misconduct

Six police officers will face a misconduct process following an investigation into their action after three people died in a car crash.

Sophie Russon, 20, Eve Smith, 21, Darcy Ross, 21, Rafel Jeanne, 24, and Shane Loughlin, 32, were last seen at about 02:00 GMT on 4 March 2023 after they went missing on a night out.

Two days after the crash, Gwent Police confirmed the car had been found on the A48 near Cardiff, with three of the five occupants tragically killed.

A COUPLE from a huge rock band have SPLIT after 22 years of marriage and historic “sexual misconduct” allegations.

The two members of a Canadian indie group have decided to call time on the relationship after over two decades together.

The couple in question are Arcade Fire‘s Win Butler and Regine Chassagne, who wed in 2003.

The pair announced their shock split on the band’s official Instagram page.

The statement read: “After a long and loving marriage, Win & Regine have decided to separate. They continue to love, admire and support each other as they co-parent their son.”

They added that their “bond as creative soulmates will endure, as will Arcade Fire. The band send their love and look forward to seeing you all on tour soon.”

Their split comes three years after Win was hit with misconduct claims from three women and a gender fluid individual.

The allegations included the sending of unsolicited explicit messages, coercive control, emotional abuse and physical assault.

Win responded to the allegations in 2022, admitting to having had relations with all of the claimants, however, he insisted each was consensual.

In a statement given to Pitchfork, he said, “While these relationships were all consensual, I am very sorry to anyone who I have hurt with my behaviour.

“As I look to the future, I am continuing to learn from my mistakes and working hard to become a better person, someone my son can be proud of. […]

“I’m sorry I wasn’t more aware and tuned in to the effect I have on people – I f**ked up, and while not an excuse, I will continue to look forward and heal what can be healed, and learn from past experiences.”

The band’s avant-garde sound has always been an acquired taste, though they have conquered the mainstream, headlining festivals such as Glastonbury and scoring three number one albums in the US.

It comes after Arcade Fire were recently slammed when they appeared on US TV show, Saturday Night Live.

The band performed two tracks from their forthcoming sixth album, Pink Elephant, in what was their second appearance on the show this series.

However, musically, their performance on May 10, left many viewers cold.

Others weren’t comfortable with the band getting such a prominent television gig after the troubling claims.

One person wrote on X, “If different people accusing you of sexual misconduct is not enough to prevent you being on this show twice in one season, how many people is?”

Another said, “Arcade Fire landing on SNL in the big 2025 is wild. Who the hell did Win Butler pay?”

Oct. 23 (UPI) — The U.S. Anglican archbishop has been accused of sexual misconduct and abuse of power, according to a recently filed complaint.

Stephen Wood, 62, has been accused by a former children’s ministry worker of putting his hand on the back of her head and attempting to kiss her in his office in April 2024. The alleged incident happened two months before Wood ascended to the church’s top post, The Washington Post reported.

The woman, Claire Buxton, also accused Wood of unexpectedly giving her approximately $35,000 from church coffers before he made the alleged advance. Wood, the father of four children, remains the rector of St. Andrew’s Church in Charleston, S.C., and a bishop who oversees more than 40 churches across the southern United States.

Woods stands to be defrocked and forced to resign if his case goes to an ecclesiastical trial.

Woods issued a statement but refused to answer questions about the alleged incident.

“I do not believe these allegations have any merit,” he said in the statement. “I place my faith and trust in the process outlined in our canons to bring clarity and truth in these matters and respectfully decline to comment further at this time.”

In her statement to the Post, Buxton accused Wood of calling her “Claire Bear” in front of other people and offered to send her to a resort for spa treatments and relaxation.

“I was literally trapped in a church that felt like hell,” Buxton told The Post. She said she turned her face to avoid the kiss and immediately told a colleague about the incident.

“He put his hand on the back of my head and tried to turn it up towards him while he slowly brought his face towards my face to kiss me,” she wrote in her affidavit. “I dropped my face down towards his shoulder so he couldn’t. He held for a second and then let go, and I said, ‘Ok, bye,’ and ran out of his office.” The Post reported that at least four other church employees voiced concerns about Wood’s behavior.

The allegations against Wood come as the ecclesiastical trial of another denominational leader, Bishop Stewart Ruch, draws to a close. Ruch oversees a diocese in the Midwest and has been accused by parishioners and clergy of responding slowly to allegations against a lay leader, Mark Rivera, of abuse and grooming.

Rivera has been convicted of felony child sexual abuse. He pleaded guilty to felony sexual assault in a different case. A verdict in Ruch’s ecclesiastical trial is expected later this year.

When she was called last year to testify against a top Los Angeles police official, Sgt. Jessica Bell assumed she would be asked about the AirTag.

Bell found the Apple tracking device under her friend’s car while on a weekend getaway in Palm Springs in 2023. The friend suspected her former domestic partner, Alfred “Al” Labrada, who was then an assistant chief in the Los Angeles Police Department, had secretly planted the AirTag to monitor her movements after they broke up. The women contacted San Bernardino County authorities, who opened an investigation.

By the time Bell, 44, testified last year, prosecutors had declined to charge Labrada with any crime, but his ascent through the uppermost ranks of the LAPD had already gone sideways. Once considered a leading candidate to become the city’s next police chief, Labrada faced being fired for allegedly lying to LAPD investigators and trying to cover up his actions.

Disciplinary proceedings against LAPD officers play out like mini-trials, held behind closed doors under state laws that shield the privacy of officers. According to her attorney, Bell figured that her role would be limited to describing the AirTag she found — and that anything she said would remain sealed.

Instead, according to her lawyer, she faced a line of questioning that turned personal, with Labrada’s attorney grilling her about problems in her former marriage.

The disciplinary panel found Labrada guilty of planting the tracking device, and he resigned from the department. In the months since, details of Bell’s testimony spread among colleagues, according to a lawsuit she filed against the city of Los Angeles this year.

The suit is one of dozens filed by LAPD employees in recent years alleging they faced blowback after reporting suspected wrongdoing. Bell and others claim testimony that was supposed to remain confidential at so-called board of rights hearings or in internal affairs interviews was later used against them.

In the months that followed Bell’s testimony against Labrada, according to her lawsuit, she was denied a position in the department’s training division. Bell said through her attorney that she has come under department investigation for at least three separate complaints, including one alleging that she hadn’t been truthful at Labrada’s disciplinary hearing.

Her supposed lie? Testifying that her daughter had been traumatized by the ordeal of finding the hidden tracking device.

Bell — known professionally as Jessica Zamorano, according to her lawsuit — declined to comment. She said through her lawyer that internal affairs investigators told her that Labrada made the complaints.

The accusation that she lied triggered a separate investigation by the state Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, the law enforcement accreditation board, putting her at risk of losing her police officer license.

Bell also lodged a complaint with the inspector general’s office, writing that she was “initially scared to come forward because I feared retaliation for reporting and cooperating with the investigation against Labrada.”

Bell’s attorney Nicole Castronovo said she was disgusted that the LAPD was allowing Labrada to “weaponize Internal Affairs to continue waging this campaign of terror on my client.”

Labrada confirmed to The Times that he had filed several complaints against Bell and Dawn Silva, his former domestic partner, who is also an LAPD officer.

He said he hoped the department would look into the veracity of statements the two women made during his disciplinary hearing. He said the allegations against Bell were based on his conversations with her ex-husband, who made him question her truthfulness. The disciplinary board wouldn’t let him call the ex-husband or others as witnesses, effectively torpedoing his case, Labrada said.

Labrada acknowledges the AirTag was his, but maintains he did not hide it to track his former girlfriend.

“This is all about financial gain for Ms. Silva and Jessica — that’s all this is,” he said. “In my opinion, she made falsified statements not only in the police report but also in the board of rights.”

He has filed his own a lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles and former Police Chief Michel Moore, alleging Moore conspired to oust a rival for the chief’s job.

Labrada was cleared of wrongdoing in the AirTag affair by the state law enforcement accreditation board, an outcome that allows him to retain his license to carry a badge in the state.

Labrada has been publicly outspoken about what he sees as his mistreatment at the hands of the department, making numerous appearances on law enforcement-friendly podcasts to plug a forthcoming tell-all book about his time as an L.A. cop.

He contends his case was handled differently than those of other senior officials accused of misconduct, who because of their close relationships to past chiefs were allowed to keep their jobs or to retire quietly with their pensions.

Retaliation among officers has been a problem in the LAPD for decades — and past reports have been critical of how the department investigates such cases.

The LAPD has long had a policy that forbids retaliation against officers who report misconduct, and officers who feel they’ve been wronged can report problems to the department’s ombudsman, or file complaints through internal affairs or the inspector general’s office.

Retaliation can take on many forms, including poor job evaluations, harassment, demotions and even termination, according to lawyers and LAPD personnel who have sued.

Fearing consequences, some officers have taken to posting about misconduct anonymously on social media or recruiting surrogates to call in to Police Commission hearings to raise allegations of wrongdoing on their behalf.

Sometimes, witnesses won’t come forward for fear of being disciplined for violating department rules for immediately reporting misconduct.

Others argue that the department’s disciplinary system allows opportunistic officers to take advantage of complaints in order to settle grievances with colleagues, distract from their own problems or earn a big payday.

LAPD Cmdr. Lillian Carranza — who has sued the department for calling out questionably counted crime statistics and misogyny, and also been sued over her supervision of others — declined to discuss Bell’s case, but said that, in general, after 36 years on the job, “I do not see the department doing anything to protect employees who are whistleblowers or report misconduct.”

“What I have seen is that they are shunned to the side, they are [labeled] as problem employees, and pretty soon, they are persona non grata,” Carranza said.

While the department takes all public complaints, supervisors can be selective about what gets investigated, according to Carranza, who alleged the process is often colored by favoritism or fear of being targeted by the police union.

“At the end of the day, the LAPD cannot investigate itself — we cannot investigate ourselves because we have too many competing interests,” she said. “We need an outside agency to investigate us, especially with things that are serious misconduct and they are not caught on body-camera videos.”

Bell alleged that the retaliation against her has stretched on for months.

A 15-year department veteran, Bell has worked in patrol for most of her career, with brief stints in vice and internal affairs. When an opening came up at the training division, where Silva also works, she put in for it and was picked for the spot.

Her former captain at Olympic Division sent out a glowing email just as she was about the leave the station in early 2024, asking her colleagues to join him in congratulating their “beloved” sergeant. Suddenly, her lawsuit said, the offer was rescinded with little explanation.

She alleged in her lawsuit that a close friend of Labrada’s pulled strings to keep her out of the position.

The LAPD higher-up who blocked her transfer, Bell wrote in her claim to the LAPD inspector general, “consistently calls and checks on Labrada and offers his vacation house to him.”

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Monday filed a misconduct complaint against the federal judge who has clashed with President Trump’s administration over deportations to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

Escalating the administration’s conflict with U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said on social media that she directed the filing of the complaint against Boasberg “for making improper public comments about President Trump and his administration.”

The complaint stems from remarks Boasberg allegedly made in March to Chief Justice John Roberts and other federal judges saying the administration would trigger a constitutional crisis by disregarding federal court rulings, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by the Associated Press.

The comments “have undermined the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary,” the complaint says, adding that the administration has “always complied with all court orders.” Boasberg is among several judges who have questioned whether the administration has complied with their orders.

The meeting took place days before Boasberg issued an order blocking deportation flights that Trump was carrying out by invoking wartime authorities from an 18th century law.

The judge’s verbal order to turn around planes that were on the way to El Salvador was ignored. Boasberg has since found probable cause that the administration committed contempt of court.

The comments were supposedly made during a meeting of the Judicial Conference, the federal judiciary’s governing body. The remarks were first reported by the conservative website The Federalist, which said it obtained a memo summarizing the meeting.

Boasberg, the chief judge in the district court in the nation’s capital, is a member of the Judicial Conference. Its meetings are not public.

The complaint calls for an investigation, the reassignment of the deportations case to another judge while the inquiry is ongoing and sanctions, including the possible recommendation of impeachment, if the investigation substantiates the allegations.

Trump himself already has called for Boasberg’s impeachment, which in turn prompted a rare response from Roberts rejecting the call.

The complaint was filed with Judge Sri Srinivasan, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

More than 250 Venezuelans who were deported to a Salvadoran mega-prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, were sent home to Venezuela earlier this month in a deal that also free 10 U.S. citizens and permanent residents who had been held by Venezuela.

But the lawsuit over the deportations and the administration’s response to Boasberg’s order remains in his court.

Sherman writes for the Associated Press.

July 29 (UPI) — Attorney General Pam Bondi on Monday evening announced that a misconduct complaint has been filed against District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg “for making improper public comments” about President Donald Trump, amid his administration’s targeting of the U.S. judicial system.

Boasberg, a President Barack Obama appointee, has rejected Trump’s attempt to deport hundreds of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador to be interned in a notorious mega prison for terrorists, attracting the ire of the president, who has called for the judge’s impeachment.

The complaint, obtained by both Politico and Courthouse News, focuses on comments made by Boasberg to Chief Justice John Roberts and some two dozen other judges who attended a March 11 judicial conference.

According to the document, Boasberg said he believed that the Trump administration would “disregard rulings of federal courts,” which would trigger “a constitutional crisis.”

The Justice Department alleges that the comments deviated from the administrative matters generally discussed at the conference and were intended to influence Roberts and the other judges.

The conference was held amid litigation on Trump’s ability to summarily deport the Venezuelan migrants, and days before Boasberg ruled against the administration. He also ruled that Trump had deported the migrants to El Salvador in violation of his order — an order that was vacated in April by a divided Supreme Court.

The complaint states that within days of making the alleged comments, he “began acting on his preconceived belief that the Trump administration would not follow court orders.”

“These comments have undermined the integrity of the judiciary, and we will not stand for that,” Bondi said in a statement on X announcing the filing of the complaint.

The Trump administration has attracted staunch criticism from the legal profession over actions it has taken that have been described as targeting the independence of the U.S. judiciary system.

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has threatened to impeach judges who rule against him, including Boasberg, described them as “rouge judges,” sanctioned law firms and lawyers linked to his political adversaries and has ignored or defied rulings he disagrees with.

His administration most recently fired newly appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Desiree Leigh Grace because the New Jersey judges did not select Trump’s pick for the position.

The complaint against Boasberg was signed by Chad Mizelle, chief of staff for Bondi, who alleged in a statement that Boasberg’s March comments violated the Canons of the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges.

“Federal judges often complain about the decline of public trust in the judiciary,” he said on X. “But if the judiciary simply ignores improper conduct like Judge Boasberg’s, it will have itself to blame when the public stops trusting it.”

The Justice Department, in the complaint, is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to launch a special investigation to determine whether Boasberg’s conduct constitutes prejudice against the Trump administration. It also seeks “interim corrective measures,” including reassignment of the cases related to the deportation of the Venezuelan migrants to another judge.

The complaint is also the second that the Trump administration has filed against a judge. In February, Bondi filed a complaint — which is still under review — against Judge Ana Reyes for “hostile and egregious misconduct” against the Trump administration during litigation on the president’s executive order to ban transgender service members from the military.

International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Karim Khan notified the court Friday he will take a leave from his duties until an investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against him concludes. Khan (C) pictured announcing requested arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant May 20, 2024. File Photo by International Criminal Court (ICC)/ UPI. | License Photo

May 16 (UPI) — International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Karim Khan notified the court Friday he will take a leave from his duties until an investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against him concludes.

A female assistant, an attorney in her 30s, accused Khan of forced sexual intercourse multiple times in New York, Colombia, Congo, Chad and Paris as well as at Khan’s home at the Hague.

Khan’s defense lawyers called the allegations “categorically untrue.”

A spokesman for the ICC told the Wall Street Journal in an email that Khan “communicated…via email his decision to take leave” until the investigation is over.

Khan said in an email to staff “In light of escalating media reports, I have made the considered decision to take leave until the completion of the investigation.”

The U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services is expected to issue a report on the investigation in coming months.

The Wall Street Journal and Drop Site News first reported the allegations. The female aide testified to United Nations investigators about the allegations.

Based on documents it has reviewed, the Washington Post reported that the allegations against Khan occurred over approximately a year.

It’s being investigated as part of an alleged pattern of abuse that also included sexual harassment and inappropriate touching.

ICC says Karim Khan will take a leave of absence pending the conclusion of UN-led investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct, which he denies.

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, has taken a leave of absence pending the conclusion of UN-led investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct against him.

Khan’s office said on Friday that he had informed colleagues he would step aside until the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) wraps up its probe. The OIOS has been conducting the external investigation since December, following complaints raised with the ICC’s oversight body.

Khan has denied the allegations, which were first reported in October last year. The court said that he would remain on leave until the inquiry concludes, though a timeline for its completion remains unclear. During his absence, the court’s two deputy prosecutors will assume his responsibilities.

Khan’s decision to step aside temporarily follows months of growing pressure from human rights groups and some court officials, who had urged him to withdraw while the investigation was ongoing.

“Stepping aside helps protect the court’s credibility and the trust of victims, staff, and the public. For the alleged victim and whistleblowers, this is also a moment of recognition and dignity,” said Danya Chaikel of human rights watchdog FIDH.

The court has not confirmed when the OIOS investigation will conclude, but the case comes at a time of rising global scrutiny of the ICC’s role and credibility.

High-profile investigations

The decision comes as the court is pursuing high-profile investigations, including into Russia’s assault on Ukraine and Israel’s war on Gaza.

Khan requested arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin for the alleged unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children, and for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes in Gaza.

The United States, a vocal critic of the court’s recent moves, imposed sanctions on Khan over his pursuit of Israeli officials. ICC leadership has since warned that such political attacks could endanger the institution’s survival.