Latest news with #HIDTA
Yahoo
6 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Search warrant leads to seizure of firearms, 3D printers, drugs in Wisconsin
MILWAUKEE, Wis. (WFRV) – A search warrant led to the discovery of several illegal items at the end of May in southeast Wisconsin. According to the Milwaukee Police Department, officers, in conjunction with other personnel assigned to the North Central High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) program, served a search warrant on Milwaukee's north side on May 30. Man arrested after leading Wisconsin deputies on pursuit, getting stuck in field The following items were confiscated as a result of the search: Nine pistol machine gun conversion devices Five rifle auto-sears 16 pistols Three rifles Four rifle suppressors Five pistol suppressors 14 3D printers 16.37 grams of psilocybin mushrooms Man arrested after leading Wisconsin deputies on pursuit, getting stuck in field The HIDTA program, created by Congress with the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, provides assistance to federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies operating in areas determined to be critical drug-trafficking regions of the United States. For more information on the program, click here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Milwaukee PD accessed Illinois Flock cameras for classified investigation
The Milwaukee Police Administration Building downtown. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner) Across the nation, law enforcement agencies are accessing Flock Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) camera databases, regardless of whether they have their own contract for the AI-powered system. Researchers from 404 Media published a data trove derived from Flock audits earlier this week. Although the audit data came from the Danville Police Department in Illinois, Wisconsin Examiner found that intelligence units within the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) also appear in the database. The audit data shows that last year on July 15 and Oct. 21, personnel from the Southeastern Threat Analysis Center (STAC) — a homeland security-focused arm of the MPD's fusion center — conducted a total of three searches within Danville PD's Flock network. STAC gathers and disseminates intelligence across eight counties in southeastern Wisconsin. MPD's own Fusion Division is co-located with the STAC. Together the units operate a 'real time event center,' a vast network of both city-owned and privately owned cameras and operate Milwaukee's gunshot detection system known as Shotspotter. They also monitor social media and conduct various types of mobile phone-related investigations. STAC has also explored the use of drones, facial recognition technology and predictive intelligence. MPD's Flock searches were logged under the user name 'D. Whi' from 'Milwaukee WI PD – STAC'. In the dataset's 'reason' column, the searches were recorded as 'HSI investigation' and 'HSI vehicle loader.' Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) specialize in matters of immigration, illegal exporting, cyber crime and national security. By tapping into Danville's Flock data, according to the audit, STAC was able to access 4,893 Flock networks and an equal number of individual devices, such as cameras, for the July 15 search alone. The other two searches from October reached 5,425 Flock networks and devices and captured data from a one-month period. 404 Media's investigation focused on how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has accessed Flock databases nationwide, despite not having a contract with the company themselves, and how various agencies appeared to conduct immigration-related searches. Whereas many searches were logged as 'immigration violation,' 'ICE' or even 'ICE ASSIST,' others only noted the involvement of HSI. In a statement sent Wednesday morning, an MPD spokesperson denied that STAC's use of Danville PD's Flock network was immigration-related. 'Information regarding this investigation is classified and not available as it is ongoing,' the spokesperson wrote in an email to Wisconsin Examiner. 'I can confirm it is related to a criminal investigation with HSI and not immigration related.' The spokesperson later added that this was a 'HIDTA investigation,' referring to a federal task force linked to the federal High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program. MPD's HIDTA units are attached to the department's Special Investigations Division, a separate branch from the Fusion division and STAC. 'The majority of HIDTA and STAC investigations are classified,' the spokesperson wrote in the statement. 'Oftentimes, these investigations involved confidential informants and sometimes it could take years to resolve.' Several police departments in Milwaukee County utilize Flock cameras. MPD entered into its contract in 2022. Over 1,300 registered cameras operate across the city as part of Community Connect, a program supported by the Milwaukee Police Foundation, according to the program's web page, with nearly 900 'integrated' cameras which grant MPD real-time access. Both the use of automatic license plate readers and MPD's ability to participate in immigration enforcement are governed by specific policies. The department's immigration policy, SOP-130, cautions that 'proactive immigration enforcement by local police can be detrimental to our mission and policing philosophy when doing so deters some individuals from participating in their civic obligation to assist the police.' The policy limits MPD's ability to assist ICE with detaining or gathering information about a person to 'only when a judicial warrant is presented' and when the target is suspected of involvement in terrorism, espionage, a transnational criminal street gang, violent felony, sexual offense against a minor or was a previously deported felon. Privacy advocates have raised concerns and filed lawsuits over Flock's ability to collect and store data without a warrant. The license plate reader policy – SOP 735 – allows personnel to access data stored 'for the purposes of conducting crime trend analyses' but only when those activities are approved by a supervisor and are intended to 'assist the agency in the performance of its duties.' MPD personnel may use Flock to 'look for potentially suspicious activity or other anomalies that might be consistent with criminal or terrorist activity' and are not prohibited from 'accessing and comparing personal identifying information of one or more individuals who are associated with a scanned vehicle as part of the process of analyzing stored non-alert data.' Automatic license plate reading technology captures information from any passing car. In some cases, investigators may also place specific vehicles on a Be On the Lookout (BOLO) list, also known as a 'hot list', which notifies law enforcement whenever a specific vehicle is seen by a license plate reader-equipped camera. A Thursday morning public hearing held by the city's Finance and Personnel Committee considered whether more Flock cameras should be added to Milwaukee's already existing network. Ald. Scott Spiker spoke in support of the cameras, and said he worked to install license plate readers in his own district. Spiker described having discussions with local business district leaders and MPD's fusion center, which resulted in cameras being deployed on 27th Street. 'Don't ask me where, because I won't tell you,' said Spiker, adding that the cameras 'serve a variety of purposes' from combating car theft to aiding Amber and Silver Alerts. 'There's going to a broader question, which I imagine will be a subject of the public testimony, however, and I'm fine hearing it, but ultimately there's going to be a discussion to be had in the city of anything that smacks of surveillance software, and what sort of oversight is provided, and should be provided,' said Spiker. He added that such a discussion 'will be had in full in Public Safety' and that although he welcomed public testimony, the committee was there to discuss approving a contract, and not concerns over surveillance. 'The camera's already in use by MPD, and in use by our parking checkers,' said Spiker. 'When they do night parking enforcement, they use ALPR's. When they do zoning enforcement during the day, they use ALPR's. So these are already in use. They have no facial recognition or any of the stuff that's been in the news. But it is a legitimate question to ask what degree of surveillance of any sort, given the national context, do we want to have oversight over?' Spiker said that there's a 'big debate' about surveillance but that 'we can't sort that out today.' Amanda Merkwae, advocacy director with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin, complained that the public had not been alerted ahead of time about the discussion of the Flock contract. 'I've been checking daily and the documents in this file and the text of the resolution weren't posted until yesterday [Wednesday] afternoon,' said Merkwae. 'So I think for an item that has significant implications for the civil liberties of Milwaukeeans, particularly the most vulnerable resident, that's concerning.' The agenda had been out for over a week, and was amended a couple of days before the hearing, Ald. Marina Dimitrijevic later explained. Merkwae said, 'We know that ICE has gained access to troves of data from sanctuary cities to aid in its raids and immigration enforcement actions, including data from the vast network of license plate readers across the country.' She cited a 404 Media investigation earlier this month, which found that Flock is building a massive people look-up tool which pulls in different forms of data, including license plate reader data, 'in order to track specific individuals without a warrant.' Merkwae also referenced 404 Media's findings this week revealing immigration-related look-ups, as well as the classified investigation that involved MPD's intelligence units. The advocacy director also questioned what MPD's policies mean in practice when federal or out-of-state law enforcement want to access its Flock databases. 'If law enforcement told us that they wanted to put a tracking device on every single car in the country so that we know where every car is every single moment of the day, and we're going to build a database of all those locations run by an unaccountable private company, and accessible to every law enforcement agency across the country without needing any type of a warrant, I think we would be alarmed and we would have some follow-up questions,' said Merkwae. 'So at the end of the day, we think the public deserves to know how it is being surveilled and the common council deserves to know the answers to some pretty basic questions before approving contracts for surveillance technology that's deployed without a warrant.' In 2023, Fox 6 published a map of Flock cameras operated by MPD. The map, broken up by aldermadic district, shows a large cluster of cameras located on the North Side around District 7, as well as a cluster on the South Side around District 8. Smaller clusters of cameras were located on the East, far Southwest Side and Northwest Side of the city. signal-2025-05-29-135844 After Merkwae testified, Spiker raised a question about whether public testimony should continue, given open meetings laws. A lengthy discussion followed about which issues and topics may be discussed in the hearing by committee members, which halted public testimony for over 20 minutes as alders heard from city attorneys and MPD. Ald. Miele Coggs said hearing the public's concerns before a contract is approved for surveillance technology was important. Ald. Dimitrijevic also stressed that public comment was an important step, saying that the committee would not go into closed session to discuss the Flock contract before the public finished speaking, or otherwise limit public testimony. When public testimony continued, Milwaukee residents shared further concerns about the technology. Ron Jansen said that the city has seen a surge of surveillance gear used by MPD. 'Between the growth of a fascist regime in Washington … and our own militarized and violent police force here in Milwaukee, it's clear that the last thing we need is more ways for police to track us,' Jansen said. He added that Flock networks are capable of tracking and cataloging 'people's every movement throughout a given day' even if they're not the target of an investigation. Other residents, including locals from Spiker's district and representatives from the court diversion non-profit program JusticePoint, also spoke against Flock's expansion. Tara Cavazos, executive director of the South 27th Street Business District, said Flock cameras had made her area safer. 'We are the initiators of these three additions to the Flock network,' said Cavazos. 'And we donated the funds for two years of use of these Flock cameras. So they're not coming from MPD's budget, it's coming out of our budgets. These Flocks are not going to be placed in a neighborhood, it's not specific to any vulnerable communities, they are in business districts on state and county highways.' Cavazos said that since Flocks have been deployed, car thefts declined 'significantly on the south end of our corridor, where the border between Milwaukee and Greenfield is,' and that 'we've caught a homicide suspect.' Leif Otteson, an executive director of two business districts, said that he hears from people who want more surveillance. Otteson recalled working to expand the city's ring camera network, which STAC and other parts of MPD's fusion center have access to. Otteson has talked with people who want cameras in their community gardens and other areas. 'I just want to make that clear, that people like myself are getting those requests,' said Otteson. Once public testimony concluded, the committee went into closed session for over an hour. The discussion pertained to an unspecified 'non-standard' provision in the Flock contract, which had been raised by the city attorney's office. When the committee returned to open session, they voted 4-1 to hold the file due to legal concerns with the contract until the next committee meeting on June 18. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Yahoo
Bridgeport man sentenced to 10 years in prison for drug trafficking
HARTFORD, Conn. (WTNH) — A Bridgeport man was sentenced Thursday to 10 years in prison, followed by five years of supervised release, for drug trafficking and firearm possession offenses. According to evidence and testimony, 60-year-old Gavin Hammett, also known as G and Silk, was identified as part of a fentanyl and cocaine drug trafficking network in the Bridgeport area amid an investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration's Bridgeport High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Task Force and Stamford Police Department starting in early 2024. Man convicted of murdering brother-in-law in Bridgeport in 2020 Between February and April 2024 investigators made controlled purchases of fentanyl from Hammett. Hammett was arrested on May 14, 2024. On that date, a court-authorized search of his residence revealed approximately two kilograms of cocaine, approximately 39 grams of fentanyl, two handguns, two loaded gun magazines, and an empty gun magazine. Hammett has been detained since his arrest. On Feb. 21, 2025, he pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute cocaine and fentanyl, and possession of a firearm in as part of a drug trafficking crime. This is Hammett's third federal conviction. In July 1997, he was sentenced in South Carolina to 105 months in prison for distributing cocaine. In Oct. 2011, he was sentenced in Connecticut to 240 months in prison for distributing cocaine and crack. In Oct. 2020, after he had served approximately nine years of his 20-year sentence, Hammett's pandemic-related motion for compassionate release was granted by a federal judge and his sentence was reduced to time served. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Yahoo
Pensacola man arrested on 5 counts of trafficking fentanyl
A Pensacola man has been arrested on five counts of trafficking fentanyl following a six month investigation. Christopher Alonse Cobb, Jr., 20, was arrested April 16 following an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Drug Enforcement Agency High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Drug Task Force, and with funding from Florida's State Assistance for Fentanyl Eradication (S.A.F.E.) grant. The investigation began in October 2024 after agents identified Cobb as a fentanyl distributer within a drug trafficking organization. Between October 2024 and April 2025, FDLE and HIDTA task force members witnessed Cobb selling fentanyl during five controlled drug purchases. Cobb sold nearly a quarter of a pound of fentanyl during the controlled purchases operations, according to FDLE. FDLE and task force agents conducted two search warrants the day of his arrest and seized a stolen 9mm Glock 23 pistol, a 50-round pistol drum, ammunition and multiple cellphones. Cobb was booked into the Escambia County Jail and is being held without bond pending first appearance. The case will be prosecuted by the Office of the State Attorney, First Judicial Circuit. FDLE Pensacola and the DEA HIDTA Drug Task Force are investigating the case. The Florida Highway Patrol assisted in the arrest. The investigation remains active. The S.A.F.E. grant program designed to combat illegal fentanyl activity through grant-funded reimbursements for pre-approved fentanyl-related investigative operations. It was established by the Florida Legislature in 2023 and has resulted in more than 1,400 arrests and law enforcement seizing more than 400 pounds of fentanyl, more than 480 pounds of cocaine, more than 1,200 pounds of marijuana and more than 470 firearms. This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Trafficking fentanyl: Pensacola man Christopher Cobb arrested
Yahoo
08-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Capito backs bill to expand HIDTA enforcement efforts
U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito, is backing a federal measure that would allow officials to more forcefully go after criminals trafficking drugs. Capito said the proposed HIDTA Enhancement Act, if passed by the U.S. Senate and Congress, would stop fentanyl from flowing into West Virginia communities. The federal measure also would reauthorize the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) program —which brings together federal and local law enforcement to stop drug trafficking — and provide them with greater resources to cover more activities to enhance fentanyl prevention and seizures, Capito said Thursday. 'Every West Virginian has been impacted by the opioid crisis, and fentanyl being trafficked into our communities has made the problem exponentially worse,' Capito said in a prepared statement. 'The brave law enforcement officers of HIDTA are working every day to stop illicit fentanyl and other illegal drugs in their tracks. I am proud to introduce this legislation that will continue to support the HIDTA program's mission, provide additional resources to stop the trafficking of fentanyl, and save lives across the country.' Capito said the HIDTA Enhancement Act would specifically: - Reauthorizes the HIDTA program at $333 million annually through 2030, increasing support for law enforcement efforts to combat drug use and trafficking. - Increases authorization for competitive grants to $14,224,000 and expands use of funds to include enhanced fentanyl seizure and interdiction activities. - Directs collaboration between the attorney general and the executive boards of each designated HIDTA. - Require a report within the annual National Drug Control Strategy describing the use of HIDTA funds to investigate fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances. The HIDTA program is administered by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and supports collaboration between federal, state, and locall law enforcement agencies to reduce drug trafficking and misuse. There are 33 regional HIDTAs across the U.S., covering counties in all 50 states. In West Virginia, there are currently 24 counties that are designated a HIDTA. Mercer County was added to the HIDTA back in 2011.
