Tag: Background Check

(CBS) — With the long lines at airports dominating the news, there is now a rush to sign up for the federal service that can move you more quickly through the crowds.

But as CBS 2’s Dorothy Tucker reports, you may need some patience to sign up for TSA “Precheck.”

There was a constant flow of traffic Monday at the TSA’s Precheck office in Chicago’s Avondale neighborhood. More than half said they were walk-ins.

One woman said reports of log jams at O’Hare spurred her to come in, ahead of a trip later this spring.

Mid-June is the earliest appointment if you book online, because of the rush to sign up for TSA Precheck, by those who either saw or experienced the horrors of long lines at Midway and O’Hare.

Signing up means you could avoid the long lines. For $85, you get your fingerprints taken – and a TSA number that gets you a coveted checkmark on your boarding pass.

You then get to move more quickly through airports to catch your flight.

But to get the precious pass, be prepared to wait.

TSA Precheck means not only do you avoid those long lines, but you can also keep your shoes and jacket on and leave three-ounce liquids and laptops in your bag.

The $85 fee covers a five-year subscription.

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“TV and movies tell us security guards are bumbling fat idiots. They are the butt of a joke. Falling asleep with their feet up, they never pay attention to those security camera monitors while burglars steal gold or priceless paintings or stacks of cash. They’re easily distracted, easily gagged and tied up and — as in Die Hard or The Matrix or countless other action films — easily killed.

In real life, they work long, boring hours strolling the halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, waving metal detectors at Mets games, printing sticky visitor passes at commercial buildings, checking IDs at concerts, standing for hours and hours on end at public landmarks, department stores, colleges, pharmacies.

There are more than two times as many security guards than police officers in New York state and roughly 10 times as many guards as firefighters. While a lot of kids grow up itching to join the NYPD or the fire department, it’s hard to find someone who said they wanted to be a security guard when they grew up.

The guard who patrols a corporate plaza with an H&R Block and Chase Bank in Midtown wants to be a train conductor. The guard scanning IDs at a commercial office building near Grand Central dreams of a career as a stand-up comedian. The guard who works at a Duane Reade in the Upper West Side hopes to be a cop. The older guards who aren’t retired police officers, when asked what they think of a career in security, will shrug, as if to say, “It’s a job. It pays the rent.”

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A doctor who leads the Illinois Medical Cannabis Advisory Board says she’s not optimistic about the chances of expanding the state’s marijuana program based on previous decisions by Gov. Rauner’s administration.

Board chair Dr. Leslie Mendoza Temple says the advisory board is moving forward and evaluating the 15 health conditions on its agenda. The advisory board is meeting Monday in Springfield.

The meeting could lead to new recommendations from the expert panel. But Rauner’s administration has twice before rejected the board’s suggestions.

Among the new ailments to be considered Monday by the Medical Marijuana Advisory Board are Lyme disease, panic disorders, persistent depressive disorder, and MRSA, a drug-resistant staph infection.

The meeting could lead to new recommendations from the expert panel. But Rauner’s administration has twice before rejected the board’s suggestions.

Among the new ailments to be considered Monday by the Medical Marijuana Advisory Board are Lyme disease, panic disorders, persistent depressive disorder, and MRSA, a drug-resistant staph infection.

Supporters want the med pot program broadened to include painful conditions that don’t respond to conventional treatment, saying the benefits outweigh the risks. But Rauner has called for conservative steps in increasing access to marijuana.

Currently, 39 conditions and diseases can qualify a patient to use medical marijuana in Illinois. The state’s medical marijuana law allows people to suggest new diseases for the program twice annually.

The board, which is made up of doctors, nurses, patients and advocates, has only an advisory role. And Rauner has rejected previous recommendations to expand access, including an effort by veterans that would allow those with post traumatic stress disorder to use medical marijuana.

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CHICAGO (WLS) — Some spring break travelers are learning the hard way that getting through airport security is taking longer than ever.

United warned customers they could stand in line for up to two hours. And American Airlines is publicly criticizing the Transportation Safety Administration for lines that cause passengers to miss flights.

People as far as the eye can see. There’s a line just to get into the line for the security maze at O’Hare.

“This feels like I’m in Disney World!” traveler Rich Frantz laughed.

People are now taking to Twitter and other social media sights to vent.

“The TSA line at Terminal 3 at O’Hare for American Air outside of the roped off lines. EVERYONE will miss their flight,” Stephanie Pratt posted.

The airlines are taking notice.

“The TSA has a duty to screen passengers and bags in an efficient manner, and that’s not being done right now,” said Leslie Scott, American Airlines spokesperson.

During the morning and late afternoon rush, American says wait times have reached an hour and a half at O’Hare.

One recent week saw more than 300 American customers miss their flights due to security delays. The TSA doesn’t release wait times at specific airports.

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“A Hoagland woman who served as the treasurer for the Heritage Elementary Parent Teacher Organization (P.T.O.) was arrested Thursday morning following a four month long investigation into allegations she had been stealing money from the PTO according to state police.

An investigation was initiated, at the request of the Heritage High School PTO, by Indiana State Police Detective Clint Hetrick and Allen County Police Detective Doug Keller in November 2015 following an audit after a large amount of money was discovered to have been missing from the elementary PTO.

Hetrick and Keller’s investigation revealed that between January 2013 and November 2014, 36 year old Genevieve M. Meyer had used the elementary PTO’s credit card and had withdrawn money, which totaled came to excess of $18,000 in theft. As a result of their investigation, the Allen County Prosecutor’s Office charged Genevieve M. Meyer with two counts of theft.

Meyer was arrested without incident at her home and incarcerated in the Allen County Jail.”

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” A gold watch chain, necklaces and six tooth fillings are among the more than $25,000-worth of jewelry and personal items police say Howard J. Carey stole from residents of the Albemarle County assisted living facility where he used to work.

Carey, 24, turned himself in to county police Wednesday evening on 20 felony charges related to a 14-week string of thefts from residents of Westminster Canterbury of the Blue Ridge, authorities said.
Authorities charged Carey, of Charlottesville, with 10 felony counts of breaking and entering and 10 felony counts of grand larceny, according to court records. A Westminster spokeswoman on Thursday could not say how long Carey worked at the facility on Pantops Mountain Road or whether his position allowed him access to residents’ rooms.
The facility is licensed through the state department of social services and prospective employees submit to background checks as part of the application process, she said. About 380 seniors live in apartments and cottages on Westminster’s 56-acre campus.
“We are deeply disappointed that an associate would commit such acts, but are relieved that this case is nearing closure,” stated Gary Selmeczi, president and CEO of Westminster Canterbury of the Blue Ridge. “We regret that our community has suffered both the criminal and emotional impacts of these thefts and appreciate the dedication and close working relationship with the Albemarle County Police department in resolving this matter.”
Investigators have recovered some of the stolen items, said police spokeswoman Carter Johnson. Police are asking anyone who may have been a victim of theft at the facility to call 972-4038.
Carey declined to comment when reached by phone Thursday. Carey’s family posted his $15,000 bond, according to his attorney, Scott Goodman.”

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Everybody lies. We lie to protect people from painful truths and to preserve the family name. We lie about affairs, flirtations, and addictions. Sometimes, we even lie to ourselves.

In this episode, we’ll hear two stories about family secrets—and the blurry line between deception and delusion: An alcoholic conceals his addiction from everyone, including himself. And Ann Walling recalls her old-school Southern family, the rites and hierarchies they observed, and the painful histories they could never bring themselves to face.

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Almost 75 years after they were killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor, the remains of five U.S. sailors who perished when their battleship was sunk, have been identified, the Pentagon said Monday.

The five men, who were exhumed last year from their graves in Hawaii and examined in special military laboratories, were among 429 sailors and Marines killed when the USS Oklahoma was torpedoed and capsized.

They had been buried as “unknowns.”

The battleship’s loss of life at Pearl Harbor was second only to the 1,100 lost on the USS Arizona, whose wreck remains a hallowed Pearl Harbor historic site.

The men identified were Chief Petty Officer Albert E. Hayden, 44, of Mechanicsville, Md., in St. Mary’s County; Ensign Lewis. S Stockdale, 27, of Anaconda, Mont.; Seaman 2nd Class Dale F. Pearce, 21, of Labette County, Kan.; Petty Officer 1st Class Vernon T. Luke, 43, of Green Bay, Wisc.; and Chief Petty Officer Duff Gordon, 52, of Hudson, Wisc.

The Oklahoma had a complement of about 1,300, including 77 Marines.

The identifications are the first to come from a project that began last April when the Defense Department announced plans to exhume an estimated 388 of the Oklahoma’s unknowns.

The effort was sparked after researcher and Pearl Harbor survivor Ray Emory, in 2003, used National Archives files to get officials to dig up a casket believed to contain an Oklahoma sailor’s remains.

That sailor, Ensign Eldon Wyman, was duly identified, and in 2007 a second casket was unearthed and the remains within were also identified as an Oklahoma sailor.

The remains were returned to their families.

The latest identifications were made by comparing pre-war dental records with the teeth of the exhumed sailors, said Air Force Lt. Col. Holly Slaughter, spokeswoman for the Pentagon’s newly created Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), which is doing the work.

During the Dec. 7, 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, which plunged the U.S. into World War II, many Oklahoma sailors jumped overboard as the battleship rolled over in about 50 feet of water.

But hundreds were trapped below decks.

Thirty-two were rescued by intrepid crews who heard them banging for help, cut into the hull and made their way through a maze of darkened, flooded compartments to reach them.

Others managed to escape by swimming underwater to find their way out. Some trapped sailors tried to stem the in-rushing water with rags and even the board from a board game. One distraught man tried to drown himself.

In the months, and years, after the attack, the handling of the crew’s remains was plagued by error, confusion and poor record keeping.

Most of the dead were found in the wreckage during the months-long salvage operation, especially after the Oklahoma was righted in 1943, according to a memo by DPAA historian Heather Harris.

By then, the bodies had been reduced to skeletons.

By 1944, the jumbled skeletons, saturated with fuel oil from the ship, had been buried as unknowns in two Hawaiian cemeteries, Harris’s report said.

Three years later, they were dug up and taken to a military laboratory near Pearl Harbor for attempted identification.

The chief tool then also was the comparison of the dental records with the teeth of the deceased. And 27 tentative identifications were made, but they were rejected as incomplete by the authorities.

Gordon, Hayden, Luke, and Stockdale were among those 27, Slaughter said in an email.

In 1949, all the remains were formally declared unidentifiable. And by 1950, they had been reburied in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, often called the Punchbowl, in Honolulu.

There they rested until last year.

The first exhumations took place June 8, and the last four caskets were dug up Nov. 9.

Sixty-one rusty caskets, still with their carrying handles, were retrieved from 45 graves. The caskets were heavily corroded and had to be forced open with mauls and crowbars.

After the remains were removed, they were cleaned and photographed, and most of them were flown to the DPAA lab in Nebraska for further analysis. Skulls were retained in a DPAA lab in Hawaii, where forensic dentists are based.

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2015 Biometric Identification Award

Virginia Police Investigator Honored for Role in Identifying Violent Perpetrator

The 2015 recipient of the FBI’s Biometric Identification Award (formerly known as the Latent Hit of the Year Award) is a member of Virginia’s Norfolk Police Department (NPD) who played a key role in the identification of a dangerous serial offender. Congratulations to Melvin Grover III, an investigator with the forensic section of the NPD’s detective division.

This Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division award is traditionally given to a latent print examiner or law enforcement officer who solves a major violent crime using the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or IAFIS. But IAFIS—our longstanding fingerprint repository—was replaced last year by the Next Generation Identification (NGI) system, developed to expand the Bureau’s biometric identification capabilities and services, and future awards will involve the use of the NGI system.

The case Grover eventually became involved with started in August 2008, when the NPD received an emergency call from a private residence and responding officers found a female tied up in a locked bathroom. The victim, a U.S. Navy officer, said that she had been sleeping and was awakened by an unknown male brandishing a knife. The man raped her, bound her legs with the cord of an iron, and stole items from the home before fleeing.

Investigator Ward Stalker of the NPD processed evidence from the scene, including latent fingerprints from the iron and a door. Grover searched all the latent print evidence against Virginia’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System but got no results.

In September 2008, the victim and her daughter returned home one day and were confronted by the same attacker. He tied them both up with duct tape and raped the daughter before fleeing the scene. Once again, investigators collected evidence, including latent fingerprints and DNA. The prints were compared against Virginia’s system, which didn’t produce any known suspects but did confirm that the same individual committed both crimes. Investigators also searched the collected DNA evidence against the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, with no results. The case remained unsolved.

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He wasn’t a doctor, but Michael Troyan, a physician assistant in Riverhead, Long Island, had the authority to write prescriptions.

And Federal agents said he wrote thousands, since 2011, to drug dealers — who wanted to sell painkillers on the street, mostly Oxycodone pills, which are highly addictive opioids.

Troyan was arrested Wednesday and charged with conspiring to illegally distribute Oxycodone. If convicted, Troyan, who operated East End Urgent and Primary Care in Riverhead, faces up to 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

The United States Attorney for the Eastern District, Robert Capers, said Troyan was captured on video writing phony prescriptions for Oxycodone and receiving large quantities of cash at his Riverhead office for prior illegal sales.

The indictment against Troyan charges he was receiving half of the profit from the sale of the Oxycodone pills.

DEA Special Agent in charge, James Hunt, pointed out, “People who are addicted to opioid painkillers are 40 times more likely to be addicted to heroin,” adding, “DEA and our law enforcement partners will continue to identify the diverted painkiller suppliers, be it an oxy street dealer, a rogue doctor, or a greedy physician’s assistant.”

Since 2012, there have been a series of federal prosecutions under the Prescription Drug Initiative — 160 federal and local cases.

Troyan was expected to face a judge at federal court in Central Islip on Wednesday afternoon.

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