Forensic drug intelligence: an important tool in law enforcement

Organised criminality is a great concern for national/international security. The demonstration of complex crimes is increasingly dependant on knowledge distributed within law-enforcement agencies and scientific disciplines. This separation of knowledge creates difficulties in reconstructing and prosecuting such crimes. Basic interdisciplinary research in drug intelligence combined with crime analysis, forensic intelligence, and traditional law enforcement investigation is leading to important advances in crime investigation support. Laboratory results constitute one highly dependable source of information that is both reliable and testable. Their operational use can support investigation and even provide undetected connections or organisation of structure. The foremost difficulties encountered by drug analysts are not principally of a chemical or analytical nature, but methodologies to extract parameters or features that are deemed to be crucial for handling and contextualising drug profiling data. An organised memory has been developed in order to provide accurate, timely, useful and meaningful information for linking spatially and temporally distinct events on a national and international level (including cross-border phenomena). Literature has already pointed out that forensic case data are amenable for use in an intelligence perspective if data and knowledge of specialised actors are appropriately organised, shared and processed. As a particular form of forensic case data, the authors' research focuses on parameters obtained through the systematic physical and chemical profiling of samples of illicit drugs. The procedure is used to infer and characterise links between samples that originate from the same and different seizures. The discussion will not, however, focus on how samples are actually analysed and compared as substantial literature on this topic already exists. Rather, attention is primarily drawn to an active and close collaboration between magistrates, forensic scientists, law enforcement investigators and crime analysts from different institutions with the aim of generating, using and validating relevant profiling case data as integral part of investigative and crime analysis processes. Original advances are highlighted through experiences from criminal investigations of offences related to the unlawful importation, exportation, supply and possession of illicit drugs.     

Discrimination of Falls and Blows in Blunt Head Trauma: A Multi‐Criteria Approach

Abstract: In the discrimination of falls versus blows, the hat brim line (HBL) rule is mentioned in several textbooks as the most useful single criterion. Recent studies, however, have found that the HBL rule is only moderately valid and that its use on its own is not recommended. The purpose of this 6‐year retrospective study was to find additional individually useful criteria in the distinction of falls from blows. Overall, the following criteria were found to point toward blows: more than three lacerations, laceration length of 7 cm or more, comminuted or depressed calvarial fractures, lacerations or fractures located above the HBL, left‐side lateralization of lacerations or fractures, more than four facial contusions or lacerations, presence of ear lacerations, presence of facial fractures, and presence of postcranial osseous and/or visceral trauma. Based on the most discriminating criteria, a decision tree was constructed to be potentially applicable to future cases.     

PLANNING AND PARTICIPATION IN CITIES THAT MOVE: IDENTIFYING OBSTACLES TO MUNICIPAL MOBILITY MANAGEMENT

The dual processes of rapidly transforming cities and administrative decentralisation demands that local government address human mobility as a means of countering urban poverty. Despite this imperative, local authorities are often poorly equipped to address the needs of poor and transient residents. Through an examination of four South African municipalities, this article helps to identify three critical factors working against effective responses: poor data and conceptual bias; institutional ambiguities and budgeting processes; and, ironically, participatory planning. Although any one of these could serve as a basis for an article, by taking them together, we better summarise the challenges' scope and outline areas for further research and policy intervention. The article concludes by considering these findings' practical and scholarly implications. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

T. Tamman (2011). The Last Ambassador: August Torma,Soldier, Diplomat,Spy

ABSTRACT

This article recounts the author’s experience as a junior diplomat in the British Diplomatic Service in the late 1960s handling the file of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s ex-deputy serving a life sentence in Spandau prison in Berlin. As the only Nazi leader still imprisoned there after the release in 1966 of Albert Speer and Baldur von Schirach, his fate as 'the lone prisoner of Spandau’had become an international issue. Sentenced at the Nuremberg trial of 1946, his fate was a matter for the four powers still occupying Berlin. Moscow was determined that as the last remaining symbol of the Hitler regime Hess should die there. In the West, however, and especially in Britain, there was a press campaign for his release that put pressure on the Foreign Office by way of letters from the public and parliamentary questions. As a desk officer for Germany, it fell to me to handle this by writing or drafting replies to the effect that as Hess was a prisoner of all four powers the decision required consent, that Moscow was adamantly opposed, and that Britain could not act unilaterally. But the real target of the press campaign, spearheaded by the Beaverbrook press through the Daily and Sunday Express, was Harold Wilson’s Labour Government. Anything that could demonstrate his alleged ‘appeasement’ of Moscow was grist to its mill. The now weeded file in the National Archives gives little hint of this politically-motivated agenda.     

Police Response to Intimate Partner Violence in Canada: Do Victim Characteristics Matter?

This study examines the role of sociodemographic factors and violence characteristics in influencing women's reporting behaviors and types of police intervention received in response to intimate partner violence (IPV) in Canada. A subset of female respondents to Canada's 1999 General Social Survey who experienced physical or sexual IPV by a male perpetrator and who had contact with the police as a result of the violence was used for this analysis (n = 383). Findings suggest significant racial, economic, and social variations in women's motivation for self-reporting violence to the police as well as in the types of law enforcement interventions administered by police in response to reports of IPV. Implications for policy development are examined.     

Raising the Threshold,Fighting Fragmentation? Mechanical and Psychological Effects of the Legal Electoral Threshold in Belgium

Many proportional representation systems are characterised by a legal electoral threshold. Such a threshold reserves the allocation of seats for those parties that reach a minimum share of the votes. In order to fight fragmentation, a 5 per cent threshold has been introduced for both federal and regional elections in Belgium. This article seeks to explore the mechanical and psychological effects of this legal threshold after five elections. It is shown that the threshold has had limited mechanical and psychological effects on voters but some psychological effects on party elites. Moreover, while in the short term the average number of lists dropped and several pre-electoral coalitions formed, in the longer term the legal threshold has not prevented further fragmentation.     

Advancing measures of innovation in the United States

This paper introduces major themes addressed in this special issue, which is based on NSF's Division of Science Resources Statistics (SRS) workshop Advancing Measures of Innovation—Knowledge Flows, Business Metrics, and Measurement Strategies, held on June 6-7, 2006 near Washington, D.C. The first two sections describe the workshop and provide a brief background on R & D and innovation metrics. The last section introduces the papers. They are based on selected workshop presentations along with additional invited papers.

Identification of acepromazine in hair: an illustration of the difficulties encountered in investigating drug-facilitated crimes

After a drug-facilitated sexual assault (DFSA), a woman was found in a drowsy state at home. She remembered having drunk an unknown beverage by the accused. Blood samples (collected 8 hours after the DFSA), two glasses, and a teaspoon seized by the police were analyzed. Acepromazine, a phenothiazine tranquilizer used in human and veterinary medicine, was detected in the residue of one of the glasses. In spite of acepromazine absence in the victim's blood, the possible use of acepromazine in the DFSA was reported to the police. Two weeks later, a suspect admitted having orally administered acepromazine to the victim. Using a liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method, this compound was subsequently detected (31 pg/mg) in a sample of the victim's hair collected a month and a half after the DFSA. A potential short elimination half-life in humans and/or the well-known in vitro degradation of acepromazine could explain the negative blood result. DFSA toxicological investigations are challenging and can be complicated when a rather unusual substance is concerned. In particular, special care should be taken when interpreting the results, taking into account elimination and/or instability data, when available.