News Roundup

As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, Robert Aaron Long pleaded guilty this week to four counts of murder arising from a series of shootings he committed earlier this year in the Atlanta area.  The plea deal covered four killings in Woodstock, Georgia, which is north of Atlanta, and spared Long from the potential of being sentenced to death at a capital trial.  Long is accused of killing eight people, many of them Asian women, and additional murder charges still are pending against him in Fulton County, where part of the shooting rampage took place.  Keep reading for more news. Raleigh.  A Raleigh police officer spoke anonymously to WRAL Investigates this week to bring attention to what the officer described as a dangerous shortage of patrol officers in the city.  The officer said that the vacancy rate for officers who are available to respond to calls for service is high, a claim that a Raleigh attorney who is a former officer said was consistent with anecdotes he had heard from other officers.  Interim Police Chief Todd Jordan noted that departments across the country had experienced staffing pressure and disagreed that the current vacancy level presented a danger to community safety. Leaks.  The Associated Press reports that a former Air Force intelligence analyst who was involved with drone strikes in Afghanistan was sentenced to nearly four years in prison this week for leaking information about the drone program to a journalist.  Daniel Hale told a federal judge that he believed the drone strikes were [...]