News Roundup

Video of a Salisbury Police Department K9 handler hoisting a police dog, Zuul, by his leash and slamming him into the side of a vehicle during a training exercise made local and national headlines this week and is under review by the department.  Salisbury Police Chief Jerry Stokes said at a press conference, which Zuul attended, that an outside agency is reviewing the incident to determine whether the handler’s actions were proper methods of training.  Keep reading for more news. Hair Comparison.  WBTV reports that the NC Department of Justice  and the State Crime Laboratory have been under pressure from the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence to review old criminal cases where crime lab staff potentially overstated the reliability of microscopic hair comparison as a forensic technique.  The majority of problematic cases occurred prior to 1990 and a review will be time consuming and resource intensive.  In a recent letter to the Center, the director of the State Crime Lab, Vanessa Martinucci, said that the crime lab is committed to identifying pre-1990 cases involving microscopic hair comparison, but that extensive manual searching of the. State Archives will be required and it will take a yet undetermined amount of time to complete. Traffic Stop Reporting. The North Carolina Criminal Justice Analysis Center recently published the final part of a series of reports examining traffic stops in our state.  Part 1 presented racial disparities among drivers stopped, Part 2 examined the purpose of stops and actions taken as a result, and this [...]