Steve Neavling

Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Sector has a new leader.

Chief Patrol Agent Kevin W. Oaks took over the helm Sunday, replacing Rosendo Hinojoa, who retired in January, the Brownsville Herald reports.

Oaks will be responsible for more than 3,000 Border Patrol agents and nine stations.

“I look forward to working with my fellow local, state, federal and foreign law enforcement agencies to secure our border and improve the quality of life in our communities,” Oaks said.

Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

TSA officers discovered a pink lipstick stun gun in a woman’s baggage at Detroit Metropolitan Airpot on Sunday after spotting something suspicious at the x-ray machine, WXYZ reports.

Turned out, the woman was carrying a 5-inch stun gun disguised as a bejeweled lip stick container.

The woman was cited but permitted to take her flight to Fort Lauderdale.

The stun gun was confiscated.

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• FBI Not Investigating West Springfield Police Department After All

The Rev. Al Sharpton, a civil rights activist and former presidential candidate, began working as a confidential FBI informant in the 1980s after he was caught on tape discussing cocaine deals with a drug kingpin, the New York Post reports.

Sharpton cooperated with authorities and helped the feds bring down the notorious Genovese crime family, according to hundreds of pages of court filings and FBI memos.
Sharpton, who denied in an interview that he was an informant, acknowledged he helped the FBI beginning in 1983.
Records indicate Sharpton used a customized Hartmann briefcase outfield with a recorder, which he used during 10 face-to-face meetings with Joseph (Joe Bana) Buonanno, a Gambino family member.

Sharpton, who was referred to as CI-7 in the reports, also was paid for his help, according to the records.

The information led to wiretaps to bug two Genovese family social clubs, three cars used by mobsters and many of their phones.
Sharpton responded with surprise when reached by the New York Post.

“I was never told I was an informant or I had a number or none of that,” he said. “Whether or not they used some of the other information they got during that period for other purposes, I don’t know.”

Steve Neavling

Republican lawmakers are want the Justice Department to seek charges against embattled ex-IRS official Lois Lerner.

Fox News reports that the House Ways and Means Committee are to meet Wednesday to write a letter notifying the Justice Department that Lerner may have broken the law.

The letter will argue that Lerner violated the constitutional rights of citizens, misled investigators and released private taxpayer information.

The accusations stem from the scandal involving the agency’s singling out of conservative groups to investigate.

istock photo

A Moroccan national accused of plotting an attack with a radio-controlled model airplane was arrested Monday by FBI agents, the CTPost.com reports.

El Mehdi Semlali Fahti, 27, is accused of plotting to crash the plane into a school and a Connecticut federal building.

FBI agents said they found wires and tools inside the High Ridge Drive apartment where Fahti had been living. It’s unclear whether explosives were also found.

The plot was revealed to an undercover agent in five recorded conversations. According to the FBI, Fahti said he studied bomb attacks and even made a chemical bomb while in high school in Morocco.

He claimed that funding for the plot would come from cash from money-laundering and drug-dealing, according to CTPost.com.