Vern Braswell, is serving 24 years for second degree murder at Northwest Correctional Complex in Tiptonville, TN. In July 2020, he received an envelope in the mail. The sender’s name was given as Linda Fairstein, the prosecutor of the Central Park Five in New York, and the return address was a parking lot across the […]
Marvell Locke (59) died at the hands of Circle K store clerk Nicholas Vitatoe, on May 19th, 2020. As reported by Action News 5 later in 2020, Marvell Locke is seen on security video as he approached a clerk at the Circle K located at 8971 US 64 on May 19th, around 1:30 AM. He […]
Recently we got documents from Memphis Police Department using “Authorization of Agency” as a search key, and we obtained an excerpt of MPD’s “Uniform Patrol Station Standard Operating Procedure”. The extract was very helpful as it outlined the procedures for Authorization of Agency, which we wrote up in our blog.
Authorization of Agency (AoA) is a pair of processes at Memphis Police Department and the DA’s office, which are designed to circumvent provisions in the Tennessee criminal trespass law, TCA § 39-14-405. AoA is designed to enhance public safety by controlling unwanted citizens who access private business property. We have written extensively about one AoA […]
The Multi-Agency Gang Unit (MGU) is a mysterious multi-disciplinary police and prosecutor unit sponsored by the Shelby County (State District 30) District Attorney. Click here for a PDF download of the above link. According to the DA’s website, MGU was started in 2011 and absorbed the Crime Strategies Prosecution Unit (CSPU), “incorporating and expanding the […]
Maureen Spain is a busy soccer mom and a nurse who finds time to engage in local issues. We encountered Ms Spain several times before. She was arrested at the Greensward on Memorial Day 2016, by Richard Rouse who was looking for brownie points for promotion to sergeant. The day following her arrest, she was […]
We wrote about Authorization of Agency (AoA) last year, providing source data, collations and some analysis of almost 1,700 Authorization of Agency reports, obtained by public records request from Memphis Police Department (Est 1827). We recently received another 473 AoA forms covering July 2018 to July 2019. We collated the data in a spreadsheet, which […]
Tami Sawyer, in her Shelby County Commission role, moved two motions on December 3rd, 2018, to secure a Lenco Bearcat armored truck for the Shelby County sheriff’s department. We received the following documents from the County via Open Records request. Motion moved by Tami Sawyer (PDF) to accept $196,038 from FEMA towards the purchase of […]
We reported on the behind-the-scenes manipulations of Caissa Public Strategy back in 2017. Our identification of the Caissa Seven at the time had predictive value, although we overestimated Kemp Conrad’s Caissa spend at a time when some documents were unavailable at the Election Commission. We also missed a year-end 2014 contribution of $500 by Caissa […]
City councilman Berlin Boyd was fast tracked into public office as a result of two prior appointments before getting elected to serve a full four-year term in 2015 as the city council representative for District 7. Like some, I hoped he’d rise to the occasion. His early ambition to move forward on the Mow to […]
