Also on today’s menu:
Unruly Passengers Could Lose Privileges
Secret Service Finds CARES Act Fraud
New Hampshire State Trooper Samuel Provenza, the former Canaan Police Officer accused of assaulting a woman during a traffic stop, claimed that his on-dash camera malfunctioned on the day of his encounter with Crystal Eastman Wright, leaving no video of the arrest, even though the camera worked well the day before and the day after the arrest.
A Grafton County Sheriff’s Department investigation found that Provenza had computer access that gave him the ability to delete dashboard camera videos. Although there is no evidence that any video was deleted, Aaron Treadwell, the department’s computer contractor, told investigator Wayne Fortier that Provenza used Canaan Police Sergeant Ryan Porter’s login information in April 2017 to give himself the authority to remove memory cards from the dashboard cameras before the data was uploaded. The system does not make a record of when the memory cards are removed, but those with the authority to remove memory cards also have the ability to delete video, Treadwell told Fortier.
According to Wright’s lawsuit, Provenza pulled her over on November 30, 2017, and was acting aggressively, “grabbing onto the door and ripping on it in an attempt to open it. His eyes were bulging out of his head, his veins were popping out of his neck, and he was visibly enraged,” the lawsuit states. Provenza then allegedly grabbed the 5-foot, two-inch, 115-pound woman by her ponytail and dragged her out of her car, handcuffed her, and hit her in the knee, although she said she was not resisting. That blow to the knee tore her ACL, according to the lawsuit.
Wright was charged with resisting arrest, but was found guilty on a lesser charge of disobeying a police officer. She lost her appeal to that conviction, but filed a federal lawsuit claiming that the town and the police department knew about Provenza’s violence and that he was never properly disciplined.
Provenza was the only other witness present when New Hampshire State Police Trooper Christopher O’Toole shot and killed Jesse Champney in December 2017. The shooting was deemed justified despite the fact that Champney was running away from O’Toole and died from a gunshot wound to his back.
Unruly Passengers Could Lose Privileges
Unruly air passengers could lose their TSA PreCheck privileges under a new partnership between Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration. Airlines have seen increasingly contentious passenger behavior in the past year, with the Federal Aviation Administration confirming more than 5,500 cases of unruly passengers, most being mask-related incidents.
“If you act out of line, you will wait in line,” FAA administrator Steve Dickson said in a statement. “Our partnership aims to promote safe and responsible passenger behavior. One unruly incident is one too many.”
Flying has become so dangerous for crew members, due to attacks by violent passengers, that airline unions have been asking for government help in bringing civility back to the skies.
Secret Service Finds CARES Act Fraud
Close to $100 billion allocated through the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act have “attracted the attention of individuals and organized criminal networks worldwide,” according to the Secret Service, which announced that Roy Dotson of its Jacksonville field office will serve as the National Pandemic Fraud Recovery Coordinator.
“The Secret Service currently has more than 900 active criminal investigations into fraud specific to pandemic-related relief funds,” said Dotson. “Every state has been hit, some harder than others. The Secret Service is … trying to recover everything we can, including funds stolen from both federal and state programs.”
To date, investigators have seized more than $1.2 billion, and secured the return of more than $2.3 billion of fraudulently obtained funds through Automated Clearing House reversals. The agency announced the arrests of 100 individuals in connection with loan fraud.
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