John H. Tucker

WalletHub, an online resource for consumers and small business owners, has assessed how efficiently the 110 most populated U.S. cities spend taxpayer dollars on police protection. Durham ranks No. 32, and Raleigh ranks No. 41. The website calculated each city’s return on investment on police spending by analyzing crime rates and per-capita expenditures on police […]

You’re driving down the highway, and a trooper pulls you over. He sits you inside his cruiser and looks at your paperwork. After 10 minutes, he issues a warning and says you’re free to leave. But as you walk back to your car, the trooper gets suspicious. He follows you, tells you to step to […]

In 2004, Rodney Vinson of Wendell hit his wife about the face with an open hand. He was charged and convicted of misdemeanor assault on a female. Federal law stipulates that individuals previously convicted of a domestic violence crime may not possess firearms. So when police found a rifle and ammo tucked inside Vinson’s closet […]

A three-judge panel will convene a special session of superior court in Columbus County on Friday to hear evidence relevant to the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission’s recommendation in the case of State v. Joseph Sledge. Sledge, now 70, contends he is innocent of a 1976 murder of a mother and her daughter in their Bladen […]

On Jan. 13, a press release went out from the Carrboro Police Department announcing that an officer had become the first in the department to administer naloxone, an opiate antagonist, to reverse the effects of a heroin overdose. The overdose had occurred the previous night. What the police department might not have known was that […]

A Raleigh man has accused a police officer of an unlawful vehicle search after the cop scoured it for marijuana but came up empty. However, since the man had crack in his pocket, he was arrested anyway—for trafficking and resisting arrest. He was convicted on both charges last January and sentenced to 35 to 51 […]

The U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina yesterday charged a California man with making racist threats against Raleigh Police Chief Cassandra Deck-Brown. Jesse Lee Kuhl is charged with transmission of threatening communications interstate, and using an electronic communication service to engage in a course of conduct with the intent to harass or […]

Quoting Charles Dickens and equating hostage-taking with walking down the wedding aisle, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia declared in an opinion published yesterday that a North Carolina bank robber should receive a 10-year sentence enhancement because he temporarily held a woman hostage. The woman suffered from a fatal heart attack. The Supreme Court’s unanimous […]