The Transportation Security Administration has apologized to a boy who was forced to take off his leg braces at the at Philadelphia International Airport, the Associated Press reported.

A Philadelphia Inquirer columnist wrote that Camden, N.J., police officer Bob Thomas said the incident happened in March when he and his wife were headed with 4-year-old son Ryan to Orlando, the AP reported.

AP reported that “TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis said the agency’s regional security director apologized to the Thomases on Friday.”

By Allan Lengel

WASHINGTON — The Transportation Security Administration is taking airport security up a notch.

USA Today reports that airport screeners in a few weeks will begin randomly going up to people at airport security checkpoint lines or at gates and taking chemical swabs from passengers and their bags to check for explosives. Metal detectors cannot detect such material.

The paper reported that the program has already been tested at five airports since the Christmas Day bombing incident in Detroit.

A private security analyst told USA Today that random checks will “create increasing uncertainty for the adversaries, which is always positive.”

To read more click here.

Sam Riddle/facebook

The nail biting continues in Detroit where a federal jury on Wednesday is set to enter its sixth day of deliberations in the trial of Sam Riddle, an outspoken  former city council aide accused of shaking down business people along with his ex-boss, Council member Monica Conyers, wife of Congressman John Conyers.

The jury last week said it was at an impasse, but U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn directed it to continue deliberating.

The Detroit Free Press wrote that ” Riddle, meanwhile, continues to post various thoughts on Twitter that are open to interpretation.

“Late Tuesday night, he posted: “Musings: Lawyers that won’t represent should be cast aside. When is a deal not a deal? You’ll know when your lawyers say ‘be realistic.’”

Conyers wife Monica Conyers was convicted on public corruption charges and is no longer a city council member. She is awaiting sentencing.

Hal Turner/msnbc photo

Fed prosecutors will take a second bite out of the apple next month and retry New Jersey right wing shock jock Hal Turner for allegedly threatening three appeals court judges in Chicago through inflammatory comments on his blog.

But this time prosecutors are asking the judge to bar Turner’s attorneys from disclosing  that he was an FBI informant — that is unless, they can present evidence through testimony from Turner himself, according to NorthJersey.com. He did not testify in the first trial.

If not, prosecutors wrote in a motion that “allowing argument or questioning of the government’s witnesses about [Turner’s] status as an informant is nothing but an irrelevant sideshow designed to distract and confuse the jury,” according to the website.

The first trial, which was moved from Chicago to Brooklyn,  ended in a mistrial after the jury deadlocked in December. Turner’s attorneys had argued that the FBI had taught Turner, as an informant, what he could and could not say.

To read more click here.

OTHER STORIES OF INTEREST

• Survivor of Ala. Shooting Recalls Fear and Panic (AP)
• Suspicious Passenger Delays Flight From Detroit (AP)
• Jesse Jackson Calls Oregon Police Shooting of Unarmed Black Man an Execution (AP)
• Pakistani Court Rejects Bail for 5 Americans Suspected of  Plotting (CNN)
• New Clip Shows JFK Arriving in Dallas (AP)
• Leader of Chinese Mafia Sentenced to Life in NY (Courthouse News Service)

Ex-D.C. Mayor Marion Barry

WASHINGTON — Trouble is a constant companion of Ex-D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, who is now a city council member.

Now the latest.

An independent report conducted by attorney William Bennett on behalf of the D.C. City Council has accused Barry of public corruption. The report says Barry  secured a $15,000 contract for an ex-girlfriend and then took a cut, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.

“Barry obtained a contract for Donna Watts-Brighthaupt after lending her money to help pay her bills, according to a report delivered to the council by Washington lawyer Robert S. Bennett,” the Post reported. “To get some of his money back, Barry at one point delivered a city check to Watts-Brighthaupt, drove her to a bank and waited in the car until she came back with the cash.”

The paper said the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office has been looking at the matter and will review the report. Barry has denied wrongdoing.

To read more click here.

By Allan Lengel

The New York City officers involved in the highly controversial fatal shooting of Sean Bell — he was shot 50 times on his wedding day in 2006 — are off the hook.

The Justice Department announced Tuesday there was insufficient evidence to file civil rights charges against the officers in the shooting of Bell and his two friends, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, who were wounded.

Three officers were acquitted of criminal charges in state court in 2008 in the shooting outside a Queens strip club. Bell, who was unarmed, was out with friends celebrating before his wedding. The shootings brought cries of outrage from the black community.

“Officials from the department’s Civil Rights Division, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York and the FBI met today with Bell’s family, his fiancée and their representatives to inform them of this decision, as well as with Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, friends of Bell who were wounded during the tragic incident,” the Justice Department said in a statement.

Read more »

By Allan Lengel

Max Ray Vision’s impressive hacking skills were only equal to his impressive prison sentence: 13 years — the longest hacking sentence in U.S. history, according to the website WIRED.

Last Friday in Pittsburgh, a federal judge sent the skilled San Francisco hacker off to prison and ordered him to pay a whopping $27.5 million in restitution for his masterful theft of credit card numbers, WIRED reported.

The San Francisco computer hacker was accused of stealing roughly two million credit card numbers from banks, businesses and other hackers.

WIRED reported that he “ran an online forum for thousands of identity thieves called CardersMarket, where he sold credit card magstripe data to the underground for about $20 a card. He was caught with 1.8 million stolen credit card numbers belonging to a thousand different banks, who tallied the fraudulent charges on the cards at $86.4 million.”

PHILADELPHIA – Just when I thought I was out of the Transportation Security Administration business for a few columns, they pull me back in.

Did you hear about the Camden cop whose disabled son wasn’t allowed to pass through airport security unless he took off his leg braces?

Unfortunately, it’s no joke. This happened to Bob Thomas, a 53-year-old officer in Camden’s emergency crime suppression team, who was flying to Orlando in March with his wife, Leona, and their son, Ryan.

Ryan was taking his first flight, to Walt Disney World, for his fourth birthday.

To Read more click here.