dispute Archives - Home Safety Tech Pros

Bus driver stabs rider in head during dispute, both arrested

homesafetytechpros — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 19:29:54 +0000

One of the southbound B41 buses that Ian Bascombe was driving when he stabbed passenger Quentin Branch (News 12/YouTube).

An MTA bus driver on his Friday afternoon route in New York City attacked and stabbed a passenger with a knife — plunging it into their head and leg — after getting into a “verbal dispute” and punched by the rider over making a stop, cops say.

Ian Bascombe, 58, was allegedly driving a southbound B41 bus near Foster and Flatbush Aves. in Brooklyn, New York, when passenger Quentin Branch, 33, asked him to pull over to drop him off, according to the New York Police Department.

“The passenger wanted to exit at an unauthorized stop,” NYPD officials tell Law&Crime.

Police sources told the New York Post that Branch, a “known transit offender recidivist,” claimed he boarded the wrong bus and wanted to get off. Bascombe allegedly kept driving to try and find a safe place to pull over, prompting Branch to attack him.

“I’m going to break your jaw” Branch allegedly said to Bascombe before socking him in the left eye, the Post reports.

The assault happened at around 12:30 p.m. and led to Bascombe brandishing a knife to stab Branch with multiple times, according to police. He was transported to Kings County Hospital in stable condition and survived.

Both men wound up being arrested and charged for the incident, with Bascombe catching two counts of second- and third-degree assault and one count of third-degree criminal possession of a weapon; Branch got hit with one count of second-degree harassment and two counts of second- and third-degree assault.

“Violence on buses puts New Yorkers at risk and is not acceptable,” said Frank Annicaro, NYC Transit’s senior vice president for buses, in a statement to local media outlets. “Pending internal review, this Bus Operator is being withheld from service.”

Bascombe is described by the New York Daily News as a 20-year vet with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.His attack on Branch is one of several incidents to happen this year involving MTA employees in New York and other major cities.

Last week, an MTA cleaner was arrested and charged for allegedly cutting a man at the Atlantic Ave.-Barclays Center subway stop in Brooklyn. In November, a female MTA employee was allegedly shot in Los Angeles by her ex-boyfriend.

The violence has sparked protests from MTA workers, who have asked for better security.

“Metro doesn’t care about its drivers,” a longtime employee told the Los Angeles Times in May. “We are all expendable.”

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Army veteran murdered following dispute at gas station: Cops

homesafetytechpros — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 19:11:19 +0000

Left: Kendrick Anderson (Orange County Jail). Right: Gregory Reed (Zanders Funeral Home).

Cops in Florida have arrested a 27-year-old man for allegedly shooting a U.S. Army veteran to death after a dispute at a gas station last year.

Kendrick Jerrod Anderson is facing a second-degree murder charge for the November 2023 slaying of 60-year-old Gregory C. Reed in Ocoee, a suburb of Orlando. Ocoee police announced Friday in a press release that detectives arrested Anderson after a year-long investigation.

According to a probable cause arrest affidavit, a Publix grocery store employee called 911 around 8:30 p.m. on Nov. 9, 2023, to report an accident involving a Ford SUV where someone died. Officers and paramedics responded to the scene and found that the driver, later identified as Reed, had been shot several times. First responders rushed him to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Publix surveillance video showed the SUV coming from the adjoining BP/Circle K gas station before making an abrupt right turn and crashing into a parked vehicle. A witness at the gas station said he and his girlfriend were sitting in front of the gas station when he saw the SUV and a Mercedes enter the parking lot about the same time. The driver of the Mercedes was trying to pull into a pump, but nearly collided with Reed’s SUV. In response, Reed honked his horn, the witness reportedly told cops. According to the witness, Reed and the two people in the Mercedes were shouting “what, what” back and forth, allegedly sizing each other up.

After the Mercedes parked at the pump, Reed went to the exit to leave the gas station. That’s when the passenger of the Mercedes got out of the car, walked up to Reed’s SUV and allegedly fired five shots, striking Reed multiple times. The Mercedes then drove away.

Reed was wearing a Domino’s Pizza T-shirt at the time of his death and his boss told detectives he had just gotten off his shift as a delivery driver prior to the murder.

In the days following the shooting, Ocoee police released surveillance photos of the Mercedes in question to the public. The vehicle’s owners saw news coverage and contacted police. They said they rented the car to Anderson on Oct. 27 for a two-week period. Anderson’s friends told detectives he would commonly let his buddy drive the vehicle while he was in the passenger seats. Street cameras confirmed this, according to police.

Detectives also obtained a search warrant for Anderson’s phone, which allegedly placed him in the area at the time of the murder. A further search of his phone showed he took a picture of a TV station’s live coverage from the murder scene and sent several text messages asking for “prayers” after Reed’s family met with the media to plead for information in the shooting, per police.

Cops arrested Anderson on Nov. 4, 2023, and took him to the Orange County Jail. However, because prosecutors did not move forward with an order for pretrial detention, a judge gave him a $50,000 bond, which he has since posted.

According to Reed’s obituary, he served in the U.S. Army from 1981 to 1984 following his graduation from high school. He worked in the food industry and at one point opened his own restaurant.

“Greg was truly a beautiful soul. He was very caring and committed father, son, brother, uncle, and cousin. He always made time for his children and family and never missed an opportunity to spend quality time,” the obituary said.

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Kavanaugh looms large as both sides in voter purge dispute

homesafetytechpros — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 01:09:27 +0000

Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh stands during a group photo of the Justices at the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on April 23, 2021 (ERIN SCHAFF/POOL/AFP via Getty Images).

As the U.S. Department of Justice and civil rights groups link arms in an effort to stop a commonwealth-sanctioned voter roll purge in Virginia, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s understanding of a nearly 20-year-old legal doctrine has risen to the foreground.

In the Old Dominion, under the terms of Executive Order 35, election officials had begun removing “individuals who are unable to verify that they are [U.S.] citizens to the Department of Motor Vehicles” from the state’s lists of voters eligible to participate in the upcoming election.

To date, some 1,600 voters’ names have been removed. On Oct. 25, a federal district court put the kibosh on the program — by way of a preliminary injunction. The appeals process has worked quickly due to the impending (and ongoing) nature of the political process.

As Law&Crime previously reported, the issue, with lightning quickness, is now before the nation’s high court. By Monday, a controversy that began with an Oct. 7 complaint was transmogrified into an emergency stay request filed with Chief Justice John Roberts.

While there are numerous issues at play in the litigation, the area of election law most likely to garner attention at this stage, and at this level, has to do with the Purcell principle — the notion that courts should be cautious and hesitant to make substantial changes to state election rules in the time period just before an election.

The doctrine is sourced from the 2006 Supreme Court case of Purcell v. Gonzalez. This murky bit of precedent made itself ripe for varying interpretations by asserting that “considerations specific to election cases” should be weighed “in addition to” typical concerns governing requests for emergency injunctions and stays of injunctions.

In a 2022 concurrence, Kavanaugh carved out his own territory with a since-popularized restatement of the Purcell principle.

While an inconsistently applied admonition from the justices, Kavanaugh summarized the doctrine as standing for the proposition that “federal district courts ordinarily should not enjoin state election laws in the period close to an election.”

Kavanaugh’s definition continues:

When an election is close at hand, the rules of the road must be clear and settled. Late judicial tinkering with election laws can lead to disruption and to unanticipated and unfair consequences for candidates, political parties, and voters, among others. It is one thing for a State on its own to toy with its election laws close to a State’s elections. But it is quite another thing for a federal court to swoop in and re-do a State’s election laws in the period close to an election.

Since that ruling, parties have been keen to cite Kavanaugh’s understanding of how the doctrine applies — perhaps in efforts to cite a still-serving member of the court and/or to elicit a direct reaction.

To hear Virginia tell it, the two lower courts that put a stop to the purge have acted far too heavy-handedly — and far too late. While the executive order instructing the current swathes of voter roll purges was issued by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, in August, the law it interpreted was passed and signed into law in 2006.

“This burdensome mandatory injunction patently violates this Court’s Purcell doctrine,” the application reads. “This Court has repeatedly instructed that Purcell bars federal courts from enjoining the enforcement of state election laws with an election impending.”

The emergency request elaborates, quoting Kavanaugh:

This Court has applied more searching review of election-eve injunctions. It has stayed injunctions against state election officials issued close to an election unless plaintiffs have demonstrated “at least the following”: “(i) the underlying merits are entirely clearcut in favor of the plaintiff; (ii) the plaintiff would suffer irreparable harm absent the injunction; (iii) the plaintiff has not unduly delayed bringing the complaint to court; and (iv) the changes in question are at least feasible before the election without significant cost, /confusion, or hardship.”

And, here, Virginia says, the merits of the case are in their favor because non-citizens might now try to vote should the injunction stand.

“Not only would such a mistake potentially expose the noncitizens to criminal charges, such court-introduced errors would severely undercut the public’s faith in our electoral system,” the application goes on. “The point of Purcell is that election administration is a complicated endeavor even without judicial intervention.”

Oppositely, the DOJ and a broad coalition of pro-voting non-profits say the district court and appellate court — which did not apply the Purcell principle — would be in the right even if they were to accept the doctrine here.

And, in each instance, the plaintiffs-respondents chose the Kavanaugh iteration to make their case.

The DOJ’s 38-page brief contains the following footnote:

Even if this Court concluded that Purcell applied and required a heightened justification for preliminary injunctive relief, the United States made that showing here. The courts below correctly held that “the underlying merits are entirely clearcut” in the United States’ favor; the United States and the public “would suffer irreparable harm absent the injunction”; the United States “has not unduly delayed bringing the complaint to court”; and the narrow remedy ordered by the district court to restore the status quo is “feasible before the election without significant cost, confusion, or hardship.”

The voting rights groups’ 50-page brief states and then repeats:

Indeed, even if this Court applied Purcell and the factors identified in Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence to the stay decision in Merrill, Applicants would prevail because the merits are clear-cut, Respondents and eligible Virginia voters face irreparable harm, Respondents did not delay, and the relief ordered is eminently reasonable. …
[E]ven if this Court applied Purcell and the factors identified in Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence to the stay decision in Merrill v. Milligan, Respondents would prevail. The merits are clear-cut, Respondents and eligible Virginia voters face irreparable harm. Respondents did not delay, and the relief ordered is eminently reasonable.

The DOJ and the civil rights groups say Youngkin and Virginia brought this election-eve injunction on themselves by going beyond even the terms of the executive order and then declining to provide necessary documentation about the purges when originally requested in late August.

As of this writing, the Supreme Court had yet to act on the emergency appeal.

Marisa Sarnoff contributed to this report.

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Former Littler lawyer drops California suit against firm, bringing end to departure dispute

homesafetytechpros — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 19:44:44 +0000

Law Firms

Former Littler lawyer drops California suit against firm, bringing end to departure dispute

By Debra Cassens Weiss

September 3, 2024, 12:27 pm CDT

A former lawyer at Littler Mendelson has dropped a California lawsuit alleging that the law firm violated a $950,000 agreement to settle their dueling claims in connection with her departure. (Image from Shutterstock)

A former lawyer at Littler Mendelson has dropped a California lawsuit alleging that the law firm violated a $950,000 agreement to settle their dueling claims in connection with her departure.

Uliana Kozeychuk’s request for dismissal of the California case states that she is “recovering $10,000 or more in value by this action,” Law360 reports. An Orange County, California, court agreed to dismiss the case Aug. 16.

In the California case, Kozeychuk had alleged that the firm violated a deal in a Dallas County, Texas, case in which the firm would pay her $950,000 for back pay, emotional distress, attorney fees and costs, if she satisfies certain conditions.

The Dallas County dispute stemmed from a Littler suit alleging that Kozeychuk uploaded more than 7,900 documents to an external Dropbox in February 2023 before quitting her job. Some of the documents contained client information and belonged to Littler, the suit claimed.

Kozeychuk claimed, however, that the firm was targeting her for complaining about bullying by one of its shareholders, according to Law360.

The Texas settlement called for Kozeychuk to delete mentions of the firm from her social media accounts and to allow a forensics expert to remove firm documents from her electronic files. She also agreed to drop a pending claim with the California Division of Labor Standards, according to Law360.

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