Hawaii
Reward offered for information on who killed endangered seal
HONOLULU (AP) — U.S. authorities on Tuesday offered a $5,000 reward for information on who killed a Hawaiian monk seal after one of the critically endangered animals was found dead on Oahu this year.
The female seal known as Malama was found dead on March 12 at Ohikilolo, a spot between Keaau Beach Park and Makua Valley, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a news release.
A post-mortem investigation found the cause of death to be “blunt force trauma.” National experts on marine mammal radiology and forensics concluded the animal was intentionally killed, the release said.
Last year, Malama was treated for malnutrition at the Marine Mammal Center’s Hawaiian monk seal hospital on the Big Island. She was released in January, after which she was in good condition and displaying normal seal behavior.
The Hawaiian monk seal is one of the most endangered seal species in the world. About 1,570 of the animals are in the wild. About 1,200 seals live in the remote Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, which are a string of atolls largely uninhabited by people. An additional 400 live in the main Hawaiian Islands, where Honolulu and other cities are located. They are found nowhere else.
In 2021, a Hawaiian monk seal was found fatally shot on Molokai Island. It was the third intentional killing of a monk seal on the rural island in 2021 and the seventh in 10 years, according to NOAA.
Colorado
Wife says police didn’t respond to 911 report that her husband was taken hostage
DENVER (AP) — A woman who received a desperate text from her husband indicating he had been taken hostage said Tuesday that she called 911 but that police did not respond until about an hour later, by which time he had been shot and killed.
On its online police blotter, the Colorado Springs Police Department said it found two deceased adult males on Friday at the location that Talija Campbell said she feared her husband Qualin Campbell was being held by another man. It said the officers responded to a report of a shooting there at 2:09 p.m.
Talija Campbell said she called 911 just after 1 p.m. when her husband, a father of two, texted his location and a photo of a man sitting next to him in his car. Then he sent messages saying “911” and “Send Please!” She called the emergency number.
Campbell said she told one dispatcher that she believed her husband had been taken hostage, described his car and his location, which was about a mile away from the headquarters of the Colorado Springs Police Department. She was then transferred to a dispatcher responsible for taking Colorado Springs calls. The first dispatcher briefed the second dispatcher on what Campbell reported, she said, before Campbell said she explained what she knew again to the second dispatcher. The dispatcher said an officer would check it out and get back to her but there was no sense of urgency, Campbell said, so she drove to the location herself.
When she arrived Campbell said she immediately recognized her husband’s company car in a parking lot. She said when she saw her husband slumped over inside the car alongside another man, she fell to her knees and started screaming. As other people gathered around, they debated whether they should open the car door after seeing a gun on the lap of the other man, who appeared to be unconscious but did not have any visible injuries, she said.
Campbell said she decided to open the door to try to save her husband, who had been bleeding, but found no pulse on his neck or wrist.
“I shouldn’t have been the one there, the first person to respond,” she said.
She said her husband’s uncle, who also went to the scene, called police to report that Qualin Campbell was dead.
When asked about Campbell’s 911 call and the police response to it, police spokesman Robert Tornabene said he couldn’t comment because there was an “open and active criminal investigation” into the deaths.
Campbell’s lawyer, Harry Daniels, said she wants answers from the department about why it did not respond to her call, saying Qualin Campbell might still be alive if they had.
“I can’t think of anything that could take higher precedence than a hostage situation, except maybe an active shooter,” he said.
New York
NYC prosecutor drops over 300 convictions tied to officers found guilty of crimes
NEW YORK (AP) — Manhattan’s top prosecutor on Tuesday disavowed over 300 convictions tied to police officers who were themselves found guilty of crimes, the latest in over 1,000 dismissals citywide of cases connected to officers who were charged or convicted.
The latest abandoned convictions, almost all misdemeanors, date back as far as 1996. Each involves one of nine officers who were later convicted of on-the-job offenses — among them taking bribes, illegally selling guns, lying under oath and planting drugs on suspects — and are no longer on the force.
The cases put more than 50 people behind bars and imposed fines on 130, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said.
“We cannot stand by convictions that are built on cases brought by members of law enforcement who have violated the law,” Bragg, a Democrat, said in a statement after 308 misdemeanor cases were thrown out Tuesday.
Since the start of 2021, Bragg and at least three of New York City’s four other district attorneys — in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens — have arranged the dismissal of a total of more than 1,200 cases connected to officers who had been convicted or charged, according to a tally compiled by The Associated Press.
The dismissals began with drug convictions built by a former narcotics detective, Joseph Franco, who was charged with perjury — until the case against him was thrown out, mid-trial, this January. The case collapsed when Bragg’s office acknowledged failing to turn over evidence as required to his defense.
By then, prosecutors in Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx had gotten hundreds of Franco-related convictions thrown out, and several public defense and exoneration-advocacy groups had written a letter urging the city’s DAs to do likewise with cases involving 22 other officers.
Twenty had been convicted of crimes and two others engaged in serious misconduct relating to their duties, according to the legal groups. Their list included the nine officers linked to the cases that Bragg is getting tossed out this week.
One of the letter-writers, Elizabeth Felber, of the Legal Aid Society, applauded the dismissals and urged Bragg and his fellow DAs to keep going.
“The same lens used on our clients charged with criminal conduct must be applied to those in law enforcement,” she said in a statement.
