Crime

The bartender, fired last year, blamed Boehner for his troubles and Ebola

A former bartender of House Speaker John Boehner plotted to kill him, federal authorities claim, according to a new report.

Michael Robert Hoyt was arrested and indicted on charges related to an alleged plot that involved poisoning Boehner’s drink, or shooting him and driving off, WCPO reported Tuesday. Authorities said Hoyt, who had worked at a country club that Boehner frequented for five years, called 9-1-1 in October after he was fired and blamed his troubles on the Ohio Republican.

Hoyt allegedly told the operator he was Jesus Christ and accused Boehner of being responsible for the Ebola outbreak. The 44-year-old is also said to have noted that voices told him Boehner was evil, and that he had a loaded Beretta .380 automatic ready to use against him. At the time, police placed him on a 72-hour psychiatric hold.

Boehner’s spokesman Michael Steel released a statement Tuesday, saying “Speaker Boehner is aware of this situation, and sincerely thanks the FBI, the Capitol Police and local authorities in Ohio for their efforts.”

[WCPO]

Richard Combs, the former police chief of Eutawville, S.C., charged with murder of Bernard Bailey in May 2011

A judge in South Carolina declared a mistrial in the case of a white ex-police chief charged with murder in the killing of an unarmed black man in 2011.

The jury deliberated for 12 hours before failing to reach a consensus over the verdict, according to the Associated Press. Richard Combs, the former police chief of Eutawville, S.C., shot Bernard Bailey three times outside of the town hall in May 2011.

Combs, the small town’s only officer on patrol, said he fired in self defense and that Bailey was attempting to run him over with a truck when he tried to arrest him. Throughout the trial, according to the New York Times, state prosecutors attempted to paint Combs as spiteful and was arresting Bailey on a trumped-up charge.

The Department of Justice declined to file charges after a yearlong investigation into Bailey’s death, according to Bloomberg. State prosecutors say they will attempt to try Combs again.

[AP]

TIME explained the Deep Web in a 2013 cover story

Ross Ulbricht’s trial for his alleged role as “Dread Pirate Roberts,” the owner of the shadowy online market place Silk Road, is scheduled to begin Tuesday. Ulbricht was indicted last year for operating the site, which allowed users to buy and sell drugs anonymously. He was charged with narcotics conspiracy, engaging in criminal enterprise, conspiracy to commit computer hacking and money laundering conspiracy. As part of the indictment, Ulbricht is accused of running the website on “The Onion Router,” concealing IP addresses and hiding the locations of Bitcoin transmissions.

If all that sounds complicated, that’s because it is.

Shortly after Ulbricht’s arrest, TIME’s Lev Grossman and Jay Newton-Small profiled Silk Road and the world in which it operated. As they explained, there’s a reason the details are difficult to nail down. After all, that’s the whole point:

On the afternoon of Oct. 1, 2013, a tall, slender, shaggy-haired man left his house on 15th Avenue in San Francisco. He paid $1,000 a month cash to share it with two housemates who knew him only as a quiet currency trader named Josh Terrey. His real name was Ross Ulbricht. He was 29 and had no police record. Dressed in jeans and a red T-shirt, Ulbricht headed to the Glen Park branch of the public library, where he made his way to the science-fiction section and logged on to his laptop–he was using the free wi-fi. Several FBI agents dressed in plainclothes converged on him, pushed him up against a window, then escorted him from the building.

The FBI believes Ulbricht is a criminal known online as the Dread Pirate Roberts, a reference to the book and movie The Princess Bride. The Dread Pirate Roberts was the owner and administrator of Silk Road, a wildly successful online bazaar where people bought and sold illegal goods–primarily drugs but also fake IDs, fireworks and hacking software. They could do this without getting caught because Silk Road was located in a little-known region of the Internet called the Deep Web.

Technically the Deep Web refers to the collection of all the websites and databases that search engines like Google don’t or can’t index, which in terms of the sheer volume of information is many times larger than the Web as we know it. But more loosely, the Deep Web is a specific branch of the Internet that’s distinguished by that increasingly rare commodity: complete anonymity. Nothing you do on the Deep Web can be associated with your real-world identity, unless you choose it to be. Most people never see it, though the software you need to access it is free and takes less than three minutes to download and install. If there’s a part of the grid that can be considered off the grid, it’s the Deep Web.

Read the rest of the story, here in the TIME Vault: The Deep Web

But they're still far lower than they were during the same week last year

The number of arrests by the New York Police Department rose during the last week, following two weeks of rapid decline amid talk of a deliberate slowdown by the city’s law enforcement.

New numbers released Monday revealed that 4,690 arrests had been made during the week ending Jan. 11, compared to 2,401 between Dec. 29 and Jan. 4, the New York Times reported.

That number still pales in comparison to the 7,508 arrests made during the same week last year, but indicates police officers have heeded last week’s stern message from Commissioner William Bratton.

Bratton told police commanders and union leaders that he expected an end to the slowdown, which took place following the shooting of two officers in apparent retaliation for the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown

[NYT]

Methods of enforcement remain few and far between

The University of Virginia has proposed new rules for its fraternity system after the uproar that broke out both on and off campus following a controversial magazine story late last year that depicted a brutal gang rape at a frat house.

The new rules include some strong reforms like the elimination of kegs and hard-alcohol punch. But the nature of the relationship between the university and the fraternities, many of which are privately owned, may make the rules hard to enforce.

The individual Greek organizations have until Friday to agree to the new rules. If they don’t, they risk losing formal affiliation with the university—the one bit of leverage UVA administrators have over the fraternities. Under the new rules, fraternities must furnish a minimum of three “sober brother monitors,” at parties, who must wait at each alcohol distribution point as well as the stairs leading to the residential bedrooms. Beer must be served unopened in the original can, pre-mixed punches would be prohibited, wine must be poured out of a bottle by a sober brother, and hard alcohol can only be served at large parties by a hired bartender licensed by the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. A privately contracted security guard would also have to stand outside the front door and check names off a guest list.

MORE The Sexual Assault Crisis on American Campuses

The new rules come after UVA briefly suspended social activities at all fraternities on campus following the publication of an article in Rolling Stone that included a detailed account of a horrific rape that allegedly happened at a UVA fraternity. The story has since been found to have significant inconsistencies. After the Washington Post and other outlets identified problems with the story, Rolling Stone issued an apology and promised to investigate further. On Monday, UVA announced that it would reinstate the fraternity in the story, Phi Kappa Psi, after the Charlottesville Police failed to find any “substantive basis” to confirm the gruesome events described in the story.

Despite the inconsistencies in the article, UVA has decided to go ahead with fraternity reform. Though UVA President Teresa Sullivan was careful not to single out Greek organizations as the main culprits in the problem of sexual assault on campus during an interview with TIME last year, the rules do reflect a slightly softer version of the reforms she favored. “The days of the trash can full of punch have to be over,” she told TIME.

MORE UVA President: Eliminate All Booze Except Beer

Nonetheless, it appears that UVA may not be doing much to enforce the reforms—a reflection of the tricky nature of governing private organizations on campus. According to ABC News, UVA spokesman Anthony de Bruyn said the university would not provide staff to monitor the fraternities to because they are privately owned. “The University will work closely with Greek leadership to support them in seeking compliance with the new practices by their members,” de Bruyn told Time. “Should violations be brought to the University’s attention, as has been the case it the past, the Dean of Students Office will investigate, and any appropriate next steps would be based upon the details of each case.”

The lack of formal monitoring raises questions as to whether the reforms will have any teeth.

Police agency frequently declined to discipline officers

A new report on chokehold incidents involving NYPD officers has found that the department routinely declined to discipline officers who used the banned maneuver even though it was the first act of physical force used in several instances.

The report, the first since the death of Eric Garner in July—who died after being placed in a chokehold by an NYPD officer—reviewed 10 chokehold cases involving NYPD officers between 2009 and 2014. According to the report issued by the NYPD’s inspector general’s office, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, an independent agency that investigates complaints against officers, recommended discipline that could’ve led to a loss of vacation days or even termination for officers involved in all 10 cases. But Raymond Kelly, who was police commissioner during six of those incidents, imposed a less severe penalty or declined to discipline the officers involved.

(MORE: Bill de Blasio’s Wife on Police Relations)

“There was no indication from the records reviewed that NYPD seriously contemplated CCRB’s disciplinary recommendations or that CCRB’s input added any value to the disciplinary process,” the report says.

In several cases, the inspector general found that NYPD officers used neck grabs, headlocks or other physical acts involving contact with a suspect’s neck or throat—all prohibited by the department’s guidelines—as a “first act of physical force in response to verbal resistance, as opposed to first attempting to defuse the situation.”

(MORE: Bill Clinton Says Eric Garner ‘Didn’t Deserve to Die’)

The report stated that the inspector general’s office plans to look at use-of-force cases more broadly to help determine how prevalent chokeholds are across the agency.

Phi Kappa Psi is welcomed back after Rolling Stone article comes under scrutiny

The University of Virginia said Monday that it would reinstate the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity featured in a widely read story last year that depicted a brutal gang rape at its house but later came under withering scrutiny for factual inconsistencies.

The University’s reinstatement of the fraternity came after the Charlottesville Police were unable to find any “substantive basis” to confirm the gruesome events detailed in the November Rolling Stone story, UVA said in a statement. The fraternity chapter had voluntarily suspended its charter shortly following the article.

MORE: Crisis on Fraternity Row

“We welcome Phi Kappa Psi, and we look forward to working with all fraternities and sororities in enhancing and promoting a safe environment for all,” UVA President Teresa Sullivan said in the statement.

After reporting from the Washington Post and other outlets raised questions about the story, the magazine apologized for “discrepancies” and said it’s trust in the accuser had been misplaced.

MORE: The Sexual Assault Crisis on American Campuses

212 HIV cases were found in the community where he practiced

An unlicensed medic is being charged with murder after Cambodian medical authorities found 212 cases of HIV in the district where he had been treating patients, allegedly with contaminated equipment.

Yem Chrin treated poor patients and was believed to have healing powers, Reuters reports. However, he did not have a medical license and was allegedly delivering injections and blood transfusions using unclean equipment. Authorities tested 1,940 people in the northwestern province where Yem Chrin worked, and 212 tested positive for HIV. Some children as young as 6 years old tested positive for the virus, according to al-Jazeera.

Yem Chrin allegedly told police that he sometimes used the same syringe on two or three patients before disposing of it.

The World Health Organization and UNAIDS found that “the percentage of people that reported receiving an injection or intravenous infusion as part of their health treatment was significantly higher among the people who tested positive for HIV than the people who were HIV negative,” in the area in which Yem Chrin treated patients, Reuters reports.

The development is a setback in Cambodia’s largely successful efforts to eradicate the virus since it first spread through the country in the 1990s.

[Reuters]