George Joseph

Court records and interviews with former prosecutors show that internal assessments of police dishonesty are rarely memorialized, potentially violating the rights of people charged in criminal cases and sometimes keeping the records of bad cops clean.

Defense attorneys say they were unaware of the practice and are unclear on how they can expunge the data of nonconvicted clients.

The technology also allows authorities to mine call databases and cross-reference the voices of individuals prisoners have spoken with.

The records raise questions about the department’s compliance with its protest monitoring rules.

The decision also held that the city’s routine storage of DNA profiles from nonconvicted people in a permanent database violates state law.

Officer Sheehan Miles of the Trenton Police Department had 43 force encounters between 2012 and 2016, according to a new database.

Officers say the language used now is more subtle but still encourages numbers-driven policing.

A new Bronx Freedom Fund report documents these extended pretrial lockups, which threaten people’s jobs and destabilize families.

The program was supposed to target ‘leading’ violent offenders. Today it’s sweeping up low-level, and disproportionately Black, defendants.

Then he ordered another officer to arrest the man.

In internal documents obtained by The Appeal, the vice unit’s supervisor admits no specific complaints were lodged against Daniels or the club before the police took action.

As in Louisiana, Oregon’s practice is rooted in its own rich history of white supremacy.

Advocates say that Sheriff Donnie Harrison is unfit for a fifth term because of such abusive practices as well as his office’s cooperation with ICE.

The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office stands accused of violating immigrants’ rights and dismissing a shocking number of jail deaths.

The office has criticized the NYPD for shielding officers’ misconduct histories, but it won’t share its own information on police dishonesty.

A new report details Alabama’s “War on Marijuana” ahead of a key DA election.

Todd Spitzer blasted Global Tel Link for recording attorney-client phone calls, but his campaign won’t call on a PAC supporting his candidacy to return the company’s lobbyist’s donation.

Two teenagers are facing life without parole sentences for capital murder, though it’s not clear they pulled the trigger.

A lawsuit brought by a Compton resident detailing an alleged beating by deputies is just one of nearly three dozen federal civil rights lawsuits alleging brutality and racial bias at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Arrests that result in dropped charges and dismissals are supposed to be sealed. But until recently, the NYPD used these records to target turnstile jumpers.

Between 2001 and 2017, the department justified officers in 99 percent of use-of-force cases, according to data released through a public records request.

City Council Member Rory Lancman, who was debating Assistant District Attorney James Quinn over the future of Rikers Island, blasted Quinn’s comments on Browder, who spent three years incarcerated without a trial.

An 11-month prosecution of a ‘forcible touching’ case in Manhattan sharply diverges from the office’s treatment of Harvey Weinstein, defense attorneys say.

A white cop joked about bringing explosives to a Black Lives Matter protest in Columbus with no consequences. A black cop joked about ‘black on black’ crime and may be fired.

The tactics outlined encourage courtroom ‘dishonesty’ and ‘gamesmanship,’ legal experts argue.

New records obtained by the Appeal show the account seems to have been monitoring Black Lives Matter activists for years.

Police appear to have used a fake Facebook account to ‘friend’ activists and archive who ‘liked’ their posts.

Jurors were barred from hearing about the eight civil rights lawsuits against Detective Jeremiah Williams.

Pedro Hernandez’s case has inspired calls for reform, but he’s still being targeted for an alleged cell phone theft.

As a consequence, authorities are keeping them in cells for 22 to 23 hours a day, according to Oregon’s federal public defender.

A New York City man has been shuffled between Rikers Island and mental hospitals for 32 years.

Walliris Velez thought the worst was behind her after she was slashed in a subway car, but then came an arrest and an attempted murder charge by the Bronx DA.

In the ‘fentanyl’ bust at a ‘narcotics house,’ no opioids were seized at all.

Los Angeles Police Department analysts are each tasked with maintaining “a minimum” of a dozen ongoing surveillance targets for future targeting, using Palantir software and an updated “probable offender” formula, according to October 2017 documents, obtained through a public records request lawsuit by the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition and given exclusively to The Appeal. These […]

In cities across the country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations agents can mine local police reports using COPLINK, a data program little known outside law enforcement circles. While public records have revealed ICE’s access to this program in the past, new documents, obtained by the ACLU of Massachusetts and shared with The Appeal, offer the first […]

Brian Solano spent over two years on Rikers Island before a potentially exonerating NYPD video interview was disclosed to his defense attorney. But that video is now being excluded from his June trial.

On the evening of January 29, 2018, Caryn Santa knew she only had a few hours to save her son, Robert Collazo. Collazo, 21, had been held on Rikers Island for almost three years, charged with the murder of Jose Velasquez.