Pinal Sheriff Babeu: Misconduct allegations false, but 'I am gay'
Pinal Sheriff Babeu: Misconduct allegations false, but 'I am gay'
Posted: Saturday, February 18, 2012 2:12 pm
Associated Press
FLORENCE -- A sheriff seeking the GOP nomination for an Arizona Congressional seat was forced Saturday to confirm he is gay amid allegations of misconduct made by a man with whom he previously had a relationship.
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu on Saturday denied claims he tried to threaten the man, a Mexican immigrant and a former campaign volunteer, with deportation if their past relationship was made public. The man's allegations were first published Friday in The New Times, a Phoenix alternative weekly magazine.
Babeu, a first-term sheriff who has risen to national prominence with his strong opposition to illegal immigration and smuggling, said the accusations were an attempt to hurt his political career.
He vowed to continue his campaign in Arizona's rural western 4th Congressional District seat, but said he had called presidential candidate Mitt Romney's staff to say he would step down from his post as state campaign co-chair.
"This whole rumor, this whole of idea of who I am in my private life has been shopped around," Babeu told reporters during an hour-long press conference Saturday in front of his sheriff's office. "This was a way, the hook, of how this could be brought out, and to malign and attack a sheriff who does stand for conservative principals, who does enforce the law."
The lawyer for the man, Melissa Weiss-Riner, did not returns calls or emails from The Associated Press on Saturday, but told The New Times that Babeu's attorney and campaign consultant falsely told her client that his visa had expired. Babeu told reporters he believed the man, identified only by his first name Jose, was living in the country legally.
The New Times posted a photo provided by the man of the two embracing. It also posted a cell phone self-portrait of a smiling Babeu in his underwear and another of what appears to be the shirtless sheriff in a bathroom, posted on a gay dating website. The man provided the magazine with photos of himself and Babeu and text messages between the two.
The congressional district where Babeu is seeking election runs from western Arizona through Prescott and south to take in parts of Pinal County south of Phoenix. Its voters are heavily Republican and generally very conservative.
Babeu issued a sweeping denial of any wrongdoing in front of his headquarters. The press conference was attended by about three dozen high-ranking uniformed deputies, local elected officials and citizens.
"I'm here to say that all the allegations that were in the story were untrue - except for the instance that refers to me as gay," Babeu said. "That's the truth - I am gay."
Babeu, who is not married, said he had been in a relationship with Jose that ended sometime before September. Jose also ran his campaign website and Twitter account, and Babeu said he began posting derogatory items on the sites after their breakup.
Babeu said he had his lawyer contact Jose and demand that he stop and turn over passwords allowing access to the sites. Babeu said the postings and actions amounted to identity theft but that he chose to deal with the matter privately through his lawyer.
Babeu is taking on an incumbent tea party Republican who switched districts and state Sen. Ron Gould, a conservative from northwestern, in Arizona in August's 4th District primary.
Gould said he believed Babeu's posting of pictures on what the lawmaker called a "homosexual hookup website" were a "Congressman Weiner type of moment."
"The real issue here is the poor judgment of a government official, posting those kinds of photos on a public website," Gould said. "I think that shows a lack of good judgment."
He also said he believes Babeu's sexual orientation would hurt him in the district. Gould sponsored Arizona constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman, an amendment he said drew extremely strong support in the rural counties he and Babeu seek to represent.
Babeu said he has never defined himself based on his ethnicity or sexual orientation, and he would continue to focus on unemployment and the federal deficit in his campaign.
"What I'm trying to do is (be) as forthright as possible, talking about deeply personal, private matters, and trying to be upfront," Babeu said. "The disclosure of that information is something that I feel no American should have to do."
Babeu acknowledged that he has sent and posted the photos, but said they were personal. When asked if posting such pictures on a public website showed poor judgment for a public official, he reiterated that he believed they were personal.
Romney’s Arizona co-chair Sheriff Paul Babeu resigns in wake of explosive allegations
SourceRomney’s Arizona co-chair resigns in wake of explosive allegations
By Felicia Sonmez
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu is stepping down as co-chairman of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s (R) Arizona campaign in the wake of allegations that he threatened to deport a former lover who declined to stay silent about their years-long relationship.
“Sheriff Babeu has stepped down from his volunteer position with the campaign so he can focus on the allegations against him,” Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in a statement. “We support his decision.”
Babeu has denied any wrongdoing. And, on Saturday, he confirmed that he is gay, the Associated Press reported.
“I’m here to say that all the allegations. . .were untrue — except for the instance that refers to me as gay,” Babeu said in a news conference, according to the Associated Press. “That’s the truth — I am gay.”
News of Babeu’s move was first reported by the Arizona Republic.
Babeu, a national GOP rising star who is running against Rep. Paul Gosar (R) in Arizona’s newly created 4th District, is known for his hard-line position on illegal immigration. He endorsed Romney in October, saying in a statement that the presidential candidate “has shown that he is the most committed to securing the border.” Babeu has stumped for Romney in recent months.
The Phoenix New Times reported earlier this week that a man who claims to be Babeu’s former boyfriend says Babeu threatened him with deportation when he would not agree to stay silent about their relationship. Babeu has denied the allegations.
I guess the smart piggies know that is the easy way to make yourself look like a hero without doing any work.
Source: Fudged reports behind robbery decline
Posted: Feb. 19, 2012 | 2:08 a.m.
Crime rates are down within Metro's jurisdiction for the five major categories reported to the FBI, Sheriff Doug Gillespie proudly reported Feb. 7.
Most of the drops are substantial. The drop in auto thefts is particularly good news, because those rates impact our insurance premiums.
But then there are the robberies.
Within Metro's jurisdiction, robberies are reported down 20 percent for 2011 compared to 2010 -- nearly 50 percent since 2006. Asked why, Lt. Ron Fox offered a number of reasons at the big Feb. 7 news conference: better technology, better community outreach. But he somehow neglected to mention the biggest reason.
Officers have discretion on how to charge a robbery, a category where Metro reports its own statistics. And given that the department looks better when crime statistics drop, street officers say they've gotten the word, very clearly, to fudge these numbers.
"If you don't have to make it a robbery, you're supposed to report it as a non-reportable (to the FBI) crime," one longtime Metro officer tells me. "This is no secret. They talk about it openly in briefing. They'll hold up a report and they'll go, 'I can't believe the officer charged this as a 407,' a robbery, 'when he could have changed it to petty larceny' -- a crime that doesn't have to be reported to the FBI. And this is a case where the perpetrator gave the clerk a bloody nose, which definitely means robbery was the right charge," my source continues. "So there's pressure there to make the department look good. It's political, and it's coming from upstairs."
The overall trends are still good; Metro and its officers deserve credit. You can't very well fudge the numbers on highway fatalities, where arresting reckless drivers can have a real impact. (As for busting people for going 45 mph in a 35 mph zone in broad daylight and good weather -- where there was never any engineering study to justify that speed limit in the first place? I have my doubts.)
But in categories where officers report open pressure to "write it up the right way," it would be naive to treat these numbers as gospel.
'Now is the perfect storm'
I wrote a few weeks back about the Jan. 30 Las Vegas gathering of nearly 100 county sheriffs who honor their oath to protect and defend the Constitution.
The most common topic of discussion was the National Defense Authorization Act, recently signed into law by President Barack Obama, which guts a huge segment of the Bill of Rights by allowing the government to lock up American citizens indefinitely without trial, without any chance to confront their accusers.
If I had to list the second most popular topic, it would probably be some aspect of United Nations Agenda 21, which has given the schoolmarms of the fascist left such popular buzz euphemisms as "sustainable development," but which is actually about shoving rural folk off the land under any of a thousand environmental pretexts, the long-term goal being to cluster a sharply reduced remnant of mankind into urban tenement ghettos.
One presenter at the Jan. 30 event was newsletter author Tom DeWeese (www.deweesereport.com), author of the recent book "Now Tell Me I Was Wrong," who wrote way back in 1997 "Modern day environmentalism has nothing to do with protecting the environment. Rather it is a political movement led by those who seek to control the world economy, dictate development and redistribute the world's wealth. They use the philosophical base of Karl Marx, the tactics of Adolf Hitler and the rhetoric of the Sierra Club."
Event organizer Richard Mack, the former sheriff of Graham County, Ariz., known for successfully challenging parts of the Brady Act in court and currently running in a GOP congressional primary against RINO Lamar Smith of Texas, estimated more than 3 percent of the sheriffs in America were in the room. Sheriffs tend to be gray-haired guys who've been around the track a few times, not young hotheads with nothing to lose by embracing such doctrines as the local nullification of federal laws found not to have been enacted "pursuant" to the Constitution -- the topic of a banquet speech by economist and historian Tom Woods of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Yet Mack tells me that even in private he didn't hear a lot of skepticism from participants -- which may be some indication of just how disastrous federal "environmental" and other policies have been to America's rural counties in recent years.
Sheriff John Lopey of Siskiyou County in Northern California spoke at the closed-to-the-public portion of the event. (Watch him declare, "We are in a fight right now for the survival of our counties. ... If we let them take our water and our land and push us off ... we'll have no quality of life," at http://tinyurl.com/7qk9mg8.)
I followed some of the federal interventions in the Siskiyou and Klamath areas on the California-Oregon border when my column ran regularly in the Siskiyou Daily News a decade ago. From shutting down the local sawmills to protect the "threatened" spotted owl to halting water flows to local farmers to protect a "threatened" sucker fish to shutting down any placer mining claim whose owners couldn't show they produced an arbitrary "living wage," the federal full-court press to bankrupt rural residents has been nothing if not creative.
Also speaking at the Las Vegas event was Sheriff Gil Gilbertson of Josephine County (Grants Pass), Ore., who argued Jan. 30 that federal interference with the ability of people to make a living in his county has become so severe that he could be required to lay off 50 to 75 percent of his staff by next fall.
When he asked the U.S. Forest Service what its agents were trying to do to miners in his county, "They said to file a Freedom of Information request. ... I asked them where in the Constitution do you get the jurisdiction to do what you're doing? ... I think they're violating the 10th Amendment," Gilbertson told the crowd.
"Now is the perfect storm, now is the time to draw a line in the sand. We're not going to have a better opportunity," he said. "I think they're closing down the resources so they can use them as collateral to borrow more money."
Babeu's Bundgaard-ian Bombshell
It’s been strange to watch the (now openly) gay sheriff play the gay card in his own defense.
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu seems suggest that the only reason a fomer love interest of his came forward to Phoenix New Times and said that Babeu and his attorney threatened him with deportation is that the former lover or the media or his political opponents or all of the above wanted to “out” him.
No.
If that were the case, it probably would have been done to Babeu a long time ago.
Sheriff Babeu is not in political (or even perhaps legal) trouble because his personal don’t-ask-don’t-tell lifestyle has been exposed, but because he was involved in a messy relationship that spilled over into his very public life and has raised questions about his judgment.
And when you’re running for the U.S. Congress, as is Babeu, your judgment is an issue.
Perhaps THE issue.
So, if you e-mail provocative pictures to someone, as Babeu did, and those pictures wind up in the media it is not only the fault of the person who released them, but of you.
And if someone with whom you had a personal relationship spills his guts to a local media outlet, hires an attorney and claims to have been intimidated by you that doesn’t only reflect on him, but on you.
Former State Sen. Scott Bundgaard is out of public office because of a very public dust-up (and his very clumsy reaction afterward) with his then-girlfriend.
His personal life became a political liability because of poor judgment.
That’s the primary question Babeu faces.
It isn’t a gay thing. It’s a trust thing.
Even if there was no attempt to use his position as a sheriff to intimidate the man New Times refers to as “Jose” (as Babeu strongly contends) there are issues that Babeu won’t be able to run from.
As one of his opponents in the Dist. 4 Congressional race, State Sen. Ron Gould put it, “"For him to take those kinds of photographs and then to have uploaded them to that kind of site is ... very poor judgment from an elected official.”
Gun owners hope to win the right to carry concealed weapons
By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times
February 20, 2012
Chuck Michel's strategy for crime-fighting rests on the element of surprise: Keep the bad guys guessing who's armed and who's not.
"If 5% of the ducks could shoot back, you're not going to go duck hunting," said the Long Beach lawyer representing many Californians denied concealed weapons permits and, in his view, their constitutional right to self-defense.
For decades, that argument has fallen flat in the courtroom. Judges have routinely held that denying permits to carry loaded firearms in public does not infringe on gun owners' right to keep and bear arms.
But now, some gun owners hope that courts will soon reverse course and find that they have a right to secretly tote their weapons in public. Ironically, their optimism stems from a piece of gun control legislation that took effect last month and bans them from openly carrying even unloaded handguns.
Courts have upheld local law enforcement officials' authority to deny concealed weapons permits in part because "you had the opportunity to openly carry an unloaded weapon and in the event of an emergency you can quickly load and defend yourself," said Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor and author of "Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America." "Now that option has been taken off the table."
Open carrying of an unloaded weapon never satisfied gun rights advocates like Michel, who have been challenging — unsuccessfully — California's ever-tightening restrictions on who can buy guns; what guns are legal; and when, where, how and if weapons can be carried outside the home. The new law, Michel said, has given him the ammunition he needs to win in court.
Although gun owners can easily qualify for concealed permits in some remote and rural counties, it is all but impossible for residents of densely populated counties, where the majority of Californians live, unless the gun owner can prove an actual threat.
"California is a stand-alone where you can't carry an unconcealed and unloaded gun and you can't get a permit to carry one concealed," Michel said, arguing that the state is out of step with at least 40 others that issue concealed-carry permits to any applicant with a clean slate.
From his law office bedecked with guns, ammo and Old West memorabilia, Michel keeps a close eye on the U.S. Supreme Court and believes the justices are on the lookout for the appropriate right-to-carry case to find a constitutional right to carry loaded guns for self-protection.
The justices issued a watershed ruling in 2008 in the case of Heller vs. District of Columbia, recognizing for the first time since Civil War days a citizen's right to keep a weapon at home for self-protection. Gun rights groups had watched carefully for years to find the most sympathetic plaintiffs to make the point that residents of the crime-ridden national capital were being denied a means of self-defense by the district's ban on handguns, Winkler said. Two years later, in McDonald vs. Chicago, the high court extended that right to the states as well as federal territory.
Those seeking recognition of a right to carry guns have petitioned the Supreme Court to review several cases since Heller in which gun owners failed to convince ower courts that their rights were being denied. The justices have so far declined to address the right-to-carry question, probably because those cases involved plaintiffs appealing convictions for illegal firearms possession or denial of carry rights to applicants with stains on their records, Winkler said.
Those who support strict gun control say the court deliberately limited its Heller ruling to recognize only a right to keep a gun at home.
"I expect the Supreme Court to decide as courts around the country have decided in hundreds of cases that there is not a 2nd Amendment right to carry guns in public places," said Jonathan E. Lowy, legal action director for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, who sponsored the new ban on open carry, likewise brushed off the gun lobby's contention that gun control supporters have shot themselves in the foot.
"Obviously the pro-gun person is going to look for anything to spin a pro-gun agenda," said the La Cañada Flintridge Democrat. "This is a reasonable move to close a loophole, and we are confident it will stand up in court."
Portantino proposed the open-carry ban after gun owners began protesting in demand of carry rights by converging by the dozens on coffee shops with Berettas and Smith & Wessons riding on their hips.
As concealed-carry permits became more difficult to get, Eduard Peruta, a client of Michel's, took his protest to the courts.
A semi-retired investigator from San Diego who wanted protection for himself and his wife when they traveled to remote places in their motor home, Peruta applied for a concealed weapons permit but was denied because "generalized fear for one's personal safety" doesn't meet county authorities' definition of what amounts to "good cause" to carry a weapon. As do most other populous counties, San Diego requires applicants to demonstrate a specific and verifiable threat to their lives.
In his lawsuit, Peruta also accused San Diego County Sheriff William Gore of violating his equal protection rights by issuing concealed-carry permits more liberally to members of the Honorary Deputy Sheriff's Assn., which raises funds for law enforcement. Peruta lost the case, and it is now pending appeal.
There is also gross inconsistency among authorities in California's 58 counties on what constitutes good cause, which could lead to courts finding equal protection violations, said Stephen Halbrook, a Virginia attorney and frequent litigator for the National Rifle Assn. In remote Plumas County, one in 39 adults has a carry permit, according to state Department of Justice statistics for 2011. In Los Angeles County, one in 33,700 adults is licensed to carry, and in San Francisco the latest records show zero civilian holders among the county's 700,000 adults.
Statewide, the number of civilians with concealed weapons permits is 32,666, or 0.1% of the adult population. That compares with about 5% licensed to carry nationwide, according to Calguns Foundation chief Gene Hoffman.
Halbrook says Peruta and a handful of other carry challenges from California could eventually get the justices' attention, along with a lawsuit by a 71-year-old Illinois woman beaten and left for dead in a 2009 robbery of her church treasury office. The woman, Mary Shepard, had sought and been denied a carry permit.
"You always want to put your best foot forward," Halbrook said of the strategy that succeeded in Heller.
carol.williams@latimes.com
Further inquiry on Pinal Sheriff Paul Babeu is sought
by Rebekah L. Sanders and Lindsey Collom - Feb. 20, 2012 10:05 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
A Pinal County supervisor and an immigrant-rights group are calling for investigations into Sheriff Paul Babeu, even as the attorney for the embattled lawman said Babeu will not ask for an outside review to clear his name.
Babeu, who won office promising county voters that he would clean house after government scandals and has touted his law-enforcement credentials in his bid for Congress, has repeatedly denied allegations that he threatened a Mexican ex-boyfriend with deportation to keep him quiet about their relationship.
Those allegations surfaced Friday in a newspaper story that also described suggestive photos posted by Babeu on dating websites and intimidating text messages he allegedly sent. The resulting media firestorm raised questions about the alleged threats and about Babeu's personal conduct.
Andrew Hall, a California-based police-procedure and administration consultant, said other lawmen who have claimed to be wrongfully accused have asked for independent investigations -- and subsequently been cleared.
But Chris DeRose, Babeu's attorney and campaign manager, said that if the ex-boyfriend, identified only as Jose, believes his allegations against Babeu are credible, he should be the one to take them to law enforcement for investigation. The sheriff, he said, will not.
"This is all just silliness," DeRose said. "It's not even something we've seriously considered."
Although Babeu claims that he, too, is a victim -- in this case, of identity theft by Jose -- Babeu has also declined to press charges.
Pete Rios, chairman of the Pinal County Board of Supervisors and a Babeu critic, said he hopes to meet today with the County Attorney's Office regarding alleged abuses of power and misuse of county resources. He said another option would be a review by the county Office of Internal Audit.
"We're looking for answers as well," he said Monday.
Rios said one challenge will be determining which agency could review the case objectively.
He said Maricopa County could appear biased because of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's past support of Babeu, while the next- largest county in Arizona, Pima, could be problematic because of past tension between Sheriff Clarence Dupnik and Babeu.
DeRose said Babeu has fully answered the allegations against him through media interviews and a lengthy press conference he held the day after the story was first published in the Phoenix New Times. Babeu confirmed he is gay but denied abusing his authority to intimidate the former boyfriend.
Babeu also denied that he sent explicit text messages to Jose from his county-issued phone, a potential abuse of county resources, and has fought back against criticism that he used poor judgment as a public official and lawman by sending sexually charged photos to Jose after posting on a gay singles website.
Bryan Martyn, a county supervisor who calls the sheriff a friend, said he stands by Babeu and wants any wrongdoing to be exposed.
"If there are criminal allegations here, we can pursue those," Martyn said, "but I don't see any reason we should ask the sheriff to step down based on an allegation."
Any resulting investigation would likely be conducted by an outside agency, such as the Arizona Department of Public Safety or the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, said Kostas Kalaitzidis, a Pinal County attorney spokesman. Some political observers have floated the possibility of an inquiry by the Arizona Attorney General's Office or the U.S. Department of Justice.
Lydia Guzman, director of the Phoenix-based immigrant-rights group Respect Respeto, sent a letter Monday to the Department of Justice requesting an investigation into potential abuse of power.
"These types of threats and acts of intimidation send a horrible message to the migrant community that they cannot look to their law-enforcement agencies for protection when they are victims of a crime," she wrote. "It is my feeling that neither an elected official nor a law-enforcement officer should abuse their positions to make such threats upon an individual in exchange for their silence, and this is why I am respectfully requesting an investigation into this matter."
Possible inquiries
If a formal complaint is lodged, law enforcement could choose not to investigate the allegations, Hall said.
"What we assume is if those allegations were brought forward in good faith and are reasonable, law enforcement would investigate," Hall said. But discretion over opening investigations is helpful in some instances. "There are people who will come forward and say, 'I saw a Martian land and steal money from a cash register, and I want you to investigate that theft.'"
Although handled differently, the "should and should nots" of conduct are the same for appointed and elected officials, Hall said.
"A police officer, whether appointed or elected, should never use their office for personal favor," he said. "It would be wrong in every circumstance ... for a police officer to threaten some form of criminal process or some form of legal process for personal gain."
DPS spokesman Bart Graves said Sunday that, to his knowledge, no one had asked the agency to look into Babeu's alleged misconduct. Amy Rezzonico, spokeswoman for state Attorney General Tom Horne, on Monday said the same thing.
Until an investigation takes place, Hall said, the public should be aware that "things are seldom as they're first presented."
"It's important that there not be a rush to judgment and that there be an investigation," he said. "Police officers and elected officials are vulnerable to complaints that have an impact on their career, and these things can be career ending and they can be significant. It's important things be done correctly, incrementally and procedurally."
Roger Vanderpool, retired DPS director and former Pinal County sheriff, said authorities need to investigate not only the allegations of abuse of power and intimidation by Babeu but any potential wrongdoing by Jose. Babeu may be a victim in this, too, Vanderpool said.
Until the truth surfaces, the issue will continue to be a distraction, he warned.
"For the sake of the citizens of Pinal County, the law-enforcement community, for Sheriff Babeu and Jose, whoever Jose is, there needs to be an investigation to answer all these questions," Vanderpool said. "It's obviously got the Sheriff's Office in turmoil, and it distracts from the duties of employees out there, and we need to lay it all to rest so people can get on with their business."
Vanderpool said a deputy accused of the type of allegations Babeu faces would likely be removed from patrol and placed on administrative duty for the duration of an internal-affairs inquiry. Paid administrative leave is an option if there's concern of possible harm to the public or systems within the agency, but Vanderpool said that doesn't seem to be applicable here.
Arizona law-enforcement officers have lost their jobs before in sex scandals.
Chandler police Officer Ronald Dible was fired in 2002 after department officials discovered he and his wife had posted sexually explicit photos and videos on a porn site and then lied about it to investigators. Dible appealed his firing to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and lost.
Ethics campaign
A former Chandler policeman and retired military officer, Babeu has touted his law-and-order background in his quest for the Sheriff's Office and more recently in his bid for Congress in Arizona's conservative 4th District, which covers most of the northwestern part of the state.
Babeu said at the news conference that he has served ethically throughout his life.
"Everything that I've done in my public life and in my performance of duty, in my sworn oath, at any level in my entire career, whether in the military or as a law-enforcement officer, has been not only fully honorable, (but) has complied with all the law and led by example," he said.
Babeu, the first Republican in Pinal County to be elected sheriff, came to the seat in 2008 by running on a platform that highlighted "ethical lapses" on the part of Pinal County leaders. He cited former County Manager Stanley Griffis, who spent nearly three years in prison on a 2007 theft conviction for using his position to steal about $600,000 in public funds.
In April 2009, Babeu called for the county recorder to resign for knowingly hiring a felon later accused of stealing customer identities while working at the Recorder's Office.
With such incidents, "a piece of the trust that our honest employees have earned from residents is lost," Babeu wrote in an opinion piece in The Arizona Republic in 2009. "The good work done by our government employees is needlessly called into question by the bad deeds of people like this."
At least a dozen of Babeu's own employees have been fired as a result of his efforts to root out corruption in Pinal County, including a jail commander who lied about cocaine use on a previous job application and a sergeant accused of not properly impounding evidence.
The most high-profile was Babeu's January 2011 firing of Louie Puroll, a 14-year-deputy who received departmental awards after a purported gunbattle with smugglers in 2010.
Puroll bragged to a Phoenix New Times reporter that Mexican cartel members had asked him to work for them and said a friend offered to murder the journalist in retaliation for news stories that questioned the veracity of the deputy's account that he had been shot by smugglers. Puroll's termination hinged on suspected violations of 10 departmental policies involving issues of ethics, truthfulness and competency. Puroll is fighting the decision but has not yet appeared before the county's merit board.
Conflict
Babeu has been reluctant to seek charges against his former boyfriend for criminal acts Babeu alleges he perpetrated.
Babeu accuses Jose of accessing the sheriff's re-election websites last year without permission and impersonating Babeu by posting damaging messages on the sites.
Babeu's attorney DeRose sent a cease-and-desist letter to Jose, threatening legal action if he didn't erase the messages and return control of the websites to the campaign.
When Jose complied, Babeu said, he felt pressing charges was not necessary.
Babeu also said he had every reason to believe the ex-boyfriend, who came from Mexico, was in the country legally.
I wonder? Does Paul Babeu smoke marijuana too? Just wondering. Some cops do.
In fact some cops love the drug war because it means they can get their weed for
free by stealing it from people they stop.
Paul Babeu: where's the (no pun intended) beef?
I've been holding off on writing about the Babeu freak show.
My first thought -- beyond holy $%#^#$ -- was to be grateful that this wasn't a story about Sheriff Joe. I really, really don't want to see pics of Joe in his undies.
That aside, it bothers me that an ex lover was allowed to anonymously hurl these accusations. I'm not defending Paul Babeu. But I am awaiting proof.
My questions: Did Babeu post those photos to a gay website and did he threaten deportation?
If he posted the photos, then obviously he's exhibited an astonishing lapse of judgment. Do we know that he posted them?
And the biggie: did he threaten his ex lover with deportation? The New Times says Jose claims to be here legally but I haven't heard that anybody's seen proof of that
If he was here legally, does it make sense that Babeu would threaten deportation? If he wasn't here legally, which seems more likely given that New Times gave him anonymity, then Babeu has problems both for making the threat and being a hypocrite. You can't be banging the illegal immigrant in your bedroom while waging war against illegal immigrants in your public life.
People are coming to Babeu's defense on my Facebook page, claiming "jilted lover syndrome." Lots of people have exes who are capable of some pretty obnoxious behavior, it seems.
"I don't care if Jose is hispanic or not or if Babeu is gay or not," Mary wrote on my Facebook wall. "What I care about is that when someone gets dumped, they can slander you and ruin your life and career and they don't have to PROVE their allegations. The fact that they made them in the first place makes many a moron believe them."
Clearly, an investigation is warranted. Regardless of what's found, though, Paul Babeu's political career is over.
He just doesn't know it yet.
If you ask me saying that a crooked cop deserves to die is certainly NOT threatening the life of the cop.
FBI raids home of Oregon blogger suspected of Arpaio threat
by Liz Kotalik - Feb. 21, 2012 08:27 PM
The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team
Agents from the FBI in Portland, Ore., conducted a raid Monday on the home of a blogger suspected of threatening Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's life last month, FBI officials and Arpaio announced at a news conference Tuesday.
Evidence was seized from the home that investigators think could potentially link Clifton Dawayne Brooks, 35, to a blog that praised cop killers, according to FBI Special Agent James Turgal.
The Google blog
TargetingCops.com
posted a picture of Arpaio with the words "Wanted: Dead or Alive" on it.
"Dead" was underlined, and "Alive" was crossed out.
The blog proceeded to say: "You're next Joe, watch your back, (expletive)."
The blog has since been taken down.
Maricopa County sheriff's detectives had recently served search warrants on Google's headquarters in California, where they determined the IP address associated with the website, according to the Sheriff's officials.
This led the FBI and the Sheriff's Office to Brooks' home in Portland.
Turgal would not give specific details during the press conference about the evidence found in Brooks' home, but Arpaio said the man had "strange items" pinned to his walls.
Agents had to evacuate the home after finding an object that looked like an explosive device, which was later identified as a "prop," according to Sheriff's officials.
Brooks was present at the time of the raid, but no arrests were made. Turgal said agents are waiting until all evidence is examined before deciding whether to take anyone into custody.
Officials believe that as many as eight people could be living in the home with Brooks.
Brooks had a prior federal conviction in 2001 for making a bomb threat in interstate or foreign commerce, officials said.
"We take all of these threats very seriously, regardless of who or what agency it was towards," Turgal said.
Arpaio called the website deeply offensive to law enforcement, specifically officers who died in the line of duty.
Arpaio said he was especially angry about a post on the blog that celebrated the death of Sheriff's Deputy William Coleman.
Coleman was killed in a shootout with Drew Ryan Maras, 30, in Anthem earlier this year. Maras was also killed.
Arpaio said he was sicked by the post on the blog, which included a picture of Coleman with the word "LOL" - meaning "laughing out loud" - over it. The blog's author called Maras a "hero."
The sheriff said today that these posts were sickening.
"In a way, I'm happy that he threatened me," Arpaio said. "Now we have the authority to investigate."
Turgal said the investigation was ongoing.
NYC mayor, Yale leader spar over Muslim spying
by David B. Caruso - Feb. 21, 2012 11:11 PM
Associated Press
NEW YORK - New York City's mayor faced off with the president of Yale University on Monday over efforts by the city's Police Department to monitor Muslim student groups.
The Associated Press revealed over the weekend that in recent years, the NYPD has kept close watch on Muslim student associations across the Northeast. The effort included daily tracking of student websites and blogs, monitoring who was speaking to the groups and, in one case, sending an undercover officer on a whitewater-rafting trip with students from the City College of New York.
Yale President Richard Levin was among a number of academics who condemned the effort Monday, while Rutgers University and leaders of Muslim student groups elsewhere called for investigations into the monitoring.
"I am writing to state, in the strongest possible terms, that police surveillance based on religion, nationality, or peacefully expressed political opinions is antithetical to the values of Yale, the academic community, and the United States," Levin wrote in a statement.
Speaking to reporters later Monday, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg dismissed those criticisms as baseless.
"I don't know why keeping the country safe is antithetical to the values of Yale," he said.
He said it was "ridiculous" to argue that there was anything wrong with officers keeping an eye on websites that are available to the general public.
"Of course we're going to look at anything that's publicly available in the public domain. We have an obligation to do so, and it is to protect the very things that let Yale survive," Bloomberg said.
Asked by a reporter if he thought it was a "step too far" to send undercover investigators to accompany students on rafting vacations, Bloomberg said, "No. We have to keep this country safe."
"It's very cute to go and blame everybody and say we should stay away from anything that smacks of intelligence gathering. The job of our law enforcement is to make sure that they prevent things. And you only do that by being proactive."
Bloomberg added that he believed that police officers had obeyed the law.
The NYPD monitoring effort included schools far beyond the city limits, including the Ivy League colleges of Yale and the University of Pennsylvania.
The undercover agent who attended the City College rafting trip recorded students' names and noted in police intelligence files how many times they prayed. Detectives trawled Muslim student websites every day and, although professors and students had not been accused of any wrongdoing, their names were recorded in reports prepared for Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
Loot confiscated by TSA turns into revenue for states
By Bart Jansen, USA TODAY
From samurai swords to hatchets to snow globes, the Transportation Security Administration collects tons of unusual objects each year that passengers try to carry onto planes.
The objects are what the TSA deems weapons or other threats to flight security. They're surrendered at checkpoints by forgetful or harried passengers who would rather give them up than miss a flight or return to the check-in counter and pay extra to put them in a checked bag.
Among the most common: Swiss Army knives or similarly sharp multiuse pocket tools, though the gamut runs to swords or even fuzzy handcuffs that are more for bedroom use than law enforcement.
And despite cynical suggestions from angry travelers that security officers keep the items for themselves, the TSA turns over the property to state agencies and commercial vendors, which cart it away to sell. Although public auctions yield a fraction of retail prices, dozens of states have found some revenue in the contraband.
"It's kind of amazing what people will try to take on board," says Troy Thompson, spokesman for Pennsylvania's Department of General Services, which takes some of the contraband. "To them (passengers), it's an item that's not threatening, but in these days and times it is threatening."
Pennsylvania collects truckloads of items from airports, including New York City's John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark Liberty. The state has raised $700,000 from selling them since 2004, Thompson says.
The most sought-after items by buyers are among the most often left behind: pocket knives, scissors and corkscrews, which are typically sold in boxes of 100. Occasionally, machetes, samurai swords and even an African spear are trucked to the state warehouse in Harrisburg, he says.
The passenger shakedown
About 30 states have collected TSA-relinquished property since the agency was created to provide stricter baggage screening after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to Scott Pepperman, executive director of the National Association of State Agencies for Surplus Property.
Because the TSA had trouble coping with the accumulation, with 10 tons of contraband piling up at Los Angeles International Airport alone, Pepperman helped negotiate an agreement a decade ago with the federal government for states to take possession of the surrendered items.
"It was of no use to TSA. It's of no value to them. The cost and care of storage and handling was exceeding the commercial value of it to them," Pepperman says. "Some (states) put them up on eBay. Some have their own websites. Others have auctions."
Some states, he says, donate useful items to schools, fire departments and charities.
Some items have questionable resale value. Items that crossed Pepperman's path while he worked in the Pennsylvania surplus agency until two years ago included machetes, meat slicers and a box of rocks.
"We collected more fuzzy handcuffs than you would ever see in your life — boxes and boxes of fuzzy handcuffs," he says.
Despite a policy of not carrying sharp objects onto planes that dates to just after 9/11 and one that limits liquids and gels that dates to 2006, the TSA continues to collect objects that clearly have malevolent possibilities.
This month, a spear gun showed up at Newark, joining assorted hatchets, chains, inert grenades, metal throwing stars and bullet-holding bandoliers.
Al Della Fave, spokesman for the Port Authority Police Department for New York and New Jersey, admired a recent find of decorative daggers from the Middle East in an ornate wooden box that a traveler carried under his arm.
"People think they're good to go — and they're not," Della Fava says.
More innocent-looking items also are relinquished. Hundreds of snow globes from Disneyland are in the mountain of TSA contraband piled up in Sacramento, says Michael Liang, spokesman for California's Department of General Services.
The liquid in the snow globes makes the souvenirs a forbidden item in carry-on bags on the possibility it could be explosive.
'Not a big moneymaker'
Nobody keeps track of how many tons of relinquished property is handed over or how much states receive in sales annually. Collecting, sorting and selling the odd objects is a chore, and the amount some states make may seem paltry.
This month, California had one of its quarterly auctions and got $9,800 for TSA-confiscated items, Liang says.
"It's not a lot of money, but every bit helps," he says.
In Alabama, the surplus property division at the state Department of Economic and Community Affairs got about 3 tons last year from airports in Alabama and Florida. Sales totaled about $15,000 for the year, says Larry Childers, an agency spokesman.
"It's a net plus for us, but not a big moneymaker," Childers says.
Georgia opted out of collecting the objects in 2008 because it was too much trouble, says Steve Ekin, the surplus program manager for the Department of Administrative Services.
"It was a lot of work for very little return," Ekin says.
The police never demonize people they murder. At least that's what the Fullerton cops want you to believe!
Next time you read an article on how the police arrested someone
notice that they always tend to demonize the person arrested.
Even if they were arrested for jay walking the police tend to make
them look like they are a combination of Attila the Hun, Charles Manson
and Adolf Hitler, who almost ended Western Civilization as we know it
by committing whatever crimes they were accused of.
Then contrast that with a police press release in which
one of their police officers were arrested.
In that case the police report makes the
accused cop look like a combination of an
alter boy, boy scout and Saint Teresa
all rolled into one.
And of course the people accusing the cop of a crime
are always demonized as bad, bad, bad, evil criminals
who hate cops.
Of course the police demonize their enemies.
Sadly that is a fact of life.
Being a cop ain't about protecting the public,
it almost always ends up building an empire
for the police department.
Fullerton police didn't intend to deceive public in Kelly Thomas' death, report finds
By Richard Winton and Abby Sewell, Los Angeles Times
February 22, 2012
There is no evidence that Fullerton police deliberately released false or negative information and an unflattering photograph of a mentally ill homeless man who died last year after being beaten by police officers, a police watchdog attorney hired by the city said Tuesday.
The report comes after community leaders and activists accused the beleaguered Police Department of going out of its way to portray Kelly Thomas as a violent street person with a history of run-ins with police before the deadly July 5 confrontation.
Although police released a two-year-old booking photo showing a disheveled Thomas and incorrectly told the media that he had been so violent that two officers suffered broken bones in the struggle, attorney Michael Gennaco said the negative portrayal of the homeless man was unintentional.
"The Fullerton Police Department did not intend to deceive or falsify information," said Gennaco, who operates the Los Angeles County Office of Independent Review and who was hired to investigate Thomas' death and the officers' actions.
But Ron Thomas, the homeless man's father, immediately questioned the conclusion.
"I don't believe that for a second," he said. "All of it was intended to make Kelly look bad."
Kelly Thomas' death has become something of a rallying cry in Fullerton, resulting in the police chief stepping down, a City Council recall effort and criminal charges being filed against two of the officers who were involved in the beating.
Gennaco's report, which was released during a well-attended special council meeting Tuesday evening, offered one of the few bright spots for police in the case.
Gennaco said although police normally don't release years-old booking photos, he found that Fullerton did not have such a written policy on old mug shots. He suggested the city develop a policy.
"I have looked at hundreds and hundreds of booking photos and I have yet to find one booking photo that put anyone in a flattering light," Gennaco said in response to the accusation that police had released the old photo to make Thomas look bad.
Further, statements by the department that two officers suffered broken bones was not a deliberate effort to win sympathy for police, he said.
Gennaco did say that police should have been more tentative in their statement and quickly told the public when it turned out that none of the officers suffered broken bones. An initial medical report had suggested that the officers might have suffered fractures.
The report also offered some vindication for Kelly Thomas, who was detained after someone reported seeing him trying to break into cars. Gennaco concluded that Thomas had not stolen mail that police found in a search of his backpack.
Thomas died five days after the July 5 incident, never regaining consciousness after suffering multiple broken bones.
Second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter charges have been filed against officers Manuel Ramos and Jay Cicinelli, respectively, for their roles in the deadly beating, while four other officers who were present remain on leave.
On Tuesday, Gennaco presented to the council what he describes as an initial report on the Thomas incident. He plans to complete a second report on violations of policy and procedure by the officers.
The council hired Gennaco in August amid rising public criticism of how the Police Department handled the case.
Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas, in charging the two officers in September, revealed that Ramos had put on latex gloves and told Thomas: "These fists are ready to F you up."
Cicinelli allegedly Tasered Thomas four times, kneed him in the head twice and hit him eight times with the Taser, Rackauckas said. Both officers have pleaded not guilty.
richard.winton@latimes.com
abby.sewell@latimes.com
Supreme Court rejects Redondo Beach appeal on day laborer law
By David G. Savage, Washington Bureau
February 22, 2012
Reporting from Washington—
Redondo Beach lost a bid to reinstate its ordinance barring day laborers from gathering on busy street corners to solicit work from passing drivers Tuesday when the U.S. Supreme Court turned down its appeal.
The ordinance allowed police to arrest those who were motioning to motorists and allegedly causing traffic problems.
Lawyers for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund in Los Angeles had sued the city on behalf of two groups of day laborers. In September, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the ordinance on free-speech grounds.
Its judges, by a 9-2 vote, said the ordinance was too broad because it applied to all city streets and all pedestrians. The judges also noted the city had not set aside a spot where day laborers could congregate and seek work from interested residents.
Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote a strong dissent. He said the city was troubled because as many as 75 day laborers crowded at some busy intersections.
"Nothing in the 1st Amendment prevents government ensuring that sidewalks are reserved for walking rather than loitering," he wrote.
Redondo Beach appealed to the high court in December, citing Kozinski's dissent.
Its lawyers argued that cities should have the authority to regulate people who use its sidewalks and intersections to solicit passing motorists. But the high court turned down the appeal without comment.
david.savage@latimes.com
Former lieutenant says he regrets handling of fatal DUI involving Chicago cop [Well, at least that what he claims after it looks like he got caught trying to help a drunk cop beat a DWI and murder charge]
By Jason Meisner and Jeremy Gorner, Chicago Tribune reporters
February 22, 2012
A teenage boy was dead, his crumpled bicycle still lying underneath a van at the South Side intersection where he had been struck by a speeding car shortly after 2 a.m. A few blocks away, off-duty Chicago police Officer Richard Bolling had been stopped driving the wrong way down a one-way street, the windshield of his Dodge Charger smashed and splattered with blood. The patrol officers smelled alcohol on his breath and found an open bottle of beer in the console.
If it were a typical fatal DUI investigation, the driver would be promptly asked to consent to field sobriety tests and a breath test.
But with an off-duty cop involved, Lt. John Brundage decided to order the patrol officers to hold off on testing Bolling until a higher-ranking commander arrived, leaving the officer to sober up in the back of the police car as crucial minutes ticked by that early morning in May 2009. Two hours after the crash, Bolling was given a field sobriety test. He wasn't ordered to take a breath test until almost three hours after the field test.
It was a decision Brundage now regrets. [Well claims to regret]
"Frankly, in hindsight, I probably should've proceeded (with the field sobriety tests)," Brundage, who is now retired, said in a Tribune interview. "But everything else, we were doing it by the book."
[They always give cops special treatment, I guess that is "by the book"]
Last month a Cook County jury found Bolling, 42, a veteran narcotics officer, guilty of aggravated DUI, reckless homicide and leaving the scene of a fatal accident in the death of Trenton Booker, 13. At Bolling's scheduled sentencing Wednesday at the Criminal Courts Building, Judge Matthew Coghlan has a wide range of options. He could impose anything from probation up to 15 years in prison.
Prosecutors alleged Brundage and other officers at the scene had given Bolling preferential treatment because he was a cop. Brundage was the lone officer disciplined for neglect of duty, according to the department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Tribune.
Even though court records and trial testimony raised questions about how the officers handled the investigation, department officials said they had no plans to re-examine what happened.
[Of course if it was a civilian they almost certainly would examine the police coverup]
University of Chicago law professor Craig Futterman said the fatal crash illustrates deep flaws in the way police handle cases involving their own. He said an internal affairs investigator — who had the authority to order Bolling to take a breath test — should have been on the scene within minutes.
[You mean internal affairs isn't there to protect the cops from being charged with a crime :). OK, just joking, but sadly is how the system works]
"The first order of business in a death investigation is to preserve evidence. In this case, you have evidence that's going to go away incredibly quickly," Futterman said. "Why hours passed before an internal affairs investigator came to the scene is evidence of … a completely broken system for investigating police misconduct."
In the Tribune interview, Brundage said he was "personally insulted" by the prosecution's allegations of favoritism and contended his delay to involve the highest-ranking officer on duty at the time — called the incident commander — wasn't an attempt to buy time for Bolling. It was just the opposite, he said.
[Believe that and I have some excellent swamp land I want to sell you in Florida!!!]
"I thought the proper way to handle it was to wait until the on-duty incident commander arrived on the scene so he can witness our investigation and ensure that we weren't giving the off-duty police officer any special breaks and that we were conducting a proper investigation," Brundage said.
He said he notified the department's main dispatching center, which then contacted the incident commander. What he didn't realize was that the incident commander was on the Northwest Side and that it would take him about an hour to drive to the crash site.
Brundage admitted the investigation would have gone much faster had the suspect in the case been a civilian. He would not have felt compelled to call the incident commander and his own presence might not even be necessary.
"We wouldn't have waited. … The on-duty incident commander wouldn't have responded to the scene," he said. "In fact, probably the police officers would've just proceeded without even the sergeant appearing on the scene."
According to a timeline of events compiled by the Tribune based on court records and trial testimony, Bolling was stopped at 82nd Street and Winchester Avenue at 1:31 a.m., just four minutes after the first 911 call about the crash a few blocks away at 81st Street and Ashland Avenue.
Much of what transpired over the next several hours was captured on the dashboard camera of the squad car where Bolling had been placed under arrest.
According to a court filing, shortly after 2 a.m., an undisclosed superior officer leaned into the car and said to Bolling, "We're going to have to give you the standard field sobriety test. ... I'm gonna try to help you out as much as possible, the lieutenant's on the scene." [Honest, he wasn't giving his fellow cop special treatment. Honest, swear to God! Well, at least that's what the cops say!]
Prosecutors did not play that portion of the video for the jury, and the state's attorney's office denied the Tribune's Freedom of Information Act request for a copy of the entire video, citing the pending criminal case.
Later that morning, Bolling was driven to a restroom — a decision that Brundage acknowledged he authorized. Brundage defended the move as one that would be accorded to a civilian. But Bolling was allowed to use the bathroom before he took the field sobriety tests or the breath test.
The video also showed that Bolling didn't perform the field sobriety tests until 3:26 a.m., about two hours after the crash. In their police report, arresting Officers Brenda Sanchez-Gomez and Milton Kinnison concluded that Bolling passed the tests and "did not appear to be impaired."
But at trial last month, both officers flip-flopped in their testimony. The two testified that after viewing the video of Bolling performing the field sobriety tests, they decided that he had actually flunked key portions of the "walk-and-turn" and "one-leg stand" tests.
Gomez-Sanchez said she was "nervous" when she administered the tests because of all the superior officers who were watching. [Would she have been punished if the cop flunked the test she gave him???]
Brundage said he still believes Bolling passed the field sobriety tests.
"Certainly it was never mentioned that we should give this guy a break," he said.
Brundage said he believes internal affairs Sgt. Richard Downs had to be rousted from home because of the time of the crash early in the morning. But Downs got there just as the incident commander arrived, at about 3 a.m. The incident commander witnessed the field sobriety test.
But according to police policy, the internal affairs investigation had to wait until officers finished their investigation. Bolling didn't have to give the arresting officers a breath test, but he couldn't refuse Downs because police policy requires it in these cases. By the time Downs ordered Bolling to submit to an alcohol-breath test, it was 5:57 a.m., nearly 4 1/2 hours after the crash, Bolling blew a 0.079 percent, just under the state legal limit of 0.08.
The delay in breath testing Bolling forced prosecutors to hire a forensic expert, who calculated that Bolling's blood-alcohol level at the time of the crash was as high as double the legal limit.
After an internal investigation, Brundage was reprimanded and given a 10-day suspension in 2010 for his handling of the case. He served the 10 days, but after winning a union grievance, Brundage's suspension was cut in half and he was given five days in back pay, he said.
An affable man who began his career as a lawyer before becoming a cop, Brundage, now 59, retired from the department a short time after his suspension. He said he realized the suspension represented a "black mark" that would make it difficult for him to win promotion.
Futterman, who specializes in police misconduct, found fault with far more than Brundage. He said the department needs a system in place to ensure an internal affairs supervisor arrives on the scene within minutes of a fatal DUI involving an officer.
"In a case where there's reason to believe that the officer may be drunk, hours go by before you test him?" Futterman said. "That's evidence of a lack of will."
jmeisner@tribune.com
jgorner@tribune.com
Vegas Mob Museum puts best face on connections to Chicago, politicians
John Kass
February 22, 2012
LAS VEGAS — The newly opened Mob Museum was stunning, but what stunned me the most was what was missing.
There were only a few brief mentions of Chicago Outfit boss Paul "The Waiter" Ricca — and no mention at all of a famous U.S. senator from Nevada known to the mob as "Mr. Clean Face."
The museum, housed in the old courthouse in downtown Las Vegas, was worth every penny of the $18 entrance fee, especially since the first thing you learn is something everyone from Chicago will understand:
Organized crime cannot exist without the help of local law enforcement and the judges and their messenger-boy politicians.
You can't spend hours at the gaming tables for $18. But you can spend hours in the museum, studying the hits, from the ones in New York and Chicago and Cleveland to that one in Dallas.
And there couldn't very well be a Mob Museum without the actual bricks from the wall of the Chicago garage where the infamousSt.Valentine's DayMassacretook place in 1929. The museum exhibit says the killers were dressed as cops. I've always thought they were cops.
It can't have everything. It has an exhibit about Bugsy Siegel, and one about Chicago Outfit killer Marshall Caifano, but it doesn't say Caifano was the prime suspect in Siegel's murder. Caifano is handsome in his museum picture, like a movie star, but there isn't a picture of him in his casket after he died of natural causes, an old man, tiny, wizened, hands like dry paper, a silver crucifix pinned to the inside of his coffin.
Still, I'll say again that my time at the museum was worth it. But after you've spent years reporting in Chicago, you develop a few odd habits. One is to look for what's not there. What I saw was only cursory mention of Ricca.
Ricca was the Chicago Outfit boss who for decades held Las Vegas in the palm of one hand and Hollywood in the palm of another. He died an old man, of natural causes, in the 1970s. But while he was alive, he was the undisputed king of organized crime. Perhaps that's why no Hollywood producer ever made a movie about him. It wouldn't have been just a horse's head in the bed.
And there were no references whatsoever in the museum to Mr. Clean Face. The absence of Mr. Clean Face was pointed out in a great column in the Las Vegas Review-Journal by Jane Ann Morrison.
You may know Clean Face by another name: U.S.Sen. Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and senate majority leader, and former chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission.
But he was called "Mr. Clean Face" by Kansas City mobster Joe Agosto, who had turned federal witness in the FBI's case against the mob skimming of casino dollars. Agosto was recorded on FBI tape saying that "I gotta Clean Face in my pocket."
In "Straw Men: A Former Agent Recounts How the FBI Crushed the Mob in Las Vegas" by Gary Magnesen, the FBI agent guarding Agosto asks about Clean Face.
"I asked him (Agosto) what that meant, but he refused to say. Even when I pressed him, he just smiled and said, 'I've got to hold something back so I won't be expendable when I finish testifying.' Later, after learning of the derisive nickname, Senator Reid said publicly that he was called Mr. Clean Face because he was clean, not corrupt."
Morrison called out the Mob Museum for failing to mention Reid as Mr. Clean Face. She also looked for what wasn't there. And what wasn't there was the former chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission, or Reid's well-publicized and televised confrontation with Chicago gaming figure Lefty Rosenthal, played in the movie "Casino"by Robert De Niro.
"I've already said this on TV so I might as well say it to you," Morrison told me on Tuesday. "By avoiding any mention of Clean Face, the Mob Museum shows itself to be either clueless or gutless or both."
But I can just imagine what the politician's wing of a Chicago Mob Museum would look like: It would be empty, as barren as the moon.
Las Vegas museum officials were in a highly agitated state when I called to ask them about the absence of Mr. Clean Face, but they finally put me in touch with the curator, Kathleen Barrie, who grew up in the Chicago area.
"Sen. Reid was never charged with a crime," Barrie told me Tuesday. "We don't go after people just because one person mentions it on a wiretap. Who knows? Was Joe Agosto the most reliable? And with only one source, we didn't think there was much of a story there."
What of only a few brief mentions of Paul Ricca?
"He was mentioned, I wouldn't ignore him completely" she said. "I'm from Glencoe. I went to school with his granddaughter at Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart, and she was one of the nicest people. We did mention him two or three times, including the shakedowns of the Hollywood studios, but you know that Paul Ricca did a pretty good job of staying in the background."
Al Capone thumped his chest and sought publicity, smoking cigars, hobnobbing with reporters. Ricca stayed in the shadows to run things.
"He let others take the credit," said Barrie.
That's why they call it organized crime.
jskass@tribune.com
NYPD built secret files on NJ, Long Island mosques
By MATT APUZZO and ADAM GOLDMAN, Associated Press
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Newark, N.J. (AP) --
Americans living and working in New Jersey's largest city were subjected to surveillance as part of the New York Police Department's effort to build databases of where Muslims work, shop and pray. The operation in Newark was so secretive even the city's mayor says he was kept in the dark.
For months in mid-2007, plainclothes officers from the NYPD's Demographics Units fanned out across Newark, taking pictures and eavesdropping on conversations inside businesses owned or frequented by Muslims.
The result was a 60-page report, obtained by The Associated Press, containing brief summaries of businesses and their clientele. Police also photographed and mapped 16 mosques, listing them as "Islamic Religious Institutions."
The report cited no evidence of terrorism or criminal behavior. It was a guide to Newark's Muslims.
According to the report, the operation was carried out in collaboration with the Newark Police Department. But the Newark chief at the time said no local officers participated. And Newark's mayor, Cory Booker, said he never authorized the spying and was never told about it.
"Wow," he said as the AP laid out the details of the report. "This raises a number of concerns. It's just very, very sobering."
Police conducted similar operations outside their jurisdiction in New York's Suffolk and Nassau counties on suburban Long Island, according to police records.
Such surveillance has become commonplace in New York City in the decade since the 2001 terrorist attacks. Police have built databases showing where Muslims live, where they buy groceries, even what Internet cafes they use and where they watch sports. Dozens of mosques and student groups have been infiltrated and police have built detailed profiles of ethnic communities, from Moroccans to Egyptians to Albanians.
The documents obtained by the AP show, for the first time in any detail, how those efforts stretched outside the NYPD's jurisdiction. New Jersey and Long Island residents had no reason to suspect the NYPD was watching them. And since the NYPD isn't accountable to their votes or tax dollars, those non-New Yorkers had little recourse to stop it.
"All of these are innocent people," Nagiba el-Sioufi of Newark said while her husband, Mohammed, flipped through the NYPD report, looking at photos of mosques and storefronts frequented by their friends.
Egyptian immigrants and American citizens, the couple raised two daughters in the United States. Mohammed works as an accountant and is vice president of the Islamic Culture Center, a mosque a few blocks from Newark City Hall.
"If you have an accusation on us, then spend the money on doing this to us," Nagiba said. "But you have no accusation."
The Newark chief at the time, Chief Garry McCarthy, is now in charge of the Chicago Police Department. He said the NYPD initiated the operation and none of his officers participated.
"The NYPD reached out to us as a courtesy when they were coming into Newark. Period," McCarthy said in a brief phone interview Wednesday.
NYPD spokesman Paul Browne did not return a message seeking comment about the report.
The goal of the report, like others the Demographics Unit compiled, was to give police at-their-fingertips access to information about Muslim neighborhoods. If police got a tip about an Egyptian terrorist in the area, for instance, they wanted to immediately know where he was likely to find a cheap room to rent, where he might buy his lunch and at what mosque he probably would attend Friday prayers.
"These locations provide the maximum ability to assess the general opinions and general activity of these communities," the Newark report said.
The effect of the program was that hundreds of American citizens were cataloged — sometimes by name, sometimes simply by their businesses and their ethnicity — in secret police files that spanned hundreds of pages:
_ "A Black Muslim male named Mussa was working in the rear of store," an NYPD detective wrote after a clandestine visit to a dollar store in Shirley, N.Y., on Long Island.
_ "The manager of this restaurant is an Indian Muslim male named Vicky Amin" was the report back from an Indian restaurant in Lindenhurst, N.Y., also on Long Island.
_ "Owned and operated by an African Muslim (possibly Sudanese) male named Abdullah Ddita" was the summary from another dollar store in Shirley, N.Y., just off the highway on the way to the Hamptons, the wealthy Long Island getaway.
In one report, an officer describes how he put people at ease by speaking in Punjabi and Urdu, languages commonly spoken in Pakistan.
Last summer, when the AP first began reporting about the NYPD's surveillance efforts, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said his police do not consider religion in their policing.
On Tuesday, following an AP story that showed the NYPD monitored Muslim student groups around the Northeast, school leaders including Yale president Richard Levin expressed outrage over the tactics. Bloomberg fired back in what was the most vigorous defense yet of his department.
"The police department goes where there are allegations. And they look to see whether those allegations are true," he told reporters. "That's what you'd expect them to do. That's what you'd want them to do. Remind yourself when you turn out the light tonight."
There are no allegations of terrorism in the Demographics Unit reports and the documents make clear that police were only interested in locations frequented by Muslims. The canvas of businesses in Newark mentions Islam and Muslims 27 times. In one section of the report, police wrote that the largest immigrant groups in Newark were from Portugal and Brazil. But they did not photograph businesses or churches for those groups.
"No Muslim component within these communities was identified," police wrote, except for one business owned by a Brazilian Muslim of Palestinian descent.
Polls show that most New Yorkers strongly support the NYPD's counterterrorism efforts and don't believe police unfairly target Muslims. The Muslim community, however, has called for Police Commissioner Ray Kelly's resignation over the spying and the department's screening of a video that portrays Muslims as wanting to dominate the United States.
In Newark, the report was met with a mixture of confusion and anger.
"Come, look at yourself on film," Abdul Kareem Abdullah called to his wife as he flipped through the NYPD files at the lunch counter of their restaurant, Hamidah's Cafe.
An American-born citizen who converted to Islam decades ago, Abdullah said he understands why, after the 9/11 terror attacks, people are afraid of Muslims. But he said he wishes the police would stop by, say hello, meet him and his customers and get to know them. The documents show police have no interest in that, he said.
"They just want to keep tabs on us," he said. "If they really wanted to understand, they'd come talk to us."
After the AP approached Booker, he said the mayor's office had launched an investigation.
"We're going to get to the bottom of this," he said.
Booker met with Islamic leaders while campaigning for mayor. Those interviewed by the AP said they wanted to believe he didn't authorize the spying but wanted to hear from him directly.
"I have to look in his eyes," Mohammed el-Sioufi said at his mosque. "I know him. I met him. He was here."
Ironically, because officers conducted the operation covertly, the reports contain mistakes that could have been easily corrected had the officers talked to store owners or imams. If police ever had to rely on the database during an unfolding terrorism emergency as they had planned, those errors would have hindered their efforts.
For instance, locals said several businesses identified as belonging to African-American Muslims actually were owned by Afghans or Pakistanis. El-Sioufi's mosque is listed as an African-American mosque, but he said the imam is from Egypt and the congregation is a roughly even mix of black converts and people of foreign ancestries.
"We're not trying to hide anything. We are out in the open," said Abdul A. Muhammad, the imam of the Masjid Ali Muslim mosque in Newark. "You want to come in? We have an open door policy."
By choosing instead to conduct such widespread surveillance, Mohammed el-Sioufi said, police send the message that the whole community is suspect.
"When you spy on someone, you are kind of accusing them. You are not accepting them for choosing Islam," Nagiba el-Sioufi said. "This doesn't say, `This guy did something wrong.' This says, `Everyone here is a Muslim.'"
"It makes you feel uncomfortable, like this is not your country," she added. "This is our country."
Online:
Read the documents:
Newark, N.J.: http://apne.ws/wBk7Hg
Nassau County: http://apne.ws/xhHxNx
Suffolk County:http://apne.ws/zmCvMU
Ex-Playboy playmate gets $1.2 million in suit vs. police
Feb. 22, 2012 07:41 AM
Associated Press
Stephanie Adams claimed that officers threw her on the ground at gunpoint after she got into an argument with the cabbie. She said the driver refused to help carry her bags into her apartment then called emergency services and falsely told police she had a gun and was going to shoot him.
Adams says she suffered permanent neck and back injuries from the rough treatment.
The Daily News says the city Law Department is considering its options, including asking the judge to reduce the award or overturn Tuesday verdict.
Infected inmate may have blown nose in guards' food
Feb. 22, 2012 10:14 AM
Associated Press
GREENSBURG, Pa. -- A prosecutor is investigating whether a western Pennsylvania county jail inmate infected with hepatitis C spit or blew his nose into food served to more than 200 guards and other staff.
Westmoreland County District Attorney John Peck has confirmed the investigation of the unnamed inmate at the Westmoreland County Prison, about 30 miles east of Pittsburgh.
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports Wednesday that informants reported the inmate's actions before he later tested positive for the serious liver infection.
Pennsylvania Department of Health spokeswoman Holli Senior says the risk of infection through the inmate's saliva is low. But Sheriff Jonathan Held, who chairs the county's prison board, says "it's best to err on the side of caution."
The county has yet to decide whether to have the guards and other employees tested for the infection.
County approves the Stun-Cuff
By Ryan Boetel rboetel@daily-times.com
Posted: 02/23/2012 12:36:19 AM MST
FARMINGTON — San Juan County Adult Detention Center has a new device to zap violent inmates.
County commissioners on Tuesday voted in favor of allowing the jail to use the Stun-Cuff Magnum, a less lethal control device that sends up to 80,000 volts into an inmate's wrist or ankle.
"That should take any grown man to his knees," said Tom Havel, the administrator of the detention center.
The Stun-Cuff will become one of several devices jail staff can use to control inmates. Certain guards are also trained to use a Taser, which shoots a two-pronged charge that penetrates the target's skin and releases 50,000 volts.
"They are used as a control techniques, never as a punishment," Havel said. "Our staff is very professional, and they take their job very seriously."
[Yea sure!!!!! They never engage in "stun gun fun" like other cops do!]
The Stun-Cuff is a black box with a plastic strap that wraps around the inmate's ankle or wrist. A two-button remote control can be used up to 100 meters away to activate the electric charge, Havel said.
Detention Center Sgt. Estevan Rodriguez tested a shock from the Stun-Cuff on Wednesday. The device was strapped to his left wrist and George Gregg, the training coordinator at the detention center, pushed the activation buttons.
Rodriguez's hand contracted in an awkward position for two seconds before he was released. He was left with two small blemishes on his wrist, but did not appear to be in pain as he left the room.
The San Juan County Adult Detention Center is the second detention center in New Mexico to purchase the Stun-Cuff. The Los Alamos County Detention Center also has them, Gregg said.
Because the Stun-Cuff is attached to an extremity, it is less invasive than the standard Taser because it doesn't penetrate the skin, Gregg told county commissioners Tuesday.
Commissioners voted 4-1 to allow the jail to use the devices. Commissioner GloJean Todacheene voted against the Stun-Cuff.
"I know on one hand your workers can be in danger ... But I just think of my constituents. The majority of the people in the jail are Native Americans," Todacheene said. "I know there are angry people in jail that need to be restrained, but I just think it's cruel."
Like the Tasers used at the jail, there will be a record each time the Stun-Cuffs are used to shock an inmate.
"I'd like to see after a year how they used it and how it worked," Todacheene said.
The detention center purchased two Stun-Cuff Magnums for $875 each. The jail's Tasers were $1,500 each, Havel said.
The Stun-Cuff is designed to be used when violent inmates are transported and attend court hearings.
Jail guards who are allowed to use the Stun-Cuffs will take a two-hour course annually that includes lectures, using the Stun-Cuff and a written test.
While we are told the "Patriot Act" is for a "war on terrorism" in reality less then one percent of the people arrested for "Patriot Act" are arrested for "terrorism crimes". Most of the arrests are for "drug war" crimes.
More Homeland Security presence in Four Corners
Feb. 22, 2012 09:16 AM
Associated Press
FARMINGTON, N.M. -- The U.S. Department of Homeland Security Investigations in New Mexico said it plans to increase its presence in New Mexico's Four Corners region to counter to growing influences of Mexican drug cartels in the area.
The Farmington Daily Times reports (http://bit.ly/wxZvqT ) the federal agency proposes that two agents move to San Juan County full-time and that more agents be dispatched occasionally to the area to assist with serious criminal investigations.
The move comes after New Mexico law enforcement agencies around the state have asked federal officials to assist cash-strapped departments in battling gangs, drug trafficking and weapons violations. But as federal authorities have moved into places like Roswell and Las Cruces, violent Mexican drug cartels have increased their presence in the remote area of northwest New Mexico that border three other western states.
Federal authorities said that by getting involved and charging criminals in federal court, it can increase the amount of prison time. "New Mexico is very difficult with their laws. It's hard to get some quality time" in prison, said Kevin Abar, the assistant special agent in charge for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Investigations in New Mexico. "This is where the federal government can step in, in the issue."
In recent months, Homeland Security Agents assisted local law enforcement agencies in more than 20 criminal investigations that will be prosecuted by U.S. attorneys, said Dennis Ulrich, a deputy special agent in charge of the agency's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"Some of the worst of the worst (criminals), they've plucked them out of here for narcotics, guns and gang membership," said Neil Haws, the director of Region II Narcotics Task Force. "It's very significant."
Homeland Security investigations will focus on arresting criminals for bulk-cash smuggling, weapons, child exploitation, narcotics, identity theft, cultural property smuggling, counterfeit drugs and merchandise and identity theft, Abar said.
Federal charges for those types of crimes have harsher punishments than state chargers. And the crimes are commonly used to fund terrorism and drug cartels, he said.
Abar also said the agency will arrest high-ranking members of the criminal networks.
"We want to target people who are trusted," he said.
The federal government can also seize criminals' money and possessions when they are convicted.
Since 2009, Homeland Security has added around 60 new agents to New Mexico and helped formed a number of joint task forces and multiagency groups aimed at tackling rural gangs, political corruption, drug and gun trafficking, child pornography, and human smuggling.
The beefed-up presence has resulted in a string of recent high-profile arrests, federal officials said. In March, for example, the mayor of the border town of Columbus and its police chief were among those arrested in a drug and weapons raid following a federal investigation into firearms smuggling from the U.S to Mexico. The mayor and police chief later pleaded guilty to federal charges.
U.S. Attorney Kenneth J. Gonzales said that for years New Mexico was often overlooked as federal officials spent energies on other hotspots around the country. But in recent years, federal officials began to realize that the state's 180-mile border with Mexico and its many wide-open American Indian reservations left it vulnerable to growing gun, drug and human trafficking among other crimes, he said.
In addition to seeking agents to work in San Juan County, local law enforcement and government officials are lobbying for a federal magistrate judge to work in San Juan County, so criminals could be tried for federal crimes locally, said Farmington Police Chief Kyle Westall.
"We believe we have the cases here for their work load, so we're optimistic," he said.
By having permanent Homeland Security agents in San Juan County, it may be more feasible to locate a federal judge here, Farmington Mayor Tommy Roberts said.
Information from: The Daily Times,
www.daily-times.com
The "Northwest Ordinance" says the government can't tax people who travel on public roads for non-commercial purposes and a "drivers license" is an illegal tax on these travelers.
But if we are going to live in a police state that requires drivers licenses, I think they should be issued to EVERYONE, including illegal immigrants.
Beck backs driver's licenses for illegal immigrants
LAPD chief advocates a change in state law, saying that licenses would improve highway safety and allow police to identify people they encounter.
By Joel Rubin and Paloma Esquivel, Los Angeles Times
February 23, 2012
Wading into a divisive, politically charged debate, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said Wednesday that California should issue driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.
The chief becomes one of the most prominent local figures to support the idea that state lawmakers have battled over repeatedly in the last 15 years. And Beck's stance is certain to further inflame critics who are already angry at the chief for his efforts to liberalize rules on how his officers impound the cars of unlicensed drivers.
"My personal belief is that they should be able to" have licenses, Beck said in response to a question during a meeting with Times' reporters and editorial writers. "The reality is that all the things that we've done — 'we' being the state of California — over the last 14, 16 years have not reduced the problem one iota, haven't reduced undocumented aliens driving without licenses. So we have to look at what we're doing. When something doesn't work over and over and over again, my view is that you should reexamine it to see if there is another way that makes more sense."
Beck said he does not believe licenses for illegal immigrants should be identical to standard licenses. Saying "it could be a provisional license, it could be a non-resident license," he acknowledged that state officials would have to find ways to address widely held concerns that giving licenses to people who are in the country illegally could make it easier for terrorists to go undetected.
Such concerns, however, were outweighed for Beck by what he said would be improved safety on California's roads and the ability of police to identify the people they encounter. "Why wouldn't you want to put people through a rigorous testing process? Why wouldn't you want to better identify people who are going to be here?" he said.
Beck, for example, said he expected the number of hit-and-run accidents would decrease if illegal immigrants were licensed, because they would not have to fear being caught without a license at accidents.
In coming out in favor of licenses for illegal immigrants, Beck echoed his predecessor, Chief William J. Bratton, who also voiced support for the idea. Beck signaled a willingness to use his sway as a respected law enforcement leader to lobby for changes in state law that prohibits illegal immigrants from receiving licenses. "I want to be able to move this issue," he said.
Asked whether he would be permitted in his capacity as police chief to, for example, testify in support of the idea at a legislative hearing, Beck said he had "to follow the lead of the city's elected officials. The mayor is pretty good with me on that. I know he would support me doing that." Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa did not respond to calls for comment.
In a brief interview, Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich joined Beck, calling it "a matter of public safety." Issuing licenses to illegal immigrants, he said, would help ensure that people on the road were capable drivers, although he added that insurance regulations would need to be tightened to combat uninsured drivers. Trutanich said he first voiced his position on licenses last year in La Opinion.
Beck's comments were embraced quickly by state Assemblyman Gilbert Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), who has been involved in repeated attempts since 1998 to pass a state law allowing licenses for illegal immigrants. The LAPD, he said, "is extraordinary … in that they have not allowed themselves to be politicized on the question of public safety vs. immigration. They truly put public safety first."
Critics of expanded rights for illegal immigrants were equally quick to condemn Beck for speaking out on the license issue. Bob Dane, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, challenged Beck's notion that allowing illegal immigrants to have licenses would improve road safety, saying the move would "represent a threat to public safety and national security." He added that issuing the licenses would be "providing a gold-plated membership card into society for people who are not here legally."
Beck's stance on the issue stems from his push in recent months to make controversial changes in the LAPD's vehicle impound rules for unlicensed drivers. Because illegal immigrants cannot receive licenses in California, they are presumed to make up a disproportionate percentage of the state's unlicensed drivers and, Beck believes, have been unfairly affected by the current impound protocols.
Under Beck's proposed changes, officers would continue to impound the cars of unlicensed drivers, but allow those who have auto insurance, a legitimate form of identification and no previous convictions for unlicensed driving to avoid a 30-day hold that carries stiff fees and fines. Drivers would also avoid having their cars impounded if a licensed driver was in the car or able to arrive "immediately."
The proposed changes set off an angry protest from police union officials and some Angelenos, who argued that the changes would reward people for breaking the law and allow potentially dangerous drivers to remain on the roads — claims that Beck rebutted. The department is delaying the new changes until city officials can review a recent legal opinion from state lawyers that questioned the legality of the moves.
The current battle over licenses for illegal immigrants dates to the late 1990s, when Cedillo and others picked up the issue. In 2003, then-Gov. Gray Davis signed a bill that gave illegal immigrants the right to licenses, but the move was so unpopular that it helped spur the campaign to recall Davis. With Davis ousted and opponents threatening a statewide referendum to repeal the law, Cedillo said he and other supporters agreed to repeal the license law. Incoming Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vowed to support a new law that included tighter restrictions and identification requirements, but went on to veto those laws multiple times, according to Cedillo.
Cedillo said he plans to introduce legislation again before he is termed out of office at the end of the year. Gov. Jerry Brown has expressed opposition to such a law.
joel.rubin@latimes.com
paloma.esquivel@latimes.com
Times staff writer Robert Faturechi contributed to this report.
But don't blame death on marijuana.
The real cause of the death was the insane "drug war" and
the trigger happy pigs that are fighting the insane drug war!
Police Unit Faces Scrutiny After Fatal Shooting in the Bronx
By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN
Published: February 22, 2012
The police officers in the Street Narcotics Enforcement Units could be called the grunts in New York’s antidrug efforts. Untrained in undercover work, they are limited to making arrests after they witness a drug deal, often observed from afar through binoculars. No drug dealer is too small time, and they arrest customers, too. They take vans with them to suspected drug locations, hoping to fill them with prisoners.
One man who was in their sights on Feb. 2 was Ramarley Graham, 18, of the Wakefield section of the Bronx. Something about how he moved his hands near his waist led the officers to suspect he might be armed, according to the Police Department’s account of the events that transpired. And when Mr. Graham slipped away, the officers in the Street Narcotics Enforcement Unit of the 47th Precinct did not let it go — or wait for backup.
They trailed him as he returned to his building, the door locking behind him. After a delay, the officers got inside and kicked their way into Mr. Graham’s apartment. In the bathroom, one officer fatally shot Mr. Graham in the chest. He was apparently unarmed, and a bag of marijuana was in the toilet bowl next to him.
The Bronx district attorney and the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau are investigating the shooting, but in interviews, more than a half-dozen police officials — from detectives to commanders — picked apart the decisions made that day by the members of the Street Narcotics Enforcement Unit, known as S.N.E.U., and raised troubling questions about their actions.
Most prominent, the police officials questioned the team’s aggressiveness and its decision to pursue Mr. Graham on its own. Why, as they milled outside the locked front door to his building, did the officers go in after him without waiting for a specialized team trained to take down doors and clear rooms?
They also questioned why the unit’s officers used a narrow tactical radio frequency to alert their colleagues in the van that Mr. Graham might be armed, rather than issue a warning on a more heavily trafficked channel that would have drawn other police units to the scene.
A detective with experience in narcotics work suggested that the better approach would have been to use “caution and slow things down.”
“We’re not chasing after Pablo Escobar here,” said the detective, who, along with others interviewed, spoke anonymously because he had not been authorized to speak to the news media.
Officials in the district attorney’s office, who are considering whether to seek criminal charges against the officer for the fatal shooting, were struck from the start by what they felt were the inexperience and the limited training that the unit’s officers had, according to a law enforcement official who was briefed on the early stages of the investigation.
The Police Department has acknowledged that the officer who shot Mr. Graham, Richard Haste, had never received the classroom instruction required of officers in the street narcotics unit. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly has stripped Officer Haste, 30, who joined the department in 2008, and his sergeant, Scott Morris, of their guns and badges and has placed them on modified duty.
Not everyone is critical of the unit’s tactics preceding the shooting.
Vincent Andrasko, a retired detective who as a Street Narcotics Enforcement Unit officer in the 1990s often worked the same intersection where the police first spotted Mr. Graham, said the team’s decision to pursue Mr. Graham indoors on its own was sound. He cited the longstanding culture of the department.
“You deal with your own business,” Mr. Andrasko said. “If it’s your collar, you go after him.”
Mr. Andrasko, who now runs a security firm in Arizona, added, “I would have done the same thing.”
After the shooting, Mr. Kelly ordered a review of the Street Narcotics Enforcement Units, which for much of the past two decades have been making thousands of arrests each year with little attention or controversy.
As street-corner drug deals have declined in some areas of the city, many of the 76 police precincts have disbanded their Street Narcotics Enforcement Units; there are only 36 left. Sergeant Morris had been leading the unit in the 47th Precinct for at least two years, one person familiar with the team said. The team had one complaint in each of the past two years brought to the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board, the independent agency that investigates accusations of police misconduct, according to the board. Last year, the review board received just shy of 6,000 complaints.
For young officers, the units are considered a stepping stone along the path to a detective’s shield.
But because the units’ officers are not trained investigators, they lack authorization for undercover work and are prohibited from buying drugs in so-called buy and bust operations. Instead they focus on visible sidewalk transactions. A report by an independent commission that investigated police corruption in the early 1990s stated that the units were even prohibited from entering buildings to make arrests, although no such rule could be independently found.
On the afternoon of Feb. 2, the unit’s observation team set up opposite a bodega near White Plains Road and East 228th Street in the Bronx, Mr. Kelly said. Mr. Graham and two friends emerged from the store and walked north. The observation team, which was in a car and following him, radioed to other members of the narcotics unit nearby its suspicion that Mr. Graham might be armed.
The next transmission presented the suspicion as a certainty. Between the bodega and his home, at 749 East 229th Street, Mr. Graham made one other stop, at a house nearby. Mr. Kelly said the observation team radioed other members of the unit that the butt of a gun was visible in Mr. Graham’s waistband as he emerged from the house.
The commissioner said that both communications about a gun went out over a tactical frequency, which was most likely monitored only by the narcotics enforcement team, rather than over a wider frequency, which would have summoned other officers to the scene.
Several officers said it was common to communicate over the wider frequency when armed suspects were involved.
“With the adrenaline pumping, were they cognizant that they were on a tactical channel and not on division- or citywide?” asked the detective with narcotics experience, adding that for an alert about a suspect “with a gun,” it was typical to put out that information over a wider frequency.
But the officers also said that there was no hard-and-fast rule, and that the narcotics team might have wanted to communicate over a narrower frequency to retain the element of surprise over Mr. Graham.
“There’s nothing etched in stone,” said Noel Leader, a retired sergeant and co-founder of the police group 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care. But Mr. Leader questioned whether officers stayed on the narrower frequency because they were not positive Mr. Graham was armed and did not want to summon other officers for a false alarm.
One person familiar with the narcotics team’s account of what happened said: “It’s one of those gray areas — do you send it out over division if you think he has a gun, or only if you know he has a gun? You’re yanking guys away from jobs left and right.”
In an interview, a detective questioned how the officers could be close enough to make out the butt of a gun clearly, but far away enough that “they couldn’t catch him.”
Officers from the unit’s van jumped out and tried to stop Mr. Graham, according to Mr. Kelly. A surveillance video from Mr. Graham’s building shows him sauntering up to the front door. He looks over his shoulder before entering, and as the door closes behind him, officers in police windbreakers come running. One officer repeatedly kicks the door, the video shows, but could not break in.
A lawyer for the Graham family, Jeffrey Emdin, said Mr. Graham had not been fleeing the police, but had returned home to drop off his keys with his grandmother and change his clothes before heading back out to meet a group of women.
The officers were eventually let in by a tenant, according to Mr. Kelly. Officer Haste and others went to the second floor and kicked open the door to Mr. Graham’s apartment.
Officers can enter homes without a warrant under limited circumstances, like when they are in hot pursuit of a suspect.
In interviews, legal experts offered diverging opinions about whether a state of hot pursuit still existed after the officers waited outside Mr. Graham’s building, initially unable to get inside.
“Once the door is shut and he tries to kick the door and fails, that’s when your hot pursuit really ended,” said Robert E. Brown, a former police captain and a criminal defense lawyer.
Several current and retired officers had different opinions about whether the officers’ decision to enter the home was correct. One option, some said, would have been to seek assistance from a specialized police unit, like the Emergency Service Unit, whose members are trained to clear homes of armed people barricaded inside.
Mr. Leader, the retired sergeant, said, “If you think he has a weapon, call for emergency services, call for the big boys, call for backup.”
But Edward Mullins, the president of the police sergeants’ union, said he doubted it was “feasible to sit back and say, ‘We should call E.S.U.’ ”
“The game’s on at this point,” said Mr. Mullins, adding that it might be unfair to second-guess “the actions that an officer had a split second to make.”
But the decision to enter Mr. Graham’s home was not, at least initially, a matter of concern to investigators. On the day of the shooting, Sergeant Morris was questioned in a formal departmental interview and the decision to enter the building received little attention, one person familiar with the investigation said.
A police thug from the Homeland Security,
the Arizona DPS, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office
and the Phoenix Police will probably read this email before you do.
That email caused an analyst at the New York Police Department to her name in an official report, which was marked "SECRET" and went to Commissioner Raymond Kelly's office.
NYPD monitored Muslim students all over Northeast
By CHRIS HAWLEY | Associated Press
Mon, Feb 20, 2012
NEW YORK (AP) — One autumn morning in Buffalo, N.Y., a college student named Adeela Khan logged into her email and found a message announcing an upcoming Islamic conference in Toronto.
Khan clicked "forward," sent it to a group of fellow Muslims at the University at Buffalo, and promptly forgot about it.
But that simple act on Nov. 9, 2006, was enough to arouse the suspicion of an intelligence analyst at the New York Police Department, 300 miles away, who combed through her post and put her name in an official report. Marked "SECRET" in large red letters, the document went all the way to Commissioner Raymond Kelly's office.
The report, along with other documents obtained by The Associated Press, reveals how the NYPD's intelligence division focused far beyond New York City as part of a surveillance program targeting Muslims.
Police trawled daily through student websites run by Muslim student groups at Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers and 13 other colleges in the Northeast. They talked with local authorities about professors in Buffalo and even sent an undercover agent on a whitewater rafting trip, where he recorded students' names and noted in police intelligence files how many times they prayed.
Asked about the monitoring, police spokesman Paul Browne provided a list of 12 people arrested or convicted on terrorism charges in the United States and abroad who had once been members of Muslim student associations, which the NYPD referred to as MSAs. They included Jesse Morton, who this month pleaded guilty to posting online threats against the creators of the animated TV show "South Park." He had once tried to recruit followers at Stony Brook University on Long Island, Browne said.
"As a result, the NYPD deemed it prudent to get a better handle on what was occurring at MSAs," Browne said in an email. He said police monitored student websites and collected publicly available information in 2006 and 2007.But documents show other surveillance efforts continued for years afterward.
"I see a violation of civil rights here," said Tanweer Haq, chaplain of the Muslim Student Association at Syracuse University. "Nobody wants to be on the list of the FBI or the NYPD or whatever. Muslim students want to have their own lives, their own privacy and enjoy the same freedoms and opportunities that everybody else has."
In recent months, the AP has revealed secret programs the NYPD built with help from the CIA to monitor Muslims at the places where they eat, shop and worship. The AP also published details about how police placed undercover officers at Muslim student associations in colleges within the city limits; this revelation has outraged faculty and student groups.
Though the NYPD says it follows the same rules as the FBI, some of the NYPD's activities go beyond what the FBI is allowed to do.
Kelly and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg repeatedly have said that the police only follow legitimate leads about suspected criminal activity.
But the latest documents mention no wrongdoing by any students.
In one report, an undercover officer describes accompanying 18 Muslim students from the City College of New York on a whitewater rafting trip in upstate New York on April 21, 2008. The officer noted the names of attendees who were officers of the Muslim Student Association.
"In addition to the regularly scheduled events (Rafting), the group prayed at least four times a day, and much of the conversation was spent discussing Islam and was religious in nature," the report says.
Praying five times a day is one of the core traditions of Islam.
Jawad Rasul, one of the students on the trip, said he was stunned that his name was included in the police report.
"It forces me to look around wherever I am now," Rasul said.
But another student, Ali Ahmed, whom the NYPD said appeared to be in charge of the trip, said he understood the police department's concern.
"I can't blame them for doing their job," Ahmed said. "There's lots of Muslims doing some bad things and it gives a bad name to all of us, so they have to take their due diligence."
City College criticized the surveillance and said it was unaware the NYPD was watching students.
"The City College of New York does not accept or condone any investigation of any student organization based on the political or religious content of its ideas," the college said in a written statement. "Absent specific evidence linking a member of the City College community to criminal activity, we do not condone this kind of investigation."
Browne said undercover officers go wherever people they're investigating go. There is no indication that, in the nearly four years since the report, the NYPD brought charges connecting City College students to terrorism.
Student groups were of particular interest to the NYPD because they attract young Muslim men, a demographic that terrorist groups frequently draw from. Police worried about which Muslim scholars were influencing these students and feared that extracurricular activities such as paintball outings could be used as terrorist training.
The AP first reported in October that the NYPD had placed informants or undercover officers in the Muslim Student Associations at City College, Brooklyn College, Baruch College, Hunter College, City College of New York, Queens College, La Guardia Community College and St. John's University. All of those colleges are within the New York City limits.
A person familiar with the program, who like others insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss it, said the NYPD also had a student informant at Syracuse.
Police also were interested in the Muslim student group at Rutgers, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. In 2009, undercover NYPD officers had a safe house in an apartment not far from campus. The operation was blown when the building superintendent stumbled upon the safe house and, thinking it was some sort of a terrorist cell, called the police emerency dispatcher.
The FBI responded and determined that monitoring Rutgers students was one of the operation's objectives, current and former federal officials said.
The Rutgers police chief at the time, Rhonda Harris, would not discuss the fallout. In a written statement, university spokesman E.J. Miranda said: "The university was not aware of this at the time and we have nothing to add on this matter."
Another NYPD intelligence report from Jan. 2, 2009, described a trip by three NYPD officers to Buffalo, where they met with a high-ranking member of the Erie County Sheriff's Department and agreed "to develop assets jointly in the Buffalo area, to act as listening posts within the ethnic Somalian community."
The sheriff's department official noted "that there are some Somali Professors and students at SUNY-Buffalo and it would be worthwhile to further analyze that population," the report says.
Browne said the NYPD did not follow that recommendation. A spokesman for the university, John DellaContrada, said the NYPD never contacted the administration. Sheriff's Departments spokeswoman Mary Murray could not immediately confirm the meeting or say whether the proposal went any further.
The document that mentions Khan, the University at Buffalo student, is entitled "Weekly MSA Report" and dated Nov. 22, 2006. It explains that officers from the NYPD's Cyber Intelligence unit visited the websites, blogs and forums of Muslim student associations as a "daily routine."
The universities included Yale; Columbia; the University of Pennsylvania; Syracuse; New York University; Clarkson University; the Newark and New Brunswick campuses of Rutgers; and the State University of New York campuses in Buffalo, Albany, Stony Brook and Potsdam; Queens College, Baruch College, Brooklyn College and La Guardia Community College.
Khan was a board member of the Muslim Student Association at the University at Buffalo at the time she received the conference announcement, which went out to a mailing list of Muslim organizations.
The email said "highly respected scholars" would be attending the Toronto conference, but did not say who or give any details of the program. Khan says she never went to the conference, was not affiliated with it and had no idea who was speaking at it.
Khan says she clicked "forward" and sent it to a Yahoo chat group of fellow students.
"A couple people had gone the year prior and they said they had a really nice time, so I was just passing the information on forward. That's really all it was," said Khan, who has since graduated.
But officer Mahmood Ahmad of the NYPD's Cyber Intelligence Unit took notice and listed Khan in his weekly report for Kelly. The officer began researching the Toronto conference and found that one of the speakers, Tariq Ramadan, had his U.S. visa revoked in 2004. The U.S. government said it was because Ramadan had given money to a Palestinian group. It reinstated his visa in 2010.
The officer's report notes three other speakers. One, Siraj Wahaj, is a prominent but controversial New York imam who has attracted the attention of authorities for years. Prosecutors included his name on a 3 ½-page list of people they said "may be alleged as co-conspirators" in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, though he was never charged.
The other two are Hamza Yusuf and Zaid Shakir, two of the nation's most prominent Muslim scholars. Both have lectured at top universities in the U.S.. Yusuf met with President George W. Bush at the White House following the 2001 terrorist attacks.
There is no indication that the investigation went any further, or that Khan was ever implicated in anything. Browne, the NYPD spokesman, said students like her have nothing to fear from the police.
"Students who advertised events or sent emails about regular events should not be worried about a 'terrorism file' being kept on them. NYPD only investigated persons who we had reasonable suspicion to believe might be involved in unlawful activities," Browne said.
But Khan still worries about being associated with the police report.
"It's just a waste of resources, if you ask me," she said. "I understand why they're doing it, but it's just kind of like a Catch-22. I'm not the one doing anything wrong."
The university said it was unaware its students were being monitored.
"UB does not conduct this kind of surveillance and if asked, UB would not voluntarily cooperate with such a request," the university said in a written statement. "As a public university, UB strongly supports the values of freedom of speech and assembly, freedom of religion, and a reasonable expectation of privacy."
The same Nov. 22, 2006, report also noted seminars announced on the websites of the Muslim student associations at New York University and Rutgers University's campus in Newark, New Jersey.
Browne said intelligence analysts were interested in recruiting by the Islamic Thinkers Society, a New York-based group that wants to see the United States governed under Islamic law. Morton was a leader of the group and went to Stony Brook University's MSA to recruit students that same month.
"One thing that our open source searches were interested in determining at the time was, where (does the) Islamic Thinkers Society go — in terms of MSAs for recruiting," Browne said.
Yale declined comment. The University of Pennsylvania did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Other colleges on the list said they worried the monitoring infringed on students' freedom of speech.
"Like New York City itself, American universities are admired across the globe as places that welcome a diversity of people and viewpoints. So we would obviously be concerned about anything that could chill our essential values of academic freedom or intrude on student privacy," Columbia University spokesman Robert Hornsby said in a written statement.
Danish Munir, an alumnus adviser for the University of Pennsylvania's Muslim Student Association, said he believes police are wasting their time by watching college students.
"What do they expect to find here?" Munir said. "These are all kids coming from rich families or good families, and they're just trying to make a living, have a good career, have a good college experience. It's a futile allocation of resources."
___
Online:
View the report at: http://apne.ws/zLpfdM
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Associated Press reporters Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman and Eileen Sullivan contributed to this report.
___
Contact the Washington investigative team at DCinvestigations (at) ap.org
Arizona man arrested for keeping a raccoon
Feb. 23, 2012 10:12 AM
BULLHEAD CITY, -- A Bullhead City man found out this week that keeping a raccoon as a pet is against the law.
Arizona Game and Fish Department officers along with members of the Bullhead City Police Department arrested 57-year-old Stan Morris Wednesday after learning that Morris was keeping a raccoon.
According to a state wildlife official, Morris had been seen in public recently with the raccoon perched on his shoulder.
A Game and Fish spokesman tells the Mohave Daily News it's potentially dangerous both for the person who brings a raccoon into their home and also for young children or others who may interact with it.
Morris was arrested on suspicion of possession of restricted wildlife.
Babeu's ex-boyfriend denies hacking allegations
by Daniel Gonzalez - Feb. 23, 2012 12:26 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Jose Orozco, the Mexican man who has accused Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu of abuse of power, denies hacking into Babeu's political campaign website,his lawyer said.
Orozco also denies that he stole Babeu's identity or his property, said Adnan Horan, a Phoenix immigration and criminal lawyer, whose firm is representing Orozco.
"Jose adamantly denies these criminal allegations," Horan said at a news conference Thursday morning at his offices on Camelback Road in northcentral Phoenix. "Number one, Jose adamantly denies he hacked Sheriff Babeu's accounts or site. And number two, he denies he stole his identify and denies he stole his property."
Orozco did not attend the news conference. Horan said he has instructed Orozco not to give any more interviews until an independent investigation requested by Babeu is completed.
Orozco set off a political fire storm when he accused Babeu, a first-term Republican sheriff who is running for a seat in Congress, of making threatening and intimidating statements after their romantic relationship spanning several years, soured. He made allegations in a story published Friday by the Phoenix New Times on the alternative magazine's website.
Babeu acknowledged he is gay and confirmed he had a relationship with Orozco but has vehemently denied threatening or intimidating him.
On Tuesday, a day after his lawyer and campaign manager told The Arizona Republic that the sheriff would not seek an independent investigation to clear his name, Babeu asked Attorney General Tom Horne to open an inquiry. On Wednesday, Horne designated his office's solicitor general to head an independent investigation.
Amy Rezzonico, a spokeswoman for the state Attorney General's office confirmed that the investigation will look at all allegations that have been made, both against Babeu and against Orozco.
Babeu has claimed that Orozco was a volunteer worker on his political campaign in charge of managing his campaign website and Twitter account. Babeu claims that after the relationship ended, Orozco retaliated by posting negative material on the sites. Babeu has said he declined to pursue criminal charges against Orozco after Babeu's lawyer sent him a cease and desist letter and Orozco agreed to stop posting the negative materials.
Horan said no charges have been filed against Orozco and Orozco has had no contact from the police. However, Horan felt compelled to call the news conference to deny any criminal wrongdoing because of the investigation.
"This is a matter that started as a personal relationship which soured, resulted in a civil matter and now for the first time escalated into criminal allegations against my client," Horan said.
Horan also said that Orozco intends to cooperate with the investigation and turn over any documents "to support his position."
Republic reporter Rebekah Sanders contributed to this story.
Joe Arpaio Slammed in New Attack Ad by Citizens for a Better Arizona
By Stephen Lemons Wed., Feb. 22 2012 at 10:27 PM
Cost $6,000 and worth every penny...
For years, Sheriff Joe Arpaio has successfully peddled the myth that he's "America's toughest sheriff," but his record of wasting taxpayer money, pursuing his political enemies and, worst of all, bungling the investigations of sex crimes on a massive, unprecedented scale, seems to finally be ripping the facade away from this phony lawman.
That's why I give big kudos to Citizens for a Better Arizona -- the group that put ex-state Senate President Russell Pearce out to pasture -- for releasing this slick new anti-Arpaio attack ad today.
Reportedly, it was aired on Cox cable during the GOP presidential debate and cost around $6K.
I'd say CBA got its money's worth.
You know, you could fill a library or three with all the articles New Times has published over the years about Arpaio's corrupt regime, one of the best of late being my colleague Ray Stern's recent cover story on the sheriff's sex crimes debacle.
Stern writes, "Victims of sex crimes -- mostly children -- in [El Mirage] and throughout the county still are paying for Arpaio's misguided policies. Rapists and child molesters got away with their crimes."
Disturbing stuff. Thing is, voters need to be pummeled with this information over and over again, so that they cannot avoid the message that a vote for Arpaio is a vote for incompetence, abuse of power, and letting sex criminals go free.
CBA's ad is yet another way of doing that. Arpaio, it seems, is in for a long, arduous election year. By the time its over, he may wish he'd resigned.
Las Vegas Police reduce crime - by not reporting it!!!!
Las Vegas piggies dramatically reduce robbery rate - By not reporting them!!!
It's not about being gay! It's about being an abusive jerk!!!!
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Second Amendment null and void in California
For all practical purposes the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms in California has been flushed down the toilet!!!
Further inquiry on Pinal Sheriff Paul Babeu is sought
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How do you spell hypocrite? Sheriff Paul Babeu!!!
You can't be banging the illegal immigrant in your bedroom while waging war against illegal immigrants in your public life.
Don't criticize crooked cops or you will go to jail
F*ck the First Amendment, if you criticize cops you're going to jail????
Mayor Michael Bloomberg loves the police state
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg doesn't
think there is anything wrong with a police state!
Of course Mayor Michael Bloomberg is in charge of the police state!
States use "war on terror" to raise revenue???
Source
Fullerton cops don't demonize people they murder - Honest!!!!
What did you expect the police to say???
Yea, we beat the living sh*t out of Kelly Thomas
and murdered him, and now we have to justify it
by demonizing him
"Although police released a two-year-old booking photo showing
a disheveled Thomas and incorrectly told the media that he had
been so violent that two officers suffered broken bones in the
struggle, attorney Michael Gennaco said the negative portrayal
of the homeless man was unintentional."
Supreme Court tells Redondo Beach to stop running Mexicans out of town
Arizona isn't the only place with racist laws making it a crime to be a Mexican.
Chicago Police cover up police murder????
Honest we don't give special treatment to cops busted for DWI.
Honest! Well at least that's what we want the public to believe!
Organized crime can only exist with the consent of the government
"Organized crime cannot exist without the help of local law enforcement and the judges and their messenger-boy politicians" - That is about the only interesting comment in this article. But it is important because it means that the drug war is impossible to win.
NYPD built secret files on NJ, Long Island mosques
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Ex-Playboy playmate gets $1.2 million in suit vs. police
Source
NEW YORK -- A New York City jury has awarded a former Playboy playmate $1.2 million for injuries she suffered during a 2006 scuffle with police based on a taxi driver's false accusation that she was armed and dangerous.
Infected inmate may have blown nose in guards' food
When you use slave labor to prepare your food you should expect this stuff to happen.
Stun gun fun in Farmington, New Mexico.
Stuff Cuff - A new toy for sadistic cops & guards to allow them to torture handcuffed inmates.
The "War on Terror" is just a renamed "War on Drugs"?
The "War on Terror" is just a renamed "War on Drugs"? I think so. The following article about Homeland Security doesn't even mention "terrorists" it's all about drug dealers, gang bangers and illegal guns.
LAPD chief Beck backs driver's licenses for illegal immigrants
I don't think you should be required to have a "drivers license" or any other ID. Some legal scholars say that per the "Northwest Ordinance" which one of the first laws passed in the US Congress that the government can't required a drivers license for non-commercial purposes.
Another death caused by marijuana use!!!!!
Danger! Marijuana use can kill you!!!!
OK, marijuana has never killed anybody.
But trigger happy police officers,
hunting down marijuana users have murdered a number of people.
Yes, the police do read your private emails!!!!
Yes the government does routinely read your email.
Adeela Khan forwarded an email message announcing an upcoming Islamic conference in Toronto to her Muslim friends at the University at Buffalo.
Source
Don't these pigs have any real criminals to hunt down????
Source
Babeu's ex-boyfriend denies hacking allegations
Sheriff Babeu is a liar????
Self Portrait of Sheriff Paul Babeu
Sheriff Joe Arpaio Slammed in attack ad
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Babeu staff facing federal inquiry
Source
Babeu staff facing federal inquiry
Investigators seek records under law against on-the-job politicking
by Lindsey Collom and Dan Nowicki - Feb. 24, 2012 12:22 AM
The Republic | azcentral.com
The U.S. Office of Special Counsel is investigating whether one or more employees of Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu engaged in prohibited political activity while on the job.
A sheriff's official said the focus appears to be on Chief Deputy Steve Henry, who has formed an exploratory committee to replace Babeu, a Republican who now is running for a seat in Arizona's conservative Congressional District 4.
Henry, a Republican, was among a handful of supporters who spoke on behalf of Babeu on Saturday during a nearly hourlong news conference at Pinal County Sheriff's Office headquarters in Florence, when the sheriff defended himself against allegations that he threatened to have a former boyfriend deported.
The county was asked for information in December by an attorney in the Office of Special Counsel in connection with an apparent Hatch Act investigation, according to a copy of the request obtained this week by The Arizona Republic. The county has complied.
The Hatch Act is a 1939 federal anti-corruption law designed to crack down on federal employees who engage in on-the-job political activities. But the statute can apply to state and local workers, too, if their jobs are connected to federal funding.
"The sheriff's department and people affiliated with the sheriff, do they appear to cross the line between official responsibility and campaigning? I would say yes," Pinal County Supervisor Pete Rios said, adding that he hears similar concerns from county residents.
A Dec. 2 letter from Treyer Mason-Gale, a lawyer in the Special Counsel office's Hatch Act unit, asked Starla Anderson, a senior official in the Pinal County Finance & Purchasing Department, for a list detailing all federal funding that the Sheriff's Office has received or expects to receive this fiscal year, including money that passes through another agency on its way to the office.
"The request is made for law-enforcement purposes and in connection with an official investigation being conducted by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel," Mason-Gale wrote.
Separately from the letter, the Sheriff's Office was specifically asked about Henry, according to Tim Gaffney, the office's director of communications and grants. The "Steve Henry for Sheriff" exploratory committee, chaired by Babeu, filed its initial registration with the county in early November.
Gaffney said Babeu and Henry have spoken with the Hatch Act unit and "are confident, in the end, it will be found our office is in full compliance." Babeu and Henry did not return calls.
The Hatch Act applies to individuals, not offices.
In response to a records request by The Arizona Republic, county officials turned over an e-mail supplied to Mason-Gale with a link to an article recounting a Block Watch meeting outside Arizona City on Jan. 12.
Jo Bode, captain of the Silverbell Estates Block Watch, wrote that Henry and two employees of the Sheriff's Office's Air Unit arrived at the meeting in a newly purchased helicopter. The group's Facebook page says the event was a planned affair to show off the new helicopter.
At one point during the Block Watch meeting, "Chief Henry took the floor and introduced himself and brought us up to date on what's going on with PCSO and the upcoming elections," Bode wrote in the Arizona City Independent. A call to Bode for clarification was not returned.
Jennie Carlson, 75, said Thursday that she was at the meeting but that there was no political chatter.
"We all knew he was running for sheriff, but he didn't say, 'Vote for me,' or anything like that," Carlson said. "He said that, if he runs, he would try to continue to do what was needed at the Sheriff's Office."
Gaffney told The Republic that Henry, who was in uniform, had been on a ride-along with the Air Unit as it patrolled a region of the county known for smuggling activity.
The Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency, is tasked with protecting federal employees and draws its authority from laws, including the Hatch Act.
That act, enacted during President Franklin Roosevelt's administration, took aim at "old-style corruption" and political patronage, said Paul Bender, a professor of law at Arizona State University's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law.
For example, according to the Office of Special Counsel's website, employees directly covered by the law can't run for partisan office, organize or attend political fundraisers, participate in political activity while using their official titles or postions, wear political buttons or clothing or invite or pressure co-workers to attend political events, or make partisan comments on blogs or social media.
"Basically, you can't politick while you are in one of these covered offices," said Bender, who also was President Bill Clinton's principal deputy U.S. solicitor general from 1993 to 1997. "The boss can't come around and say, 'Give me $100 to give to my favorite political candidate,' which used to happen. And it applies pretty broadly, and my impression is it can apply if there's any federal money around."
Ann O'Hanlon, a spokeswoman for the Office of Special Counsel, declined to answer specific questions about the Pinal County situation. Speaking generally, if the office concludes that a Hatch Act violation has occurred, the employee must either stop his partisan political activity or quit his government position, she said.
The employee can defend himself against the allegation to the federal Merit Systems Protection Board. If a state or local employee who is found to have violated the Hatch Act refuses to quit and is not fired, the federal government can withhold funding equal to twice the offender's salary.
In fiscal 2010, the Office of Special Counsel processed and closed 535 Hatch Act complaints and had 422 complaints pending at the end of the year. The office issued 163 warning letters and its investigations resulted in 28 candidates quitting their political races and 26 government workers resigning.
The past two years, more than half of the office's Hatch Act caseload involved state or local cases, O'Hanlon said.
In one recent high-profile Hatch Act case, Ogden, Utah, Police Chief Jon Greiner was fired in December in connection with a political campaign he launched for Utah's state Senate in 2006. In announcing Greiner's termination, city officials said their hand was forced by the threat of losing federal money. Greiner took his case to the Merit Systems Protection Board, which eventually sided with the Office of Special Counsel and ordered his removal from the job.
"It is imperative to point out that Greiner's campaign activities that triggered the Hatch Act do not constitute a crime or a violation of a legal duty on the part of the chief; rather, they affect only the city's ability to qualify for future federal funding," Ogden Mayor Matthew Godfrey said.
Officer suspended, charged after raiding refrigerator
Feb. 23, 2012 07:56 PM
Associated Press
DEER PARK, Texas -- A sting operation by a suburban Houston police department netted one of their own when surveillance cameras caught an officer repeatedly stealing colleagues' food and drinks from the refrigerator in the station's break room.
Deer Park police Officer Kevin Yang was charged with misdemeanor theft and suspended for 30 days without pay. Deer Park Police Chief Greg Griggs tells KTRK-TV (http://bit.ly/w3B4KP) of Houston that a class C misdemeanor conviction would not keep Yang from returning to duty.
Griggs says he authorized the video sting because the thefts have been going on for too long. Even though the items being stolen may be of trivial value, Griggs says theft is theft.
Yang tells KTRK that he was merely taking it upon himself to keep the shared refrigerator clean.
Cop charged with stealing drinks from co-workers
Thursday, February 23, 2012
DEER PARK, TX (KTRK) -- It's something that happens at some workplaces -- items suddenly come up missing from the company fridge. But it has happened so often at the Deer Park Police Department that they decided to watch the refrigerator with a surveillance camera. And now a police officer faces charges.
The police chief told us someone had been stealing lunches, drinks, even 60 pounds of deer sausage out of the break room fridge for about a year and police employees were pretty mad. So, the chief authorized a sting operation on the refrigerator.
According to Deer Park police, on November 19 last year Officer Kevin Yang was caught on video taking an unopened Monster energy drink out of the break room refrigerator. That drink was marked with 'MSA', a detective's initials. Yang told investigators he took it upon himself to keep the fridge clean.
"A lot of times we clean up the community refrigerator like once a week, everything take by Friday or certain date or everything gets thrown out, which we don't do here," explained Officer Yang.
But Deer Park police say it happened again and again. Officer Yang was reportedly caught again November 22 taking a bag from a local sandwich shop marked with a detective's initials. Then, on November 26, Officer Yang is seen taking a Monster drink and on November 27, he takes another drink, once again marked with initials.
The police chief authorized the video sting because he says the thefts had gone on for a while.
Deer Park Police Chief Greg Griggs said, "The conversations in the hallways and briefings and people's frustrations and aggravation with that occurring did not deter the events. In fact, they increased."
So investigators set up a hidden camera and put Monster energy drinks and some food in the fridge and waited.
"The same officer was taking the items each time," Chief Griggs said. "Nobody else was taking it during that three week period."
Officer Yang began a 30-day unpaid suspension on Tuesday and is facing misdemeanor theft charges now.
The chief says no matter what's stolen or where, theft is theft.
He said, "When you're not putting anything in and you're taking things out, it became clear to us he was taking things knowingly and against the law."
Officer Yang will be reinstated from his 30-day suspension March 22. Even if he is convicted of the misdemeanor theft charge, he will be able to return to the job, because it's not a class B or above offense.
Some puzzled by low profile of Babeu's ex-boyfriend Jose
by Daniel Gonzalez - Feb. 24, 2012 12:28 AM
The Republic | azcentral.com
It's been a week since a Mexican man living in the Phoenix area touched off a political firestorm when he accused nationally known Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu in a newspaper article of making threats and intimidating comments toward him to cover up their romantic relationship.
But while Babeu, a first-term Republican sheriff and candidate for Congress, has spent much of the past week defending himself against abuse-of-power allegations and fighting for his political life, very little information has emerged about his accuser.
The man, who was identified only by his first name, Jose, 34, in the explosive article first published last Friday on the website of Phoenix New Times, has virtually disappeared.
Except for an interview he gave on Monday to CNN reporter Miguel Marquez, the man, whose full name is Jose Orozco, has refused to talk to any other media, including The Arizona Republic. In the CNN interview, Orozco's face is blurred and his voice is altered.
"He is a mystery, a big mystery," said Lydia Guzman, who has assisted hundreds of immigrants facing deportation or other legal difficulties as head of Respect Respeto, a Phoenix-based immigrant-rights group.
Guzman, who sent a letter Monday to the U.S. Department of Justice requesting an investigation into potential abuse of power by Babeu, said she has tried to contact Orozco through his lawyer and other contacts but has been unsuccessful.
By making the allegations and then going underground, Orozco could be diminishing his credibility, she said.
"I do think it hurts his story," Guzman said.
On Thursday, lawyers representing Orozco held their first news conference since the allegations emerged. Orozco did not attend. Melissa Weiss-Riner, one of his lawyers, refused to say where Orozco is staying.
"He is in the area," she said. "He hasn't left Arizona."
During the news conference, Adnan Horan, whose firm is representing Orozco, said he has instructed Orozco not to give any more interviews until an independent investigation requested by Babeu is completed.
"There is no way at this point, without knowing the scope and the nature of the investigation, that I will allow Jose to make a comment, and I don't think anyone else would," Horan said.
Babeu has claimed that Orozco was a volunteer worker on his political campaign in charge of managing his campaign website and Twitter account. Babeu claims that after the relationship ended, Orozco retaliated by posting negative material on the sites.
Babeu has said he declined to pursue criminal charges against Orozco after Babeu's lawyer sent him a cease-and-desist letter and Orozco agreed to stop posting the negative material.
On Tuesday, a day after his lawyer and campaign manager told The Arizona Republic that the sheriff would not seek an independent investigation to clear his name, Babeu asked Attorney General Tom Horne to open an inquiry. On Wednesday, Horne designated his office's solicitor general to lead an independent investigation.
Amy Rezzonico, a spokeswoman for the state Attorney General's Office, said that the investigation will look at all allegations that have been made, both against Babeu and against Orozco.
Horan said Orozco denies hacking into Babeu's political- campaign website. Orozco also denies that he stole Babeu's identity or his property, Horan said.
"He was an authorized administrator who assisted, created and maintained websites for Sheriff Babeu with his permission and upon his request," Horan said. "He had authority while working on the campaign to access those accounts. When the relationship soured and a civil dispute arose, he complied with the return of that information."
Horan said that no charges have been filed against Orozco and that Orozco has not been contacted by the police. However, Horan felt compelled to call the news conference to deny any criminal wrongdoing because of the investigation.
"This is a matter that started as a personal relationship which soured, resulted in a civil matter and now, for the first time, escalated into criminal allegations against my client," Horan said.
Horan also said Orozco intends to cooperate with the investigation and turn over any documents "to support his position."
However, Horan refused to discuss Orozco's legal status in the United States. Orozco's legal status is at the center of the allegations against Babeu.
In the New Times article, Orozco claims Babeu, a border hawk who has become known nationally for his tough stance against illegal immigration, threatened to have him deported unless he kept quiet about their relationship, which spanned several years.
The article does not disclose Orozco's legal status. The article says Babeu's lawyer and campaign manger suggested Orozco could be deported because his visa had expired.
But, in his news conference, Babeu said that as far as he knew Orozco was in the country legally.
Marquez, the CNN reporter, said on the air that Orozco told him he entered the U.S. legally with a "10-year multiple-entry tourist's visa" but that when he asked to see it, Orozco said he didn't have it with him.
Amber Cargile, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to comment on Orozco's legal status. She said it is against privacy laws to discuss the legal status of individuals who have not been charged with crimes.
A man named Jose Orozco is listed as the owner of the business Website Results LLC, according to records of the Arizona Corporation Commission.
The Corporation Commission records list a Chandler address for the business.
The address is for a modest ranch house in a middle-class neighborhood near Guadalupe Road and Loop 101 in Chandler.
On Thursday, a sign taped to the front door read, "No solicitation. Jose no longer lives at this residence."
Kyle Moynihan, 27, the man who answered a knock on the door, said he owns the house.
He said Orozco had rented a room from him for 10 months but moved out suddenly at the end of January without saying why he was leaving or where he was going.
Moynihan said although Orozco had rented a room from him for almost a year, he did not know him well. "Jose was really shy," he said. "He never offered information about his life, and I never asked."
Moynihan said Orozco was a tidy and respectful roommate and always paid his $450-a- month rent on time.
He said Orozco had several computers for his business and worked from his room.
Moynihan said Orozco told him he was from Jalisco, Mexico, but he never asked Orozco about his legal status and Orozco never discussed it.
"I really don't care about someone's immigration status," Moynihan said. "It's not my problem."
He said that he knew Orozco was gay but that Orozco never confided anything to him about his relationship with Babeu, their breakup or any alleged threats. He said he found out about Orozco's involvement with the sheriff when reporters began showing up at his door late last Friday.
"I cannot tell you the extent he was private, timid and shy," Moynihan said. "I couldn't have been more surprised."
Moynihan said he didn't know Orozco well enough to judge his character. But he said he can see how he might have felt intimidated considering Babeu is known as a tough sheriff in a state known for cracking down on illegal immigrants.
"From a logical perspective, Jose obviously was not an American national," Moynihan said. "I consider that he did not really know the laws of this country. Even if he had not been threatened, he might have been concerned, especially living in a state where laws like 1070 exist, that he could have been living in harm's way."
Republic reporters Rebekah L. Sanders, Lindsey Collom and Craig Harris contributed to this article.
Police officer stealing from other police officers
Cops stealing from cops!!!
Sheriff Paul Babeu's boyfriend keeping a low profile?
Source
Jury will hear police 'code of silence' allegation in bar beating
Judge: Jury will hear police 'code of silence' allegation in bar beating suit
By Jeremy Gorner Tribune reporter
9:20 p.m. CST, February 23, 2012
A federal jury will be allowed to hear a bartender’s allegation that Chicago police officers practiced a “code of silence” to protect a fellow officer caught on video brutally attacking her at the Northwest Side bar where she worked.
The ruling on Thursday by U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve will allow lawyers for Karolina Obrycka to make that case to jurors in a civil lawsuit against ex-cop Anthony Abbate and the city.
On Feb. 19, 2007, Obrycka was punched and kicked repeatedly by Abbate at Jesse Shortstop Inn, 5425 W. Belmont Ave.
The beating was captured on surveillance video at the bar. The video was later shown around the world.
In her ruling, St. Eve noted that veteran Grand Central District Officers Peter Masheimer and Jerry Knickrehm didn’t include in their final police report about the attack that Abbate was a police officer, the ruling states.
Shortly after the attack, Gary Ortiz, a friend of Abbate’s, went to the bar and told Obrycka that Abbate offered to pay for her medical bills if she didn’t file a complaint or lawsuit against him, St. Eve also noted in her ruling. The city admits that the action constitutes an attempted “bribe” by Ortiz.
St. Eve also noted that after the attack, Abbate, then a tactical unit officer in the North Side’s Lincoln police district, made numerous phone calls to other police officers, including his partner.
The ruling also cited the opinion of Lou Reiter, an expert on law enforcement procedures, who stated that during the time of the attack that a “code of silence” was present in the Chicago Police Department, and its disciplinary procedures allowed officers “to engage in misconduct with little fear of sanctions.”
Abbate was convicted in 2009 of felony aggravated battery for the attack and sentenced to two years of probation. He has since been fired from the department.
jgorner@tribune.com
The tawdry tale of 'The Sheriff's New Clothes'
Source
The tawdry tale of 'The Sheriff's New Clothes'
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu is not a victim. He just plays one on TV.
Babeu is a grown man pursuing a career in politics who took photographs of himself in his underpants (as well as without them, allegedly) and then sent them to others and posted them online.
That is not a victim.
The sheriff has tried to change the subject by saying for the past week that he does this sort of thing on his own time and it says nothing about his job performance. Maybe.
But it says something about his judgment.
And that doesn’t even take into account the accusation by Babeu’s former lover, a Mexican national, that there were threats of deportation if he “outed” the sheriff. Babeu vehemently denies that. An independent investigation hopefully will sort out the details.
In the meantime, Babeu says that he’s determined to stay in the race for the congress against Rep. Paul Gosar and state Sen. Ron Gould.
Babeu said, “I'm embracing what some people would see as a hill, even a mountain, and saying I'm going forward. Let the voters decide. If there is money that is given back to donors, there's going to be other people who support us because of our honesty, because the fact we're standing and fighting, we're not cutting and running."
Perhaps not exactly “cutting and running,” but he is doing an awful lot of excuse making and finger pointing. It’s an old strategy.
A long-time politician once explained it to me this way: “In sports, defense can be the best offense. In politics, offense is ALWAYS the best defense.”
Babeu at first questioned the “timing” of the story, as if the only reason a former lover approached Phoenix New Times and said that the sheriff and his attorney had threatened him with deportation was that Babeu’s political opponents wanted to “out” him.
It’s a nice try, but if that were the case, outing Babeu could have been done a long time ago.
Sheriff Babeu is not in political (or perhaps legal) trouble because his lifestyle has been exposed. He’s in trouble because he was involved in a messy relationship that spilled over into his public life and has raised questions about his judgment.
And when you’re running for the U.S. Congress your judgment is an issue.
This isn’t “All the President’s Men.” It’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes”
If you e-mail provocative pictures of yourself to someone, as Babeu did, or post them on a web site, and those pictures wind up in the media it is not only the fault of the person who released them, but of you.
And if someone with whom you had a personal relationship spills his guts to a local media outlet, hires an attorney and claims to have been intimidated by you that doesn’t only reflect on him, but on you.
Former State Sen. Scott Bundgaard is out of public office because of a very public dust-up (and his very clumsy reaction afterward) with his then-girlfriend.
His personal life became a political liability because of poor judgment.
That’s the question Babeu faces.
It isn’t a gay thing. It’s a trust thing.
Even if there was no attempt to use his position as a sheriff to intimidate former love interest Jose Orozco (as Babeu strongly contends) there are issues that Babeu won’t be able to run from.
As one of his opponents in the Dist. 4 Congressional race, Ron Gould put it, “For him to take those kinds of photographs and then to have uploaded them to that kind of site is ... very poor judgment from an elected official.”
The fact that Babeu didn’t understand that is astonishing.
Think about it: You take pictures of yourself in your underpants. You send them to someone. You post them online. And then, in a television interview you actually say, as Babeu did:
“I never could imagine in a million years that this could have been done to me.”
He still doesn’t get it.
This wasn’t done TO Babeu. It was done BY him.
Records detail mosque spying; NYPD defends tactics
Source
Records detail mosque spying; NYPD defends tactics
By ADAM GOLDMAN and MATT APUZZO
Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Police Department targeted Muslim mosques with tactics normally reserved for criminal organizations, according to newly obtained police documents that showed police collecting the license plates of worshippers, monitoring them on surveillance cameras and cataloging sermons through a network of informants.
The documents, obtained by The Associated Press, have come to light as the NYPD fends off criticism of its monitoring of Muslim student groups and its cataloging of mosques and Muslim businesses in nearby Newark, N.J.
The NYPD's spokesman, Paul Browne, forcefully defended the legality of those efforts Thursday, telling reporters that its officers may go wherever the public goes and collect intelligence, even outside city limits.
The new documents, prepared for Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, show how the NYPD's roster of paid informants monitored conversations and sermons inside mosques. The records offer the first glimpse of what those informants, known informally as "mosque crawlers," gleaned from inside the houses of worship.
For instance, when a Danish newspaper published inflammatory cartoons of Prophet Muhammad in September 2005, Muslim communities around the world erupted in outrage. Violent mobs took to the streets in the Middle East. A Somali man even broke into the cartoonist's house in Denmark with an ax.
In New York, thousands of miles away, it was a different story. Muslim leaders preached peace and urged people to protest lawfully. Write letters to politicians, they said. Some advocated boycotting Danish products, burning flags and holding rallies.
All of that was permissible under law and protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. All was reported to the NYPD by its mosque crawlers and made its way into police files for Kelly.
"Imam Shamsi Ali brought up the topic of the cartoon, condemning them. He announced a rally that was to take place on Sunday (02/05/06) near the United Nations. He asked that everyone to attend if possible and reminded everyone to keep their poise if they can make it," one report read.
At the Muslim Center of New York in Queens, the report said, "Mohammad Tariq Sherwani led the prayer service and urged those in attendance to participate in a demonstration at the United Nations on Sunday."
When one Muslim leader suggested planning a demonstration, one of the people involved in the discussion about how to get a permit was, in fact, working for the NYPD.
"It seems horrible to me that the NYPD is treating an entire religious community as potential terrorists," said civil rights lawyer Jethro Eisenstein, who reviewed some of the documents and is involved in a decades-old class-action lawsuit against the police department for spying on protesters and political dissidents.
The lawsuit is known as the Handschu case, and a court order in that case governs how the NYPD may collect intelligence.
Eisenstein said the documents prove the NYPD has violated those rules.
"This is a flat-out violation," Eisenstein said. "This is a smoking gun."
Browne, the NYPD spokesman, did not discuss specific investigations Thursday but told reporters that, because of the Handschu case, the NYPD operates under stricter rules than any other department in the country. He said police do not violate those rules.
His statements were intended to calm a controversy over a 2007 operation in which the NYPD mapped and photographed all of Newark's mosques and eavesdropped on Muslim businesses. Newark Mayor Cory Booker said he was never told about the surveillance, which he said offended him.
Booker and his police director accused the NYPD of misleading them by not revealing exactly what they were doing. Had they known, they said it never would have been permitted. But Browne said Newark police were told before and after the operation and knew exactly what it entailed.
Kelly, the police commissioner, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have been emphatic that police only follow legitimate leads of criminal activity and do not conduct preventive surveillance in ethnic communities.
Former and current law enforcement officials either involved in or with direct knowledge of these programs say they did not follow leads. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the secret programs. But the documents support their claims.
The effort highlights one of the most difficult aspects of policing in the age of terrorism. Solving crimes isn't enough; police are expected to identify would-be terrorists and move in before they can attack.
There are no universally agreed upon warning signs for terrorism. Terrorists have used Internet cafes, stayed in hostels, worked out at gyms, visited travel agencies, attended student groups and prayed at mosques. So the NYPD monitored those areas. In doing so, they monitored many innocent people as they went about their daily lives.
Using plainclothes officers from the squad known as the Demographics Unit, police swept Muslim neighborhoods and catalogued the location of mosques. The ethnic makeup of each congregation was logged as police fanned out across the city and outside their jurisdiction, into suburban Long Island and areas of New Jersey.
"African American, Arab, Pakistani," police wrote beneath the photo of one mosque in Newark.
Investigators looked at mosques as the center of Muslim life. All their connections had to be known.
David Cohen, the NYPD's top intelligence officer, wanted a source inside every mosque within a 250-mile radius of New York, current and former officials said. Though the officials said they never managed to reach that goal, documents show the NYPD successfully placed informants or undercovers — sometimes both — into mosques from Westchester County, N.Y., to New Jersey.
The NYPD used these sources to get a sense of the sentiment of worshippers whenever an event generated headlines. The goal, former officials said, was to alert police to potential problems before they bubbled up.
Even when it was clear there were no links to terrorism, the mosque informants gave the NYPD the ability to "take the pulse" of the community, as Cohen and other managers put it.
When New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle and his flight instructor were killed on Oct. 11, 2006, when their small plane crashed into a Manhattan high-rise apartment, fighter planes were scrambled. Within hours the FBI and Homeland Security Department said it was an accident. Terrorism was ruled out.
Yet for days after the event, the NYPD's mosque crawlers reported to police about what they heard at sermons and among worshippers.
At the Brooklyn Islamic Center, a confidential informant "noted chatter among the regulars expressing relief and thanks to God that the crash was only an accident and not an act of terrorism," one report reads.
"The worshippers made remarks to the effect that 'it better be an accident; we don't need any more heat,'" an undercover officer reported from the Al-Tawheed Islamic Center in Jersey City, N.J.
In some instances, the NYPD put cameras on light poles and trained them on mosques, documents show. Because the cameras were in public space, police didn't need a warrant to conduct the surveillance.
Police also wrote down the license plates of cars in mosque parking lots, documents show. In some instances, police in unmarked cars outfitted with electronic license plate readers would drive down the street and record the plates of everyone parked near the mosque, former officials recalled.
"They're viewing Muslims like they're crazy. They're terrorists. They all must be fanatics," said Abdul Akbar Mohammed, the imam for the past eight years at the Masjid Imam Ali K. Muslim in Newark. "That's not right."
___
Associated Press writers Chris Hawley and Eileen Sullivan contributed to this report.
___
Online:
View the NYPD documents: www.ap.org/nypd
NYPD Informant summaries of Danish cartoons: http://apne.ws/zVwtCt
NYPD New Jersey mosque targeting: http://apne.ws/wsrSvN
NYPD Informant summaries of plane crash: http://apne.ws/xB9kVM
___
Contact the Washington investigative team at DCinvestigations (at) ap.org
From this article it sure sounds like people accused of
killing a cop won't get a fair trial.
Sladjana Vuckovic was arrested and charged with a felony
for letting her client, Timothy Herring use a cell phone.
Judge rules that lawyer charged with giving suspect a cellphone must go to trial
By Steve Mills, Chicago Tribune reporter
8:08 p.m. CST, February 23, 2012
A Cook County Circuit Court judge on Thursday ordered an attorney to face trial on charges of bringing a cellular telephone into a Chicago police interrogation room and allowing her client, a suspect in the killings of a Chicago police officer and another person, to make several calls with it.
Judge Evelyn Clay, ruling in the case of Sladjana Vuckovic, turned down a defense request to dismiss the charges because the law Vuckovic was arrested under is vague, ambiguous and overly broad. Clay, in a nine-page order, ruled the law was clear and said claims by other attorneys that they routinely bring cellphones into interrogation rooms — which the defense included in its argument — were "irrelevant."
"The constitutionality of the statutes does not hinge on the experiences and practices of defense attorneys, albeit very respected and well regarded members of the bar," Clay wrote.
Vuckovic — who volunteered as a lawyer for First Defense Legal Aid, a group that represents the indigent — was charged with the felony of bringing contraband into a penal institution for taking her cellphone into the interrogation room where she was meeting with a man suspected in the November 2010 slaying of Officer Michael Flisk and another man.
The suspect, Timothy Herring, was being questioned at the Calumet Area headquarters on the South Side, and Vuckovic met with him twice. During the second visit, according to prosecutors, Vuckovic allowed Herring to make several calls. Vuckovic was charged four months later, in March 2011.
Vuckovic and her attorney, Leonard Goodman, had argued that it was unclear that a police interrogation room was a "penal institution," as prosecutors contend. They argued, too, that there were no signs barring attorneys from bringing cellphones in the rooms and that attorneys routinely do so.
What's more, they argued that Vuckovic was targeted for charges because she was representing a suspect in the killing of a police officer.
Prosecutors, however, said the law, which considers a cellphone contraband, was clear and that Vuckovic should have known better.
Goodman said he was disappointed in Clay's ruling.
"It seems fairly clear that the statute is arbitrarily enforced," he said.
smmills@tribune.com
11 officers fired guns in Koreatown shooting death, sources say
February 24, 2012 | 3:36 pm
Eleven Los Angeles police officers fired more than 60 shots, fatally wounding an armed carjacking suspect in Koreatown at the end of a televised slow-speed pursuit on Thursday, police sources said.
Authorities said police fired because the suspect pointed his handgun at customers at a gas station, endangering public safety.
"When he pulled out his revolver and pointed it at people inside the store, the officers took action, fired their rounds and the suspect expired at the scene," Cmdr. Andrew Smith said Friday.
But sources said the number of officers firing weapons is likely to be a focus of the Los Angeles Police Department investigation into the use of force, which is routine after every officer-involved shooting. In addition to the department's force investigation division, the district attorney's officer shooting team and the Police Commission's inspector general are investigating the shooting, as is standard practice.
Sources said that the incident unfolded very quickly, within moments of the suspect's pulling into the gas station parking lot. He was clearly armed and officers knew he had committed two violent carjackings, police said, making the situation particularly volatile. Video footage of the shooting shows officers opening fire and delivering multiple rounds as a bystander ducked for cover.
A variety of factors will be examined, including whether bystanders or officers were potentially in danger because so many officers were firing weapons, the sources said. The investigation will also evaluate the chase and the large number of patrol cars involved.
No breakdowns were available about how many shots each officer fired. The sources declined to be identified because the investigation was still unfolding.
A revolver was found inside the older-model Saturn, said LAPD sources familiar with the incident.
The man allegedly stole a car from a woman in San Bernardino shortly before 3:30 p.m. Thursday, the sources said.
The man drove to Valley Boulevard and Eastern Avenue in El Sereno, where he dumped the car he was driving and stole the Saturn from a 65-year-old man, according to the sources.
But still it is hypocritical for Babeu who claims to be a big time opponent of illegal immigrants to break these laws. As a cop Babeu should have know what the laws are, and not broken them.
Babeu may face new legal question over ex's volunteer work
by Daniel Gonzalez and Craig Harris - Feb. 24, 2012 11:22 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, a nationally known advocate of tough immigration enforcement and border security, may have aided the violation of federal immigration laws himself by allowing his ex-boyfriend, a Mexican national, to work on his campaign as a volunteer, according to immigration experts.
He also may have illegally accepted a campaign donation from Jose Orozco, 34, who reportedly is living in the United States on a visitor's visa.
Babeu has maintained that he thought Orozco was in the country legally when he assigned him to manage his political-campaign website and social-media sites as an unpaid volunteer. But his campaign manager conceded Friday that the sheriff did nothing to verify that.
"No campaign does background checks on volunteers," said Chris DeRose, who also is Babeu's attorney. "People come in and people volunteer."
He added it was the campaign's understanding that Orozco was in the United States legally.
The Phoenix New Times reported this month that Orozco's lawyer said DeRose mentioned her client's "supposedly expired visa" in an effort to get him to sign a non-disclosure statement to prevent him from discussing his relationship with Babeu.
Federal regulations prohibit foreign visitors from doing volunteer work while in the United States unless the service is for a recognized religious or non-profit charitable organization that serves the poor and needy.
Under Internal Revenue Service rules, political campaigns are not considered non-profit charitable organizations. The IRS also prohibits non-profit organizations from participating in political campaigns.
Orozco, who has gone into hiding since he accused Babeu of threatening to have him deported if he didn't keep quiet about their years-long relationship, told a CNN reporter that he entered the United States legally with a 10-year multiple-entry tourist visa.
By allowing Orozco to manage his campaign website and social-media sites, Babeu may have aided a violation of federal immigration laws, legal experts say.
"He possibly facilitated someone violating his visa," said Evelyn Cruz, who is head of the immigration clinic at Arizona State University's law school.
What's more, it would be illegal for Orozco, a Mexican, to make a campaign contribution unless he had a permanent residence card, according to Amy Chan, the state's elections director.
DeRose also said he was unaware of a $40 contribution given to Babeu's sheriff campaign on Jan. 17, 2008, from a person identified as having the same name of Babeu's former boyfriend, Jose Orozco.
The sheriff's campaign-finance records indicate that the donor named Orozco was a student living in Chandler at the time.
Babeu's former boyfriend, with whom he had a three-year relationship, lived in Chandler for at least 10 months last year, though at a different address.
Chan said campaign contributions from non-U.S. citizens and those without a permanent residence card must be returned, or a campaign could face a financial penalty. She said late Friday afternoon that she did not know the exact amount of the penalty and that it would depend on the size of the contribution. However, she added, the easiest way to clear up such a problem would be for a campaign to return questionable contributions to the donors.
Babeu, a first-term Republican sheriff running for Congress in Arizona's conservative Congressional District 4, is one of the most well-known border-security and immigration-enforcement advocates in the nation.
His office also has agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement that allow trained deputies to enforce federal immigration laws and officers in the Pinal County jail to screen inmates for immigration violations.
An ICE official declined to discuss the matter because it would require speculating about information the agency did not have.
Cruz said federal law prohibits employers from knowingly hiring unauthorized foreign workers.
But she said Babeu would not have violated the federal employer-sanctions law if he did not pay Orozco any money or remuneration such as housing or services.
The state has a similar law.
But some immigration lawyers say Babeu showed a lack of judgment considering his background as a law-enforcement officer and his reputation as a strong supporter of border security and immigration enforcement.
They point out that Orozco, who had a relationship with the sheriff and did the work pro bono, was essentially taking a job from an American and saving Babeu from having to pay someone.
"Handling someone's website I don't think is analogous to what you would traditionally think of as volunteering. So, to me, that is why I don't think it passes the smell test," said Elizabeth Chatham, a Phoenix attorney who specializes in employment-based immigration law.
She said, at the very least, Babeu should have looked into the visitor-visa rules before allowing a foreign visitor to manage his website, pay or no pay.
"He should have inquired about what kind of duties would be acceptable for someone in a (visitor's) status to perform," Chatham said. "Like if he owned a company that did marketing and he had this guy do his website, I think ICE would come down on him and say, 'You are an employer who is allowing someone to work for you regardless of the fact you are not paying a wage.' "
Multiple-entry visitor visas are valid for 10 years before they must be renewed. They allow people from other countries to visit the U.S. for business or pleasure for a limited time, usually less than six months, before they must return home, she said.
She said visitor visas allow foreign visitors to conduct some limited business activities in the country, such as setting up a business, but visitors are not supposed to set up a business and earn money from it.
Orozco's business, Website Results LLC, was incorporated in July and was terminated in January, according to Arizona Corporation Commission records.
Leaving the country and returning repeatedly is also considered a violation, she said.
State Sen. Ron Gould, R-Lake Havasu City, who is running for Congress against Babeu, said it appears Babeu didn't check Orozco's background. Gould said vetting volunteers is a common rite in campaigns.
"It doesn't look like he (Babeu) really did anything in terms of checking the guy out," Gould said. "It didn't look like he ever bothered to do that."
Gould said he would have expected Babeu's campaign at least to look up voter-registration records.
"Generally, my volunteers, I'm running their voter registration to make sure they're Republicans" and to weed out anyone with a prior felony, Gould said. "I don't have to worry about them being foreign nationals if they're registered to vote. ... If he's (Jose is) Paul Babeu's boyfriend, he (Babeu) may have overlooked all of that stuff. He (Babeu) was involved with this guy, so he's not using his judgment. He lacked judgment."
Republic reporter Rebekah L. Sanders contributed to this article.
I suspect NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg considers
me un-American for that comment and will have his
police thugs tail me.
NYC mayor defends intelligence-gathering on Muslims
by David B. Caruso - Feb. 24, 2012 11:12 PM
Associated Press
NEW YORK - New York City's mayor served notice Friday that his Police Department will do everything in its power to root out terrorists in the U.S., even if it means sending officers outside the city limits or placing law-abiding Muslims under scrutiny.
"We just cannot let our guard down again," Mayor Michael Bloomberg warned.
The mayor laid out his doctrine for keeping the city safe during his weekly radio show following a week of criticism of a secret Police Department effort to monitor mosques in several cities and keep files on Muslim student groups at colleges in Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and upstate New York.
Several college administrators and politicians have complained that the intelligence-gathering, exposed in a series of stories by the Associated Press, pried too deeply into the lives of innocent people.
With about 1,000 officers dedicated to intelligence and counterterrorism, the NYPD has one of the most aggressive domestic-intelligence operations in the U.S. Its methods have stirred debate in legal circles over whether it has crossed the line and violated the civil liberties of Muslims.
In perhaps his most vigorous defense yet of some of the NYPD's anti-terrorism efforts, Bloomberg said it is "legal," "appropriate" and "constitutional" for police to keep a close eye on Muslim communities that terrorists might use as a base from which to strike the city. And he said investigators must pursue "leads and threats wherever they come from," even across state lines.
"It would just be naive to think we should stop following threats when they get to the border," Bloomberg said.
Critics have said it isn't appropriate for the police to spy on citizens without reason to believe they committed a crime.
The American Civil Liberties Union issued a statement Friday accusing the NYPD of turning the city into a "surveillance state."
Faiza Patel, co-director of a civil-rights program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University's law school, said guidelines in federal court rulings do not allow the department to hold on to files detailing the conversations of mosque worshipers "unless the information relates to potential terrorist or criminal activity."
Bloomberg said the NYPD will continue to do "everything that the law permits us to do" to detect terrorists operating in the U.S. before they have a chance to act.
He warned of dire consequences if the city fails to detect plots, citing the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, which was carried out by followers of Omar Abdel-Rahman, a radical sheik who recruited jihadists from Brooklyn mosques.
Hey it's a lot cheaper then arresting people and putting them on trial. And when some military grunt at Nellis Air Force base in Las Vegas pulls the trigger to launch a hell fire missile to kill the suspected criminal they know positively the guy is guilty. Well at least that is what our government masters tell us.
U.S. drone kills Moroccan militant
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) – Somali militants say that a Moroccan was killed in a strike that a U.S. official said was carried out by an American drone.
The statement Saturday on an al-Shabab website named the dead Moroccan as Sheik Abu Ibrahim. The statement said two others — including a second foreigner — were killed in the overnight Friday attack.
A U.S. official told The Associated Press the attack was carried out by a drone. Somali officials identified another of the militants killed in the attack as a Kenyan citizen.
Somalia's al-Shabab counts hundreds of foreign fighters among its ranks. It formally merged with al-Qaeda this month.
Al-Shabab has been forced out of Mogadishu and faces military attacks on three sides.
Of course any first year law student will tell you all these laws banning guns and allowing searches with out warrants are unconstitutional. But sadly that is something the members of the Supreme Court have not figured out.
Gun charges filed against San Bernardino assemblyman
By Michael J. Mishak, Los Angeles Times
February 25, 2012
Reporting from Sacramento -- The San Bernardino County district attorney's office has filed criminal charges against a California lawmaker who attempted to take a loaded gun onto an airplane.
Tim Donnelly, a self-described tea party Republican from San Bernardino, was charged with carrying a loaded firearm in public without a concealed weapons permit and possessing a gun in an airport. Both offenses are misdemeanors, punishable by up to 18 months in jail and $2,000 in fines.
A vocal advocate for gun rights, Donnelly was detained by police at Ontario International Airport last month after security screeners discovered a loaded .45-caliber Colt Mark IV pistol and an ammunition magazine with an additional five rounds in his carry-on luggage.
The assemblyman, who was headed for Sacramento to attend the opening of the new legislative year, later characterized the incident as an "unfortunate mistake." He told reporters he had forgotten to remove the gun from his briefcase after placing it there while working in his home garage.
On Friday, Donnelly issued a statement in which he said he had taken responsibility for "an innocent mistake."
"I have fully cooperated with law enforcement officials and have been candid about this matter publicly," he said. "I am deeply honored to represent the people of the 59th District and regret any inconvenience this has caused to those involved."
The lawmaker told reporters last month that he regularly carried a firearm because he had received death threats since proposing to roll back state financial aid for illegal immigrants.
Assembly minority leader Connie Conway (R-Tulare) said Donnelly had the support of the GOP caucus: "Like anyone else, Tim is entitled to due process.... Assembly Republicans stand united with him in our legislative priorities of taxpayer protection and job creation."
Donnelly, a former member of the volunteer border patrol group known as the Minutemen, was elected in 2010 on an anti-illegal-immigration platform.
michael.mishak@latimes.com
I wonder, are the cops asking for a DNA sample from your children too?
As H. L. Mencken said:
ID your kid
Posted: Sunday, February 26, 2012 5:14 am
Tribune
Get your child’s fingerprints, photograph and video all in one place during Chandler Regional Medical Center’s free child identification card event.
Using the latest technology, parents of children older than 3 will receive a laminated photo identification card with their child’s information as well as a CD which stores digital fingerprints, photographs, video, voice recording and child safety tips. Should it be needed, this documentation provides the necessary information for police departments and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
The free event will be 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. March 3 at Chandler Regional Medical Center, 475 S. Dobson Road. Advance registration is required. Appointment times can be made by visiting the Arizona Crime Prevention Association website at
www.acpa.net.
Arpaio to mark 'Tent City' anniversary
by D.S. Woodfill - Feb. 26, 2012 06:03 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio will mark the 19-year anniversary of the makeshift jail known as "Tent City" by erecting a large sign outside the facility boasting the number of inmates "served."
Sheriff's officials said the concept was borrowed from "the world's most renowned fast food chain," apparently alluding to McDonald's, which once posted the number of hamburgers served.
Tent City opened in 1993 in southwest Phoenix using surplus Korean War tents. Since then, the jail has housed more than 427,000 inmates, according to the Sheriff's Office.
In a news release, Arpaio said Tent City remains one of his "proudest innovations" and is a "model program throughout the entire nation as an economical, safe and successful way to house a growing inmate population."
The sheriff will unveil the new sign to the public Monday.
Federal prisons will allow inmates to have MP3 players
by Kevin Johnson - Feb. 27, 2012 12:33 AM
USA Today
Federal-prison inmates will be allowed one more personal item that had been traditionally checked at the door when they served hard time: music.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons is unveiling a program that will allow many of its more than 200,000 inmates to carry MP3 players, packed with personalized music lists, to pass the time.
The music program, currently being tested at a women's unit in West Virginia, is expected to expand to the rest of the system this year, bureau spokeswoman Traci Billingsley says.
The devices will be sold in prison commissaries. But there is an important catch: While inmates can choose from a song list of about 1 million titles, the list will be monitored to exclude "explicit" tracks including material such as obscene or racially charged language.
Billingsley says the bureau will cull the list according to a content-ratings system established by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Not everybody is applauding. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Judiciary Committee's ranking Republican, says it is "difficult to see how all of the necessary safeguards can be put into place to stop prisoners from using MP3 players as bargaining chips or other malicious devices."
And of course Obama promise to make the government open and accountable for it's actions is 100 percent BS - "John Brennan, Obama's top counterterrorism adviser ... would not elaborate. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano ... refused in recent months to discuss the police tactics. Tom Perez, the Justice Department's top civil rights lawyer, has repeatedly refused to answer questions about the NYPD"
White House helps pay for NYPD Muslim surveillance
WASHINGTON (AP) – Millions of dollars in White House money has helped pay for New York Police Department programs that put entire American Muslim neighborhoods under surveillance.
Attorney Nadia Kahf, left, stands with Mohamed Elfilali of the Islamic Center of Passaic County during a news conference in Newark to address NYPD spying.
The money is part of a little-known grant intended to help law enforcement fight drug crimes. Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush and Obama administrations have provided $135 million to the New York and New Jersey region through the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program, known as HIDTA.
Some of that money — it's unclear exactly how much because the program has little oversight — has paid for the cars that plainclothes NYPD officers used to conduct surveillance on Muslim neighborhoods. It also paid for computers that store even innocuous information about Muslim college students, mosque sermons and social events.
When NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly was filled in on these efforts, his briefings were prepared on HIDTA computers.
The AP confirmed the use of White House money through secret police documents and interviews with current and former city and federal officials. The AP also obtained electronic documents with digital signatures indicating they were created and saved on HIDTA computers. The HIDTA grant program is overseen by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
The disclosure that the White House is at least partially paying for the NYPD's wholesale surveillance of places where Muslims eat, shop, work and pray complicates efforts by the Obama administration to stay out of the fray over New York's controversial counterterrorism programs. The administration has championed outreach to American Muslims and has said law enforcement should not put entire communities under suspicion.
The Obama administration, however, has pointedly refused to endorse or repudiate the NYPD programs it helps pay for. The White House last week declined to comment on its grant payments.
John Brennan, Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, last year called the NYPD's efforts "heroic" but would not elaborate. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, whose department also gives grant money to the NYPD and is one of the lead federal agencies helping police build relationships with Muslims, has refused in recent months to discuss the police tactics. Tom Perez, the Justice Department's top civil rights lawyer, has repeatedly refused to answer questions about the NYPD.
Outside Washington, the NYPD's efforts drew increased criticism last week. College administrators at Yale, Columbia and elsewhere issued harsh rebukes for NYPD's infiltration of Muslim student groups and its monitoring of school websites. New Jersey's governor and the mayor of its largest city have complained about the NYPD's widespread surveillance there, outside New York's police jurisdiction.
The White House HIDTA grant program was established at the height of the drug war to help police fight drug gangs and unravel supply routes. It has provided about $2.3 billion to local authorities in the past decade.
After the terror attacks, law enforcement was allowed to use some of that money to fight terrorism. It's unclear how much HIDTA money has been used to pay for the intelligence division, in part because NYPD intelligence operations receive scant oversight in New York.
Congress, which approves the money for the program, is not provided with a detailed breakdown of activities. None of the NYPD's clandestine programs is cited in the New York-New Jersey region's annual reports to Congress between 2006 and 2010.
NYPD spokesman Paul Browne did not respond to questions the AP sent to him in two emails about the White House money and the department's intelligence division.
Most of the money from the White House grants in New York and New Jersey has been spent fighting drugs, said Chauncey Parker, director of the program there. He said less than $1.3 million was spent on vehicles used by the NYPD intelligence unit.
"Those cars are used to collect and analyze counterterrorism information with the goal of preventing a terrorist attack in New York City or anywhere else," Parker said. "If it's been used for specific counterterrorism effort, then it's been used to pay for those cars."
Former police officials told the AP those vehicles have been used to photograph mosques and record the license plates of worshippers.
In addition to paying for the cars, the White House money pays for part of the office space the intelligence division shares with other agencies in Manhattan.
When police compiled lists of Muslims who took new, Americanized names, they kept those records on HIDTA computer servers. That was ongoing as recently as October, city officials said.
Many NYPD intelligence officers, including those that conducted surveillance of Muslim neighborhoods, had HIDTA email addresses. Briefing documents for Kelly, the police commissioner, were compiled on HIDTA computers. Those documents described what police informants were hearing inside mosques and which academic conferences Muslim scholars attended.
When police wanted to pay a confidential informant, they were told to sign onto the HIDTA website to file the paperwork, according to a 2007 internal document obtained by the AP.
Parker said the White House grant money was never used to pay any of the NYPD intelligence division's confidential informants. The HIDTA computer systems, he said, are platforms that allow different law enforcement agencies to share information and work.
"I am shocked to hear that federal dollars may have helped finance the NYPD's misguided efforts to spy on Muslims in America," said Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., one of 34 members of Congress who have asked the Justice Department and House Judiciary Committee to investigate the NYPD.
The connection between NYPD and the White House anti-drug grant program surfaced years ago, during a long-running civil rights lawsuit against police. Civil rights attorneys asked in court about a "demonstration debriefing form" that police used whenever they arrested people for civil disobedience. The form carried the seal of both the NYPD Intelligence Division and HIDTA.
A city lawyer downplayed any connection. She said the NYPD and HIDTA not only shared office space, they also shared office supplies like paper. The NYPD form with the seal of a White House anti-drug program was "a recycled piece of paper that got picked up and modified," attorney Gail Donoghue told a federal judge in 2003.
The issue died in court and was never pursued further.
Last week, the controversy over NYPD's programs drew one former Obama administration official into the discussion.
After the AP revealed an extensive program to monitor Muslims in Newark, N.J., police there denied knowing anything about it. The Newark police director at the time, Garry McCarthy, has since moved on to lead Chicago's police department where President Barack Obama's first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is now the mayor.
"We don't do that in Chicago and we're not going to do that," Emanuel said last week.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said the NYPD surveillance in his state was "disturbing" and has asked the attorney general to investigate. Christie was New Jersey's top federal prosecutor and sat on the HIDTA executive board during 2006 and 2007 when the NYPD was conducting surveillance in New Jersey cities. Christie said he didn't know that, in 2007, the NYPD catalogued every mosque and Muslim business in Newark, the state's largest city.
If Peoria piggy Pat Shearer thinks Obama is a jerk he certainly should be allowed to say so on his Facebook page.
Peoria police sergeant demoted over Obama photo incident
by Sonu Munshi - Feb. 28, 2012 02:03 PM
The Republic
A Peoria police sergeant who grabbed national headlines when he posted President Barack Obama's apparently bullet-riddled image on his Facebook page has been demoted and suspended without pay for two weeks.
Pat Shearer, a longtime patrol sergeant in Peoria, will be demoted to the rank of officer, which means a reduction in pay, according to a police spokesman.
Shearer has 10 days to appeal the decision.
"The Peoria Police Department's Code of Conduct states, all employees shall conduct themselves in a manner that shall never bring discredit or embarrassment to the City of Peoria or the Peoria Police Department. We expect our employees to exercise sound judgment and not bring discredit upon our Police Department," Police Chief Roy Minter Jr. said in a written statement.
Shearer could not immediately be reached for comment.
Shearer had been reassigned to administrative duties pending the investigation's outcome.
The photo on Shearer's Facebook profile, which was quickly removed, showed seven Centennial High School students, some holding guns and one holding what appeared to be a shot-up Obama T-shirt.
Peoria's investigation began after a resident alerted the U.S. Secret Service about the photo. A Secret Service spokesman told The Republic Tuesday that the case was "a local police matter."
Police did not release details on the investigation pending the 10-day appeal time.
Last week at the Ron Paul Debate I was harassed by a Mesa piggy. I took the 5h and refused to talk to the piggy.
Like most pigs, this one was a criminal who viewed my constitutional rights as toilet paper and the piggy continued to question me. The piggy angrily told me that when you take the 5th they get suspicious.
But when ever pigs are under criminal investigation they always take the 5th and you should too.
New info brings Joel Fox hearing to a halt
Fox may be under federal inquiry
by JJ Hensley - Feb. 28, 2012 09:46 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
The hearing to determine whether a fired Maricopa County sheriff's captain can get his job back came to an abrupt halt after an investigator revealed that a federal criminal probe might be ongoing into political fundraising in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office.
The revelation came during a Tuesday afternoon hearing in which Arizona attorney general's investigator Mike Edwards testified about the FBI's role in a criminal investigation into political fundraising in the Sheriff's Office.
Former sheriff's Capt. Joel Fox was fired last October in part for telling Edwards one version of the events surrounding a political-action committee that was active in Arpaio's office during the 2008 election, and relaying a different version of events to sheriff's investigators conducting an internal probe into Fox and other members of the Sheriff's Office.
On Tuesday, Fox's attorney asked to stop the hearing because he feared that statements Fox might make during the county's civil proceeding could be used against Fox in a potential federal criminal trial, a possibility Fox's attorney claimed he was unaware of before Edwards took the stand.
The political-action committee known as the Sheriff's Command Association, or SCA, raised more than $100,000 for the 2008 election. Contributions came from a handful of Arpaio's administrators and affluent supporters, including the chief executive of Jimmy John's Gourmet Sandwiches, who donated $10,000, and Tom Gimple, an aviation company owner and land developer from Anchorage, Alaska, who donated $25,000.
A state investigation was eventually launched to determine if funds collected by SCA had been legally raised and used. Federal authorities have also been investigating certain Sheriff's Office activities in conjunction with a criminal abuse-of-power probe.
Edwards on Tuesday said FBI agents participated in 2009 interviews of Gimple and James Liautaud, the Jimmy John's CEO, who live in other states. At that time, the state Attorney General's Office was still involved in the investigation, but in March 2011, state and federal prosecutors agreed that the attorney general's investigations into the Sheriff's Office overlapped with some of the federal probes into Arpaio's agency.
The U.S. Attorney's Office took over the cases, which included the SCA probe.
A representative from the U.S. Attorney's Office did not respond to a request for an update on the investigation late Tuesday.
When Edwards said on Tuesday that, as far as he knew, federal officials were continuing the criminal investigation into SCA, Fox's attorney immediately called for the hearings to stop, claiming it was the first time he had learned that Fox is the potential target of a federal criminal investigation.
"The harm that can be caused by continuing in this process -- especially under the circumstances as it has gone so far -- the potential harm to Mr. Fox far outweighs any harm that could possibly result to the county by a stay," said Ed Moriarity, Fox's attorney in the hearing.
Deputy County Attorney Clarisse McCormick, representing the Sheriff's Office, told the court that Moriarity must have known SCA was part of the ongoing federal probe because it has been so widely covered in the local media.
McCormick also said that Moriarity's arguments were baseless because the allegations against Fox are based on his statements to the attorney general's investigators and not federal officials.
"All the information we need to fully address the termination of Mr. Fox, you now have that information before you," McCormick told the hearing officer.
But the hearing officer, Robert Sparks, was unswayed. Sparks did not specifically rule on Moriarity's motion to halt the proceedings, instead saying he would wait until federal officials give some signal about the status of their investigation.
Until then, how the hearings will proceed remains unclear. But how it proceeds could offer some insight into the status of the federal government's SCA investigation.
Sparks asked McCormick, or someone from the County Attorney's Office, to contact federal prosecutors in hopes of getting information about the investigation into Fox.
If federal investigators concede the investigation is ongoing or, as is their habit, refuse to confirm or deny the existence of the investigation, Sparks said he would assume the criminal probe continues. In either of those scenarios, Sparks said he would allow the county to finish presenting its case against Fox, then wait for the federal investigation to conclude before allowing Fox to present his case.
If federal investigators indicate the criminal probe into SCA is complete, the hearings will resume as scheduled.
Either way, Sparks ordered the group back to the Board of Supervisors auditorium at 8:30 a.m. today, where McCormick is expected to question sheriff's Deputy Chief Frank Munnell, whose 63-page memo sparked the internal investigation that led to Fox's demise.
Court gives Arizona warning about execution protocol
Feb. 28, 2012 05:11 PM
Associated Press
A federal appeals court panel on Tuesday issued a strong warning to Arizona officials who have continuously violated and changed their own written protocol for executing state death-row inmates.
In its ruling on Tuesday, the three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco turned down a request to delay two upcoming executions -- that of Robert Henry Moormann on Wednesday and of Robert Charles Towery eight days later on March 8.
While the judges declined to delay the executions, they wrote that Arizona has forced the court "to engage in serious constitutional questions and complicated factual issues in the waning hours before executions."
"This approach cannot continue," the panel wrote. "We are mindful of the admonition requiring us to refrain from micro-managing each individual execution, but the admonition has a breaking point."
And unless Arizona officials make permanent changes, the judges wrote that the court might have to start monitoring each individual execution in the state to make sure the law is followed.
The ruling comes after the state Department of Corrections unexpectedly changed its execution protocol last month, one of multiple unannounced changes in recent years.
Defense attorneys argued to the court that the new protocol loosened requirements for those who inject inmates with the lethal drugs and gave far too much discretion to corrections Director Charles Ryan.
According to the new protocol, Ryan can decide with which and how many drugs to execute inmates and must give the inmates' one week's notice of what he decided.
But on Monday, less than 48 hours before Moormann's scheduled Wednesday execution, corrections staff realized that one of the drugs they had planned to use expired last month and is no longer available.
They then notified Moormann and his attorneys that he would be executed with just one drug, pentobarbital.
The late notice violates the department's new written execution protocol.
"How such a discovery escaped the state for the past six weeks is beyond us," wrote the appeals panel on Tuesday. "(It) gives us pause as to the regularity and reliability of Arizona's protocols. To be sure, the state caught the mistake, but almost too late."
Although the judges warned Arizona about violating and changing its execution protocol, they said that neither Moormann nor Towery is likely to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment because of those changes, and did not deserve to have their executions delayed.
Also Tuesday, a different three-judge panel at the 9th Circuit turned down a separate filing from Moormann that sought a delay in his 10 a.m. Wednesday execution over arguments about his mental disabilities.
Moormann, of Flagstaff, was serving nine years to life in prison in 1984 for kidnapping and molesting an 8-year-old girl when the state let him out on the three-day compassionate furlough from a state prison in Florence, about 60 miles southeast of Phoenix.
Moormann beat, stabbed and suffocated his adoptive mother, Roberta Moormann, before cutting off her head, legs and arms, halving her torso, and flushing all her fingers down the toilet. He then went to various businesses asking if he could dispose of spoiled meat and animal guts before he threw most of her remains in trash bins and sewers.
The killing prompted the state to change its furlough policy.
Moormann's attorneys have been arguing in courts at every level that he should not be executed because multiple psychologists have diagnosed him as mentally disabled.
State law prohibits executing the mentally disabled, or those who have IQs lower than 70.
Prosecutors argue that Moormann's mental capacity at the time of the killing was just above the legal requirement for mental impairment.
In its ruling Tuesday, the 9th Circuit panel ruled that Moormann's mental disabilities at the time of the crime are what matters.
"There is no clearly established federal law that a person who was not mentally retarded at the time of the crime or the trial may nevertheless be exempted from the death penalty ... because of subsequent mental deterioration," the panel wrote.
Although Moormann's teachers and family members say that he was clearly mentally impaired as a child, his abilities have worsened over the years following a spate of health problems, including a stroke in 2007.
Moormann's attorneys also have been unsuccessful in arguing to courts and a clemency board that because Roberta Moormann sexually abused her adoptive son throughout childhood and into adulthood, it would be "unconscionable" to execute him.
Moormann's attorneys have at least one outstanding request to delay the execution.
In a Tuesday filing at the U.S. Supreme Court, they ask for a delay over arguments about his mental disabilities.
Richmond cops tried to set up their boss, feds say
Justin Berton
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Two Richmond police officers, angered by an investigation into their off-duty security company, tried to frame their supervisor by having him lured into an extramarital affair, federal prosecutors say.
In legal papers filed in U.S. District Court, prosecutors said the two officers had hired a Concord private investigator who specialized in stings using female decoys to tempt men into misconduct.
The officers' idea, prosecutors say, was to catch their lieutenant cheating on his wife while on duty and deliver video evidence to the police chief's office.
Prosecutors filed the papers in Oakland last week in connection with a case against Danny Harris and Ray Thomas, who quit the Richmond Police Department in April shortly after The Chronicle reported that the FBI was investigating them for possible wrongdoing in connection with a security company they ran on the side.
A federal grand jury indicted Harris in July for allegedly purchasing firearms for two young men who worked at the security business, and both officers were charged with attempting to prevent the men from cooperating with the investigation.
The new court document indicates that prosecutors want to cite the alleged setup attempt as evidence that the former officers already had ties to private investigator Christopher Butler, but will not charge them with a new crime.
Prosecutors said that in late 2010, Harris, 31, and Thomas, 34, paid $1,800 to Butler to create a video of one of his decoys making sexual advances toward the officers' boss, Lt. Michael Booker.
According to prosecutors, the men believed Booker "had gotten them in trouble" with officials over their security firm, which police supervisors had ordered them to shut down.
Prosecutors have previously said the officers tried to intimidate two young men working for the security outfit after they cooperated with law enforcement investigators, and had hired Butler to conduct a sting that would result in one of the men being arrested for drunken driving.
Not-guilty plea
Attorneys for Harris and Thomas did not respond to requests for comment. Both men have pleaded not guilty.
The new allegations are the latest twist in a police corruption scandal that began in early 2011 with the arrest of Butler and a drug task force commander in Contra Costa County, Norman Wielsch, for allegedly stealing narcotics confiscated in police raids. Prosecutors later added charges that Butler bribed a law enforcement officer to participate in drunken-driving-setup arrests.
Two former employees of Butler said in interviews with The Chronicle that Butler had told them that conducting a sting on Booker was an easy way to neutralize a corrupt cop.
A San Jose woman who said Butler had paid her to play the decoy said her instructions were to contact Booker and tell him she wanted to interview him for a college essay about his job.
The woman, who asked that her name not be used because she feared reprisals, said she had eventually met with Booker at a San Jose restaurant. Butler bugged her purse and told her to flirt with the lieutenant, then initiate physical contact outside that the detective filmed from a parked car, she said.
Going to chief
Another Butler employee, a former investigator, said he had been paid to bring the video to Police Chief Chris Magnus while posing as the decoy's enraged boyfriend.
Capt. Mark Gagan, a Richmond police spokesman, said the department had investigated the complaint without knowing of the alleged setup, and "concluded there were no policy violations by our employee." He would not confirm that the target of the complaint was Booker.
Booker did not respond to requests to comment. Butler's attorney did not respond to phone messages.
Thomas and Harris are scheduled to go to trial March 26.
Justin Berton is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Twitter: @justinberton. jberton@sfchronicle.com
Second cops as usual seem to think they are above the law. It's OK for them to have sex with hot teenagers, but a crime for the rest of us.
Cop-cadet sex case has precedents
Feb. 29, 2012 01:04 PM
Associated Press
SANTA MARIA, Calif. -- When an on-duty police officer was shot and killed by a colleague a month ago, residents of this agricultural community north of Santa Barbara were horrified.
Outrage grew when they learned the shooting occurred as fellow officers tried to arrest the policeman on suspicion he was having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl in the city's "Police Explorers" program.
But inappropriate relationships between officers and youths in the junior police program aren't all that rare. No organization keeps statistics but an Associated Press examination of news accounts during the 21 years since the Explorers was spun off from the Boy Scouts of America found at least 97 cases involving officers accused of sexual assault on minor girls, and sometimes boys, in the program.
And that's likely a fraction of all such incidents, said Samuel Walker, a University of Nebraska-Omaha criminal justice professor and expert on police misconduct and accountability. Most relationships never become public because a youth is unlikely to report it and even if fellow officers are aware, they're reluctant to do anything.
"More often than not other officers know that something wrong is going on and they don't report it," Walker said. "Police departments are like villages: everybody gossips and everybody knows."
The Explorer program is run by Learning for Life, a subsidiary of Boy Scouts of America that pairs young people 14 to 21 with police mentors who take them on ride-alongs, and teach them to write reports and direct traffic in the hope they'll be inspired to pursue law enforcement careers. It is open to anyone, male or female.
Learning for Life representatives would not speak directly to AP, but answered written questions submitted through a public relations firm. National Director Diane Thornton said mentors, before participating, go through a training program aimed at keeping young people safe. Explorers under 18 can't go on ride-alongs after midnight and should not be used in covert operations or as confidential informants or sources, she said.
In Santa Maria, the department apparently did use an underage Explorer in a covert operation -- the alleged female victim. She was part of a sting in January set up to get Officer Alberto Covarrubias to reveal the relationship so officers could make the arrest. He did divulge the information, sources say, but the arrest went awry when the 29-year-old, married officer resisted and shots were fired.
The shooting has shaken the department. In a recent vote, officers overwhelmingly expressed no confidence in Chief Danny Macagni. He declined to comment for this story and a department spokesman refused to talk about the Explorer program.
"I can't talk to you about anything regarding the Explorers at this point," Lt. Rico Flores said. "It's obvious we still have an internal investigation going on, so it's premature to look at anything involving the program and make any changes."
Thornton wrote that each law enforcement agency is responsible for monitoring and establishing policies to "further protect Explorers." She said the organization will work with the Santa Maria department as it evaluates its program.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department in southeast California changed its policies last year after Deputy Nathan Gastineau, 31, was charged with lewd acts upon a child and unlawful sexual intercourse with a 16-year-old Explorer. In August 2011, another deputy, Anthony James Benjamin, 30, agreed to a plea bargain giving him nine months in jail on two counts of oral copulation of a 17-year-old Explorer.
After those incidents, Sheriff Rod Hoops suspended the program for his 216 Explorers. When it resumed there was a 10 p.m. curfew for teens. A limit was established for the number of times an Explorer can ride with the same deputy, and a watch commander now must sign off on all ride-alongs.
"It's a good program," sheriff's spokeswoman Jodi Miller said. "We've got a couple of deputy chiefs who started out as Explorer scouts."
Neither Learning for Life nor the Boy Scouts keep track of sexual abuse cases involving Explorers. Neither do organizations such as The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children or the U.S. Office of Violence Against Woman. The University of Nebraska-Omaha did a simple web search in 2003 and found 39 such cases in the media dating to 1995.
Among the places where busts have occurred are Nogales, Ariz., where last year Officer Mariano Garibay received a two-year prison sentence for sex with a 16-year-old Explorer. Also last year, former Burlington, N.C., Officer William Matthew Hill pleaded guilty to raping a 14-year-old Explorer. In Brownwood, Texas, in 2007 Sgt. Vince Ariaz, the founder of the local Explorer program, pleaded guilty to reduced charges of sexual assault on a 15-year-old Explorer and was sentenced to three concurrent 20-year terms.
In California, the San Benito County Sheriff's Department suspended its program after rumors surfaced following a camping trip with Explorers and officers to Yosemite National Park. The deputy and the girl under suspicion denied wrongdoing, but three years ago when the officer was accused of spousal rape investigators went back to the former Explorer for corroborating evidence. She admitted an affair and said she had been afraid to speak up at the time.
"Where it hurts is that in law enforcement we are held to a higher standard," said Curtis Hill, who was undersheriff at the time and later served as sheriff. "We're in a position of trust. These young people are looking up to them as examples of a future career path. When you mix in that human condition sometimes these employees forget the higher standard."
Andre Pena, a fourth-year Explorer in Clovis, Calif., said he's never seen anything but professional relationships between officers and young people in the program. His experience has inspired him to pursue a criminal justice degree with plans to return to the city's police force after graduation.
"I think the biggest change in me over the years is growing my leadership skills," he said. "When I first joined it was to get an inside look at law enforcement as a possible career choice, and it has strengthened the idea for me."
While everyone acknowledges the rate of abuse is low among the 105,000 young people in the Explorer program each year, for those who are victimized the damage can be lasting.
"You have an under-aged person incapable of making mature decisions who is pressured by someone you've always been told you can rely on. It has a devastating impact," said attorney Dennis Steinman, who successfully sued on behalf of a girl in the Explorer program in Tualatin, Ore., who was sexually abused by four officers. The abuse causes victims to "question their own self-worth, their own sexuality, their own importance in life," he said.
Violations of trust by priests, teachers, coaches and others with authority over children are tragic occurrences that make salacious headlines. But with police it seems especially egregious since they enforce sexual assault laws and should be sensitive to the long-term emotional and psychological harm caused by sexual exploitation, said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
"When it's a police officer who represents a broader kind of authority, who are you going to tell?" he asked.
Of course my main question is don't these pigs have any real criminals to hunt down??? You know, like robbers, burglars, rapists and murders???
On the other hand I bet it's a lot safer for these piggies to only arrest hot looking women that give them lap dances.
Escorts claim Utah law makes acting sexy illegal
Feb. 29, 2012 12:38 PM
Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY -- Three escort services are asking a federal judge to overturn a Utah law that makes it easier -- too easy, they say -- for undercover police to make prostitution arrests.
Utah law had defined solicitation as a person agreeing to have sex for money. But an amendment last year broadened it to include any person who performs acts such as exposing or touching themselves.
An attorney for the escort services says the law now makes it a crime for a stripper to merely expose private parts during a dance. Arguments in the case were set for Wednesday in federal court in Salt Lake City.
The law allows authorities make a prostitution arrest simply because a person acted sexy, said Andrew McCullough, who is representing Baby Dolls Escorts, Companions LLC and TT II.
McCullough said a female escort already has been arrested under the amended law, but the charge has been put on hold and the case sealed pending the outcome in federal court.
An undercover officer "tried everything he could for her to offer sex. She didn't, and he arrested her anyway under the new statute for touching herself in a certain way," McCullough said.
[Duh! well maybe the woman wasn't a prostitute? Of course the piggie doesn't want to let the facts interfere with his arresting her for prostitution!]
Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank has defended the law, saying that prostitutes have learned to ask customers to expose themselves before offering sex for money as a way to determine whether the client is a police officer. Authorities are not allowed to expose themselves, Burbank said, but under the amended law, the escort or stripper can be arrested for just posing the question.
"Officers were being put in a position that we're not going to allow," Burbank said. "So we took a different direction."
The escort services are suing Burbank and Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff. McCullough said the amended law is "virtually identical" to one struck down in Utah in 1988 as unconstitutional.
He said the law could be used to charge a dancer at a strip club who makes suggestive movements, but Burbank has said he would use the law only against a prostitute when it becomes obvious that a sex-for-money deal is being arranged.
The federal court case comes down to intent, which the bill's sponsor, Rep. Jennifer Seelig, D-Salt Lake City, said is only aimed at targeting prostitutes.
McCullough argued the language is too broad and unfairly entraps strippers and escorts who are performing legal services.
Across Texas, Police Root Out Transgressors of a Mild Sort
By MANNY FERNANDEZ
Published: February 29, 2012
HALE CENTER, Tex. — A burly, goateed police lieutenant knocked on a door in this windswept farming town of 2,200 Tuesday morning. He was looking for Daniel Castillo, who had become a wanted man.
There was a good chance that Mr. Castillo knew the law was after him: his picture was posted on a community bulletin board at the post office and on the plate-glass windows of the police station, and his name was published last Friday in a local newspaper, The American.
The lieutenant, Brandon Richardson, held the warrant for Mr. Castillo’s arrest as he knocked. But the manhunt lacked a certain tension. Mr. Castillo was hardly a desperate killer on the run. In fact, he was wanted for failing to take care of a traffic violation — lacking proof of auto insurance — and his fine was $868.
In another state, perhaps, Mr. Castillo’s failure to address this problem might have been a private matter or might have been a low priority for law enforcement. But this is Texas, and this is the week of the Great Texas Warrant Roundup, an annual statewide event that functions as a sort of “America’s Most Wanted” for an unromanticized subset of the Texas outlaw: the misdemeanor kind.
Each year in late February and early March, dozens of law enforcement agencies and municipal courts in big cities and small towns across the state take to the airwaves and to the streets seeking out, apprehending and otherwise rounding up Texans who have ignored their unpaid speeding tickets and other minor infractions for too long. None are wanted for violent offenses like murder or robbery. The focus, instead, is on those with outstanding warrants for misdemeanor traffic, parking and city ordinance violations — going 80 miles per hour in a 70-m.p.h. zone, writing a bad check — who failed to resolve their ticket or case by paying a fine or appearing in court.
No other state holds an event quite like the weeklong Warrant Roundup, now in its sixth year. More than 260 agencies and courts are taking part in the roundup, which in most jurisdictions started last Saturday and ends March 4.
By the end of a typical Warrant Roundup, thousands of people will have been arrested and millions of dollars in fines and court fees will have been paid across the state. Last year, the Houston police arrested 4,110, and the city’s municipal courts collected $2.5 million. This year, Waco arrested 32 on Saturday, and San Antonio apprehended 39 on Monday. Abilene has collected $49,966 so far.
“If everyone gets a ticket and says to hell with it, that defeats the purpose,” said J. C. Mosier, the chief deputy for Harris County’s Constable Precinct One, which made 42 arrests on Saturday as part of the event. “Our files are full of traffic warrants and hot-check warrants. The only people that gripe are the ones getting arrested.”
Few towns or cities have been conducting as enthusiastic a roundup as Hale Center, a city about 35 miles north of Lubbock that has one restaurant (Owl’s Café) and no bars (alcohol sales are banned). It spent roughly $600 on the two-page ad in Friday’s six-page paper: a list of the names of nearly 600 men and women with outstanding misdemeanor warrants in Hale Center, along with their offenses.
The chief of police, Dennis D. Burton, covered his office windows with fliers bearing pictures and names of those wanted in the roundup. Since no mug shots were available for many of them, Chief Burton used their driver’s license photos, so a number of the lawbreakers look out with unusually bright smiles on Main Street and the bare flagpoles outside the municipal building.
The city has collected nearly $25,000 in fines this month, more than double the monthly average. Chief Burton said he sought to motivate, not humiliate. “We’re not saying these people are bad people,” he said. “We’re not judging these people. We’re just reminding them.”
Outside the house where Lieutenant Richardson believed he would find Mr. Castillo, relatives said he was not there. The next warrant Lieutenant Richardson focused on belonged to Patricia Salas, 21. She owed $42 for a dog-at-large offense. No one answered at the residence where the lieutenant thought he could find Ms. Salas, but later in the afternoon, she showed up at the court clerk’s desk in the municipal building to pay up.
“I just think he takes it a little bit too far, especially with all the pictures,” Ms. Salas said of Chief Burton.
She had no idea her name was on the list, and said she had paid a portion of the fine but did not realize that $42 remained. She was happy about one thing, though. It was just her name, and not her picture, that had been posted around town.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: February 29, 2012
A photo caption in an earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the chief of police, Dennis D. Burton, as Bruton.
Personally I don't like Emperor Obama any more then I liked Emperor Bush, but I find it hard to believe the Emperor Obama is an illegal alien from Kenya!
Arpaio unveils Obama birth-certificate probe
Mar. 1, 2012 03:36 PM
Associated Press
America's self-proclaimed toughest sheriff finds himself entangled these days in his own thorny legal troubles: a federal grand jury probe over alleged abuse of power, Justice Department accusations of racial profiling and revelations that his department didn't adequately investigate hundreds of Arizona sex-crime cases.
Rather than seek cover, though, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is seeking to grab the spotlight in the same unorthodox fashion that has helped boost his career as a nationally known lawman.
Arpaio on Thursday unveiled preliminary results of an investigation, conducted by members of his volunteer cold-case posse, into the authenticity of President Barack Obama's birth certificate, a controversy that has been widely debunked but which remains alive in the eyes of some conservatives.
At a news conference, Arpaio said the probe revealed that there was probable cause to believe Obama's long-form birth certificate released by the White House in April is a computer-generated forgery. He also said the selective service card completed by Obama in 1980 in Hawaii also was most likely a forgery.
"We don't know who the perpetrators are of these documents," Arpaio said, although he said he doesn't think the president forged the documents.
Earlier, the 79-year-old Republican sheriff defended his need to spearhead such an investigation after nearly 250 people connected to an Arizona tea party group requested one last summer.
"I'm not going after Obama," said Arpaio, who has criticized the president's administration for cutting off his federal immigration powers and conducting a civil rights investigation of his office. "I'm just doing my job."
Some critics suggest Arpaio's aim is to divert attention from his own legal troubles while raising his political profile as he seeks a sixth term this year. The sheriff vehemently denies such strategies are in play.
"You say I need this to get elected? Are you kidding me? I've been elected five times. I don't need this," he said in a recent interview.
Democratic state Sen. Steve Gallardo said Arpaio is pandering to relentless critics of the president.
"It doesn't matter what President Obama does, they'll never support him," Gallardo said. "It's those folks who will continue to write checks to Sheriff Joe because of this stuff."
Arpaio's probe comes amid a federal grand jury investigation into the sheriff's office on criminal abuse-of-power allegations since at least December 2009, focusing on the sheriff's anti-public corruption squad. Separately, the U.S. Justice Department has accused Arpaio's office of racially profiling Latinos, basing immigration enforcement on racially charged citizen complaints and punishing Hispanic jail inmates for speaking Spanish. Arpaio denies the allegations and said the investigation is politically motivated.
Critics also have sought Arpaio's resignation for more than 400 sex-crimes cases over a three-year period ending in 2007 that were either inadequately investigated or weren't investigated at all by the sheriff's office after the crimes were reported. The sheriff's office said the backlog was cleared up after the problem was brought to Arpaio's attention.
Speculation about Obama's birthplace has swirled among conservatives for years. "Birthers" maintain that Obama is ineligible to hold the country's highest elected office because, they contend, he was born in Kenya, his father's homeland. Some contend Obama's birth certificate must be a fake.
Hawaii officials have repeatedly confirmed Obama's citizenship, and Obama released a copy of his long-form birth certificate in April in an attempt to quell citizenship questions. Courts also have rebuffed lawsuits over the issue. Of late, the president's re-election campaign has poked fun at it, selling coffee cups with a picture of the president's birth record.
On Thursday, Obama's campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt offered a light-hearted dismissal of Arpaio's probe -- he tweeted what he referred to as a "live link" to the sheriff's news conference, but instead provided a link to a snippet of the old conspiracy-theory based TV series, "The X-Files."
Arpaio has said he took deliberate steps to avoid the appearance that his investigation is politically motivated. Instead of using taxpayer money, the sheriff farmed it out to lawyers and retired police officers who are volunteers in a posse that examines cold cases. Other posses assist deputies in duties that include providing free police protection at malls during the holiday season or transporting people to jail.
Even as he is under fire by the federal government, the sheriff remains popular among Republicans.
GOP presidential candidates have courted him for his endorsement throughout the primary season. At last week's GOP presidential debate in Arizona, Arpaio won loud cheers. During a question about Arizona's border woes, Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum said the government ought to give local police agencies the chance to enforce immigration law as Arpaio has.
Bruce Merrill, a longtime pollster and senior research fellow at Arizona State University's Morrison Institute for Public Policy, said the subject of the investigation plays to the sheriff's base of supporters. And, he said, it highlights Arpaio's gift for publicity.
"It's something that the press will cover," Merrill said. "He'll get a lot of exposure from it."
Legal trouble dogged school led by Babeu
Officials probed abuse claims while sheriff was headmaster
by Robert Anglen, Ronald J. Hansen and Sean Holstege - Mar. 1, 2012 11:21 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
STOCKBRIDGE, Mass. - Before moving to Arizona nearly a decade ago, Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu led a controversial private school for troubled youths that Massachusetts investigators sought to shut down over reports of abuse, neglect and concerns about students' safety.
Court records, case files and interviews show that problems at the DeSisto School in Stockbridge began years before Babeu took over as headmaster in 1999. The state launched an investigation in 2000 after receiving nine separate complaints about the school, according to the Massachusetts Office of Child Care Services.
Babeu left the school in August 2001. The state's eventual findings showed problems had continued during his administration and didn't end until the school closed in 2004.
The agency found systemic problems at the school. The probe resulted in a court order to stop specific activities, including punishments that put students in chairs facing corners for hours at a time, withholding food from students and strip-searching. The court also ordered the school to stop group showers and allow students to use the bathroom in private.
Babeu was not named in any specific allegation in the state's investigation.
The sheriff, who is running for Congress in Arizona's 4th District, has come under scrutiny in recent weeks amid allegations by a former boyfriend that he abused his authority as sheriff. Babeu denies any abuse of power.
In 1999, school founder Michael DeSisto named Babeu as his replacement as headmaster. Babeu responded to some questions about the school through an attorney but did not address specific questions about allegations of abuse and neglect at DeSisto.
In an e-mail statement to The Arizona Republic, Babeu downplayed his leadership role at the school. He said he was recognized for "helping to restore financial accountability to the school." He said he did not teach, counsel or discipline students, or supervise teachers or counselors.
Babeu also said that, in his role as headmaster, he was responsible only for operations such as kitchen, housekeeping, facility and grounds maintenance, office-support staff and admissions.
However, interviews, court and tax records, media accounts and Babeu's police personnel records present a broader picture of his leadership role at DeSisto.
In a Chandler Police Department employment application signed by Babeu in November 2002, he wrote that he "supervised directors and 80 full-time employees" at DeSisto. He wrote that he was "responsible for budget preparation, financial accountability, legal issues, long-range planning and fundraising."
Babeu and one other employee, along with the school's founder, were listed as the highest-paid employees on the non-profit school's tax forms in 2000.
Students and school staff said Babeu and other administrators sat in on morning meetings in which student safety and misconduct were routinely discussed. Babeu also intervened with parents, said Harvey Thompson, who oversaw the school's finances from 1989 until its closure in 2004.
Troubled students
The DeSisto School was founded in 1978 by Michael DeSisto as an institution to help troubled students through an intense discipline regimen and group therapy. Students were primarily from wealthy, prominent families who paid up to $78,000 a year for their children to attend.
DeSisto billed himself as a longtime educator with a host of academic degrees and employment credentials that proved to be false, according to a 1988 investigation by the Orlando Sentinel in Florida, where another DeSisto school was located.
Students accepted into the school were considered artistically gifted and exceptionally intelligent. Most received psychological treatment before coming to the school for issues that included depression, eating disorders, anger management, self-destruction, addiction and rebellion, according to former administrators.
Because of the number of special-needs students at DeSisto, the Office of Child Care Services fought to regulate and license the school as a group-care facility "after receiving allegations of neglect and abuse of residents at the facility" during Babeu's tenure, agency spokeswoman Heather Johnson said.
A Massachusetts court agreed.
The state found that students were made to sit facing corners up to 14 hours a day for weeks at a time.
In November 2001, about six months after Babeu left as headmaster, state authorities painted a dismal environment at the school, noting that employees were poorly trained and that the school was chronically understaffed.
There were no written policies at the school for reporting suspected child abuse or neglect and no record of proper background checks on most of the staff, investigators said.
"The school uses discipline that is overly punitive and dangerous; and students are routinely denied their basic human rights through strip searches, denial of permission to use bathroom facilities in privacy, and denial of all means of communication with family members," the state said in court records.
Students were enlisted to help restrain other students, and, in one case, a student contacted a classmate's parents to inform them that their son had run away, records show. Group showers were routine and led to instances of sexual abuse, the state reported.
A New Jersey student who attended DeSisto from 1998 to 2004 told The Arizona Republic last week that one girl sat for so long that she urinated in front of five other students. She said another girl with an eating disorder vomited in socks in order to avoid getting caught.
"She hid them inside a mattress for weeks until the whole room smelled like mildew. A twin mattress was filled. I helped pull it down," the student said. "Everybody knew she refused to eat. They put her in a corner. She didn't need to be in a corner, she needed to be in a hospital."
A political connection
Babeu and DeSisto were friends and political allies in western Massachusetts.
Babeu was hired in April 1999 as DeSisto's assistant and named headmaster of the school in July when DeSisto announced that he was stepping down from that position for health reasons.
DeSisto told the Berkshire Eagle newspaper at the time that he chose Babeu for the job because of Babeu's longtime involvement with the school.
"He will be the public face of the school," DeSisto told the newspaper.
Before coming to DeSisto, Babeu had served as a Berkshire County commissioner and a North Adams, Mass., city councilor and was a 1997 mayoral candidate.
Babeu earned a history degree from North Adams State College in 1992. He also earned a master's in public administration in 2003 from American International College in Massachusetts, working on the degree while at DeSisto.
At the same time Babeu was promoted as headmaster, three other managers were named as part of the school's leadership team.
Later, Babeu later took over as executive director for DeSisto, becoming the first person other than DeSisto to hold the position.
"Paul was loved and respected by the kids," DeSisto told the newspaper in November 2001, after Babeu had left the school. "The kids know a phony; they can see through them. And they love Paul."
Babeu this week downplayed his interaction with students and his role in the school's management. In his e-mail statement, he said he is a recognized leader for victims rights.
Thompson, who oversaw the school's finances, said, "I think all four (managers) were equal in what they did."
Babeu's role as headmaster was limited, Thompson said. The title "tends to make people think it means he's in charge. It didn't have the power that the term headmaster has at other schools," Thompson said
The Republic attempted to contact the other three former managers: a director and assistant director of the school and the director of residential life. Two did not respond to phone and e-mail requests for comment, and the third could not be reached.
Controversial treatment
A review of records by The Republic found that throughout much of the Stockbridge school's 27-year history, students were "leashed" or tied together in the name of therapy, forced to do manual labor as a form of punishment, deprived of food and water on a regular basis and made to strip to their underwear and wear togas.
The school had its supporters. Some former students, their parents and staff credit the school with helping students overcome personal issues.
Spencer Moore, a court-ordered consulting psychologist, defended the school's treatment methods in a sworn statement in 2002.
"In my opinion, absent their participation in this program, many of the students at the school would have been back out on the street, institutionalized, in jail or dead," Moore said. "The model employed by the school is entirely appropriate."
Gregory Steinbach, the school's admissions officer, testified that 90 percent of students went to college and that 35 percent went to graduate school over the years.
However, some former students created "survivor" groups and say the school's stark methods continue to haunt them.
State regulators said relationships between students and teachers were problematic because many staff members had not undergone background checks, were living in close quarters with students and had unsupervised access to them.
State investigation
As part of the 2000 probe, when Babeu was headmaster, investigators found four categories of violations. One centered on the condition of facilities, which he was directly responsible for overseeing. The other three categories were restraints of students, separation and isolation practices, and restricting contact with family. It is unclear what level of oversight Babeu had in those areas.
A judge acknowledged in 2002 that the school had reversed some practices, such as housing five students in a dorm room built for two to four and blocking dorm-room doors.
The school was in violation of building codes, and a local building inspector described the school as "dangerous to life and limb," the judge wrote in his order.
State regulators described dorms as overcrowded with inadequate bathrooms, in violation of the fire code and group-home safety regulations.
Judith Spiewak, a parent of a DeSisto student who attended during Babeu's tenure, declined to discuss his stewardship of the school.
"Our experience (at DeSisto) was a positive one," she said in her Framingham, Mass., home.
Financial woes
Babeu said this week that one of his duties was to raise money for the school and that he was recognized for refinancing and consolidating the school's debts and renovating school properties. A DeSisto board member said in court documents that Babeu was authorized in 2000 to legally sign bank loans on behalf of DeSisto.
Although Babeu touts his financial record at the school, its tax records as a non-profit organization show its decline began on his watch.
In the 1999-2000 fiscal year, Babeu's first, the school ended with a $169,000 surplus. The next year, Babeu's last, it ended with a $165,000 deficit. Afterward, the school's finances spiraled downward as enrollment plummeted and legal expenses soared.
The school's expenses on facility repairs dropped 42 percent, or $105,000, under Babeu. State and local regulators cited problems with the state of the facilities when they stepped in. Although the school saved on repairs during his tenure, its legal expenses increased by nearly as much.
Also, during Babeu's tenure, the state investigation found that school officials advised parents that they deduct the entire cost of tuition from their federal taxes, even though the Internal Revenue Service did not permit it.
One of the DeSisto School's bright spots, an off-Broadway musical called "Inappropriate," starring students from the school, was a meditation on the pains of high-school students drawn from the journals of some of its students. The musical, too, became a source of financial dispute.
During the Babeu years, the musical traveled from New York to Los Angeles, with interest in record and film rights for the project, as well.
Babeu slashed $700,000 from the part of the school's budget that supported musicals, according to the school's tax records. The composer of "Inappropriate" sued and won a $342,000 judgment against the school in 2004.
School's demise
Located in the affluent Berkshire County community of Stockbridge, the school sat on 300 isolated acres of rolling hills behind large iron gates and rock walls. The school consisted of 11 dormitories, a gym and cafeteria fronted by a 19th-century rambling, four-story mansion that served as the headquarters.
Babeu left the school in 2001 to run for mayor in his hometown of North Adams, Mass. After losing the race, he moved to Arizona in 2003.
The state's legal battle with the DeSisto School reached a climax in January 2004, when the school suffered one of the most serious safety lapses in its history.
Dawn Matthews, a girl with 41 hospital admissions for self-inflicted injuries over a two-year span at DeSisto, swallowed two plastic-covered razors. The razors passed through her digestive system without harm, according to court records.
"I had a rough time at school, but it was my issues," said Matthews, 24, who enrolled in 2002. "Mainly, the staff members they hired weren't equipped to deal with people with forms of psychosis. ... Half those people didn't know what they were doing."
In March 2004, a court ordered the school to temporarily suspend new-student admissions. By then, the student population had dwindled to 38 from a peak of about 130. The state asked the court to extend the sanction, which the school's lawyer described as the "death penalty."
Frank McNear took over as DeSisto executive director from Babeu and served until the school closed in 2004. Today, the mansion is shuttered and being gutted as part of a renovation project. Only a few of the school's buildings remain.
"I took the position not knowing the history of the school and spent the next several years answering allegations about things that had happened in the past," McNear said in an e-mail Wednesday, adding that he was not aware of any abuse on his watch. "Paul Babeu was not working at the school on that watch, but had I been informed of inappropriateness on his part after his departure, I would have reported that, as well."
Reach the reporters at robert.anglen@arizonarepublic.com, ronald.hansen@arizonarepublic.com or sean.holstege@arizonarepublic.com.
Babeu ousted as Oklahoma police event speaker
Okla. police event pulled sheriff after allegations
by Daniel González, and Lindsey Collom - Mar. 2, 2012 10:12 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu had been scheduled to give the keynote speech today at an annual police-officer awards dinner in Tulsa, Okla., but organizers of the event replaced him at the last minute after hearing about the misconduct allegations involving Babeu in Arizona.
"We did not want to take anything away from our officers because this was a night for them, and, quite frankly, we were not sure if the sheriff's appearance would cause a media frenzy, and we did not want that to occur," said Maj. Julie Harris, a member of the Tulsa Police Department and one of the organizers of the event to honor more than 40 officers for saving lives and other acts of heroism and valor.
Babeu was invited to speak at the Tulsa Police Department's annual awards dinner after some officers heard him speak last year at another event in Tulsa and liked what he had to say about controlling the border and illegal immigration, Harris said.
Instead, the keynote speech will be given by Hector Hernandez, the resident agent in charge of the Secret Service in Tulsa, said Leland Ashley, a spokesman for the Police Department.
Although Tulsa, the second-largest city in Oklahoma, is not located near the Mexico border, the city has a growing number of undocumented immigrants, Harris said.
"We find that many of them are unlicensed drivers and don't have insurance," she said.
Harris said organizers called Babeu to explain why he was being replaced.
"There was no problem from he or his staff," Harris said.
The committee was planning to pay for Babeu's travel expenses, but Babeu did not want a speaking fee.
Harris said officers "would love to have" Babeu speak in the future but not while he is still in the spotlight. Last month, a former boyfriend said the sheriff threatened to deport him if he didn't keep quiet about their relationship. Babeu has denied the accusation.
Babeu himself has canceled appointments since the allegations were published Feb. 17.
An update on the Sheriff's Office budget -- projected in January to exceed $3.2 million by June 30 if spending levels from the previous six months continued -- was pulled at Babeu's request at the last minute from the Feb. 22 agenda of the Pinal County Board of Supervisors. Babeu, who had requested that the item be on the agenda, asked that it be removed the afternoon before the meeting, said the county's spokeswoman and the county's budget director. The sheriff's budget will now be on the board's agenda March 14, county officials said.
Tim Gaffney, Sheriff's Office director of communications and grants, said the budget item was postponed because the county manager was out of town. County Manager Fritz Behring said that wasn't his understanding.
"Before I left town, the agreement was that they were going to move forward," Behring said Thursday, adding that Babeu and his staff did not provide updated budget figures by the end of the workday on Feb. 17 as planned.
Gaffney said the sheriff was in an operations briefing Feb. 17, the same day the Phoenix New Times asked Babeu and his then-attorney Chris DeRose to respond to allegations posed by a former boyfriend. By 5 p.m., Babeu and DeRose were meeting with a Republic reporter in Phoenix.
On the morning of Feb. 18, Babeu, who is running for Congress in Arizona's conservative District 4, was a no-show at the Wickenburg Gold Rush Days parade. That afternoon, he held a news conference outside the Sheriff's Office headquarters in Florence, backed by a crowd of several dozen people, including uniformed employees, a county supervisor and community members. But he wasted no time in returning to his congressional campaign, going before a crowd of Yavapai County Republicans that evening who had gathered for a Lincoln Day Dinner at a Prescott Valley golf club.
He cited a schedule conflict in missing a Yavapai Tea Party meeting Feb. 24 in Prescott Valley. The group's website indicated that Babeu was supposed to lead a group discussion on immigration. The following day, he attended a California Rifle and Pistol Association gala in Ontario, Calif., to receive the group's Defender of Freedom Award.
For the last 30 years Edward Lee Elmore has said he was framed for murder. This week, Edward Lee Elmore, lied and said he was guilty of the murder in exchange for being released from prison.
I suspect Edward Lee Elmore lied feeling it was better to be
released from prison then to spend the rest of his life in prison
for a crime he didn't commit.
The police tell us they would rather let 100 people
go then have one innocent person spend time in
prison, but that is 100 percent bullsh*t.
Innocent people like Edward Lee Elmore are routinely
framed by the police and frequently spend their lives
in prison or are executed for crimes they didn't commit.
S.C. inmate is freed after guilty plea in '82 murder
by Jeffrey Collins - Mar. 2, 2012 11:13 PM
Associated Press
GREENWOOD, S.C. - Edward Lee Elmore glanced at the ceiling when a judge asked him if he was sure he wanted to plead guilty to the murder he has spent decades denying. He whispered to his lawyer, who had told him "freedom is justice," and then looked toward the heavens again.
"Yes, sir," he said quietly. With those words, he ended a 30-year stint in prison.
Elmore was convicted three times of killing Dorothy Edwards, with appeal courts overturning each verdict. Elmore lived nearby and did odd jobs for the 75-year-old widow, who was found in the closet of her Greenwood home in January 1982. She had been savagely beaten and stabbed more than 50 times, dying from a loss of blood and blows that caved in her chest, prosecutor Jerry Peace said.
Prosecutors agreed his punishment should be the 11,000 days Elmore spent behind bars, much of it on death row.
He got off death row in 2010 when his attorneys argued he was mentally disabled and had a low IQ. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled states can't execute the mentally disabled, and his punishment was reduced to life in prison.
On Friday, prosecutors dropped rape and burglary charges, and an hour after the hearing, Elmore walked out of the Greenwood County courthouse a free man.
Peace said he still thinks Elmore killed Edwards. He said Elmore confessed, telling investigators he may have blacked out as he attacked her. Small spots of the victim's blood were found on Elmore's jeans, Peace said, but he decided to make the deal for two reasons.
First, Edwards' sister asked him to end three decades of uncertainty and phone calls from reporters and other people she doesn't want to talk to. Second, even if he was convicted and sentenced to life again, Elmore would have been immediately eligible for a parole hearing, Peace said. And with a spotless prison record, his chances could be good.
Elmore's lawyers first asked the judge to throw out the charges.
The founders gave us the 2nd Amendment to give the people a way to overthrow government tyrants. Only government tyrants pass laws that take away the people guns.
Bill to allow guns in public buildings poised for House passage
Mar. 2, 2012 11:31 AM
Associated Press
PHOENIX -- The Arizona House appears poised to approve a bill that could allow people to carry guns into government buildings where they're now banned.
The House on Friday gave preliminary approval to the bill without debate.
House passage on a formal vote would send it to the Senate.
The bill would generally allow firearms to be prohibited from public buildings
only if there are either armed law enforcement officers
[sounds like a jobs program for cops]
or armed security guards with metal detectors or X-ray machines.
Signs and storage lockers also would be required.
Supporters say the bill would protect gun owners' rights
and allow them to defend themselves.
Critics call the bill an unfunded mandate on local governments.
[Hmmm??? What part of the 2nd Amendment don't the critics understand!!!]
Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed a version of the bill last year. She said it lacked clarity.
Of course you can expect the crooked police officers
that are protected by the law will appeal his decision
all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Source
Judge rules eavesdropping law unconstitutional
By Jason Meisner Tribune reporter
1:01 p.m. CST, March 2, 2012
A Cook County judge today ruled the state’s controversial eavesdropping law unconstitutional.
The law makes it a felony offense to make audio recordings of police officers without their consent even when they’re performing their public duties.
Judge Stanley Sacks, who is assigned to the Criminal Courts Building, found the eavesdropping law unconstitutional because it potentially criminalizes “wholly innocent conduct.”
The decision came in the case of Christopher Drew, an artist who was arrested in December 2009 for selling art on a Loop street without a permit. Drew was charged with a felony violation of the eavesdropping law after he used an audio recorder in his pocket to capture his conversations with police during his arrest.
jmeisner@tribune.com
Regulators seek input on cell phone interruptions
Reuters
By Jasmin Melvin
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The deliberate disruption of mobile phone service last year by transit police in San Francisco has prompted federal communications regulators to consider rules for similar situations in the future.
The Bay Area Rapid Transit Police Department said it cut cellphone service to aid public safety but civil liberties groups criticized the actions as a violation of free speech and argued it put people at more risk.
The Federal Communications Commission issued a public notice late Thursday seeking comment through April 30 on whether regulatory guidance is needed in these situations, and if so, what type of policies.
Last August, the BART system cut off cell service in a number of stations for about three hours during the afternoon rush hour in anticipation of protests of a fatal shooting of a man by a BART police officer.
The protesters had planned to coordinate the demonstration through their cell phones and had instructed participants to text the location of law enforcement.
"The same wireless network that police see as a tool for rioters to coordinate is the same wireless network used by peaceful protesters to exercise our fundamental freedoms," said Harold Feld, legal director for public interest group Public Knowledge.
The FCC said it would carefully deliberate before backing any framework for intentional cellphone interruptions.
"Any interruption of wireless services raises serious legal and policy issues, and must meet a very high bar," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said on Friday.
Among the agency's concerns is whether wireless carriers could implement a general service interruption without affecting the public's ability to make emergency 911 calls. About 70 percent of emergency calls come from cell phones, the agency said.
The FCC notice also seeks comment on the overall legality of a wireless service interruption and the FCC's authority over such shutdowns.
A coalition of public interest groups, including Public Knowledge, asked the FCC in August to immediately rule that BART violated federal law and to make clear that local government agencies could not interfere with access to cellphone networks.
But TechFreedom, a technology policy think tank that accused BART of violating the First Amendment and putting passengers at greater risk, argued on Friday that wireless service shutdowns were an issue for the courts to decide, not communications regulators.
"BART simply turned off equipment it doesn't own - a likely violation of its contractual obligations to the carriers. But BART did nothing that violated FCC rules governing network operators," the group said in a statement.
Salary 'spiking' drains public pension funds, analysis finds
By Catherine Saillant, Maloy Moore and Doug Smith, Los Angeles Times
March 3, 2012
Approaching retirement, Ventura County Chief Executive Marty Robinson was earning $228,000 a year.
To boost her pension, which would be based on her final salary, Robinson cashed out nearly $34,000 in unused vacation pay, an $11,000 bonus for having earned a graduate degree and more than $24,000 in extra pension benefits the county owed her.
By the time she walked out the door last year, her pension was calculated at $272,000 a year — for life.
Robinson, 62, is among a group of public employees who have increased their retirement paychecks by adding such things as vacation time, educational incentives, car allowances and bonuses to their final salaries.
Such "salary spiking" was banned in 1993 by CalPERS, the state's largest public employee retirement system, to help control spiraling costs. But 20 of California's 58 counties — including Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange and San Diego — do not participate in CalPERS and their employees may legally continue to spike their salaries.
The scope of the practice is unclear because counties have resisted releasing complete pension data, citing the difficulty and cost of assembling the information.
But an analysis by The Times of partial data from Ventura and Kern counties — two small windows into the problem — shows that spiking is affecting pension systems already staggered by massive obligations.
In Ventura County, where the pension system is underfunded by $761 million, 84% of the retirees receiving more than $100,000 a year are receiving more than they did on the job. In Kern County, 77% of retirees with pensions greater than $100,000 a year are getting more now than they did before.
Ventura County officials have defended the practice, arguing that some pension boosts were meant to make up for pay freezes during lean years. It would be unfair to take them away now, Robinson said during a board hearing last year.
And the vast majority of county employees, officials pointed out, retire with modest pensions: an average non-management worker with 30 years of service gets $32,580 a year.
But Jim McDermott, a board member for the Ventura County Taxpayer's Assn., said the burden from spiking was too large to ignore.
"This is becoming an increasing drain on taxpayers … which will have to lead to cuts in service or additional taxes," he said. "Managers have their entire careers to refine spiking. And there is not a nook or cranny that they don't manipulate."
For those who plan ahead, there are numerous ways to spike salaries in the last year of work. In fact, there are 60 categories of payments that Ventura County employees can convert to cash.
Former Sheriff Bob Brooks, for instance, added a $30,500 "longevity" bonus (for working more than 30 years), which boosted his pension to $272,000 a year, almost 20% higher than his base salary.
Former Undersheriff Craig Husband added nearly $92,600 in unused vacation time, resulting in a $257,997-a-year pension, nearly 30% above his working pay. Many county retirees also are entitled to annual cost-of-living adjustments.
Brooks, Robinson and Husband did not return calls seeking comment.
County firefighters and sheriff's deputies can boost their pensions by layering premium pay and end-of-career cash-outs on top of salary. Fire Capt. T.N. Roberts, for instance, padded his final year's pay by nearly $130,000, resulting in a pension 84% higher than his base compensation. He gets $159,598 a year in retirement pay.
A pension is typically a percentage of an employee's highest annual pay — usually, but not always, the final year's pay. A firefighter who worked 25 years, for instance, could get 75% of his or her final salary in many counties.
Government jobs historically have been a tough sell because of the modest salaries they often provide; one incentive for prospective workers was the generous pension that came with being a cop or a county planner.
And when counties and cities couldn't afford to hand out raises, elected officials routinely offered enhanced retirement benefits. Pension payouts did not burden retirement systems in years past as they do today, and the deals seemed to make financial sense: Government agencies could hold the budgetary line and workers in turn would get richer paydays when they retired. It effectively kicked the problem down the road.
But in bad economic times, pension systems can take a beating. Higher benefits and lower market returns put a squeeze on county treasuries.
Orange County last year went all the way to the state Supreme Court in an effort to roll back benefits sweetened through salary spiking and other incentives, only to learn what other agencies already had: Once given, benefits can't be taken away from current employees or retirees.
Gov. Jerry Brown now is proposing to stop spiking by basing pensions on a three-year average of final pay to discourage "games and gimmicks … that artificially increase compensation." Brown is also proposing to base pensions on normal salary only, without all the add-ons lumped in.
McDermott, of the Ventura County Taxpayers Assn., repeatedly has asked county supervisors to eliminate vacation cash-outs, calling it the most abused form of spiking.
A Times analysis of Ventura County data showed that a third of the final salaries for its highest-paid retirees was the result of spiking. About 25% of that final salary boost came from vacation cash-outs; about 20% from accrued overtime and about 12% from the cashing out of healthcare credits.
Supervisors agreed to eliminate the vacation sell-back policy for new managers but declined to do the same for current employees.
Ventura County Supervisor Steve Bennett said that he supports pension reform but that change should come through either statewide legislation or union cooperation. "It took 30-plus years and lots of layering of things back when people weren't paying enough attention to get to this point," he said. "It's not going to be something you can just flip the switch."
The Times has asked for pension data from the 18 other counties that allow spiking, but most have resisted or said it would be too costly and laborious. Some have asked to be paid for extracting the data — $63,000 in the case of Sacramento County.
The data from Kern and Ventura counties also does not provide a complete picture. Ventura County turned over detailed information on 148 officials who earned more than $100,000 a year in retirement, only a fraction of its 5,500 retirees. Kern County provided information for all of its retirees but left out pensions paid to the beneficiaries of deceased retirees and withheld the full amount of pensions that are split between ex-spouses.
Several counties, including Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Santa Barbara, have agreed to provide the data, but the release of the information is dependent on ongoing negotiations over cost and handling.
Limited data provided by the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Assn. showed that at least 4,000 retirees are receiving pension checks that exceed their final compensation. But the data lack additional details to determine whether the workers spiked their salaries or whether the bump is the result of cost-of-living increases or a combination of the two.
Database: Biggest
Ventura County pensions
Database:
Kern County pensions
catherine.saillant@latimes.com
maloy.moore@latimes.com
doug.smith@latimes.com
CHP officer facing weapons, explosives charges
Saturday, March 3, 2012
A California Highway Patrol officer facing weapons and other charges has turned himself in to authorities.
The CHP says 44-year-old Gerald Roland Harris surrendered at Shasta County jail on Friday, the same day a warrant was issued for his arrest. He has been charged with possessing assault weapons, methadone and explosives and a misdemeanor count of embezzlement.
Authorities say a search of Harris's home near Anderson last month turned up explosives, 10 rifles and a handgun and a few methadone pills.
Shasta County prosecutor Benjamin Hanna told The Record Searchlight of Redding (http://bit.ly/yY2WFj) that investigators also found dozens of drivers' licenses. Authorities say the search was prompted by an unrelated criminal allegation although they declined to say what that was.
Harris is out on $100,000 bail.
A person who answered the phone at a number listed for him hung up.
___
Information from: Record Searchlight, http://redding.com
Arrest made after search; Methadone, weapons found in CHP officer's home
By Joe Szydlowski
Posted March 3, 2012 at 12:04 a.m.
A California Highway Patrol officer was arrested Friday night on charges stemming from a daylong search of his house that turned up explosive devices, assault weapons and methadone, the CHP reported.
Veteran highway patrolman Gerald Roland Harris, 44, turned himself in to the Shasta County jail at 7:30 p.m. after an arrest warrant was issued Friday afternoon charging him with 11 felony counts of possessing assault weapons, one felony count of possession of methadone, one misdemeanor count of embezzlement and one felony count for possession of explosives, said CHP Capt. Todd Morrison.
Bail was set at $100,000. Harris bailed out at 8:40 p.m., a jail spokesman said.
The arrest warrant was issued at 1:30 p.m. Friday, Morrison said.
Harris was not taken into custody the day his house on Deschutes Road near Anderson was searched, and a bomb squad detonated a number of explosive devices they said were found during the search. Nor had he been brought in for questioning, Morrison said.
Investigators wanted to gather and properly handle all the evidence before charging Harris, said Josh Lowery, chief deputy district attorney.
"We wanted to review what evidence was received at the home to make sure the evidence found at the home matched up against the charges," he said. Senior Deputy District Attorney Benjamin Hanna said "steps (were) made to monitor what (Harris) was doing and where he was going."
He declined to elaborate on the methods.
None of the counts are related to the alleged crime that spurred the Feb. 21 search warrant, Morrison said. He would not elaborate on what prompted issuance of the search warrant.
Officers also found "dozens and dozens" of driver's licenses at Harris' home, Lowery said. He said Harris took them from drivers he'd pulled over or contacted while on duty.
Lowery said the theft of the licenses spawned the embezzlement charge, though the motive is still being investigated.
Officers also found 10 rifles and a hand gun that violated the state assault weapons ban, Lowery said.
Hanna said a few methadone pills were found at the residence.
Morrison said he couldn't speak to whether Harris would remain on "administrative assignment" if released.
Harris would face up to nine years in the county jail if convicted on all charges, Hanna said. The investigation into the incident that prompted the original search by the CHP also is continuing, and could result in more charges against Harris, Hanna said.
Harris has been a CHP officer for 21 years and has been assigned to the Redding CHP office since 2003.
Gay public officials in sharper spotlight
Tim Steller Arizona Daily Star
Sunday, March 4, 2012 12:00 am
The outing of Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu underlines a growing truth about American politics in the 21st century, observers say: The closet appears to be closing as an option for gay politicians.
The good news for them: Fewer and fewer people seem to care.
The free flow of information on the Internet and growing public openness about homosexuality mean a candidate's orientation comes out, one way or another.
As a result, even following a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in the public sphere, as Babeu did, is unlikely to pan out over the long run, said R. Clarke Cooper, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans and an associate of Babeu.
"We've reached a really interesting point in American politics," he said. "Anything that's hidden or secret will eventually surface."
Easy access to information also means that keeping a secret may be more difficult. In Babeu's case, an ex-lover accused him in the Phoenix New Times of threatening the lover with deportation if he didn't keep quiet about Babeu's personal life. The newspaper also published semi-nude photos Babeu sent via a gay dating website during his term as sheriff.
Babeu said neither he nor any representative made a threat but acknowledged sending the photos.
While he denied that threat, Babeu has used a prominent lawyer to have online comments about his sexuality on Pinal County news websites removed, editors there said.
The day after the Phoenix New Times published the ex-lover's allegations, Babeu acknowledged being gay and began taking stands in favor of gay rights. He also explained how it feels for a public figure to come out like this.
"It's very difficult and liberating at the same time," Babeu said. "I'm not going to live in fear. I'm not going to live with the threats."
Stayed in closet
By federal law, Babeu was forced to stay in the closet for his entire military career, which ended in September 2010 when he retired as a major in the U.S. Army National Guard.
The Don't Ask Don't Tell law took effect in July 1993, when Babeu had been in the service for almost three years. It was repealed in September 2011. The law, which subjected service members to expulsion if they revealed they were gay, led gay and lesbian service members to live what Cooper calls a "redacted life."
Cooper, who remains in the Army Reserve, coined the phrase to describe the awkward situation in which gay military members would not bring dates to unit events, would not speak about what they did on the weekend and avoided discussing their personal lives in general.
After separation from the military, some gay service members burst out of the closet, while others preferred to remain private, said Linda Thomas, a retired Air Force officer who until June 2011 worked as program director for Wingspan, an organization for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in Tucson. Thomas and her partner, Hollace Lyon, moved to SaddleBrooke, live an open life and largely feel accepted, she said.
Kathy Young, political co-chair of the Human Rights Campaign in Arizona, said people have a right to their own process.
"Everybody's coming-out journey is very personal and doesn't necessarily speak to character," she said.
Cease AND desist
After his military retirement in September 2010, Babeu had a year-long window of opportunity to come out publicly before he announced he was exploring a run for Congress in October 2011. He didn't pretend to be heterosexual, but he remained in a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" mode.
In November 2010, former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods but by then a private attorney, sent cease-and-desist letters to two Apache Junction news outlets on Babeu's behalf, editors of each publication said. The letter Ed Barker received demanded that he remove comments by Babeu's estranged sister Lucy, said Barker, editor of the Apache Junction News.
The letter said "that I was printing blogs from Babeu's sister about his gay lifestyle, and that I was to immediately cease and desist," Barker said.
It turned out Woods had the wrong news outlet in that first letter: Lucy Babeu had been making comments on the Apache Junction Independent's website. The editor of that publication, Richard Dyer, said he got a cease-and-desist letter in November 2010 and passed it on to the company's webmaster.
Lucy Babeu said her comments were removed, and she was banned from commenting on the site.
In a separate incident during a long interview in early 2011, a reporter for Pinal Ways magazine asked Babeu, "Do you hope one day to marry?"
Babeu's response was equivocal: "Ah... one day. Maybe. It's not certain. Sometimes it's something that I may want or desire and then other times it's the last thing that's on my mind."
Babeu considered how to come out, said Cooper of the Log Cabin Republicans.
"Without breaking confidence, I can tell you that many within Republican circles said to him, 'Paul, you need to be prepared to talk about yourself articulately,' " Cooper said.
Kolbe's situation
Jim Kolbe, the former congressman who represented Southeastern Arizona for 22 years, knows about coming-out quandaries. The Republican thought he was going to be outed in 1996, so he held a press conference first to discuss his orientation.
"My view on any issue like this is, get out in front of it," Kolbe said. "Don't let it control you; you control it. But every person has to do it on their own terms."
Being a gay politician comes with significant challenges, said Ken Cheuvront, who served his Phoenix district in each house of the state Legislature for eight years. When he first won in 1994, he became the state's first openly gay legislator.
"My first eight years in office, I was 'Rep. Openly Gay Cheuvront," he said, citing the shorthand used to refer to him in news accounts.
Cheuvront said there's a key difference between him and Babeu: Cheuvront is a Democrat, while Babeu is a Republican who cultivated the party's conservative wing with strong anti-illegal-immigration rhetoric.
"I think it's really difficult running as a Republican openly gay, because the primary electorate is socially conservative," he said.
But Babeu's experience suggests that reality may be changing. In the first week after the initial story came out, the campaign raised another $14,000 and didn't have to return any of the $263,000 it had initially raised, said Chris DeRose, Babeu's campaign head.
What disturbed some of Babeu's supporters about the original story was not that Babeu is gay, said Malcolm Barrett Jr., chairman of the Yavapai County Republican Committee.
"Their level of support has not changed because of his being gay. Their level of support may have changed because of his judgment on the pictures," Barrett said.
Cheuvront perceives tolerance spreading across the political spectrum.
"Times are changing very quickly," he said, "and I think acceptance toward gays and lesbians is going quicker than even I thought."
Contact reporter Tim Steller at 807-8427 or tsteller@azstarnet.com
I call it "policing for dollars" because when the cops get to
keep the money they steal from alleged criminals,
the cops view anybody with money as an alleged criminal
to shake down for their money. And the name of the game
becomes stealing money for the cops to use, not
getting dangerous criminals off of the streets.
Auction of confiscated vehicles to be held Saturday
Posted: Friday, March 2, 2012 3:35 pm
Tribune
The U.S. Marshal’s Service of Arizona is holding an auto auction on Saturday featuring vehicles that have been forfeited to the government.
The auction, which will be held at Apple Towing, 5720 E. Mineral Road in Guadalupe near Tempe, will begin at 9 a.m. The cars can be previewed until 5 p.m. on Friday and from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. Saturday.
The United States Marshals Service Asset Forfeiture Program plays a vital role in managing and disposing of $3.9 billion worth of assets for items such as vehicles, watercraft, real property, and jewelry that are seized and forfeited by federal law enforcement agencies and the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The program has become a key part of the federal government’s efforts to combat major criminal activities by stripping criminals of their ill-gotten gains.
Proceeds generated from asset sales are used to fund victim restitution,
supplement funding for federal law enforcement initiatives,
and are often [often? make that ALWAYS]
shared with state and local law enforcement partners,
said David Gonzales, U.S. Marshal of Arizona.
Supporter of Sheriff Baca got personal county car
By Robert Faturechi, Los Angeles Times
March 4, 2012, 6:55 p.m.
For months, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Capt. Phillip Hansen heard the grumblings: Deep-pocketed donors and other well-connected individuals working as reserve deputies were driving around in unmarked Sheriff's Department cars. One reserve, a restaurant owner who threw a fundraiser for Sheriff Lee Baca, was frequently seen parking a county-owned Ford Crown Victoria outside his La Mirada restaurant, a popular hangout for deputies.
Hansen, who heads the volunteer deputy program, was troubled by the reports and asked for an accounting of which reserves had take-home cars.
He was stunned by the response.
"I basically got nicely told I really wasn't authorized to have that information," Hansen recalled.
It turns out at least one reserve — the Baca fundraiser — was assigned a county car. A sheriff's spokesman conceded that other reserves may have had vehicles as well, but he declined to provide a detailed accounting of how many received such a perk.
Last year, the Sheriff's Department refused to comply with a public records request from The Times regarding take-home county car use and gas consumption by four reserves who have given Baca political support or gifts. The department declined to even confirm the men were reserves, despite all four being named on department websites or other public listings.
When reached by phone last month, one of the four men, Chris Vovos, refused to answer questions about whether he had a take-home car, hanging up twice. "You're asking me for information I don't give my own father," he said.
Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore did not confirm that Vovos was assigned a car until The Times presented the department with evidence. Whitmore declined to say how many reserves had cars, but added that "being a donor to the sheriff has nothing to do with getting a car or not."
After The Times' inquiries, Whitmore said, Baca recalled any county vehicles assigned out to reserves and planned to draft a policy to prevent it from happening again.
The department's reserves, who are paid a dollar a year, generally work under the supervision of full-time sworn deputies. Common tasks include administrative work and parking enforcement, though some highly trained volunteers are allowed to make on-duty arrests and work in specialized units.
Hansen and others say they can't imagine under what circumstances reserves would need personally assigned county cars, given that most full-time sheriff's deputies and many department supervisors don't get the perk.
"There's undoubtedly staff out there who could use a county car, but we can't afford to give it to them," Hansen said, alluding to major cuts in the department's budget in recent years. "I could find you hundreds of them."
Maria Haberfeld, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York who specializes in police ethics and training, said the practice is a questionable use of county funds and could hurt morale.
"I have never seen a department that allocates vehicles to reserves before they take care of their sworn full-time officers. That's unheard of," Haberfeld said. "This is not an operationally sound procedure. On the contrary, this is very bizarre and doesn't sound ethical."
The sheriff's reserve program has for years faced criticism of mismanagement and special treatment. In 2010, a state agency discovered that the program gave badges to volunteers who flunked mandatory law enforcement tests and attended classes at unauthorized locations, including a Four Seasons hotel, 20th Century Fox Studios and possibly a yacht. Among the 99 reserves who were either stripped of their badges or demoted as a result were contributors, businesspeople, at least one celebrity — and Vovos.
In several cases, officials discovered that some course material and attendance records had been fabricated. One trainee apparently passed a firearms test despite missing the target completely.
Hansen said he was brought in about two years ago to clean up the reserves program. After he was contacted multiple times by peers and subordinates who believed reserves were getting their own cars, he said, he felt obligated to act. Car assignments are not up to him, but rather unit commanders across the department.
Hansen said he was worried that cars being personally assigned to influential reserves would be another public embarrassment for a program staffed by more than 800 volunteers — one of whom, Shervin Lalezary, was recently lauded as a hero after ending a massive countywide manhunt by arresting an arson suspect accused of setting more than 50 fires.
"I hate to see the very good work of 800 or so like Shervin be overshadowed by the excesses of very few," Hansen said.
The captain said special treatment within the reserves program has been cleaned up significantly in the last two years. He said big donors still "take liberties sometimes, guys like that kind of walk in whenever they want to meet with execs. Other people need to make an appointment.... That's the kind of thing that irritates a normal person, but that's just life."
Whitmore said Vovos was not using his black Ford Crown Victoria for personal business, but rather to drive around the county six days a week to solicit equipment donations from construction companies for the Sheriff's Department.
"These guys are rich," he said. "They don't need free cars."
Sheriff's Capt. Patrick Maxwell, who heads the Norwalk station, said he has seen Vovos park a county car for the last two or three years outside his business, a restaurant popular with sheriff's employees. Maxwell said he also has often seen the car parked outside a nearby warehouse that he believes belongs to Vovos.
Maxwell said that on other occasions he has seen Vovos with the car while in plainclothes, though he said he had no way of knowing if the volunteer deputy was on duty at the time.
A 2008 audit commissioned by the Los Angeles County civil grand jury to look at countywide take-home car use found that the Sheriff's Department did not vet requests for take-home cars thoroughly enough.
robert.faturechi@latimes.com
Worried that porn industry may migrate, Simi Valley takes action
By Steve Chawkins, Los Angeles Times
March 4, 2012, 7:35 p.m.
Simi Valley is a quiet suburban community and wants to keep it that way: No lights, no cameras, no porn studios.
Not that adult-film producers are flocking over the hill from the porn-rich San Fernando Valley, but the fear is that they might. Angered by a recent L.A. requirement for on-set condom use, producers have made noises about leaving, and officials next door in Simi Valley are trying to thwart an invasion before it gets started.
"The bottom line is we don't want to be known as the porn capital of the world," said Mayor Bob Huber, who is pushing for a local condom measure similar to one the L.A. City Council approved in January.
In Los Angeles, enforcement of the ordinance, which takes effect Monday, hasn't been worked out, but it could rely on surprise visits from law enforcement or health officials.
Spokesmen for the multibillion-dollar adult film industry call the new rule classic government overreach, but that hasn't stopped Simi, a usually conservative town, from coming up with a twist of its own.
Under its proposed law, the city would require producers to hire on-set medical professionals, who would attest to appropriate condom use. At the end of a shoot, the producers would have to send their unedited video to the Police Department, where employees would scrutinize it — for compliance with Simi Valley Municipal Code Title 5, Chapter 32, as amended.
Civilian employees, not officers, would do the heavy lifting, scanning films for possible violations. Last year, there wouldn't have been much to view; of 59 filming permits granted in the city, just one was for an adult film, city officials said.
The city's preemptive strike is pointless, said Diane Duke, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, a porn industry trade association based in Canoga Park.
"Very little filming is done in Simi Valley, and I doubt that the production studios are planning any increase at all in the area," she said. "However, I am amused at the thought of Simi Valley hiring people to sit around and view porn on taxpayer dollars. I wonder what the training for that would look like."
Not every City Council member is so amused.
"We should let the porn industry know it's not welcome in Simi Valley," said Councilman Steve Sojka, "but to pass an ordinance requiring them to police themselves to wear condoms is a waste of tax resources."
Running afoul of the law would bring a fine of up to $1,000 and six months in jail. However, some council members at a meeting last month expressed doubt that many judges would incarcerate producers for condom violations.
"Five years and a million-dollar fine would get their attention," said Councilwoman Barbra Williamson. "I'm sorry we can't do that, but I wish we could."
The condom issue is not the talk of the town in Simi Valley. A wave of heroin deaths has shocked the upscale community, triggering a march, a task force and public meetings packed with concerned parents. The city now features a listing of drug resources in a prominent spot on its home page.
Even so, the specter of the porn industry on the doorstep should not be ignored, said Huber, an attorney and former prosecutor. He said the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases is his prime concern. But there's also what he cast as an assault on family values, citing "block after block after block" of porn studios with "blacked-over windows" in the San Fernando Valley.
"The key reason people love to live here is that we'll stand up to protect the sanctity of our families," he said.
Ged Kenslea, a spokesman for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, said the group didn't anticipate the Los Angeles ordinance producing a ripple effect in places like Simi Valley.
Other restrictions could be in the works. Kenslea said the foundation has gathered half the signatures required for a November ballot measure that would mandate health permits for adult film producers in most of L.A. County.
Meanwhile, Moorpark, just down the road from Simi Valley, is considering the possibility of its own condom measure. At a recent meeting, he asked for research on whether Moorpark should draft an ordinance or rely on state regulations.
"I'm sure we don't want the porn industry looking at Moorpark, with lots of vacant commercial and industrial space," he said. "We need to promote business, but there are probably some businesses we probably don't need to promote that well."
steve.chawkins@latimes.com
Newport Beach man must remove 72-foot ship from his yard
March 4, 2012 | 5:03 pm
Dennis Holland with Shawnee, the boat he's restoring at his Newport Beach home
A Newport Beach man who has been restoring a 72-foot wooden ship in his yard for six years has been ordered to remove the boat or risk going to jail.
The court order is the latest development in a long-running conflict between Dennis Holland, some of his neighbors and city officials, who sued the 65-year-old resident in an effort to have the vintage ship removed.
Holland now has until April 30 to remove the ship from his Holiday Road home, or face fines of up to $1,000 a day, or possibly jail time, according to Deputy City Atty. Kyle Rowen.
Superior Court Judge Gregory Munoz issued a preliminary injunction Thursday and set an April 30 trial date.
Holland has been restoring the Shawnee, a 1916 ketch, in his West Bay neighborhood home for about six years.
Some neighbors support the project, saying it adds a splash of character to the community, while others — including the couple who can see the stern from their bedroom — want it moved to an industrial area.
"We know it's a step in favor of removing that big blight out of the neighborhood," said neighbor Dalia Lugo.
Holland, who said his work was slowed when he underwent cancer treatment, said he needs another three to four years to restore the ship.
Last year, city officials took Holland to court after repeated fines and orders failed to budge the boat.
Holland has been violating a 2009 ordinance that requires him to obtain a permit and give officials an estimated completion date. Because Holland said the project is too complex to pick a date, the city hasn't granted him a permit since 2010.
"Mr. Holland has been in violation of city laws for many years and has had ample opportunity to move the boat to a suitable location," City Atty. Aaron Harp wrote in an email Friday. "The city is hopeful that Mr. Holland will comply with the court order and move the boat to a suitable location that is consistent with applicable laws."
Holland contends that his restoration project was legal when he moved the boat to his home and that the city cannot retroactively enforce a law. He also argues that the city singled him out when it created the ordinance in 2009.
It took him about 12 years to build the Pilgrim, a 118-foot replica of a 1770 schooner, now sailing in Dana Point Harbor. That project was during a different era -- the 1970s and 1980s -- and on a Costa Mesa street with different neighbors.
"I can't move the boat," Holland said Friday. "The city's going to have to come in and destroy it. I don't have the heart to."
Holder expected to explain rationale for targeting U.S. citizens abroad
By Sari Horwitz and Peter Finn, Published: March 4
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Monday plans to provide the most detailed account to date of the Obama administration’s legal rationale for killing U.S. citizens abroad, as it did in last year’s airstrike against an alleged al-Qaeda operative in Yemen, officials said.
The rationale Holder plans to offer resembles, in its broad strokes, those previously offered by lower-ranking officials. But his speech Monday will mark a new and higher-profile phase of the administration’s campaign to justify lethal action in those rare instances in which U.S. citizens, such as New Mexico-born Anwar al-Awlaki, join terrorist causes devoted to harming their homeland.
Civil libertarians and other critics have been demanding a more thorough and public accounting of the administration’s logic since the killing of Awlaki in September. Administration officials have relied on a classified opinion, written by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, that provides a legal framework for the unusual action, but they have refused repeated requests to release it despite intense internal debate on the subject.
Holder plans to argue that the killing of an American terrorist abroad is legal under the 2001 congressional authorization of the use of military force, according to an official briefed on the speech, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss its details ahead of its formal release. This official also said Holder plans to say that the U.S. right to self-defense is not limited to traditional battlefields as the government pursues terrorists who present an imminent threat.
Awlaki, 40, was a skilled propagandist and the chief of external operations for al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen, which has attempted a number of terrorist attacks on the United States, according to administration officials. He had been placed on “kill lists” compiled by the CIA and and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command. Awlaki died when a joint CIA-JSOC drone operation fired missiles at him.
He was the first U.S. citizen deliberately targeted by the U.S. government.
Major address on security
The Awlaki operation was carried out after the administration requested and received the Justice Department opinion saying that targeting and killing U.S. citizens overseas was legal under domestic and international law, according to administration officials. The classified memo also included intelligence material about his operational role within al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen.
Senior Obama administration officials, including John O. Brennan, the president’s counterterrorism adviser, and Harold Koh, the State Department legal adviser, have given speeches that offered a broad rationale for U.S. drone attacks on individuals in al-Qaeda and associated forces.
On Feb. 22, in a speech at Yale Law School, Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson said the targeted killing of those suspected of engaging in terrorist activities against the United States, including U.S. citizens, is justified and legal. He did not mention Awlaki by name or the secret CIA drone program.
Holder’s remarks will be included in what administration officials are calling a major national security speech at Northwestern University’s law school in Chicago. The speech may not mention Awlaki by name, but his case has been central to the legal thinking on the issue and in the preparation of the text of Monday’s speech, officials said.
In the administration, there was some reluctance on the part of the intelligence community to discuss the subject publicly. But others argued that the killing of an American citizen by the U.S. government was such an extraordinary event that it required some public accounting.
The American Civil Liberties Union has asked a federal court to force the Obama administration to release legal and intelligence records related to the killing of Awlaki and two other U.S. citizens in drone attacks in Yemen last year. Samir Khan, also a U.S. citizen, was reported to have been killed in the Awlaki attack. And Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, was reportedly killed in a JSOC drone strike two weeks later.
After the killing of Awlaki, several senators called on the Obama administration to release the classified legal memo.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said that “for both transparency and to maintain public support of secret operations, it is important to explain the general framework for counterterrorism actions.”
Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also urged administration officials to release the memo.
Civilian vs. military custody
Holder’s speech will also outline the Obama administration’s approach to counterterrorism and the rule of law, according to an official familiar with the address. Holder will discuss the broad new waivers that President Obama issued last week that allow U.S. law enforcement agencies to retain custody of al-Qaeda terrorism suspects rather than turn them over to the military.
Holder also plans to highlight the success of the civilian court system in the prosecutions and convictions of terrorism suspects. One case he will cite as an example is that of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who tried to bring down a U.S. commercial flight on Christmas Day 2009 by attempting to detonate a bomb hidden in his underwear. He was sentenced last month to life in prison.
Abdulmutallab was arrested by federal law enforcement agents, given his Miranda rights within an hour and processed through the civilian criminal justice system. Some Republican critics argued that Abdulmutallab should never have been advised of his rights to counsel and that the administration should have considered turning him over to the military to continue his interrogation.
But administration officials said that they got the intelligence they needed from him immediately and that later he provided further details on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Some of that information, including on Awlaki’s alleged operational role, was revealed at Abdulmutallab’s sentencing.
Prosecutors said Abdulmutallab was acting on the orders of Awlaki, which may have been a critical factor in the legal reasoning in the classified Justice memo justifying his killing.
Holder will also discuss the debate over whether terrorism suspects should be tried in federal criminal courts or by military commissions. The administration argues that military commissions are appropriate for a small and select group of cases but that it should have the ability to transfer some suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States for trial. Congress, however, has blocked such prosecutions
Cops taking video may grasp that public has same right
Posted: Sunday, March 4, 2012 7:12 am | Updated: 9:53 am, Sun Mar 4, 2012.
By Mark Scarp, contributing columnist
Now that phones with video cameras are widespread, anyone can take video of most anything at any time, including police activity.
Some of this video has justified police actions as warranted and proper. Other examples showed officers engaging in misconduct or even criminal behavior.
Rodney King’s case seems so long ago now, in part because at the time it was seen as an anomaly that someone actually had a camera to record Los Angeles police officers beating him.
Today we’re more likely to tune in to caught-on-tape TV shows that use actual police footage showing officers having to put up with belligerent drunks they’ve pulled over or with people high on something in an escalating domestic dispute, or depicting cops chasing down suspects over fences and through vacant lots.
And so it’s not really surprising to learn from a story by the Tribune’s Garin Groff that by April, 50 Mesa police officers will be taking video of officers in action as a response to the proliferation of footage taken by bystanders. Cost to taxpayers: $67,000.
Groff reported that police in Mesa are doing this to reduce meritless allegations made against police officers, in addition to providing video documentation of crime-scene evidence and things suspects do — things I’m sure that would not look good for suspects if played back in a courtroom.
Mesa Police Chief Frank Milstead’s view, reported by Groff, is that what bystander video that gets broadcast by news media often fails to tell the whole story of the incident. He has a point; only the most provocative few seconds of an incident often makes it onto television news broadcasts.
[And of course data released by the police rarely tells the full story either,
and in fact almost always it is intended to convict the accused person in the media, so they will not get a fair trial and will be convicted]
We can only hope that cops who take video will avoid what some officers wrongly engage in: telling bystanders with their own cameras, who are standing on public property and a reasonable distance from the action, to stop shooting.
Examples abound locally and nationally of police informing folks, who are admittedly often sympathetic with the people whom officers are trying to detain or disperse, to turn off their cameras.
The reasons such officers often give don’t square with the First Amendment: That somehow posting video of an incident that occurred outdoors in front of several witnesses — that is, a public act — is going to somehow spill the beans on police’s ability to build a case.
More likely is that some officers just don’t like to be scrutinized, especially by some guy with a camera who probably isn’t keeping his mouth shut. But in our society the First Amendment provides the public with a valuable ability to check on the power we give police to arrest and, if the situation warrants, to use deadly force. These are potent denials of personal liberty that need to be checked on by a vigilant citizenry.
While there’s nothing wrong with what the Mesa police force is doing, an important thing to remember for these and other men and women in blue is that video they take is by law deemed to be a public record unless they can show in court that it is entitled to be kept secret.
“This is an ongoing investigation,” a time-honored police explanation for refusal to release information, alone is not enough to keep it from the public, according to a 1993 Arizona Supreme Court decision that involved this newspaper. Only a specific showing of the harm caused by the release of a record would be sufficient to keep it confidential, the state’s high court ruled.
This means that even evidence gathered via video would be and should be accessible as a public record under most circumstances. And so members of the public would be entitled to compare police footage as well as that they themselves take.
Just as police blanch at selected snippets of the public’s video of what they do reaching the news media or the Internet, so must they understand that only through access to all their footage of an incident can the public truly know whether police acted accordingly or justifiably.
A Tribune reader identified as downtown resident put it well in a comment to Groff’s story on
eastvalleytribune.com:
“This only makes sense if the public is given full access to the recordings. Otherwise, it’s just a propaganda tool for the police to use to make themselves look good. Full disclosure or nothing.”
It should not be far easier to get video from police when it depicts officers acting properly than video that shows that they are not. So long as the right of access by the public can be fully exercised, then the public should have little to fear from the sight of handheld police cameras.
Read Mark J. Scarp’s opinions here on Sundays. Watch his video commentaries on eastvalleytribune.com. Reach him at mscarp1@cox.net.
Eric Holder: U.S. can target citizens overseas in terror fight
By Richard A. Serrano and Andrew R. Grimm
March 5, 2012, 1:44 p.m.
Reporting from Chicago—
Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. defended the U.S. right to target and kill American citizens overseas in the war on terror, telling an audience at the Northwestern University law school that when those individuals pose a real threat to this country and cannot be captured unharmed, "we must take steps to stop them."
But according to the text of his remarks released by the Justice Department,
he stressed that
it can only be done "in full accordance with the Constitution,"
[I bet he had his fingers crossed!]
and asserted that a targeted slaying, like that of American-born
Anwar Awlaki in a U.S. drone attack in Yemen last year,
can be ordered only after an "imminent threat"
was posed to this country and their capture was "not feasible."
"In this hour of danger, we simply cannot afford to wait until deadly plans are carried out," Holder said. "And we will not."
He said the legal right to kill U.S. citizens overseas
without benefit of a trial was based in Congress’ authorization
to use all necessary and appropriate force against the
perpetrators of 9/11 or those who helped them and the
president’s power "to protect the nation from any imminent threat of violent attack."
[Hmmm so Congress can vote to suspend the Constitution and let the President murder anybody he feels like????]
That authority is "not limited to the battlefields in Afghanistan,"
Holder said, adding that,
"We are at war with a stateless enemy, prone to shifting operations from country to country."
His speech, in a carefully orchestrated address Monday at the law school’s Chicago campus, came after sharp questions over the Obama administration’s slaying of Awlaki, born in New Mexico, and how his killing comports with the oft-repeated stance from Holder and the White House that terrorists should be brought to justice in U.S. federal courts in this country.
The attorney general has been at the center of the controversy over trying to defend the administration’s policy toward handling terrorists.
Obama in the 2008 campaign pledged to close the military prison for terrorists at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and he and Holder have repeatedly insisted that terrorists should be tried in federal civilian courts rather than military tribunals. But after intense pressure from Republicans and some Democrats, they have had to back off on shutting Guantanamo Bay, as well as their plan to try five top Sept. 11 plotters in federal court in New York.
Since the drone attack last fall that killed Awlaki and a second American citizen, Samir Khan,
conservatives began casting the administration as two-faced in its policy for terrorists,
and liberals questioned how Obama and Holder could justify killing Americans.
Holder did not mention the September slayings of Awlaki or Khan,
or the reported slaying of Awlaki’s 16-year-old son,
Abdulrahman, in a drone attack two weeks later.
Nor did he discuss the Department of Justice Office of Legal Policy document giving the administration legal justification for the use of force.
Indeed, he did not even acknowledge that such a document exists, although several organizations have filed suit to make it public.
Holder did not take questions from reporters after his remarks, and while he originally was going to answer questions from the law school audience, on Monday morning he abruptly canceled that plan.
Evidence has shown the 40-year-old Awlaki, a radical cleric, was a major propagandist for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. He also was linked to Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, who is being court-martialed for the 2009 rampage that killed 13 at Ft. Hood, Texas, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian sentenced in federal court in Detroit last month to life in prison with no parole for trying to ignite a bomb on a jetliner on Christmas Day 2009.
The government has alleged Awlaki encouraged Hasan and Abdulmutallab in their plots to kill Americans, with Holder on Monday strongly suggesting that someone like him meets three criteria for an attack with lethal force – he poses an imminent threat against the U.S, his capture is not feasible, and his slaying "would be conducted in a manner consistent with applicable law of war principles."
Holder argued that the Supreme Court has applied a "balancing approach" to the 5th Amendment’s Due Process Clause, which guarantees a citizen his right to due process of law that also "takes into account the realities of combat."
"Here," he said, "the interests of both sides of the scale are extraordinarily weighty."
But, the attorney general added, "it is imperative for the government to counter threats posed by senior operational leaders of al Qaeda, and to protect the innocent people whose lives could be lost in their attacks."
Serrano reported from Washington.
Richard.serrano@latimes.com
dgrimm@tribune.com
Paul Babeu's ex-boyfriend files notice of claim
by Lindsey Collom and Ronald J. Hansen - Mar. 5, 2012 09:41 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
The man who accused Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu of making threats against him to prevent him from revealing their relationship filed paperwork Monday signaling he intends to sue both the sheriff and the county.
The notice of claim, which attorneys for Jose Orozco filed with the sheriff and the county's Board of Supervisors, seeks $1million in damages, according to County Manager Fritz Behring.
Additional details about the notice of claim were unavailable Monday night.
Neither Orozco, nor Orozco's lawyer, Melissa Weiss-Riner, could be reached for comment. Babeu's lawyer also could not be reached.
Tim Gaffney, Sheriff's Office director of communications and grants, issued this statement in response to a request for comment: "A notice of claim was provided to our office earlier today regarding this matter. As with any pending civil litigation, it would be inappropriate to comment at this time."
The claim creates new complexities for Babeu, who is completing his first term as sheriff and is running for a congressional seat in central Arizona.
Babeu's relationship with Orozco surfaced Feb.17 when the Phoenix New Times alleged the sheriff and his attorney, Chris DeRose, had threatened that the former boyfriend, who is Mexican, could be deported if he revealed the relationship.
The next day, Babeu stood in front of the sheriff's office in uniform and acknowledged he is gay but denied abusing his position or making threats. DeRose also has denied making threats. Babeu has said the disclosure in the New Times was the result of an effort to undermine him politically.
Babeu has said that Orozco was a volunteer campaign worker in charge of managing his campaign website and Twitter account. Babeu claims that after the relationship ended, Orozco retaliated by posting negative material online.
Babeu has said he declined to pursue criminal charges against Orozco after Babeu's lawyer sent him a cease-and-desist letter and Orozco agreed to stop posting the material.
A day after DeRose told The Arizona Republic that the sheriff would not seek an independent investigation to clear his name, Babeu asked Attorney General Tom Horne to open an inquiry. Horne designated his office's solicitor general to lead an independent investigation.
Amy Rezzonico, a spokeswoman for the state Attorney General's Office, said that the investigation will look at all allegations that have been made, both against Babeu and against Orozco.
In the weeks since the New Times story, Babeu's background has come under renewed scrutiny. One of his opponents for the Republican primary, state Sen. Ron Gould, R-Lake Havasu City, has called for Babeu to drop out of the congressional race. Pete Rios, chairman of the Pinal County Board of Supervisors, has also called on Babeu to step aside as sheriff.
The lawsuit could create new political headaches for Babeu, who is eeking to put his campaign on firmer footing.
The district he is running in is perhaps Arizona's most conservative and the GOP field includes a sitting member of Congress, Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.
Before the Orozco matter, Babeu burst into the race with $263,000 in campaign funds raised since he officially began exploring a race in October. That surpassed Gosar and instantly made Babeu the front-runner for the seat in the newly drawn district.
Beyond being a political liability, Orozco also poses another potential legal one for Babeu as well. Orozco is a Mexican national who has said he worked on Babeu's campaign websites before their breakup. He is believed to be a legal immigrant here on a tourist visa, which would prohibit him from such work, even if unpaid.
Also, questions have arisen about whether Orozco made a $40 campaign contribution to Babeu's 2008 run for sheriff; Babeu's campaign filings list a donor named Jose Orozco. Political donations are also prohibited for such immigrants.
In addition to the potential lawsuit, the Sheriff's Office already faces a federal investigation into whether one or more employees engaged in prohibited political activity while on the job.
Of course from a Libertarian point of view any and all taxes are wrong.
Cash-strapped Youngtown considers disbanding
With key services already cut, W. Valley town considers disbanding
by Dustin Gardiner - Mar. 5, 2012 10:37 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
A standing-room-only crowd crammed into a Youngtown meeting room as the town's leaders debated disbanding their 50-year-old police force.
Some residents yelled at council members. Others wept in the back of the room. The mayor, his temper flaring, threatened to have the chambers cleared.
Three hours later, six police officers left without jobs. Each was given a month's pay and told to hand over gun and badge.
The December move was a sign of just how desperate things have become in the northwest Valley town, as a budget shortfall endlessly chips away at public services and, perhaps eventually, the town itself.
John Cosmos, owner of Youngtown Cafe, which faces the main street alongside an Ace Hardware store and other small businesses, said diners have been fretting about the town's future since the vote late last year to ax the police force.
"People are worried, you know," Cosmos said. "You might as well call it a dead town."
Town leaders, facing a financial quagmire among the worst in the Phoenix area, are considering once-unthinkable options undertaken by only a few cash-strapped cities in the country.
The town could make further budget cuts so steep that most services are gone. It could seek to be annexed by a neighboring city.
Or it could disincorporate, ceasing to exist as its own town and returning to be a piece of Maricopa County.
It's the first modern Arizona town or city to openly consider calling it quits because of money woes.
Youngtown's budget problems are exacerbated by its microscopic size. The town budget is so small that there's not much left to cut. Most of the bread-and-butter services that cities typically provide, such as police protection, garbage pickup and park maintenance, have already been outsourced.
The town's commercial tax base is limited. Land-locked between Sun City and El Mirage along Grand Avenue, the town has nowhere to grow to add a new development or major shopping center. The economic downturn has choked what revenues there are from the few businesses.
Residents don't pay a city property tax. And although Youngtown was once a retirement community, a legal decision stripped it of its age-restricted status. The arrival of younger residents and families brought an increasing demand for public services such as police and code enforcement.
The result is an operating cost that is projected to inevitably outpace revenue, with no apparent scenario for change.
Before the police vote last year, Mayor Mike LeVault painted a grim scenario for the town: a car driving toward a cliff in the distance. Unless the town of 6,100 changed course, he said, it would have exhausted its approximately $1.8 million in reserve funds within a few years.
"I can see the cliff down the road -- two years, three years," LeVault said at the time. "In its current form, this town is not sustainable long term."
He said that although the decision saved Youngtown from financial collapse, the town still lacks the fiscal stability needed to ensure survival.
Bigger money woes
The disbanding of Youngtown's police force is the latest in a series of cuts that have shrunk its workforce from nearly 40 employees seven years ago to 23 today. But the downsizing hasn't solved the long-term money problem.
Town Manager Lloyce Robinson said the town's budget for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, projects expenses that exceed revenue by about $183,000. The town would have to cover the difference by making further cuts or pulling from its savings account of $1.8 million.
"You do the math," Robinson told a fellow town manager who was called her office on a recent afternoon over rumors that the town was going broke.
At the current pace, the town has several years before its reserves could be depleted.
Youngtown's $4.7 million budget covers the basics: a town manager, public-works department, finance director, code-enforcement officers, town clerk, Municipal Court and other office workers. The only non-core service is the town library and museum, which cost about $100,000 a year to operate.
Its revenues are far smaller than communities of comparable size such as Litchfield Park, Guadalupe and Tolleson. Those have annual budgets of more than $7 million each and still offer recreation programs and other amenities that Youngtown cut years ago.
More than 25 percent of Youngtown's budget had gone toward its fledgling police force. Since the town cut the force and contracted with the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office for patrols, Robinson estimates it could save more than $400,000 by the end of the fiscal year.
This would leave the town with a projected deficit of about $183,000 this year.
Before the vote to cut the police force, the town had estimated a $583,000 shortfall this year. Although the cut brought a savings, Robinson said, deficits are likely in future years if the revenue equation isn't changed.
Town leaders say their decision to outsource policing was a matter of coming to grips with the reality that they are too small and revenue-strapped to afford their own.
Some have long questioned if they could maintain a properly trained and equipped department.
That fear rose to the forefront in August, when Police Chief Terry McDonald warned the council that a lack of resources was putting his officers at risk.
Two years ago, an outside consultant warned that the department was not equipped to respond to major crimes and did not have enough officers to ensure 24-hour police protection.
After months of consternation -- and McDonald's departure for a job in a neighboring city -- the Town Council voted unanimously in December to disband the police force. Council members said they could no longer put officers on the streets knowing that they could be in harm's way, with the town bearing the liability.
Critics said Youngtown should have cut everything else before booting its police force, including its library and salaries for the mayor and council members, which are $1,000 per month for the mayor, $600 for the vice mayor and $500 for council members.
There is now a bitter rift in town, and some residents have threatened to file a recall campaign against the mayor and council.
Residents said cutting Youngtown's Police Department was akin to removing a piece of the town's identity.
The mayor disagrees, seeing the vote as an unavoidable step toward a secure future. He said the town still has a long way to go to build its fiscal "firewall."
"I think what it does, at the very least, is buy us time to regroup," LeVault said. "That one decision on policing does not solve our financial problems."
History
Those problems are rooted in tradition. Retirees who dominated the Town Council for years deliberately kept the town small, not raising taxes or annexing land.
That limited the town's ability to grow and accommodate changes in its population.
Youngtown was founded in 1954 and claims to be the nation's first master-planned community for active seniors, despite nearby Sun City's reputation as the pioneer.
The Youngtown vision was to create a utopia for retirees from around the country, who would flock there for affordable housing and live out their twilight years in sunshine.
For decades, the concept was golden. Hundreds of modest, ranch-style homes sprang up along streets winding around a fishing lake, five parks and a town clubhouse.
Residents even founded the nation's first AARP chapter.
Then, the town's age restriction was challenged.
A town ordinance required that one resident in every home be more than 55 years old and that no one be under 18 years old. In 1998, the town lost a legal battle with the state attorney general and was forced to lift its age restriction.
An influx of young families and children followed. The population doubled from about 3,000 to more than 6,000 over the years, and the town catered to its new residents with playgrounds and youth-sports programs.
Crime rates rose, increasing the demand for police and code enforcement. Officers who had spent much of their time dealing with minor problems were receiving calls for domestic violence, drugs and sex crimes involving minors.
The town's new residents weren't as apt to keep neatly manicured lawns and gardens, spurring complaints from longtime residents.
Youngtown's transition from retirement community to one like any other across the Phoenix area was the tipping point toward its current budget conundrum.
Service needs increased as the population changed, but the town didn't take steps to bring in more revenue and shore up its finances.
The town is further hampered by being landlocked, preventing it from annexing land for new businesses or subdivisions. There are no major employers and only small businesses that bring little sales-tax revenue.
Other cities in the Valley have depended on new rooftops to bring construction sales taxes and spur commercial growth.
Borrowing money isn't a likely option. The town has no guaranteed revenue source, such as utility fees or a property tax, to secure a bond. Town leaders still lament a 1995 decision to sell the water utility to a private company.
Larger municipalities can leverage buildings in tough economic times or borrow money for infrastructure upgrades, but beyond its tiny Town Hall complex, Youngtown has little in the way of hard assets.
Youngtown isn't getting much help from other levels of government, either. The Arizona Legislature has tightened its belt in recent years by taking money from cities and towns, cutting revenues to Youngtown by about $500,000 since 2009, officials estimate.
Federal grants that the town has depended on to fund its recent capital projects, such as paving its alleys and improving fire-hydrant flow in older neighborhoods, are also being scaled back or eliminated.
Given the lack of revenue options, town leaders said it could be a matter of time before they are ultimately forced to raise taxes or pursue other unsavory options, such as disincorporation, bankruptcy or deannexation.
A small group of residents continues to push for a property tax to save the town, but a survey last fall indicated that a majority of residents are still cool to the idea.
Two years ago, 73 percent of voters rejected a property tax that would have mostly funded the Police Department.
Town Council members recently appointed a citizens tax advisory committee to, among other things, study the property-tax issue, talk to residents and make a recommendation on whether to put it before voters. The council had opted not to put a tax on the ballot this year.
"The town is in a position now where they're trying to make up for a lot of mistakes," said Lora Rice, a committee member whose family has run an auto-body shop in town since 1971. "Because if we don't have money, we don't have a town."
Still, others say they would rather quit being a town than pay property taxes.
They complain the city provides residents with far fewer services and amenities than neighboring communities that have public pools, recreation programs and outreach services for seniors and the disabled.
Losing its identity
Ceasing to be a town is easier said than done.
Two-thirds of voters must petition the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, who can then decide to disincorporate the town or call for an election to let voters decide. A trustee would be appointed to sell the town's property and wind up its business.
Few towns or cities in Arizona have successfully disincorporated.
According to the League of Arizona Cities and Towns, none has done so in at least four decades.
South Tucson, a community of about 5,000, incorporated, disincorporated and reincorporated between 1936 and 1940. Disincorporation campaigns have started and fizzled at other spots, such as Chino Valley and Camp Verde, in recent decades.
On a national level, Youngtown would be one of a few small towns and cities to dissolve since the recession. Each had unique circumstances, but most were so strangled by the recession that leaders decided services could be provided more cheaply at the county level.
Another option for Youngtown is annexation by a neighbor, but mayors of the only cities that border the town, Peoria and El Mirage, have said they are not interested. In joining either city, Youngtown residents would pay a property tax.
Because no Arizona community has disincorporated in recent memory, other details of the process are not cut and dried.
If residents do decide to return to Maricopa County, the few services that Youngtown still provides would go away or be handled by county departments. Utilities in the town are all privately owned, and fire protection is provided as part of a special tax district with Sun City.
What the county would do with Youngtown's parks, library and other municipal buildings is unclear.
State law provides that any money left over in city coffers would go toward projects to benefit the community.
For Youngtown residents, the decision is still up in the air. In the fall survey, there was no clear consensus among those who responded on the question of disincorporation.
Youngtown leaders said they plan to fight to preserve the town. LeVault hedges over whether that means a property tax, which he said must bubble up from a citizen effort to succeed.
But, he admits, without more revenue, the town could die a slow death.
"There is going to be a day of reckoning," Robinson said. "It will come."
Arizona inmates denied adequate medical care, lawsuit says
by Bob Ortega - Mar. 6, 2012 12:36 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
A lawsuit filed Tuesday accuses Arizona's Department of Corrections of unconstitutionally denying adequate medical and mental-health care to inmates in state prisons, and of routinely warehousing mentally-ill inmates in solitary confinement under brutal conditions.
"In two decades of prison litigation, this is one of the most broken systems I've seen," said David Fathi, an attorney with the ACLU's National Prison Project. "The indifference to the needs of desperately ill people is shocking. And the gratuitous cruelty we see in Arizona's SMUs (solitary confinement units) is unlike anything we've ever seen even in other states' Supermax prisons."
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix by a coalition of human-rights groups, offers a myriad of specific, horrific allegations: an inmate whose pleas for help were ignored for two years while cancer swelled his liver to four times its normal size and then killed him; a four-months pregnant woman who was told her problems were "all in your head" and was left alone in a cell while she miscarried; at least two examples of inmate suicides that poorly-trained staff failed to prevent; an inmate punished for using CPR to save another inmate after a heart attack while corrections officers refused to summon medical help; and many examples of prisoners waiting months and even years for treatment of fractured bones, broken teeth and other medical issues.
More broadly, the suit, which seeks class-action status on behalf of some 33,100 prisoners, cites internal department emails to argue that Corrections Director Charles Ryan and state officials knowingly, systematically and intentionally provide inadequate medical care.
"Is the Department being deliberately indifferent? Maybe. Probably. That would be up to a Federal Judge to decide," wrote Dr. James Baird, the department's director of medical services, in a December 2009 email responding to a prison doctor who complained that the department was breaking the law by providing such poor care.
Ryan did not respond to requests for comment regarding the lawsuit. Corrections spokesman Bill Lamoreaux said that the state Attorney General's office advised Corrections officials not to comment. However, in a Feb. 17 letter to the Prison Law Office, a San Quentin, Calif.-based group involved in the suit along with the ACLU, the Arizona Center for Disability Law, and the law firms of Perkins Coie and Jones Day, Ryan dismissed the allegations.
"There is not a system-wide deficit in the delivery of health care," Ryan wrote. "While there have been some delays, there is no evidence (of) deliberate indifference by ADC or any member of its health care services staff. Our internal review does not support the wholesale allegations you have made in your original correspondence."
Last year, the Prison Law Office won a landmark case against California's Department of Corrections before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ordered California to release some 30,000 prisoners to relieve prison overcrowding. In October, the Prison Law Office wrote to Ryan, alleging problems with prisoners' medical and mental-health care and demanding a legal agreement to improve care in order to avoid a suit.
On Nov. 17, Arizona's Department of Corrections agreed to investigate the allegations in exchange for a three-month delay in any lawsuit. Ryan's Feb. 17 letter ended that agreement.
While Ryan denied systemic problems, many of the allegations in the suit were consistent with those reported by The Arizona Republic in December and that have been raised by inmates, corrections officers and medical staff within the prison system in correspondence and interviews with the newspaper.
Regarding the use of solitary confinement, many states, including California, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Ohio and Wisconsin, bar solitary confinement for inmates diagnosed with serious mental illness, because the conditions in solitary make those inmates deteriorate psychiatrically. By contrast, Arizona routinely places mentally-ill inmates in long-term solitary confinement, and uses solitary cells to house suicidal prisoners, according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday.
Dustin Brislan, one of the plaintiffs in the suit, is a seriously mentally ill inmate at the Eyman state prison who has repeatedly cut himself and been placed on suicide watch.
In a letter to The Republic, Brislan wrote that "Not only are the mentally ill forced to spend up to 24 hours in small windowless cells, but (we) are subject to harassment. Here at SMU-1 watch pod, the lights are left on all night long. At Browning Unit watch pod, the suicide watches aren't given mattresses to sleep on. They sleep on cold steel. I know this because I've been on watch 6-7 times." He wrote that the conditions "make prisoners' mental illnesses worse. We've got nowhere to turn for help. Several people have committed suicide."
Seven of the ten most recent suicides reported by the department were by prisoners in solitary confinement, even though those prisoners only make up one-tenth of the state-prison population. One of those was Karot Phothong. While in isolation at the Florence prison, he repeatedly asked to be seen by mental-health staff because he was suicidal. According to the suit, "nothing was done for him, and he committed suicide by hanging on Jan. 28." Five other deaths in solitary in the past year remain under investigation.
The lawsuit alleges that prisoners on suicide watch are forced awake by correctional officers every 10 to 30 minutes, around the clock, and that the watch cells are filthy, the walls and food slots so routinely smeared with blood and feces that they are referred to as the "feces cells."
Prisoners in solitary receive two cold meals a day, and are allowed to leave the cells no more than three times a week for a shower and a maximum of two hours' exercise in a windowless, empty concrete "rec pen" cell.
"These conditions are gratuitously cruel," and lead to self-injury and deteriorating mental conditions, said the ACLU's Fathi. "There are no penological nor security justification for those kinds of conditions."
In response to a public-records request by attorneys, Corrections said it doesn't keep records of mental-health programming provided to prisoners in solitary confinement. But it appears to be minimal. According to the suit, one mentally-ill prisoner in isolation at the Eyman prison, Robert Gamez, wasn't seen by a psychiatrist in four years, despite numerous referrals. As of November, four of the six prisons housing seriously mentally ill prisoners, including Eyman, had no psychiatrist on staff.
On her last day of work last June, the sole psychiatrist at the Perryville prison emailed Ryan after staff at the Florence prison, 90 miles away, asked her to prescribe or renew medications for patients there that she had never met or treated. She refused.
The suit noted that Corrections' overall spending on health-care positions fell by $4.4 million, or 8.7 percent, between fiscal 2009 and 2011, while the prison population declined by one percent. As of November, more than 20 percent of health-care positions were vacant. In part, this was because plans to privatize prison health care led many employees to look for jobs elsewhere. In the last fiscal year, overall Corrections spending on health care fell 27 percent from a year earlier, to $111.3 million, or $3,258 per inmate.
The suit cited cases of an inmate losing his vision while waiting three years to see an ophthalmologist; of an inmate waiting two years for a biopsy while his prostate cancer metastatized into a stage 2 cancer; of an inmate with eye damage and broken orbital bones from an assault waiting nearly a year to receive proper treatment.
When the state locks someone up, noted Fathi, it assumes responsibility for that person's basic needs, including health care. "The vast majority of these people are going to get out some day. Do we want them to be able to get a job? To become productive? Or do we want them debilitated by physical illness, by mental illness, and remaining public charges when they get out of prison?" he asked.
The suit seeks an order to the department to provide adequate medical and mental-health care staffing, to provide timely and adequate treatment and medication, to give inmates access to adequate mental-health care, and to prohibit isolation that puts prisoners at risk of physical and mental harm.
The Department of Corrections has 21 days to file a response to the suit.
Girl handcuffed at school for being rude, officials say
Mar. 6, 2012 09:39 AM
Associated Press
BRIGHTON, Colo. -- A sixth-grader found out the hard way that some administrators won't tolerate sassing and being rude.
The Adams County Sheriff's Office says 11-year-old Yajira Quezada was handcuffed and taken to a detention center after she disobeyed orders from an assistant principal and became extremely rude.
The girl claimed she was cold and needed to get a sweater from her locker when she was stopped for questioning.
According to KUSA-TV, the Adams County Sheriff's Office says handcuffing kids during transport is standard procedure.
The girl moved to another school and no charges were filed.
8 women allege rape, harassment in military suit
Mar. 6, 2012 06:17 PM
Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- Eight current and former members of the U.S. military allege in a new federal lawsuit that they were raped, assaulted or harassed during their service and suffered retaliation when they reported it to their superiors.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, accuses the military of having a "high tolerance for sexual predators in their ranks" and fostering a hostile environment that discourages victims of sexual assault from coming forward and punishes them when they do. The suit claims the Defense Department has failed to take aggressive steps to confront the problem despite public statements suggesting otherwise.
The eight women include an active-duty enlisted Marine and seven others who served in the Navy and Marine Corps. Seven women allege that a comrade raped or tried to sexually assault them, including in a commanding officer's office after a pub crawl in Washington and inside a Naval Air Station barracks room in Florida. The eighth says she was harassed and threatened while deployed to Iraq, only to be told by a superior that "this happens all the time."
"There (are) no circumstances under which women who are brave enough and patriotic enough to stand up and defend this nation should have to be subjected to being called 'slut, whore, walking mattress,'" said Susan Burke, a lawyer representing the women. "This is the year 2012. This kind of conduct is not acceptable."
The women say they've suffered depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder because of the assaults. One woman says she tried to commit suicide after being raped inside her home by a senior officer and his civilian friend.
The lawsuit names as defendants past and present military leaders, including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and his predecessors.
Defense Department spokeswoman Cynthia Smith said she could not discuss pending litigation, but said the military has no tolerance for sexual assault. Under a policy announced in December, service members who report a sexual assault have the option of quickly transferring to another unit or installation.
She said the department has also increased funding for investigators and judge advocates to receive specialized training in sexual assault cases and has appointed a two-star officer to direct a sexual assault response and prevention office. The Pentagon is assembling a data system to track reports of sexual assault and is reviewing how commanding officers are trained in preventing and responding to rape cases.
"It is important that everyone in uniform be alert to the problem and have the leadership training to help prevent these crimes," Smith said in a written statement.
The Marine Corps issued a statement Tuesday evening saying it takes sexual assault allegations seriously and continues to improve in responding to and preventing rapes within the ranks. The statement challenged the allegations of two former Marines -- Ariana Klay and Elle Helmer -- who are part of the lawsuit, saying their claims had been investigated and properly handled. Although The Associated Press normally does not identify victims of sexual assault, Klay and Helmer agreed to publicly discuss their case.
"Commanders are expected to foster a climate where Marines will trust their command to listen respectfully, respond confidentially, investigate immediately, and take appropriate action," the statement said.
A similar lawsuit was filed last year in federal court in Virginia. But the case was dismissed after the government argued in part that the judiciary had to defer to military decisions on command and discipline. That decision is being appealed.
Klay, a former Marine Corps officer and plaintiff who says she was raped in August 2010, said the military avoids scrutiny for its handling of these accusations by projecting a warrior culture immune to questioning and because the public doesn't want to believe these crimes and cover-ups are occurring among service members.
"A noble cause is a great vehicle for corruption because nobody wants to look and nobody is going to look," Klay told the AP.
After serving in Iraq, Klay was recruited to Military Barracks Washington in the nation's capital, where she says she was falsely accused of adultery, taunted as a "slut" and "whore" and told to "deal with it" by a superior. She said the situation became so uncomfortable that she requested a deployment to Afghanistan, but that request was denied because she was told she was too critical to the command.
Klay alleges she was raped inside her row house near the barracks on the morning of Aug. 28, 2010, by an officer who said he planned to humiliate her and by his civilian friend. She said she reported the rape and left the barracks, but endured retaliation and became so despondent that she attempted suicide.
Haytham Faraj, a lawyer for the officer, denied that any rape occurred and said that his client and Klay were instead involved in a consensual sexual relationship. His client was found not guilty of the sexual assault allegations after a court-martial and was convicted instead of the lesser offenses of adultery and indecent language.
Another plaintiff, Elle Helmer, who says she was told she obtained a public affairs position at the Marine Barracks because she was considered the "prettiest," reported being sexually assaulted by a commanding officer following a St. Patrick's Day pub crawl in Washington's Capitol Hill in 2006. She says she was discouraged from submitting to a rape kit and medical examination and was told she needed to toughen up. The lawsuit says the military initially refused to investigate, and Helmer says she found herself investigated for public intoxication and conduct unbecoming. She says left the military soon after.
"It took approximately 72 hours for the victim to become the accused in this example, and that was really the beginning of the Spanish Inquisition," Helmer said.
"Are they saying we're all lying? Are they saying it doesn't happen? Hiding behind their rhetoric of zero tolerance is entirely cowardly and misleading and they know it," Helmer said.
Sky Harbor adds 'trusted traveler' program
Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport has joined 23 other airports nationwide in offering the “trusted traveler” program that allows frequent international passengers who've cleared a federal background check to hustle through security checkpoints.
Sky Harbor is one of four airports to start offering the Global Entry program for trusted travelers in recent weeks.
A new federal regulation expanding the program formally went into effect on Tuesday. The program’s expansion was announced last month by U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
A pilot of Global Entry was launched in 2008 and was, until the new rule was written, available at 20 airports.
In addition to Sky Harbor, three other international airports recently began offering expedited security checks, including Minneapolis-St. Paul, Charlotte, and Denver.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol oversees the program for DHS, and estimates that travelers cleared for participating Global Entry get through the Transportation Security Administration’s checkpoints 20 minutes faster than the average traveler.
To apply for the trusted-traveler clearance, a passenger must be at least 14 years old and pass a security-threat assessment. Passengers 14 to 18 years old must have obtained signed consent of a parent or guardian. The government charges a $100 processing fee for every applicant.
Once a traveler has clearance, he or she can check in at special Global Entry kiosks, which look like small ATMs in the terminals of the airports participating in the program to enter the expedited lines at security checkpoints.
As of June 6, 2011, 75 percent (148,000 travelers) out of 198,000 applicants had been approved for the trusted-traveler program, federal documents show.
- Emily Gersema, emily.gersema@arizonarepublic.com
Border Patrol testing surveillance blimp
Mar. 7, 2012 07:01 AM
Associated Press
NOGALES -- That big white thing flying over Nogales this week is a tethered-camera-equipped blimp the Border Patrol is testing out.
The Nogales International reports the aerostat is equipped with surveillance equipment and is on a test flight for the next week or so.
Border Patrol spokesman Lloyd Easterling says it was first deployed Monday at an altitude of between 1,500 and 2,000 feet.
Easterling says when and if the blimp returns to the Nogales border area will depend on whether the agency is satisfied with the system's performance.
According to the blimp maker's website, the aerostat is capable of scanning a city-sized area at once, making it virtually impossible to sneak up to, or through a protected area.
Drug policy as race policy: Book galvanizes the debate
By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER
POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Mar 07, 2012
Garry McCarthy, a 30-year veteran of law enforcement, did not expect to hear anything too startling when he appeared at a conference on drug policy organized last year by an African-American minister in Newark, N.J., where he was the police director.
But then a law professor named Michelle Alexander took the stage and delivered an impassioned speech attacking the war on drugs as a system of racial control comparable to slavery and Jim Crow — and received a two-minute standing ovation from the 500 people in the audience.
"These were not young people living in high-crime neighborhoods," McCarthy, who is now police superintendent in Chicago, recalled in telephone interview. "This was the black middle class."
"I don't believe in the government conspiracy, but what you have to accept is that that narrative exists in the community and has be addressed," he said. "That was my real a-ha moment."
McCarthy is not alone. Over the past two years, Alexander has been provoking such moments across the country — and across the political spectrum — with her book, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness," which has become a surprise best seller since its paperback version came out in January. Sales have totaled some 175,000 copies after an initial hardcover printing of a mere 3,000, according to the publisher, the New Press.
The book marshals pages of statistics and legal citations to argue that the get-tough approach to crime that began in the Nixon administration and intensified with Ronald Reagan's declaration of the war on drugs has had a crippling effect on black America.
Today, Alexander writes, nearly one-third of black men are likely to spend time in prison at some point, only to find themselves falling into permanent second-class citizenship after they get out. That is a familiar argument made by many critics of the criminal justice system, but Alexander's book goes further, asserting that the crackdown was less a response to the actual explosion of violent crime than a deliberate effort to push back the gains of the civil rights movement.
For many African-Americans, the book — which has so far spent six weeks on the paperback nonfiction best-seller list— has given eloquent and urgent expression to deep feelings that the criminal justice system is stacked against them.
"Everyone in the African-American community had been seeing exactly what she is talking about but couldn't put it into words," said Phillip Jackson, executive director of the Black Star Project, an educational advocacy group in Chicago, who has blasted its 60,000 email subscribers with what he called near-daily messages about the book and Alexander since he saw her speak a year and a half ago.
It is also having a galvanizing effect on some white readers, including those who might question the book's portrayal of the war on drugs as a continuation of race war by other means.
"The book is helping white folks who otherwise would have simply dismissed that idea understand why so many people believe it," said David M. Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control and John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "It is making them take that seriously."
"The New Jim Crow" arrives at a receptive moment, when declining crime rates and exploding prison budgets have made conservatives and liberals alike more ready to question the wisdom of keeping nearly 1 in 100 Americans behind bars. But Alexander, who teaches at the Moritz School of Law at Ohio State University, said in an interview that the more provocative claims of her book did not come easily to her. When she first encountered the "New Jim Crow" metaphor on a protest sign in Oakland, Calif., a decade ago, she was a civil rights lawyer with an impeccable resume — Stanford Law School, a Supreme Court clerkship— and was leery of embracing arguments that might be considered, as she put it, "crazy."
Alexander, who is black, knew that African-Americans were overrepresented in prison, though she resisted the idea that this was anything more than unequal implementation of color-blind laws. But her work as director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Racial Justice Project in Northern California, she said, opened her eyes to the extent of lifelong exclusion many offenders face, including job discrimination, elimination from juries and voter rolls, and even disqualification from food stamps, public housing and student loans.
"It's easy to be completely unaware that this vast new system of racial and social control has emerged," she said. "Unlike in Jim Crow days, there were no ‘Whites Only' signs. This system is out of sight, out of mind."
In conversation, she disputes any suggestion that she is describing a conspiracy. While the title is "provocative," she said, the book contains no descriptions of people gathering secretly in rooms.
"The main thrust," she said, "is to show how historically both our conscious and unconscious biases and anxieties have played out over and over again to birth these vast new systems of social control."
Whatever Alexander's account of the origins of mass incarceration, her overall depiction of its human costs is resonating even with people who disagree with her politics.
Rick Olson, a state representative in Michigan, was one of the few whites and few Republicans in the room when Alexander gave a talk sponsored by the state's black caucus in January.
"I had never before connected the dots between the drug war, unequal reinforcement, and how that reinforces poverty," Wilson said. "I thought, ‘Gee whiz, let me get this book."'
Reading it, he said, inspired him to draft a bill decriminalizing the use and possession of marijuana.
The Rev. Charles Hubbard, the pastor at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, a mostly white evangelical congregation in Garland, Texas, says he has started carrying the book with him everywhere and is urging his fellow pastors to preach about it, though he acknowledges it may be a tough sell in Texas.
"I think people need to hear the message," he said. "I don't think Anglo folks have any idea how difficult it is for African-American men who get caught up in the criminal justice system."
Hubbard said he was particularly impressed by how "well-documented" Alexander's book is. But to some of the book's detractors, including some who are deeply sympathetic to her goal of ending mass incarceration, its scholarship falls short.
In an article to be published next month in The New York University Law Review, James Forman Jr., a clinical professor at Yale Law School and former public defender, calls mass incarceration a social disaster but challenges what he calls Alexander's "myopic" focus on the war on drugs.
Painting the war on drugs as mainly a backlash against the gains of the civil rights movement, Forman writes, ignores the violent crime wave of the 1970s and underplays the support among many African-Americans for get-tough measures. Furthermore, he argues, drug offenders make up less than 25 percent of the nation's total prison population, while violent offenders — who get little mention in "The New Jim Crow" — make up a much larger share. [I have to disagree with that statement. Other numbers I have read say that from half to two thirds of the people in prison are there for victimless drug war crimes]
"Even if every single one of these drug offenders were released tomorrow," he writes, "the United States would still have the world's largest prison system."
To Alexander, however, that argument neglects the full scope of the problem. Our criminal "caste system," as she calls it, affects not just the 2.3 million people who are behind bars, but also the 4.8 million others who are on probation (predominately for nonviolent offenses) or parole, to say nothing of the millions more whose criminal records stigmatize them for life.
"This system depends on the prison label, not just prison time," she said.
In a telephone interview, Forman, a son of the civil rights leader James Forman, praised the book's "spectacular" success in raising awareness of the issue. And some activists say their political differences with Alexander's account matter less than the overall picture she paints of a brutal and unjust system.
Craig M. DeRoche, director of external affairs at the Justice Fellowship, the advocacy arm of Prison Fellowship, a Christian ministry founded by the former Nixon aide Charles Colson, said he rejects the political history in "The New Jim Crow" but still considers it essential reading for conservatives.
"The facts are the facts," he said. "The numbers are the numbers."
Which means there are about 42 people in the Phoenix area with cars that the FBI is spying on.
And about 10 in the Tucson area.
(The Phoenix metro area has a population of about 4.2 million and Tucson a population of 1 million).
Supreme Court Ruling Prompts FBI to Turn Off 3,000 Tracking Devices
ABC News
By Ariane de Vogue
A Supreme Court decision has caused a "sea change" in law enforcement, prompting the FBI to turn off nearly 3,000 Global Positioning System (GPS) devices used to track suspects, according to the agency's general counsel.
When the decision-U.S. v. Jones-was released at the end of January, agents were ordered to stop using GPS devices immediately and told to await guidance on retrieving the devices, FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann said in a recent talk at a University of San Francisco conference. Weissmann said the court's ruling lacked clarity and the agency needs new guidance or it risks having cases overturned.
The Jones case stemmed from the conviction of night club owner Antoine Jones on drug charges. Law enforcement had used a variety of techniques to link him to co-conspirators in the case, including information gathered from a GPS device that was placed on a Jeep primarily used by Jones. Law enforcement had no valid warrant to place the device on the car.
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for a five-member majority, held that the installation and use of the device constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment based on trespass grounds. The ruling overturned Jones' conviction.
"It is important to be clear about what occurred in this case," Scalia wrote. "The government physically occupied private property for the purpose of obtaining information. We have no doubt that such a physical intrusion would have been considered a 'search' within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment."
It was a narrow ruling only directly impacting those devices that were physically placed on vehicles.
Weissmann said it wasn't Scalia's majority opinion that caused such turmoil in the bureau, but a concurring opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito. Alito, whose opinion was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, agreed with the Court's conclusion in the case but wrote separately because his legal reasoning differed from the majority.
Alito focused not on the attachment of the device, but the fact that law enforcement monitored Jones for about a month. Alito said "the use of longer-term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on expectations of privacy." He also suggested that Scalia's reliance on laws of trespass, will "provide no protection" for surveillance accomplished without committing a trespass.
"For example," Alito wrote, "suppose that the officers in the present case had followed respondent by surreptitiously activating a stolen vehicle detection system that came with the car when it was purchased?"
In his talk at a University of San Francisco Law Review Symposium, Weissmann suggested that Alito's concurrence means that several members of the court are concerned with long-term surveillance by technologies beyond GPS systems and that the FBI needs new guidance in order to ensure that evidence does not get thrown out.
"I just can't stress enough," Weissmann said, "what a sea change that is perceived to be within the department."
He said that after agents were told to turn off the devices, his office had to issue guidance on how some of the devices that had been used without a warrant could actually be retrieved. "We had to come up with guidance about you could locate [the devices] without violating the law," Weissmann said. "It wasn't obvious that you could turn it back on to locate it because now you needed probable cause or reasonable suspicion to do that."
Weissmann said the FBI is working on two memos for agents in the field. One seeks to give guidance about using GPS devices. A second one targets other technologies beyond the GPS, because, Weissmann said, "there is no reason to think this is just going to end with GPS."
"I think the court did not wrestle with the problems their decision creates," Weissmann said. "Usually the court tends to be more careful about cabining its decisions" and offering useful guidance. But in the Jones opinion, he said, the court didn't offer much clarity or any bright line rules that would have been helpful to law enforcement.
"Guidance which consist of 'two days might be good, 30 days is too long' is not very helpful," Weissmann said.
Catherine Crump, and attorney with the ACLU, welcomed the court's ruling as a first step toward preserving privacy rights.
"Alito's concurrence concerned the FBI because if tracking someone's movements violates their privacy, that should be true no matter what technology the FBI uses," says Crump. "The FBI now needs to give guidance to agents in the field, and the Alito decision raises serious questions about the constitutionality of other ways of tracking suspects."
As for Antoine Jones, the man whose conviction was thrown out because of the ruling, the government has announced that it wants to retry Jones without using evidence obtained from the GPS device. The trial is expected to start in May.
Sexual assault allegations lead Chandler PD to question Phoenix cop
Posted: Wednesday, March 7, 2012 1:39 pm
By Mike Sakal, Tribune
Ricardo Orosco, 29, who has worked for the Phoenix Police Department for six years, voluntarily met with Chandler police detectives about 2 p.m. in connection to allegations from three women accusing him of sexually assaulting them in Chandler over the last six months, according to Chandler police.
Orosco, who lives in Chandler, was released to his attorney. He had been placed on administrative leave last Thursday in an unrelated case involving another Phoenix police employee, according to Phoenix police.
Orosco is accused of initiating inappropriate misconduct with a female civilian employee in the Phoenix Police Department, an incident that allegedly took place on Feb. 29, according to Sgt. Trent Crump, a Phoenix police spokesman.
The current incidents are not the first time that Orosco has faced disciplinary action by the Phoenix Police Department.
In February, 2010, Orosco was arrested by Phoenix police on suspicion of unlawful imprisonment, criminal damage and assault involving an incident against his ex-girlfriend, according to Phoenix police. Although police forwarded the case on to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, the charges later were dropped.
Phoenix police launched an internal investigation into Orosco involving the 2010 incident and the department suspended him for three days without pay because of his behavior, Trump said.
The case in Chandler is an ongoing investigation and investigators plan to submit the case to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office for review, so prosecutors can decide whether to move forward with any charges.
He has not been arrested in connection to that case.
Contact writer: (480) 898-6533 or msakal@evtrib.com
Threats key question in Babeu case
by Lindsey Collom and Daniel González - Mar. 7, 2012 10:30 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
In papers filed with Pinal County officials this week, attorneys for an ex-boyfriend of Sheriff Paul Babeu lay out details that they say show Babeu and his lawyer threatened their client to force him to keep quiet about the relationship.
Jose Orozco, a Mexican national who lives in the Valley, wants $1 million in damages from Pinal County for "mental anguish," "public humiliation and embarrassment," and "fear, panic, stress" caused by the intimidation, said the notice of claim, which indicates an intent to file a lawsuit.
But if Orozco sues, it's unclear what his chances are of winning a judgment or settlement. The evidence outlined in the notice of claim gives alleged quotes and messages from Babeu and his attorney Chris DeRose that, on the one hand, have threatening aspects, some legal experts said. But some alleged threats also are ambiguous or implied. An additional hurdle for Orozco would be to demonstrate that the harm to him went beyond hurt feelings, one legal expert said.
A key alleged threat is one that Orozco's attorney Melissa Weiss-Riner said was made by DeRose in a conversation with her on Sept. 12: DeRose told her that because Orozco's visa had expired, "it would be in his best interest" to sign an agreement not to disclose his romance with Babeu, the notice of claim said. Weiss- Riner told The Arizona Republic this week, however, that DeRose never used the word "deportation" or a form of it. DeRose denies the Sept. 12 conversation ever took place.
The sheriff, who is running for Congress in District 4, and DeRose deny making any threats. After Phoenix New Times published an article Feb. 17 with Orozo's allegations and outed Babeu as gay, Babeu denied abusing his authority, acknowledged his sexuality and has since called the incident an effort to ruin him politically.
The notice of claim is directed at Pinal County and names the Sheriff's Office and the Board of Supervisors' three members and its clerk. According to state law, Orozco can take the county to court if it doesn't respond within 60 days.
On Wednesday, the Arizona Counties Insurance Pool, which insures 11 counties for liability, said Babeu and the insurance pool agreed that Orozco's claim is not valid because it involves a private matter. The insurance pool will not respond to the claim and, if the county is sued, will move to dismiss the matter because "it has nothing to do with the county or Sheriff Babeu in his official capacity," said William H. Hardy, executive director of the insurance pool. Hardy said in filing the claim, Orozco is "trying to get to deep pockets."
The four-page claim letter includes a summary of facts and statements about why Orozco and his attorney believe there is liability and a reason to seek damages. The claim is accompanied by copies of e-mails between DeRose and Orozco or Weiss-Riner, sent in early September, early November and mid-January.
The notice of claim said Babeu and Orozco met in 2006 and "had a relationship" for a short time before going their separate ways. About a year later, they ran into each other at a bar and began dating. Orozco created and maintained a website and Twitter account for Babeu's campaign for sheriff in 2008. In early September last year, they had an argument and broke up.
DeRose and Babeu have said Orozco improperly accessed Babeu's Twitter and other re-election Web accounts. DeRose sent a letter to Orozco demanding he stop accessing the accounts or face possible civil or criminal violations. Weiss-Riner told The Republic this week that after receiving the letter, Orozco agreed to stop accessing Babeu's campaign websites and Twitter account as long as Babeu stopped contacting Orozco.
Around this time, the notice of claim said, several alleged threats were made against Orozco:
On Sept. 4, 2011, Babeu told Orozco in what New Times said was a text message, "You can never have business after this and you will harm me and many others in process ... including yourself & your family."
On Sept. 5, Orozco received a call about 2:30 a.m. from someone he believed was in law enforcement calling at Babeu's request. "After he identified himself and who he was calling for, Mr. Orozco hung up the phone," the notice of claim said.
On Sept. 6, Babeu messaged Orozco, "You and Website Results LLC (Orozco's company) will be sued. ... You have crossed the line better get an attorney. You (sic) brother will also be contacted."
Weiss-Riner said after Orozco agreed to sign the cease-and-desist letter and stop accessing the accounts, she thought the matter was settled but DeRose called back Sept. 12 and made an additional request. He also wanted Orozco to sign a document promising to stop talking about his relationship with Babeu, including in blog posts online, Weiss-Riner said. She said DeRose told her that he wanted Orozco to stop talking about their relationship because it could potentially embarrass Babeu.
Orozco refused to sign any document promising not to talk about their relationship, Weiss-Riner said. She said she told DeRose on the phone, "He is not interested in that agreement."
She said DeRose asked why not. Weiss-Riner said she told DeRose it was because Orozco "isn't embarrassed" by their relationship. That is when DeRose made the threat, Weiss-Riner said.
"He said, 'Well, he should be because it's my understanding his student visa is expired,' " Weiss-Riner said. "That is exactly what he said."
"I said, 'Are you kidding me?'" Weiss-Riner said.
She said she told DeRose, "Don't you think that would be worse for your client?"
DeRose asked why, she said.
"I said, 'Because of his stance on illegal immigration,' " Weiss-Riner said. "I was just shocked that he would say it."
When asked Tuesday if she interpreted DeRose's comment to mean Orozco could be deported if he didn't agree to keep quiet about the relationship, Weiss-Riner responded, "People can draw their own conclusion."
Weiss-Riner refuses to answer questions about Orozco's immigration status.
"I am not going to talk about his immigration at all," she said, adding that she does not practice immigration law and she is only representing Orozco on the civil matter.
DeRose denies ever having the Sept. 12 conversation and on Wednesday repeated his claim that he never asked Orozco to sign a non-disclosure contract.
"The only thing I ever wanted him to sign was an agreement to refrain from further attacks on our website, Twitter, or online transaction systems," DeRose told The Republic. "If you look at her first letter to me, she says that Jose would not sign anything but would refrain from further attacks on the website. I took her at her word."
On Jan. 11 of this year, DeRose sent an e-mail to Weiss-Riner alleging that Orozco was the source of an anonymous comment on a Chino Valley website that said Babeu is gay and had posted revealing photos of himself. A copy of the mail is included in the notice of claim. "We can't control our clients, but when we can't, we shouldn't make promises for them," DeRose told Weiss-Riner.
Expert: Orozco must prove damages
Orozco contends the facts provided in the claim will demonstrate abuses of power, constitutional violations, malicious prosecution, conspiracy, defamation, negligence and infliction of emotional distress. Babeu and his offices used "tactics such as threats and intimidation of harm in a calculated effort to silence Mr. Orozco, effectively placing Mr. Orozco in fear."
As a result, "Mr. Orozco's reputation and integrity have been tarnished, (and) he continues to fear for the safety of himself and his family," the notice states.
Michael Manning, a Phoenix attorney who's handled constitutional claims against law enforcement but is not involved with the Orozco case, said the messages allegedly sent by Babeu are "threats to be taken seriously."
What isn't as clear was Orozco's ability to prove he suffered damages, Manning said.
"For this to have any legs as a serious civil matter, Mr. Orozco would have to show how he was damaged other than losing sleep or having his feelings hurt," Manning said.
Jose de Jesus Rivera, a former U.S. attorney for Arizona who now practices civil law, said comments about invoking someone's visa could easily be interpreted as a threat of deportation, especially if it came from a lawyer representing a chief law-enforcement officer.
"I think that's not an unreasonable interpretation of those facts," said Rivera, who is not involved in the case.
"I think it's definitely pushing the ball more towards the fact that it's a threat than just an average conversation," Rivera said. "If I am looking at this from Orozco's point of view, it's not John Doe from down the street who's making this conversation. It's a law-enforcement agent who obviously has better access to (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and people who have the authority (to deport people), as opposed to say a plumber. You have to look at the totality of the circumstances."
Rivera said, however, that there could still be problems with the case, even if a jury agreed that DeRose had implied a threat of deportation.
"You don't know whether Babeu gave him the authority to make that threat," Rivera said. "You don't know whether Babeu had knowledge of that."
Rivera also said that making an implied threat alone is not enough to make a strong case, especially if no one else heard it.
"It's hard to show from that comment alone whether there is an intent to do a deportation," he said. "You take a case with all the other evidence combined, not just an iota of evidence."
MCSO, actor Seagal sued over 2011 arrest
by Richard Ruelas and JJ Hensley - Mar. 7, 2012 09:25 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
When a tank knocked down his block wall with a boom, waking him from a sound sleep, Jesus Llovera scrambled out of bed and grabbed his jeans and a phone to dial 911.
He made it to the hallway just as his bedroom windows shattered. At his door, members of a Maricopa County Sheriff's Office SWAT team in full riot gear told him to get on the floor.
slideshow Suspected cockfighting operation
He was handcuffed and taken outside, where action-movie actor Steven Seagal waited, clad in camouflage and sunglasses and hoisting a rifle.
"I looked up and saw his face," Llovera said. "It was very strange."
The SWAT team was at Llovera's Laveen home the morning of March 10, 2011, to search it.
Deputies suspected that Llovera, who had pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor violation of being present at a cockfight, still had roosters and chickens on his property, a violation of his probation. They also suspected he was raising them to fight, a Class 5 felony.
But the Sheriff's Office was also participating in the creation of a reality show, "Steven Seagal: Lawman," a cable show that followed Seagal's exploits as a deputized officer. Four cameras from the production company filmed the warrant execution and arrest. Arpaio's office had alerted the media. Reporters and television cameras lined the southwest Phoenix neighborhood's street.
This week, Llovera struck back. Llovera, 43, filed a civil lawsuit Tuesday against the Sheriff's Office and Seagal, claiming his arrest was orchestrated to make for good television. He seeks unspecified monetary damages to be determined by a jury.
The suit, which also names the county Board of Supervisors, says it fit a pattern of Arpaio "arresting and prosecuting individuals without probable cause solely for the selfish and improper purposes of achieving personal and political gain through publicity."
The Sheriff's Office insists in court documents that the use of a tank, a bomb robot and 40 deputies was part of its normal course of duties.
"The search warrant was going to occur with or without Seagal," sheriff's Deputy Chief Dave Trombi said before the lawsuit was filed. "The search warrant was not based at all on the needs of the production company."
After the raid, Llovera was criminally charged with raising animals for cockfighting and possession of dangerous drugs used on the animals. At the time, he was not supposed to have the animals in his possession because he was on probation for a cockfighting-related offense.
Robert Campos, Llovera's attorney, has asked the court in the criminal case to throw out evidence discovered at Llovera's home, arguing that the warrant was not served property.
Campos said his client was not involved with cockfighting, as authorities suspect. But, even if he were, the raid "was still overkill, and that's the whole point."
The Arizona-filmed episode of "Steven Seagal: Lawman" was to premiere on the A&E Network on Jan. 4, but the season was pulled from the schedule and the channel's website.
At the time of his arrest, Llovera said, Seagal walked him off his property to a van but did not speak to him. Seagal went off to do media interviews. Show producers asked Llovera to sign a release allowing them to use footage of his arrest. Llovera said deputies removed his handcuffs twice as producers asked him to sign. He refused.
"They said, 'It will be good for you, so everyone can see your animals,' " Llovera said. "I said I didn't want to."
Deputies found more than 100 roosters on the property. Court records say some had been physically altered in ways suggesting the birds had been bred for cockfighting. Since such birds are too aggressive to be rehabilitated, deputies said, they were euthanized.
Deputies also found medicines, charging Llovera with possession of dangerous drugs, and accessories, like sparring balls.
Deputies interviewed Llovera for 90 minutes, according to a prosecution filing in court.
"During that time, defendant equivocated between saying that the roosters were being raised solely for show purposes and then stating that he was raising the roosters so that they could be sold to people who would use them for cockfighting," it said.
Llovera, during a recent tour of his home, told a reporter that he bred the birds to show their colorful plumage. But he did not know when the next rooster show was, or anything about competitions for rooster beauty or breeding.
He showed a copy of Gamecock magazine, saying he's just like dealers who sell in that publication. The Humane Society calls the magazine a thinly disguised journal for cockfighting fans.
Llovera walked with a reporter through three rows of cages in his backyard for the 40 birds he owns.
To show his birds weren't meant for fighting, Llovera put his hand into a cage. The rooster backed up. Had they been fighters, he said, they would be used to handling and could be easily approached.
He conceded he trimmed some birds' wattles and combs, but only so the birds could place their heads through the bars of their cages to eat. He said a room authorities thought was a training ring is where he practices Santeria, a religion that includes animal sacrifice.
Llovera said he grew up a fan of cockfighting, watching battles in his native Cuba. He attended cockfights in Arizona when they were legal. Voters banned the practice in 1998.
"Those are traditions that you bring with you," Llovera said, "and it was in Arizona. It was a tradition that was in Arizona."
Llovera was one of 69 people arrested at a cockfight in Tonopah in May 2010. He pleaded guilty to being present at a fight and was given probation.
Phoenix police went to Llovera's home in February 2011 to investigate a man's claim that Llovera had kidnapped him and held him hostage for four days. Llovera told his own story of being kidnapped and having his pinky chopped off in the desert.
Confronted with differing stories, police didn't pursue the kidnapping case. But they did send the information about the roosters on Llovera's property to the Sheriff's Office.
That resulted in the search warrant that led deputies, with Seagal in tow, to storm Llovera's home. Trombi said the allegations against Llovera justified the sheriff's use of force.
"When SWAT is requested, it's based on previous history surrounding that suspect and that residence. Phoenix police did it with just as many if not more SWAT personnel as we did," Trombi said. "We had a legitimate law-enforcement reason to be there, we had a legitimate document, a search warrant, signed by that judge to be at that property. And a year later, we're still in the litigation phase. We're not willing to back down from the charges the county attorney filed based on our investigation."
Llovera said he's frustrated thinking how much his life was upended by the bust. "At the end of it, I realized it was a show," Llovera said. "What they showed up for was to make a show, and they made one."
New trial ordered in death of inmate forced to wear pink underwear
By Carol J. Williams, Times Staff Writer
March 8, 2012
"America's toughest sheriff" is facing a new threat of punishment in the death of a mentally ill jail inmate forced to don pink underwear.
The jail dress code imposed by Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., so traumatized schizophrenic detainee Eric Vogel that it may have caused his death from heart failure, two coroner's officials concluded, and their testimony should have been presented to a jury that rejected a wrongful death claim in 2010, a divided panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday.
Vogel, a 36-year-old recluse who lived with his mother, was arrested by deputies on suspicion of burglary after he wandered out of his North Phoenix home in November 2001. After mental health screeners at the jail deemed him in need of psychiatric care, Vogel became hysterical when ordered to "dress out" and had to be held down and stripped naked by four deputies to force him into the pink garments. He was released a couple of days later.
Less than a month after his release, Vogel was riding in his mother's car when she had a minor accident, and a sheriff's deputy told him there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest. Vogel fled the scene, running four or five miles before dropping dead of a heart attack, according to court records.
His sister, Yvon Wagner, filed a lawsuit alleging constitutional violations in her brother's death. When the case went to court, the judge refused to allow her to testify at trial about Vogel's delusional belief that he had been raped during the dressing struggle. The court also refused to allow two medical examiners to offer their opinions that the humiliating pink underwear was "likely" a factor in the man's fatal attack of arrhythmia.
"Pink underwear sounds funny until you have a paranoid schizophrenic who thinks he's being prepared to be raped," said Joel Robbins, the Phoenix attorney representing Wagner in her quest to punish Arpaio, who has been dubbed by the media — and himself — as the toughest lawman in the country.
The 9th Circuit sent Wagner's case back for a new trial, but Robbins said he expected Arpaio and county authorities to petition for reconsideration by a larger panel of 9th Circuit judges.
"My experience with Maricopa is they squirm until they have to pay," Robbins said of Wagner's claim for unspecified damages.
The attorney for Arpaio, Eileen D. Gilbride, did not return phone calls.
The 9th Circuit opinion, written by Judge John T. Noonan, an appointee of President Reagan, said Arpaio's choice of pink for male inmates' undergarments "appears to be punishment without legal justification."
"Given the cultural context, it is a fair inference that the color is chosen to symbolize a loss of masculine identity and power, to stigmatize the male prisoners as feminine," wrote Noonan, who was joined by a visiting judge appointed by President Clinton.
Judge N. Randy Smith, named to the court byPresident George W. Bush, dissented, saying that Wagner's account of her brother's mental state was inadmissible hearsay.
Arpaio has been sued repeatedly over his treatment of jail inmates. He has reduced jail meals to two daily, served surplus food, reinstated chain gangs — including for women and juveniles — and relegated some detainees to a tent city where summer temperatures often exceed 120 degrees.
The Justice Department last year revoked the sheriff's authority to identify and detain illegal immigrants after finding that Maricopa County deputies were engaged in racial profiling.
A week ago, Arpaio announced at a Phoenix news conference that preliminary results of an investigation he ordered on the authenticity of President Obama's birth certificate had yielded "probable cause to believe forgery and fraud occurred." Obama released the Hawaiian document to the public last year after "birthers" stirred up a national frenzy with claims that he was born in Africa and therefore ineligible to be president.
carol.williams@latimes.com
Lt. Kenneth Denson got $407,908. Police manager Douglas Keith got $311,060. 77 cops and firemen made more then $151,000.
Public safety employees among highest paid in Palo Alto
By Jason Green
Daily News Staff Writer
Posted: 03/08/2012 07:27:55 AM PST
Public safety employees were among the top earners in Palo Alto last year, according to newly released salary data.
The highest-paid person in the city was police Lt. Kenneth Denson, who took home a whopping $407,908 in calendar year 2011. More than half that sum -- $212,738 -- was attributed to a "cash-out" of unused vacation and sick leave. His base salary was $195,169, according to the data released Tuesday night.
Denson, who retired on Dec. 30 after 31 years with the city, was among a dwindling group of employees who predate a rule change that prevents workers from converting unused sick leave into pay, said Marcie Scott, assistant director of human resources. Members of the Palo Alto Police Officers Association hired after Aug. 1, 1986, cannot cash out sick leave.
A detailed breakdown of Denson's cash-out was not immediately available Wednesday afternoon.
Denson was in good company. Among the top 100 earners in the city, 77 worked for the police or fire departments and drew total wages in excess of $151,000, according to the salary data. Eight of the top 10 earners were retirees, too.
Fire Capt. Jason Amdur, who left the city's employ on Sept. 11, trailed Denson with a total take-home of $322,734, and police management specialist Douglas Keith, who departed on Sept. 13, ranked third with $311,060.
Similar to Denson, Amdur was hired before the city changed the cash-out rule for members of the International Association
of Fire Fighters, Local 1319; it doesn't apply to anyone hired before Dec. 31, 1983. Amdur, who was paid a base salary of $94,082 and earned $65,365 in overtime last year, received a $163,286 cash-out, according to the salary data.
By way of comparison, the city's top official, James Keene, was No. 7 on the list. The city manager earned a total of $246,811, although that sum did not include other perks such as a home loan.
Exact figures weren't immediately available Wednesday, but Scott said the city has seen a rise in retirements since 2009, when it began seeking concessions from its various labor groups.
"We've had an elevated number of retirements as we've reached agreements that include employee concessions," she said.
According to the salary data, several of the top-paid firefighters retired around the time the city inked a tough new contract with the union last fall. The agreement will require employees to begin paying their full 9 percent CalPERS pension contribution at the start of the next fiscal year and cover 10 percent of their medical insurance premiums going forward.
The retirement trend is expected to continue, particularly with the city poised to impose a similar contract on the Police Officers Association. The city declared an impasse with the union on Feb. 24.
While public safety employees are retiring with big salaries, which ultimately influence their pensions, the city expects the introduction of a reduced retirement benefit for new workers to result in savings.
New firefighters, for example, won't be eligible to retire until age 55, and instead of calculating a pension based on the single highest salary earned in a single year, it will be based on an average salary of the three highest consecutive years worked.
There are, however, costs associated with the wave of retirements that cannot be defined by dollars and cents.
"We are at a time of evolution and change in our police department," Lt. Zach Perron said during a ceremony Monday to recognize Denson for his years of service. "As you've all heard, there's been a remarkable loss of institutional knowledge and experience within our ranks due to recent retirements and Lt. Denson, as his remarkable professional resume suggests, is a shining example of that loss."
Email Jason Green at jgreen@dailynewsgroup.com.
I suspect many times the police think person X is the guilty
person and then will take the evidence found at the scene of
the crime and then make lots of illogical assumptions to
prove that the evidence is related to person X.
That works great in a fictional crime novel, but it sucks
when you are going to send a person to prison for the
rest of their life on a bunch of junk science.
Texas vulture study upends forensics
By MICHAEL GRACZYK | Associated Press
SAN MARCOS, Texas (AP) — For more than five weeks, a woman's body lay undisturbed in a secluded Texas field. Then a frenzied flock of vultures descended on the corpse and reduced it to a skeleton within hours.
But this was not a crime scene lost to nature. It was an important scientific experiment into the way human bodies decompose, and the findings are upending assumptions about decay that have been the basis of homicide cases for decades.
Experienced investigators would normally have interpreted the absence of flesh and the condition of the bones as evidence that the woman had been dead for six months, possibly even a year or more. Now a study of vultures at Texas State University is calling into question many of the benchmarks detectives have long relied on.
The time of death is critical in any murder case. It's a key piece of evidence that influences the entire investigation, often shaping who becomes a suspect and ultimately who is convicted or exonerated.
"If you say someone did it and you say it was at least a year, could it have been two weeks instead?" said Michelle Hamilton, an assistant professor at the school's forensic anthropology research facility. "It has larger implications than what we thought initially."
The vulture study, conducted on 26 acres near the south-central Texas campus, stemmed from previous studies that used dead pigs, which decompose much like humans. Scientists set up a motion-sensing camera that captured the vultures jumping up and down on the woman's body, breaking some of her ribs, which investigators could also misinterpret as trauma suffered during a beating.
Researchers are monitoring a half-dozen other corpses in various stages of decomposition, and they have a list of about 100 people prepared to donate their bodies to the project, which the school says is the first of its kind to study vultures.
"Now that we have this facility and a group of people willing to donate themselves to science like this, we can actually kind of do what needs to be done, because pigs and humans aren't equal," Hamilton said.
The forensic center opened in 2008, as did a similar facility at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, making Texas home to two of the nation's five "body farms."
At the farms, forensic pathologists observe the decomposition process in natural surroundings to see how corpses react to sun and shade, whether they decay differently on the surface or below ground and what sort of creatures — from large to microscopic — are involved.
Only in recent years has academic literature tried to establish formulas for death time based on stages of decomposition and environmental factors such as temperature conditions where the body was found.
The vulture research has drawn interest from homicide investigators, including Pam McInnis, president of the Southwestern Association of Forensic Scientists and director of the Pasadena Police Crime Lab in suburban Houston. She said the ability to account for vultures would "significantly" help investigators who already use insects and their life cycles to estimate time of death.
The body in the vulture study was that of Patty Robinson, an Austin woman who died of breast cancer in 2009 at age 72. She donated her remains to research, and they were placed in a five-acre fenced area.
Her son, James, said the Texas State research seemed like a worthy project.
She'd be delighted "if she could come back and see what she's been doing," he said. "All of us are pretty passionate about knowing the truth."
As for the vulture research, "we're not a particularly squeamish lot," he added.
The project began after scientists noticed scavenger damage on other bodies, an anomaly that puzzled them because the site several miles north of campus is secured against animal intruders.
"It didn't fit the model of scavengers that we had seen before and what people had written about," said Kate Spradley, an assistant professor at Texas State who also works on the project. "We realized we didn't account for something and it was vultures."
Vultures fly over much of the United States and are particularly abundant in the Southwest. Two of the most common species are turkey vultures and the more aggressive black vultures, which can exceed 2 feet in length, weigh 5 to 6 pounds and have wingspans of 5 feet.
The initial surprise was that it took vultures 37 days to find the body. Researchers visited the site daily and checked the camera for any activity.
"Nothing, not even a rat," Hamilton said.
Then on the day after Christmas 2009, a graduate student working on another project at the site alerted them to the vultures' swift work on the corpse.
"I was wondering if it ever was going to happen," Spradley said. "We downloaded the photos, and it was stunning."
She and Hamilton are working with Texas State geographer Alberto Giordano to map the area where birds dragged bones. They hope to make a predictive model for law enforcement officers that will help determine time of death.
Sgt. Jim Huggins, a recently retired Texas Department of Public Safety criminal investigator who now teaches forensic science at Baylor University, said vultures were always something of a mystery for investigators.
Previous research on scavenged remains focused on carnivores such as coyotes or rodents.
"This is, as far as I'm concerned, it's cutting edge," he said. "No one has ever sat down and put a pencil down and attempted this before. ... This is going to, I think, change some minds about scavengers."
When unidentified remains turn up, the vulture research can also be used to help include or exclude people who have been reported missing, Spradley said.
Hamilton said he used to hate vultures. "But now I kind of appreciate what they do, how they dispose of decomposing animals on landscape," he said. "They perform a really serious function."
Deputy accused of taking cash meant for informant
by JJ Hensley - Mar. 8, 2012 04:23 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
A Maricopa County Sheriff's deputy working in the agency's special-investigations unit was arrested Thursday on suspicion of theft and forgery over an alleged role he had in shortchanging a confidential informant working with the office.
Sheriff's deputies arrested Torrey McRae, a four-year veteran of the Sheriff's Office, and accused him of failing to account for more than $5,000 intended for a confidential informant. Investigators believe that McRae later tried to repay the money without being detected, according to the Sheriff's Office.
In addition to the theft and fraud accusations, McRae also faces two allegations of violating the duties of a custodian of public money.
Accoriding to the Sheriff's Office, McRae's supervisor noticed discrepancies in an account used to transfer money to confidential informants for information and drugs that are essential to prosecuting narcotics cases.
McRae, a former Chicago police officer, resigned when deputies arrived at his home to make the arrest, according to the Sheriff's Office.
Buckeye police cars crash into each other en route to call
by Sasha Lenninger - Mar. 8, 2012 01:22 PM
The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team
Two Buckeye Police Department cars collided about 9 p.m. Wednesday while in route to help another agency, authorities said.
Both officers were responding to help a Maricopa County Sheriff's Office deputy regarding a suicidal-subject call, Lt. Jared Griffith of the Buckeye Police Department said.
While driving to help on the call, the lead officer slowed down his patrol vehicle near Old Highway 80 and Patterson Road and the officer behind him struck the lead officer's vehicle, Griffith said.
Both officers received medical treatment at local hospitals and have been released, Griffith said. Their injuries were minor and were said to be non-life threatening.
Ex-LAPD detective found guilty of killing romantic rival in 1986
By Joel Rubin and Andrew Blankstein, Los Angeles Times
March 9, 2012
A jury found former Los Angeles Police Det. Stephanie Lazarus guilty of murdering the wife of a man who had spurned her, bringing an end to a remarkable case in which a new generation of the LAPD redeemed the failures of a past one.
On Thursday, after little more than a day of deliberation, the panel of eight women and four men concluded that Lazarus brutally beat and then shot Sherri Rasmussen three times in the chest on Feb. 24, 1986. Three months before the attack, Rasmussen, a 29-year-old hospital nursing director, had married John Ruetten, who dated Lazarus casually for a few years leading up to the wedding.
The verdict broke a tense silence in a cramped downtown Los Angeles courtroom full of the victim's family, relatives of Lazarus and journalists.
The case drew national attention for its sensational story line of a love-sick cop killing a woman she viewed as a romantic rival and then somehow managing to bury her dark secret.
Beyond that, however, the case was a study of stark contrasts between the best and worst of the Los Angeles Police Department, leading Chief Charlie Beck to issue an extraordinary apology to the victim's family.
"This case was a tragedy on every level," Beck said. "To the family of Sherri Rasmussen, I am truly sorry for the loss of your wife, of your daughter. I am also sorry it took us so long to solve this case and bring a measure of justice to this tragedy.... It shows the tenacity of the detectives on the LAPD who will work tirelessly to bring a case to justice, whether that case takes them around the world or across the hall."
Although any police officer on trial for murder is a rarity, the Lazarus case was particularly compelling. It pitted the LAPD against one of its own, forcing homicide detectives to push aside the strong familial bonds officers feel for each other and treat Lazarus as they would any other murder suspect.
The department also had to confront awkward questions about why detectives two decades ago did not pursue Lazarus, with her apparently obvious motive, as a suspect. Had they been protecting a fellow cop or was it simply sloppy detective work?
John Taylor, an attorney representing the Rasmussen family, deflected such questions, choosing instead to praise the current LAPD detectives who reopened the case.
"The family is relieved that this 26-year nightmare was concluded with the positive identification of who killed their daughter and sister."
Lazarus, 51, who served more than 25 years in the LAPD and retired while she sat in jail awaiting trial, showed no emotion as the court clerk read the verdict.
Because the jury found her guilty of first-degree murder, state law requires that Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Robert J. Perry sentence Lazarus to life in prison with the possibility of parole in about 14 years, a state corrections official said. Perry scheduled sentencing for May 4.
Prosecutors Shannon Presby and Paul Nunez argued during the monthlong trial that Lazarus harbored deep feelings for Ruetten and was driven to kill by the jealousy she felt over his decision to marry someone else.
Through diary entries, a forlorn letter Lazarus wrote to Ruetten's mother, and testimony from Ruetten about Lazarus tearfully pleading with him to reconsider his decision, they presented jurors with a portrait of a heartbroken woman.
It was Ruetten, who attended much of the trial with Rasmussen's parents and sisters, who discovered his wife's body on the living room floor of their Van Nuys town house.
The attacker had smashed a vase over her head and shot her at close range while Rasmussen apparently lay motionless, taking the time to wrap the gun in a thick blanket that lay nearby to muffle the noise of the gunshots. A bite mark on Rasmussen's arm spoke to the struggle she had put up.
At the time of the killing, the lead detective assigned to the case, Lyle Mayer, was convinced that Rasmussen had been killed by two men trying to burglarize her home.
Mayer ignored repeated pleas from Rasmussen's father that he look into whether a woman the family knew only as their son-in-law's "ex-girlfriend, who is an LAPD officer" could have killed their daughter. He told Mayer about a disturbing confrontation his daughter had had with the woman shortly before she was killed.
Mayer's notes from the case show that he had identified Lazarus but, in an interview with The Times, he said he never considered her a suspect.
Rasmussen's father grew so distraught over Mayer's refusal to investigate Lazarus that he wrote a letter to then-Chief Daryl Gates asking him to intervene. That led to nothing, however, and the case went cold after Mayer retired.
Lazarus went on to build a successful career. She worked patrol assignments for years, eventually earning a promotion to detective and becoming a specialist in art fraud and theft cases. She married another LAPD detective and the couple adopted a young girl, now 5.
In 2009, as historically low homicide rates freed detectives to look at unsolved cases, a homicide investigator reopened the Rasmussen case.
By then the department's crime lab had conducted DNA testing — which didn't exist at the time of the killing — on a saliva sample taken from the bite mark and concluded that it had come from a woman.
Realizing that this upended Mayer's theory of two male burglars, the detective began from scratch and quickly identified Lazarus as a suspect. Undercover officers spent weeks following Lazarus in an effort to collect a sample of her DNA surreptitiously.
They eventually snatched a cup she discarded in a garbage can and rushed it to the lab. Jurors heard from DNA experts who testified that the test results were unambiguous: It had been Lazarus' saliva in the bite mark.
Prosecutors also built a circumstantial case that Lazarus killed Rasmussen with a small revolver she owned.
Ballistics experts testified that the bullets collected from Rasmussen's body were the specific type issued to LAPD officers in 1986, and markings on the bullets were telltale signs of having been fired from a snub-nosed .38-caliber Smith and Wesson handgun like the one Lazarus owned.
Two weeks after the killing, Lazarus reported to Santa Monica police that someone had broken into her car and stolen the revolver.
Mark Overland, Lazarus' hired attorney, struggled to counter the prosecutors' case.
He mounted a defense that lasted only two days — a meager showing compared to the 51 witnesses the prosecution put on over three weeks — and tried to undermine the credibility of the saliva swab by raising questions about the way it had been handled and stored over the years.
Although the seal on the plastic tube that contained the swab was intact, Overland said a hole in the envelope in which the tube was stored pointed either to tampering or contamination.
Lazarus, who had remained in custody in lieu of $10-million bail since her arrest in 2009, did not take the stand in her own defense.
Overland, who said he plans to file an appeal arguing that Perry was wrong to restrict him from pursuing certain lines of argument in the trial, said he was perplexed by the speed with which the jury reached its decision.
"It showed," he said, "we never had a chance."
joel.rubin@latimes.com
andrew.blankstein@latimes.com
Telling the Truth Like Crazy
By JIM DWYER
Published: March 8, 2012
One summer day in 2009, a woman walked into the police station house of the 81st Precinct, in Brooklyn, to report that her car had been stolen. She was well into her second day of trying to file a report, having already spoken to five or more officers in two precincts and was waiting, exasperated, for a lieutenant to turn up as he had promised.
Then an officer named Adrian Schoolcraft emerged and heard her story. She wrote an account for him. He bundled it with a dozen other cases of crime victims who found themselves trapped in bureaucratic hamster wheels that seemed to have purposely been set up to make it hard to report serious crimes. It was a pattern, Officer Schoolcraft was convinced.
That October, he met with investigators and told them about the woman and her car, and others who were the victims of felonies but whose cases either disappeared from statistics or wound up classified as misdemeanors: a Chinese-food deliveryman who was beaten and robbed; a cabby held up at gunpoint; a man who was beaten and robbed of his wallet and cellphone, a case that the 81st Precinct classified as “lost property.”
Officer Schoolcraft’s career in the Police Department was about to take a turn for the worse.
On the evening of Oct. 31, 2009, Officer Schoolcraft, who had gone home sick from work, was forcibly taken from his home in Queens by senior police officials and delivered to a hospital psychiatric ward.
He had been telling the truth like crazy.
This week, the findings of an internal police investigation into his claims were reported in
The Village Voice
in an article by Graham Rayman, the latest installment in a series that has won awards for chronicling the case of Officer Schoolcraft and the corruption of police crime statistics. The investigation found “a concerted effort to deliberately underreport crime in the 81st Precinct.”
The 85-page report, never released by the Police Department, vindicated Officer Schoolcraft, who has been suspended without pay for more than two years. He has filed a lawsuit, charging that he faced retaliation for telling the truth. Officer Schoolcraft recorded all the precinct roll calls for two years, and also recorded the raid on his home when he was brought to the psychiatric ward. One senior official confiscated his audio recorder during that encounter, but he had secreted a backup.
The question of crime statistics is a matter of great sensitivity in the Police Department and at City Hall, which regularly boasts of New York’s safety. But more than 100 retired police commanders told researchers that intense pressure for annual crime reductions had led some officials to manipulate statistics. The department set up a panel in January 2011 to investigate the claims and report in three to six months, but authorities have said nothing of it or its work since then.
The investigation of Officer Schoolcraft’s claims does not provide any camouflage for those involved in manipulating crime reports.
A portion of the document headed “Incident No. 10, Handwritten Letter From Complainant” gives a road map of the difficulties faced by ordinary citizens trying to make a report.
On July 30, 2009, a woman discovered that her car, parked a few blocks from her home, had been stolen. “She called 911 from her residence,” the report states, and the matter was assigned to the police in the precinct where she lived, the 79th.
“Officers from the 79 responded,” it continues. She told them where the vehicle had been parked. The officers informed her that she had to report the theft to the 81st Precinct. The next day, she went to the 81st Precinct, and was told that she had to go to the street where the car was stolen.
There, she was met by a lieutenant from the 81st, who told her to go back to the station house and that he would meet her there, according to the report. “While waiting for the lieutenant, she encountered Officer Schoolcraft and wrote the letter that she provided to case investigators.”
Finding out what happened to the Schoolcraft case was as daunting as trying to file a crime report. Using the state’s Freedom of Information Law, Mr. Rayman of The Village Voice sought the report, which was completed in June 2010. The police denied his request. He appealed. They denied it again. He finally obtained a copy through back channels and published an article this week.
It was, as he points out, not nuclear launch codes, but a factual recitation of everyday bureaucratic activities in a police station house.
The government does not have a Fifth Amendment right to silence.
E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com
Twitter: @jimdwyernyt
NYPD documents: 'Focus' scrutiny on Muslim Americans
Mar. 9, 2012 07:02 AM
Associated Press
NEW YORK -- The New York Police Department kept secret files on businesses owned by second- and third-generation Americans specifically because they were Muslims, according to newly obtained documents that spell out in the clearest terms yet that police were monitoring people based on religion.
The NYPD has faced intense criticism from Muslims, lawmakers and even the FBI for widespread spying operations that put entire neighborhoods under surveillance. Police put the names of innocent people in secret files and monitored the mosques, student groups and businesses that make up the Muslim landscape of the northeastern U.S.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has defended his department's efforts, saying they have kept the city safe, were completely legal and were not based on religion.
"We don't stop to think about the religion," Bloomberg said at a news conference in August after The Associated Press began revealing the spying. "We stop to think about the threats and focus our efforts there."
In late 2007, however, plainclothes officers in the department's secretive Demographics Unit were assigned to investigate the region's Syrian population. Police photographed businesses and eavesdropped at lunch counters and inside grocery stores and pastry shops. The resulting document listed no threat. And though most people of Syrian heritage living in the area were Jewish, Jews were excluded from the monitoring.
"This report will focus on the smaller Muslim community," the report said.
Similarly, police excluded the city's sizable Coptic Christian population when photographing, monitoring and eavesdropping on Egyptian businesses in 2007, according to the police files.
"This report does not represent the Coptic Egyptian community and is merely an insight into the Muslim Egyptian community of New York City," the NYPD wrote.
Many of those under surveillance were American-born citizens whose families have been here for the better part of a century.
"The majority of Syrians encountered by members of the Demographics Unit are second- or even third-generation Syrian Americans," the Syrian report said. "It is unusual to encounter a first generation or new arrival Syrian in New York City."
The Demographics Unit was conceived in secret years ago as a way to identify communities where terrorists might hide and spot potential problems early. If the plainclothes officers, known as "rakers," overheard anti-American sentiment or violent rhetoric, they flagged it for follow-up investigation.
If police, for example, ever received a tip that an Egyptian terrorist was plotting an attack, investigators looking for him would have the entire community already on file. They would know where he was likely to pray, who might rent him a cheap room, where he'd find a convenient Internet cafe and where he probably would buy his groceries.
As a result, many people were put into police files, not for criminal activities but because they were part of daily life in their neighborhoods. Shopkeepers were named in police files, their ethnicities listed. Muslim university students who attended a rafting trip or discussed upcoming religious lectures on campus were cataloged. Worshippers arriving at mosques were photographed and had their license plate numbers collected by police.
The Demographics Unit is one example of how, since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the NYPD has transformed itself into one of the most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies in the country, operating with little oversight and in areas outside the city such as New Jersey.
Speaking Thursday in Chicago, Bloomberg said: "Let me tell you this, New York City will continue, consistent with the Constitution of the United States, federal, state and city laws to protect the people from our region."
And although civil rights lawyers disagree, the legal question isn't expected to be settled soon. In the meantime, the NYPD has become a flashpoint in the debate over the balance between civil rights and security.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress on Thursday he was disturbed by what he's read about the NYPD's surveillance of mosques and Islamic student organizations in New Jersey. "And these are things that are under review at the Justice Department," he said.
Police said they can't afford to become complacent or ignore the reality that Islamic terrorists carried out the 2001 attacks and others. If Muslim neighborhoods feel unfairly singled out, however, it could reinforce the perception that the United States is at war with Islam, which al-Qaida has used as a major recruiting pitch.
Since the AP began reporting on these efforts last year, Bloomberg and the NYPD have offered varying explanations for the clandestine efforts.
At first, police spokesman Paul Browne denied the Demographics Unit existed. When documents proved that it did, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said his department only follows investigative leads.
For instance, after Moroccans were involved in terrorist attacks overseas, the NYPD photographed and eavesdropped in New York businesses where Moroccans might work, shop and eat.
Asked during a City Council meeting in October whether the NYPD maintained similar documents for Irish and Greek neighborhoods, Kelly replied: "We don't do it ethnically. We do it geographically."
Bloomberg echoed those comments in December.
"The communities, whether they're Muslim or Jewish or Christian or Hindu or Buddhist or whatever, all contribute to this city. We don't target any one of them. We don't target any neighborhood," Bloomberg said.
The AP has since obtained documents outlining NYPD efforts to monitor Albanians, Egyptians and Syrians. Each report focused specifically on ethnicity.
In the case of the Egyptians and Syrians, the reports explicitly focused on Muslims. The Albanian report mentions Albania's diverse religious composition but police only photographed and mapped mosques for the report. There was no indication that criminal leads prompted any of the reports.
In a recent interview on WOR radio, Bloomberg acknowledged for the first time that police were not only following leads and at times conducted these operations without any indications of criminal wrongdoing.
"When there's no lead, you're just trying to get familiar with what's going on, where people might go and where people might be to say something," Bloomberg said. "And you want to listen. If they're going to give a public speech, you want to know where they do it."
The Damascus Bread and Pastry Shop in Brooklyn, where judges and lawyers from the nearby federal courthouse frequently dine on fresh baklava and rugelach, was listed in police files with other businesses that the NYPD described as "Syrian Locations of Concern." Police noted that the building is owned by a Syrian family, adding: "This location mostly sells Middle Eastern pastries, nuts, foreign newspapers and magazines."
"If they want to check on Damascus Bakery, why not, let them check," said Ghassan Matli, 52, when showed the police documents.
But like many whose businesses were monitored, he said he wishes the NYPD would stop by and talk to him so it would get its information right. The people who owned the store at the time of the report, for instance, were the grandchildren of Syrian immigrants. They had been raised as Catholics.
"If they need help, I will help them," said Matli, who is a Christian. "This is the last country we can go to for freedom and to live in freedom. So if they want, why not? Let them check."
I suspect this is all about raising revenue rather then making the dirt roads people drive on in the boondocks safer. Or perhaps the $4,000 grant is a jobs program to give the Game & Fish piggies some extra overtime pay.
Game and Fish to test for drinking, DUI among off-highway vehicle users
by Ivy Morris - Mar. 8, 2012 02:30 PM
Cronkite News
PHOENIX - Those who may drink to excess when driving off-highway vehicles should be prepared to blow into a tube when pulled over by an Arizona Game and Fish Department officer.
Armed with a $4,000 grant, the agency's off-highway vehicle patrol is using eight preliminary breath-testing devices across the state to determine whether drivers are under the influence.
"I think we've missed a lot of DUIs over the years because of the lack of training and the lack of equipment," said Jimmy Simmons, off-highway vehicle law enforcement equipment manager with Game and Fish.
The devices have been helpful in showing DUI suspects what officers could otherwise only see through field sobriety tests such as standing on one leg, walking and turning and performing eye tests, he said.
"It allows our suspect to see a tangible result," said Geoffrey Hossack, law enforcement specialist with Game and Fish. "They may not understand what I'm trying to say when they're impaired. Being able to show them on a preliminary test that 'It's illegal at this number and you're at this number' is easier to comprehend."
A representative of the Arizona Off Highway Vehicle Coalition said the focus on safety and sobriety is long overdue.
"If you're not totally coherent, you get loose on the dirt faster than if you're on the pavement," said Chris Radoccia, the group's four-by-four representative. "You have a higher likelihood of losing control, and trying to correct once you've lost it is like sliding on glass, it's near impossible."
Alberto Gutier, director of the Arizona Governor's Office of Highway Safety, which provided the grant, said driving is dangerous whether it's on a highway, in a boat or a path.
"Driving is dangerous on a highway, in a boat or on a non-designated road," he said.
"The law needs to be enforced wherever drivers are," he said.
Game and Fish also is training off-highway vehicle patrol officers on how to recognize drivers impaired by drugs.
"Getting people out there is just as important as getting them on the main road," Radoccia said. "If you don't have all your faculties with you, pavement or dirt the results are the same - someone could die or get seriously injured."
Former CHP officer sentenced to 50 years for killing her husband
March 9, 2012 | 11:56 am
A former California Highway Patrol officer convicted in January of killing her husband was sentenced on Friday to 50 years to life in prison.
Tomiekia Johnson, 32, was sentenced to 25 years to life on separate charges of first-degree murder and for the use of a firearm causing great bodily injury. Johnson was also ordered to pay $7,500 to the victim's family in restitution.
Johnson was found guilty in the 2009 shooting death of Marcus Lemons. Johnson shot Lemons in the head during a heated altercation after the couple left a TGI Friday's restaurant in Compton.
During the sentencing, Johnson's attorney, Darryl A. Stallworth, argued for a new trial or a reduced verdict of manslaughter.
"The type of mental state and the the evidence supports a hostile, combative, emotional and provocative exchange," Stallworth said according to court transcripts.
L.A. County Superior Court Judge Robert Perry denied the request, and gave Johnson the maximum sentencing.
The sentencing concludes a highly emotional case that involved allegations of domestic violence and anger management. Johnson collapsed under the defense table after the guilty verdict was read and was taken from the courtroom by paramedics.
After the sentencing was read, Johnson's mother yelled "I love you Tomiekia." The outburst lead to a disagreement between Johnson's family and Lemons' family.
El Mirage held back refunds of traffic-cam fines
Hundreds overcharged, but judge delayed repayments
by Dustin Gardiner - Mar. 9, 2012 11:28 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
More than 600 drivers who paid photo-enforcement tickets in El Mirage last year were overcharged and not refunded their money for at least six months, an analysis by The Arizona Republic has found.
A former El Mirage police lieutenant uncovered the error in August and warned the city judge and management. The city immediately corrected its fine amounts, but it has yet to return money to everyone whom it owes a refund.
The court decided to issue refunds only after The Republic began investigating the issue in January, according to city e-mails. Judge James Mapp had earlier said the court would not return the money because it was within his discretion to increase fine amounts.
The problem started last February when an El Mirage court clerk gave camera-vendor Redflex Traffic Systems an incorrect list of fines for photo-enforcement citations. As a result, wrong fine amounts were printed on tickets, leading many to pay $46 extra for speeding violations and $52 more for red-light violations.
Last month, the court sent refund checks to 609 drivers who were overcharged speeding fines. The refunds totaled a little over $28,000. It still has not refunded those who were overcharged for red-light violations, which court documents indicate is about 55 people.
Mapp said Friday that he was unaware of any outstanding refunds for red-light tickets until he was contacted by The Republic. He said the remaining refunds are being researched and likely will be paid within the next few weeks.
"It was one of those things that we just didn't realize how big of a problem it was and how many people it affected," Mapp said. "It could just be that we get busy and we forget to follow through on things."
Mayor Lana Mook called the court's handling of the refunds "quite upsetting." She said city officials had indicated to Mapp last summer that the overpayments should be refunded because the court had made a mistake.
"Absolutely it's too long," Mook said. "The photo radar has never been, in my estimation, something that the city instituted to make money."
A typical red-light ticket at the time was supposed to be $228 and a speeding ticket was $219.
But Mook and city officials who were made aware of the problem last summer apparently did not push to make sure drivers did receive the refunds.
City e-mails obtained by The Republic indicate that Police Chief Steven Campbell and City Manager Spencer Isom were alerted to the problem in August after it was discovered by then-Lt. Ron Hergert. He questioned what the city was doing to fix the problem but said he never got a response.
The issue resurfaced in early January, when Campbell e-mailed the court to ask if refunds had been given. About the same time, The Republic submitted a public-records request seeking a list of all photo citations and fines paid between Feb. 1 and Aug. 8 of last year.
In a Jan. 6 e-mail obtained by The Republic, Mapp told Isom that he had no plans to return the money, saying it was "within the court's discretion" to charge a higher amount for the offenses. He also noted the public-records request from The Republic the previous day.
Isom responded that, "since this is a potential/probable headline," Mapp should alert Mook and the vice mayor to the request and Mapp's decision to forgo the refunds.
"At that point, I met with the judge, only suggesting that he reconsider and refund the money," Isom told The Republic. "Police and administration became aware (of the error) and notified the court in August. The decision on whether to refund the money or not lay with the court."
After Isom's meeting with Mapp, the judge changed his mind. According to an e-mail, Mapp told Mook that although the court was not required to make the refunds, he decided "that the overpayments were nevertheless unfair to the defendants" and should be refunded.
The Republic pushed for the release of public records for nearly two months. A clerk said the city could not provide a list of all photo-enforcement citations and fines that had been paid, even as the city began issuing refund checks in early February to drivers who had been overcharged.
On March 1, a 200-page report listing people who had paid citations, including photo-enforcement cases, was provided to The Republic. An analysis of the documents estimated nearly 670 people had mistakenly paid the overcharges for either speeding or running a red light.
Mapp said the public-records request was too broad and a request for a list of overpayments would have been fulfilled.
Hergert, the former police lieutenant who revealed the overcharging, said he is disappointed by the city's handling of the issue. He resigned from the Police Department in October because of a dispute with Isom over an unrelated issue.
"I'm disappointed that the people who knew about this did not make this right as soon as they knew," Hergert said.
The controversy comes as Mapp, the city judge, and council members have had heated discussions over a $200,000 shortfall in citation revenues. At a February meeting, Mapp was removed from council chambers after an outburst. He contends the council's move to have a consultant examine the shortfall breaches the separation of powers between the court and City Hall.
This reminds me when Sheriff Joe's goons arrested the owners of the Phoenix New Times arrested for a story they published on Sheriff Joe and his thugs.
Berkeley police union 'gravely concerned' with chief's move to alter story
Posted: 03/11/2012 09:14:27 PM PDT
Berkeley Police Chief Michael Meehan sent an armed police sergeant to Bay Area News Group reporter Doug Oakley's home at 12:45 a.m. Friday because he wanted a story that he perceived to contain inaccuracies changed online.
First Amendment experts on Friday said Meehan's action was "an attempt at censorship by intimidation and an abuse of power."
Tim Kaplan, a police officer and Berkeley Police Association president, said the union "stand with our community and share in their concerns about the appearance and correctness of the chief's orders," in a statement released Sunday afternoon on behalf of the 160-member force.
"We are committed to providing the best possible service to the community, and protecting the constitutional rights of the citizens of Berkeley to whom we ultimately answer. We do not believe that the actions taken by Chief Meehan represent the will, spirit or sentiment of the membership of the Berkeley Police Association."
Meehan apologized Friday, calling his actions an "overzealous attempt to make sure that accurate information is put out."
The chief was not available for comment
Sunday. In a statement, Meehan said he is planning an independent review of the department's policies and practices on timely releases of information, which will be sent to the City Council and community.
Mayor Tom Bates could not be reached for comment late Sunday.
Oakley, 45, covers Berkeley for this newspaper chain and had reported on a meeting Thursday in which Meehan tried to explain to about 150 angry residents his department's failure to provide information in the days after the Feb. 18 beating death of Peter Cukor, 67, outside his Berkeley hills home. Cukor allegedly was attacked by a 23-year-old Alameda man, who has been charged with murder but will undergo competency tests to determine if he can stand trial.
That night, Cukor had called the department's nonemergency line during a period when police were ordered to respond only to 911 calls due to a potentially volatile Occupy march.
Oakley's story posted online at 11:20 p.m. Thursday reported that Meehan apologized to the community for the slow response. Meehan though, said he apologized only for not informing the public right away. Meehan called and emailed Oakley about the story, but Oakley was asleep. After the rap at the door, Oakley changed two paragraphs in his story.
Jim Ewert, general counsel of the California Newspaper Publisher's Association, said it wasn't out of line that Meehan wanted the article altered, but that he ordered the sergeant to Oakley's home for the changes.
"If the police chief believed the tone was improper or even if the facts were subject to interpretation, the appropriate response is to call the editor. Or write a letter to the editor or an (opinion piece),'' Ewert said.
Berkeley police chief's call on reporter draws fire
Henry K. Lee
Monday, March 12, 2012
Chief Michael Meehan has apologized for ordering the department's public information officer to go to the Berkeley home of Bay Area News Group reporter Doug Oakley at 12:45 a.m. Friday after efforts to reach the journalist by phone and e-mail failed.
Oakley, 45, had written a story about a raucous community meeting Meehan attended Thursday. The story, which appeared online late that night, reported that Meehan had apologized for the department's slow response in connection with the Feb. 18 slaying of Berkeley hills resident Peter Cukor by an intruder on his property.
The report upset Meehan, who said he never apologized for a slow response - which he has steadfastly denied - but instead had said he was sorry he had failed to quickly release information to the public about the slaying.
The chief's decision to send Sgt. Mary Kusmiss to Oakley's door has rankled many on his 160-member force. Many are privately grumbling that the former Seattle police captain is more worried about burnishing his image and spinning the story instead of responding to concerns about whether police staffing was adequate the night Cukor was killed.
"We, the members of the Berkeley Police Association, stand with our community and share in their concerns about the appearance and correctness of the chief's orders, and are gravely concerned about the impact his actions will have on our ability to maintain the vital trust of the community we serve," said Officer Tim Kaplan, president of the police union.
Reporter, family awakened
When Kusmiss knocked on Oakley's door, the journalist, his wife and their two sons, ages 3 and 5, were asleep. Oakley, whose address is listed online, thought at first that something bad had happened to a relative.
Kusmiss, in civilian clothes, told Oakley that she was mortified to be at his home but said she was given a direct order to request he change his story, the reporter said. Oakley told her that no one could post an amended article until later that morning.
Oakley said after Kusmiss left, he began shaking and had a panic attack, wondering if Meehan "can do this whenever he's mad at me, or send someone else who is not as sympathetic as Mary and threaten me." After changes were made in the story about 7 a.m. Friday, Meehan e-mailed Oakley repeatedly with requests for more alterations, Oakley said.
Oakley said he has no plans to file a formal complaint or to sue.
In a statement, Meehan said, "I have apologized to the reporter personally and I take full responsibility for this error in judgment. I was frustrated with the department's ability to get out timely information, but that is no excuse."
Interim City Manager Christine Daniel said, "There was no justification for contacting the reporter in this way, and the chief understands that the more appropriate response to his concerns ... should have been to wait until the following day and make contact by phone or e-mail. The chief has acknowledged his lapse in judgment and assured me that nothing like this will happen again."
It was not known Sunday if Berkeley officials would probe the matter further.
Since Cukor's killing Feb. 18, questions have been raised about why police did not respond more quickly to Cukor's call on a nonemergency line about a trespasser.
Police radio tapes show that an officer had volunteered to investigate several nonemergency calls, including Cukor's, but was told not to because patrol officers were responding only to emergency calls. At the time, a contingent of other officers was being deployed to monitor an Occupy protest march taking place that night.
Critics raise concerns
Harry Stern, an ex-Berkeley officer who serves as an attorney for the police union, said, "As a former cop ... it troubles me that they have the resources to send an officer to bother a reporter at home in the middle of the night and apparently not respond to a crime in progress in a timely fashion."
Some residents have called for the chief to resign, but Jim Chanin, a civil-rights attorney and former chair of the Berkeley Police Review Commission, said, "I think obviously he showed a serious lapse in judgment, and he admitted it, and the reporter in question accepted his apology. Given all those facts, I don't think he should resign. I think it's hopefully a lesson for him."
But Peter Sussman, a Berkeley First Amendment advocate, questioned whether Meehan was "missing a police-chief gene," saying, "If nothing else, it smacks of an extraordinary and unexpected blindness to the effect of wearing a uniform, especially in places like Berkeley. It is police intimidation, pure and simple, however he intended it."
Henry K. Lee is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Twitter: @henryklee. hlee@sfchronicle.com
"this is about doing the right thing for our children and keeping them safe" - yea, sure!!!
Mayor's speed cameras would help political ally
Longtime Emanuel backer consults for firm that stands to make millions from city's push for traffic devices
By David Kidwell, Jeff Coen and Bob Secter, Chicago Tribune reporters
12:01 a.m. CDT, March 13, 2012
When Rahm Emanuel was a first-time candidate for Congress, Greg Goldner was behind him, quietly marshaling the patronage troops that helped get him elected. When Emanuel ran for mayor, Goldner was there again, doling out campaign cash to elect Emanuel-friendly aldermen to City Council.
And when the rookie mayor was looking for community support for his school reform agenda, there was Goldner, working behind the scenes with the ministers who backed Emanuel's plan.
Now, it turns out the longtime allies share another interest — the installation of automated speed cameras in Chicago.
As consultant to the firm that already supplies Chicago its red-light cameras, Goldner is the architect of a nationwide campaign to promote his client's expansion prospects. That client, Redflex Traffic Systems Inc., is well-positioned to make tens of millions of dollars from Emanuel's controversial plan to convert many of the red-light cameras into automated speed cameras.
Emanuel is expected to present his speed camera proposal to City Council on Wednesday, and his aides began briefing aldermen on the plan Monday.
In an interview at his Resolute Consulting LLC offices, Goldner said there is no connection between his political support for Emanuel and the mayor's staunch support for speed cameras. He said he wasn't aware Emanuel was pushing a speed camera plan in his hometown until he read it in the Tribune in late October.
He acknowledged others may have a different perception.
"The fact is you guys are going to write your story, and you know, it's legitimate," Goldner said. "It's a legitimate news story. … I can't dispute it."
In a city long defined by the intersection of political clout and business might, Emanuel campaigned on a pledge to change a culture where government is "an insider's game, serving primarily the lobbyists and well-connected." But the converging interests of the mayor, his political consultant and the camera company are likely to fuel more skepticism about an initiative already labeled by critics as a money grab for the cash-starved city.
Emanuel declined to answer questions about Goldner. But spokeswoman Sarah Hamilton said, "There is no connection.
"As the mayor has said, this is about doing the right thing for our children and keeping them safe," she said.
Goldner's unassuming style and California roots belie his critical role in the political careers of two consecutive Chicago mayors. A former campaign manager for former Mayor Richard Daley, Goldner helped command political street armies that also worked to elect Emanuel to Congress in 2002. Goldner was Emanuel's campaign manager in that race.
In late 2010, as Emanuel was launching his campaign to replace Daley, Goldner formed a political action committee, For a Better Chicago, to help elect a pro-Emanuel City Council. The lawyer who helped set up the PAC, Michael Kasper, was defending Emanuel against a ballot challenge that nearly knocked him out of the mayor's race.
Kasper is a state lobbyist for Goldner's camera client, Redflex, an Australian company that counts Chicago as is its largest U.S. customer.
After Emanuel's election, Goldner said, he began working on plans for legislation to legalize speed cameras statewide. To bolster his efforts, he said, in September he retained the services of a key Chicago traffic expert who had just left City Hall.
But Emanuel pre-empted any statewide effort with one just for Chicago. The mayor had a bill introduced in Springfield in October to let him transform much of the city's existing network of nearly 200 red-light cameras into the equivalent of automated radar guns near schools and public parks.
With the Chicago police chief and schools CEO fronting the effort, Emanuel pitched the plan as a child-safety initiative and rolled to a quick victory at the Statehouse, despite questions about the statistics the mayor used to justify the push.
Goldner and Kasper both said they never talked to Emanuel about the camera issue.
But by last fall the interests of Resolute, Redflex and Emanuel had officially converged — though it would be nearly impossible for the public to know.
The Emanuel administration has repeatedly denied Tribune requests for public records related to the speed-camera push, releasing a small fraction of the requested information months after the mayor's bill was passed by state lawmakers.
Redacted city email shows Kasper, Redflex's lobbyist, had suggested changes in the Emanuel speed-camera bill.
Resolute got on board with the mayor's push after he announced it, Goldner said. The firm said it has since provided the city with data and "talking points" on the issue.
But until now, Resolute's role as a primary player in the national traffic camera debate has been largely unpublicized — including its efforts here.
Most of the firm's work on the issue is done through the Traffic Safety Coalition, a group it created with funding from Redflex that seeks to establish support across the country by forging relationships with law enforcement, pedestrian-friendly groups and relatives of pedestrians killed by errant drivers. The coalition pushes for new camera laws, defends against regional uprisings to ban cameras and produces gut-wrenching video testimonials about fatal crashes.
Resolute Consulting was first hired by Redflex in late 2009 amid a successful effort to fend off a backlash in the Illinois Legislature that could have resulted in a statewide ban on red-light cameras.
In its filings with the Australian Securities Exchange, Redflex said, "In Illinois, a firm was engaged to manage the media interface, develop an advocacy to write letters to the editor, blog on a micro-site about street safety, and be ready to testify in committee hearings." The company confirmed that firm is Resolute.
Within weeks of being hired, Resolute was producing news releases sent out under the name of the Traffic Safety Coalition. The coalition is based at Resolute offices in Chicago, and Goldner confirmed Redflex is the coalition's sole financial supporter.
The news releases touted the effectiveness of automated traffic cameras and described the coalition as "a grass-roots organization comprised of public safety professionals, law enforcement officials, victim's advocates, health care professionals, academics and industry leaders."
The coalition soon began showing up in battleground states for traffic cameras, including Ohio, New Mexico and Texas.
Goldner acknowledged last week that the coalition's strategic model involves an early appearance in markets that interest Redflex, building community support, finding examples of children victimized by errant drivers, videotaping their parents and then asking sympathetic policymakers to file a bill or pass an ordinance in support of automated traffic cameras.
In other instances, Goldner said, Resolute and the coalition end up playing defense to tamp down proposed camera bans and other community opposition. Goldner acknowledged that the aim of all the coalition work related to the expansion of his client's business.
While Resolute was working to expand Redflex's business across the country, in fall 2010 Chicago was focused on the much-anticipated announcement of Emanuel's run for mayor. Goldner's attention likewise turned to local politics.
Goldner and his chief operating officer at Resolute, David Smolensky, formed For a Better Chicago in late 2010 and armed its political action committee with more than $855,000 in donations from business interests the group was not required to disclose under the law. At Goldner's direction, the political action committee worked to elect aldermen who would support a pro-business, pro-Emanuel agenda on the City Council.
Goldner said none of the secret donations to For A Better Chicago came from Redflex.
"Not from the company or anyone associated with them in any way shape or form," he said.
Resolute stepped up its speed-camera campaign in 2011. Goldner and two other top Resolute executives from Chicago who manage the Redflex account formed the Texas Traffic Safety Coalition in that state in March. A day later, the coalition filed a lawsuit that helped stop a ballot initiative against red-light cameras in the Gulf Coast town of Port Lavaca.
Goldner said 2011 was also when he began speaking with Illinois lawmakers about an initiative to allow the use of speed cameras throughout the state.
By late May, less than two weeks after Emanuel was inaugurated, the city's transportation commissioner, Gabe Klein, sent the first of more than 500 city emails on the issue of speed cameras, according to a log provided to the Tribune.
One of Klein's top deputies at the time was John Bills, who ran the city's red-light camera program and played an instrumental role in Redflex's city contracts.
By late September, Bills had quit his city post and begun doing consulting work for Resolute and the Traffic Safety Coalition. Goldner acknowledged the perception of a conflict but said last week he would not have hired Bills had he known at the time the city was considering speed cameras.
"I would say in hindsight that if I knew this bill was going to pass and there might be a procurement coming out and would we still do the same thing with John Bills, probably not," he said. "I don't have the luxury of making decisions going in reverse."
By mid-September, though, Emanuel's proposal was already quietly under review in the Statehouse, the Tribune has learned. It wouldn't become public until October.
On Sept. 25, Resolute shot a series of videos at the annual Stop for Maya walk, marking the death of 4-year-old Maya Hirsch, run down in 2006 near Lincoln Park Zoo by a man accused of blowing the stop sign and who pleaded guilty to leaving the scene.
Goldner's For a Better Chicago co-sponsored the march, along with Goldner's Resolute Consulting and his client Redflex, which also had sponsored the event in 2010.
The mayor did not attend, but Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, was there as the honorary chairman. On a Resolute video, Cullerton urged participants to go to Springfield and try "to pass legislation that can make a difference."
In late October, Cullerton officially filed Emanuel's bill.
In pushing state lawmakers to support speed cameras, Emanuel said he needed to move fast to save children's lives. It's an argument he continues to make, despite questions about the accuracy of safety statistics the mayor uses.
Goldner, who directed more than $445,000 in campaign donations to City Council races last year, was adamant that neither he nor his operatives have had any contact with the aldermen he supported through For a Better Chicago.
"There's not one member of City Council that would ever say that I've called to lobby them on any of those issues," he said.
Goldner's resume in bare-knuckle Chicago politics dates to his time as a political aide for Daley. After leaving to form Resolute, Goldner was Daley's 2003 campaign manager and a consultant to the Hispanic Democratic Organization, a patronage army that provided campaign muscle for Daley.
In a federal investigation of City Hall hiring, a former high-ranking city official who admitted to running a patronage army testified in 2006 that he took election-season orders from Daley operatives including Goldner, whose firm was subpoenaed by prosecutors for records. He also testified that he led city patronage workers who helped elect Emanuel to Congress in 2002, with Goldner as the campaign manager.
About the time he was launching the PAC to support Emanuel's latest campaign, Goldner also dedicated some of his firm's resources to supporting a push for longer school days and more charter schools — key planks in Emanuel's school reform agenda.
Goldner recently acknowledged to the Tribune that he coordinated with ministers who have delivered busloads of witnesses to testify in favor of the mayor's proposals at public hearings.
But much as he explains his education work as nothing more than an interest shared with the new mayor, Goldner says his speed-camera campaign and the mayor's push are simply coincidence — parallel paths that didn't intersect until late last year.
"It wasn't until we read the media reports that we knew about Chicago," he said. "I don't know how to be any more clear than that. I just don't."
Tribune reporter Kristen Mack contributed.
dkidwell@tribune.com
jcoen@tribune.com
bsecter@tribune.com
Report details officer's use of stun gun on boy, 9
Mar. 13, 2012 11:06 PM
Associated Press
MOUNT STERLING, Ohio - An Ohio officer whose use of a stun gun on a child resulted in the shutdown of a village police force said he shocked the boy twice as the 9-year-old lay on the floor with his hands underneath his body.
Details of the Mount Sterling incident released Monday say the boy was warned before the officer shocked him at his home last week following a truancy complaint from the Madison County Sheriff's Office.
The officer said the child begged his mother to let him go to school instead of with the officer, but she refused, telling him it was too late.
The officer said he eventually tried to pull the boy, whom he described as at least 5 feet 5 inches and 200 pounds, from a couch when the boy dropped and "became dead weight," kicking and flailing.
He said that he fired a warning shock with the stun gun and that the child's mother told the boy to obey the officer so he wouldn't be shocked.
Tracy Comisford, an attorney for the boy's mother, told the Columbus Dispatch that the woman did not expect the officer to use a stun gun when he came to arrest the boy.
"She certainly never wanted this to happen," Comisford said.
The police report said the boy was shocked twice because he did not comply with the officer after the first stunning and that he screamed and stopped moving during each five-second shock. Medics checked the boy, his mother signed a waiver of medical treatment and the boy was taken to the Madison County Sheriff's Office.
The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation is looking into the matter.
Also on Monday, Police Chief Mike McCoy resigned. He'd been suspended Thursday for not immediately reporting the stun-gun matter to the mayor, and the force of part-time officers has been disbanded.
The Sheriff's Office is patrolling the village.
McCoy told the Dispatch that he does not feel it was wrong to delay telling the mayor about the stun-gun incident because he thought he should first look further into it himself.
"I did what I was supposed to do to maintain the integrity of the incident," McCoy said.
LAPD adopts new rules on probing officer-involved crashes
By Joel Rubin, Los Angeles Times
March 14, 2012
Acknowledging major problems with the quality of its investigations into serious traffic collisions involving officers, the Los Angeles Police Department on Tuesday announced new rules intended to improve the thoroughness and credibility of the inquiries.
The move follows a pair of Los Angeles Times articles in January that examined the human and financial toll of officer-involved accidents. The Times found that police caused about 1,250 crashes over the last three years — an average of about one a day. Most were minor, but some resulted in life-threatening injuries or were the result of the officer violating traffic laws, according to LAPD records. In at least two incidents, the driver of another car was killed.
Under the terms of the revamped policy,
any time an officer is involved in a traffic accident
in which someone is killed or injured badly enough
to require hospitalization, a team of detectives and officers trained
in crash reconstruction will go to the scene immediately.
The team will preserve skid marks and other physical evidence
needed to reconstruct the crash and will interview witnesses
and compel the officers involved to give their account of what happened,
[You mean cops routinely take the 5th when they are involved in a job related traffic accident???]
Cmdr. Michael Williams told the Los Angeles Police Commission
at the oversight board's weekly meeting.
Until now, LAPD officers involved in crashes had
not been required to speak with investigators,
while witness interviews were conducted by regular officers
who failed to ask pertinent questions, Williams said.
Also, crucial physical evidence was often compromised
because accident scenes were not secured, he said.
He added that crash investigations have suffered from a
lack of continuity and expertise because investigations
are typically started by the department's crash experts and
then reassigned to detectives who are not required to have
experience with traffic accidents. Going forward, the crash response teams will handle the investigations from start to finish.
Calling driving "one of the most dangerous things that our officers do,"
Chief Charlie Beck said the new rules were a much-needed change.
"It's not just about money, although money is important. It is about officer safety and the safety of the public," he said.
The LAPD's poor investigations, Williams said, have created
"serious obstacles" for police officials and city attorneys as
they try to determine whether officers are to blame for crashes
and to defend the city against lawsuits.
[if normal LAPD cops are incompetent when it comes
to investigating crashes, why are they still investigating civilian car crashes??]
If an officer interviewing a witness, for example,
fails to document whether the witness saw the
police vehicle's emergency lights and sirens
on at the time of the crash, it can weaken the
city's position during settlement negotiations or trial, Williams said.
Curtailing traffic-related lawsuits — and lawsuits in general — has become a top priority for the LAPD in the last year.
[And I suspect the job of these new traffic cops will be to always find that the cop involved in the traffic accident did nothing wrong, and blame it on any civilians involved]
The city has paid nearly $24 million in settlements or verdicts in about 400 LAPD traffic-related lawsuits over the last nine years and must contend with dozens more cases that remain unresolved, according to the Times reports.
The drain on city coffers caused by judgments and
settlements in LAPD lawsuits has persisted for decades, and city officials have expressed increasing frustration recently as they struggle to close a yawning budget deficit.
[Well, maybe the solution to the problem is to teach the LAPD cops to drive safer, not assign a special traffic cop squad that only investigates the crashes that involve cops]
Traffic-related cases account for about a quarter of all
lawsuits against the department, according to a Times
review of city records. Lawsuits involving civil rights violations and workplace issues, such as harassment and retaliation, are also serious concerns.
Richard Drooyan, president of the civilian commission, called the changes "a big step forward" in the department's ongoing effort to rein in litigation.
Drooyan asked if investigators will continue to make use of speed and braking data captured by on-board computers that are akin to airplane black boxes. Williams assured him they would.
In a brief interview after the meeting, Officer Jahna Beard, one of the LAPD's crash experts, explained that investigators rely on the data to corroborate the conclusions they reach through their crash reconstruction models and would not use the information on its own to determine the speed an officer was driving.
The issue was at the center of a fatal 2009 collision in which a 25-year-old woman was killed when an LAPD cruiser without its emergency lights and siren on broadsided her car.
The department's reconstruction experts concluded that the officer was traveling about 50 mph, and LAPD officials cleared the officer of wrongdoing. Data from the onboard computer, however, showed that the car's speed was nearly 80 mph, and, based on that information, the city settled last year with the woman's family for $5 million.
joel.rubin@latimes.com
Of course I suspect the long run goal is to get rid of money and force everybody to buy everything with a government issued debit card. That way our government masters know everything you do, and can block any purchases not approved by our government masters.
And of course that makes tax collecting a lot easier too.
Don't laugh it sounds a lot like George Orwell's 1984 novel, even if it is almost 30 years late.
Cameras at U.K. gas stations will block uninsured drivers from refueling
By Eric Pfeiffer
A new plan from the British government will use closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras at gas stations that will automatically prevent uninsured drivers from filling up their gas tanks—that is, until their vehicle information has been logged in the system.
The Mirror reports that the plan is meant to address the 1.4 million uninsured motorists in Britain and act as a deterrent. That may not sound like a huge number compared with the estimated 13.8 percent of uninsured American motorists, but the 1.4 million figure represents four percent of all U.K. drivers.
The British government decided to make use of the CCTV cameras after hearing a presentation from accounting firm Ernst & Young, which will help implement the new system. And while the proposal comes from the private sector but will be used by the government, it's hard to not immediately think of British author George Orwell's seminal novel "1984."
"The key to this is simplicity. Connecting the existing technology ... is relatively inexpensive and wouldn't be a big information technology program" Ernst & Young partner Graeme Swan told the Telegraph. "There shouldn't be concerns about 'big brother' because there is no new database, no vehicles are tracked and no record is kept. It's simply a new rule of no insurance equals no fuel."
The decision is already being met with complaints from gas station owners, who say the proposed law puts them in a compromising position.
"Staff are already getting stick [flack] from motorists for high fuel prices," Brian Madderson, from RMI Petrol, told the Mirror. "This proposal will increase the potential for conflict. Our cashiers are not law enforcers."
Several thousand CCTV cameras, which are currently being used to deter drivers from leaving the station without paying for their gas, have already been installed at stations around the country.
So could British gas attendants start seeing a line of uninsured drivers with empty tanks filling up their station lanes? Not exactly. The Mirror notes that uninsured drivers will still be able to fuel up, but only after the camera has captured and logged their license plate numbers.
And the inconvenience works both ways: Insured drivers will have to wait for their information to be verified before they are allowed to fuel up too. Which leads us to wonder, just how much of a deterrent to driving without insurance will this new system be?
Phoenix police officer accused of aggravated DUI
by Caitlin Cruz - Mar. 14, 2012 11:20 AM
The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team
A Phoenix police officer was arrested on March 4 on suspicion of aggravated driving under the influence after being pulled over with a 7-year-old in the vehicle, law enforcement officials said.
Brian Gentry was pulled over by a Goodyear police detective after a race at Phoenix International Raceway in Avondale, said Christopher Hegstrom, a spokesman for Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.
PIR's website lists the March 4 event as the Subway Fresh Fit 500 of the NASCAR Spring Cup Series Race.
The Goodyear detective was working off-duty with MCSO at the intersection of South Estrella Parkway and West Vineyard Road near Goodyear when he noticed Gentry's inability to follow designated traffic directions, Goodyear Lt. Jason DeHaan said.
The DUI Task Force was called to check Gentry's level of impairment and the investigation was turned over to MCSO, DeHaan said.
Gentry's blood-alcohol content level was above the legal limit and he was deemed intoxicated, Hegstrom said.
Gentry was arrested on suspicion of aggravated DUI, a class 6 felony, because of the presence of someone younger than 15 in the vehicle. It wasn't clear what relation the 7-year-old child had to Gentry.
He was cited and released to be driven home, Hegstrom said.
Phoenix Sgt. Tommy Thompson confirmed Gentry is on administrative leave at home while an internal investigation is conducted by the Professional Standards Bureau, the internal-affairs section of Phoenix police.
Less screening tested for air travelers over 75
Mar. 14, 2012 11:51 AM
Associated Press
CHICAGO -- Some air travelers over the age of 75 will soon get a break at U.S. airport security checkpoints under a test program announced Wednesday that could allow them to keep their shoes and light jackets on and to skip pat-downs.
The new guidelines from the Transportation Security Administration, which take effect Monday at four U.S. airports, are part of an effort to move away from one-size-fits-all security procedures and speed lower-risk passengers through. Similar changes were made last fall for travelers 12 and younger.
Since the 9/11 terror attacks led to tighter security, air travelers have criticized what they say is a lack of common sense in screening all passengers the same way, including young children and the elderly. That criticism grew louder in 2010 when the government began using a more invasive pat-down that involves screeners feeling a traveler's genital and breast areas through their clothing.
The change in guidelines will be introduced at a limited number of security lanes at Chicago's O'Hare International, Denver International, Orlando International and Portland International. Those airports were chosen because they have a higher percentage of travelers 75 and older, said agency spokesman Jim Fotenos. He said the rules will be relaxed indefinitely at the four airports with the intention of expanding elsewhere if it is a success.
"The TSA recognizes that the vast majority of air travelers present no risk to aviation security," Fotenos said. "But it's how we identify those (travelers) and expedite the process that we're working on right now."
In November, two passengers in their 80s traveling separately through New York's Kennedy Airport complained that they were effectively strip-searched. One was made to remove a back brace so it could be X-rayed. The other said she was humiliated when two female screeners made her lower her sweat pants so they could examine her colostomy bag. The TSA has disputed parts of their accounts while acknowledging that screeners violated rules by asking to examine their medical devices.
In another incident that sparked outrage, a 6-year-old girl was reduced to tears after screeners frisked her at New Orleans airport in March 2011 -- a scene recorded on video and posted on YouTube.
To reduce the number of pat-downs given to children and the elderly, screeners in the test programs are being told to send those passengers through metal detectors or walk-through imaging machines multiple times to capture a clear picture, according to the TSA.
The agency is also expanding a program that allows vetted travelers in certain frequent flier programs to go through expedited screening, keep their shoes on and leave liquids and laptops in their bags.
Removing shoes during checkpoint screening has been a common complaint among airline travelers since security was increased after an al-Qaida operative tried to set off a bomb built into his shoe on an American Airlines flight in December 2001.
Pinal Sheriff Babeu set to overspend by $1.6 mil
Office says it has made deep cuts, but overtime and other costs add up
by Lindsey Collom - Mar. 14, 2012 09:09 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Even after making deep cuts, the Pinal County Sheriff's Office is on track to overspend its budget by $1.6 million.
Accounting for the projected deficit are fuel costs, shift-differential pay, overtime pay and related expenses, administrative-leave pay, and retirement contributions, according to Sheriff Paul Babeu.
Babeu's total budget is about $47 million.
In a presentation to county supervisors Wednesday, Babeu said his office would come up with $950,000 by sweeping money designated for inmate welfare and jail improvements. A sheriff's official said Babeu is confident the move would have no effect on inmate services.
The county, meanwhile, would be on the hook to cover the remaining $656,000. About half that amount stems from changes implemented after the 2011-12 budget was set: a contract the Board of Supervisors signed with a deputy's union and a slight increase in the retirement-contribution rate. The other half, county Budget Director Leo Lew said, is related to the sheriff's overtime spending.
Babeu said his staff has worked closely with county budget personnel since January, when supervisors were told that his office's budget deficit would exceed $3.2 million by June 30 if spending levels from the previous six months continued. In reducing initial projects, Babeu said, his office drastically scaled back overtime expenses.
"Public safety has not been compromised, but we can't provide many of the additional pro-active operations we used to do," said Tim Gaffney, the sheriff's director of communications and grants. "We are maintaining levels to ensure public safety but restricting overtime unless it is absolutely mission critical."
Gaffney said most of the overtime pay is spent in the jail. The county jail must maintain certain staffing levels as part of a contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to house its inmates. ICE reimburses the county for each ICE inmate it houses.
"Per that contract, we should have 51 more employees then we have currently," Gaffney wrote in an e-mail. "Due to that, we are having to put people on overtime to cover the shifts and meet the contract requirements. We can't keep overtime levels this low."
The sheriff said his office is exploring new ways to generate revenue. Babeu said his grants department has obtained millions of dollars worth of demilitarized equipment -- anything from microwaves to dump trucks -- that will be auctioned with proceeds to fund sheriff's operations. "Clearly, I have shown my budget is balanced," Babeu told reporters after his presentation.
When Babeu made the claim to the board, Chairman Pete Rios disagreed. The two, frequent adversaries, bickered over whether the sheriff or the county should be paying for the budget overage.
"You're saying with this (proposal) it's balanced, and that's assuming this board is going to approve another $656,000 to your budget to balance it," Rios said. "If that action comes to be, then you would be able to say at the end you're balanced, but you need some additional resources. It's not balanced at this point."
Republic, 12 News have fought to access public records
by Michael Kiefer - Mar. 14, 2012 09:34 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
It's not an event that shows up on most calendars, but March 11-17 is Sunshine Week, when American journalists discuss the importance of shining light on open government.
The Arizona Republic and 12 News in 2011 successfully went to court more than 10 times to open public records for inspection. Journalists fight every day to open records and meeting to the public, but these cases stand out as significant legal victories.
"As the largest news organization in the state, The Republic and 12 News take their responsibilities as watchdogs seriously," said Randy Lovely, senior vice president for news and audience development. "In the past few years, we have spent more on legal challenges than previously because agencies at the local, state and federal level increasingly are obstacles to the public's right to monitor government actions."
First celebrated in 2002 in Florida, it has grown into a national discussion by a coalition of professional journalism organizations and is scheduled each year to coincide with the birthday of James Madison, one of the drafters of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
The First Amendment says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
With that comes the concept -- at times resented or derided -- of a responsible media whose duty is to keep the public informed.
"Our democracy is based on a notion that the public is well educated and well informed," said First Amendment attorney David Bodney, who represents The Arizona Republic and other media outlets in obtaining access to government records or proceedings. "Sometimes public officials forget who owns these records. They belong to the people."
Often, courts intercede to determine the balance between the public's right to know and the privacy of individuals, including those charged with crimes or under investigation.
And sometimes, it's a public official, an agency or even a celebrity trying to cover up matters that are embarrassing or potentially incriminating -- matters that are news.
In the past year, The Arizona Republic and 12 News successfully fought through the courts to gain access to important information and proceedings. Records obtained include:
The community-college records and e-mails about Tucson shooting defendant Jared Loughner and the findings from the search warrants executed on his home, all "basic investigative information about a crime that took place in broad daylight," Bodney said.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys alike have fought to keep as much information as possible under seal in Loughner's case. By stipulation, Pima Community College paid $25,000 to compensate The Republic for its attorneys' fees fighting to open the college's records.
The investigative report compiled by Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu into the doings of former Maricopa County Sheriff's Chief Deputy David Hendershott and two of his subordinates.
Court records and transcripts of hearings related to a criminal prosecution in Operation Fast and Furious, the botched sting operation that resulted in automatic weapons being trafficked into Mexico. One such weapon killed a U.S. Border Patrol agent.
A report by Surprise detailing the city's misspending of millions of dollars of developer impact fees.
The city stipulated to pay The Republic $10,000 in attorneys' fees in the matter.
Family court records in the Maricopa County Superior Court that were ostensibly sealed to protect domestic-violence victims but ended up keeping quiet a sports celebrity's divorce.
The newspaper also fought for access to events in 2011, winning arguments to bring news cameras into major criminal trials -- those of Sedona sweat-lodge guru James Arthur Ray and temple-murders suspect Johnathan Doody -- and the state Bar disciplinary hearings of former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas and two of his former deputies.
Sometimes it takes an extended fight. The newspaper recently sought access to court booking documents involving a double murder in Paradise Valley. Initially, the records were not released. While the intervention of newspaper attorneys resulted in the disclosure of some information, legal arguments continue in an effort to make public more information about the case.
In another case last year, state and federal agencies opposed the release of documents shedding light on how several states including Arizona imported a drug used in death-row executions.
The matter was embarrassing to some agencies because the drugs had bypassed normal import scrutiny. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration eventually released a cache of internal e-mails that it later said had not been properly redacted. They were revealing. In them were passages justifying bent rules and speculating on how to avoid being dragged into a national legal debate over the issue.
However, some governmental bodies -- intentionally or not -- have instituted rules making information gathering more difficult:
The Arizona Supreme Court revised court rules so that minute entries in certain trials, such as rape cases, can no longer be accessed over the Internet.
Municipal courts do not have an electronic database that is free for public research. The Phoenix court system charges a minimum $17 research fee as part of a series of fees to support a "technology enhancement fund" that is meant to cover the cost of purchasing and implementing a new court data-software system. A member of the public must pay the municipal court a minimum of $17 for copies from a criminal case or civil case. The fees are waived only for crime victims or those accused of crimes who want to examine their court files.
State House of Representatives leaders have begun enforcing a rule this session requiring media members to have a special badge, approved by their security department, to get onto the floor of the Legislature. Staffers ordered a 12 News reporter to leave the floor and, earlier, questioned the presence of Republic reporters and photographers who aren't normally assigned to the Capitol.
The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality barred a reporter from using a document scanner during inspections of records, despite other agencies allowing it in the past. After a month of phone and e-mail conversations, the newspaper was allowed to use a portable wand scanner to inspect records that were bound in folders and binders.
One Maricopa County agency sought to bill the newspaper $900 for a database-records request. The agency's charges included an employee's hourly rate multiplied by the number of hours they said it would take him to reproduce records -- plus his unemployment benefits, Federal Insurance Contributions Act payments and county health insurance.
The newspaper disagreed, but the agency would not relent and the records were not obtained.
Republic reporters Mary Jo Pitzl, Michelle Ye Hee Lee, David Madrid, John Yantis, Parker Leavitt and Emily Gersema contributed to this article.
And of course the prosecutors that violated U.S. Senator Ted Stevens right to a fair trial are not going to be arrested and tried for their crimes.
Posted at 09:23 AM ET, 03/15/2012
‘Systematic concealment’ of key evidence in Ted Stevens investigation: Report
By Del Quentin Wilber
The federal investigation of former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens was “permeated by the systematic concealment” of evidence that would have aided the Alaska politician’s defense at trial and would have “seriously damaged the testimony and credibility of the government’s key witness,” a special prosecutor concluded.
The 514-page report was a response to an investigation ordered by U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, who threw out Stevens’ April 2009 guilty verdict in a financial disclosure case after the Justice Department revealed that prosecutors kept key information from defense attorneys.
Three years later, “special prosecutor” Henry L. Schuelke made the report public over objections from the prosecutors involved in the case.
Prosecutors are generally required to turn over helpful evidence to defense lawyers.
Stevens, an Alaska Republican who died in a small-plane crash in 2010, lost his reelection bid shortly after being convicted of seven counts of making false statements on financial disclosure statements to hide about $250,000 in gifts and free renovations to his Alaska house.
The results of Schuelke’s investigation were made public in a November order by Sullivan. In the report made public this morning, Schuelke wrote that his team examined and analyzed “well over 128,000 pages of documents, including the trial record, prosecutors’ and agents’ emails, FBI 302s and handwritten notes, and depositions of prosecutors, agents and others involved in the investigation and trial.”
In the end, however, Schuelke recommended against charging the federal prosecutors — Brenda Morris, William Welch, Edward Sullivan, Joseph Bottini and James Goeke, as well as Nicholas Marsh, who committed suicide last year — with a crime. He wrote that prosecuting the Justice Department lawyers would be difficult because Sullivan never issued a “clear, specific and unequivocal order” to disclose evidence that would have helped the defense.
Measure would require federal law enforcement to seek local sheriff's approval
Posted: Thursday, March 15, 2012 4:08 pm
By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services
A Senate panel voted Thursday to fire a warning shot of sorts over the heads of federal law enforcement agencies: Don’t come around here unless you get local OK.
The legislation, crafted by Rep. David Gowan, R-Sierra Vista, would require employees of those agencies to first notify the sheriff of the county “before taking any official law enforcement action in a county in this state.”
The only exception would be if the notification would impede the federal officer’s duties. But even then, HB 2434 has a requirement to notify the sheriff “as soon as practicable after taking the action.”
Gowan said it’s a simple matter of state sovereignty.
“If you look in your Constitution, you will not find there are any police powers granted to the federal government,” he said. And Gowan said the Tenth Amendment says any powers not given to the federal government are reserved for the states and the people.
“That means the states have the inherent right to use law enforcement,” he said.
From a practical standpoint, Gowan said the highest elected law enforcement officers in the state are the sheriffs of the 15 counties.
“They have a mandate from the people over bureaucracies,” he said, which includes federal agencies. “Without this, we allow the bureaucrats to dictate and bring their vision of law enforcement down upon the people who are duly elected.”
Gowan said his legislation would bring back the state’s sovereignty “in line with what we need to be to make sure our citizens have all the liberty they can handle.”
Sen. Steve Gallardo, D-Phoenix, said that, constitutional philosophy aside, he sees a more practical problem with the legislation.
“Why would a federal agency listen to a local sheriff?” he asked.
“We’re telling a federal agency, ‘You’ve got to do this,’” Gallardo continued. “What would prevent a federal agency saying, ‘Yeah, thank you, but we’ll tell you when we’re good and ready to tell you?’”
Gowan told members of the Senate Committee on Border Security, Federalism and States Sovereignty it’s because of the state’s constitutional authority.
Pressed for specifics after the 5-2 committee vote, Gowan acknowledged there is no actual penalty for a federal agency that refuses to comply — other than the knowledge they are violating state law.
“Do they want that on their conscience or not?” he asked.
Gowan said it would not apply to Border Patrol apprehending those who enter this country illegally, as there is inherent authority of the federal government to protect the border. But he said if they are investigating anything else, their authority is inferior to that of the sheriff.
Firm Romney Founded Is Tied to Chinese Surveillance
Keith Bedford for The New York Times
BEIJING — As the Chinese government forges ahead on a multibillion-dollar effort to blanket the country with surveillance cameras, one American company stands to profit: Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Mitt Romney.
In December, a Bain-run fund in which a Romney family blind trust has holdings purchased the video surveillance division of a Chinese company that claims to be the largest supplier to the government’s Safe Cities program, a highly advanced monitoring system that allows the authorities to watch over university campuses, hospitals, mosques and movie theaters from centralized command posts.
The Bain-owned company, Uniview Technologies, produces what it calls “infrared antiriot” cameras and software that enable police officials in different jurisdictions to share images in real time through the Internet. Previous projects have included an emergency command center in Tibet that “provides a solid foundation for the maintenance of social stability and the protection of people’s peaceful life,” according to Uniview’s Web site.
Such surveillance systems are often used to combat crime and the manufacturer has no control over whether they are used for other purposes. But human rights advocates say in China they are also used to intimidate and monitor political and religious dissidents. “There are video cameras all over our monastery, and their only purpose is to make us feel fear,” said Loksag, a Tibetan Buddhist monk in Gansu Province. He said the cameras helped the authorities identify and detain nearly 200 monks who participated in a protest at his monastery in 2008.
Mr. Romney has had no role in Bain’s operations since 1999 and had no say over the investment in China. But the fortunes of Bain and Mr. Romney are still closely tied.
The financial disclosure forms Mr. Romney filed last August show that a blind trust in the name of his wife, Ann Romney, held a relatively small stake of between $100,000 and $250,000 in the Bain Capital Asia fund that purchased Uniview.
In a statement, R. Bradford Malt, who manages the Romneys’ trusts, noted that he had put trust assets into the fund before it bought Uniview. He said that the Romneys had no role in guiding their investments. He also said he had no control over the Asian fund’s choice of investments.
Mr. Romney reported on his August disclosure forms that he and his wife earned a minimum of $5.6 million from Bain assets held in their blind trusts and retirement accounts. Bain employees and executives are also among the largest donors to his campaign, and their contributions accounted for 10 percent of the money received over the past year by Restore Our Future, the pro-Romney “super PAC.” Bain employees have also made substantial contributions to Democratic candidates, including President Obama.
Bain’s decision to enter China’s fast-growing surveillance industry raises questions about the direct role that American corporations play in outfitting authoritarian governments with technology that can be used to repress their own citizens.
It also comes at a delicate time for Mr. Romney, who has frequently called for a hard line against the Chinese government’s suppression of religious freedom and political dissent.
As with previous deals involving other American companies, critics argue that Bain’s acquisition of Uniview violates the spirit — if not necessarily the letter — of American sanctions imposed on Beijing after the deadly crackdown on protests in Tiananmen Square. Those rules, written two decades ago, bar American corporations from exporting to China “crime-control” products like those that process fingerprints, make photo identification cards or use night vision technology.
Most video surveillance equipment is not covered by the sanctions, even though a Canadian human rights group found in 2001 that Chinese security forces used Western-made video cameras to help identify and apprehend Tiananmen Square protesters.
Representative Frank R. Wolf, Republican of Virginia, who frequently assails companies that do business with Chinese security agencies, said calls by some members of Congress to pass stricter regulations on American businesses have gone nowhere. “These companies are busy making a profit and don’t want to face realities, but what they’re doing is wrong,” said Mr. Wolf, who is co-chairman of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission.
In public comments and in a statement posted on his campaign Web site, Mr. Romney has accused the Obama administration of placing economic concerns above human rights in managing relations with China. He has called on the White House to offer more vigorous support of those who criticize the Chinese Communist Party.
“Any serious U.S. policy toward China must confront the fact that China’s regime continues to deny its people basic political freedoms and human rights,” according to the statement on his Web site. “The United States has an important role to play in encouraging the evolution of China toward a more politically open and democratic order.”
In recent years, a number of Western companies, including Honeywell, General Electric, I.B.M. and United Technologies, have been criticized for selling sophisticated surveillance-related technology to the Chinese government.
Other companies have been accused of directly helping China quash perceived opponents. In 2007, Yahoo settled a lawsuit asserting that it had provided the authorities with e-mails of a journalist who was later sentenced to 10 years in prison for sending an e-mail that prosecutors charged contained state secrets.
Cisco Systems is fighting a lawsuit in the United States filed by a human rights group over Internet networking equipment it sold to the Chinese government. The lawsuit asserts that the system, tailored to government demands, allowed the authorities to track down and torture members of the religious group Falun Gong.
Bain defended its purchase of Uniview, stressing that the Chinese company’s products were advertised as instruments for crime control, not political repression. “China’s increasingly urban population will face growing needs around personal safety and property protection,” the company said in a statement. “Video surveillance is part of the solution to that, as it is anywhere in the world.” The company also said that only one-third of Uniview’s sales were to public security bureaus.
William A. Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council in Washington, said it was up to the American government, not individual companies, to set the guidelines for such business ventures. “A lot of the stuff we’re talking about is truly dual use,” said Mr. Reinsch, a former Commerce Department official in the Clinton administration. “You can sell it to a local police force that will use it to track down speeders, but you can also sell it to a ministry of state security that will use it to monitor dissidents.”
But Adam Segal, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an expert on the intersection of technology and domestic security in China, said American companies could not shirk responsibility for the way their technology is used, especially in the wake of recent controversies over the sales of Western Internet filtering systems to autocratic rulers in the Arab world. “Technology companies have to begin to think about the ethics and political implications of selling these technologies,” he said.
Uniview is proud of its close association with China’s security establishment and boasts about the scores of surveillance systems it has created for local security agencies in the six years since the Safe Cities program was started.
“Social management and society building pose new demands for surveillance and control systems,” Uniview says in its promotional materials, which include an interview with Zhang Pengguo, the company’s chief executive. “A harmonious society is the essential nature of socialism with Chinese characteristics,” Mr. Zhang says.
Until now, Bain’s takeover of Uniview has drawn little attention outside China. The company was formerly the surveillance division of H3C, a joint venture between 3Com and Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant whose expansion plans in the United States have faced resistance from Congress over questions about its ties to the Chinese military.
In 2010, 3Com, along with H3C, became a subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard in a $2.7 billion buyout deal.
H3C also sells technology unrelated to video surveillance, including Internet firewall products, but it was the video surveillance division alone that drew Bain Capital’s interest.
In December, H3C announced that Bain had bought out the surveillance division and formed Uniview, although under terms of the buyout, H3C provides Uniview with products, technical support and, for a period of time, the use of its brand name. Bain controls Uniview but says it has no role in its day-to-day operations.
Bain is, however, well positioned to profit. According to the British firm IMS Research, the Chinese market for security camera networks was $2.5 billion last year, a figure that is expected to double by 2015, with more than two-thirds of that demand coming from the government. Uniview currently has just 1 percent of the market, the firm said.
Chinese cities are rushing to construct their own surveillance systems. Chongqing, in Sichuan Province, is spending $4.2 billion on a network of 500,000 cameras, according to the state news media. Guangdong Province, the manufacturing powerhouse adjacent to Hong Kong, is mounting one million cameras. In Beijing, the municipal government is seeking to place cameras in all entertainment venues, adding to the skein of 300,000 cameras that were installed here for the 2008 Olympics.
By marrying Internet, cellphone and video surveillance, the government is seeking to create an omniscient monitoring system, said Nicholas Bequelin, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong. “When it comes to surveillance, China is pretty upfront about its totalitarian ambitions,” he said.
For the legion of Chinese intellectuals, democracy advocates and religious figures who have tangled with the government, surveillance cameras have become inescapable.
Yang Weidong, a politically active filmmaker, said a phalanx of 13 cameras were installed in and around his apartment building last year after he submitted an interview request to President Hu Jintao, drawing the ire of domestic security agents. In January, Ai Weiwei, the artist and public critic, was questioned by the police after he threw stones at cameras trained on his front gate.
Li Tiantian, 45, a human rights lawyer in Shanghai, said the police used footage recorded outside a hotel in an effort to manipulate her during the three months she was illegally detained last year. The video, she said, showed her entering the hotel in the company of men other than her boyfriend.
During interrogations, Ms. Li said, the police taunted her about her sex life and threatened to show the video to her boyfriend. The boyfriend, however, refused to watch, she said.
“The scale of intrusion into people’s private lives is unprecedented,” she said in a phone interview. “Now when I walk on the street, I feel so vulnerable, like the police are watching me all the time.”
Pleasant Hill madam tells of top cop's protection
Lacy Atkins / The Chronicle 2011
A woman who ran a Pleasant Hill brothel told investigators she did so with the approval of central Contra Costa County's top vice cop, and said she also had a sexual encounter with the officer, according to documents obtained by The Chronicle.
Jordi Simms said that after she opened a massage parlor that fronted for a brothel in July 2009, Norman Wielsch, then the commander of the multiagency Central Contra Costa Narcotics Enforcement Team, received weekly payments and protected the business from police raids. The allegations contradict public statements made by Wielsch and his attorney, who have repeatedly denied that the former state Department of Justice agent was involved in the illicit business.
Wielsch's attorney, Michael Cardoza, declined to address Simms' statements directly in an interview this week.
"I'm going to wait until all the evidence is presented in the courtroom," he said.
In August, Wielsch and private investigator Christopher Butler, both 50, were indicted by a federal grand jury on corruption charges, including stealing drugs from police evidence lockers and one count of extortion in connection with the alleged brothel.
Both men have pleaded not guilty.
Simms, 37, who lives in Concord, made the allegations about Wielsch during two interviews with state Department of Justice agents in February and March 2011. The Chronicle obtained summaries of the agents' interviews.
Simms declined to comment for this article. She was granted immunity from prosecution by the Contra Costa County district attorney's office in exchange for her cooperation.
Her statements to investigators tell the story of a woman who found herself in a unique relationship with Wielsch and benefited from his powerful position within law enforcement.
Met him in a raid
She said she met Wielsch in March 2009 when she was arrested in a prostitution raid at a Walnut Creek residence. She said Wielsch had interviewed her, released her at the scene and issued her a citation to appear in court.
Before her court date, Simms went to work for Butler's investigation agency as a decoy - a woman who would lure cheating husbands into compromising situations that Butler documented for the wives who hired him.
She said she had mentioned the prostitution arrest to Butler, who told her he was good friends with Wielsch and could "work something out."
According to Simms, Wielsch contacted the Contra Costa County district attorney's office on her behalf and appeared with her in court in July 2009. Records show that her prostitution charge was reduced to a misdemeanor for disturbing the peace, to which she pleaded guilty. She was sentenced to 60 hours of community service.
Friendship helped
Simms "is convinced the only reason she received leniency in court was because of Wielsch's assistance," state investigators wrote, "and that assistance would never have been provided if it weren't for the friendship of Butler and Wielsch."
In June 2009, Simms said, Butler approached her with an offer to run a salon that would provide "sensual massages." Clients would receive sexual favors stopping short of intercourse, she said.
Simms said the private investigator had told her Wielsch approved of the plan, and she soon helped Butler pick out a four-room suite in a strip mall on Gregory Lane in Pleasant Hill. Butler leased the space in his name and outfitted the office with Ikea furniture and security cameras, she said.
Simms charged $200 an hour for a massage, and she and the women she hired made weekly deposits in an envelope that Butler collected, she said.
"Simms said the agreement was she and each girl would pay Butler and Wielsch $500 each week for use of the business, and the girls could charge what they wanted for the massage services," according to state investigators' summary of their interviews with Simms.
Neighbor's complaint
As the operation went into full swing in late summer 2009, Simms said, Wielsch told her a nearby tenant had complained to police about suspicious activity and that he had been forced to dispatch an agent to investigate.
She said Wielsch had sent a junior investigator and had given a photograph of the agent to Butler, who passed it along to her. When the undercover agent knocked on the door, Simms talked to him briefly and he left, she said.
The agent said he had told Wielsch he recognized Simms from her arrest earlier that year, according to accounts that two fellow agents gave to state investigators. Wielsch told the junior investigator to "forget about it" and that he would follow up later, the agents said.
Simms said she had a conversation about the undercover officer's visit with Wielsch and continued to operate the salon.
Sexual encounter
At one point, she said, Butler told her to "be nicer" to Wielsch, which she understood as a suggestion to engage in a sexual encounter with the officer.
According to Simms and statements from another woman who worked at the parlor, Jessica Banda, 33, the two women agreed to meet Wielsch at a hotel room.
Banda told state investigators that Simms had asked her to accompany her to "thank (Wielsch) for getting her criminal case reduced."
Both women told investigators they had performed sex acts with Wielsch.
Banda, who did not respond to messages seeking comment, told investigators the salon's demise began in late 2009 because of citizen complaints and the resulting scrutiny by Pleasant Hill police.
Simms said the business had been a challenge to manage. Women came and went, and it became difficult to rent out rooms and raise the money Butler and Wielsch expected.
The operation closed in December 2009 or early 2010, she said. Records show the landlord sued Butler in small claims court for unpaid rent in 2010.
Lawyer's denials
In May 2011, after The Chronicle reported Butler had admitted to his role in the brothel and alleged it was Wielsch's idea, the officer's attorney offered a full-throated denial of his client's involvement.
Cardoza said Wielsch "had nothing to do with starting, running or protecting a brothel," and that Butler was "spinning tales to save himself."
In an interview that month with television station KNTV in San Jose, Wielsch was asked if he knew of the allegations that connected him to the parlor.
He shook his head. "No, I haven't heard that," he said.
Justin Berton is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Twitter: @justinberton. jberton@sfchronicle.com
Colo. man ticketed after cat refuses to go for jog
Mar. 15, 2012 10:14 AM
LAFAYETTE, Colo. -- Police in Lafayette, Colo. have ticketed a man who is accused of tying his cat to a rock after the feline refused to go jogging.
Sgt. Fred Palmer says 19-year-old Seth Franco brought his cat on a leash to the path around Waneka Lake Park on Wednesday, but the cat was unable to keep up.
According to the Boulder Daily Camera
(http://bit.ly/ysr3qe),
witnesses told police that Franco secured the cat's leash to a rock while he finished his run. A passer-by called police.
Franco was ticketed on suspicion of "domestic animal cruel treatment," a municipal offense.
Palmer says an ordinance in the city, about 20 miles north of Denver, "prohibits that kind of tethering."
The cat wasn't injured, so it was released to its owner.
Franco could not immediately be reached for comment.
Lafayette police: Cat refuses to jog around lake; owner ticketed for leaving it behind
By Heath Urie Camera Staff Writer
Posted: 03/14/2012 09:44:29 PM MDT
Police in Lafayette ticketed a 19-year-old man Wednesday on suspicion of tethering his cat to a rock after the pet refused to go jogging with him.
Lafayette police Sgt. Fred Palmer said the man, Seth Franco, of Lafayette, brought his cat on a leash to the path around Waneka Lake Park near Baseline Road and U.S. 287.
"Apparently, the individual was trying to jog with the animal on a leash and the animal was either unwilling or unable to keep up," Palmer said.
According to Palmer, Franco secured the cat's leash to a rock while he finished his run. A passerby saw the cat and called police. According to police radio traffic, the cat was being attacked by a flock of birds while it was tied to the rock.
Lafayette animal control officers responded and found Franco retrieving his cat. Franco was ticketed on suspicion of "domestic animal cruel treatment," a municipal offense.
"Our ordinance prohibits that kind of tethering," Palmer said.
The cat was not injured, so it was released to its owner, Palmer said.
A phone listing for Franco could not be located Wednesday.
Messages sent to a Facebook account for a Seth Franco in the Boulder area were not returned. The social media site contains numerous images of a rescued cat, Stella, including some with the cat on a leash outside.
Contact Camera Staff Writer Heath Urie at 303-473-1328 or urieh@dailycamera.com.
Accused cop killers don't get fair trials????
Accused cop killers don't get fair trials????
LAPD murders carjacker with 60+ shots!
I saw the video and it looks like a police murder. The video is on the LA Times web page and on the Chicago Tribune web page.
Sheriff Babeu breaks the law by letting Mexican national work on his political campaign
I think the laws Babeu is accused of violating are
silly and could care less if he broke the law.
Even if I dislike pigs, they shouldn't be forced to
obey irrational laws any more then us serfs should be.
NYC mayor defends intelligence-gathering on Muslims
Didn't Hitler say the same thing about the Jews???
U.S. drone kills Moroccan militant
I wonder when the American Empire start using drone strikes like this in the USA to kill suspected "drug war" criminals?
Gun charges filed against San Bernardino assemblyman
When they do it, it's an innocent mistake! When we do it we are dangerous criminals that should be put in prison for life!!!
Help the police start a dossier on your child!!!
Well the cops don't call it that, but I suspect if you become part of this police program you will be helping the police start a dossier on your children.
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
Source
19 years of Sheriff Joe's Tent City Gulag!!!
Source
Federal prisons will allow inmates to have MP3 players
Source
The "war on terror" is just an extension of the "war on drugs"
White House helps pay for NYPD Muslim surveillance
The "war on terror" is just an extension of the "war on drugs". This article seems to confirm that - "Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush and Obama administrations have provided $135 million to the New York and New Jersey region through the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program, known as HIDTA ... The HIDTA grant program is overseen by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy"
Peoria police sergeant demoted over Obama photo incident
I have never been a big fan of piggies, but they should have the same First Amendment rights as the rest of us!
Fired Maricopa County Sheriff's Captain Joel Fox takes the 5th
Cops always take the Fifth, you should too!!!!
Court gives Arizona warning about execution protocol
Our government masters don't follow their own rules very well.
Richmond cops tried to set up their boss
Source
Cops love to have sex with hot teenagers???
First I don't consider consensual sex between an adult and a underage child a crime. So this cop was murdered for what amounts to a victimless crime.
In Utah acting sexy means you are a prostitute???
Utah thought crimes??? Acting sexy means you are a prostitute???
How do you spell revenue?? In Texas it's trivial traffic tickets.
Source
Sheriff Joe says President Obama is an illegal???
Is Sheriff Joe shoveling the BS to distract people from his problems? Sometimes shoveling the BS higher and deeper is the best defense!
Sheriff Paul Babau abused children at Massachusetts boarding school????
This article seems to imply that Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babau might
have been involved in physically abusing or sexually abusing children
at a Massachusetts school he helped run. But the article doesn't accuse
him of any of these acts, other then that he was involved with the school
which was accused of abusing the children.
Babeu ousted as Oklahoma police event speaker
Source
Edward Lee Elmore spent 30 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit???
Innocent man freed after 30 years in prison for murder?
Bill to allow guns in public buildings
If you ask me per the 2nd Amendment guns should be allowed in public building. The real question is how did all these unconstitutional laws that ban guns get passed and why haven't they been struck down for being unconstitutional.
Judge rules eavesdropping law unconstitutional
In Illinois if you tape record a crooked cop you can
be arrested and sent to prison for many years.
Thank God, Cook County Judge Stanley Sacks
thinks this law which protects crooked cops is
unconstitutional and has voided it.
San Francisco BART Police violated 1st Amendment rights by shutting down cell phone towers???
BART piggies violated 1st Amendment rights by shutting down cell phone towers???
"Public servants???" "Bloodsucking parasites" would be a better word!!!!
Source
CHP officer facing weapons, explosives charges
Source
Methadone, weapons found in CHP officer's home
Source
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu
Gay public officials in sharper spotlight
Source
Policing for $$$ dollars $$$
I suspect that most of these $3.9 billion in assets stole
by Federal cops are the result of victimless drug war crimes.
Sheriff Baca gives away cop cars for campaign contributions???
Give Sheriff Baca a campaign contribution, get a free county car.
The Condom Police??? - A jobs program for overpaid under worked cops
The condom police???? Think of it as a jobs program for overpaid under worked cops. And you get to watch hot porn stars screw!!!!
Messy yard cops order man to remove yacht from his yard.
Messy yard cops order man to remove yacht from his yard.
Why it's OK for Obama to murder Americans abroad!!!!
Hey, the President is the American Emperor and he can murder anybody he feels like. Well that's what they want us to think.
Cops taking video may grasp that public has same right
Source
Eric Holder: U.S. can murder American citizens in terror fight
I wonder when the American Empire will start using drones to murder suspected criminals on US soil??? I suspect the first murder will be a person suspected of a victimless drug war crime!
Sheriff Paul Babeu's boyfriend to sue Pinal County
Source
Youngtown, Arizona fires it's police force!!!
The article seems to paint a dismal picture for Youngtown.
But it seems the real problem is the members of the town council
have chosen to spend more money then they steal in taxes.
If the town could live within it's means there wouldn't be a problem.
Arizona sued for barbaric, inhumane prison conditions
Source
Another dangerous criminal removed from our streets!!!
Another dangerous criminal removed from our streets!!! At least that's what the piggy at this Colorado school wants us to think.
8 women allege rape, harassment in military suit
Source
TSA gives some travelers special treatment
I wonder if this is a violation of the "Equal protection" clause of the Arizona Constitution and of the equal protection clause of the Federal 14th Amendment?
Border Patrol testing surveillance blimp
Source
The "war on drugs" is also a racist war on Black people?
Source
Supreme Court Ruling Prompts FBI to Turn Off 3,000 Tracking Devices
Hmmm ... one out of every 100,000 people in the USA has an FBI tracking device attached to their car???
It ain't rape if you have a gun and a badge!!!!
I got a gun and a badge and that means I can screw any woman I want to - Well at least that's how the cops feel!!!!
A Phoenix police officer accused of sexually assaulting three women is the focus of a criminal investigation after meeting with Chandler police on Tuesday.
Threats key question in Babeu case
Source
MCSO, actor Seagal sued over 2011 arrest
Wow! Sounds like a publicity stunt alleged Libertarian Ernie Hancock would do to
make himself look like a hero.
Of course Ernie didn't do this, the morons
that work for Sheriff Joe did it.
Pink underwear is a punishment???
Source
Piggies are very well paid!!!! - Lt. Kenneth Denson got $407,908 this year
Piggies are very well paid!!!!
Myths cops use to frame killers busted???
Texas vulture study upends forensics
Science is pretty cool stuff and I love it.
But sadly a lot of the stuff cops use to frame and
convict people in courts under the name of science
is nothing more then junk science that is falsely labeled
as fact.
Deputy steals cash meant for "drug war" snitch
Let's face it, the "drug war" is not winnable.
Buckeye, Arizona police cars crash into each other!!!!
Source
LAPD detective Stephanie Lazarus guilty of murder
Source
NYPD cop locked in psychiatric ward for reporting police corruption???
Source
NYPD - If you are a Muslim, you must be a criminal???
Source
A jobs program for the Game & Fish Police Officers???
Raising revenue busting off road drivers for DUI???
CHP officer sentenced to 50 years for murder
Source
El Mirage Photo Radar Crooks
It ain't about safety, it's about revenue!!!!
Armed cop sent to reporters home at 1 am with orders to change story
Berkeley police chief sends armed cop to reporters home at 12:45 a.m. with orders for him to change story.
BERKELEY -- The Berkeley police chief's decision to order a sergeant to a reporter's home insisting on changes to a story continued to draw heavy criticism Sunday, with the city's police union saying they are "gravely concerned" about his actions and the impact on officers' ability to maintain community trust.
Berkeley police chief's call on reporter draws fire
Source
The Berkeley police chief's decision to send an officer to a reporter's home after midnight Thursday met with more criticism Sunday, with the city's rank-and-file officers saying they were "gravely concerned" about his actions.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel's speed cameras would help political ally Greg Goldner
Honest, it's not about the revenue, it's about safety. Well that's the lie they want us to believe!!!
Ohio cop tasers 9 year old
I suspect the piggie will tell you he was terrified for his life.
A lot of these 9 year olds carry AK-47s in their back pockets. At least that's what the piggies want us to think.
Trust the LAPD, we can investigate our own traffic accidents!!!!
It doesn't take a psychic to figure out that almost all the police drivers in these police car crashes will be found not at fault by the investigative team.
You need the government's permission to buy gasoline???
You have to get permission from the government to buy gasoline in England??? Don't laugh, the government tyrants in the USA could copy these British tyrants.
Phoenix police officer accused of aggravated DUI
Source
Kinder, gentler TSA thugs won't break your legs if you are over 75????
Source
Pinal Sheriff Babeu set to overspend by $1.6 mil
This idiot is over budget by $1.6 million and
he wants us to send him to US Congress
where he can spend our money like a drunken sailor????
Royal government rulers routinely ignore public records laws
Public records laws don't mean jack sh*t to royal government rulers
You can't get a fair trial from the government???
Uncle Sam screwed Senator Ted Stevens. Will you do better???
If U.S. Senator Ted Stevens can't get a fair trial from the Federal government do you really think one of us serfs on the street has a change of getting a fair trial???
Measure would require federal law enforcement to seek local sheriff's approval
Of course this wouldn't help much in
Maricopa County where Sheriff Joe's goons
are just as much of a problem as the terrorists from
the Federal government.
Romney firm supports the Chinese police state?
Source
Cops help run Pleasant Hill prostitution ring
We need to end the government "war on victimless crimes", which in this case is the "war on prostitution". The laws against prostitution cause more harm then the victimless crime of prostitution ever caused.
Colo. man ticketed after cat refuses to go for jog
Don't these cops have any "real" criminals to hunt down????
Lafayette police: Cat refuses to jog around lake; owner ticketed for leaving it behind
Source
Judge clears release of part of UC pepper-spray report
In California corrupt cops have some God given right to be protected them from the public they abused????"The Federated University Police Officers Assn. had sought an injunction preventing the UC report from being released, contending that some content violates privacy and other state laws designed to protect the personnel files of peace officers accused of wrongdoing"
Judge clears release of part of UC pepper-spray report
By Lee Romney, Los Angeles Times
March 17, 2012
Reporting from Oakland— An Alameda County Superior Court judge Friday cleared the way for the release of portions of an investigative report about the pepper-spraying of UC Davis student protesters in November. But the judge barred for now the release of other sections that deal with the conduct of specific officers.
The Federated University Police Officers Assn. had sought an injunction preventing the UC report from being released, contending that some content violates privacy and other state laws designed to protect the personnel files of peace officers accused of wrongdoing.
The report has been keenly awaited by students and faculty at UC Davis, but it remains unclear when they will see any of it.
Judge Evelio Grillo blocked release of certain sections contested by the union and set another court hearing for March 28 to deal with those. He also ordered the union and UC attorneys pressing for the full release of the material to try to come to agreement on three sections that the officers' attorneys had not yet reviewed.
UC system spokeswoman Dianne Klein said the university must wait for the judge's final written order Monday specifying which portions can be made public. Former state Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso, who chaired the UC Davis investigative task force, will decide when the report will be released and whether the university will do so in a public forum on the Davis campus, which was his intent before the injunction.
Adding to the uncertainty about the release date, several media organizations, including The Times, have filed Public Records Act requests to obtain the portions of the report no longer under seal, some of which may wind up as public evidence in the court file after the judge rules on Monday.
UC General Counsel Charles Robinson said he would confer with Reynoso before deciding whether to release it "piecemeal."
"We are making some progress toward our overall objective of trying to get the entire report released," Robinson said outside the Oakland courtroom. He added, "One could imagine a circumstance where releasing just a part of the report could be misleading or not provide sufficient context."
Attorneys for the campus police union also expressed muted optimism Friday. "We believe we accomplished our goal today," said John Bakhit. "All the sections we asked to be held back were held back. We're happy — but it's temporary."
The November protest took place as part of the Occupy movement, and images of UC Davis Police Lt. John Pike casually spraying seated protesters in the face went viral. Afterward, UC Davis placed three officers on administrative leave and began an internal affairs investigation.
Separately, the university convened the task force headed by Reynoso to make recommendations regarding police procedures in light of the event. Kroll Associates, a security consulting firm headed by former Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton, was retained to collect information on the incident and make policy recommendations.
Grillo combed through both reports and permitted release only of those sections that police attorneys do not wish to conceal — nearly the entire Reynoso report, which mainly deals with broader policy issues, and certain sections of the Kroll report that deal with administrative actions.
While officers' names would not typically be confidential, the union is seeking to withhold them because they say Pike has received threats.
Only officers who witnessed the incident were interviewed for the Kroll report, and they were offered immunity from any discipline. The subjects of internal affairs investigations were not interviewed. But the police union argued that because they were compelled to talk to Kroll investigators and spoke about officers who were under investigation, that material should be withheld.
The judge voiced concern with only one portion of the Kroll report — Section 6 — in which the authors make "statements about individual officers' conduct and whether that conduct was right or wrong."
Grillo had issued a tentative ruling late Thursday that took issue with a number of the union's legal arguments and said he was inclined to deny the injunction for both reports. The reports draw on a lot of material already in the public domain, such as videos, photos and news articles, he noted.
Yet at Friday's hearing, he stressed that he was open to persuasion and said he would attempt to resolve remaining disputes at the next hearing. Grillo's tentative ruling had ordered all sections of the report released by April 2 unless the union appealed. On Friday, he pushed that date back to April 16.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California has joined UC officials in seeking the report. Lawyers for the Sacramento Bee and the Los Angeles Times also filed briefs in the case seeking access to the full report.
lee.romney@latimes.com
Los Angeles Times staff writer Larry Gordon contributed to this report.
It's about MONEY, not public safety!!!
Source
Sheriff's Dept. accused of purposely not providing air support
By Robert Faturechi, Los Angeles Times
March 17, 2012 Los Angeles County sheriff's investigators are probing allegations that supervisors from the department's Aero division purposely delayed responding to calls for emergency air support.
At least one former Aero Bureau supervisor has publicly made accusations of impropriety. In a lawsuit filed against the county, Lt. Edison Cook said deputies were instructed by their supervisors to "slow down on service calls in order to miss calls for service." One sheriff's supervisor, Cook said, instructed other supervisors to complete their quota of required special shifts during the day, not the night, when most calls for service go out.
On one occasion, the three-decade veteran said, he drew criticism from his captain when, during one shift, he assigned an aircraft to a deputy without one: "We don't want to field too many ships because then it would look like we could get along without overtime."
During the period of the alleged manipulation, Sheriff Lee Baca was regularly alerting the Board of Supervisors, which controls his budget, to the negative consequences of funding cuts, often including a detailed accounting of calls for service that the Aero Bureau had to miss.
In his lawsuit, Cook quotes a 2010 email from an Aero Bureau sergeant: "If we go short and calls are missed we need to record the missed calls and provide our executives with the proper records so they can fight the fight."
Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said the allegations of misconduct are being thoroughly investigated.
He also said the department has completed a separate internal criminal investigation into allegations that Aero Bureau officials had improper relationships with contractors. Whitmore said that probe found no wrongdoing, though the results won't be presented to prosecutors until next week.
"When all is said and done," he said, "we are confident that the department will be cleared of any wrongdoing."
Elizabeth M. Kessel, an attorney representing the county in the lawsuit, described Cook in a statement as "a disgruntled former employee. This litigation will show that his allegations are meritless, based on gossip and innuendo."
Cook said he began noticing problems soon after he was transferred from his post as a unit commander on Catalina Island to the Aero Bureau in 2009.
His lawsuit alleges that in May 2010 he learned that some deputies and sergeants were getting more overtime than others.
Cook, now retired, also alleges that division supervisors were making use of the department's air fleet when commercial flights would have been significantly cheaper. One county aircraft, he said, "was used as the personal aircraft" by some officials when attending out-of-state meetings.
In his lawsuit, he claims he took his concerns about the wasteful spending to his chief, telling him "the department will have problems if the Los Angeles Times found out."
Cook also alleged that the Board of Supervisors was misled into believing that a project to outfit helicopters would cost $12 million more than needed. He said sheriff's officials also made a contract so narrow in scope that only one avionics company could compete.
He claims he was retaliated against as a result of his complaints, and eventually received a "punitive transfer" out of Aero Bureau to a post at a sheriff's jail.
Whitmore confirmed that department investigators are probing allegations that Aero Bureau officials improperly used county aircraft.
The accusation of financial irregularities in business with contractors was referred to the county auditor, which he said found no impropriety, Whitmore added. He quoted the audit, which was not provided to The Times, stating that the dealings "followed county standards for competitive solicitation."
robert.faturechi@latimes.com
Pepper Spray fun at UC Davis
SourceFor more on the pepper spray fun Police Lt. John Pike enjoys getting involved with at UC Davis check out these articles
I do have a problem with the cops double standard.
This pig doesn't think anything of breaking the law
and having illegal sex with minors, when the rest of
us would be thrown in jail for many years for that
victimless crime.
Former San Jose cop pleads no contest to sex acts with high school students
By Mark Gomez
mgomez@mercurynews.com
Posted: 03/16/2012 12:11:14 PM PDT
A former San Jose police officer pleaded no contest Thursday to engaging in sex acts with two male high school students during an encounter at his Gilroy home and could be sentenced to more than three years in prison, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office.
Patrick D'Arrigo, 44, a longtime campus officer at Leland High in San Jose, pleaded no contest to one count of lewd and lascivious acts on a minor age 14 or 15 and one count of oral copulation with a minor, according to prosecutor Stuart Scott.
In a criminal case, pleading no contest has the same effect as a guilty plea. So D'Arrigo will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
He is facing a maximum sentence of three years, eight months in prison, Scott said.
D'Arrigo is scheduled to be sentenced on April 30.
The San Jose cop had been on paid administrative leave since his arrest on Aug. 31 after an indictment by a Santa Clara County criminal grand jury.
D'Arrigo resigned from the force last month, "which was the appropriate thing to do," San Jose Police Chief Chris Moore said.
"Whenever one of our own violates the public trust in that manner, they've lost their ability and privilege to serve the community," Moore said.
Brian Madden, an attorney who represented D'Arrigo, could not be reached for comment.
Three people told a criminal grand jury that D'Arrigo gave them booze at his Gilroy home four
years ago and then engaged in sex acts with two of them, according to a court transcript.
They told the grand jury that they believed D'Arrigo knew they were all underage at the time.
After the closed-door testimony, the veteran San Jose cop was indicted on Aug. 31, 2011, by the grand jury and arrested the same day when he showed up to work.
According to the court transcript, the encounter occurred after D'Arrigo answered a 2008 Craigslist ad for "Men Seeking Men." After being introduced to the officer by the 16-year-old who posted the ad, five students partied with D'Arrigo, watching movies and drinking rum and Cokes at his Gilroy home.
Two of the teens testified to having sexual activity with the cop, and afterward, receiving gift cards from him.
One of those students, 15 at the time, told the grand jury that he had oral sex with the officer on his couch.
The student testified that he was very drunk at the time.
"I just remember doing it," the student said, according to the grand jury transcript. "And like I just snapped out of it, I was like 'What am I doing here?' "
Afterward, the officer gave him a gift card from Hollister Co. clothing store.
"And I was like 'Oh, thanks,' " the student testified.
D'Arrigo was one of two San Jose police officers who was accused of covering up a 2008 suspected drunken-driving crash involving Sandra Woodall, a former police officer. A grand jury decided not to charge either officer. After an internal police inquiry, then-Chief Rob Davis decided in 2009 to fire the two officers for failing to properly investigate the crash. After arbitration, they were reinstated in 2010.
I once remember a Texas prosecutor saying
a guy who was about to be executed for a
crime he didn't commit shouldn't be complaining
because he got a fair trial. Sadly I think that is the
mentality of prosecutors across the USA.
Ex-inmate fights Texas over compensation law
by Nomann Merchant - Mar. 17, 2012 11:00 AM
Associated Press
McKINNEY, Texas -- Billy Frederick Allen spent more than 25 years in prison
before an appeals court overturned his convictions in two murders.
Three years after winning his freedom,
Allen is fighting the state again --
this time for the $2 million he says he's owed for wrongful imprisonment.
Although the appeals court declared the evidence against
Allen too weak for any reasonable juror to convict him,
Texas officials say he has not proven his innocence.
Therefore, they say, he isn't covered by a state law that
generously [What BS, it doesn't even meet Federal minimum wage standards]
compensates the wrongfully convicted for the years they spent behind bars.
Advocates say Allen's case raises new questions about
what evidence is needed to qualify for compensation in Texas,
where more inmates have been freed because of wrongful convictions than any other state.
DNA evidence has led to most of Texas' exonerations.
But with DNA testing essentially standard in most cases
and the number of DNA-based exonerations expected to dwindle,
more former inmates like Allen --
whose case has no DNA evidence --
are likely to account for more compensation cases.
"The only difference is the good luck, if you want to call it that, that exonerees in DNA cases had versus Billy," said Jeff Blackburn, chief counsel of the Innocence Project of Texas, which works to free wrongfully convicted inmates. "It doesn't make them any more innocent than Billy Allen. It doesn't make Billy any less innocent than them."
Texas' compensation law is the most generous in the U.S., according to the national Innocence Project. Freed inmates who are declared innocent by a judge, prosecutors or a governor's pardon can collect $80,000 for every year of imprisonment, along with an annuity.
[$80,000 is a lousy $219 per day, or $9.13 per hour, which doesn't even meet Federal overtime rules of time and a half for all hours worked over 40. To meet Federal overtime rules the pay would have to be $87,464 a year. That's $7.25 for the 1st 40 hours and $10.875 for the final 128 hours in a 7 day, 24 hour a day forced labor work week]
Allen, who was imprisoned for 26 years, would stand to collect almost $2.1 million.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest state court to review criminal cases, reversed Allen's murder convictions three years ago in two 1983 murders in the Dallas enclave of University Park. The court ruled that Allen's trial attorney made mistakes, including failing to contradict a police officer's claim that one victim, moments before he died, indicated Allen was his attacker.
The court ordered a new trial. Prosecutors decided to dismiss the charges, but said they still considered Allen a suspect and have kept the case open.
Texas Comptroller Susan Combs' office denied Allen's application for compensation because "ineffective assistance of counsel was the basis for the relief he received from the court; it was not on the basis of actual innocence," her spokesman said in a statement. Combs declined an interview request.
Allen was convicted in the fatal shootings of James Perry Sewell and Sewell's girlfriend, Raven Dannelle Lashbrook. Allen said he'd frequently visited Sewell because he wanted to sell Sewell scraps of gold as part of a legitimate business, and that he'd leaned against Sewell's car a few days before the couple's deaths, according to court filings.
The court documents said Sewell was found "gagged, handcuffed and covered with blood" near an apartment building, and that Allen's handprint was discovered on top of the car, where Lashbrook was found dead.
The police officer testified that when he asked Sewell who attacked him, he answered: "Billy Allen."
But a defense investigator after the trial found two paramedics who heard Sewell saying three names as he was dying, the Court of Criminal Appeals said. One said he heard Sewell say "Billy Wayne Allen," the name of another possible suspect. The other paramedic remembered hearing a middle name, but couldn't recall it.
That new evidence left the officer's testimony ineffective, and the remaining major piece of evidence -- the palm print on the car -- would not have been enough to convict him, the Court of Criminal Appeals determined. The court overturned Allen's conviction in 2009, and he walked out of prison on bond.
Now, the Texas Supreme Court is considering Allen's compensation claim. Both sides recently argued before the court, with Allen's attorneys saying he had proven himself innocent and was the same as any other ex-inmate who had been released from prison.
"Billy will establish that you don't have to have a DNA exoneration to be compensated," said his attorney, Kris Moore.
Assistant Solicitor General Philip Lionberger, representing the state, argued that Allen was freed through a claim that raised legitimate questions about his conviction but did not prove he was fully innocent. He said state law only requires payment to former inmates who win their freedom after presenting evidence proving their innocence based on a stricter standard than the one Allen met.
Lionberger said Allen's claim and others like his are "never going to be entitled to compensation."
Democratic state Sen. Rodney Ellis, who pushed for the state's compensation law and other criminal justice reforms, said Allen's case seemed caught in a "no person's land" -- the evidence was insufficient to convict him, yet it also appeared too weak to qualify him for compensation.
The state has paid 79 people about $48 million, according to the state comptroller's office. Most were freed through DNA testing or in connection to a drug detective in the Texas Panhandle town of Tulia later convicted of perjury.
Combs' office is currently challenging five compensation claims before the Texas Supreme Court. Another ex-inmate, Richard Sturgeon, had his conviction for a 1998 robbery overturned based on problems with his trial attorney and witnesses. He filed a claim similar to Allen's.
Cory Session, whose brother, Tim Cole, was exonerated of a rape conviction after he died and became the namesake of the compensation law, said he was prepared to push for legislative changes to help Allen.
"I'm totally against someone going to prison, spending years, and then their case getting out on appeal, and they say, 'We don't really want to say he's innocent, but no jury would find him guilty,'" Session said. "In the state of Texas, we can't play semantics with people's lives after they're incarcerated."
San Jose cop pleads no contest to humping underage minors???
Personally I think consensual sex between two or more people
should be legal. So I don't have a problem with this cop having
consensual sex with teenagers.
Billy Frederick Allen gets nothing for 25 years falsely spent in Texas prison
In Texas you are guilty till proven innocent!!!
Special perks for off duty government cops???
Sadly when government police officers or cops work
off duty and moonlight providing security they often
get special government perks that non-government cops don't get.
Often the taxpayers pay for these special perks.
Read more
here.
Secrecy common in government union pay talks
SourceSecrecy common in union pay talks
Cities' negotiations often preclude public
by D.S. Woodfill - Mar. 17, 2012 10:39 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Cities that negotiate pay and benefits with their employee unions in secret are becoming the norm instead of the exception, say union representatives and labor-relations experts.
Surprise is one of the latest municipalities to drop the curtain on its yearly negotiations by imposing secrecy rules in the city code in June.
Glendale, Tempe, Chandler and Maricopa have similar laws forbidding negotiating parties from disclosing labor talks to the media or public. Surprise goes a step further, threatening to have the police and fire unions disband for two years if they violate the rule. City managers face repercussions that would be meted out by the City Council.
The move came after tumultuous negotiations between the then-city manager and the Surprise firefighters union that included public finger-pointing from both sides.
The purpose of the ordinance "is so that the public and the press do not interfere with the negotiations," Assistant City Attorney Misty Leslie said when she presented a draft to the City Council in May. Leslie went on to say the ordinance would provide the city a reason to deny any public-records requests.
Union leaders and city officials support the rules, saying they promote harmonious discussions. Critics say they're meant to keep taxpayers from having a say in how their money is spent.
Nick Dranias, director of the Center for Constitutional Government at the Goldwater Institute, blasted Surprise's ordinance as "an obvious abuse of the public trust." The Goldwater Institute is a conservative watchdog group supporting legislation to ban "meet and confer" negotiations in Arizona. Dranias said state lawmakers should require officials to hold negotiations in public.
"The taxpayers have at least as much of a right as a shareholder in a business to know what their servants are doing with their money," he said. "(Negotiations) must be kept open to the public, and they must be kept open to the press. There is simply no other way that they can make sure that their elected officials aren't serving two masters instead of the one that they're supposed to serve, which is the public."
Greg Fretz, a labor-relations consultant and secretary-treasurer of the Arizona Public Employer Labor Relations Association, said negotiating in private is part of a relatively new approach to collective bargaining.
"I negotiated in the old days, where you used to be adversarial," Fretz said. "The new theory is both sides are going to have to work together. If you posture in the newspaper or on television, it doesn't do any good. You need to be talking and solving these problems face to face."
Comments made in public are often misinterpreted and foster ill will between negotiating parties, Fretz added.
"I don't like to generalize, but television -- they're looking for a sound bite," he said. "Once you start talking to the television, radio, newspaper ... there's a chance for misunderstanding."
Surprise Councilman John Williams said any deals struck between the city and unions would become public when they're discussed during the City Council's annual budget workshops, which are in April. Deals will be approved or rejected as part of the budget, usually in late May or early June.
Williams said the city isn't trying to hide anything from the public but instead is trying to take "a lot of the politics out of it, and it keeps it at that staffing level, where I think it should stay."
Other cities provide much less time for the public to digest information contained in a city-union agreement.
Capt. Pete Gorraiz, United Phoenix Firefighters Association president, said the agreements between Phoenix's public-safety unions and managers aren't made public until a week before the council takes a vote.
He acknowledged that's not enough time for a public perusal but residents elect council members to act in their best interests.
"The reality is nobody looks at it anyway," he said, except special-interest groups.
Phoenix Councilman Michael Johnson, who serves on the city's public-safety committee, said the rules avoid a cycle of accusations and counteraccusations. Like a jury awaiting evidence in a trial before it reaches a decision, the public needs to have city-union agreements before weighing in, he said.
Dan Barr, a Valley attorney who specializes in First Amendment cases, said the laws seem intended to cut the public out of the process.
"They're saying, 'We don't want you to be talking publicly about this, because Lord forbid that the public weigh in on what's going on,' " Barr said.
Barr said the ordinance's privacy provision would not hold up in court under the state's Public Records Law.
"Arizona courts have held repeatedly that the promise of confidentiality between a public body and whomever they're dealing with is not enough to overcome disclosure," Barr said.
New wrinkle in medical marijuana debate: stoned driving
Arizona's medical marijuana law says you can't be arrested for DWI just because you have THC in your body. But it does say it is illegal to drive stoned, but doesn't define what stoned is:This chapter does not authorize any person to engage in ....SourceD. Operating, navigating or being in actual physical control of any motor vehicle, aircraft or motorboat while under the influence of marijuana, except that a registered qualifying patient shall not be considered to be under the influence of marijuana solely because of the presence of metabolites or components of marijuana that appear in insufficient concentration to cause impairment.
New wrinkle in pot debate: stoned driving
Associated Press
By KRISTEN WYATT | Associated Press
DENVER (AP) — Angeline Chilton says she can't drive unless she smokes pot. The suburban Denver woman says she'd never get behind the wheel right after smoking, but she does use medical marijuana twice a day to ease tremors caused by multiple sclerosis that previously left her homebound.
"I don't drink and drive, and I don't smoke and drive," she said. "But my body is completely saturated with THC."
Her case underscores a problem that no one's sure how to solve: How do you tell if someone is too stoned to drive?
States that allow medical marijuana have grappled with determining impairment levels for years. And voters in Colorado and Washington state will decide this fall whether to legalize the drug for recreational use, bringing a new urgency to the issue.
A Denver marijuana advocate says officials are scrambling for limits in part because more drivers acknowledge using the drug.
"The explosion of medical marijuana patients has led to a lot of drivers sticking the (marijuana) card in law enforcement's face, saying, 'You can't do anything to me, I'm legal,'" said Sean McAllister, a lawyer who defends people charged with driving under the influence of marijuana.
It's not that simple. Driving while impaired by any drug is illegal in all states. [In Arizona any measurable amount of an illegal drug in your body is considered to mean you are DUI - Expect for medical marijuana patients.]
But it highlights the challenges law enforcement officers face using old tools to try to fix a new problem. Most convictions for drugged driving now are based on police observations, followed later by a blood test. [Well if it's that difficult to determine if a person is DUI, then the effects of marijuana use are probably not any where as dangerous on driving as alcohol use]
Authorities envision a legal threshold for pot that would be comparable to the blood-alcohol standard used to determine drunken driving. [Sadly the .08 level is more about raising revenue for the police and government then it is about getting dangerous drivers off the road. When the crime of DUI was invented the standard was .15, almost twice the legal limit now.]
But unlike alcohol, marijuana stays in the blood long after the high wears off a few hours after use, and there is no quick test to determine someone's level of impairment — not that scientists haven't been working on it.
Dr. Marilyn Huestis of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a government research lab, says that soon there will be a saliva test to detect recent marijuana use.
But government officials say that doesn't address the question of impairment.
"I'll be dead — and so will lots of other people — from old age, before we know the impairment levels" for marijuana and other drugs, said White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske. [Again that probably means using marijuana and driving isn't any where near as dangerous as drinking and driving]
Authorities recognize the need for a solution. Marijuana causes dizziness, slowed reaction time and drivers are more likely to drift and swerve while they're high.
Dr. Bob DuPont, president of the Institute for Behavior and Health, a non-government institute that works to reduce drug abuse, says research proves "the terrible carnage out there on the roads caused by marijuana."
One recent review of several studies of pot smoking and car accidents suggested that driving after smoking marijuana might almost double the risk of being in a serious or fatal crash.
And a recent nationwide census of fatal traffic accidents showed that while deadly crashes have declined in recent years, the percentage of mortally wounded drivers who later tested positive for drugs rose 18 percent between 2005 and 2011.
DuPont, drug czar for Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, wrote a paper last year on drugged driving for the Obama administration, which has made the issue a priority.
Physicians say that while many tests can show whether someone has recently used pot, it's more difficult to pinpoint impairment at any certain time.
Urine and blood tests are better at showing whether someone used the drug in the past — which is why employers and probation officers use them. But determining current impairment is far trickier.
"There's no sure answer to that question," said Dr. Guohua Li, a Columbia University researcher who reviewed marijuana use and motor vehicle crashes last year.
His survey linked pot use to crash risk, but pointed out wide research gaps. Scientists do not have conclusive data to link marijuana dosing to accident likelihood; whether it matters if the drug is smoked or eaten; or how pot interacts with other drugs.
The limited data has prompted a furious debate.
Proposed solutions include setting limits on the amount of the main psychoactive chemical in marijuana, THC, that drivers can have in their blood. But THC limits to determine impairment are not widely agreed upon.
Two states place the standard at 2 nanograms per milliliter of blood. Others have zero tolerance policies. And Colorado and Washington state are debating a threshold of 5 nanograms.
Such an attempt failed the Colorado Legislature last year, amid opposition from Republicans and Democrats. State officials then set up a task force to settle the question — and the panel couldn't agree.
This year, Colorado lawmakers are debating a similar measure, but its sponsors concede they don't know whether the "driving while high" bill will pass.
In Washington state, the ballot measure on marijuana legalization includes a 5 nanogram THC limit.
The measure's backers say polling indicates such a driving limit could be crucial to winning public support for legalization.
"Voters were very concerned about impaired driving," said Alison Holcomb, campaign director for Washington's legalization measure.
Holcomb also pointed to a failed marijuana legalization proposal in California two years ago that did not include a driving THC limit.
The White House, which has a goal of reducing drugged driving by 10 percent in the next three years, wants states to set a blood-level standard upon which to base convictions, but has not said what that limit should be. [Pleaseeee, what part of the U.S. Constitution give the White House the power to get involved in DUI case????]
Administration officials insist marijuana should remain illegal, and Kerlikowske called it a "bogus argument" to say any legal level of THC in a driver is safe. [Are they going to take that silly argument on alcohol? How about on nicotine or even caffeine??? ]
But several factors can skew THC blood tests, including age, gender, weight and frequency of marijuana use. Also, THC can remain in the system weeks after a user sobers up, leading to the anxiety shared by many in the 16 medical marijuana states: They could be at risk for a positive test at any time, whether they had recently used the drug or not.
A Colorado state forensic toxicologist testified recently that "5 nanograms is more than fair" to determine intoxication. But, for now the blood test proposals remain politically fraught, with supporters and opponents of marijuana legalization hinging support on the issue.
Huestis, of the government-funded drug abuse institute, says an easy-to-use roadside saliva test that can determine recent marijuana use — as opposed to long-ago pot use — is in final testing stages and will be ready for police use soon. [Recent marijuana uses doesn't mean jack!!! Taking one hit is a lot different then smoking a whole joint!!!]
Researchers envision a day when marijuana tests are as common in police cars as Breathalyzers.
Until then, lawmakers will consider measures such as Colorado's marijuana DUI proposal, which marijuana activists say imperils drivers who frequently use the drug such as Chilton, the multiple sclerosis patient.
She says that since she began using pot she has started driving again and for the first time in five years has landed a job.
Chilton worries Colorado's proposal jeopardizes her new found freedom.
___
Follow Kristen Wyatt at http://www.twitter.com/APkristenwyatt
___
Online:
National Institute on Drug Abuse drugged driving report: http://goo.gl/ZAYwn
Glendale officer written up over Fiesta Bowl gift
Source
Glendale officer written up over Fiesta Bowl gift
by Cecilia Chan - Mar. 18, 2012 09:11 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
A Glendale Police Department investigation concluded that a lieutenant violated the city's gift policy when he took a dozen free Fiesta Bowl tickets.
A pair of city lobbyists also took tickets but were cleared of wrongdoing by the city's Human Resources Department.
And City Manager Ed Beasley, who reported taking free tickets for three years, was not investigated.
The findings came about after The Republic requested the names of city employees who took free game tickets.
Glendale has hosted the Fiesta Bowl at University of Phoenix Stadium since 2007. The Scottsdale-based bowl organization stopped doling out free tickets starting with the 2011 game.
The police investigation found that Lt. Brian France violated department directives to follow city policy when he accepted the 2008 game tickets.
France, who was in charge of planning special events and was working the college game that year, gave four tickets to his wife's boss, four to a friend and four to Sgt. Brent Coombs, the report said.
Coombs, who is the department's spokesman, said he did not ask about the source of the tickets.
France told investigators that he did not consider the tickets a gift or gratuity because he gave them away, the report said.
The investigation determined France did not personally or financially benefit from the tickets, but it found that his actions "are not in keeping with the image and high standards of performance expected of city employees."
A memo of correction was placed in France's personnel file.
Brent Stoddard, director of Intergovernmental Programs, received one ticket in 2007 and two tickets in 2010. Ryan Peters, Intergovernmental Programs administrator, received two tickets in 2010.
Acting Human Resources Director Jim Brown said the lobbyists did not violate city policy because they attended the games as part of their jobs.
Brown said both city lobbyists brought a guest to the game with their second ticket, but he did not look into who those guests were.
"We found that they were performing the duties of their job description with the city of Glendale. That was our main concern when we looked at the intent," Brown said.
He said the major difference in the two situations is that the lieutenant took the tickets "for the purpose of entertainment and did not take them within the scope of his job duties."
Brown said the game provided a backdrop for the lobbyists to discuss issues with state lawmakers attending the college bowl.
Brown said he could not explain why the city didn't pay for the tickets if the events were important for the two employees to attend.
When Brown was asked why the city manager wasn't also investigated, city spokeswoman Julie Frisoni responded. She said his was a "different situation."
Frisoni said Beasley and the City Council are introduced during the field ceremony each year. "So it was certainly part of his job duties," she said.
Brown said there is no immediate need to amend the city's gift policy, which states, "Except as otherwise provided herein, city employees, or their family members, shall not accept gifts, gratuities and favors from any person, business, organization or group conducting business with the city."
The policy lists tickets to athletic events as an example of prohibited gifts or favors.
California gun shows caught in the crossfire
Source
California gun shows caught in the crossfire
By Howard Mintz
hmintz@mercurynews.com
Posted: 03/19/2012 06:40:31 AM PDT
Before the end of this year, Russell and Sallie Nordyke will set up shop for at least five gun shows at the Santa Clara County fairgrounds, providing a gathering spot for thousands of gun enthusiasts to buy and sell rifles, pistols and other weapons.
For the Glenn County couple, the South Bay is a small island amid a sea of hostility toward their TS Gun Shows. Bay Area counties from Alameda and Marin to San Mateo have enacted laws that forbid the sale or possession of guns on government property, effectively banning gun shows at some of the best spots to hold them.
The Nordykes believe those laws are unconstitutional -- and on Monday, a federal appeals court will once again take up their 12-year quest to strike down the regulations.
The case offers another crucial test of Second Amendment rights that could have repercussions for California's sweeping slate of state and local gun control laws.
Specifically, an 11-judge 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel is to hear arguments in the Nordykes' legal challenge to Alameda County's ordinance, which has outlawed gun shows at the fairgrounds in Pleasanton since 1999.
"It has impacted our lives tremendously," Sallie Nordyke said. "We used to be able to have gun shows in a lot of other places."
With gun rights groups such as the National Rifle Association on one side and gun control advocates such as the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence on the other, the Nordyke case is being closely watched across the country. The showdown is considered a barometer of how far local and state governments can go in regulating guns following U.S. Supreme Court rulings expanding constitutional protections for the right to bear arms.
The most recent of those rulings, in a Chicago case two years ago, established that the Second Amendment applies to state and local gun control regulations. But it left unresolved the legal survival threshold for laws such as Alameda County's, and the 9th Circuit is expected to tackle that issue in the Nordyke case.
The outcome could determine the fate of gun show regulations in California and other states within the 9th Circuit and may also shape ongoing legal challenges to other gun controls. With the Nordyke case pending, the 9th Circuit has put on hold two cases challenging California's strict limits on carrying concealed weapons and licenses for carrying loaded firearms in public.
"This could be the next big gun case to go to the Supreme Court," said Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor and author of "Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America." "It does pose a big question: whether the right to bear arms extends outside the home."
Winkler cautioned, however: "The gun show promoters have an uphill climb. When managing its own property, the government usually has a lot of (leeway)."
In fact, a three-judge 9th Circuit panel in 2009 upheld the county's law, finding it a "reasonable" form of regulation, but the court decided to reconsider the case with an 11-judge panel in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's major gun rights rulings.
The Nordykes have a history of pressing their cause, winning a case against Santa Clara County in the late 1990s when a federal judge concluded a gun show ban ran afoul of their free speech rights. With no regulation in place, the Nordykes have been able to hold gun shows in Santa Clara, including one this past weekend.
But Alameda County crafted its law to avoid Santa Clara County's legal problems, using language other counties have borrowed. Spurred by former Supervisor Mary King, Alameda County outlawed firearms on county property in response to concerns about a spate of gun-related violence across the East Bay at the time.
The Nordykes and gun rights advocates say there is no connection between gun violence and gun shows, arguing the Alameda County law arbitrarily targets the "gun culture." They maintain the ordinance undercuts Second Amendment rights, as well as their First Amendment rights to gather on public property for a gun show. Most legal experts say the 9th Circuit is primarily focused on the gun rights issue.
"The ordinance singles out Second Amendment activity for disfavored treatment and declares county property a Second Amendment-free zone," former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement wrote in a 9th Circuit brief on the NRA's behalf.
Alameda County's lawyers did not respond to requests for comment but have previously said the gun ban on government property is just the type of regulation the Supreme Court suggested would withstand a legal challenge. In court papers, they urged the 9th Circuit to uphold the law, saying there are "ample alternatives" for gun show promoters to hold events on private property.
The Nordykes are certainly ready to get the issue resolved.
"It has just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger," Sallie Nordyke said. "I never dreamed it would go on this long. I know more about the court system than I ever wanted to know."
Howard Mintz covers legal affairs. Contact him at 408-286-0236 or follow him at Twitter.com/hmintz.
Tucson cops having some stun gun fun kill a man
Source
Man dies after being hit with stun gun in Tucson
Mar. 19, 2012 12:07 PM
Associated Press
TUCSON -- Tucson police say they will have more to say Monday on the death of a 46-year-old man who struggled with Tucson police and was hit twice with a stun gun and later died.
Michael Carbone was pronounced dead early Sunday morning at a Tucson hospital.
Police spokeswoman Sgt. Maria Hawke tells The Associated Press the department has launched an internal investigation into Carbone's death.
Hawke says the department is still assembling information from the investigation and will be prepared to respond Monday afternoon.
Hawke says officers responded to a domestic violence call Saturday which resulted in a confrontation between police and Carbone, prompting officers to shoot him twice with a stun gun.
Hawke says Carbone was later uncooperative with paramedics then became unresponsive when police placed him on the ground.
Arizona gets a D+ in government corruption
When it comes to government corruption Arizona gets a D+Study: Arizona has corruption risk
by Mary Jo Pitzl - Mar. 19, 2012 09:38 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
Arizona gets a D+ in a new report that ranks the states on their susceptibility to corruption.
Although a low grade, it puts Arizona in the middle of the national pack at 27th, according to a yearlong study conducted by the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C.
The study tried to size up a state's risk of corruption by looking at laws and procedures designed to provide transparency and accountability in state government. The looser the standards, the greater the risk of corruption.
The study looked at 14 categories -- such as ease of accessing information, accountability across all levels of government and state budget practices -- and then applied 330 "integrity indicators."
The highest-ranking state -- New Jersey -- got a B+, and no state earned an A.
Arizona scored an A for its redistricting process, which is overseen by an independent panel. But that high mark was dragged down by Fs in pension-fund management, civil-service management, lobbying disclosures and oversight by the state insurance commission.
Several factors heavily influenced Arizona's overall D+ grade:
Inaction on financial-disclosure laws, even though the Fiesta Bowl scandal exposed problems with what lawmakers are required to report. No substantial changes have been made to laws since the AzScam scandal 20 years ago.
Although Arizona lawmakers must file financial-disclosure reports, they are not cross-referenced with similar reports from lobbyists, making it hard to connect dots on who is peddling influence and who is buying it.
An opaque budgeting process. The report notes the fiscal 2012 budget was unveiled, debated and finalized within an 18-hour period last year.
Budget cuts have weakened the state's ability to exercise its regulatory duties. The state lost 5,000 workers as it grappled with budget deficits.
The state's procurement laws are riddled with exceptions for some of government's largest institutions, such as universities.
The report is available at stateintegrity.org.
22 killed in drug violence in south Mexico state
Legalize drugs and all this crime and violence will end the very next day.22 killed in drug violence in south Mexico state
Mar. 19, 2012 02:39 PM
Associated Press
ACAPULCO, Mexico -- Gunmen ambushed and killed 12 police officers who had been sent to investigate the beheadings of 10 people in southern Guerrero state, Mexican authorities said Monday.
Guerrero state police spokesman Arturo Martinez said six state and six local officers were killed Sunday night on a road leading out of the town of Teloloapan. Another 11 officers were wounded.
The attack on the officers occurred as they were traveling in six patrol pickups and searching for the bodies of seven men and three women whose severed heads were dumped outside the town's slaughterhouse earlier Sunday, Martinez said.
The heads were left with a message threatening the La Familia drug cartel, whose home base is in neighboring Michoacan state.
Teloloapan is near the area shared by both Guerrero and Michoacan states and known as Tierra Caliente for its steamy weather.
The region is a violent, mountainous zone that has been used by drug traffickers to grow marijuana and opium poppies for years. It has been plagued by drug violence in recent years as drug gangs fight to control the area. Authorities say La Familia has been severely battered in the fighting.
Soldiers have been sent to the area but that hasn't stopped gunmen from killing priests, politicians, police chiefs, or anyone else who gets in the way.
Two years ago, nine police officers were kidnapped in Teloloapan when they were investigating the death of a man in the village of El Revelado. The bodies of eight of the officers were found days later. Six had been dismembered. One was found alive.
More than 47,000 people have died in drug violence nationwide since President Felipe Calderon began a crackdown on drug cartels in December 2006.
Cops bust 6 teenagers for protesting against Sheriff Joe's terrorists
SourceProtesters in custody after Arpaio protest outside school
by John Genovese - Mar. 20, 2012 08:13 PM
The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team
Six of the nearly 150 young people were taken into custody Tuesday after taking to the streets in front of Trevor Browne High School in Phoenix to protest the immigration policies of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
The protesters, consisting of students from Trevor Browne, other area high schools and colleges, rallied in the intersection of 75th Avenue and Cheery Lynn Street, forcing the closure of 75th Avenue in both directions. slideshow Trevor Browne High School protest
"Arpaio is terrorizing our community and we're tired of it," said 16-year-old Jackie Sanchez, who was seated around a protest banner laid out in the street. "The only power [Arpaio] has is fear. That's over."
The group repeatedly chanted "undocumented and unafraid" during the nearly 4-hour protest.
Some held signs reading "Support the DREAM Act!" and "We will no longer remain in the shadows."
Arpaio was unavailable for comment Tuesday evening.
"Our job is to keep it peaceful and legal," said Officer James Holmes, a Phoenix police spokesman.
The protest was peaceful but was clearly illegal because participants were blocking the road, he added.
The protest started on a street corner but moved into the street by 3:15 p.m.
Police, wearing helmets and carrying shields, later formed a line across 75th Avenue. A warning was announced at 5:50 p.m., telling the protesters who continued to block the street they would be arrested. Many had moved to the sidewalk but others remained in the street.
Police began moving towards the group at 6 p.m., and the street was mostly cleared by 6:15 p.m.
Four women, including two under age 18, and two men were arrested and are expected to be charged with disorderly conduct and obstructing a thoroughfare, according to Phoenix police.
"It's incredibly important that we exercise patience in these situations," Holmes said. "We don't want to rush in with unprepared resources."
According to Holmes, a "tremendous amount of resources" were used by police during the protest, in which about 100 Phoenix officers responded.
He added that the demonstrators were never physically aggressive and the outcome "appeared to be a success" for both protesters and police.
SF mayor suspends sheriff, seeks removal
by Paul Elias - Mar. 20, 2012 12:22 AM
Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO - The San Francisco mayor says he's suspending the city's embattled sheriff and intends to permanently remove him from office following a domestic violence conviction involving the law enforcement official's Venezuelan actress wife.
Mayor Ed Lee said Tuesday that Ross Mirkarimi rejected his suggestion to resign after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor false imprisonment charge. Lee said he will file official misconduct charges Wednesday and the matter will be referred to the city's Ethics Commission.
"He has chosen not to resign, and now I must act," Lee said. "Sheriff Mirkarimi's actions and confession of guilt clearly fall below the below the standards of decency and good faith rightly required of all public officials."
If Lee succeeds in removing Mirkarimi as sheriff, the mayor will need the votes from nine of 11 members of the Board of Supervisors.
Earlier, a defiant Mirkarimi said he would fight to keep his job because he believes he didn't "official misconduct." The New Year's Eve dispute with his wife, Eliana Lopez, at their home in front of their toddler son left her with a bruise on her arm.
Mirkarimi was sworn in as sheriff on Jan. 8.
"I wanted to and have taken full responsibility," a sweat-drenched Mirkarimi told reporters outside his office in City Hall. "At this time, I do not plan to resign."
Mirkarimi said he hasn't spoken to his wife in nine weeks and is allowed to visit his son for about two hours each day because of an order issued by a judge. A separate order also prohibits the sheriff from carrying a gun.
He said his chief aim is reconciling with his family. "It's been cruel. It's been crushing," he said.
Mirkarimi also called a neighbor's accusation that he and his Lopez pressured him to destroy evidence and lie to the police a "complete fabrication." The claims were published Tuesday on the San Francisco Chronicle's opinion page, leading Lopez to cancel an appearance at a press conference to discuss the case.
Lopez' attorney, Paula Canny, said she advised the sheriff's wife to refrain from public comments because lawsuits were threatened.
Attorney Lidia Stiglich told The Associated Press that Mirkarimi will hire another attorney with more City Hall experience to represent him before the city's Ethics Commission and the Board of Supervisors.
Mirkarimi pleaded guilty to misdemeanor false imprisonment in exchange for the dropping of three other misdemeanor charges of domestic violence, child endangerment and dissuading a witness. The plea deal was struck as a jury was being picked for a trial that promised to embarrass the sheriff with testimony about infidelity, his temper and other intimate details.
San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon said the false imprisonment charge was a domestic violence plea and the conviction was just as serious as the three charges that were dropped.
On Monday, a judge sentenced Mirkarimi to three years of probation and a year of counseling. Under the plea agreement, Mirkarimi must pay $590 in fines, serve probation, spend a year in a domestic violence intervention program, take parenting classes and do community service.
The district attorney said Mirkarimi will be barred from carrying a gun until a judge lifts a stay-away order that prevents the sheriff from seeing his wife without court permission. Gascon said that order could stay in place for the entire three years of probation.
Mirkarimi said he was undergoing counseling to address "my arrogance and anger management issues" and reiterated his advocacy against domestic violence during his time as a board supervisor.
Meanwhile, Lee has named a retired chief deputy, Vicki Hennessy, to serve as interim sheriff.
I won't argue against executing evil nasty criminals. The problem is frequently that innocent people are routinely railroaded by corrupt cops or power hungry prosecutors leading to innocent people being executed by our government masters.
As of today around 300 people have been removed from death row when DNA testing proved the police framed them for crimes they didn't commit. I suspect those 300 are just the tip of the iceberg.
Arizona's Ray Krone was the 100th person to be freed from death row when DNA proved the Phoenix police framed him murder.
Arizona high court approves 2 more executions
Mar. 20, 2012 03:34 PM
Associated Press
The Arizona Supreme Court on Tuesday approved the executions of two more death-row inmates, one for the brutal rape and murder of a Phoenix woman and the other for killing a Tucson college student after robbing him.
Samuel Villegas Lopez, 49, is scheduled to be executed on May 16. Thomas Arnold Kemp, 63, is set for execution on April 26. If both executions are carried out, and if the state can carry out three other executions on its radar screen, Arizona would be on pace to match its busiest year for executions in state history.
The most inmates Arizona has executed in a given year since establishing the death penalty in 1910 was seven inmates in 1999.
Arizona has executed two inmates so far this year -- Robert Henry Moormann on Feb. 29 and Robert Charles Towery on March 8. It could schedule three more on top of Lopez's and Kemp's executions, putting the state on pace to execute seven men this year.
The state executed four inmates last year.
Police later found a half-naked Holmes with three major stab wounds to her head, one on her face, and 23 in her left breast and upper chest. The 5-foot-2-inch, 125-pound woman had been blindfolded and gagged with her own clothing, and her throat had been slit.
Semen found on her body matched Lopez's after he was arrested in a separate rape less than a week later.
Holmes' apartment was in complete disarray, and blood was splattered on walls in the kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. In a 1993 ruling from the Arizona Supreme Court upholding Lopez's death sentence, the justices wrote that the state of the apartment and Holmes' body showed "a terrific struggle for life" and called the killing a "grisly and ultimately fatal nightmare."
"Obviously, the victim endured great physical and mental suffering over a relatively protracted period of time while she struggled for her life," they wrote.
Lopez argued to the court that he didn't deserve the death penalty because he said he didn't torture Holmes, that none of the wounds he gave her were inflicted solely to cause pain, and that he "simply continued to stab the victim until she died."
In a later unsuccessful appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, Lopez argued that he deserved a sentence of life in prison rather than the death penalty. He said that he had ineffective attorneys who failed to present during trial a psychiatric expert who had hypothesized that Lopez was suffering from "pathological intoxication" at the time of the killing.
Pathological intoxication is considered a rare condition in which a person exhibits sudden and unpredictable behavior shortly after drinking a very small amount of alcohol.
Juarez had just left his apartment to get food when Kemp and Jeffery Logan spotted him. They held him at gunpoint and used his debit card to withdraw $200 before driving him to the Silverbell Mine area near Marana, where Kemp killed Juarez.
The two men then went to Flagstaff, where they kidnapped a married couple traveling from California to Kansas and made them drive to Durango, Colo., where Kemp raped the man in a hotel room. Later, Kemp and Logan forced the couple to drive to Denver, where they escaped. Logan soon after separated from Kemp and called police about Juarez's murder.
Logan led police to Juarez's body, and Kemp was arrested.
Kemp has argued that his conviction was unfair because then-prosecutor Kenneth Peasley repeatedly told jurors that Kemp's homosexuality was behind Juarez's kidnapping and murder, and that the jury hadn't been properly vetted for their feelings about gay men.
Kemp addressed the court during his sentencing trial when he was supposed to explain why he didn't deserve the death penalty. Instead, Kemp said Juarez was in the country illegally and was "beneath my contempt," and expressed contempt for Juarez, Logan, Peasley and reporters who had written about his case.
"I don't show any mercy, and I am certainly not here to plead for mercy," he said. "I spit on the law and all those who serve it."
And of course this brings up one definition of "insanity" which says "insanity" is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Last but not least this is a result of the insane and unconstitutional "war on drugs". At the Federal level two thirds of the people in Federal prisons are there for victimless drug war crimes that didn't hurt anybody. I don't know what percent of the California prison population is there for victimless drug war crimes, but I suspect it is a huge number.
New ACLU report on costly prison realignment - counties ignoring cheaper, better alternatives
By Tracey Kaplan
tkaplan@mercurynews.com
Posted: 03/20/2012 07:13:47 PM PDT
California may be dismantling its prison-industrial complex, but it's quickly replacing it with a jail-industrial complex, a new report released late Tuesday warns.
The state's prison population has plummeted -- by 22,440 inmates, or about 15 percent -- since October, according to the report by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. That's when the state responded to a court order to reduce overcrowding by adopting realignment, which shifts responsibility to counties for imprisoning and rehabilitating nonviolent felons.
But now, according to the ACLU, the state is funneling billions of dollars to counties, much of it for building or expanding jails, instead of for cheaper alternatives
called for in the realignment law -- including electronic monitoring, drug treatment and vocational training. The report is the first comprehensive critique of realignment since the massive plan was adopted six months ago.
"The state says locking people up hasn't worked," said Allen Hopper, police practices director of the ACLU of Northern California. "But on the other hand, it turns over billions to maintain the status quo," he said.
Beginning in 2007, the state has awarded about $1.2 billion to 22 counties for jail construction, including $602 million early this month to 11 counties for the expansion or construction of jails. The state also gave counties about $400 million this fiscal year to spend on whatever mix of incarceration,
supervision and programs they choose.
The report contends counties could easily reduce their jail populations and save money without endangering public safety, principally by releasing more inmates awaiting trial on their own recognizance or under supervision. About 71 percent of the inmates languishing in California's jails are awaiting trial and haven't been convicted of any offense.
The report recommends reforming the money-based bail system, as Washington, D.C., and Santa Cruz County have done with great success.
But sheriffs in some of the 32 counties with overcrowded lockups or court-imposed caps on jail populations before realignment criticized the report, saying the ACLU doesn't have a realistic grasp on the problems they are facing. And county officials also said they oppose a suggestion that the state freeze funding for jail construction.
"I'm already letting out the best of the worst,'' said Sheriff Adam Christianson of Stanislaus County, where many commuters to Silicon Valley live.
He said many sheriffs are taking a hybrid approach with the jail funds.
"Here's what the ACLU needs to understand -- I'm not just building jail beds," Christianson added. He's also replacing a jail that burned down, putting in a day-reporting center, building a new medical unit for mentally ill and sick inmates and adding classrooms to serve the new population of felons, who will be locked up longer.
The ACLU report also contends the state is allocating too much realignment money to counties like Kern, San Bernardino and Riverside, which sent more felons to state prison. The formula is being negotiated by members of the California State Association of Counties, who are apparently split on the question. Next year, counties will be getting nearly $855 million, about double what they received for a nine-month period this fiscal year.
The report recommends that the formula be revised to reward counties that reduced the number of people they sent to prison by adopting innovative programs before realignment.
An analyst for the county group said it will not factor crime rates into the formula, as the ACLU suggests. But the organization is still haggling over how to divide the money, with counties that got fewer funds last year pushing for change.
Philip Kader, Contra Costa County's probation chief, said the current division doesn't make sense. His county got about $4.5 million. But Tulare County, which has about a third of Contra Costa's population, got $6 million.
Contact Tracey Kaplan at 408-278-3482.
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
Iran has conducted surveillance in NYC, police say
Mar. 21, 2012 11:31 AM
Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- Authorities have interviewed at least 13 people since 2005 with ties to Iran's government who were seen taking pictures of New York City landmarks, a senior New York Police Department official said Wednesday.
Police consider these instances to be pre-operational surveillance, bolstering their concerns that Iran or its proxy terrorist group could be prepared to strike inside the United States, if provoked by escalating tensions between the two countries.
Mitchell Silber, the NYPD's director of intelligence analysis, told Congress that New York's international significance as a terror target and its large Jewish population make the city a likely place for Iran and Hezbollah to strike.
Silber testified before the House Homeland Security about the potential threat. Much of what Silber said echoed his previous statements on the potential threat, but he offered new details Wednesday about past activities in New York.
In May 2005, Silber said, tips led the NYPD to six people on a sight-seeing cruise who were taking pictures and movies of city landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge. In September 2008, police interviewed three people taking pictures of railroad tracks. And in September 2010, federal air marshals saw four people taking pictures and videos at a New York heliport. Interviews with law enforcement revealed that all were associated with the Iranian government, but they were ultimately released and never charged, Silber said.
U.S. officials long have worried that Iran would use Hezbollah to carry out attacks inside the United States. And Iran was previously accused in a disrupted plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. here last year, a plan interpreted in the U.S. intelligence community as a clear message that Iran is not afraid to carry out an attack inside the U.S.
In January, James Clapper, the top U.S. intelligence official, said some Iranian officials are probably "more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime."
But government officials have said there are no known or specific threats indicating Iranian plans to attack inside the U.S.
Sheriff Joe's shifts conspiracy theory from birth certificate to draft card
Ok, so maybe the phony birth certificate claim concerning President Barack Obama didn’t quite catch on with the media. Did you think that was going to stop Sheriff Joe Arpaio?
How about claims of a faked Selective Service registration?
The sheriff sent out a press release today that begins, “Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has sent a letter to the Director of the U.S. Selective Service System headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. The Sheriff is asking the agency to conduct an investigation of Barack Obama’s Selective service registration form from 1980 after preliminary findings of the Sheriff’s six-month long investigation determined that it may be a forgery.”
Like the “birther” conspiracy that the sheriff claimed to uncover earlier this month, the Selective Service card conspiracy has been out there for a very long time and also has been debunked.
The Internet is filled with conspiracy theories by believers in the fake card and with others who debunk the claims. One of the latter can be viewed here.
Not that such a thing matters to those who want to believe the documents are fake no matter what.
People who happen to be the voters Arpaio is most counting on in November.
The sheriff hints in his press release that he doesn't trust what the Selective Service director will tell him, anyway, since the director was appointed by Obama.
Which means this entire exercise is what?
A political stunt?
Also, for an investigation by posse members that wasn’t supposed to cost taxpayers anything the sheriff’s throw-everything-against-the-wall-and-see-if-anyt hing-sticks investigation into the president’s background certainly seems to be taking up a lot of HIS time. As well as the time of his county paid public relations staff.
And doesn’t THAT cost us something?
Or would suggesting such a thing be part of a media conspiracy against him?
Check out these previous
articles
on the police.
More
articles
on the police.
SF mayor suspends sheriff, seeks removal
For useless information the city and county of San Francisco occupy the same land.
Arizona government to murder 2 more people
Murder is wrong (except when it's done by our government masters). Well at least that's how our government masters feel about it.
Lopez was convicted for raping, robbing and stabbing 59-year-old Estafana Holmes to death in her Phoenix apartment on Oct. 29, 1986, after what court records described as a "terrible and prolonged struggle."
Kemp, the other inmate approved for execution, was sentenced to death for kidnapping 25-year-old Hector Soto Juarez from outside his Tucson apartment on July 11, 1992, and robbing him before taking him into a desert area, forcing him to undress and shooting him twice in the head.
California prison-industrial complex becomes jail-industrial complex
Think of it as a jobs program for cops and prison guards.
Only terrorists take photos of the Statute of Libertry
They must be terrorists!!!
They are taking photos of the Statute of Liberty
and other tourist attractions.
Or at least that is the lame excuse the cops want to use to spy on them!!!
H. L. Mencken
Source
Sheriff Joe says President Obama is a draft dodger???
Source