments impacts courthouse security
The Newark Star-Ledger
In Birmingham, Ala., a judge began arming herself after the deputies assigned to her courtroom were pulled to save money. In Maine, metal detectors sit unused in the state’s busiest courthouse after budget cuts forced court officials to choose between reducing services or cutting back on security. While nothing that extreme is happening in New Jersey, a lack of money and manpower is forcing the sheriff’s departments that provide court security to take other measures to ensure courthouses remain safe.More

Sheriff offers to cut budget by $47 million
Houston Chronicle
Harris County, Texas, Sheriff Adrian Garcia has presented a plan to cut his department's spending by $47 million in the upcoming year by nearly eliminating overtime, slashing insurance costs and ending the practice of paying other counties and another state to take hundreds of inmates off his hands. The sheriff was among a parade of county officials who appeared before budget directors to tell how each of their departments would cut expenses in the face of a tightening budget picture and stagnant property taxes.More

Mexican drug lord captured
The Associated Press via the Los Angeles Times
A Mexican drug cartel kingpin accused of dissolving victims in barrels of lye and waging a terror campaign that turned Tijuana into one of Mexico's most dangerous cities was captured in the port city of La Paz, federal authorities said. Teodoro Garcia Simental, blamed for a years-long campaign of massacres, beheadings and kidnappings that chased away tourists and caused social upheaval in northern Baja California, was arrested by Mexican federal police without the suspect firing a shot, and immediately flown to Mexico City.More

High court rejects challenge to Calif. prison plan
The Associated Press via The Washington Post
The Supreme Court rejected California's challenge to a preliminary court order forcing the state to reduce its prison population, setting up the state's appeal of a final order issued last week. The administration immediately filed its next appeal, arguing that the lower court violated a federal law limiting judges' power in inmate rights cases. In a short ruling, the justices said they will not consider a tentative ruling issued by a special judicial panel in August. The three-judge federal panel had ruled that reducing the state's prison population by about 40,000 inmates over two years is necessary to improve medical and health care throughout the state's 33 adult prisons.More

Thousands protest sheriff's immigration efforts
The Washington Post
Thousands of immigrant rights advocates marched in front of a county jail in Phoenix in a protest that was aimed at Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's immigration efforts and was marked by a clash between a small group of protesters and police officers. Organizers say the protest was meant to show officials in Washington that Arpaio shouldn't handle immigration enforcement, and that Congress and the Obama administration need to come up with a way for immigrant workers to come to the country legally. More

Prison drug use becoming harder and harder to control
The Associated Press via The Observer
Richard Pillajo, a wellness education officer at a Florida state prison, strayed beyond his job description, according to investigators who arrested him last year. He allegedly planned to smuggle cocaine, marijuana and hydrocodone pills to inmates for a payoff of $2,500. Florida's corrections secretary, Walt McNeil, praised the investigators from his own department who cracked the case. Yet official annual reports suggest these investigators, like their counterparts in many states, are playing a frustrating version of Whack-a-Mole as they try to keep illegal drugs out of America's prisons.More