Illegal Immigrant Charged with Rape, Kidnapping:  A twice-deported Honduran illegal immigrant was formally charged this month by federal prosecutors for kidnapping his estranged girlfriend and repeatedly raping her at knifepoint during a trip from Missouri to New Jersey.  The AP reports that last May, 30-year-old Jose Amaya-Vasquez kidnapped the woman from a Kansas City parking lot and assaulted her repeatedly in Missouri, Pennsylvania and New Jersey as they traveled with their two-year-old child in tow, holding her against her will by threatening to kill her three children and mother in Honduras.  Amaya-Vasquez first entered the country illegally in 2005, but wasn't caught and deported until July 2014.  He was caught again two months later attempting to reenter the U.S. through Mexico, served 30 days in jail, and was deported and barred from reentering for another 20 years, an order he ignored.

Baltimore Police Begin Wearing Body Cams:  Baltimore equipped over 150 of their police officers with body cameras on Monday as part of a two-month pilot program to test cameras from three vendors before one is chosen for citywide use beginning next year.  Kevin Rector of the Baltimore Sun reports that officers have been instructed to activate their own cameras prior to citizen interactions and upload the footage to a cloud-based storage.  The department decided not to release the program's "draft policy" that was developed to determine how and when officers use their cameras, how officers can respond to citizen requests not to be filmed, how the department plans to use the footage and who will have access to the footage, leaving some citizens concerned over the lack of transparency.  Ultimately, city officials and citizens agree that equipping Baltimore's officers with body cameras will be an asset to the department by helping to "ensure fairness on each side."  It will take approximately two years to equip the city's 3,000 rank-and-file officers.

Police Officers Alerted to Possible Halloween Ambush:  The Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a bulletin to police departments in cities across the country warning that an anarchist group may be planning to ambush officers on Halloween.  Fox News reports that the group, called the National Liberation Militia, encouraged its supporters to create disturbances to lure law enforcement and then attack them ambush-style, in what they dubbed a "Halloween Revolt."  In New York City, where tensions are high after last week's fatal shooting of a police officer and the anti-police rally that followed, NYPD is monitoring the threat.

CA High Court Upholds Death Penalty in 1979 Murder:  The California Supreme Court unanimously upheld the murder conviction and death sentence on Monday of a man who raped and strangled an eight-year-old San Pablo girl in 1979.  The Contra Costa Times reports that 71-year-old Joseph Seferino Cordova was arrested in 2002 for the rape and murder of Cannie Bullock when a cold hit DNA match linked him to evidence found in the girl's body over two decades earlier.  He was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 2007.  In Cordova's appeal of the murder conviction, he argues that there was an unfair delay in the prosecution because authorities should have suspected him sooner, as he was convicted in Colorado in 1992 for attempted sexual assault on a child and again in 1997 for sexual assault on a child.  That argument was rejected by the California high court on the basis that investigators possessed no evidence connecting Cordova to the crime until the 2002 cold hit.  His challenges to the use of the DNA evidence were also turned down by the court.  He will continue legal challenges to his conviction in the federal court system.