PHOENIX — An Arizona death row inmate convicted of killing six people in Phoenix's "serial shooter" attacks has died in prison.

Prison officials say 40-year-old Dale Hausner was found unresponsive in his cell in Florence around noon Wednesday. He was pronounced dead at a hospital about an hour later.

Authorities say the cause of death is under investigation.

Hausner was sentenced to die for his convictions in a series of random shootings in the Phoenix area in 2005 and 2006.

Investigators say Hausner preyed on pedestrians, bicyclists, dogs and horses during a 14-month conspiracy that occasionally included his brother and his former roommate, Sam Dieteman.

Dieteman pleaded guilty to two of the killings.

Copyright 2013 Associated Press

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Three people were shot to death and a fourth was seriously injured Wednesday at a condominium building in Louisville, Ky.

The fourth person was taken to University Hospital with what appeared to be life-threatening injuries after the shootings, reported shortly before 4:30 p.m. EDT Wednesday, police spokesman Dwight Mitchell said.

Asked if there was a suspect, Mitchell said officers believed everyone involved was accounted for but wouldn't say whether the shooter was among those shot.

"At this time, we believe we have everybody that's involved ...," Mitchell said. "We believe there's not anyone on the loose."

He said the shootings took place inside an apartment but declined to say whether there were other people inside at the time at the building on the outskirts of the Highlands neighborhood near the Watterson Expressway.

Mitchell also wouldn't indicate the ages of the victims and said the investigation was just beginning.

The condominium complex lies in a neighborhood filled with upper-middle-class homes with manicured lawns near private Bellarmine University.

Molly Hoekstra said she has lived in the condo complex for nearly two years but returned home Wednesday to find the building blocked off by police tape.

"Nothing like this has ever happened," she said. "It's always been really safe and neighborly. It's like the most quiet place there is."

Hoekstra, eventually allowed inside her condo, brought her cat, Sasha, out in a carrier and said she was spending the night with relatives. The shooting, she said, had left her unnerved.

"I don't think it will ever happen again," she said.

Copyright 2013 Associated Press

BANNING, Calif. — One Southern California city is looking for volunteers -- to monitor a new surveillance camera system.

With Banning, Calif., becoming the latest city in Inland Empire to add a surveillance system, Police Chief Leonard Purvis is hoping members of the senior community will apply at the department to join the watch.

The cameras record 24 hours a day and keep up to 30 days of video. Some of the cameras can pan and zoom into areas hundreds of yards away with high-quality resolution. There are speakers above the cameras so the person monitoring the system can warn the public.

Full Story: Volunteers Wanted to Monitor Police Surveillance

BAY CITY, Mich. — Three officers have resigned after footage surfaced of a 'questionable' arrest of a man outside a bar in early May.

Three officers — including one off-duty — approached a man, 39, outside the bar when he snapped a photo with his camera phone of their SUV and posted it to Facebook, according to WNEM.

The police vehicle, according to the man’s attorney, had been parked on the wrong side of the street in front of another bar.

Bay City attorney Jason Gower claims the officers threatened the man before placing him under arrest and confiscating his cell phone.

"A uniformed officer and an off-duty officer approached him and started making verbal threats, threats of bodily harm, threats that he's a marked man, threats of that nature," Gower told WNEM.

The man was not charged and claims he was never given his cell phone back. No criminal charges have been made against the officers, but they were put on leave immediately following the incident.

NEW YORK — A brave NYPD police dog was kicked in the face while breaking up a catfight in a Midtown subway station.

Bear, a 6-year-old German shepherd, suffered four broken teeth and a cut on his tongue as he helped an officer break up the fight involving four women in the 59th Street/Lexington Avenue station.

Officer Vincent Tieniber, 36, was handcuffing Ravenia Matos-Davis, 22, when she allegedly booted the pooch in the teeth and snout at 11:15 a.m.

"Bear kept the woman's foot in his mouth, and held on until I could handcuff her," said Tieniber, who suffered a sprained wrist in the ruckus.

Bear was treated at an animal-care facility and released later in the day. He'll be back on the job today.

The dog will have two teeth capped and is expected to return to full duty.

Matos-Davis was charged with injuring a police animal, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

In 2011, Bear helped apprehend suspects in two other cases.

Copyright 2013 N.Y.P. Holdings, Inc.

NEW YORK — Cops might as well wear blindfolds if the City Council passes a bill that would let them use little more than the color of a suspect's clothing in descriptions — or risk being sued for profiling, according to this provocative new ad from the NYPD captains union.

The ad asks, "How effective is a police officer with a blindfold on?"

And the answer is not very, says the NYPD Captains Endowment Association, which is fighting the measure, claiming it would handcuff cops and send crime rates soaring.

Union President Roy Richter — who is seen in the ad wearing a blindfold in Times Square — told The Post the bill is dangerous because "it will ban cops from identifying a suspect's age, gender, color or disability."

"When we have wanted suspects and patterns of crimes, those are very important descriptive terms to let officers know who to look for."

The ad warns that if cops transmit a description of a suspect that goes beyond the color of his or her clothing, they could be sued for racial profiling if the proposal becomes law.

The ad will appear in tomorrow's Post, in addition to the union's Web site, Twitter and Face­book - and provides links to contacts for City Council members to sway their vote on the measure.

The bill's sponsor, Jumaane Williams (D-Brooklyn), and Speaker Christine Quinn are going to bypass normal committee process and bring the measure directly to a vote.

Detectives-union President Michael Palladino blasted Quinn for supporting the rare expedited process - and said his union plans to place ads in newspapers next week.

"The [union's] ad will focus on . . . Speaker Quinn's political decision to sell the security of all New Yorkers for votes. Where was the speaker and her legislation for the last seven years?" Palladino asked.

A rep for Quinn said she sent the proposals to a floor vote ­because a majority of council members supported it and Public Safety Committee chair Peter Vallone Jr. — an opponent — refused to let it out of committee.

PBA President Pat Lynch said the "so-called biased policing" package was a misnomer.

"Rather than focus on unnecessary laws, the council should be supporting its police officers — not attacking them," he said.

"Racial profiling is already ­illegal — and should be."

Williams and fellow Brooklyn Democrat Brad Lander, a co-sponsor of the proposal, say it would only expand the city's existing ­racial-profiling law by adding other demographic groups that should be protected, such as the homeless and gay people.

They have said police are free, under the bill, to chase leads that include descriptions but cannot stop and frisk people based solely on those descriptions.

But the Bloomberg administration has warned that the bill could lead to an avalanche of lawsuits against the city by any members of a protected class who believe that they were profiled.

Copyright 2013 N.Y.P. Holdings, Inc.

OAKLAND TOWNSHIP, Mich. — A search of a rural field in suburban Detroit has failed to turn up the remains of former Teamsters union leader Jimmy Hoffa, an FBI agent announced Wednesday as authorities ended the dig.

"We did not uncover any evidence relevant to the investigation on James Hoffa," said Robert Foley, head of the FBI in Detroit.

"I am very confident of our result here after two-days-plus of diligent effort," he said. "As of this point, we'll be closing down the excavation operation."

Authorities have pursued multiple leads as to Hoffa's whereabouts since his disappearance in 1975. He was last seen outside an Oakland County restaurant where he was to meet with a New Jersey Teamsters boss and a Detroit Mafia captain.

The latest tip about Hoffa's remains came from reputed Mafia captain Tony Zerilli, who, through his lawyer, said Hoffa was buried beneath a concrete slab in a barn in Oakland Township, north of Detroit.

The barn is gone, but FBI agents on Monday starting poring over the field where it used to stand.

On Tuesday, authorities used a backhoe to dig and move dirt around in the section of land. Authorities also called in forensic anthropologists from Michigan State University and cadaver dogs from the Michigan State Police.

Hoffa's rise in the Teamsters, his 1964 conviction for jury tampering and his presumed murder are Detroit's link to a time when organized crime, public corruption and mob hits held the nation's attention. Over the years, authorities have received various tips, leading the FBI to possible burial sites near and far.

In 2003, a backyard swimming pool was dug up 90 miles northwest of Detroit. Seven years ago, a tip from an ailing federal inmate led to a two-week search and excavation at a horse farm in the same region. Last year, soil samples were taken from under the concrete floor of a backyard shed north of the city. And detectives even pulled up floorboards at a Detroit house in 2004.

No evidence of Hoffa was found.

Other theories have suggested he was entombed in concrete at Giants Stadium in New Jersey, ground up and thrown in a Florida swamp or obliterated in a mob-owned fat-rendering plant.

Zerilli, now 85, was in prison for organized crime when Hoffa disappeared. But he told New York TV station WNBC in January that he was informed about Hoffa's whereabouts after his release. His attorney, David Chasnick, said Zerilli is "intimately involved" with people who know where the body is buried.

Details are in a manuscript Zerilli is selling online.

Copyright 2013 Associated Press

Maybe it’s because “great followers” sounds like a paradox in our culture. America is about celebrities, heroes, and individualism. What’s the first image that pops into your mind when you think follower? A sheep, a lemming, a faceless-one-of-many?

Followership is not something most of us aspire to.

The Corollary to Leadership As Don Mercer recently wrote in Followership: The Corollary to Leadership there’s a built-in assumption in our culture that everyone should strive to be a leader. That’s where glory lies. We can get a Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership, but I doubt we’d find even an Associate Degree in Followership.

Leadership development is BIG business — a $50 billion industry. And that raises some important questions.

We seem to ignore the untapped resource of developing empowered followers, and few professional development programs or even in-service trainings spend time on how to develop an effective followership culture or skills. It’s as if the lone leader casts his or her magic wand and miracles happen without much — if any — attention paid to the followers doing the heavy lifting. So ask yourself:

• What does that communicate about their value to the agency and the mission? • Does all this focus on developing leaders nurture the wrong-headed thinking that being a great follower is not quite cutting it? • And what about followers who work around failures of leadership to accomplish the mission?

The Rising Phoenix of Followership Robert Kelley challenged the exclusive primacy of leadership research, training and development in his Harvard Business Review article "In Praise of Followers" (a best-selling reprint for HBR).

More recently, Harvard University scholar Barbara Kellerman wrote in her 2008 book Followership: How Followers Are Creating Change and Changing Leaders, that as “long as we fixate on leaders at the expense of followers, we will perpetuate the myth that [followers] don’t matter much... In fact, as a result of forces now converging, followers are more important than ever before.”

Those forces include scandalously-failed political, economic, financial, and spiritual leadership on a global scale.

The United States Air Force decided that its focus on leadership development, while overlooking the development of a valued followership culture and skills, failed to optimize institutional performance. Lt. Colonels Sharon M. Latour and Vicki J. Rast bolster this conclusion in an informative, well-supported two-part article on Dynamic Followership.

One of the things the authors looked at was how Air Force retention rates amongst “followers” were a persistent problem. The service sought to retain 55 percent of first-term airmen, 75 percent of second-term airmen, and 95 percent of the career enlisted force. It had failed to meet these goals for all three noncommissioned categories since 1996 (with the exception of 2002 when stop-loss measures prevented separation actions).

Air Force efforts to raise retention numbers focused on tangible, transactional issues such as better pay, housing and base facilities. While important, Latour and Rast noted these initiatives failed to address the important role individual followers play in accomplishing the mission.

They concluded: “Rather than focusing on the negative aspects of worker dissatisfaction, follower-development programs should take advantage of opportunities to instill/reinforce institutional values, model effective follower roles and behaviors, and begin the mentoring process.”

Leadership development has moved from transactional (economic exchange of material goods for services of the subordinate) to transformational (enlisting others in a united effort to meet higher, intangible needs) theories and models.

The authors recommend a similar strategy for followership development — a strategy they believe is more essential to mission success than leader development. And, just as leader development proposes competencies, skills, desirable traits, and educational programs and training to advance them — so, too, must any effective follower development program.

Followership in Policing I’ve worked with law enforcement officers for more than 25 years. As someone who trains on leadership, I know I’ve committed some level of heresy in the above article. So be it. It’s time we trimmed some fat from the sacred cow of “leadership development.”

I’ve been as guilty as the rest of the profession in neglecting followership as a discreet resource worthy of separate training and development.

In a hard-hitting presentation at the ILEETA annual training conference, Dr. Alexis Artwohl challenged widely held misconceptions about the danger, emotional trauma, alcoholism, divorce rate, premature mortality, suicide incidence, and burnout associated with police work.

She set the record straight with well-documented findings that officers overwhelmingly are well-grounded, mentally healthy, and resilient.

“Of course, some people fail to thrive in law enforcement, as with any profession,” she says. “But certain prevailing beliefs about the personal risks of a policing career are extreme exaggerations and need to be corrected.”

Artwohl is a faculty member with the certification course in Force Science Analysis and is co-author of the best-selling book, Deadly Force Encounters. She formerly served law enforcement as a clinical and police psychologist in the Pacific Northwest.

Here’s a fiction-versus-fact summary of the fallacies she addressed at ILEETA.

MYTH #1: Law Enforcement is Among the Top Five Most Dangerous Jobs “There’s no doubt policing can be dangerous, but it’s not even in the top 13 of the most dangerous occupations,” Artwohl says.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, loggers are the most likely to be killed on the job. Even farmers are twice as likely as cops to experience a work-related death.

Police rank 14th in danger, between heavy equipment operators and electricians.

When it comes to death from homicide, taxi drivers and chauffeurs are at greatest risk—more than four times likelier than cops to be murdered.

That’s not to belittle the risks officers are exposed to or to encourage complacency, Artwohl emphasizes. Rather, she says, it shows that “officers are pretty skilled at keeping themselves safe and alive in threatening circumstances.”

MYTH #2: A Shooting Will Likely Cause Significant Emotional Problems and a Career Change “We’ve all heard alarming allegations about officer-involved shootings,” Artwohl says. “It’s claimed that two-thirds of officers in shootings have serious traumatic reactions and that 70 percent leave law enforcement within seven years.

“That’s absolutely untrue,” Artwohl says. Multiple studies have found that while short-term emotional reactions are common, “the vast majority of officers cope very well with shootings,” reporting only “mild, transitory symptoms.” In one study of 540 shooting survivors, only two ever filed workers comp claims for psychological problems afterward.

And quitting the job is extremely rare. In a study of nearly 1,000 officers, more than 80 percent reported no post-shooting change in their job satisfaction. Indeed, 8 percent even found their work “more enjoyable” after their OIS. One researcher reports that 30 percent of officers received a promotion post-shooting.

“Individual reactions vary,” Artwohl says. “If an officer does experience adverse emotional problems that seem overwhelming and chronic, he or she should definitely seek professional help, without being stigmatized.”

MYTH #3: LEOs Abuse Alcohol More than Other Occupations After digging into this subject, Artwohl concluded that “there is no research whatsoever that documents an unusually high level of alcoholism among police officers.”

The same determination was reached by another police psychologist who examined data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, comparing alcoholism rates by occupation. Indeed, that researcher identified eight other occupations that have a significantly higher rate than cops, Artwohl says.

“Although there’s a widespread belief that massive amounts of alcohol are consumed by police, there is very little rigorous research on this topic,” she says. “If you hear people say this, challenge them to come up with studies to prove it.”

MYTH #4: LEOs Have a Higher Divorce Rate than Other People “Again, absolutely not true,” Artwohl asserts. “An analysis of U.S. census data reveals that police officers, detectives, and their supervisors actually have a lower divorce rate than the national average for other occupations and for what would be expected from their demographic profile. This has held true for more than a century.”

A subcategory of transit and railroad police, for example, ranks among the five occupations with the lowest divorce rate, about the same as the clergy.

One social scientist concludes: “There are no data to demonstrate that law enforcement…has a statistically significant negative impact upon marriages.”

MYTH #5: Most Cops Die Within Five Years of Retirement As a sampling, pension records in Arizona and California show otherwise, Artwohl points out. They document that male LEOs, who typically retire at age 55, live an average of 24 more years (to 79), while females live an average of 29 years post-retirement (to 84).

“It’s possible other jurisdictions have different death rates,” she says, “but there are no studies that prove a cop on the force today is automatically doomed to an early death as a result of serving in law enforcement.”

MYTH #6: LEOs Have a Higher-than-average Suicide Rate “It’s always controversial to say this is a myth,” Artwohl admits, “because police officers do have a higher suicide rate when compared to the general population. But that’s an invalid comparison.

“Males as a whole are more likely to kill themselves than are women. Since law enforcement is predominately a male profession, that skews the statistics. If you compare cops to their demographic peers in other professions — matching for gender, age, race, and so on — you get an entirely different picture.”

With that comparison, multiple studies have shown the police suicide rate actually to be lower than the norm. “LEOs are 26 percent less likely to kill themselves than their demographically matched peers in nonpolice occupations,” Artwohl says. “To keep from feeding the myth, researchers need to be careful to always do demographic matching before reaching any conclusions and to be certain their statistics are gathered from a large sample over a long span of time.”

MYTH #7: Burnout is Inevitable in Law Enforcement “The image of cynical, burned-out cops who hate their job and the public they serve is a disservice to law enforcement,” Artwohl says. “Again, responsible research shows a much more positive picture.”

She cites a study that surveyed officers and other workers on job satisfaction and “general happiness.” Nearly 60 percent of cops said they were “very satisfied” with their job. Overall, LEOs ranked “in the middle” among occupations, on a par with nurses and accountants.

About four in ten reported being “very happy.”

Another survey, of suburban departments in the Midwest, found that officers generally reported “low levels of emotional exhaustion” and moderate to high levels of “personal accomplishment.”

“There is simply no evidence to support the idea that police work produces more burnout than other occupations,” Artwohl says.

Reflecting on the seven myths, Artwohl stresses the importance of “dealing with the statistical realities” of law enforcement. “Being overly concerned about exaggerated problems creates more stress for officers, more worry and fear for their families, and hampers efforts to recruit good people to the profession,” she says.

“Also if a police career is viewed as being destructive, it encourages officers to think of themselves as victims of the profession rather than as resilient individuals who can determine their own outcomes.

“The truth is that law enforcement is a noble, challenging calling with many rewards that far outweigh the negatives for most officers.”

Dr. Artwohl can be reached viae mail.

BANGOR, Maine -- An Edinburg man who was wielding a knife when he was shot last summer by a Maine State Trooper was found guilty Tuesday of criminal threatening with a dangerous weapon.

A jury of five men and seven women deliberated for about four hours at the Penobscot Judicial Center before finding Warren Frederick Dome, 55, guilty of the charge. Dome remains free on bail pending his sentencing hearing on Aug. 22. He faces up to 5 years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000. His bail conditions include a curfew from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. during which he must remain at his home.

Earlier in the day, Dome took the stand and told the jury that he didn't recall much about that sunny August day.

"I don't remember calling the police or much of anything," Dome testified during the second day of his trial.

Maine State Police Trooper Christopher Hashey testified Monday that he feared for his life on Aug. 14 when he twice shot Dome, who was approaching him with a butcher knife in his hand. The trooper, one of many who responded to Dome's Edinburg home for the report of a suicidal man, said Dome was marching toward him when he fired his weapon at a distance of about 10 feet.

Penobscot County Sheriff's Deputy Ray Goodspeed, who also responded to the 911 call, testified Monday afternoon that he was ready to pull the trigger to shoot Dome when Hashey fired the second time. Dome was wounded in the thigh and testicles and has since recovered.

Defense attorney Hunter Tzovarras of Bangor told jurors in his closing statements that by the time police arrived, his client "was so far out of it he wasn't a threat."

While on the stand, Dome's attorney asked him whether he experienced a blackout during the incident, which occurred in his driveway.

"I don't know. It's like I fell into a black hole," Dome testified. "I can't [remember]. I tried. I just don't know."

Alice Clifford, assistant district attorney for Penobscot County, told jurors repeatedly in her closing statement that Dome "knew what he was doing." She said he called police using a fake name telling the dispatcher that he "didn't want to go on" and to bring the militia "because you're going to need it." He then followed through on his threats, she said.

"The officer's fear was real," Clifford said. "Remember his testimony. He didn't want to shoot him. He warned him repeatedly [to stop and put down the weapon]."

Clifford told jurors that if Dome was so out of his mind when the incident occurred, as the defense claims, why didn't he attack his two friends, who stopped by just before police arrived after seeing a fire burning at the end of his 180-foot driveway.

"He went after the police, just like he said he would," she said.

Trooper Barry Meserve testified Tuesday that when he arrived Dome was injured, and he was tasked with applying pressure to his wounds. The injured man was saying, "Just let me die. Let me die," Meserve testified.

Trooper Josh De'Angelo testified he took pictures of the scene, including Dome's garage, which a had a meat cleaver stuck in a woodpile, empty alcohol and beer bottles, and matches.

Trooper Brian Bean rode with Dome in the ambulance and testified that he heard him ask the ambulance crews to, "tell his family he loved them, and he told them, 'This was not police's fault. It was the fault of my own.'"

Trooper Tom Fiske spoke with Dome on June 2 and, "He stated he held no grudges for Trooper Hashey" and that he understood that Hashey "was afraid and was trying to protect himself."

The state rested its case at about 9:30 a.m., and a sidebar was held to discuss if the defense could rely on Dome's own testimony that he has post-traumatic stress disorder. District Court Judge John Lucy determined that Dome was not a medical expert and therefore the term PTSD would not be allowed during the trial.

"I will allow Mr. Dome to testify about how he was feeling, [that he was] seeing a doctor and taking medication," the judge ruled.

Dome said he saw two people commit suicide during his 10 years in the U.S. Navy, between 1976-1986, and "it never leaves you."

He said he called a VA crisis hotline a month or two before the incident. Dome was the only person to testify for the defense.

The jury asked to hear the 911 calls again and to rewatch the video from Hashey's cruiser before making their determination. The two minute video recorded from when Hashey arrived at the end of Dome's driveway to the time of the shooting. Hashey gets out of the cruiser and can be seen waving for Dome's friends to leave, which they do several seconds later in a burgundy colored car.

The trooper then walks in front of his cruiser, pulls his sidearm and walks out of view down the driveway.

Shortly afterward, Hashey comes back into view backing away from the driveway. Dome is seen walking toward him with the knife and then he grimaces, he grabs his crotch and then falls to the ground. Hashey comes back into view and appears to kick away at something on the ground, apparently Dome's knife.

Dome told the jury that he had experienced other blackouts during previously stressful moments in his life, including a breakup in Arizona where he walked in front of a truck, and that he suffered a lot of stress in the last couple of years from a divorce, the death of a beloved pet dog and the death of three lifelong friends. The lifelong friends were from the same family in New York. He grew up on Long Island, he said.

He also said he had run out of his medication, which Dome described as anti-depressants he took daily. But an audiotape of the interview conducted by state police Detective Greg Mitchell with Dome in the hospital on Aug. 29, 2012, revealed the accused man said he was prescribed Valium, which is used to treat anxiety disorders.

In that interview and on the stand, Dome said he spent the morning doing chores around the house, including catching squirrels to keep them out of his attic.

Dome testified he woke up in the hospital with no memories of the event and that he learned what happened from the news.

"That is when I was clued in," Dome said.

Copyright 2013 the Bangor Daily News