The bad news is the law sucks. From this article the law seems to be worse then our medical marijuana in Arizona and we have one of the worst in the nation.
House approves medical marijuana bill
4-year pilot proposal clears chamber after emotional debate
By Ray Long and Rafael Guerrero, Chicago Tribune reporters
April 18, 2013
SPRINGFIELD—
— The Illinois House voted to legalize marijuana for medical use in a potential breakthrough for supporters Wednesday after an emotional debate that included lawmakers' stories of friends and relatives seeking relief from overwhelming pain and sickness.
The 61-57 vote for a four-year pilot program was cheered by supporters who say the House has long been the highest hurdle for legalization. The Senate has previously passed similar legislation, and Gov. Pat Quinn said Wednesday that he is "open-minded" about the proposal.
Illinois would become the 19th state to legalize medical marijuana, and proponents say it would be the most restrictive program in the country, with conditions on qualifying illnesses, physician approval and production of the drug.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is not about getting high, it's not about dope, it's not about what our mothers told us when we went to college," said Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, the chief sponsor. "This is about providing a product at no expense to the taxpayers to provide better health care to people who desperately need this product."
National opinion polls have suggested that Americans are increasingly comfortable with marijuana for medical use, but opponents pointed out that many in law enforcement and medicine, as well as the federal government, are not on board.
"This bill is absolutely a wrong piece of legislation," said Republican Rep. Jim Sacia, a former FBI agent from Pecatonica who added that many Illinois sheriffs oppose the proposal.
Lang implored fence-sitting lawmakers to stop forcing people who need relief into "some back alley" to score their pot, saying that "we're turning granny into a criminal."
The most persuasive arguments may have been those from lawmakers who related personal stories.
With her voice breaking, Rep. JoAnn Osmond, R-Antioch, told colleagues she opposed a similar measure in the past but changed her mind because of an ill friend and his wife who spent time at Osmond's home while the man battled chronic pain tied to complications from cancer.
Osmond would not let him use marijuana in her house. Now, two years since his death, she said she wonders about her decision because he was in a daze from a painkiller prescription that "made him extremely sick, very sick."
North Side Democratic Rep. Kelly Cassidy told colleagues the story of a brother-in-law who suffers from terminal cancer and "would not be with us if not for making use of cannabis." Pain pills were "sucking the life out of him," but now he and her sister can "enjoy what will be his last days," she said.
"My sister and my brother-in-law, who I love dearly, are able to make the best of an absolutely horrific situation as a result of this product," Cassidy said.
Rep. Deb Mell, D-Chicago, said she has taken medicine for pain since having a mastectomy in August and can relate to the suffering. "There's a real panic that comes in because it's like, 'I can't live with this pain, but I can't keep taking these pills,'" she said.
Under the bill, an individual could be prescribed no more than 2.5 ounces of marijuana over two weeks. A doctor who prescribes marijuana must have had a prior and ongoing relationship with the patient.
Patients would have to buy the marijuana from one of 60 dispensing centers throughout the state rather than be allowed to grow their own. Workers at dispensing centers would undergo criminal background checks, the stores would be under round-the-clock camera surveillance and users would carry cards that indicate how much they had bought to prevent stockpiling.
Marijuana would be grown inside 22 cultivation centers registered with the Illinois Department of Agriculture.
A previous version of the legislation had allowed patients to grow their own, but that provision was removed to make the bill more restrictive, said Sen. Bill Haine, D-Alton, who sponsored similar legislation that passed the Senate in 2009 and will be the lead sponsor of the current measure.
The bill also says a person who uses medical marijuana would be required to take a field sobriety test if police pulled over a car. Refusal would lead to a one-year driver's license suspension and revocation of the medical marijuana privilege, Haine said.
Currently, field sobriety tests in police stops for driving under the influence of marijuana generally are inadmissible in court cases. The legislation now would allow field sobriety tests to be admissible as evidence at trial in such cases, Haine said.
Haine acknowledged that "there is a question as to how much marijuana impairs a driver." Current Illinois law says drivers with a trace of marijuana in their systems can be convicted of driving under the influence.
Haine, a former Madison County state's attorney, dismissed the argument that "this can be abused, it's a gateway drug."
"The people who are using it, many of them are terminal," he said. "I don't know what gateway they're talking about."
The bill goes to the Senate, where President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, supported the previous medical marijuana bill that passed the upper chamber in 2009 but later failed in the House.
The House vote came only hours after Quinn said at an unrelated Springfield appearance that he was impressed by the story of an injured military veteran who maintained that marijuana provided him relief from war wounds.
Outside the state Capitol, some opponents of the bill expressed their dismay.
"It's really, strongly unfortunate," said Dr. Eric Voth, a Topeka, Kan., physician who is chairman of the Institute on Global Drug Policy. He said he's watched pro-marijuana lobbying groups work the medical marijuana angle for years.
"I think it's unfortunate that Illinois fell into their clutches," Voth said.
Voth's biggest concern, echoed by John Kennedy, executive director of the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police, is that the law would allow medical marijuana to bypass FDA regulation, which could jeopardize consumers, he said.
"Medicine needs to come through a process of careful trials and research," Voth said. "It's not good medicine. It's impure and unpredictable."
Tribune reporter Ellen Jean Hirst contributed.
rlong@tribune.com
raguerrero2@tribune.com
Basically the government schools have become a jobs program for teachers, administrators, and cops and are run for the sake of the teachers, administrators, cops and unions, not the parents and children.
Now the cops seems to want to use recent shootings to turn the schools into a bigger jobs program for police officers. And this article addresses some of that.
Criminalizing Children at School
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Published: April 18, 2013 13 Comments
The National Rifle Association and President Obama responded to the Newtown, Conn., shootings by recommending that more police officers be placed in the nation’s schools. But a growing body of research suggests that, contrary to popular wisdom, a larger police presence in schools generally does little to improve safety. It can also create a repressive environment in which children are arrested or issued summonses for minor misdeeds — like cutting class or talking back — that once would have been dealt with by the principal.
Stationing police in schools, while common today, was virtually unknown during the 1970s. Things began to change with the surge of juvenile crime during the ’80s, followed by an overreaction among school officials. Then came the 1999 Columbine High School shooting outside Denver, which prompted a surge in financing for specially trained police. In the mid-1970s, police patrolled about 1 percent of schools. By 2008, the figure was 40 percent.
The belief that police officers automatically make schools safer was challenged in a 2011 study that compared federal crime data of schools that had police officers with schools that did not. It found that the presence of the officers did not drive down crime. The study — by Chongmin Na of The University of Houston, Clear Lake, and Denise Gottfredson of the University of Maryland — also found that with police in the buildings, routine disciplinary problems began to be treated as criminal justice problems, increasing the likelihood of arrests.
Children as young as 12 have been treated as criminals for shoving matches and even adolescent misconduct like cursing in school. This is worrisome because young people who spend time in adult jails are more likely to have problems with law enforcement later on. Moreover, federal data suggest a pattern of discrimination in the arrests, with black and Hispanic children more likely to be affected than their white peers.
In Texas, civil rights groups filed a federal complaint against the school district in the town of Bryan. The lawyers say African-American students are four times as likely as other students to be charged with misdemeanors, which can carry fines up to $500 and lead to jail time for disrupting class or using foul language.
The criminalization of misbehavior so alarmed the New York City Council that, in 2010, it passed the Student Safety Act, which requires detailed police reports on which students are arrested and why. (Data from the 2011-12 school year show that black students are being disproportionately arrested and suspended.)
Some critics now want to require greater transparency in the reporting process to make the police even more forthcoming. Elsewhere in the country, judges, lawmakers and children’s advocates have been working hard to dismantle what they have begun to call the school-to-prison pipeline.
Given the growing criticism, districts that have gotten along without police officers should think twice before deploying them in school buildings.
While I think it is wrong to murder innocent people like the people that planted the bombs in the Boston Marathon, I think that Tamerlan Tsarnaev quote is correct.
If the American government would stop terrorizing people in other countries these terrorist acts would stop overnight.
Also from this quote it sounds like the American police force have a double standard of justice.
They seem to think it's OK to flush our Constitutional rights down the toilet to help them catch
alleged criminals.
Final shootout, then Boston bombing suspect caught
Associated Press Sat Apr 20, 2013 7:26 AM
WATERTOWN, Mass. — For just a few minutes, it seemed as if the dragnet that had shut down a metropolitan area of millions while legions of police went house to house looking for the suspected Boston Marathon bomber had failed.
Weary officials lifted a daylong order that had kept residents in their homes, saying it was fruitless to keep an entire city locked down. Then one man emerged from his home and noticed blood on the pleasure boat parked in his backyard. He lifted the tarp and found the wounded 19-year-old college student known the world over as Suspect No. 2.
Soon after that, the 24-hour drama that paralyzed a city and transfixed a nation was over.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s capture touched off raucous celebrations in and around Boston, with chants of “USA, USA” as residents flooded the streets in relief and jubilation after four tense days since twin explosions ripped through the marathon’s crowd at the finish line, killing three people and wounding more than 180.
President Barack Obama said there are many unanswered questions about the Boston bombings, including whether the two men had help from others. He urged people not to rush judgment about their motivations.
Dzhokhar and his brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, were identified by authorities and relatives as ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who had been in the U.S. for about a decade and were believed to be living in Cambridge, just outside Boston. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died early in the day of gunshot wounds and a possible blast injury. He was run over by his younger brother in a car as he lay wounded, according to investigators.
During a long night of violence Thursday and into Friday, the brothers killed an MIT police officer, severely wounded another lawman during a gun battle and hurled explosives at police in a desperate getaway attempt, authorities said.
Late Friday, less than an hour after authorities lifted the lockdown, they tracked down the younger man holed up in the boat, weakened by a gunshot wound after fleeing on foot from the overnight shootout with police that left 200 spent rounds behind.
The resident who spotted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in his boat in his Watertown yard called police, who tried to persuade the suspect to get out of the boat, said Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis.
“He was not communicative,” Davis said.
Instead, he said, there was an exchange of gunfire — the final volley of one of the biggest manhunts in American history.
The violent endgame unfolded just a day after the FBI released surveillance-camera images of two young men suspected of planting the pressure-cooker explosives at the marathon’s finish line, an attack that put the nation on edge for the week.
Watertown residents who had been told Friday morning to stay inside behind locked doors poured out of their homes and lined the streets to cheer police vehicles as they rolled away from the scene.
Celebratory bells rang from a church tower. Teenagers waved American flags. Drivers honked. Every time an emergency vehicle went by, people cheered loudly.
“They finally caught the jerk,” said nurse Cindy Boyle. “It was scary. It was tense.”
Police said three other people were taken into custody for questioning at an off-campus housing complex at the University of the Massachusetts at Dartmouth where the younger man may have lived.
“Tonight, our family applauds the entire law enforcement community for a job well done, and trust that our justice system will now do its job,” said the family of 8-year-old Martin Richard, who died in the bombing.
Queries cascaded in after authorities released the surveillance-camera photos — the FBI website was overwhelmed with 300,000 hits per minute — but what role those played in the overnight clash was unclear. State police spokesman Dave Procopio said police realized they were dealing with the bombing suspects based on what the two men told a carjacking victim during their night of crime.
The search by thousands of law enforcement officers all but shut down the Boston area for much of the day. Officials halted all mass transit, including Amtrak trains to New York, advised businesses not to open and warned close to 1 million people in the city and some of its suburbs to unlock their doors only for uniformed police.
Around midday, the suspects’ uncle, Ruslan Tsarni of Montgomery Village, Md., pleaded on television: “Dzhokhar, if you are alive, turn yourself in and ask for forgiveness.”
Until the younger man’s capture, it was looking like a grim day for police. As night fell, they announced that they were scaling back the hunt and lifting the stay-indoors order across the region because they had come up empty-handed.
But then the break came and within a couple of hours, the search was over. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured about a mile from the site of the shootout that killed his brother.
A neighbor described how heavily armed police stormed by her window not long after the lockdown was lifted — the rapid gunfire left her huddled on the bathroom floor on top of her young son.
“I was just waiting for bullets to just start flying everywhere,” Deanna Finn said.
When at last the gunfire died away and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was taken from the neighborhood in an ambulance, an officer gave Finn a cheery thumbs-up.
“To see the look on his face, he was very, very happy, so that made me very, very happy,” she said.
Authorities said the man dubbed Suspect No. 1 — the one in sunglasses and a dark baseball cap in the surveillance-camera pictures — was Tamerlan Tsarnaev, while Suspect No. 2, the one in a white baseball cap worn backward, was his younger brother.
Chechnya, where the brothers grew up, has been the scene of two wars between Russian forces and separatists since 1994, in which tens of thousands were killed in heavy Russian bombing. That spawned an Islamic insurgency that has carried out deadly bombings in Russia and the region, although not in the West.
Also, the FBI interviewed the older brother at the request of a foreign government in 2011, and nothing derogatory was found, according to a federal law enforcement official who was not authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The official did not identify the foreign country or say why it made the request.
Exactly how the long night of crime began was unclear. But police said the brothers carjacked a man in a Mercedes-Benz in Cambridge, just across the Charles River from Boston, then released him unharmed at a gas station.
They also shot to death a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer, 26-year-old Sean Collier, while he was responding to a report of a disturbance, investigators said.
The search for the Mercedes led to a chase that ended in Watertown, where authorities said the suspects threw explosive devices from the car and exchanged gunfire with police. A transit police officer, 33-year-old Richard Donohue, was shot and critically wounded, authorities said.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ran over his already wounded brother as he fled, according to two law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation. At some point, he abandoned his car and ran away on foot.
The brothers had built an arsenal of pipe bombs, grenades and improvised explosive devices and used some of the weapons in trying to make their getaway, said Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., a member of the House Intelligence Committee.
Watertown resident Kayla Dipaolo said she was woken up overnight by gunfire and a large explosion that sounded “like it was right next to my head … and shook the whole house.”
“It was very scary,” she said. “There are two bullet holes in the side of my house, and by the front door there is another.”
Tamerlan Tsarnaev had studied accounting as a part-time student at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston for three semesters from 2006 to 2008, the school said. He was married with a young daughter.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was registered as a student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Students said he was on campus this week after the Boston Marathon bombing. The campus closed down Friday along with colleges around the Boston area.
The men’s father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said in a telephone interview with the AP from the Russian city of Makhachkala that his younger son, Dzhokhar, is “a true angel.” He said his son was studying medicine.
“He is such an intelligent boy,” the father said. “We expected him to come on holidays here.”
A man who said he knew Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Krystle Campbell, the 29-year-old restaurant manager killed in Monday’s bombing, said he was glad Dzhokhar had survived.
“I didn’t want to lose more than one friend,” Marvin Salazar said.
“Why Jahar?” he asked, using Tsarnaev’s nickname. “I want to know answers. That’s the most important thing. And I think I speak for almost all America. Why the Boston Marathon? Why this year? Why Jahar?”
Two years ago, the city of Cambridge awarded Dzhokhar Tsarnaev a $2,500 scholarship. At the time, he was a senior at Cambridge Rindge & Latin School, a highly regarded public school whose alumni include Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and NBA Hall of Famer Patrick Ewing.
Tsarni, the men’s uncle, said the brothers traveled here together from Russia. He called his nephews “losers” and said they had struggled to settle in the U.S. and ended up “thereby just hating everyone.”
———
Sullivan and Associated Press writers Stephen Braun, Jack Gillum and Pete Yost reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Mike Hill, Katie Zezima, Pat Eaton-Robb and Steve LeBlanc in Boston, Rodrique Ngowi in Watertown, Mass. and Jeff Donn in Cambridge, Mass., contributed to this report.
Richardson: When will Arizona, cities get serious about alcohol-related crime?
Posted: Thursday, April 18, 2013 9:27 am
Guest Commentary by Bill Richardson
It was no surprise a 20-year-old man was arrested over the weekend for stabbing another man at the Country Thunder music festival in Pinal County. News reports tell of an argument escalating into violence. I’d bet excessive and criminal alcohol consumption played a part in this crime.
Country Thunder is well known for its wild parties, exhibitionism, drunkenness and violence. In 2011 an Arizona Department of Public Safety officer and Pinal County sheriff’s deputy were attacked by a drunken crowd resulting in serious injuries to both officers.
We constantly hear about violent outcomes to citizens encountering drunks and DUI drivers, but police officers contact drunks regularly and get hurt and killed. I can recall four officers, three from Tempe and one from Gilbert, in Tempe being seriously injured and killed. Two were shot — one beaten and another run over after their assailants spent the night drinking to excess at local watering holes and boozefests. Officers from Mesa, DPS, Chandler, Phoenix and other agencies have also fallen victim to criminal alcohol abusers in their communities.
[Oddly ex-cop Bill Richardson just plain forgot to mention
DPS police officer Steven Svestka
who was arrested, while he was drunk as a skunk at the Country Thunder concert who was busted in a woman's restroom.]
Gov. Jan Brewer’s Office for Highway Safety recently awarded an $80,000 grant to Tempe to the city get a handle on its illegal alcohol activities and related crime. Officials said the money would be used for “DUI enforcement downtown and on streets citywide, including to impact Large Party Liquor Enforcement, enhance existing Covert Underage Buyer Program in partnership with the Arizona Department of Liquor License, Control and Investigations, and limit the purchase of alcohol with fraudulent ID in liquor establishments.”
An amount like $80,000 will no doubt help pay the extra overtime in Tempe’s efforts, but what happens when the money is gone? When you’re paying officers $50-$60 an hour in overtime to make arrests and appear in court, the cash will be gone in a flash.
[Sounds like a jobs program for overpaid and under worked cops. If we are going to pay them $50 or $60 an hour we should at least make them hunt down real criminals, not victimless liquor crime]
Will there be thousands for Scottsdale to help them with their booze related problems? What about Pinal County’s annual problems at Country Thunder? Will there be money for DPS and surrounding cities to deal with the problems that are pushed out of Tempe and onto the highways and into other cities? I doubt with Arizona’s budget and federal sequestration there’ll be many more handouts.
What’s going to be done long-term?
Does the Legislature need to make the criminal law violations relating to the liquor law enforcement more police friendly versus liquor industry friendly? Should it be easier for officers to make arrests for serving an intoxicated patron or allowing drunks on the premises? Should using a fake ID card to get alcohol be a more serious crime? What about a “sin tax” on alcoholic beverages and liquor licenses to pay for police to enforce liquor laws, grants for assistance, education and treatment of those with alcohol problems?
[Sorry there already are hefty federal and state taxes on liquor which pretty much are sin taxes]
Should Arizona return liquor law enforcement to DPS and remove it from the state liquor board that’s run by a political appointee? Currently there are only 10 liquor board officers enforcing laws at 11,000 establishments. Should law enforcement “data mine” DUI arrest reports to look for bars that chronically produce drunk drivers? Police officers collect data on where arrested drivers were drinking but the information mostly sits in files and could be used as part of an intelligence led policing effort to prevent crime and target trouble spots. Bars have long been havens for money laundering, drugs, stolen property and the sex trade and with little or no liquor law enforcement these kinds of crimes have only flourished. Should liquor law enforcement be a higher priority for law enforcement?
There’s no question the criminal use of alcohol in Arizona has contributed to crime.
[And no doubt that the "war on liquor", like the "war on drugs" is mostly a jobs program for cops and has nothing to do with public safety]
The question is, does Arizona and its cities really want to get serious about confronting alcohol related crime and the misery it causes?
Retired Mesa master police officer Bill Richardson lives in the East Valley and can be reached at bill.richardson@cox.net.
H. L. Mencken
Sens. Graham, McCain say Tsarnaev should be sent to Guantanamo
By Richard A. Serrano
April 20, 2013, 10:33 a.m.
WASHINGTON -- Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), said Saturday in a joint statement that alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be denied a defense attorney and declared an “enemy combatant.”
They added in a statement on Graham's Facebook page, "It is clear the events we have seen over the past few days in Boston were an attempt to kill American citizens and terrorize a major American city.”
The two Republican conservatives have demanded that terror suspects not be Mirandized or tried in federal courts and instead be shipped to the detainee prison on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
But the Supreme Court has never said that a U.S. citizen captured on U.S. soil, like Tsarnaev, could be treated as an enemy combatant.
“The accused perpetrators of these acts were not common criminals attempting to profit from a criminal enterprise, but terrorists trying to injure, maim, and kill innocent Americans,” the senators said. “We need to know about any possible future attacks which could take additional American lives. The least of our worries is a criminal trial which will likely be held years from now.
"Under the Law of War we can hold this suspect as a potential enemy combatant not entitled to Miranda warnings or the appointment of counsel. Our goal at this critical juncture should be to gather intelligence and protect our nation from further attacks."
In a separate tweet, Graham added, “The last thing we may want to do is read Boston suspect Miranda Rights telling him to 'remain silent.'"
Tsarnaev was arrested Friday night in Watertown, Mass. He was being held at a local hospital, and a Justice Department official said he likely would be charged later Saturday. Carmen Ortiz, the U.S. Attorney in Boston, invoked a “public safety exemption in cases of national security and potential charges involving acts of terrorism” as a reason not to immediately read him his Miranda rights against self-incrimination.
In 2011, a Justice Department memo expanded the use of the public safety exception in domestic terrorism cases, so that it can be invoked in exceptional circumstances even when there is not an imminent safety threat. The changes were made after a controversy over the handling of the suspect in the Christmas Day 2009 airline bomb attempt, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was questioned by FBI agents for less than an hour before being read his rights.
The American Civil Liberties Union, meanwhile, said in a statement that “every criminal defendant” is entitled to Miranda rights, noting that Tsarnaev became a naturalized American citizen.
“The public safety exception should be read narrowly. It applies only when there is a continued threat to public safety and is not an open-ended exception to the Miranda rule,” the ACLU said. “Every criminal defendant has a right to be brought before a judge and to have access to counsel. We must not waver from our tried and true justice system, even in the most difficult of times. Denial of rights is un-American and will only make it harder to obtain fair convictions."
Sadly the Bill of Rights is supposed to protect us from those very government tyrants who want to flush his 5th Amendment rights down the toilet.
Of course if you ask me I would tell Mr Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev to take the 5th and not say a word to the cops. It's his Constitutional right!
Debate Over Delaying of Miranda Warning
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: April 20, 2013
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s announcement that it planned to question the Boston Marathon bombing suspect for a period without first reading him the Miranda warning of his right to remain silent and have a lawyer present has revived a constitutionally charged debate over the handling of terrorism cases in the criminal justice system.
The suspect, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, a naturalized American citizen, remained hospitalized on Saturday for treatment of injuries sustained when he was captured by the police on Friday night, and it was not clear whether he had been questioned yet. But the administration’s effort to stretch a gap in the Miranda rule for questioning about immediate threats to public safety in this and other terrorism cases has alarmed advocates of individual rights.
Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said it would be acceptable for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to ask Mr. Tsarnaev about “imminent” threats, like whether other bombs are hidden around Boston. But he said that once the F.B.I. gets into broader questioning, it must not “cut corners.”
“The public safety exception to Miranda should be a narrow and limited one, and it would be wholly inappropriate and unconstitutional to use it to create the case against the suspect,” Mr. Romero said. “The public safety exception would be meaningless if interrogations are given an open-ended time horizon.”
At the other end of the spectrum, some conservatives have called for treating terrorism-related cases — even those arising on American soil or involving citizens — as a military matter, holding a suspect indefinitely as an “enemy combatant” without a criminal defendants’ rights. Two Republican senators, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, called for holding Mr. Tsarnaev under the laws of war, interrogating him without any Miranda warning or defense lawyer.
“Our goal at this critical juncture should be to gather intelligence and protect our nation from further attacks,” they said. “We remain under threat from radical Islam and we hope the Obama administration will seriously consider the enemy combatant option.”
The Miranda warning comes from a 1966 case in which the Supreme Court held that, to protect against involuntary self-incrimination, if prosecutors want to use statements at a trial that a defendant made in custody, the police must first have advised him of his rights. The court later created an exception, allowing prosecutors to use statements made before any warning in response to questions about immediate threats to public safety, like where a gun is hidden.
The question applying those rules in terrorism cases arose after a Nigerian named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009. After landing in Michigan, he was given painkillers for burns and confessed to a nurse. He also spoke freely to F.B.I. agents for 50 minutes before going into surgery.
After he awoke, the F.B.I. read Mr. Abdulmutallab the Miranda warning, and he stopped cooperating for several weeks.
Republicans portrayed the Obama administration’s handling of the case in the criminal justice system as endangering national security, setting the template for a recurring debate.
In late January 2010, Mr. Abdulmutallab’s family and lawyer persuaded him to start talking again, and he provided a wealth of further information about Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen. Later, during pretrial hearings, his lawyers asked a federal judge, Nancy G. Edmunds, to suppress the early statements.
But Judge Edmunds ruled that the statement to the nurse had been voluntary and lucid despite the painkillers, and that the 50-minute questioning was a “fully justified” use of the public safety exception. She declined to suppress the statements, and Mr. Abdulmutallab pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.
By then, the Justice Department had sent the F.B.I. a policy memo urging agents, when questioning “operational terrorists,” to use a broad interpretation of the public safety exception. The memo asserted that giving the “magnitude and complexity” of terrorism cases, a lengthier delay is permissible, unlike ordinary criminal cases.
“Depending on the facts, such interrogation might include, for example, questions about possible impending or coordinated terrorist attacks; the location, nature and threat posed by weapons that might post an imminent danger to the public; and the identities, locations and activities or intentions of accomplices who may be plotting additional imminent attacks,” it said.
Judge Edmunds’s ruling was seen by the administration as confirmation that its new policy was constitutional — and that it was neither necessary nor appropriate to put domestic cases in military hands.
Stephen Vladeck, an American University law professor, said the middle ground sought by the administration has put both the civil libertarian and national security conservative factions in a bind.
“This is the paradox of progressive national security law, which is how do you at once advocate for the ability of the civilian courts without accepting that some of that includes compromises that are problematic from a civil liberties perspective?” he said. “The paradox is just as true for the right, because they are ardent supporters of things like the public-safety exception, but its existence actually undermines the case for military commissions.”
Some people criticize me and say that is too high.
I counter that with, give me your stats and even
if they are lower then mine the percent of people arrested
for victimless drug war crimes will still be a very high number.
According to this article, half or 50 percent of the
people arrested in this Maricopa and Pinal county warrant roundup
were for victimless drug war crimes.
Another good source to validate these numbers
is the
ASU student newspaper
called the
State Press.
Each issue has a short section on page 2 called the "Police Beat"
which lists arrests by the ASU and Tempe police.
Almost always the arrests for victimless drug war crimes are at least 50 percent of the total arrests.
Also a very high percentage of the arrests will be for victimless alcohol crimes committed by students under the legal drinking age.
For those of you folks in Tucson, the U of A student newspaper,
the
Arizona Daily Wildcat
also has a section also has a
Police Beat
section and the numbers are pretty much the same.
Bottom lines is the drug war, along with the war on liquor is just a jobs program for cops.
Arizona agents arrest 231 as part of fugitive roundup
Associated Press Sat Apr 20, 2013 11:20 AM
PHOENIX — State and federal law enforcement agents have arrested 231 people as part of a fugitive roundup in Maricopa and Pinal counties.
The weeklong “Operation Justice V” effort focused on those with outstanding felony warrants. About half of the warrants that were served this week involved drug-related offenses.
Authorities also arrested a man accused of arson and another of sexually assaulting a 4-year-old child.
The U.S. Marshals Service says the operation involved more than 150 agents from 30 departments throughout the two counties, including the Chandler and Surprise police departments.
When both governor Jan Brewer and ADHS Director Will Humble are admitted medical marijuana haters you have to suspect they are doing this to throw a monkey wrench into the Arizona's medical marijuana program which they both hate.
I know several people whom it took a good week or two to get their medical marijuana cards because of "alleged" crashes of the ADHS computer server.
Pot dispensary opens in Phoenix, but it can't serve customers
Associated Press Sat Apr 20, 2013 1:49 PM
PHOENIX — Phoenix’s first licensed medical marijuana dispensary has opened its doors, but it can’t serve any customers.
Bloom Sky Train executive director Lezli Engelking says a computer server run by the Arizona Department of Health Services was down Saturday and affected all of the state’s marijuana dispensaries.
Bloom Sky Train has rescheduled its grand opening for Wednesday.
The dispensary is adjacent to the city’s new Sky Train Terminal and the 44th Street light rail station.
Arizona voters approved medical marijuana by about 4,300 votes in 2010, authorizing its use for cancer and certain other medical conditions.
The Department of Health Services oversees Arizona’s medical marijuana program and regulates dispensaries where patients and caregivers can legally buy marijuana. More than 35,000 people in Arizona have medical marijuana cards.
Just to be fair, they should allow the defense to video tape the prosecutors and cops 24/7 to find any dirty deeds they do. But don't count on that happening.
James Holmes' Prosecutors Want to Use Jail Video and Audio at Trial
By CAROL McKINLEY
April 20, 2013
The prosecution seeking the death penalty against James Holmes in the Aurora theater shooting case wants to see what he's been doing in jail so that they can possibly use it against him during the penalty phase of trial if he is found guilty by a jury.
In a new notice filed Friday in Arapahoe District Court, District Attorney George Brauchler made a list of evidence he wants to see in order to establish a capital murder case, including "any video or audio recording of the defendant and/or any person he interacts with while incarcerated."
Former Colorado prosecutor Bob Grant says asking for jailhouse recordings is an excellent way to catch an inmate off-guard. "Every jail phone has big sign right there on the wall and the prisoners all sign a document that 'This phone is monitored' and it doesn't make a darn bit of difference. They say the most incriminating stuff," said Grant, a former district attorney for Adams County.
Grant, the last district attorney to successfully prosecute a death penalty case in Colorado, added, "I don't doubt that in some of those recordings the prosecutor is looking for something to establish state of mind. If he's (Holmes) making sense like a common man would make, then it would help them to disprove insanity."
There were 74 types of evidence requested in the motion, including cell site data from Holmes' cellular phone, 911 calls "related to disturbance complaints" the day before and of the murders, and spent shell casings collected from the Byers Canyon Rifle Range.
It's the first time law enforcement has publicly mentioned that the shooter may have used the range for target practice.
The penalty phase may be necessary because on April 1, Brauchler announced that he would seek the death penalty against Holmes.
He is charged with 166 counts in the shootings at the Aurora Cinemark theater on July 20 which left 12 people dead, including an 8-year-old girl. Another 70 people were injured.
Holmes' trial is scheduled to begin in February 2014.
Celebran millones el Día Mundial de la Marihuana
Autor: pijamasurf
Publicación: 19/04/2010 9:27 pm
Millones de fumadores alrededor del mundo celebran, como cada año, el día internacional de la marihuana este 20 de abril
¿Que mejor manera de celebrar este día que promover la legalización inteligente de la marihuana?
Para celebrar el Día Mundial de la Marihuana (4:20) te compartimos 5 buenos argumentos para promover su legalización
Hoy el planeta tiene un rostro distinto, risueño, ojos ensoñadores y lentamente sincronizados con una amigable sonrisa. Y es que este 20 de abril es el Día Mundial de la Marihuana, fecha en la que cada año se reúnen millones de aficionados a la cannabis para degustar su hierba favorita mientras narran confusas e irrelevantes anécdotas, y llegan tarde a todos sus compromisos del día.
Desde hace tres o cuatro décadas el 420 se ha convertido en un legendario código que alude a fumarse un porro por la tarde. Su origen radica en un grupo estudiantil (conocidos como “Los Waldos“) en San Rafael, California, que adquirireron la costumbre de disfrutar cotidianamente un cigarrillo de ganja después de clases, a las 4:20 de la tarde. Y a pesar de que seguramente la mayoría llegaba tarde a la cita, honrando la flexibilidad temporal de los fumadores de marihuana, este ritual habría de trascender a este grupo de risueños estudiantes para convertirse en el código mundial de la marihuana.
Como dato aleatorio de sincromística marihuanera, el 20 de abril también es el onomástico de Hitler, lo cual se rumora es responsable de que algunos fumadores de ganja se malviajen entrando a la dimensión de la paranoia.
Por cierto, este podría ser el último Dia Mundial de la Marihuana en Estados Unidos el que el consumo de esta planta es ilegal en diversas entidades de este país como el estado de California. Quizá el próximo 20 de abril, en 2011, las festividades sean históricas en este sentido. Esperemos que así sea.
El equipo editorial de Pijama Surf había previsto una nota tempranera para celebrar este singular día, sin embargo el tiempo se hizo humo y con trabajo llegamos a publicarla dentro de las 24 horas pertinentes a esta conmemoración… o al menos eso pensabamos hasta que nos dimos cuenta que realmente el 20 de abril es mañana por lo que no sólo estamos a tiempo sino que quizá hayamos sido el primer medio en conmemorar esta fecha. Sin duda la marihuana genera comportamientos lúdicos y risas espontáneos en aquellos que celebran su día. Celebremos pues.
4-20: Hoy se celebra el Día de la Marihuana
Source
4-20: Hoy se celebra el Día de la Marihuana (historia, parafernalia y beneficios del cannabis)
Autor: pijamasurf
Publicación: 20/04/2011 4:20 am
Millones de personas se reúnen hoy para celebrar el día internacional de la marihuana y fumar porros de cannabis de manera sincronizada; 4-20 el código de la ganja
Para celebrar el Día Mundial de la Marihuana (4:20) te compartimos 5 buenos argumentos para promover su legalización
Hoy el planeta se sincroniza sobre la faz de una planta para celebrar el Día Mundial de la Marihuana y todo es un poco más lento y amigable. Este 20 abril, 4-20, millones de aficionados al cannabis se reúnen a fumar, con especial placer, porros, gallos, canutos, marleys, toques, fasos, joints… y a producir todo tipo de parafernalia en torno a esta milenaria hierba mientras comparten confusas e irrelevantes anécdotas en una colorida y psicodélica celebración que les permite llegar tarde a todos su compromisos con ojos rojos llenos de una alegría flotante.
Desde hace tres o cuatro décadas –como es apropiado, la fecha es difusa y el tiempo se hace humo- el 420 se ha convertido en un legendario código que alude a fumarse un porro por la tarde (el otro té). El origen de esta celebración contracultural radica en un grupo de estudiantes de preparatoria (conocidos como “Los Waldos“) de San Rafael, California, que tomaran la costumbre de reunirse todos los días después de clases a las 4:20 de la tarde para fumar marihuana a un lado de la estatua de Louis Pasteur. La hora coincide con la hora a la que terminaba el periódo de detención con el que se penaliza a los estudiantes indisciplinados, una práctica muy común en el sistema escolar de Estados Unidos. Y a pesar de que seguramente la mayoría llegaba tarde a la cita, honrando la flexibilidad temporal de los fumadores de marihuana, este ritual habría de trascender a este grupo de risueños estudiantes para convertirse en el código mundial de la marihuana.
Como dato aleatorio de sincromística marihuanera, el 20 de abril también es el onomástico de Hitler, lo cual se rumora es responsable de que algunos fumadores de ganja se malviajen entrando a la dimensión de la paranoia, alucinando una policía interdimensional que los persigue.
También hoy la revista más popular dedicada a la marihuana y a los estupefacientes, High Times, celebra su fiesta en Nueva York, a la cual generalmente tienen acceso sólo 420 personas y en la que se anunciará a la chica High Times o Miss Marihuana 2011. Las características que debe de reunir la ganadora son “ser increíblemente linda y fumar mucha, pero mucha marihuana”, además, las participantes serán evaluadas en su conocimiento de las propuestas en favor de la legalización y se buscará chicas que “quieran llevar las cosas a un nivel más alto”. Este año también se premiara a Mr. High Times.
Otros epicentros de los festejos se encuentran en Amsterdam, Nueva Zelanda, Vancouver, Boulder y San Rafael.
Como parte de esta celebración en Pijama Surf queremos compartir una serie de propuestas orientadas a mitigar la nefasta influencia del narco y aumentar la libertad de los psiconautas, así como información que hace patente que es absurdo prohibir esta milenaria planta:
Plantela usted mismo… iniciativa en Uruguay promueve que consumidores planten su propio cannabis y se independicen del crimen organizado
Legalización del cannabis a través de la inundación (crece ganja por donde quiera que vayas)
Crece la tuya (propuesta de Pijama Surf para una vida psiconaútica autosustenable)
¿Por qué es ilegal la marihuana? (Historia de la criminalización de una planta)
Portugal y su exitosa descriminalización de las drogas
Holanda cerrará su prisiones por falta de criminales
Legalización bajaría un 80% el precio de la marihuana
Salva a México: legalización de las drogas
Combustible de hemp a sólo 50 centavos de dólar el galón
Algunos beneficios a la salud y usos médicos que tiene la marihuana:
10 beneficios médicos (comprobados) de la marihuana
Descubrimiento científico podría hacer del cannabis la nueva aspirina
El cannabis reduce tumores de cáncer de mama
Sexo y marihuana: los fumadores de marihuana tienen más parejas sexuales; las mujeres difrutan más en la cama con cannabis
¿Por qué la gente inteligente usa más drogas psicoactivas?
Fumar marihuana no reduce capacidad de conducir, sólo hace que se vaya más lento
La marihuana ayuda a detener cáncer
Un poco de parafernalia:
Ganja Gourmet: compañía entrega fina comida hecha con cannabis a domicilio
Reinas de la marihuana: 100 mujeres que aman la ganja
Top 12 sexy fumadoras de marihuana
El crítico de la marihuana: ganando dinero por fumar ganja
“Marijuanaman”: ¿puede el superhéroe de la ganja salvar al mundo?
Que nunca te arresten: ex policía quema karma y da tips a fumadores de marihuana para burlar a la ley
Highs Times nombra a la chica marihuana del 2010
Chica High Times 2009
Top 10 fumadores de marihuana más exitosos del mundo
Carl Sagan escribe sobre las bondades de la marihuana
Marihuana presidencial: 1 de cada 4 presidentes de Estados Unidos han usado cannabis
Aplicación de iPhone te permite localizar a tu dealer de marihuana más cercano
Hell I don't even think the government nannies in Mesa should be giving them millions in corporate welfare to build their silly hotel in Mesa.
But I do find it funny the royal rulers of Mesa are demanding that the hotel have a bar.
Usually government nannies are a holier then thou bunch of creeps and are always attempting to keep people from drinking. But not in this case. The Mesa City Council is demanding that the hotel have a bar, which will bring more drunks to the city of Mesa.
Mesa city council debates whether to include bar at Riverview-area Marriott hotel
Posted: Saturday, April 20, 2013 7:59 am
By Daniel Quigley, Tribune
With only a partial City Council on hand, Mesa Mayor Scott Smith ultimately pulled an agenda item on a proposed Marriott Springhill Suites Hotel — slated for the “Wrigleyville” area between the news Cubs’ baseball stadium and park at Riverview — from the council’s meeting during its study session Monday night.
But a discussion still took place on the merits of the proposed facilily, to be developed owned and operated by Mesa-based Sunridge Properties Inc. Sunridge also owns a dozen or more Marriott-branded hotels, according to Marriott Vice President Scott McAllister.
The most discussed issue: whether the hotel should have a bar.
“What does it look like opening a hotel in a sports and entertainment district that is dry?” said Councilman Dennis Kavanaugh, observing that the hotel will be the only venue in the Wrigleyville area when its doors open; restaurants, bars and shops will eventually spring up around the anchor facility.
Kavanaugh said other council members have the same concern, although none others who were present expressed it.
Councilwoman Dina Higgins and Councilman Scott Somers were not in attendance, leading to Smith’s request that the item be moved to the next council meeting.
“I think this is too important of an issue to take up when we don’t have a full council, considering that there are disagreements on the council,” Smith said.
McAllister was still able to explain Sunridge’s logic to the council present, however.
“It does not make economic sense to put a bar in and that’s our position,” he said.
He added that one of the reasons Sunridge and Marriott chose the area was because the hotel could depend on the outside providers to take care of guest’s dining, drinking and shopping needs.
“Wrigleyville is a gamechanger,” McAllister said. “Wrigleyville is a great location with great amenities.”
McAllister said Marriott had considered the location of the current Hyatt Place, located as part of the Mesa Riverview shopping complex across Dobson Road, but he said Marriott had “concerns” that barred the project.
McAllister said of more than 300 Springhill Suites, fewer than 10 percent of them have bars. He said most that do are in locations without outside providers nearby.
Sunridge CEO Paul Welker added that changes can be made without revisions to the layout of the building if it turns out guests demand more services like a bar or dining.
Kavanaugh appeared not to be convinced that the hotel shouldn’t at least offer some sort of limited bar service.
“Mom and pop may want to have a beer or glass of wine (and) don’t want to leave the hotel or you could have business travelers, who’ve traveled all day, again, and who don’t want to leave the hotel,” he said.
Councilman Dave Richins said he prefers to leave the decision up to Sunridge and Marriott and does not want to “micromanage what someone does inside their business.”
Smith agreed.
The council seemed to universally favor the design the hotel group presented in a rendering. The design includes upgrades that do not usually accompany the Springhill Suites brand. The upgrades, suggested by the city to adhere to its vision of the Wrigleyville project, included multi-level roofs with extra steelwork and balconies, plus an “L”-shaped layout that isn’t typical of the brand.
“It’s out of the norm,” Welker said. “There’s significant cost involved in doing this over and above (a standard Springhill Suites) but we feel like Wrigleyville is a good project and we want to be able to take advantage of that with the right product ... and the extra cost is something that we’re going to absorb.”
“I appreciate the improvement in design — it has really moved along very well,” Kavanaugh said.
Added Vice Mayor Alex Finter: “I’m still really excited in
what this means for that area.”
The Marriott umbrella is comprised of 4,000 hotels worldwide, under 18 brands — other examples include Residence Inn and Courtyard.
Smith is convinced Marriott is the correct fit for the Riverview area.
“Marriott is the brand that I personally want to see in that area,” Smith said. “It is by far the superior brand for that location.”
Contact writer: (480) 898-5647 or dquigley@evtrib.com.
Sadly like most other political issues medical marijuana is about MONEY, not people. Each special interest groups wants the government to give THEM a monopoly on medical marijuana sales.
Rival marijuana measures thrown into the electoral pot
By Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times
April 21, 2013, 8:27 p.m.
Dozens of medical marijuana activists rallied outside Los Angeles City Hall last week, declaring war on an enemy.
Their target was not the federal government, whose agents raided several local dispensaries in recent days, or neighborhood groups trying to shut down the city's estimated 700 pot shops.
The enemy was fellow medical marijuana advocates.
Three competing measures on the May 21 city ballot have divided L.A.'s lucrative medical cannabis industry, with each side accusing the other of trying only to protect profits, not do what is best for patients.
The measures may appear similar to the uninitiated, but they would greatly benefit different groups of pot businesses.
Yami Bolanos, who runs PureLife Alternative Wellness Center, is backing Proposition D, which would shrink the number of pot shops to about 130. Only dispensaries like Bolanos', which opened before the adoption of a failed 2007 city moratorium on new shops, would be allowed to continue operating.
At the City Hall rally and news conference, Bolanos accused some newer shops of catering to drug dealers by not requiring doctor's prescriptions and selling more than 8 ounces of marijuana per visit to customers, more than twice what her store allows.
"Who needs 8 ounces, unless you're going to break it up into dime bags and sell it in the street?" she said.
Proposition D is backed by the Los Angeles County Democratic Club and by a labor union that has organized workers at dozens of older dispensaries. The measure was placed on the ballot by the City Council to counter two measures that qualified through the initiative process.
One of those initiatives, Measure F, would place no limit on the number of pot shops but would require them to submit to city audits, test cannabis for toxins and keep a certain distance from schools, parks and other dispensaries. It is being pushed by a coalition of shops that opened after the 2007 moratorium. Like Proposition D, it would increase taxes on pot sales.
A third measure, Initiative Ordinance E, would permit only the older shops but would not raise taxes. It was put on the ballot by a group of older shops and the dispensary employees union, but that coalition has shifted its support to the council-backed Proposition D.
The measure with the most votes will win, but only if it receives more than 50% of the vote. If none of the three receives majority approval, they all fail.
With the election a month away, the competing camps are collecting campaign cash and stepping up attacks. An anti-Proposition D website warns that the initiative would create a monopoly for older shops and the rise of "pot superstores." By forcing existing dispensaries to close, "Proposition D encourages building massive marijuana drug centers that could greatly increase crime for nearby residents," the site says.
Grace Moore, who opened Grace Medical Marijuana Pharmacy in 2009, said she is fighting Proposition D because market forces, not government, should determine the number of dispensaries. "The good will succeed, and the places that are not so nice, people will not frequent," she said.
At her Pico Boulevard shop, customers are offered strains of pot like Purple Cush and Blue Dream, as well as "Yes on Measure F" wristbands.
Moore has been growing marijuana for decades. As a single mother living in West Virginia, she said, she used to trade her pot for hay. Her business has been successful, she says, because she grows cannabis without pesticides and offers a safe environment for patients. "We are an option for women and for truly ill people," she said.
But critics say the free-market model hasn't worked, pointing to heavy concentrations of pot shops in some parts of the city, including a stretch of Mid-City known as the "Green Mile."
Michael Larsen, a member of the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council, fought to curb the glut of dispensaries in his community. He opposes all the pot measures. Measure F allows too many stores, he said, and the council-backed Proposition D doesn't ensure the safety of dispensaries or provide a mechanism for neighbors to complain about bad operators.
L.A. has struggled for years to regulate the location of pot shops against a backdrop of contradictory court rulings on cities' legal authority to regulate pot. The city is battling more than 60 lawsuits over its earlier attempts at regulation, and many predict new lawsuits are inevitable after the May election.
"Whoever views themselves as the loser will immediately start litigating," said Councilman Bernard Parks, a former L.A. police chief. He wrote the ballot measure arguments against all three initiatives, arguing that federal law prohibits the possession and sale of marijuana even if state law allows it for medicinal use.
"You can't regulate an illegal business," he said.
On those grounds, the City Council last year voted 14 to 0 to outlaw over-the-counter sales of marijuana, while allowing small groups of patients to grow the drug for their own use. But it reversed the action after the coalition of older dispensaries and union workers qualified a measure for the ballot that would have repealed the ban.
Attorney David Welch, who is backing Measure F, said the council has been hostile toward medical marijuana and voters should reject the city-backed ballot proposal. He cited a council vote last August that instructed police to work with the federal Drug Enforcement Agency "to deal with medical marijuana collectives."
The next month, federal agents raided several pot shops in downtown and Eagle Rock, an area represented by Councilman Jose Huizar, a leading dispensary opponent. The council's Proposition D is "a Trojan horse" intended to confuse and overwhelm voters, Welch said. "They want these measures to fail."
Huizar, Parks and other council members are urging voters to reject all three measures. But several elected officials are backing Proposition D, including council members Bill Rosendahl and Paul Koretz and mayoral candidates Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti. It is also endorsed by City Atty. Carmen Trutanich, who in the past argued that all for-profit pot sales are illegal.
California voters have generally supported medical marijuana. In 1996, California became the first state to legalize medicinal use of pot, although many have complained that subsequent state laws failed to clarify how the drug should be distributed. In 2011, Los Angeles voters approved a ballot measure to tax medical marijuana sales.
There are no official estimates of medical pot sales in the city, but police believe there are between 600 and 700 shops, and dispensary owners say sales of $1 million annually are not uncommon.
Don Duncan, California director of the medical marijuana advocacy group Americans for Safe Access, said it is unfortunate that pot supporters are being forced to choose sides. But the ballot measure fight doesn't reflect a larger schism in the medical marijuana movement, he said.
"We're not talking about a community division, we're talking about an industry division."
His group has endorsed Proposition D. But he hopes the infighting doesn't doom all the measures. "We certainly cannot afford for everybody to lose," he said.
kate.linthicum@latimes.com
And of course in this case the Phoenix City Council has been bribed by the Phoenix Police has has been giving them millions of dollars in government pork in exchange for their votes.
Judge: Phoenix officers must do union work off the clock
By Cecilia Chan The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Tue Apr 23, 2013 10:55 PM
Phoenix officers must immediately stop working for the police union at taxpayers’ expense, a judge has ruled.
Judge Katherine Cooper of Maricopa County Superior Court on Tuesday granted the Goldwater Institute’s request for a preliminary injunction against part of the two-year labor contract ending June 2014 between the city and the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association.
The labor contract allows six city-funded officers to do union business full time, including representing officers on grievance and disciplinary matters; advocating for members’ interests, such as better pay and benefits; and providing training. The union represents more than 2,500 rank-and-file officers.
Goldwater, a conservative think tank, sued the city and the union, arguing that the practice violated the state Constitution’s Gift Clause. The Gift Clause requires that public entities receive substantial benefit from any public money they spend. A ruling on the lawsuit has yet to be made.
This is the second injunction Cooper has granted Goldwater, which challenged the practice of “release time” in June.
PLEA Vice President Ken Crane declined to comment.
The union and Phoenix officials have maintained that the city benefits because PLEA officers use release time to represent employees during administrative investigations, serve on Police Department task forces and committees, and facilitate communication between city management and employees.
Phoenix will comply with the judge’s decision, city spokeswoman Toni Maccarone said.
Effective immediately, the PLEA officers will begin a short-term assignment at the Police Department training academy, Maccarone said. The officers will then be assigned regular police duties by Monday, she said.
Goldwater lead attorney Clint Bolick said some of the union’s activities, including lobbying, should not be done on city time.
“The streets of Phoenix will be safer now that union officials must go back to the important police work for which they were hired,” Bolick said in a statement.
In Cooper’s 11-page decision, she found that “release time does not advance a public purpose.”
“It diverts resources away from the mission of the Phoenix Police Department, which is the safety of the community,” and instead applies those resources to the interests of a single group of city employees, she wrote.
Cooper said the union’s activities are solely to advance the interests of its members.
Release time costs the city $852,000 a year, or $1.7 million for the entire two-year contract, according to Cooper. She said union work can be paid for by membership fees, with each officer paying $322 a year, instead of by taxpayers.
Phoenix Councilman Sal DiCiccio hailed the decision as a win for taxpayers.
“This is fantastic news for the hardworking taxpayers in Phoenix,” DiCiccio said. “This is big news, huge news.”
DiCiccio said the practice is widespread, with local and state governments paying their employees wages and benefits while they conduct union business.
“They can do stuff for the union but not while on the government payroll,” DiCiccio said.
Bolick said that if the group succeeds in its lawsuit, it will stop the practice “in all state and local labor contracts.”
OK, for that matter what part of the Constitution gives the Feds the power to regulate drugs period???
DEA offers drop-off day for unwanted prescription drugs
Posted: Monday, April 22, 2013 9:19 pm
TRIBUNE
The Drug Enforcement Administration and its state, local and tribal law enforcement partners will give the public another opportunity to prevent pill abuse and theft by ridding their homes of potentially dangerous expired, unused, and unwanted prescription drugs.
Collection sites will be open across the state 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. April 27.
The public can find a nearby collection site by visiting www.dea.gov, clicking on the “Got Drugs?” icon, and following the links to a database where they can enter their zip code or city/county.
Babeu urged to lower budget bid
By Lindsey Collom The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Apr 24, 2013 10:27 PM
FLORENCE -- Pinal County supervisors have asked Sheriff Paul Babeu to pare down a request for an extra $12.1 million in the coming fiscal year to avoid throwing the county into bankruptcy by fiscal 2016.
Babeu had asked to increase his spending capacity by an estimated 20 percent in order to hire new deputies, buy equipment and raises salaries to compete with market values.
According to county budget office projections, granting the sheriff’s request while implementing a planned countywide 2.5 percent merit-pay increase would deplete the county’s contingency fund within three years unless the Republican-controlled Board of Supervisors raised the primary-tax rate, an option it has declined to entertain so far.
Supervisor Anthony Smith, who cited the projections before making a motion to postpone voting on Babeu’s proposal for a month, said he wasn’t pointing fingers at the sheriff but wanted to “encourage all departments to help us find ways to make government more efficient.”
The board unanimously agreed.
“The board basically did what they had to do in respect to ensure that we assume our fiduciary responsibility in balancing the budget now and into future years,” said Supervisor Pete Rios, the board’s lone Democrat. “I think it was the board’s gracious way to tell the sheriff, ‘No, but if you want to bring something back in a work session, we would certainly consider it.’ ”
Board Chairman Steve Miller had warned elected officials and department heads in February that budgets will be frozen at current levels except in instances tied to “specific, mandated state or federal programs.”
But Babeu told supervisors on Wednesday that an estimated 20 percent budget increase was necessary to keep Pinal County safe and that a no vote was tantamount to supervisors not prioritizing public safety.
Included in the Sheriff’s Office proposal:
$1 million for holiday pay and related expenses.
$5 million for 69 new positions (most are deputies), 5 percent specialty pay, and related expenses, such as retirement contributions.
$950,000 for equipment, software, leasing of office space, training and fuel.
$3.9 million for 65 new vehicles, and an extra $1.1 million (on top of the $1.5 million already set aside) to help replace 44 vehicles.
In justifying the staffing expenses, Babeu presented supervisors with a study by the Segal Co., a benefit-analysis firm based in Washington, D.C. In conducting its research, the company compared the Sheriff’s Office staffing levels and pay ranges for select sworn and civilian positions with five local law-enforcement agencies.
“The last countywide survey which polled our residents gave the Pinal County Sheriff's Office the highest ranking of any government entity with a 75% approval rating,” Babeu said in a written statement. “The same survey showed 97% of those surveyed support our law enforcement efforts to lower crime rates. The Pinal County Board of Supervisors has asked our office to come forward during the budget process with proposals which would continue to improve public safety. As part of the process, a nationally renowned staffing expert conducted an independent review of our needs. ... Together we presented his findings to the Board of Supervisors to open the dialog during this budget process.”
In a 24-page memorandum dated Tuesday, Segal’s senior vice president said the Sheriff’s Office is understaffed by 79 to 116 deputies compared with similar agencies.
The study indicated that Pinal County sheriff’s deputies earn more than their counterparts in Maricopa and Pima counties when comparing minimum, midpoint and maximum pay ranges, but less when matched against police officers in Chandler, Tempe and Mesa. Pay ranges for select command staff in both sworn and civilian ranks were below market.
In setting the stage for the presentation, Babeu introduced a Pinal County K-9 deputy who recently accepted a job with the Chandler Police Department for a $12,000 salary boost. The deputy, who has been with Pinal County for seven years, told supervisors that Valley law-enforcement agencies are luring good employees from Pinal County to better support their families.
Babeu said his office’s turnover rate is 4 to 6 percent; the industry average is 3 to 5 percent.
I think two thirds of the people in Federal prison are there for victimless drug war crimes. I am not sure of the percent in Arizona prison for victimless drug war crimes, but the number is huge.
Study: Medical marijuana will create 1,500 jobs in Arizona
Posted: Wednesday, April 24, 2013 1:35 pm
By Julia Shumway, Cronkite News
When Arizona voters approved the use of medical marijuana in 2010, Steve Cottrell saw a way to combine his laboratory background and his interest in the plant he’d been studying since his 11-year-old son died of cancer more than a decade before.
Cottrell is now the owner of AZ Med Testing, a medical marijuana testing laboratory in Tempe. Dispensaries pay Cottrell and his business partner, Brenda Perkins, to test marijuana samples for mold and pesticides.
“We’re making money, but we definitely have our challenges,” he said. “But now that dispensaries are open, it’s moving forward.”
According to a study sponsored by the Regulated Dispensaries of Arizona Association, the two jobs at AZ Med Testing are among estimated 1,500 that will be created by Arizona’s medical marijuana industry.
Tim Hogan, an Arizona State University research associate who authored the study, used information from Oregon’s established medical marijuana industry to estimate the size of Arizona’s market
“It’s a pretty simple industry,” he said. “There’s not too much nuance. The main driving mechanism is how many patients.”
Hogan found that the industry had the potential to create not only 1,500 direct jobs for marijuana growers and dispensary employees but up to 5,000 indirect jobs at places like grocery stores.
Arizona has approximately 38,000 medical marijuana cardholders and is allowed 126 dispensaries, a percentage of the state’s operating pharmacies. Only a handful are open now.
Hogan said his study models only the straight economic impact of the industry instead of offering a more extensive cost-benefit analysis. The industry is small but should contribute to Arizona’s economy, he said.
“Given the size of the industry, it seems it will generate substantial income and tax revenue,” Hogan said.
In Colorado, which legalized the use of medical marijuana in 2000, dispensaries brought in nearly $200 million in sales and paid about $5.5 million in state sales tax in 2012, according to that state’s Department of Revenue.
Beth Wilson, an economics professor at California’s Humboldt State University and a faculty member in the school’s new Humboldt Institute for Interdisciplinary Marijuana Research, said much more study on medical marijuana is needed.
She said it’s possible that more states legalizing the drug for medical or recreational use could lead to marijuana mega-farms run by tobacco companies instead of small businesses.
“No one can know for sure what the impact is,” Wilson said.
Michelle LeBas worked as an office administrator at a car dealership before becoming a dispensing agent at Bisbee’s Green Farmacy Natural Relief Clinic. She verifies that patients have valid medical marijuana cards and then teaches them about different strains of the plant.
LeBas said the dispensary, which has three employees and an on-site doctor, faced some scrutiny when it opened in late March.
“People just thought it was an excuse for stoners to do it,” she said. “But we’ve overcome that and we have people coming in here that genuinely need it. We’ve given them a completely new form of care.”
Green Farmacy Natural Relief Clinic serves about 100 patients and has provided 25 with new medical marijuana cards.
Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery has sought to block the state’s medical marijuana law since it went into effect. He said any study that discusses medical marijuana’s possible economic benefits is inherently flawed because the state loses more in criminal prosecution.
“It’s crock,” Montgomery said. “None of those studies that purport to show an economic impact take into account the criminal impact.”
It’s important to remember that all marijuana is illegal at the federal level, said Carolyn Short, chairwoman of Keep AZ Drug Free, a committee that formed in opposition to the 2010 ballot proposition that legalized medical marijuana.
She said economic models like the study commissioned by the Regulated Dispensaries of Arizona Association have to be done in a bubble because every part of the medical marijuana business violates federal law.
“Every single time a dispensary sells a joint or an ounce, they’re doing something illegal,” Short said.
At AZ Med Testing, Cottrell said the possibility of federal prosecution or a raid by the Drug Enforcement Administration hangs over his head each day. However, he said he remains focused on doing his job well.
“Sure, they could come down and knock our door down and arrest us for this plant material,” Cottrell said. “But there’s far more dangerous non-law-abiding people who are doing a lot worse than testing plants for pesticides, and we have to believe the DEA is going after them.”
Of course I wouldn't like him any better then Hitler, Bush, Mecham or Brewer.
But Steve Benson would have 4 years of editorial cartoonist fun making fun of
the moron in the Republic editorial cartoons
Disbarred former Maricopa County Attorney Thomas to run for governor
By Alia Beard Rau The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Apr 25, 2013 6:14 PM
Disbarred former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas has announced he will run for governor in 2014.
In an e-mail to members of the media, the Republican said he file paperwork today with the Secretary of State’s Office.
“I’ll be focusing on the need to protect public safety, ensure border security and fight corruption, among other issues,” Thomas said in the e-mail. “Voters will be urged to watch the video of my State Bar hearing and see for themselves how honest prosecutors are railroaded for fighting corruption in this state.”
Thomas served as county attorney from 2005 until he resigned in 2010 to unsuccessfully run for Arizona attorney general. He was stripped of his law license last year after a court panel found he acted unethically.
Thomas was once a conservative Republican icon, making his name pushing immigration control at the state and county levels. His political downfall came after he was accused of using his prosecutorial powers while in office for political purposes.
A disciplinary panel convened by the Arizona Supreme Court found clear and convincing evidence of ethical misconduct that merited disbarment.
Among the most serious findings were that he and his former prosecutors pressed unwarranted criminal charges, obtained indictments, filed a federal racketeering lawsuit and initiated investigations against his political enemies and those of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio from 2006 to 2010. Targets included judges, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and other county officials.
Thomas did not respond to an e-mail from The Arizona Republic seeking additional comment about his decision to run for governor.
Thomas joins a growing list of candidates.
Democrat and former Arizona Board of Regents Chairman Fred DuVal, Republican and former Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman and Americans Elect party candidate John Mealer have already formally filed to run. Republicans Sen. Al Melvin and Secretary of State Ken Bennett have formed exploratory committees, and numerous others have indicated an interest.
Letter: What about Fifth Amendment rights?
Posted: Tuesday, April 23, 2013 7:16 pm
Letter to the Editor
Every time I am stopped by the police I tell them I am taking the Fifth and refusing to answer their questions.
I even refuse to tell them my name.
I am not a criminal, but I figure that since the founders died to get me those rights I should use them or lose them.
The next things that usually happens is the cops tell me I don’t have any Fifth Amendment rights in “this case.” I am confused on that because Miranda v Arizona says “If the individual indicates ... he wishes to remain silent, the interrogation must cease”
And of course things then get worse. The cops usually illegally search my wallet, and all my pockets looking for my ID, drugs and guns. I don’t carry an ID, and I don’t use drugs or carry a gun so they never find anything.
Yes, I know Terry v. Ohio allows the cops to give you a pat down search of your outer garments looking for weapons, but a search of my pockets and wallet is clearly illegal per the 4th Amendment and Terry v. Ohio.
Then, I am usually handcuffed and falsely arrested while the police make all kinds of threats on what is going to happen if I don’t answer their questions. After an hour or two the cops release me and tell me I am a jerk for thinking I have “Constitutional rights”.
With that in mind, I can understand where the cops are going in attempting to force Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombing suspect, to answer their questions without reading him his Miranda rights.
Our Constitutional rights were not created to protect criminals. They were created to protect the innocent from government tyrants, like the police that have a number of times falsely arrested me, illegally questioned me and illegally searched me. I guess I should be glad, because I have not been beaten up, yet, for thinking I have Constitutional rights.
Mike Ross
Tempe
When I was in high school they fed us nothing but lies about the effects of using drugs and alcohol. They even showed us the movie "Reefer Madness" in an attempt to scare us into not using marijuana.
About the only thing I remember from that stupid movie is that if a Black man smokes a joint, it will cause him to go out and rape 6 White woman. Yea, sure!!!!!
I suspect the one of the reasons the kids falsely think that smoking pot improves their driving skills is because they are used to the government schools feeding them lies about drug use.
I suspect if the government stopped feeding high schools kids the lies they currently feed them, and only feed them factual information about drugs many of these kids would not think that pot improves their driving skills.
On the other hand I will have to admit that driving when you are stoned on pot is much safer then driving when you drunk. Marijuana doesn't wipe out your motor skills like booze does. But even so I certainly don't recommend driving when you are stoned.
Poll: 34% of teens say pot improves driving
By Zachary Tracer Bloomberg News Thu Apr 25, 2013 10:41 AM
NEW YORK — Most teenagers who drove under the influence of marijuana said the drug either improves their performance behind the wheel or is no hindrance, according to a survey by insurer Liberty Mutual Holding Co. and a safety group.
Thirty-four percent of those who have driven while high say the drug makes them a better motorist, and 41 percent said it had no effect, Boston-based Liberty Mutual said. Among teens who drove under the influence of alcohol, 62 percent said drinking affected their driving for the worse.
Teens’ attitudes show that parents need to do a better job of educating children about safe driving, Liberty Mutual and Students Against Destructive Decisions said in a statement Thursday disclosing survey results. They found that 23 percent of teens had driven under the influence of alcohol, marijuana or prescription drugs used illegally.
“We’ve been stressing the dangers associated with drinking and driving, and drugging and driving, for years and years and years,” Dave Melton, who helps oversee safety initiatives at Liberty Mutual, said in an interview. “Our kids are still doing the same kinds of things.”
Parents need to set a good example for their children and enforce driving rules to keep them safe, Melton said.
While there’s a clear association between alcohol and increased car-crash risk, the link between marijuana use and accidents is less certain, according to NORML, which seeks to decriminalize marijuana use by adults. Stoned drivers may slow down and require greater time to respond, the organization said on its website.
“This reaction is just the opposite of that exhibited by drivers under the influence of alcohol, who tend to drive in a more risky manner proportional to their intoxication,” NORML said on its site.
Still, the organization said people shouldn’t drive after being impaired by marijuana use.
Teen drivers say using a mobile phone is at least as distracting as driving under the influence of alcohol, marijuana or prescription drugs, Liberty Mutual found. Three quarters of teens said driving while high on marijuana is at least slightly distracting, and 86 percent said the same of driving under the influence of alcohol.
The data are based on completed surveys from 1,708 11th and 12th graders at 26 high schools across the U.S., according to Liberty Mutual.
Melton said he was shocked by teen acceptance of driving after marijuana use.
“I don’t understand how they think it improves their driving,” he said. “Maybe they think that their senses are enhanced as a result of using a mind-altering drug. I just can’t say, I have no idea.”
Report: Yavapai County deputies had lied in probe
By Dennis Wagner The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Apr 25, 2013 10:49 PM
Two Yavapai County deputies who belonged to a motorcycle club known as the Iron Brotherhood lied to Prescott police about a December bar fight on Whiskey Row and criminally hindered the investigation, according to an internal report released Thursday by the Sheriff’s Office.
Three sheriff’s employees — Capt. Marc Schmidt, Sgt. William Suttle and Deputy Mark Boan — were subjects of the probe, which concluded that Schmidt and Suttle were “deceitful” on the night of the altercation, and all three deputies showed more loyalty to the biker club than to their sworn duty as peace officers.
At least 16 members of the Iron Brotherhood, a law-enforcement club, were partying at saloons on Dec. 22 when a fight broke out at Moctezuma’s Bar. Justin Stafford, 23, was hospitalized with a possible broken nose after allegedly being struck several times by club member Eric “Guido” Amado, whose police agency was not listed.
In a news release, Sheriff Scott Mascher apologized to county residents “for any trust we may have lost as a result of this event. I know the badge has been tarnished and we will work relentlessly to regain the community’s full trust and confidence.”
None of the Yavapai County deputies involved could be reached for comment. Schmidt and Suttle resigned while the internal probe was under way; Boan faces discipline for alleged conduct unbecoming of an officer. A criminal investigation by the Arizona Department of Public Safety was to be released today.
Cmdr. Rex Gilliland, who conducted the internal review, compared the 26-member Iron Brotherhood with outlaw organizations such as the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, noting that it is an all-male outfit that uses similar membership “patches” — a skull with blue eyes and an iron cross. Iron Brotherhood vests display the number 92, using the ninth and second letters in the alphabet to indicate the club initials, IB. Hells Angels display the number 81 for HA.
A website for the Iron Brotherhood says it was founded in 2006 as a national fraternity for biker officers who do not associate with “1 percenters,” a nickname for outlaw motorcycle clubs.
Gilliland wrote that Suttle, a police supervisor for more than two decades, is the club’s vice president and goes by a nickname, “Mongo.” On the night of the fisticuffs, he said, Suttle attempted to influence local officers by telling them that Prescott’s deputy police chief, Andy Reinhardt — also an Iron Brotherhood member — had been present. Evidence later revealed that Reinhardt had left his companions and gone to another bar before the brouhaha. He has since resigned from the biker club.
The altercation began when Stafford accosted another lawman in the Iron Brotherhood, Prescott Valley Police Chief Billy “Tarzan” Fessler, reportedly grabbing at his “colors,” or vest. Fessler, the club’s Whiskey Row chapter president, quit the biker fraternity in December and resigned from the Police Department last month, according to the Daily Courier of Prescott.
Gilliland concluded that Suttle and Schmidt untruthfully denied knowing the names of fellow club members and gave other false or misleading statements. “It is this investigator’s opinion and belief that Suttle’s allegiance and loyalties are first to the club and not to his position as a law enforcement officer,” he wrote. “I believe Suttle was reluctant and in fact misled and lied to Prescott police.”
According to this article, Mesa judge Markel K. Chiles who is accused of shoplifting at Walmart offered Mesa Police officers Rich Rivera and Steve York a $1,000 bribe to make the charges go away won't face any bribery charges.
If that is true, I wonder how many bribes Mesa Judge Markel K. Chiles has taken to make cases go away in his East Mesa Justice Court???
No bribery charges for Mesa justice of the peace
By Jim Walsh The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Apr 25, 2013 10:19 PM
An east Mesa justice of the peace told two Mesa police officers that he would pay $1,000 to make a shoplifting case disappear, but will not face bribery charges.
Chiles made the comment to Officer Rich Rivera and Officer Steve York during a meeting in his chambers at East Mesa Justice Court, according to a Mesa police report released Wednesday.
Police cited Chiles on a misdemeanor for a $40 speaker he allegedly took from a Walmart and will not pursue a bribery charge, said Mesa police spokesman Steve Berry.
“We were aware of the comment. It was not perceived as an attempted bribe,” he said.
Berry said police consider the statement an off-hand comment and that Chiles made no overt attempt to hand over money to the officers.
The report, released after The Arizona Republic and 12 News filed a public records request, said that a Walmart undercover security officer noticed that Chiles was wearing his badge from the court on his belt during the March 28 incident. Police accuse Chiles of removing the iBoost speaker from a package, hiding it under a jacket and leaving the store without paying for it.
The officers went to Chiles’ court on April 3 and told him that the undercover security officer watched as the judge paid $157 for nine videos, but walked out of the store without paying for the speaker, then loaded the speaker into a canvas bag before driving away on his motorcycle, according to the report.
“I really don’t know what an iBoost speaker is,” Chiles first told police.
When officers explained that it is a small external speaker that can be hooked up to an iPhone, iPad or a laptop to play music, Chiles said he planned to use it for his iPad, according to the police video.
“I really thought I had bought it. It was a speaker,” Chiles said.
Rivera asked Chiles to return to his house, find the stolen speaker and return it to police.
Rivera told Chiles that Walmart knew of his position at the court and “they are not looking to make a big deal out of it,” according to the video. “They just want to get their speaker back.”
Chiles asked the police if he could pay for the speaker, but the officers told him that was not an option. They also said he could not buy another speaker as a replacement, that they needed the original speaker back.
But later that day, Chiles told police he couldn’t find the speaker at home. He went to Walmart, bought another speaker and attempted to hand it over to police.
The officers would not accept the speaker Chiles purchased and cited him on suspicion of shoplifting.
“I am dumbfounded. I’m embarrassed. I am so very sorry,” Chiles said on the videotaped recording. “I’ll give you $1,000 if we could make this go away.”
Later, he said he would have no motive for such a petty theft.
“I don’t know, I have no idea,” he said when asked why he stole the speaker. “I don’t know why I would take it. I have plenty of money. I own three houses free and clear.”
He said he had spent $1,000 buying rifles at Walmart recently.
The speaker theft occurred between 4:40 a.m and 6:30 a.m. March 23.
Chiles worked at the court on April 3 and on the morning of April 4, but agreed to take a voluntary leave of absence during the lunch hour that day at the suggestion of C. Steven McMurry, the presiding judge of Maricopa County Justice Courts.
The courts handle misdemeanor cases, which can include shoplifting. He is scheduled to appear a pretrial conference before Judge Victor Ortiz on May 13.
Brian Strong, Chiles’ attorney, did not return a call from a reporter seeking comment.
On Tuesday, Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Rebecca White Berch ordered Chiles reassigned to other duties pending the outcome of his case. He earns $101,500 a year.
Sheryl Rabin, a Justice Courts spokeswoman, said the justice courts have no authority to withhold Chiles’ salary while the case is pending.
Judge Don Calender has been appointed as judge pro tem for the East Mesa Justice Court until the state Commission on Judicial Conduct decides what discipline Chiles will face.
Chiles has been reprimanded and censured in the past by the commission for violations of judicial conduct. He has served as the East Mesa Justice of the Peace since 2006.
Posted on April 25, 2013 4:46 pm by EJ Montini
Andrew Thomas for governor (curse for Arizona, blessing for the media)
Along with a number of my brothers and sisters in the news business I received this precious gift of an e-mail this afternoon from disbarred former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas:
“I will be filing my paperwork at the Secretary of State’s Office tomorrow at 3 p.m. to run for Governor of Arizona. I will be making a few remarks and answering a few questions for media organizations that attend. Joining me for the filing will be some key supporters.
“I am confident public surveys will show upon my filing that I am a leading candidate for Governor.
“I’ll be focusing on the need to protect public safety, ensure border security, and fight corruption, among other issues.
“Voters will be urged to watch the video of my State Bar hearing and see for themselves how honest prosecutors are railroaded for fighting corruption in this state.
“Andrew Thomas
“Former County Attorney”
Thank you.
Medical marijuana in Illinois????
The good news is if the governor signs it people will cease being jailed for the victimless crime of smoking pot in Illinois!!!
Criminalizing Children at School
Of course the real solution is to get rid of the government schools and replace them with private schools which are accountable to the parents and children, not government bureaucrats and unions.
U.S. uses the Bible as “an excuse for invading other countries.”
Tamerlan Tsarnaev - the U.S. uses the Bible as “an excuse for invading other countries.”
U.S. officials said a special interrogation team for high-value suspects
would question him without reading him his Miranda rights
Sorry guys, our Constitutional rights are there to protect us from government tyrants,
like the police involved in the arrest and questioning of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Will cops torture Boston Marathon bombing suspect to get answers???
The 19-year-old — whose older brother and alleged accomplice was killed earlier Friday morning in a wild shootout in suburban Boston — was in serious condition Saturday at a hospital protected by armed guards, and he was unable to be questioned to determine his motives. U.S. officials said a special interrogation team for high-value suspects would question him without reading him his Miranda rights, invoking a rare public safety exception triggered by the need to protect police and the public from immediate danger.
U.S. uses the Bible as “an excuse for invading other countries.”
The older brother had strong political views about the United States, said Albrecht Ammon, 18, a downstairs-apartment neighbor in Cambridge. Ammon quoted Tsarnaev as saying that the U.S. uses the Bible as “an excuse for invading other countries.”
DUI and "drug war" laws are a jobs program for cops????
Let's face it the government war on liquor, along with the war on drugs is just a jobs program for overpaid cops.
When you’re paying officers $50-$60 an hour
in overtime to make arrests and appear
in court, the cash will be gone in a flash.
And of course the war on DUI also mostly about raising revenue for cities and cops with those $2,000 fines for simple DUI arrest.
Sens. Graham, McCain say Tsarnaev should be sent to Guantanamo
Government tyrants always justify their tyrannical rules by saying they will prevent crime.
"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."
And of course the Constitution is there to protect us from tyrants like Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator John McCain
F*ck his Constitutional rights, he is a criminal!!!
Well at least that's what the cops seem to be saying about the alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev.
Half of all arrests are for for victimless drug war crimes???
I usually say that two thirds or 66 percent of the people in
Federal prisons are there for victimless drug war crimes.
I think that number came from an article in Reason Magazine,
but I really don't remember.
"Alleged" ADHS computer crash shuts down pot dispensary
I suspect most of these "alleged" computer crashes on Arizona Department of Health Services medical marijuana servers are intentional and designed to prevent people from using medical marijuana.
Fair trial??? Don't make me laugh!!!!!
James Holmes' Prosecutors Want to Use Jail Video at Trial
While our government masters say you will get a fair trial, don't count on it.
Celebran millones el Día Mundial de la Marihuana
Source
Mesa city council lobbies for more drunks in Mesa???
Mesa Mayor Scott Smith wants more drunks in Mesa???
Personally I don't think the government nannies should be able to tell the folks at the Marriott Springhill Suites Hotel that they are required to have a bar in the hotel.
Rival marijuana measures thrown into the electoral pot
Just legalize marijuana, don't tax it or regulate it.
Judge: Phoenix officers must do union work off the clock
Remember cops and police unions are a special special interest group that trades their votes for government pork.
DEA offers drop-off day for unwanted prescription drugs
What part of the Constitution gives the Feds the power to dispose of unused drugs????
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu spends our money like a drunken sailor????
Source
Medical marijuana will create 1,500 jobs in Arizona
One thing the article forgot to say is that the "war on drugs" literally has created 10,000's of jobs very high paying jobs in Arizona for cops, prosecutors, probation officers, judges and other people who jail people for victimless drug war crimes.
Disbarred Maricopa County Attorney Thomas to run for governor
Hey, Hitler got elected president of Germany, George W. Bush got elected president of the USA,
Ev Mecham and twit Jan Brewer got elected as governors in Arizona, so their ain't not reason
that that *sshole and m*ron Andrew Thomas couldn't get elected to the governors office.
What about Fifth Amendment rights?
Source
34% of teens say pot improves driving
While I am 100 percent for legalizing ALL drugs, I think it is stupid to drive when you are stoned.
Yavapai County deputies had lied in probe
Source
No bribery charges for Mesa justice of the peace Markel K. Chiles
More of the old "Do as I say, not as I do" from our government masters.
Andrew Thomas for governor
Andrew Thomas for governor (curse for Arizona, blessing for the media)
“Dear Members of the Media:
On behalf of hardworking members of the media, some of whom (okay, me) are always looking for ways to make their lives easier, I’d like to send along this response.
Dear Mr. Thomas,
Miranda rights silenced Boston bombing suspect
Source
Miranda rights silenced Boston bombing suspect
By Richard A. Serrano, Ken Dilanian and Brian Bennett
April 25, 2013, 7:09 p.m.
WASHINGTON — Federal agents had to end what they termed "an urgent public safety interview" with Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev when a judge came to his hospital room, officials said Thursday, a disclosure that has renewed the debate over how the government should handle terrorism suspects.
Tsarnaev has not answered any questions since he was given a lawyer and told he has the right to remain silent by Magistrate Judge Marianne B. Bowler on Monday, officials said.
Until that point, Tsarnaev had been responding to the interagency High Value Detainee Interrogation Group, including admitting his role in the bombing, authorities said. A senior congressional aide said Tsarnaev had asked several times for a lawyer, but that request was ignored since he was being questioned under the public safety exemption to the Miranda rule. The exemption allows defendants to be questioned about imminent threats, such as whether other plots are in the works or other plotters are on the loose.
After being briefed on the sequence of events, lawmakers from both parties questioned Thursday why the Justice Department didn't seek to delay the judge's appearance on the grounds that the public safety interview was continuing. Legal experts said that once documents charging Tsarnaev with using a weapon of mass destruction were signed Sunday night, criminal rules of procedure require that he be brought before a judge "without unnecessary delay," which usually means the next business day.
Lawmakers were told Tsarnaev had been questioned for 16 hours over two days. Injured in the throat, he was answering mostly in writing.
"For those of us who think the public safety exemption properly applies here, there are legitimate questions about why he was [brought before a judge] when he was," said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), a former federal prosecutor who serves on the House Intelligence Committee.
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the committee, wrote Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. asking for a full investigation of the matter, complaining that the court session "cut off a lawful, ongoing FBI interview to collect public safety information."
Justice Department officials Thursday did not address the question of why they signed documents charging Tsarnaev on Sunday night, knowing that could start the clock ticking toward an appearance by a magistrate. Once that was done, they said, they had no legal way to stop the hearing from going forward.
A congressional official said interrogators left the hospital room about an hour before the judge arrived, after they were told she was coming.
Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman, said, "The prosecutors and FBI agents in Boston were advised of the scheduled initial appearance in advance." One Justice Department official put it another way: "You don't tell a federal judge to put off a hearing."
Eugene Fidell, a professor at Yale School of Law, said it was past time for Tsarnaev to have been read his rights, because the Constitution requires it.
"The notion that the public safety exemption was going to allow them all the time in the world is preposterous," he said.
In other developments in the case Thursday:
A source familiar with the inquiry said that the FBI two years ago linked the phone number of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the second bombing suspect and Dzhokhar's older brother, to two people who were investigated for possible terrorist ties. But the matter was not pursued because the cases were closed for lack of evidence.
The source, speaking confidentially because the case is still underway, added that the brothers' mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, told an associate at the time that Tamerlan was "going over to the dark side" — another sign that he was becoming radicalized.
Meanwhile, New York Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told federal interrogators while he was still talking that he and his brother Tamerlan had planned to drive to New York to set off another series of explosions in Manhattan's Times Square. They had another pressure-cooker bomb like the ones used in Boston and five smaller pipe bombs in the car when they were stopped by police in Watertown, Mass., Kelly said.
Kelly said the younger suspect described how he and his brother had carjacked a motorist in a Mercedes three days after the bombing and then "decided spontaneously on Times Square as a target. They would drive to Times Square that same night."
But the police commissioner said the plan "fell apart" when they stopped for gas and the Mercedes owner fled and called police. A shootout ensued. Tamerlan was killed shortly after midnight; Dzhokhar was arrested Friday night.
Kelly also said Dzhokhar was caught by surveillance cameras in Times Square on April 18, 2012, and again in New York in November. But, he added, "we don't know if those visits were related" to plans to attack the city.
Law enforcement officials also revealed that the FBI in Boston was looking into whether two Kazakh men tried to remove items from Dzhokhar's dorm room at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth after his name surfaced as a bombing suspect.
Dias Kadyrbayev, 19, and Azamat Tazhayakov, 20, were arrested in New Bedford, Mass., on Saturday on administrative immigration violations, and investigators believe they were social friends with Dzhokhar.
The two men had entered the U.S. from Kazakhstan on academic visas to attend the school, but the visas had since terminated, an official said. They are being held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Suffolk County House of Correction at South Bay in Boston but have not been charged with a crime.
Investigators at this point do not believe the men were accomplices, an official said. An evidence team Thursday searched several city dumps hunting for sales receipts, discarded bomb parts or other clues.
richard.serrano@latimes.com
ken.dilanian@latimes.com
brian.bennett@latimes.com
David G. Savage and Lisa Mascaro in the Washington bureau contributed to this report.
It's OK for the police to drive when they are drunk???
Man, cops can come up with the lamest excuses on why it's OK for them to commit crimes which the rest of us go to jail for.Fired cop: Alcoholism was a disability
Associated Press Fri Apr 26, 2013 4:21 PM
PORTLAND, Ore. — A police officer fired for driving drunk in an unmarked police car while off-duty has filed a $6 million lawsuit against the city of Gresham, the police chief and others, alleging his rights were violated under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The lawsuit filed in Portland alleged the officer, Jason Servo, was suffering from alcoholism, a recognized disability under the act, and shouldn’t have been dismissed.
The suit also alleged Servo was denied due process, and the police union failed to represent him adequately.
“Just as with any type of disability or disease, they should have made some kind of effort to accommodate that, or some kind of effort to work with him, and not simply sever all ties,” said Shawn Kollie, one of Servo’s attorneys.
Police Chief Craig Junginger was out of the office Friday. City spokeswoman Laura Shepard said officials would not discuss the case because their policy is to not talk about pending litigation.
Servo, 43, was arrested in January 2011 after he crashed into a ditch while off-duty. The lawsuit said that Servo, a detective who was the department’s lead firearms instructor, had taken the police vehicle to a firearms training session in the nearby city of Troutdale. He later joined fellow officers for dinner and drinks.
“This was a common practice among (Gresham) officers and had become an inherent part of the culture,” according to the lawsuit filed late Thursday.
Servo was alone when his vehicle veered into a ditch and he was not hurt. Though Servo refused to take breath or field sobriety tests, the Clackamas County sheriff’s deputy who arrested him later testified before the state Department of Public Safety Standards and Training that Servo was probably one of the top 10 most intoxicated people he had arrested in almost 15 years of drunken-driving investigations.
Two months after the accident, Servo pleaded guilty to drunken driving and entered a diversion program. He fulfilled the program’s requirements and the DUI was dismissed.
Servo also voluntarily entered an in-patient program at a Serenity Lane drug-and-alcohol treatment center, where he was diagnosed as an alcoholic.
“There were times where I went home and I couldn’t get crime scenes out of my head; I went to drinking for that and there are other officers that do the same thing,” Servo said Friday, adding that he has now been sober for 818 days.
The lawsuit alleged the chief fired Servo to save money, ignoring the known disability of alcoholism.
“I know it sounds kind of like a conspiracy theorist’s claim,” Kollie said, “but we do believe there was a funding issue in the Gresham police department at the time.”
It could not immediately be determined how common it is for alcoholics to claim their rights have been violated under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in a fact sheet, provides an example of how an alcoholic can justly be fired, and it’s similar to the Servo case.
In its example, a federal police officer is involved in an accident for which he is charged with drunken driving. About a month later, he gets a termination notice stating that his conduct makes it inappropriate for him to continue. The officer says the arrest made him realize he is an alcoholic and that he is obtaining treatment. According to the EEOC, the employer may proceed with the firing.
The example, of course, is not precise because Servo’s crash happened while he was off-duty.
“The ADA has provisions in it, across the board, to not require employers to subject other people to unreasonable risk to accommodate a disability,” said Bob Joondeph, executive director with Disability Rights Oregon.
Joondeph said he couldn’t comment on any specifics in the Servo case, but generally accommodations for an alcoholic might include letting the worker attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings — not allowing them to drink on the job or drive drunk.
Separate from the lawsuit, Servo is appealing the standards-and-training agency’s decision to strip him of his police certification.
Servo is currently working as a private investigator.
San Jose: Rollout of curb-sitting policy urged by police auditor, community groups
The right thing for San Jose Police Chief Chris Moore to do would be to tell his cops to stop falsely arresting minorities.Forcing the cops to document the age, race and other details of these false arrests is just a way of condoning the false arrests.
San Jose: Rollout of curb-sitting policy urged by police auditor, community groups
By Robert Salonga
rsalonga@mercurynews.com
Posted: 04/26/2013 02:46:24 PM PDT
SAN JOSE -- Community activists have long accused San Jose police of disproportionately "curb sitting" minorities during routine stops and searches, but there has never been data to confirm or dismiss the charges.
Sometime in the next few months, after some internal wrangling, police say they will start collecting information that could shed light on the debate over alleged racial profiling by city police.
Since the beginning of the year, the breakthrough policy has been batted back and forth within police ranks. In one of his final acts as police chief in mid-January, Chris Moore sought to tackle the question head-on, ordering officers to start documenting age, ethnicity and location in traffic and pedestrian stops.
But soon after acting, Acting Chief Larry Esquivel suspended its implementation. The department said it needed to retool the plan, a move that came under fire this week when the annual report from the city's Independent Police Auditor lamented Esquivel's decision.
LaDoris Cordell, the independent police auditor and a retired judge, challenged the department's assertion that the original policy was overly broad and would be difficult to implement. Its adoption was a milestone in police-community relations, she said, and the suspension ran the risk of eroding trust from minority groups.
"I respect Acting Chief Esquivel. He has immediately established a positive working relationship with our office," Cordell said. "While I disagree with his decision to suspend (the policy) I remain hopeful that he will re-enact it without delay."
Sgt. Jason Dwyer, a police spokesman, said the delay was necessary to update police computer systems to capture the data so it can be queried, and to narrow its focus to the most frequent instances. The department hopes to roll out the system over the next few months.
"If we have to experience a delay up front to do that, it's a small price to pay for something that will be very useful in the future," Dwyer said.
Moore's act would add a section to the department's duty manual, which guides police conduct. The addition, L-5108, mandates officers record the "justification, manner, duration and scope of the detention and/or search" even in instances where no one is arrested, according to the memo. It also required officers to record ages and races of those who are searched and detained without arrest. [Huh???? The legal definition of an "arrest" is when a person is detained by the police and not free to leave!!!! So anyone who is "detained" by the police has been arrested!!!!]
"The primary purpose for documenting the detention and/or search is that it provides a record that can be used if the detention and/or search is the subject of a complaint, concern or questions from a member of the public," according to a memo Moore issued.
Moore issued it Jan. 14, five days before he retired. Ten days later, Esquivel suspended it "until further notice."
Moore understood the technological dimension wasn't yet in place, but he declared the policy "effective immediately" in his memo because he wanted his officers to get in the habit of taking down the information, according to city officials familiar with the drafting process. Moore declined to comment for this story.
Some in the rank and file initially balked at the breadth of the policy, which covered a wide array of detentions and searches. It was criticized as overreaching and encroaching on the judgment of an officer, being referred to as the "Don't-do-anything memo" in some circles with critics saying it would discourage officers from making stops to avoid burdensome paperwork. Dwyer said the policy is being narrowed to find a workable solution.
"The original memo covers everything," Dwyer said. "As far as detentions go, this is something that occurs a lot. We don't want to put officers in a position to de-police because it's too cumbersome and time-consuming to do that."
Dwyer said the revised policy will address three kinds of non-consensual searches and detentions: when a person is handcuffed, ordered to sit in the back of a patrol car or ordered to sit on a street curb.
Curb sitting has had a particular resonance in San Jose after "communities of color" complained about being targeted, Cordell said.
"They perceived an officer's order to curb sit as demeaning, humiliating and unnecessary," Cordell said.
The police auditor's evidence is anecdotal; she pushed for the new policy to remedy that.
Documenting events like curb sitting is new in law enforcement; recording information about traffic stops has been widely practiced, but pedestrian stops were often considered informal acts by patrol officers looking to proactively keep the peace.
"It's a newer field of data gathering. It's a very unexamined area," said Robert Weisberg, law professor and co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center.
Raj Jayadev, coordinator of Silicon Valley De-Bug, a media, social-advocacy and business collective based in San Jose, said the policy and its execution are being closely watched.
"It's critically important for building trust between communities and police to have quantitative data and measurements for those interactions to move us beyond anecdotes and entrenched political positions," Jayadev said. "The community has been waiting for something tangible to hang their hat on to say this approach of working collectively with police creates a better environment."
Contact Robert Salonga at 408-920-5002. Follow him at Twitter.com/robertsalonga.
Pot in a pill: All the pain relief without the smoke
Source
By Melissa Healy
April 23, 2013, 8:55 a.m.
Unless there is some recognized analgesic effect of rolling a joint, lighting it up and deeply inhaling the by-products of marijuana combustion, then it stands to reason that you could distill the psychoactive ingredient of marijuana, tetrahydrocannabinol, and formulate it into, say, a capsule. Doing so would combine the relief that comes with smoked marijuana with the ease of a pill and the quality control that comes with approval by the Food and Drug Administration.
Poof! Up in smoke goes the debate about medical marijuana.
Let me introduce you to dronabinol. It turns out that the miracle that is modern psychopharmacology has now shown it IS possible to render pot's analgesic effects into capsule form. And according to a new study, it works just as well as smoked marijuana at tamping down pain. But the capsule's effects last longer, and they come with fewer of the "abuse-related subjected effects" (i.e., feeling high) than does smoked marijuana.
Face it, potheads: You knew it was just a matter of time before "the man" got a hold of weed and snagged all the profits. But who knew he'd suck the fun out of it too?
For the record, dronabinol did induce some of smoked marijuana's other side effects, some of which have medicinal value to certain populations: It did increase appetite, decrease nausea and improve sleep.
The new research appeared Monday in the Nature journal Neuropsychopharmacology. It was authored by a group from Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons.
In a small, preliminary study, researchers ran 30 subjects -- all of them regular pot smokers who were in good health -- through five experimental sessions. In each session, the subject would plunge his or her left hand into a vat of water set to a temperature just above freezing -- 39 degrees -- and hold it there for as long as was tolerable (up to two minutes), and then answer questions about the intensity of the pain or discomfort they felt.
This procedure followed the administration of one of the following: three-to-seven puffs of a marijuana cigarette in one of two strengths (provided by the National Institute on Drug Abuse); a single capsule containing dronabinol in one of two doses, high and low; or a capsule containing placebo medication.
Each subject served as his or her own comparison group across the drug conditions. And after each dose, subjects answered questions about their "liking" for the drug administered and other subjective feelings that might suggest the degree to which the drug would inspire drug-seeking behavior.
Both marijuana and dronabinol at the higher dose increased pain tolerance and decreased pain sensitivity roughly equally in subjects. Compared with smoked marijuana, it took a bit longer for dronabinol's analgesic effects to peak -- about 180 minutes for the higher-dose THC capsule, compared with about 15 minutes for smoked marijuana. But for dronabinol, there was substantial pain relief during the period leading up to that peak; after smoked marijuana reached its peak pain-killing effect, the analgesia it brought dropped off quickly.
Subjects declared themselves to feel less "high" on both doses of dronabinol than on marijuana.
Conclusions: marijuana in a capsule seems to fight pain, at least in a population of people who already use marijuana regularly and don't have chronic or neuropathic pain. Its effects on populations of patients who don't usually smoke pot, and whose pain comes from disease states such as cancer or neuropathy, still needs to be tested.
Meanwhile, be apprised: Sure, its recreational use may now be legal in Washington and Colorado, but its medicinal use remains controversial, and it's still illegal to use, sell or possess under federal law. Unless dronabinol gets approved as an over-the-counter drug-- not likely -- pot's days as an alternative drug may be numbered.
Recorded interrogations should be the norm
SourceRecorded interrogations should be the norm
By Laura H. Nirider My Turn Mon Apr 22, 2013 8:03 AM
President Ronald Reagan once famously said: “Trust, but verify.”
That phrase — originally uttered about the Soviet Union’s nuclear program — has since become a rallying cry for those concerned about government transparency here at home.
But in Arizona, transparency only extends so far. In fact, one of the most crucial, potentially life-changing interactions that a person can have with the government is often cloaked in secrecy. I’m talking about police interrogations.
In Arizona, police aren’t required to electronically record interrogations. Instead, a person can be subjected to government questioning behind closed doors for hours on end — all without any objective record of what happened.
This state of affairs lies at the heart of a federal appellate court’s recent decision to overturn the capital conviction of Phoenix resident Debra Milke, who was convicted in 1990 of soliciting the murder of her 4-year-old son.
Milke’s conviction was overturned because the only evidence against her was a detective’s claim that she had confessed to him at the police station during an unrecorded interrogation. Milke, on the other hand, denied ever confessing. In short, the only evidence against her was the detective’s say-so.
But that detective, it turned out, had said a lot of things in the past that weren’t so. He had a long history of misconduct, including repeatedly lying under oath in order to secure convictions. He even accepted sexual favors from a female motorist in exchange for leniency and then lied about it. In tossing out Milke’s conviction and death sentence, the court’s chief judge said of the detective’s testimony: “No civilized system of justice should have to depend on such flimsy evidence.”
In this case, our system relied on trust alone — and a potentially innocent woman paid a horrific price.
Let’s learn from Milke’s case. The Arizona Legislature should trust, but verify: It should require police to electronically record all interrogations from start to finish. Nineteen other states already have such a requirement, ranging from New Mexico to Ohio to North Carolina.
Even setting aside the possibility of police misconduct, there are plenty of other reasons for police to record interrogations. For one, it protects police from baseless claims of misconduct. One Mesa police officer who voluntarily records his interrogations has found that “the act of recording automatically brings with it the air of disclosure and avoids accusations of impropriety during the interview.”
And there are practical benefits, too.
A Gilbert police officer who records his interrogations has explained that it helps him question suspects more effectively: “In addition to the detective not having the distractions of note-taking, the absence of notes frequently makes the subject more at ease and does not alert him/her to key phrases, which may be of special interest at a later time.”
Even while some Arizona officers are already recording their interrogations, many others are not.
Indeed, the detective who questioned Milke was ordered by his superiors to record her interrogation — but he refused. So let’s change the law to require all police to get out the video cameras — or even their smartphones.
It’s not hard, and it’s not expensive, especially when weighed against the financial and moral costs of a case like Milke’s.
Most of us trust the police, and most of the time we’re right to do so. But we also need to verify what happens during police interrogations. That’s our duty to each other as citizens. And in this case, it very well might be the duty that we owe to Debra Milke.
Laura H. Nirider is co-director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago.
These government mandated drug tests are wrong, and I also suspect are also unconstitutional.
‘Shy bladder’ syndrome leads to lawsuit
By Jeff Eckhoff Des Moines Register Sat Apr 27, 2013 10:31 AM
DES MOINES, Iowa -- A would-be administrator who failed a job-related drug test due to anxiety over giving a urine sample has sued Iowa Methodist Medical Center for failing to make a reasonable accommodation to her alleged disability.
Federal court papers filed in Des Moines this month accuse Iowa Methodist of violating Jennifer Conner’s rights after the hospital determined that Conner failed a company-ordered drug test last June because she did not complete it.
Conner, who graduated from Des Moines University in May 2012 with a master’s degree in health care administration, applied for a job as organ transplant financial coordinator with Iowa Methodist Transplant Center. She was offered the job June 22 and told to report three days later for a drug test.
Court papers say Conner was diagnosed during adolescence with paruresis, commonly referred to as “shy bladder” syndrome. It’s an anxiety condition that creates an inability to urinate in public restrooms or in close proximity to other people.
Documents say Conner had managed the condition by using single-stall restrooms or by running water to cover the sound of her urinating, court documents say. “If Conner cannot flush the toilet or run the water in the sink, she is generally unable to urinate in a public restroom,” according to the lawsuit.
Court papers say nurses at the assigned facility placed Conner in a room without running water, then knocked on the door after only 4 minutes. Two minutes later, nurses knocked again, according to the complaint, increasing Conner’s anxiety.
The lawsuit, filed under a 2009 expansion to the federal Americans With Disabilities Act, says Conner was asked to relinquish her restroom so someone else could use it. “While in the waiting room, Conner began to experience significant physical discomfort because she needed to urinate, but could not,” according to the lawsuit. “She also began to feel increasingly anxious and began to cry.”
Conner, who lives in Indiana, has not responded to requests for comment.
A spokeswoman for UnityPoint, which includes Iowa Methodist, declined to comment on pending litigation. UnityPoint previously was Iowa Health Systems.
Tom Foley, Conner’s attorney, said paruresis qualifies as a disability under the 2009 Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act, which was intended to place the legal focus more on steps taken by businesses than on the definition of a worker’s shortcomings.
Lawsuits brought under the original, more narrow law were difficult to argue because attorneys had to prove that their clients were disabled and were able to work with a little help, Foley said.
Before the amendments, “It was getting to the point where attorneys were getting gun shy to bring these kinds of claims because they’d get thrown out of court,” Foley said. “You had this small little target that you were trying to hit.”
Patrick Smith, a Des Moines attorney who publishes a blog on Iowa employment law, said it’s likely that lawyers won’t even argue over Conner’s disability but instead will focus on whether the hospital could reasonably be expected “to administer the test in some way that allows her to do what she needs to do to provide them a sample.”
And of course the drug war is also a jobs program for the civilians who are involved in making all the high tech devices in the article that are used to spy on and track the drug smugglers.
I am sure that the engineers, managers, and salesmen that are involved on the civilian side are also paid very well.
Of course as we know from the Mexican side of the drug war all this stuff will eventually fail. When they build a 8 foot high fence on the border, the Mexicans show up with a 9 foot ladder.
Then we build a 10 foot high fence, and the Mexicans show up with an 11 foot ladder. And the cycle repeats it's self indefinitely.
US tries new aerial tools in Caribbean drug fight
By BEN FOX | Associated Press
ABOARD THE HIGH SPEED VESSEL SWIFT (AP) — Drug smugglers who race across the Caribbean in speedboats will typically jettison their cargo when spotted by surveillance aircraft, hoping any chance of prosecuting them will vanish with the drugs sinking to the bottom of the sea.
That may be a less winning tactic in the future. The U.S. Navy on Friday began testing two new aerial tools, borrowed from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, that officials say will make it easier to detect, track and videotape drug smugglers in action.
One of the devices on display aboard the High Speed Vessel Swift is a large, white balloon-like craft known as an aerostat, which is tethered up to 2,000 feet (600 meters) above the ship's stern. The other tool on board for tests in the Florida Straits is a type of drone that can be launched by hand from the deck.
Together, they expand the ability of Navy and Coast Guard personnel to see what's beyond their horizon, according to officials from both military branches and the contractors hoping to sell the devices to the U.S. government.
The devices should allow authorities to detect and monitor suspected drug shipments from afar for longer sustained periods, giving them a better chance of stopping the smugglers. They also should allow them to make continuous videotapes that can be used in prosecutions.
"Being able to see them and watch what they are doing even before we get there is going to give us an edge," said Chief Chris Sinclair, assistant officer in charge of a law enforcement detachment on board the Swift, a private vessel leased to the Navy that is about to begin a monthlong deployment to the southwestern Caribbean, tracking the busy smuggling routes off Colombia and Honduras.
Crews practiced launching and operating both systems before a small contingent of news media on board the Swift, managing to bring back video of vessels participating in a mock surveillance mission as well as radar and video images of the fishing charters and sailboats that dot the choppy seas separating Cuba from the U.S. mainland.
The drone, officially a Puma All Environment unmanned aircraft system from Aerovironment Inc. of Simi Valley, California, splashed into the water on one landing and had to be retrieved. On the second round, it clacked noisily but intact on the shifting deck of the 321-foot ship. Rear Adm. Sinclair Harris, commander of the Navy's 4th Fleet, said the devices are necessary at a time when the service is making a transition to smaller, faster ships amid budget cuts.
The aerostat, formally the Aerostar TIF-25K and made by a division of Raven Industries Inc. of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is filled with helium. It's an old technology, models of which have been used for decades, but it's packed with cameras and sensors that expand the ship's radar capability from about 5 miles (8 kilometers) to about 50 miles. That can help teams in an on-board control center to identify larger ships, which now would appear as just dots on the horizon, from as far as 15 miles (25 kilometers) away.
The Puma, meanwhile, can be sent out to inspect a vessel flagged by the larger aerostat and give a "God's eye view," of what's happening on board, a job usually handled by a plane or helicopter, said Craig Benson, director of business development for the company.
Both the aerostat and the drone have been used widely by the U.S. government for overseas actions, but Harris and others aboard the Swift said neither has been used before by the Navy to conduct counter-drug operations.
Unmanned aerial devices, however, are not new to the drug fight. U.S. Customs and Border Protection operates 10 Predator drones, including two based in Cape Canaveral, Florida, that patrol a wide swathe of the Caribbean through the Bahamas and down to south of Puerto Rico. It deployed one to the Dominican Republic last year for six weeks and has considered using one in Honduras. The others are used along the northern and southern borders of the United States.
The U.S. military has long been deeply involved in counter-drug operations in the Southern Hemisphere, coordinated by a multi-agency task force based in Key West, Florida. Navy ships and Air Force jets use their radar to track and run down smugglers, though for legal reasons the actual arrests are carried out by the Coast Guard, civilian agencies or officials from other countries.
In March, the military said it would reduce patrols and sorties in Latin America and the Caribbean because of the automatic spending cuts imposed by Congress, another argument for increased use of aerial surveillance devices like the aerostat and drone, officials said.
Representatives on the Swift from both contractors declined to say what their systems cost. But they said each can be run at a fraction of the cost of the fixed-wing planes or helicopters usually dispatched to check out suspected smugglers.
‘Shy bladder’ syndrome leads to lawsuit
Sadly the government's insane and unconstitutional war on drugs had turned America into a police state where the government requires many employers to force any employees they hire to pee into a bottle and prove they don't take drugs.
US tries new aerial tools in Caribbean drug fight
The article is an excellent example of how the "drug war" is a jobs program for a large number of people. Sure the peons on these military ships get paid peanuts, but I suspect the officers get paid rather well.
US uses drug war to turn Mexico into a police state???
Source
U.S. role at a crossroads in Mexico’s intelligence war on the cartels
By Dana Priest, Published: April 27
MEXICO CITY — For the past seven years, Mexico and the United States have put aside their tension-filled history on security matters to forge an unparalleled alliance against Mexico’s drug cartels, one based on sharing sensitive intelligence, U.S. training and joint operational planning.
But now, much of that hard-earned cooperation may be in jeopardy.
Drugs and homicides in Mexico.
The December inauguration of President Enrique Peña Nieto brought the nationalistic Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) back to power after 13 years, and with it a whiff of resentment over the deep U.S. involvement in Mexico’s fight against narco-traffickers.
The new administration has shifted priorities away from the U.S.-backed strategy of arresting kingpins, which sparked an unprecedented level of violence among the cartels, and toward an emphasis on prevention and keeping Mexico’s streets safe and calm, Mexican authorities said.
Some U.S. officials fear the coming of an unofficial truce with cartel leaders. The Mexicans see it otherwise. “The objective of fighting organized crime is not in conflict with achieving peace,” said Eduardo Medina Mora, Mexico’s ambassador to the United States.
Interviews with more than four dozen current and former U.S. and Mexican diplomats, law enforcement agents, military officers and intelligence officials — most of whom agreed to speak about sensitive matters only on condition of anonymity — paint the most detailed public portrait to date of how the two countries grew so close after so many years of distance and distrust, and what is at stake should the alliance be scaled back.
U.S. officials got their first inkling that the relationship might change just two weeks after Peña Nieto assumed office Dec. 1. At the U.S. ambassador’s request, the new president sent his top five security officials to an unusual meeting at the U.S. Embassy here. In a crowded conference room, the new attorney general and interior minister sat in silence, not knowing what to expect, next to the new leaders of the army, navy and Mexican intelligence agency.
In front of them at the Dec. 15 meeting were representatives from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the CIA, the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and other U.S. agencies tasked with helping Mexico destroy the drug cartels that had besieged the country for the past decade.
The Mexicans remained stone-faced as they learned for the first time just how entwined the two countries had become during the battle against narco-traffickers, and how, in the process, the United States had been given near-complete entree to Mexico’s territory and the secrets of its citizens, according to several U.S. officials familiar with the meeting.
The administration of former president Felipe Calderon had granted high-flying U.S. spy planes access to Mexican airspace for the purpose of gathering intelligence. Unarmed Customs and Border Protection drones had flown from bases in the United States in support of Mexican military and federal police raids against drug targets and to track movements that would establish suspects’ “patterns of life.” The United States had also provided electronic signals technology, ground sensors, voice-recognition gear, cellphone-tracking devices, data analysis tools, computer hacking kits and airborne cameras that could read license plates from three miles away.
Under a classified program code-named SCENIC, the CIA was training Mexicans in how to target and vet potential assets for recruitment and how to guard against infiltration by narco-traffickers.
In deference to their visitors, the U.S. briefers left out the fact that most of the 25 kingpin taken off the streets in the past five years had been removed because of U.S.-supplied information, often including the location of top cartel members in real time, according to people familiar with the meeting. The CIA and Calderon declined to comment for this article.
Also unremarked upon was the mounting criticism that success against the cartels’ leadership had helped incite more violence than anyone had predicted, more than 60,000 deaths and 25,000 disappearances in the past seven years alone.
Meanwhile, the drug flow into the United States continued unabated. Mexico remains the U.S. market’s largest supplier of heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine and the transshipment point for 95 percent of its cocaine.
No one had come up with a quick, realistic alternative to Calderon’s novel use of the Mexican military with U.S. support. But stopping the cartel violence had become Peña Nieto’s top priority during the campaign. The U.S. administration didn’t know what that meant. Some feared a scaling back of the bilateral efforts and a willingness to trade the relentless drive against cartel leaders for calmer streets.
When the Dec. 15 meeting concluded, Mexico’s new security officials remained poker-faced, “They said they were very appreciative to have received so much information,” said one U.S. official familiar with the meeting. We will be in touch, they added, and left.
The roots of cooperation
U.S. involvement in Mexico’s deteriorating internal security first peaked in the mid-1980s when the cocaine epidemic in the United States turned the southern neighbor into a prosperous distribution route north. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed a National Security Decision Directive instructing U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies to help defeat the growing narco-trafficking menace worldwide.
Beginning in the late 1980s, a massive U.S. air, sea and land effort was shutting down many Caribbean drug routes. The traffickers were increasingly forced to move their product through the only territory left unhindered: Mexico.
Mexico’s secret security ties with the United States date at least to the Cold War, when Mexico City was a hub of intrigue, the “Beirut of the Western Hemisphere,” according to intelligence history scholar Sergio Aguayo. To keep an eye on the United States, the Soviet Union and China had their largest embassies here, necessitating a large CIA presence.
Back then, the Mexican intelligence service, CISEN, “was basically run by the CIA,” according to one former CISEN official. Although that has changed with time, the unusually close relationship between Mexican presidents and CIA chiefs has not. Then-CIA director David H. Petraeus attended a party at the Mexican Embassy in Washington in 2011 and visited Calderon in Mexico last year. As many of his predecessors had done, Calderon usually met with the CIA director when he came to Washington.
The CIA’s importance here can be explained, in part, by the historically strained dealings between Mexico and the DEA and U.S. military. “There was a void that the CIA stepped into,” said Jeffrey S. Davidow, a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico and author of a book about the prickly relationship between the two countries.
In the mid-1980s, the DEA had been virtually banished from the country because of its aggressive pursuit of a slain DEA agent’s killers. But that relationship has improved greatly in the past five years. Now, the DEA has more employees in Mexico than in any other of its 67 foreign posts.
In 2000, a political earthquake in Mexico paved the way for a less suspicious era between the two neighbors. The 71-year political reign of the authoritarian and corrupt PRI ended with the election of Vicente Fox of the National Action Party as president. The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States turned the new openness into unprecedented bilateral action against terrorism.
The two countries fortified the border with personnel and surveillance technology. Eventually, a protocol was worked out for Mexico to stop, detain and interrogate non-Mexicans traveling north toward the United States. Mexican authorities allow U.S. officials to remotely question third-country nationals of concern to the United States, according to Mexican and U.S. officials.
Clamping down on illegal border crossings, however, had an unintended consequence: It upset agreements among the cartels over smuggling routes, sparking yet more violent competition.
By the time Calderon was inaugurated in late 2006, many experts believed that Mexico was losing control of parts of the country. Even before his inauguration, Calderon pleaded with President George W. Bush to help the Mexican military quash the cartels, according to Antonio Garza, then U.S. ambassador to Mexico, who attended a meeting between the presidents.
Bush agreed to help, and the Merida Initiative, a $1.9 billion aid package for military training and equipment and judicial reform, set the framework for a new level of U.S.-Mexican cooperation. In a little-noticed move, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence took a leading role in the U.S. effort to defeat the cartels, signaling the importance of intelligence in combating organized crime.
By then, cartels had begun employing assassination squads, according to Guillermo Valdes, who was CISEN director at the time. CISEN discovered from a captured videotape and a special analytical group it set up that some of the cartels had hired former members of the U.S.-trained Guatemalan special forces, the Kaibiles, to create sociopathic killers who could behead a man, torture a child or immerse a captive in a vat of acid.
Anxious to counterattack, the CIA proposed electronically emptying the bank accounts of drug kingpins, but was turned down by the Treasury Department and the White House, which feared unleashing chaos in the banking system.
As the Mexican death toll mounted, Calderon pleaded with Bush for armed drones. He had been impressed by the results in Iraq and Afghanistan, two former U.S. officials said. The White House considered the request, but quickly rejected it. It was far too likely to result in collateral damage, they said.
Violence deepened ties
By 2009, President Obama’s first year in office, horrific scenes had become commonplace throughout Mexico: severed heads thrown onto a dance floor, a half-dozen bodies hanged from a bridge, bombs embedded in cadavers. Ciudad Juarez, a stone’s throw from El Paso, was a virtual killing zone.
Obama approved an intensification of bilateral measures. Deputy national security adviser John O. Brennan, also in charge of counterterrorism operations focused on al-Qaeda, led the U.S. side. His Mexican partner was CISEN director Valdes.
“We got people together to define the operations,” Valdes said in an interview here. Every new program was vetted by Mexico’s security team and often by Calderon. The day-to-day operations were conceived in Mexico and approved by the U.S. ambassador at the time, Carlos Pascual, and the specific Mexican agency head involved.
The first important decision was to use the same “high-value target” strategy that had been so successful against al-Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. authorities used real-time intelligence against kingpins on a Mexican-U.S. priority list — including cellphone geolocation, wiretaps, electronic intercepts and tracking of digital records — to help Mexican authorities target them.
The second was to clean up the Mexican units that would be responsible for carrying out raids.
As early as 1997, the DEA had funded the creation of Sensitive Investigative Units (SIU) made up of foreign nationals, first in Colombia, then in Bolivia, Peru and Mexico, and eventually in nine other countries. By mid-2006, the DEA had two units with a total of 184 members in Mexico alone, according to a DEA inspector general’s report. The Mexicans were brought for training to the DEA’s facility at Quantico.
Mexico does not allow U.S. agents to take part in the actual raids, but they can be involved in planning operations and can even direct them remotely.
The CIA also has trained units in raid tactics, protection of senior officials, intelligence collecting and, in a departure for the spy agency, in gathering and preserving evidence that can be used in court.
To guard against penetration from the cartels, members were polygraphed, drug-tested and vetted for criminal and financial irregularities. But operations were still routinely exposed by moles inserted by the cartels. So, beginning in 2009, the size of the units was cut significantly. Those who remained worked under cover and lived in secret safe houses. The U.S. agencies they worked with provided special cellphones and even paid their salaries and set up their bank accounts. There are now six or seven SIUs in Mexico, sponsored by the DEA, CIA and at least one other U.S. law enforcement agency.
The two countries also have constructed an elaborate physical infrastructure and developed protocols for sharing sensitive, often real-time intelligence. Garza, the former U.S. ambassador, called it “the plumbing” of the security relationship.
“We started to appreciate that the same sort of plumbing construction for counterterrorism naturally translated into other security cooperation,” he said.
By 2011, the plumbing extended to a CIA-run fusion center in Mexico City, a DEA-sponsored fusion center in Monterrey, a federal police bunker of “Star Wars”-like screens and computer terminals, also in the capital city, as well as separate military and federal police intelligence centers and one inside the headquarters of CISEN.
“They gave us intelligence, they helped teach us the 24-hour intelligence cycle, helped build up our intelligence centers and taught us the importance of connecting intelligence to operations,” said Valdes, the CISEN director until September 2011. “Both DEA and the [CIA] helped, and we had a high level of support from Washington.”
Drugs and homicides in Mexico.
The infrastructure also has included regional law enforcement headquarters with temporary war rooms set up during large-scale Mexican military and federal police operations in Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana and Acapulco.
To support Mexican operations in Ciudad Juarez, U.S. authorities arranged two brainstorming sessions at nearby Fort Bliss in Texas for their Mexican counterparts. Experts were brought in, including, upon Mexican request, the police chief of New Orleans, from whom they wanted to learn about the civilian large-scale control and relief measures after Hurricane Katrina.
U.S. liaison officers remained on hand inside the federal police war room in Ciudad Juarez for more than two years, according to U.S. and former Mexican officials involved.
The bulk of the U.S. work finding cartel members depends on the DEA’s exhaustive network of informants and undercover agents. Their information usually trumps what Mexican authorities bring to the table, particularly because local and state police remain riddled with corruption.
DEA-provided information led to the killing of cartel leader Arturo Beltran Leyva in December 2009. The cartel not only moved significant quantities of cocaine into the United States but also had penetrated the highest level of Mexico’s institutions. His death gave Calderon his first significant victory in the militarized anti-cartel campaign.
But planning for the Beltran Leyva operation had to overcome significant hitches. The CIA persuaded the embassy team to give the mission to a specialized Mexican army unit it was working with at the time. But the army chain of command dragged its feet. After several weeks of delay, the DEA insisted the mission be given to Mexico’s more aggressive Naval Special Forces.
In another successful mission, the DEA in the summer of 2010 was able to locate the multiple cellphones of U.S.-born kingpin Edgar Valdez Villarreal, known as “La Barbie” for his Ken-doll good looks. The drug agency tracked his travels over time, allowing Mexican authorities to pursue him through five Mexican states. He was captured in August 2010 and is in Mexican custody, still awaiting extradition to the United States.
Drones became part of the mix, too.
In July 2009, hours after Mexican smugglers shot and killed a U.S. Border Patrol agent while trying to steal his night-vision goggles, U.S. authorities were given permission to fly an unarmed Predator drone into Mexican airspace to hunt for suspects. Intelligence from the flights was passed to the Mexican army. Within 12 hours, the army brought back more information, according to two U.S. officials involved in the operation. Eventually, four suspects were captured. Three pleaded guilty, one is awaiting trial and a fifth remains at large.
That first flight dispelled Mexican fears that U.S. authorities would try to take control of drone operations. An agreement was reached that would temporarily give operational control to Mexican authorities during such flights. U.S. pilots sitting in the States would control the planes remotely, but a Mexican military or federal police commander would be able to direct the pilot within the boundaries of a Mexico-designated grid.
By late 2010, drones were flying deeper into Mexico to spy on the cartels, as they did during the two-day gun battle involving 800 federal police that resulted in the death of Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, head of the ultra-violent La Familia Michoacana cartel.
By then, Mexican authorities had grown so enamored with drones that they were requesting more flights than the United States could deliver, given that most of the aircraft were being used to support operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Pakistan. So Mexican authorities bought their own drones. The first public indication of this development came when one crashed in El Paso in December 2010.
“Eventually, when they got better at using their own, they would fly more missions than we would,” said one former law enforcement official involved in drone operations.
Mexico’s new approach
Four months and many conversations after the Dec. 15 meeting, the new Mexican government is still fleshing out the details of its counterdrug approach.
In a visit to Washington two weeks ago, Mexico’s top security team shared the broad outlines of the plan with U.S. agencies, according to U.S. and Mexican officials. It contains many changes.
The president will not be nearly as directly involved in counterdrug efforts as Calderon was, the officials said. The interior minister will coordinate the relationships between various Mexican and U.S. agencies and other Mexican units. The director of the Mexican intelligence agency will decide which Mexican agency should receive and act on sensitive U.S. information.
Given the corruption of Mexican law enforcement and armed forces, U.S. officials said privately they would be unwilling to share sensitive information until they have vetted the people involved and understand how their information is to be protected.
The Mexican government also plans to create five regional intelligence fusion centers, staffed with federal and state officials, and to build a 10,000-member super police force. This force would be steeped in military discipline but would use police tactics, rather than overwhelming military force, to keep violence to a minimum.
Medina Mora, the Mexican ambassador, said in an interview that his nation considers U.S. help in the drug war “a centerpiece” of Mexico’s counternarcotics strategy. But the Mexican delegation in Washington also informed U.S. authorities that Americans will no longer be allowed to work inside any fusion center, including the one in Monterrey. The DEA agents and retired military contractors there will have to go.
Several senior U.S. officials say U.S. agencies stand ready to help in any way the new administration allows.
They anxiously await further details.
Julie Tate in Washington and Gabriela Martinez in Mexico City contributed to this report.
Government, it's all about the money!!!!
When you read stuff like this, it sure makes it sound like government is mostly about cold hard cash!!!!Santa Clara County district attorney's hiring practices ignite debate
By Tracey Kaplan
tkaplan@mercurynews.com
Posted: 04/27/2013 04:00:00 PM PDT
SAN JOSE -- Eager to distinguish himself as more ethical than his scandal-prone predecessor, Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen promised to take on and promote only "the best people." But halfway into his first term, questions are being raised about whether merit was his only consideration when he hired his top aide's brother-in-law, the girlfriend of his wife's close colleague, and a longtime protege of a local congresswoman who gave him a key campaign endorsement.
Rosen said he would have hired the investigator and two prosecutors even without those connections, based on their impressive qualifications. But critics both inside and outside the District Attorney's Office note that each of the hires proceeded in an unusual fashion, with either the candidate's work history or the way they were chosen varying from the norm.
"It is disappointing to hear that DA Rosen has been accused of politicizing the hiring process, despite having committed to an open, honest, fair and transparent hiring process," said Max Zarzana, president of the Government Attorneys Association, which represents county attorneys including those in the DA's office. "We hope that none of our members are tainted by Mr. Rosen's actions."
Rosen's supporters say concern over the hires is unwarranted and blame the controversy on the union, which is locked in a feud with Rosen over his willingness to investigate and discipline attorneys.
"For almost every person that applies to be a prosecutor, I receive phone calls and letters encouraging me to hire that person ... often ... from elected officials, judges, community leaders and those in law enforcement,'' Rosen said. "This is a normal part of the hiring process. It would not matter if anyone tried to pressure me or apply undue influence on an applicant's behalf. I only hire those who are excellent."
The hiring flap comes on the heels of another Rosen-centered controversy, involving his efforts to compensate his top deputies, whose bonus pay was cut under a union agreement, by giving them extra administrative leave. He has been rebuked by county managers for that move, and the county counsel says it may have been illegal.
At the least, the twin brouhahas suggest the DA -- who had no prior management experience -- is not always adept at recognizing the appearance of impropriety, observers say.
The economy was still reeling from the recession when Rosen took office in 2011 after narrowly defeating one-term DA Dolores Carr. But there was a silver lining to the dark cloud hanging over the economy: More than 600 attorneys and police officers applied for jobs, giving Rosen and Chief Assistant Jay Boyarsky their pick of extraordinarily qualified candidates.
Rosen has added more than 38 attorneys and 15 criminal investigators in his first two years in office, partly to fill retirement vacancies.
Among them is Robert Longwell, the brother-in-law of his best friend and top aide, Boyarsky. Rosen hired him as an entry-level investigator in December for $84,524 a year.
Longwell is something of a Renaissance man -- a Stanford University-educated civil engineer, private attorney and philanthropist, according to a short profile distributed by the DA's office.
But unlike every other investigator Rosen hired, Longwell has never been a full-time police officer. Instead, he met the minimum requirement for an entry-level investigator position -- including three years of patrol experience -- as a volunteer reserve officer with the Palo Alto police working at least two days a month for the past 26 years. A spokesman for that department described him as "stellar," and the short profile put out months ago by the DA's office says he wrote grants there "to obtain sophisticated investigative tools," worked in financial investigations and served as a departmental gunsmith. It does not mention his relationship to Boyarsky.
Pete Oliver, the DA's chief of investigations, said the office is "lucky" to get someone like Longwell and denied that Boyarsky played any role in the hiring process.
County officials say the hire doesn't violate the county's nepotism policy, which applies to only the spouse, parent, child, brother or sister of a department head.
But Deputy County Executive Luke Leung said Rosen should have taken clearer steps to wall off Boyarsky from the Longwell hire and to be transparent about their familial connection. "There's no specific regulation," Leung said. "But it is not a good, clean process if you get involved and use your influence to get a relative hired."
Cameron Day, a former aide to Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, and son of her husband's former business partner, took a tortuous route to the job he landed in the DA's office in March 2012. He was originally interviewed by an advisory panel made up of Boyarsky and five other prosecutors, but the group recommended he not be hired -- even after being told of his potentially useful connections to Lofgren, who was Rosen's most prestigious endorser in 2010, a source close to the hiring process said.
The Rosen administration abided by the advice of the panel, which viewed Day's credentials and interview performance as relatively lackluster, though he speaks Spanish and had done well as a volunteer law clerk with the office for six months. Day graduated from De Anza Community College magna cum laude before transferring to UCLA and attending law school at Santa Clara University, a fine record in normal times.
But the office had its choice of UCLA alums -- and eventually hired another who graduated summa cum laude from that college and then with distinction from Stanford Law School; she also served as an intern in the prosecutor's office for the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The panel-interview process has yielded other noteworthy hires, including a decorated former U.S. Marine, a leading authority on juvenile justice and top-notch prosecutors from all over California.
Undeterred, Day applied again, and this time a second panel made up of a different group of prosecutors chosen by the Rosen administration recommended him among a group of qualified candidates. However, Day was hired on an essentially temporary basis -- as part-time "extra help," at a lower hourly salary than the other new permanent hires. He was paid $67,161 during his 11-month stint, according to county records.
After 11 months, he was not offered a permanent position or kept on as extra help, "so I elected to resume private practice," he said in an email.
Both Day and Rosen insist his connection to Lofgren had nothing to do with his hiring. "I was hired based on my own merit, persistence, and hard work including two unpaid internships at the office and academic coursework focused on criminal law," Day said.
In contrast to hundreds of other job candidates, prosecutor Jenny Jiang was one of only three who were vetted in a series of private one-on-one interviews with Rosen administration officials.
The more typical process involves candidates appearing before the six-member panel, as Day had. The idea is to test their poise in a courtroom-like situation, in part by having them respond to a hypothetical problem involving such matters as trial tactics or ethics.
At the time of her interviews, Jiang was dating Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Nedrow; Jiang and Nedrow have since married. Nedrow is a close colleague of Rosen's wife, federal prosecutor Amber Rosen. Nedrow ranks higher than Amber Rosen, but Jeff Rosen said his wife does not report directly to Nedrow.
Rosen said he condensed the hiring process for Jiang because she has superb credentials and had been offered a job by the San Diego City Attorney's Office. Jiang, who makes $117,350 a year, is fluent in Mandarin in a county where more than a quarter of the population is of Asian descent but only one or two other prosecutors speak the language. Her résumé includes a law degree from UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall, a federal clerkship and a stint at one of the best law firms in the state.
"We believe that every deputy district attorney, including Ms. Jiang, is highly qualified," union president Zarzana said.
Asked to comment on the three hires, Gerald Uelmen, a former federal prosecutor who teaches at the Santa Clara University School of Law, said he was unperturbed.
"None of this smells that bad," Uelmen said. "I'm generally impressed with the quality of his hiring."
But another outside expert had concerns.
"The hirings raise suspicions," Dick W. Simpson, a political-science professor at the University of Chicago and co-author of a series of anti-corruption reports, including one on patronage and cronyism. "Particularly in a sensitive office like district attorney, the way these hirings were done might cause citizens to lose their faith in government, and that makes them less likely to follow laws, turn in offenders and pay taxes because they don't think the government is being fair."
Staff researcher Leigh Poitinger contributed to this report. Contact Tracey Kaplan at 408-278-3482. Follow her at Twitter.com/tkaplanreport.
NYPD corrupt to the core!!!!!
New York Police whistle-blowers testify at stop-frisk trial
SourceNYPD whistle-blowers testify at stop-frisk trial
Associated Press Sun Apr 28, 2013 10:12 AM
NEW YORK -- After Officer Pedro Serrano decided to testify in federal court about what he sees as wrongdoing within the New York Police Department, a rat sticker appeared on his locker.
That was the least of his problems.
Serrano claims he’s been harassed, micromanaged and eventually transferred to a different precinct and put on the overnight shift.
“It hasn’t been a picnic,” he said in an interview this week. “They have their methods of dealing with someone like me.”
Serrano and other whistle-blowers took the stand in a civil rights case challenging some of the 5 million streets stops made by police in the past decade using a tactic known as stop and frisk. They believe illegal quotas are behind some wrongful stops of black and Hispanic men.
“A lot of people told me not to come forward because of what would happen — they said the department would come after me,” Serrano said. “But I’ve been thinking about it since 2007. I felt I couldn’t keep quiet.”
Several other officers and police brass testified to the opposite: They say there are no quotas. Most officers follow the letter of the law, and low-performing cops like Serrano are lazy malcontents who make the city less safe.
Under NYPD policy, officers are required to report corruption without fear of retribution to the internal affairs bureau, which investigates the claims.
But starting with legendary whistle-blower Frank Serpico in the 1970s, corruption scandals large and small have exposed a clannish culture that critics say encourages police officers to turn a blind eye to wrongdoing and never question authority — or else face harassment by peers and punishment by superiors.
As a plainclothes officer, Serpico was labeled a traitor for refusing payoffs and reporting corruption. On Feb. 3, 1971, he was shot in the face during a drug raid; he says other officers purposely failed to back him up. He recovered and testified before the Knapp Commission — a story etched in popular culture by a hit movie starring Al Pacino.
In the early 1990s, an internal affairs investigator who pursued drug-dealing officers was blackballed by his commanders before an independent investigation by the Mollen Commission proved him right. And the 1997 police assault of Abner Louima resulted in charges against officers who kept quiet because of a so-called blue wall of silence — an unspoken code among the rank-and-file to never “rat” on each other.
“Nothing’s changed,” the 76-year-old Serpico said in a recent phone interview when asked about the current crop of whistle-blowers. “It’s the same old crap — kill the messenger.”
In the ongoing federal trial over stop and frisk, lawyers for men who have sued police are seeking to show a disproportionate number of black and Hispanic men are being wrongly stopped in part because officers are under too much pressure to keep enforcement numbers up.
Serrano, along with Officers Adhyl Polanco and Adrian Schoolcraft secretly recorded hours of patrol briefings, meetings with bosses and encounters on the streets that they say show they were being targeted by overzealous officials bent on making their precincts look good. The recordings were played at trial.
Both Serrano and Polanco said they made stops they didn’t think were right as a result.
“I was extremely bothered with what I was seeing out there,” Polanco testified. “The racial profiling, the arresting people for no reason, being called to scenes that I did not observe a violation and being forced to write a summons that I didn’t observe.”
Polanco said he agonized over the decision to come forward.
“I was afraid,” he said. “It’s not that easy to report corruption. … Look at what happened to Schoolcraft.”
Schoolcraft, who didn’t appear in court because he has filed his own federal suit, was taken to a psychiatric ward in 2009 by his superiors, he says against his will. He remains suspended.
Polanco was suspended with pay for years after internal affairs officers brought charges of filing false arrest paperwork; he says the charges came because he detailed a list of complaints to internal affairs.
Serrano testified that he received poor evaluations, was denied vacation days and was forced to work overtime as punishment because he tallied too few arrests and stop-and-frisk reports.
“There’s a whole bunch of things they do, but they’re minor,” Serrano said. “But when you put it all together, it becomes a hostile work environment.”
For example, he says, he never saw his commanding officer until word got out about his quota allegations — then the official was personally checking Serrano’s shift paperwork. He says he was forced to drive around with a sergeant and issue summonses and stop people until he brought up his numbers. Even after his numbers improved, his evaluations didn’t. And he claimed he was forced to come in during a massive snowstorm even though he was nearly in a car accident.
When asked whether Serrano’s complaints were considered punishment, several other officers who testified said no — it’s just part of the job.
Most officers “leave their house every day to go to work to protect the city. They have the best intentions all the time, and they do it,” Joseph Esposito, the former chief of the department, testified. “There is a small percentage … we’re talking about in any profession, there is a group that will try to do the least amount and get paid the most.”
After Serrano appeared in court last month, he was transferred from the Bronx to a Manhattan precinct where he now works the midnight shift.
Serpico, who adopted a pet rat after he was accused of being one, says he holds the bosses responsible.
“Their message is ‘Do you want to write a summons or do you want to be delivering pizza? As a police officer, you’re duty-bound to refuse an illegal order. … But where do you go? The police department doesn’t want to hear it.”
Serpico, who now lives in upstate New York, still feels like an outsider to the police. He says he’s there to listen when fellow whistle-blowers reach out.
“I’ve become their grandfather,” he said. “They don’t want nothing. They just want somebody who knows what they’re going through. I give them moral support.”
From this article is sure sounds like the folks at the FBI feel that way.
On top of that the FBI also seems to think think that somebody else should be required to pay for the cost of any wiretaps the FBI demands.
King George would be proud of the terrorists at the FBI.
Panel seeks to fine tech companies for noncompliance with wiretap orders
By Ellen Nakashima, Published: April 28
A government task force is preparing legislation that would pressure companies such as Facebook and Google to enable law enforcement officials to intercept online communications as they occur, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the effort.
Driven by FBI concerns that it is unable to tap the Internet communications of terrorists and other criminals, the task force’s proposal would penalize companies that failed to heed wiretap orders — court authorizations for the government to intercept suspects’ communications.
Rather than antagonizing companies whose cooperation they need, federal officials typically back off when a company is resistant, industry and former officials said. But law enforcement officials say the cloak drawn on suspects’ online activities — what the FBI calls the “going dark” problem — means that critical evidence can be missed.
“The importance to us is pretty clear,” Andrew Weissmann, the FBI’s general counsel, said last month at an American Bar Association discussion on legal challenges posed by new technologies. “We don’t have the ability to go to court and say, ‘We need a court order to effectuate the intercept.’ Other countries have that. Most people assume that’s what you’re getting when you go to a court.”
There is currently no way to wiretap some of these communications methods easily, and companies effectively have been able to avoid complying with court orders. While the companies argue that they have no means to facilitate the wiretap, the government, in turn, has no desire to enter into what could be a drawn-out contempt proceeding.
Under the draft proposal, a court could levy a series of escalating fines, starting at tens of thousands of dollars, on firms that fail to comply with wiretap orders, according to persons who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. A company that does not comply with an order within a certain period would face an automatic judicial inquiry, which could lead to fines. After 90 days, fines that remain unpaid would double daily.
Instead of setting rules that dictate how the wiretap capability must be built, the proposal would let companies develop the solutions as long as those solutions yielded the needed data. That flexibility was seen as inevitable by those crafting the proposal, given the range of technology companies that might receive wiretap orders. Smaller companies would be exempt from the fines.
The proposal, however, is likely to encounter resistance, said industry officials and privacy advocates.
“This proposal is a non-starter that would drive innovators overseas and cost American jobs,” said Greg Nojeim, a senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology, which focuses on issues of privacy and security. “They might as well call it the Cyber Insecurity and Anti-Employment Act.”
The Obama administration has not yet signed off on the proposal. Justice Department, FBI and White House officials declined to comment. Still, Weissmann said at the ABA discussion that the issue is the bureau’s top legislative priority this year, but he declined to provide details about the proposal.
Increased urgency
The issue of online surveillance has taken on added urgency with the explosion of social media and chat services and the proliferation of different types of online communication. Technology firms are seen as critical sources of information about crime and terrorism suspects.
“Today, if you’re a tech company that’s created a new and popular way to communicate, it’s only a matter of time before the FBI shows up with a court order to read or hear some conversation,” said Michael Sussmann, a former federal prosecutor and a partner at the law firm Perkins Coie’s Washington office who represents technology firms. “If the data can help solve crimes, the government will be interested.”
Some technology companies have developed a wiretap capability for some of their services. But a range of communications companies and services are not required to do so under what is known as CALEA, the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. Among those services are social media networks and the chat features on online gaming sites.
Former officials say the challenge for investigators was exacerbated in 2010, when Google began end-to-end encryption of its e-mail and text messages after its networks were hacked. Facebook followed suit. That made it more difficult for the FBI to intercept e-mail by serving a court order on the Internet service provider, whose pipes would carry the encrypted traffic.
The proposal would make clear that CALEA extends to Internet phone calls conducted between two computer users without going through a central company server — what is sometimes called “peer-to-peer” communication. But the heart of the proposal would add a provision to the 1968 Wiretap Act that would allow a court to levy fines.
Challenges abound
One former senior Justice Department official, who is not privy to details of the draft proposal, said law enforcement officials are not seeking to expand their surveillance authorities. Rather, said Kenneth L. Wainstein, assistant attorney general for national security from 2006 to 2008, officials are seeking “to make sure their existing authorities can be applied across the full range of communications technologies.”
Proponents say adding an enforcement provision to the 1968 Wiretap Act is a more politically palatable way of achieving that goal than by amending CALEA to redefine what types of companies should be covered. Industry and privacy experts, including some former government officials, are skeptical.
“There will be widespread disagreement over what the law requires,” said Albert Gidari Jr., a partner at Perkins Coie’s flagship Seattle office who represents telecommunications companies. “It takes companies into a court process over issues that don’t belong in court but rather in standards bodies with technical expertise.”
Some experts said a few companies will resist because they believe they might lose customers who have privacy concerns. Google, for instance, prides itself on protecting its search service from law enforcement surveillance, though it might comply in other areas, such as e-mail. And Skype has lost some of its cachet as a secure communications alternative now that it has been bought by Microsoft and is reportedly complying with wiretap orders.
Susan Landau, a former Sun Microsystems distinguished engineer, has argued that wiring in an intercept capability will increase the likelihood that a company’s servers will be hacked. “What you’ve done is created a way for someone to silently go in and activate a wiretap,” she said. Traditional phone communications were susceptible to illicit surveillance as a result of the 1994 law, she said, but the problem “becomes much worse when you move to an Internet or computer-based network.”
Marcus Thomas, former assistant director of the FBI’s Operational Technology Division, said good software coders can create an intercept capability that is secure. “But to do so costs money,” he said, noting the extra time and expertise needed to develop, test and operate such a service.
A huge challenge, officials agree, is how to gain access to peer-to-peer communications. Another challenge is making sense of encrypted communications.
Thomas said officials need to strike a balance between the needs of law enforcement and those of the technology companies.
“You want to give law enforcement the ability to have the data they’re legally entitled to get, at the same time not burdening industry and not opening up security holes,” he said.
Indiana cop accused in fatal drunk-driving crash arrested again
By Matt Pearce
9:36 p.m. CDT, April 28, 2013
An Indianapolis police officer who faces drunk-driving charges for allegedly crashing into two motorcycles with his patrol car in 2010, killing one rider, has been arrested again on suspicion of drunk driving.
Despite the earlier crash, which also injured two people, David M. Bisard's driver's license was still valid due to irregularities surrounding his 2010 arrest and a quirk in state law. The case was originally thrown out over allegations that the bloodwork -- which showed his blood-alcohol content to be 0.19, more than twice the legal limit -- was handled incorrectly.
An appellate court later overruled that claim after prosecutors refiled seven felony charges against him, including reckless homicide.
The uproar spurred legislators to change Indiana's laws on drunk-driving tests and became so great that a judge moved his trial out of Indianapolis for fear that Bisard wouldn't get an unbiased jury.
Bisard, 39, is suspended from the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.
On Saturday, Bisard was arrested again on suspicion of drunk driving after running his truck into a speed-limit sign, a guardrail and a power pole in Lawrence, Ind.
"I've been drinking since noon, and I'm not going to say I've had two like everyone else does," Bisard told a police officer who arrived on the scene, after at first denying that he had been drinking, according to an arrest report obtained by WISH-TV. "I know you know who I am. I messed up today. If you guys can cut me a break, I promise I will never drink again."
Bisard's blood-alcohol content registered 0.17 after a Breathalyzer test at the scene, according to the arrest report -- slightly lower than in 2010 but still twice the legal limit.
After learning about the new crash, the mother of the motorcyclist killed in 2010 told WISH-TV, "I am just thankful that nobody was hurt, nobody was killed, that the only damage was property damage."
Mary Wells, mother of Eric Wells, continued: "But my first words out of my mouth was, 'Oh my God,' because it's like, we have been trying to get this man's license suspended from the get-go."
As of Sunday, Bisard was being held in the Marion County jail on a $25,000 bond on a charge of operating a vehicle while intoxicated. A court appearance was set for Wednesday morning.
If Wal-Mart bribes a Mexican government official it's a crime, but when the CIA slips a foreign ruler a few million, it's OK.
With Bags of Cash, C.I.A. Seeks Influence in Afghanistan
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG
Published: April 28, 2013 194 Comments
KABUL, Afghanistan — For more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president — courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency.
All told, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from the C.I.A. to the office of President Hamid Karzai, according to current and former advisers to the Afghan leader.
“We called it ‘ghost money,’ ” said Khalil Roman, who served as Mr. Karzai’s deputy chief of staff from 2002 until 2005. “It came in secret, and it left in secret.”
The C.I.A., which declined to comment for this article, has long been known to support some relatives and close aides of Mr. Karzai. But the new accounts of off-the-books cash delivered directly to his office show payments on a vaster scale, and with a far greater impact on everyday governing.
Moreover, there is little evidence that the payments bought the influence the C.I.A. sought. Instead, some American officials said, the cash has fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington’s exit strategy from Afghanistan.
“The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan,” one American official said, “was the United States.”
The United States was not alone in delivering cash to the president. Mr. Karzai acknowledged a few years ago that Iran regularly gave bags of cash to one of his top aides.
At the time, in 2010, American officials jumped on the payments as evidence of an aggressive Iranian campaign to buy influence and poison Afghanistan’s relations with the United States. What they did not say was that the C.I.A. was also plying the presidential palace with cash — and unlike the Iranians, it still is.
American and Afghan officials familiar with the payments said the agency’s main goal in providing the cash has been to maintain access to Mr. Karzai and his inner circle and to guarantee the agency’s influence at the presidential palace, which wields tremendous power in Afghanistan’s highly centralized government. The officials spoke about the money only on the condition of anonymity.
It is not clear that the United States is getting what it pays for. Mr. Karzai’s willingness to defy the United States — and the Iranians, for that matter — on an array of issues seems to have only grown as the cash has piled up. Instead of securing his good graces, the payments may well illustrate the opposite: Mr. Karzai is seemingly unable to be bought.
Over Iran’s objections, he signed a strategic partnership deal with the United States last year, directly leading the Iranians to halt their payments, two senior Afghan officials said. Now, Mr. Karzai is seeking control over the Afghan militias raised by the C.I.A. to target operatives of Al Qaeda and insurgent commanders, potentially upending a critical part of the Obama administration’s plans for fighting militants as conventional military forces pull back this year.
But the C.I.A. has continued to pay, believing it needs Mr. Karzai’s ear to run its clandestine war against Al Qaeda and its allies, according to American and Afghan officials.
Like the Iranian cash, much of the C.I.A.’s money goes to paying off warlords and politicians, many of whom have ties to the drug trade and, in some cases, the Taliban. The result, American and Afghan officials said, is that the agency has greased the wheels of the same patronage networks that American diplomats and law enforcement agents have struggled unsuccessfully to dismantle, leaving the government in the grips of what are basically organized crime syndicates.
The cash does not appear to be subject to the oversight and restrictions placed on official American aid to the country or even the C.I.A.’s formal assistance programs, like financing Afghan intelligence agencies. And while there is no evidence that Mr. Karzai has personally taken any of the money — Afghan officials say the cash is handled by his National Security Council — the payments do in some cases work directly at odds with the aims of other parts of the American government in Afghanistan, even if they do not appear to violate American law.
Handing out cash has been standard procedure for the C.I.A. in Afghanistan since the start of the war. During the 2001 invasion, agency cash bought the services of numerous warlords, including Muhammad Qasim Fahim, the current first vice president.
“We paid them to overthrow the Taliban,” the American official said.
The C.I.A. then kept paying the Afghans to keep fighting. For instance, Mr. Karzai’s half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was paid by the C.I.A. to run the Kandahar Strike Force, a militia used by the agency to combat militants, until his assassination in 2011.
A number of senior officials on the Afghan National Security Council are also individually on the agency’s payroll, Afghan officials said.
While intelligence agencies often pay foreign officials to provide information, dropping off bags of cash at a foreign leader’s office to curry favor is a more unusual arrangement.
Afghan officials said the practice grew out of the unique circumstances in Afghanistan, where the United States built the government that Mr. Karzai runs. To accomplish that task, it had to bring to heel many of the warlords the C.I.A. had paid during and after the 2001 invasion.
By late 2002, Mr. Karzai and his aides were pressing for the payments to be routed through the president’s office, allowing him to buy the warlords’ loyalty, a former adviser to Mr. Karzai said.
Then, in December 2002, Iranians showed up at the palace in a sport utility vehicle packed with cash, the former adviser said.
The C.I.A. began dropping off cash at the palace the following month, and the sums grew from there, Afghan officials said.
Payments ordinarily range from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, the officials said, though none could provide exact figures. The money is used to cover a slew of off-the-books expenses, like paying off lawmakers or underwriting delicate diplomatic trips or informal negotiations.
Much of it also still goes to keeping old warlords in line. One is Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek whose militia served as a C.I.A. proxy force in 2001. He receives nearly $100,000 a month from the palace, two Afghan officials said. Other officials said the amount was significantly lower.
Mr. Dostum, who declined requests for comment, had previously said he was given $80,000 a month to serve as Mr. Karzai’s emissary in northern Afghanistan. “I asked for a year up front in cash so that I could build my dream house,” he was quoted as saying in a 2009 interview with Time magazine.
Some of the cash also probably ends up in the pockets of the Karzai aides who handle it, Afghan and Western officials said, though they would not identify any by name.
That is not a significant concern for the C.I.A., said American officials familiar with the agency’s operations. “They’ll work with criminals if they think they have to,” one American former official said.
Interestingly, the cash from Tehran appears to have been handled with greater transparency than the dollars from the C.I.A., Afghan officials said. The Iranian payments were routed through Mr. Karzai’s chief of staff. Some of the money was deposited in an account in the president’s name at a state-run bank, and some was kept at the palace. The sum delivered would then be announced at the next cabinet meeting. The Iranians gave $3 million to well over $10 million a year, Afghan officials said.
When word of the Iranian cash leaked out in October 2010, Mr. Karzai told reporters that he was grateful for it. He then added: “The United States is doing the same thing. They are providing cash to some of our offices.”
At the time, Mr. Karzai’s aides said he was referring to the billions in formal aid the United States gives. But the former adviser said in a recent interview that the president was in fact referring to the C.I.A.’s bags of cash.
No one mentions the agency’s money at cabinet meetings. It is handled by a small clique at the National Security Council, including its administrative chief, Mohammed Zia Salehi, Afghan officials said.
Mr. Salehi, though, is better known for being arrested in 2010 in connection with a sprawling, American-led investigation that tied together Afghan cash smuggling, Taliban finances and the opium trade. Mr. Karzai had him released within hours, and the C.I.A. then helped persuade the Obama administration to back off its anticorruption push, American officials said.
After his release, Mr. Salehi jokingly came up with a motto that succinctly summed up America’s conflicting priorities. He was, he began telling colleagues, “an enemy of the F.B.I., and a hero to the C.I.A.”
The FBI wants to wiretap your internet viewing????
The FBI has a God given right to wiretap your internet communications???
Indiana cop accused in fatal drunk-driving crash arrested again
More of the old "Do as I say, not as I do" from our government masters.
With Bags of Cash, C.I.A. Seeks Influence in Afghanistan
More of the old "Do as I say, not as I do" from our government masters.
Menlo Park to install license plate readers at all city entrances???
Source
Menlo Park's police chief calls for use of Tasers and surveillance cameras
By Bonnie Eslinger
Daily News Staff Writer
Posted: 04/30/2013 03:00:00 AM PDT
Menlo Parks' new police chief says he'd like to arm his officers with Taser stun guns and install security cameras and license plate readers at the city's main entrance points.
Chief Robert Jonsen, who joined the city in February, cited Tiburon as an example of what he'd like to see in Menlo Park. In 2010 the North Bay town installed cameras that take pictures of license plates of vehicles that enter and exit its borders.
"If criminals knew that everybody that went into the city, no matter where ... that their license would be captured, I think it would be well protected," Jonsen said.
The Menlo Park City Council tonight is scheduled to receive a report on the city's police department prepared by public safety consultants Belcher, Ehle, Medina & Associates. The $25,282 organizational review was contracted by the city in November while it was searching for a new police chief, according to Assistant City Manager Starla Robinson.
The Santa Cruz-based firm found that the Menlo Park Police Department is meeting "what is considered Best Practices" in most areas, according to the firms's report, which also states that "No systemic issues of corruption, malfeasance or other inappropriate conduct were uncovered during the review."
The consultants are recommending that the department establish a proactive community policing program; install surveillance cameras "in high crime areas," as well as automated license plate readers and gun-shot detection technology; and issue Tasers to officers.
Jonsen said he "absolutely" wants his officers to have Tasers, which critics contend are too often used by police on nonviolent suspects. Jonsen said policies could be set to restrict how officers use the weapons and he noted that the benefits outweigh any potential for abuse.
"I think the less we have to put our hands on people, the high-risk person that we're going to have to use force on because they're not going to go with compliance, Tasers give us that opportunity to take somebody into custody," Jonsen said.
While San Francisco's police chief dropped his proposal for stun guns earlier this month because of community concerns over how they would be used, and Berkeley residents have long fought arming officers with Tasers, San Mateo County cities have embraced the use of such weapons. Menlo Park and East Palo Alto are the only two county cities that don't arm officers with Tasers. A 2011 civil grand jury report suggested that both cities fall in line with the others.
Jonsen said he also agrees that the department should move toward community policing, where officers spend more time interacting with citizens to earn their trust and collaboratively create crime-stopping measures. As a result of staff shortages 10 years ago, police had their hands full just responding to calls, the chief said. The department is now fully staffed.
Last year, Menlo Park and East Palo Alto announced they were cracking down in response to an uptick in shootings believe to be linked to a feud between rival gangs. Jonsen said that although violent crime has been down in recent months, police are preparing for a surge that usually hits in the summer.
Before coming to Menlo Park, Jonsen worked as a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department captain.
The council will meet in regular session at 7 p.m. in council chambers at 701 Laurel St.
Email Bonnie Eslinger at beslinger@dailynewsgroup.com; follow her at twitter.com/ bonnieeslinger.
This system would cost about $40 for each of the million or so children in Arizona government public schools.
And of course the system also smacks as a 1984 big brother police monitoring system. I didn't know this but according to the article every child in an Arizona school has a government ID number that follows the child around from school to school.
Arizona education hindered by lack of central data system
By Cathryn Creno and Luci Scott The Republic | azcentral.com Mon Apr 29, 2013 12:47 AM
State Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal has a high-tech vision for school improvement in Arizona.
With one click of a mouse, he’d like teachers to be able to see whether their students are gifted, whether they have special needs or whether their attendance was ever a problem.
He’d like parents to be able to log in to an Arizona Department of Education website and see immediately how their child’s school is performing, if their kids have been absent, or how they performed on any given day.
He’d also like to better guarantee the accuracy of enrollment and test scores that school districts and charter schools need for school funding and will use for teacher and principal evaluations.
But those wishes are a long way — and nearly $40 million — from becoming reality.
For now, districts are hampered by a lack of access to key information.
The Phoenix Union High School District, for example, has difficulty gathering necessary information on incoming ninth-graders.
“We won’t have the eighth-grade kids’ AIMS scores,” said Craig Pletenik, the district’s public-information officer. “Putting students in the correct sequence of classes is critical to their success, and we need to have that prior information to properly place them so they’re not in a too-hard class or a too-easy class.”
Without the student’s specific history, the district relies on teacher recommendations. It also looks at seventh-grade scores on Arizona’s Instrument to Measure Standards, or AIMS, and does pretesting in the first week or two of class to assess the student’s level, all cumbersome techniques.
“If we’d have that data up front, it would be so much easier,” said Juvenal Lopez, the district’s director of human resources.
Lopez saw the need for real-time data when he was principal at Metro Tech, where 50 or 60 schools were represented in that school’s freshman class.
“It was very challenging to get (data) on special-needs students and English-language learners, among others,” he said.
Funding depends on data
In addition to academic data, keeping accurate attendance records is vital because a statistic known as “average daily membership” determines a district’s state funding.
“Between the numbers we submit and the numbers the state will officially grant us, there always seems to be a discrepancy,” Pletenik said.
“There are over a million students in public education in Arizona,” he added. “We need to do a better job of tracking them.”
Phoenix Union currently has five data systems, which are unwieldy and costly in staff time, said Don Fournier, the district’s division manager of information technology.
Yet another problem that weighs heavily on districts is tracking dropouts because they are penalized for students who are unaccounted for either in other districts or in the military.
“If a student leaves Mesa and goes somewhere else in the state, we don’t have a way of knowing that,” said Joe O’Reilly, head of research and evaluation for Mesa Public Schools.
Conversely, if a student transfers to Mesa from Parker or Prescott, educators in Mesa don’t know the student’s history, and requesting records takes time and money.
In the Scottsdale Unified School District, Chief Technology Officer Tom Clark agrees that a streamlined system has the potential of saving staff time.
“The system that Arizona is using is somewhat archaic and, for use of a better word, clunky,” Clark said. “We would like to be able to receive data back from the state in a more real-time fashion.”
Hodgepodge a burden
Although every student in Arizona has an identification number that follows him or her from school to school or district to district, “that still doesn’t mean you have all the information you’d like to have on that student when they move,” he said. [Maybe they should just tattoo the kids numbers on foreheads. Teachers and cops would love that!!!]
His district spends $110,000 a year to maintain its data system Synergy, used by several districts in the Valley, and an additional $75,000 for portions of salaries of people who handle data.
Having everyone on the system could be a good thing depending on what services are provided, he said.
The current hodgepodge of systems throughout Arizona creates a burden, especially for smaller districts, Clark said.
At one of those smaller districts, Balsz Elementary in Phoenix, Superintendent Jeff Smith said a modernized system is crucial.
“In order to accomplish what we’re being asked to do, we need good, reliable data,” he said. “It’s as simple as that.”
“We’re talking about student growth and holding teachers and administrators accountable, and that’s a complicated, complex process,” he added.
Smith gave an example of how the right kind of data can greatly improve instruction. Balsz administrators found that data can predict with a high probability how well students will perform on the AIMS test. Those students who are at high risk of not doing well can join tutoring groups and make use of other resources to bring them up to speed.
In the Litchfield Park Elementary School District, Brian Owin, director of federal programs and student evaluation, sees delays in getting information, for example, on whether a new student has been assessed as a candidate for English-language-learner classes.
Although phone calls can be made to the student’s previous district, that is cumbersome because out of 11,000 students in the district, 750 were tested this year for ELL.
Under the current system, it depends on when the student arrives whether the district has the necessary data.
“If a kid comes in midyear but was assessed the first of the year, we’d be able to see that,” Owin said.
Huppenthal, elected to office two years ago, acknowledges the department’s data challenges. At various times, he has called the current data system “a snake pit, “medieval” and a “mutant organism.” He says it requires 200 in-house “data wranglers” and approximately 2,000 school-district technology workers to make it function.
How the tangle emerged
To understand how the education data system got in such a tangle, one must look back more than a decade to when the state created what it calls the Student Accountability Information System to track AIMS scores and other basic student data.
The program worked for a few years, but was quickly overwhelmed in the early 2000s, when the federal No Child Left Behind law took effect. It required states to collect data including race, gender, English proficiency and socioeconomic status so educators could make sure that no group of students was falling behind academically.
Huppenthal said to cope with the growing demands, staffers employed by his predecessors patched together a piecemeal system of data and coding that no longer does the job.
The problem got even worse as officials began to track Arizona’s growing charter-school movement and the large number of students taking part-time online and community-college classes.
Mark Masterson, the state education agency’s chief information officer, said when Huppenthal brought him on board, the computer code being used in the department “looked like a middle-school student wrote” it.
“The software was built here by people who were not IT workers,” he said. “They made it much more complicated than it should have been.”
Since Huppenthal took office, the department has spent $13.6 million on data-system improvements and estimates it will spend $19.5 million more this year.
Although the fixes will continue to be expensive for three more years — Huppenthal says it will take an additional $39.4 million in that period — he says both the state and schools will save money in the long run by not having to employ workers to enter duplicate data on students.
Little money would be spent on computer hardware — the department has relatively new computers, purchased a few years ago with federal funds, he said.
Rather, it would primarily be spent on contracts with software developers who would build various components of the new data system and an in-house support center. Education officials call this new system the Arizona Education Learning and Accountability System.
Toward a better future
Huppenthal says if his funding request is approved, the new system will be fully developed in five years.
The system would contain all the information needed for school districts to enroll new students and get accurate per-pupil funding from the state — plus information about school performance, teacher performance and student data including attendance, grades, standardized test scores and special-education status.
Teachers and principals would have access to student data — including attendance records from every public school in Arizona, AIMS test scores and other measurements, including those for students who are gifted or in special education.
Currently, it can take weeks to track down such information about a student when he or she enrolls in a new school.
A similar “dashboard” would allow parents to log in and see how their kids performed on a test or whether they were in school that day. The public also would have access to parts of the system that show overall school data, such as test scores.
The new system also would allow students, parents and teachers to see state standardized-test scores instantly, he said. Under the current system, AIMS scores are not received until summer — too late for remedial work before the start of the next school year.
“Right now, students and teachers want their scores, but there is a burlap sack over the scoreboard,” Masterson said.
Department of Education officials say that they have looked at data systems in many other states. Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia and Washington, D.C., are said to have well-developed systems.
In Colorado, for instance, parents, students and educators may access information about a school’s finances, classes offered, number of highly qualified teachers, enrollment and student performance on standardized tests on a dashboard similar to the one that Education Department staffers envision.
But Huppenthal says no other state so far has as comprehensive a system as the one he and his staff have planned.
Vision far from reality
While state lawmakers agree that Arizona needs better education data, some think a new system could be developed faster and cheaper by outside contractors.
Sen. Kimberly Yee, chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee, likes the idea of putting the data system entirely out to bid by private software developers.
Since most other states are developing similar systems in response to demand for school data, why not try to find a program “off the shelf”? she wonders.
“I am absolutely in support of upgrading our archaic system. It is quite broken-down,” Yee said. “But to fix this, we need a system that has already been tested. There may be something available right now.”
Gov. Jan Brewer, meanwhile, likes much of Huppenthal’s proposal but thinks the data system can be improved faster and cheaper.
She included $7 million for data-system improvements in her budget plan this year and would like to see the Arizona Department of Administration manage the funds.
Under her plan, the two state agencies together would select an outside vendor to run a public interface similar to Service Arizona, the state’s system for vehicle licensing.
Rebecca Gau, director of the governor’s Office of Education Innovation, said the Administration Department was selected to team with the Education Department because it has more experience with technology procurement.
Brewer’s plan has the support of Expect More Arizona, a non-profit education-reform group that is supported by a number of major Arizona businesses, said the organization’s president, Pearl Chang Esau.
“Expect More Arizona believes that the $7 million proposed in the governor’s budget puts us on the right track,” she said. “If we don’t have good data in the hands of teachers, administrators and parents, we will never have the accountability we want or see the improvement in education that we expect.”
Huppenthal noted that his staff already is working with four school districts — the Phoenix and Tolleson elementary school districts in metro Phoenix and the Vail and Kingman unified districts outside Maricopa County — to test a “dashboard” that gives teachers instant access to student data.
“It gives a teacher a better feel for the type of student they will be teaching,” said Ed Jung, the Education Department’s chief technology officer and project leader. “At a glance, I can see on the dashboard which students are going to need a bit more of my attention this year.”
Jung noted that the department has spent decades collecting student data that should be put to use by teachers. Walmart, he said, knows more about its shoppers than Arizona knows about its students and schools.
Need quick response
Useful data can be collected, but often its usefulness erodes if it’s not in the hands of teachers and administrators quickly.
This is crucial in evaluating teachers, said Justin Greene, executive director of system services in the Higley Unified School District. State law requires districts to use data that is valid, reliable and timely, and a problem now is with a lack of timeliness, Greene said.
“Students take the AIMS test in the spring after teachers have the kids about 145 days, and we can extrapolate some measure of what the teacher imparted to that student,” Greene said. Teachers have one-fifth of the year left to teach.
The problem is that schools don’t receive AIMS data until the day the teachers leave for summer or the day after they’re gone, and “it becomes a difficult evaluation process,” Greene said. “The state spends millions and can’t give us timely (information).”
Gary Jujino, coordinator of assessment in Gilbert Public Schools, said that this year, the district used the state’s letter grades assigned to schools and assigned those to teachers. So a teacher was rated an A if he or she worked in an A school.
Becoming more sophisticated in evaluating teachers requires addressing certain challenges, especially when a part of it is teacher evaluations by students. For example, some teachers might have up to 150 students and others might have six. One student could have a much greater impact on a teacher’s score from one of the smaller classes.
“We’re trying to address that by using multiple years’ worth of data,” Jujino said, but there can be questions about the data’s integrity.
“The problem is not with the student data that could be tied to teacher evaluations,” Jujino said. “It’s how are we going to tie that with the integrity needed for evaluating teachers.”
Just as important as modernizing the system is making sure it serves the proper purpose, said Andrew Morrill, president of the Arizona Education Association, who says a data system is just a tool.
“Sometimes in Arizona we’ve seen situations where the tool became more important than the system it is serving,” he said. “It happened with the AIMS test in the ’90s, when education was serving the AIMS test rather than the AIMS test serving education.”
Morrill, who taught high-school English 17 years in the Marana Unified School District, said Arizona could commit the same error with a data system if planners believe that simply having data is the same as having a grand plan for what to do with the data.
“At that point,” Morrill said, “we have to ask ourselves: Are we really serving the education system — student needs — or are we serving the bureaucracy?”
Key components
Elements of the proposed $39.4 million state education data system:
- Software that allows school districts and charter schools to collect and analyze information about student attendance and demographics for funding purposes.
- Software that calculates state aid based on the student data.
- Software to let the state administer the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, which will replace AIMS by 2015.
- Software that connects a student with teachers and classes he or she takes as well as allows teachers to look back over a student’s achievement and other data from previous years.
- Dashboards that make data contained in the student-teacher connection software more user-friendly and easier to understand.
- Software to provide support for teachers with test questions, curriculum suggestions and opportunities to collaborate with other teachers on methods to improve student achievement. Administrators can track and evaluate teacher performance and provide feedback and resources to improve teacher effectiveness.
- A security program to shore up the privacy of student data. Teachers and principals could see only their own students’ information; the public would see only aggregated data that excludes student names.
Source: Arizona Department of Education
Most “blue laws’’ were enacted from pressure by religious groups who believed Sunday was a day to be used for prayer and reflection.
States Turn to Striking Down 'Blue Laws'
Monday, 29 Apr 2013 02:52 PM
By Bill Hoffmann
Lawmakers in four of 11 states that ban hunting on Sundays are considering the elimination of those century-old “blue laws.’’
North Carolina, Connecticut, Massachusetts and West Virginia are now studying the laws that many residents believe are out of date and a hindrance to commerce and personal freedom, according to USA Today. [Sorry these unconstitutional laws were out of date the day they were passed]
Other states that ban Sunday hunts are Delaware, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Virginia.
The Coalition to Lift State Bans on Sunday Hunting is supported by groups such as the National Shooting Sports Foundation, National Rifle Association, Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation and Archery Trade Association.
“Today, 11 states either prohibit or restrict hunting on Sunday. Were these states to eliminate these outdated restrictions, and simply allow hunting on all Sundays within the dates of the current hunting season, it is estimated that over 27,000 new jobs would be created,’’ the coalition said in a statement.
“These are good jobs, paying over $730 million in wages, and contributing about $2.2 billion in additional economic activity to the states in question.’
Most “blue laws’’ were enacted from pressure by religious groups who believed Sunday was a day to be used for prayer and reflection.
State Sen. Clark Barnes, a West Virginia Republican, who introduced a bill to kill the ban in his state, said the only day of the week some hunters have free is Sunday.
“Many of them work during the week and would like to hunt on the weekends,” Barnes told USA Today.
Glendale assistant police chief under investigation
By D.S. Woodfill and Paul Giblin Arizona
Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Tue Apr 30, 2013 5:57 PM
Glendale Assistant Police Chief Greg Dominguez is the subject of an internal investigation concerning off-duty conduct, officials said.
Police spokeswoman Tracey Breeden confirmed the probe on Tuesday by the department’s Professional Standards Unit but refused to disclose any details, citing a state law which prohibits them from discussing open investigations.
“All we are able to provide at this time is the investigation involves off duty conduct,” she said in an email.
Breeden would not say what the investigation focused on, and Interim Chief of Police Debora Black declined an interview.
David Leibowitz, a spokesman for the Glendale Fraternal Order of Police and who was speaking on behalf of Dominguez, said the investigation stems from an encounter in mid-February that Dominguez had with a man who he believed was selling his son a synthetic drug known as “spice.”
Spice is a blend of herbs and various chemicals that was once marketed as incense, but often smoked as an alternative to marijuana. It was made illegal in Arizona in 2011.
Dominguez went to the person’s place of employment in Peoria, Leibowitz said. He said Dominguez was not wearing his police uniform, was not driving a police car and he did not identify that he was an officer, but he told the man to stop selling drugs to his son.
When asked if Dominguez threatened the person, Leibowitz said he did not know Dominguez’s exact words.
Dominguez declined to be interviewed.
Dominguez is a 28-year veteran who started his career as a patrol officer, according to the department’s website. He went on to work as a detective investigating gang crimes and a supervisor of department’s Vehicular Crimes Unit among other jobs.
Dominguez, one of two assistant chiefs, was promoted in December of 2011 and oversees the operations bureau, which includes neighborhood patrol, emergency management and special operations.
Julie Reed, president of the Glendale Fraternal Order of Police, said she’s known Dominguez for more than two decades and considers him a friend
Reed wouldn’t comment on the investigation but said Dominguez was a good man who has done a lot of good things in his career.
Reed said he is known for his charitable work, particularly those concerning children. He’s helped promote the Salvation Army's Christmas Angel Tree program, which collects and distributes new toys to needy children, and he’s helped raise money for the United Way, she said.
He’s also served on the board of the West Valley Child Crisis Center, which provides shelter to children who are victims of abuse.
“He cares about the community and he cares about the men and women in blue who deliver service to keep the community safe,” she said.
Let's face it, DUI or DWI arrests are mostly about raising revenue and have almost nothing to do with public safety.
And if the Scottsdale Police lab will fudge the results in with DUI tests, don't you think they will also fudge the results in other tests to help get convictions???
Lawyers spar over DUI lab in Scottsdale
By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Apr 30, 2013 11:23 PM
In hearings over the past five months, defense lawyers and experts told Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Jerry Bernstein the same thing: Scottsdale’s police lab does not conform to internationally accepted standards and has such shoddy record-keeping that the lab’s own assessment of equipment failures can’t be trusted.
The highly technical case has hammered the lab’s circumstantial failures as lawyers hope to convince Bernstein that the lab’s findings cannot be trusted. Their ultimate goal: suppression of blood evidence in 11 drunken-driving cases that are at the heart of the hearings.
The felony DUI cases were consolidated into the ongoing evidentiary hearing to examine whether a decision by a crime-lab technician to bootstrap old software onto a new blood-testing machine in 2009 — and the faulty results that allegedly arose from that decision — has affected evidence handled by Scottsdale’s crime lab.
Once the hearings wind up, as early as next week, Bernstein will decide whether the lab’s blood analysis may be introduced as evidence in the DUI cases. If the evidence is disallowed, the lab’s equipment and work could be called into question in other cases, as well.
A challenge of DUI-related equipment in the late 1990s resulted in the dismissal of more than 1,500 cases statewide.
Court documents indicate Scottsdale police were aware for years of potential problems with the pricey blood-testing equipment. For example, the equipment mislabeled vials with wrong names or numbers, quit running during tests and erased baseline information from measurements during test runs, according to court documents.
All 11 of the cases involve serious DUI allegations, according to court documents. At least two suspects submitted themselves to preliminary breath tests, and their blood-alcohol content measured above 0.20 percent, more than twice the legal limit.
At least eight suspects had prior DUI convictions, the documents said. One was supposed to have an ignition-interlock device in his car when he was arrested. Another had her 11-year-old daughter in the car when she was pulled over in late March 2011. Her preliminary breath tests put her blood-alcohol content at more than twice the legal limit.
Whether the 11 suspects in these cases were drunk never came up in the hearings. Instead, discussion focused on whether the lab’s employees were familiar with accepted scientific standards that police claim the lab adheres to and whether the lab’s record-keeping is reliable enough for attorneys and defendants to take lab administrators at their word.
Law-enforcement attorneys and representatives concede that there were instances when blood samples were left out on a bench overnight and that the machine responsible for testing the blood has had repeated failures, including mislabeled vials and failure to collect data from samples.
But the samples were retested by the lab, and those results are all that matter, scientists and the case’s prosecutor told the court repeatedly. They and others in the forensic-science community view the tactics employed by the DUI lawyers as another predictable attempt to get their clients out of trouble.
“They attack the instrument, the analyst and the process, but never the result,” said John Musselman, a forensic scientist at the Phoenix crime lab who is not involved in the cases. Musselman, who has testified in about 300 DUI trials, said defense attorneys rarely want to test the backup vial of blood, which remains unopened for that very purpose.
Equipment can break down from time to time, Musselman said, but it is the lab’s responsibility to catch errors through peer review before bad test results are published.
“The instrument is merely a tool — there’s the quality-control aspect, there’s the internal standard. If all the quality criteria are not met, we have procedures to deal with that. It’s totally appropriate and acceptable to reanalyze samples,” he said. “The process is working as long as you catch the bad results before they go out the door.”
Attorneys representing the Scottsdale DUI defendants claim the lab would not know if bad results had gone out the door unless a thorough defense attorney caught them.
In one exchange, attorney Lawrence Koplow questioned Scottsdale blood-alcohol analyst Richard Bond about a decision to dilute a small sample in order to test it. Bond said that before he diluted the sample, he consulted the arresting officer’s report on the case and realized, based on the officer’s observation, that the subject should have a blood-alcohol content well above the legal limit.
The analyst’s decision to look to the police report for guidance could raise concerns about whether police are guiding the lab’s work or whether the results are truly independent.
Koplow later asked Bond how a suspect would get detailed information about the testing process, included in a series of “non-conforming memos.” The defense teams claim the documents are not readily available unless a defense attorney uncovers the details through the discovery process, meaning that most of the 2,500 people cited on suspicion of DUI in Scottsdale each year would not be aware of the reports.
Aaron Harder, the deputy Maricopa County attorney assigned to the case, argued that the path that the evidence and written documents take from the lab to suspects is not relevant to the work done in the lab.
“If they’re making non-conforming memos and they have no policy in place that the rest of us can see and evaluate their work, it seems that goes to the reliability and trustworthiness of what these people report,” Koplow said. “Also, Mr. Bond has testified the only time he finds out about mistakes sometimes is if a defense attorney brings it to his attention.”
That exchange came one day after defense attorneys suggested that some of the lab employees should seek the advice of their own defense counsel because of the lab’s practice of shredding original printouts with handwritten notes from the scientists.
Neither of the two forensic scientists questioned showed up with attorneys, but the defense team’s point was clear: The destruction of those original sheets along with the scientists’ notes amounts to, at best, a violation of the state’s Public Records Law or, at worst, destruction of evidence.
The quality of crime labs when it comes to DUI evidence has been an issue in the Valley before.
When a Valley motorist drove his car into the back of a motorcycle and seriously injured the motorcyclist in 1997, a pair of alcohol breath tests showed the driver was at nearly twice the legal limit, resulting in an indictment accusing the driver of aggravated assault.
But during the trial, evidence emerged about the Phoenix Police Crime Lab’s practice of destroying the breath test’s calibration samples when the samples were outside the accepted range.
The driver’s first trial ended with a hung jury, but defense attorneys appealed and discovered that the practice of destroying the faulty calibration tests was more widespread than initially thought. A court later ordered the results of the breath tests suppressed and forced prosecutors to pay sanctions.
Hundreds of misdemeanor DUI cases in Phoenix were later dismissed after the Arizona Supreme Court refused to hear more arguments from prosecutors about the quality of the machine, known as the Intoxilyzer 5000.
Some of the same people — including a Scottsdale crime-lab employee who worked in Phoenix’s lab at the time and defense attorney Cliff Girard, who successfully sought sanctions against the state — are involved in the case before Bernstein.
To the attorneys involved in the recent evidentiary hearings, the faulty equipment and sloppy record-keeping in Scottsdale’s crime lab have the potential to make the Clarus 500 gas chromatograph every bit as significant in establishing precedents for Arizona DUI prosecutions as the Intoxilyzer 5000.
Concerns with that equipment arose in the late 1990s and took years to resolve. By the time the court battles were complete, more than 1,300 DUI cases in Maricopa County were dismissed or modified, according to attorneys involved, and dozens more were affected throughout the state.
Bernstein will wait for each side to submit written closing arguments before issuing a ruling, and defense attorneys have predicted that his ruling will be appealed, regardless of the outcome.
But the effect of the allegations related to Scottsdale’s DUI blood work is already being seen.
A 27-year-old woman was acquitted of DUI charges in Scottsdale Municipal Court this summer after Koplow was able to explore the lab’s policies and equipment with witnesses in front of a jury, according to court documents.
And a 43-year-old man who was facing DUI charges in Scottsdale had the allegations dismissed at the request of prosecutors early last month in a case where the lab’s practice of diluting samples and multiplying the results was at issue.
3 former sheriff employees set for Sept. 3 trial
Posted: Tuesday, April 30, 2013 7:12 pm
Associated Press
A new trial date has been set for three former Maricopa County sheriff's employees accused of aiding smugglers while they worked for the police agency.
A Sept. 3 trial was set for former Deputy Alfredo Aguirre Navarrette and former detention officers Marcella M. Hernandez and Sylvia Rios Najera.
All three pleaded not guilty to charges and no longer work for the agency.
Navarrette is accused of helping drug smugglers by laundering illegal proceeds, using a police database to get information for the group and assisting a separate smuggling ring.
Hernandez is accused of assisting a cartel member and his drug trafficking group by letting the group use her two residences as stash houses for drugs and drug proceeds.
Najera is accused of conspiring to launder the trafficking group's illegal proceeds.
Mexico captures drug kingpin's father-in-law
The major arrest comes on the eve of President Obama's visit, and as Mexico is starting to pull away from the U.S. on security matters.
By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
April 30, 2013, 9:10 p.m.
MEXICO CITY — On the eve of President Obama's trip to Mexico, Mexican authorities on Tuesday announced the capture of a key drug cartel operative, the father-in-law and associate of one of the world's most-wanted fugitive kingpins.
The major arrest — the first under new President Enrique Peña Nieto — comes as the extraordinarily close U.S.-Mexican cooperation in the drug war is undergoing significant changes.
The Los Angeles Times reported this week that officials of the 5-month-old Mexican administration were alarmed to discover how deeply involved U.S. advisors were in sensitive areas of security and law enforcement during the six-year government of former President Felipe Calderon.
As a consequence, the new government plans to narrow American participation in its agencies and activities, confining U.S. contacts to more limited channels. The development is unnerving U.S. officials, who have overseen a program of nearly $2 billion in support to Mexico's drug war, including the training of police and judicial institutions.
Asked Tuesday about these shifts, Obama said in Washington that he would wait to "judge how this will alter the relationship" until he speaks directly with Peña Nieto on Thursday "to see exactly what are they trying to accomplish."
But a Mexican official told The Times that Mexican Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong had informed his counterpart, Janet Napolitano, of the new restrictions in April. Osorio, in Washington for a series of meetings, told the American officials that future contact would be solely through his office, the source said.
"It was like deer in headlights" when Peña Nieto's officials began to examine the way Mexican government security agencies were working and discovered an American advisor at every turn, a U.S. official said.
Some of the changes under Peña Nieto reflect how his Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, prefers to do things, with all power concentrated in a few hands at the top. But it also reflects irritation within the new Mexican government over how badly the attorney general's office and the Interior Ministry, under U.S. tutelage during the Calderon years, botched a string of high-profile drug prosecutions, the vetting of new police forces and other projects.
Plus Peña Nieto, whose party has long used the issue of sovereignty as a rallying cry, gets points in some quarters for appearing to stand up to — and cut down — the Americans.
Yet the sharing of U.S. intelligence that flourished under Calderon was a crucial element in precisely the kind of high profile arrest that was announced Tuesday.
Ines Coronel Barrera, 45, was captured early Tuesday in the border state of Sonora by federal police, who also confiscated marijuana destined for Arizona, weapons, vehicles and four presumed bodyguards, the Interior Ministry announced.
Coronel is the father of Emma Coronel, who married Mexico's most powerful drug baron, Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman, nearly six years ago when she was an 18-year-old beauty queen. Guzman's third wife, Emma Coronel gave birth to twin girls in the Los Angeles area in August 2011.
Coronel is also considered by authorities to be a key player in fugitive billionaire Guzman's vast empire, and in January he was added to the U.S. Treasury Department's so-called kingpin black list, which called him a major marijuana trafficker and banned U.S. companies, banks and individuals from doing business with him.
The Coronel arrest was a reminder of the areas in which the U.S. and Mexicans have worked most closely and efficiently, succeeding in weakening some cartels, although others grew and proliferated.
Eduardo Sanchez, the spokesman for the Interior Ministry who announced Tuesday's capture, was asked repeatedly what role U.S. intelligence had in the takedown of Coronel. He cited a list of Mexican government agencies that worked "in close coordination with each other" to begin the process of bringing Coronel to justice and "contribute to a Mexico in peace."
The drug war under Calderon unleashed waves of violence across the country that claimed more than 70,000 lives and led to the disappearance of thousands of people. Peña Nieto, whose party ruled with an autocratic air for seven decades until losing the election in 2000, promised a weary Mexican society to reduce violence in his successful bid last year to return the PRI to presidential power.
Narrowing the American role also fits into his strategy of emphasizing other issues, like the economy and trade, to deflect attention from organized crime, even though the power of the cartels and the killing continue in much of the nation.
wilkinson@latimes.com
Mexico’s Curbs on U.S. Role in Drug Fight Spark Friction
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD, DAMIEN CAVE and GINGER THOMPSON
Published: April 30, 2013 160 Comments
MEXICO CITY — In their joint fight against drug traffickers, the United States and Mexico have forged an unusually close relationship in recent years, with the Americans regularly conducting polygraph tests on elite Mexican security officials to root out anyone who had been corrupted.
But shortly after Mexico’s new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, took office in December, American agents got a clear message that the dynamics, with Washington holding the clear upper hand, were about to change.
“So do we get to polygraph you?” one incoming Mexican official asked his American counterparts, alarming United States security officials who consider the vetting of the Mexicans central to tracking down drug kingpins. The Mexican government briefly stopped its vetted officials from cooperating in sensitive investigations. The Americans are waiting to see if Mexico allows polygraphs when assigning new members to units, a senior Obama administration official said.
In another clash, American security officials were recently asked to leave an important intelligence center in Monterrey, where they had worked side by side with an array of Mexican military and police commanders collecting and analyzing tips and intelligence on drug gangs. The Mexicans, scoffing at the notion of Americans’ having so much contact with different agencies, questioned the value of the center and made clear that they would put tighter reins on the sharing of drug intelligence.
There have long been political sensitivities in Mexico over allowing too much American involvement. But the recent policy changes have rattled American officials used to far fewer restrictions than they have faced in years.
Asked about security cooperation with Mexico at a news conference on Tuesday, President Obama said: “We’ve made great strides in the coordination and cooperation between our two governments over the last several years. But my suspicion is, is that things can be improved.”
Mr. Obama suggested that many of Mexico’s changes “had to do with refinements and improvements in terms of how Mexican authorities work with each other, how they coordinate more effectively, and it has less to do with how they’re dealing with us, per se.” He added, “So I’m not going to yet judge how this will alter the relationship between the United States and Mexico until I’ve heard directly from them to see what exactly are they trying to accomplish.”
Mr. Obama is scheduled to visit Mexico on Thursday and Friday on a mission publicly intended to broaden economic ties.
But behind the scenes, the Americans are coming to grips with a scaling back of the level of coordination that existed during the presidency of Felipe Calderón, which included American drones flying deep into Mexican territory and American spy technology helping to track high-level suspects.
In an interview, Mexico’s interior minister, Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, made no apologies. He defended the moves, including the creation of a “one-stop window” in his department to screen and handle all intelligence, in the name of efficiency and “a new phase” in fighting crime.
In a country worn down by tens of thousands of people killed in a drug war, he said Mexico needed to emphasize smart intelligence over the militarized “combating violence with more violence” approach of the Calderón years.
But American officials here see the changes as a way to minimize American involvement and manage the image of the violence, rather than confronting it with clear strategies.
The lack of certainty over Mexico’s plans and commitment has jeopardized new security assistance from the United States. Plans to release $246 million, the latest installment of a $1.9 billion anticrime package known as the Merida initiative, have been held up by Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont. His office has been waiting for months for more details from the State Department and the Mexican government on how the money would be spent and what it might accomplish.
A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to provide a more candid assessment, said a recent visit by Mr. Osorio Chong to Washington helped calm some fears. A delegation of Mexican officials is also expected to visit in the coming weeks to explain the country’s plans to members of Congress.
But there is growing anxiety that the violence has not diminished, with daily killings hovering around 50 since last fall. Some American officials say they are increasingly worried by public and private signs suggesting that Mr. Peña Nieto, the young face of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ran Mexico for 71 years, is putting the government’s crime-fighting image above its actions.
“The cosmetics — that’s what they care about,” one American official said, insisting on anonymity so as not to worsen already tense relations.
“The impression they seem to want to send is ‘We got this,’ ” one former American official said, asking for anonymity because he was discussing private conversations. “But it’s clear to us, no, they don’t. Not yet.”
A senior administration official, asked for a sign of progress or a recent accomplishment in security matters, struggled with the question until pointing to the extradition to the United States of a few men on drug charges, conceding they were not big fish. Other extradition requests appear stalled; there were 155 last year, mostly for drug offenses, the highest in nearly a decade.
Tuesday evening, less than 48 hours before Mr. Obama’s arrival and with mounting questions on whether Mexico would go after kingpins, Mexico announced it had captured Inés Coronel, the father-in-law of the most-wanted capo, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo. It was unclear if the United States played a role in the arrest.
If so, it would represent a step beyond the Mexican discomfort with Americans operating on their turf that emerged in December, just after Mr. Peña Nieto’s inauguration. It solidified after an explosion on Jan. 31 at the office complex of the state oil company, Pemex, in which 37 people died and more than 120 were injured.
Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were invited to help investigate. But after they suggested in a preliminary assessment that a bomb might have caused the blast, the agency’s role in the investigation was cut short, American officials said, adding that Mexican officials canceled a visit by a team of investigators from the United States.
An administration official said that while American explosives experts were not allowed to contribute as much as they could have to the investigation, creating a sense that the Mexicans were rushing to conclude that the blast was an accident.
On Feb. 4, the attorney general of Mexico announced that the cause was an unexplained buildup of gas, possibly methane, that was ignited by a spark in the basement of one of the buildings.
The American ambassador was invited to the news conference on the findings, but a State Department official said the level of American involvement in the investigation did not warrant the ambassador’s presence. With the American agents leaving the cooperative center in Monterrey, which was first reported by The Washington Post on Sunday, and the development of the one-stop intelligence mechanism, the United States is worried and is seeking more information.
“We’re still figuring out what that means,” a senior administration official said of the new intelligence arrangement.
But the fear is that it will diminish the access that American law enforcement and intelligence agencies have established with branches of the Mexican police and military. Those hard-fought relationships could disintegrate if American agents have to go through a central office to communicate and share knowledge with their Mexican counterparts, some American officials say.
Randal C. Archibold and Damien Cave reported from Mexico City, and Ginger Thompson from New York.
$40 million dollar solution for $10 problem???
Arizona education hindered by lack of central data system
If you ask me this sounds like a million dollar solution to a non-existent ten dollar problem.
States repealing 'Blue Laws' that ban hunting on Sunday???
Sadly most of our elected officials consider themselves to be royal rulers who are not limited by the Bill of Rights or the Federal and state constitutions. And as a result we have thousands, if not 10s of thousands of laws that are unconstitutional, such as these blue laws that ban hunting on Sundays.
Glendale assistant police chief under investigation
From this article it sounds like Glendale Assistant Police Chief Greg Dominguez may have threatened to beat us someone he thought was selling spice to his son.
How do you spell revenue - DUI tickets!!!!
Who cares about the lab work. They want the MONEY!!!!!
3 reasons why the "drug war" is impossible to win!!!
Source
U.S. role in Mexico drug war will be a topic of Obama visit
Let's hope Mexico tells the US they don't want to fight our stupid drug war any more and boots the American government out of Mexico.
More on the US/Mexico drug war!!!!
Mexico’s Curbs on U.S. Role in Drug Fight Spark Friction
You have a right to a speedy trial??? Don't make me laugh!!!!
Source
In Misdemeanor Cases, Long Waits for Elusive Trials
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
Published: April 30, 2013 85 Comments
Francisco Zapata keeps a copy of the Constitution on his cellphone. So when the police stopped, frisked and charged him with misdemeanor marijuana possession, he wanted what that cellphone document promised.
“I was under the assumption,” he said, “that if I kept going back to court, eventually I would get my day in court.”
But this was the Bronx.
Court delays of as long as five years in felony cases have pushed the Bronx criminal courts into the bottom ranks of courts nationally, reaching what even the judges call crisis levels.
But that backlog has a less-noted companion. The courts are so dysfunctional that those accused of minor offenses — misdemeanors like trespassing or driving with a suspended license — have all but lost the fundamental guarantee of the American legal system: the right to a trial.
The case of Mr. Zapata would usually be overlooked in the flood of 50,000 Bronx misdemeanor filings a year. But he was part of a special legal-defense effort led by the Bronx Defenders, which provides legal representation to poor Bronx residents charged with crimes. That effort tested the borough’s courts by trying to bring 54 misdemeanor marijuana possession cases to trial for clients who had been arrested as part of New York City’s controversial stop-and-frisk program and wanted to fight the charges.
Instead, these defendants got a through-the-looking glass criminal justice system where charges that were punishable by a maximum sentence of three months in jail could take many times that just winding toward an always elusive trial. And when the increasingly elastic speedy-trial rules of the Bronx were finally stretched too far by delay after delay, prosecutors would sometimes drop the cases as if they were never quite worth their time anyway.
How 60 Days Turn Into 600 in a Misdemeanor Case
New York law calls for many misdemeanors to be tried within 60 days of arraignment. But Anthony Fearon, who was arrested and charged with criminal possession of marijuana in 2011, has been waiting more than 600 days for a trial because the court only counts certain types of delays toward the 60 days. His case is one of 54 cases in the Bronx Defenders project, an effort to bring clients who wanted to fight their arrests to trial.
Eventually, the effort by the Bronx Defenders, done in partnership with the Wall Street law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, was scrapped. The grim conclusion was that the borough’s courts were incapable of giving defendants the hearings that people expect. Of the 54 cases, not one ended in a trial.
“The normal rules about being ready and having your day in court just don’t apply,” said Lev L. Dassin, a former acting United States attorney in Manhattan who was the Cleary Gottlieb partner in charge of the firm’s work on the project. “It’s appalling.”
The rights of the accused were not the only ideals compromised. The inability to get a judge to provide a complete hearing or a full decision in a single case meant the Bronx courts ignored pressing constitutional questions about the city’s controversial stop-and-frisk program. There were no hearings that allowed Bronx judges to wrestle with the fraught issues of public safety versus civil liberties, and no rulings that provided the police with firm guidelines about what the Constitution allowed when someone was searched in the street.
The Criminal Court’s absence from the debate is particularly glaring in the Bronx, where nearly 1 in 10 residents were stopped and frisked by the police in 2010 and 2011, according to new data compiled by Columbia University.
For years, trials have been vanishing in the lower criminal courts around the country, transforming them into plea-bargaining mills. That trend can upend basic legal concepts, creating such profound disincentives to fighting a case that the accused are effectively treated as if they are presumed guilty rather than innocent. In New York, critics have long said the city’s Criminal Courts have so abdicated their function that it is a stretch to call them courts at all.
Efrain Alvarado, the former top criminal judge in the Bronx, disputed that characterization even as the Bronx Defenders were finding it impossible to get the courts to rule on the marijuana cases. He noted proudly that there had been 300 Bronx misdemeanor trials in 2012. At the time, there were more than 11,000 misdemeanor cases pending.
Bronx judges do sometimes express frustration with the pace of low-level cases. This March, a judge dismissed a marijuana case that was not part of the Bronx Defenders project, saying prosecutors had failed to explain why they were not ready for trial for more than a year. But more often, the whole court system seems to push people to give up on the idea of fighting the charges.
Last year, a judge told a 17-year-old defendant in a marijuana case in the Bronx Defenders project that if he did not take a plea deal, which involved no jail time, he would be “coming back and forth to court over the next 18 to 24 months.” The 17-year-old took the deal.
A Punishing Process
A 40-year-old Iraq War veteran named Michailon Rue sat in a buzzing basement courtroom in the Bronx, where his marijuana case was scheduled for its seventh court date.
The whole system had made it clear, he said, that if he pleaded guilty, he would not have to keep coming to court. But he had turned down a string of ever-sweeter plea offers over 15 months after his arrest in August 2011. “I said: ‘No. Why would I do that? I am not guilty.’ ”
Michael Appleton for The New York Times
Scott D. Levy, of the Bronx Defenders, with a client who had just been to court for his case dealing with an arrest for marijuana possession at the Bronx County Hall of Justice.
Mr. Rue’s lawyer, Scott D. Levy, of the Bronx Defenders, coordinated the marijuana arrest project. “The way the courts operate in a million, subtle, unspoken ways,” Mr. Levy said, “is to communicate it’s just not worth their time to fight.”
In January 2012, the prosecutors said they were still not ready for Mr. Rue’s trial. Shortly thereafter, in March, they said they were not ready because the police officer who had arrested Mr. Rue had not come to court that day. In June, they said the prosecutor handling the case was on vacation.
The court delays are difficult to explain to clients, said Robin Steinberg, the executive director of the Bronx Defenders, which represents some 30,000 people a year.
In lower-level cases, Ms. Steinberg said, defendants who have been found guilty of nothing miss jobs and school to return repeatedly to court until they give up and plead guilty to something. The ordeal of going to court has become the new price of being arrested — even more so than the minor sanctions that usually come with low-level charges.
“The process is the punishment,” she said.
Of the 54 cases in the marijuana project, the average case lasted 240 days, though the state’s speedy trial law sets a target length of 60 days for lower-level misdemeanors.
The prosecutors’ average request for a delay was eight days. But the average postponement granted by judges was 57 days.
In the fuzzy math of the courts, the eight days that a prosecutor might ask for would count toward the 60-day limit, but the other 49 days of delay scheduled by a judge would not. That is how misdemeanor cases can balloon to a year or more while only counting as 45 days. For the defendants, a year still seems like a year.
Still, prosecutors sometimes cannot meet even that deadline. The day of his seventh appearance in court, Mr. Rue said it had been a costly choice to try to fight the charges. He had lost a $17-an-hour maintenance job because of the drug charges pending against him month after month.
In the courtroom, he strained to hear. There was some mumbling at the bench. The prosecutor said the case had aged beyond that 60-day limit for a marijuana misdemeanor.
“Dismissed and sealed,” was all a harried Judge Miriam R. Best said as she turned to the other 117 cases on her calendar. Mr. Rue had won, but not in the way he had hoped.
Outside in the busy courthouse hallway, Mr. Rue said he wished the judge had talked to him. “I would tell her: ‘Don’t you see? There’s something wrong with the system,’ ” he said. “ ‘And why isn’t somebody doing something about it?’ ”
Stop-and-Frisk Project
In spring 2011, the Bronx Defenders and volunteers from the Cleary Gottlieb law firm decided to team up to try to press the Bronx courts to confront the stop-and-frisk issues for clients like Mr. Rue.
Under New York law, possession of a small amount of marijuana is a misdemeanor only if it is in public view. But across the city, black and Latino men were claiming that when the police found marijuana in their pockets during stop-and-frisk searches, they often manufactured cases by claiming the marijuana had been in plain view.
Despite the growing controversy, the courts have been slow to confront the stop-and-frisk issues. The two most widely noted rulings from state appeals courts raising questions about stop-and-frisk arrests came in more serious gun cases, not in the far more numerous marijuana arrests. In federal court, there is a trial under way in a class-action civil rights lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the tactic.
A law professor, Steven Zeidman, argued in a law review article published in April that the city’s Criminal Courts had displayed “invisibility and willful irrelevance” in the stop-and-frisk debate.
The 54 defendants who took part in the project turned down plea offers, rejecting deals that were often extremely favorable, like having a case sealed if they stayed out of trouble for six months. They asked for trials, hearings, testimony and rulings.
“I imagined actually going to court so I could tell my side and they could tell their side,” said Shaniel G. Whyte, a 34-year-old shipping manager who said he had been falsely charged with holding marijuana in public view.
After nine months of trips to court, Mr. Whyte took a deal that would leave him with no record if he was not arrested again. He had regrets, he said, because he had given up his chance to make a point in a trial one day.
Sheepishly, he said the system had worn him down. “I didn’t know how much more I would have to come back,” he said.
An Illusory Expectation
Michael Appleton for The New York Times
Matthew J. Vanek, Kristen M. Santillo and Jennifer L. Kroman, from the Wall Street law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, in partnership with the Bronx Defenders, brought marijuana cases stemming from police frisks in front of judges in the Bronx, but rarely got very far.
At times, the public defenders and the corporate lawyers seemed to have come from two different legal planets. The Cleary Gottlieb lawyers saw the Bronx courts with fresh eyes.
Matthew J. Vanek, a Cleary Gottlieb associate, prepared his case the way he did for the firm’s corporate clients: He filled his binder with legal points and trial questions. But he never got to use it.
It was not like his usual work for big banks and big business, Mr. Vanek said. “The expectation is you get your day in court,” he said one day in the firm’s plush Lower Manhattan office. “My experience and the experience of a lot of associates here was that was illusory in the Bronx.”
Kristen M. Santillo was on the Cleary Gottlieb team that worked on representing Danilo Melendez, a father of three. Mr. Melendez said the police had stopped him when he took a break from his job at a Bronx meat market to buy a soda. They frisked him, he said, and found a stub of a marijuana cigarette in his pocket. They said he had been holding the stub in his left hand.
“He was really ready to tell his story,” Ms. Santillo said.
Mr. Melendez said the marijuana case weighed on him as one court date led to two, and finally to eight. “That thing’s not letting me sleep,” he said in an interview. “I’m thinking about the court.”
Ms. Santillo said Mr. Melendez geared up to take the stand each time, with growing frustration at each court postponement.
But the courts kept avoiding the issue. Finally, after a year, a prosecutor announced that the arresting police officer “cannot make it today.” The judge was irate and refused to give them more time. The prosecutors dropped the charges.
“I was definitely surprised,” Ms. Santillo said.
But Mr. Melendez seemed less mystified by the way the system misfired than his lawyers, thanks to his life experience in the Bronx. Mr. Levy, the lawyer from the Bronx Defenders, said: “There was always an expectation in the back of his head: ‘Yeah, this is how things go.’ ”
A New Cause
In spring 2012, having had the chance to conduct no trials and complete no hearings, Cleary Gottlieb and the Bronx Defenders decided to phase out the marijuana arrest project.
Now they are working together on ways to challenge court delays, like trying to get defendants excused from some of the endless court dates that some of them say are a major factor in turning the process into the punishment.
Of the 54, Francisco Zapata, the man with the Constitution on his cellphone, was the one who came closest to getting a judge to grapple with his case. The case lasted 523 days.
There were 11 court dates. When Mr. Zapata missed one because he had to work, he was threatened with arrest. There were no such rebukes when prosecutors and police officers repeatedly missed hearings.
But Mr. Zapata did have the rare experience of seeing the officer who arrested him take the stand in a pretrial hearing. His own lawyer from the Bronx Defenders, Martha Kashickey, even got to ask some questions about the night the officer claimed he had seen Mr. Zapata from a distance holding a plastic bag of marijuana in plain view.
Then, before the cross-examination got too far, the prosecutors suddenly dropped all charges.
Just like that, after 523 days, the case was over.
I wonder if they will say this incident proves that the movie "Reefer Madness" accurately portrays how marijuana users behave.
On the other hand many legal experts will tell us that this is why the Founders created the Second Amendment, to give the people the tools to over throw government tyrants.
Those same legal experts say that because the Constitution doesn't give the Feds the power to regulate marijuana or any other drug, that because of the 10th Amendment all the drug war laws are unconstitutional.
Document: White House shooter practiced for months
Associated Press Wed May 1, 2013 10:40 AM
WASHINGTON — An Idaho man charged with attempting to assassinate President Barack Obama by shooting at the White House practiced with his weapon for six months and may have been upset about the country’s marijuana policy, prosecutors said in a newly filed court document.
Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez is currently awaiting trial for the 2011 shooting, which didn’t injure anyone but left more than five bullet marks on the executive mansion. Prosecutors filed a 14-page court document Tuesday that adds additional detail about Ortega-Hernandez, who allegedly shot at the White House the night of Nov. 11 while the president and first lady were away.
Ortega-Hernandez has pleaded not guilty to the attempted assassination charge and to other charges.
In the document, prosecutors said Ortega-Hernandez “expressed anger towards the government regarding the continued criminalization of marijuana,” which they said he acknowledged smoking and claimed makes people more intelligent.
Prosecutors said they will offer evidence to show that Ortega-Hernandez’s motive in shooting at the White House “was to punish and kill the president, who he believed was the head of a government that was oppressing its citizens in various ways, such as by continuing to criminalize the use of marijuana.”
Prosecutors also reiterated previously disclosed information that Ortega-Hernandez repeatedly expressed contempt for Obama, whom he called the antichrist.
Ortega-Hernandez practiced firing the assault rifle used to shoot at the White House at a “desolate crater” outside his home in Idaho Falls, prosecutors said in the document. They said a witness told them Ortega-Hernandez practiced shooting at items including “a home stereo amplifier, an empty ammunition case, a video cassette recorder, and a stereo speaker.”
Ortega-Hernandez fired the assault weapon from his car, a black Honda Accord, and then fled on foot after he crashed it, prosecutors said. They said he was later photographed riding on a freight train headed northwest from Washington. A former FBI photographer who takes pictures of trains as a hobby took the picture and approached law enforcement with it, the document said.
Ortega-Hernandez, who was arrested in Pennsylvania several days after the shooting, told investigators his car was stolen from him at gunpoint the same day as the shooting.
A status conference in the case is set for June 18.
In this article the Phoenix Police are bragging about making lots of big time arrests, but if you read the article they didn't mention any arrests of people for real crimes, other then mostly petty victimless crimes.
Sure the sweep was a waste of our tax dollars, but I am sure the cops who raked in overtime making the arrests loved every minute of it.
180 arrested, cash and drugs seized in central Phoenix crime sweep
By Cecilia Chan The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Wed May 1, 2013 6:13 PM
Law enforcement officers arrested 180 people, seized nearly a 1,000 pounds of drugs, $830,000 in cash and 18 guns during a two-day crime sweep in central Phoenix, Phoenix police said Wednesday.
“Not only was it a success in the number of arrests and citations and DUIs we did but it was a success in the bringing together of law enforcement from all the different agencies,” police spokesman James Holmes said.
The police department’s special units such as vice partnered with five other state and county agencies in the sweep dubbed “high tide.” The 42-hour operation kicked off April 19. More than 100 law enforcement personnel were out on the street at any given time. The Arizona Department of Public Safety and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office were among the agency to participate.
Officers targeted an area bounded by Indian School Road to Northern Avenue and from 19th Avenue to 35th Avenue, due to its crime numbers, police said.
Holmes said another operation is expected sometime later this year in the city. The area the operation will focus on will depend on a number of factors, including crime numbers, Holmes said.
Law enforcement officers stopped vehicles with expired registration tags or suspected drunken drivers. Officers also went to homes of people with outstanding warrants.
The operation set up a makeshift command center in a parking lot near 27th Avenue and Camelback Road.
Vehicles impounded from drunken drivers, drivers without registration, men who solicit prostitutes and other violations also were taken to the area and then towed to an storage yard.
One man who ran from police when he was pulled over for a traffic stop died after he complained of feeling hot. He was taken to the hospital, went into cardiac arrest and pronounced dead, police said.
Holmes said that was the only death during the operation.
Holmes also said one man was arrested twice during the two-day sweep. The man was arrested the first day on a warrant and while he was in jail his family served him with an order for protection, Holmes said.
The man was released from jail the second day and was arrested shortly after for violating that order, he said.
Operation High Tide results include the following
Source: Phoenix Police
White House shooter upset about pot policy?
I bet the cops and government will be using this incident for years to demonize pot smokers!!!
180 arrested, cash and drugs seized in central Phoenix crime sweep
Huge crime sweep doesn't arrest any real criminals, but gives cops lots of overtime pay!!!
County attorney blocked from Horne campaign case
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County attorney blocked from Horne campaign case
By Lindsey Collom The Republic | azcentral.com Thu May 2, 2013 7:51 PM
A Maricopa County Superior Court judge has ruled that a campaign-finance case against Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne and an aide that was due to be heard next week cannot move forward because of legal technicalities and procedural failings by the Secretary of State's Office.
The ruling issued Thursday prevents Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery from taking any further action against Horne and employee-turned-staffer Kathleen Winn, dismisses a related administrative proceeding, and awards the pair attorneys fees.
But the case against Horne and Winn isn’t dead. The matter now goes back for review to the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, which has already determined that reasonable cause exists to believe a campaign-finance violation occurred and can still pursue the case through another prosecutor.
Horne and Winn are accused of unlawfully coordinating campaign spending during the 2010 election, when he was the Republican candidate for attorney general and she was chairwoman of Business Leaders for Arizona, an independent-expenditure committee. Both continue to deny any wrongdoing.
Stephanie Grisham, an Attorney General’s spokesperson, said Horne did not want to comment on the ruling, except to say that the decision speaks for itself. Winn said she looks forward to an independent prosecutor’s review of the case.
“We want to get the facts out, but not with someone who has already declared you to the public as guilty,” she added.
In the ruling, Civil Presiding Judge John Rea said Secretary Ken Bennett did not follow the enforcement procedure outlined in statute, which dictates that Bennett’s office must send campaign-finance allegations involving statewide officeholders to the attorney general, meaning to Horne himself. Bennett referred the case to Montgomery.
“Going through the seemingly formalized dance of the Secretary referring the matter to the Attorney General and the Attorney General recusing himself and the matter going to another agency is not senseless or meaningless,” Rea wrote in his judgment. “The fact that observance of the express statutory procedure would require a few extra steps in these circumstances does not justify simply abandoning it.”
According to Montgomery, a 14-month inquiry by the FBI and his office revealed that Horne collaborated with Winn’s committee to quickly raise more than $500,000 to run negative ads against his Democratic foe, Felecia Rotellini. Montgomery issued a civil order last October for Horne and Winn to revise their campaign-finance reports and refund about $400,000 in donations to bring them into compliance, or face three times that amount in penalties.
Horne and Winn appealed to the Arizona Office of Administrative Hearings, an independent arbiter over decisions made by certain state agencies, boards and commissions. An evidentiary hearing that was scheduled to begin May 7 is now moot.
In a statement issued after the ruling, Montgomery said he disagreed with the outcome but his office will transfer the matter to the Secretary of State’s Office for further handling.
“I will not appeal. That would only further delay a review of this matter on the merits,” Montgomery said. “In my judgment, it is more important for the issues in this case to be fully and fairly addressed and resolved as soon as possible so that the people of Arizona can determine whether or not a statewide law enforcement official violated the law.”
But Winn’s attorney, Tim LaSota, said the ruling throws Montgomery’s entire case against his client into question.
"It's now obvious that our civil accuser, he’s the one who hasn’t followed the law and I think now his actions have been repudiated,” LaSota said. “Here we have someone who has gotten the law wrong in such a critical respect, why would we assign any credibility to the civil allegations against Kathleen and the attorney general?”
Tom Horne will decide who will investigate Tom Horne
SourcePosted on May 2, 2013 4:44 pm by Laurie Roberts
Tom Horne will decide who will investigate Tom Horne
From the only-in-Arizona files: Attorney General Tom Horne will get to decide who will investigate Attorney General Tom Horne.
No…really.
A judge on Thursday tossed out a finding by Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery that Horne violated campaign-finance laws.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Rea ruled that Secretary of State Ken Bennett erred in asking Montgomery to investigate Horne. Instead, state law required that Bennett send the complaint about Horne to Horne.
Montgomery last year initiated a civil enforcement action against Horne at the request of Bennett. Montgomery found that the attorney general violated campaign-finance laws by working with a so-called independent campaign committee to order to raise a truckload of cash to fend off Democrat Felecia Rotellini in the 2010 AG’s race.
As a result of that fundraising blitz, the independent campaign was able to launch $500,000 worth of last-minute attack ads against Rotellini, allowing Horne to eke out a win.
Horne has denied any wrongdoing and was due before an administrative judge next week to appeal Montgomery’s civil enforcement action. Meanwhile, he petitioned Superior Court to dismiss the case, contending that Bennett didn’t forward the case to the proper authority — himself, that is.
In his ruling, Rea, agreed that Montgomery had no authority to cite Horne under ARS 16-924(A).
“Ignoring a clear statute for the sake of expediency means that we are no longer under a rule of law but the rule of some official or court’s notion of convenience and practicality,” Rea wrote.
So the case against Horne and Kathleen Winn – the independent campaign chairwoman who now works for the AG’s office – returns to Bennett, who will have to send the case to Horne, who will, presumably, declare a conflict and send it along to some other prosecutor’s office.
The judge makes it sound so simple, as if it is merely a matter of a few extra steps.
“Going through the seemingly formalized dance of the Secretary referring the matter to the Attorney General and the Attorney General recusing himself and the matter going to another agency is not senseless or meaningless,” Rea wrote. “The fact that observance of the express statutory procedure would require a few extra steps in these circumstances does not justify simply abandoning it.”
The problem is, those extra steps result in a wholesale trampling of the public’s trust.
So now Horne will decide who should take the case against Horne — perhaps a prosecutor a bit friendlier than Montgomery.
Only in Arizona could the state’s top law enforcement officer get to decide who will investigate the state’s top law enforcement officer.
Glendale's medical marijuana shops tread through legal maze
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Glendale's medical marijuana shops tread through legal maze
By Caitlin McGlade and Lesley Wright The Republic | azcentral.com Wed May 1, 2013 10:34 AM
Glendale is home to two of Maricopa County’s three operating medical-marijuana dispensaries.
The opening of dispensaries — two years after Arizona voters approved medical-marijuana usage — has come with plenty of growing pains at the state and local levels.
The state took nearly two years, with a lot of legal wrangling, to hold a lottery-style drawing to designate who could open dispensaries.
Holdups still exist, primarily as dispensary owners seek local zoning approvals, Arizona Department of Health Services Director Will Humble said.
The state has 15 non-profit dispensaries operating with several others expected to open within a few days and more than 10 on the verge of approval.
Glendale took the lead when Arizona Organix opened downtown in December. GreenHouse, the city’s second dispensary, at 83rd Avenue and Union Hills Drive, opened in March.
But the lag between the issuance of medical-marijuana cards to patients suffering from specific medical conditions and the opening of dispensaries, led to an unintended outgrowth, “compassion clubs.”
The clubs are a cooperative where patients and caregivers coordinate to grow and trade medical marijuana. The law allows transfers of marijuana between patients and between patients and caregivers if a dispensary is not within 25 miles of their home.
An unknown number of compassion clubs operate in homes and strip malls in the West Valley. The state does not track the cooperatives.
Their ability to legally remain open will diminish as more dispensaries clear regulatory hurdles and open.
Paul Perez, who owns the GreenHouse, says the state created a black market when “they handed out the cards before they approved dispensaries.”
Compassion clubs
Martin Ridgway, a disabled veteran, is certified by the state as a registered designated caregiver. He has spent from $15,000 to $20,000 to purchase equipment, acquire stock and build a grow area at his Surprise home. Since 2010, he has served patients in the Sun Cities and other West Valley cities.
Those patients may be affected since the new Glendale clinics fall within the 25-mile radius. The radius — to the frustration of patients and caregivers — is drawn on a map “as the crow flies,” and does not account for how many miles it could take to drive to the dispensary.
“From my understanding, when they open more legal dispensaries, they’re going to start cracking down on these compassion clubs and collectives,” Ridgway said.
Ridgway said he isn’t paid for the pot, but he does get donations.
The law is ambiguous, he said. “If somebody drops money on my table, there is a suggested donation,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. It’s a very gray area. You can twist it 100 ways to Sunday.”
Laura Oxley, spokeswoman for the Department of Health Services, said the law does not address collectives and compassion clubs.
Ridgway, who was stabbed and shot during a marijuana robbery at his home last summer, said he might discontinue his business when his card comes up for renewal.
“If I continue, I’ll just get patients farther and farther away,” he said.
The Surprise Police Department, along with police departments in Glendale and Peoria do not track compassion clubs. But arrests have been made during raids of similar clubs in Phoenix, Gilbert, Mesa and Tempe.
Police across the Valley have warned that cardholders who grow their own marijuana could become victims of the same type of robbery that Ridgway suffered.
Glendale’s newest dispensary
Glendale police report has no issues with the city’s two dispensaries.
Perez, who owns the north Glendale dispensary, said he wishes police would keep a closer eye on the clubs because they take business from heavily regulated, state-approved facilities such as his own.
It has been difficult enough to build up a steady customer-base of about 40 to 50 a day, he said, because the state does not send alerts to card-carrying marijuana users when new dispensaries open.
Patients receive a list of operating dispensaries in the state when approved by the DHS and any patient at any time can request a list of the dispensaries.
Perez struggled to fully staff his store in the beginning because, he said, selling marijuana comes with a stigma.
And for every employee he could find, he needed to pay $500 to get them checked out by the state, compared with the $200 caregivers like Ridgway must spend.
Perez, like many other new dispensary owners, stocks his shelves entirely with donations from caregivers. He aims to open his own growing site soon, which is another sore point for him. Glendale code requires him to have separate locations for the dispensary and the growing facility because dispensaries may locate in general office or commercial areas, whereas growing sites must locate in industrial districts.
Picking a spot for his dispensary proved to be a struggle. City code requires that dispensaries be situated at least 500 feet from residential areas, and the Union Hills site he ended up landing sat less than 500 feet from Loop 101 and the New River channel, both of which are zoned residential. The city initially denied his application, although no homes are within the 500 feet. Perez took Glendale to court on the grounds that no homes were going to be springing up on top of the river or freeway. The judge in Superior Court dismissed the case in Perez’s favor.
Perez says he is navigating tricky city codes because he believes in the medicinal value of pot.
Years ago, his 78-year-old aunt had a stroke and stopped eating. She lost 40 pounds and the doctors told the family that she would die of malnutrition. But Perez had an idea — he asked her if she wanted to smoke marijuana.
“Bring it on,” she told him.
From that point on she took in marijuana daily, started eating again and lived a few extra years, Perez said.
Many of his customers are middle-aged or older, and purchase about one-eighth of an ounce to a quarter every two weeks. Virtually no one goes through the state-maximum of 21/2 ounces every 14 days, Perez said.
Perez’s dispensary was one of about 45 in Maricopa County approved to open last year. Many have a long way to go. If dispensaries owners don’t turn in an operating-permit application by Aug. 7, the state permanently disqualifies them.
Humble said at that point he’ll decide whether to seek new applications based on whether the state has an adequate number of dispensaries to cover gaps in service areas.
I suspect people would be taking time tested drugs that are reasonably safe like marijuana or LSD instead of these legal, bug questionably safe drugs like spice and N-bomb.
‘N-bomb’ drug stirs fear in Phoenix area
By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Fri May 3, 2013 10:24 PM
A drug marketed as an alternative to LSD or mescaline could be among the most powerful and potentially deadly of the synthetic drugs that have inundated the market in recent years, police and physicians believe.
A 19-year-old from the West Valley was in a medically induced coma for four days after taking the drug, a synthetic hallucinogen known as “n-bomb,” and would have died if he had not received treatment when he did, according to a physician.
Scottsdale police are investigating whether the deaths this year of two 18-year-olds are linked to the drug.
“That is certainly a possibility, based on what witnesses are telling us — that either this drug is involved, some variant of that,” said Sgt. Mark Clark, a Scottsdale police spokesman. “Certainly, when anyone becomes deceased from a possibility of any of these new drugs that are out there, we are obviously concerned.”
The first case in Scottsdale involved an 18-year-old Saguaro High School student who died in late January after taking what he assumed was LSD.
Scottsdale police are also investigating the death of an 18-year-old Arizona State University student who authorities believe died after taking the drug last weekend.
In the January case, Noah Carrasco lost consciousness shortly after taking the dose, administered through nose drops. An onlooker thought Carrasco simply needed to get some fresh air and sleep it off, said Carrasco’s mother, Susan Wadsworth.
A friend drove Carrasco around for a while but later became more concerned and took Carrasco to the hospital about 1:40 a.m. on Jan. 25.
“He’d been dead already at least for a couple of hours,” Wadsworth said. “They didn’t know that that’s what they were taking. My son was not a reckless person. He decided to try what he thought was acid, and obviously I didn’t know this at the time. But he would never have tried something he knew was that dangerous.”
Clark said it’s the same story with all the synthetic drugs. Whether they’re marketed as synthetic marijuana, cocaine or ecstasy, there is no reliable way to know what they are made of or how the body will react.
Ignorance about the drugs stretches from the streets to the crime labs, where scientists have to try to determine what substances are present in order for investigators to know what they’re dealing with.
“One of the problems with all these drugs is that we don’t know how they extract out of blood and how to recover them,” said Vince Figarelli, superintendent of the Arizona Department of Public Safety’s crime lab, where analysts have seen a couple of “n-bomb” cases.
“With most of these, there are no clinical trials,” he said. “These weren’t designed or approved for ingestion for medicinal purposes. There are no tests done on human subjects for us to rely on, or to go in and do an analysis of blood on the back end.”
The drug was first synthesized in 1991 by a Bay Area chemist and was banned in the United States in 2012, said Dr. Frank LoVecchio, a physician at Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center who co-authored a report on the unnamed 19-year-old’s case.
A Drug Enforcement Administration spokeswoman in Phoenix said investigators nationwide believe the drug is sold online and most often imported from foreign markets. She said the substance gets the street name “n-bomb” because of the series of chemicals that are key ingredients: N-BOMe.
The active chemical in one popular version of the drug is referred to as 2C-I, but other variations of that chemical have been found as chemists attempt to avoid the federal government’s ban on that ingredient.
The variations are a particular concern to Scottsdale police, Clark said.
“What you have is some amateur chemists who are trying to change the formulation of a drug that’s been declared an illegal substance to try to stay ahead of the law,” Clark said. “Kids — and it’s mostly kids who are taking this — need to understand that this chemical variant could be changed by a very, very little bit and it can prove to be very harmful. Just because someone says that it’s safe or someone says that it’s acid, everyone’s metabolism is different.”
The effort to sell “n-bomb” and its variants as drugs similar to LSD or mescaline is nothing more than a marketing gimmick, LoVecchio said.
“They act very similar to methamphetamine,” LoVecchio said. “Except this lasts longer, (has) worse fever (and) longer seizures.”
The 19-year-old patient that LoVecchio treated was brought in after taking the drug, sold as “smiles,” at a rave. He suffered from seizures shortly thereafter, according to the medical report.
Physicians could not stop the seizures, so the teen was placed into a medically induced coma. For the next four days, physicians treated the teenager with a battery of drugs, attempting to bring him out of a coma each day only to have the seizures resume.
“The agitation and hallucinations resolved on hospital day five,” the report states, and the patient was sent home the following day.
Two weeks later, he was still suffering from episodes of forgetfulness, according to the report.
Evidence of the drug affecting Arizona users is relatively thin so far, with few police agencies reporting that their investigators have encountered “n-bomb” and its variants and many unaware of its lethal potential. Only a handful of fatalities have been reported nationwide, and physicians at Banner Good Samaritan wrote a report in February about the drug’s effects on the 19-year-old, framing it as one of the first laboratory-confirmed cases.
LoVecchio said he has since seen similar cases, but he was not aware of any deaths linked to the drug.
A law Gov. Jan Brewer signed in April makes it illegal to possess one of the backbone chemicals in the drug and helps to ensure that the variants are illegal too, Figarelli said.
But it is a near-constant race for investigators to keep up with chemists who try to stay in front of the changing legal landscape when it comes to synthetics, according to investigators, making it more difficult for police to identify and spread the word about potentially lethal drugs that are making their way on the market.
“That is the biggest problem we face,” said Sgt. Tommy Thompson, a Phoenix police spokesman and former narcotics detective.
DUI arrests bring in a minimum of a $2,000 fine and based on the 3,129 DUI arrests last year in May for DUI, this seasons May arrests will raise over $6 million in DUI fines for local cops and city governments.
The cops love these arrests because they make big bucks in overtime, and the cities love them because they bring in millions in revenue. Of course the only people that get screwed are the taxpayers and the people who are arrested.
Phoenix-area police plan increased DUI enforcement in May
By Jackee Coe The Republic | azcentral.com Fri May 3, 2013 7:21 PM
Police departments are ramping up their DUI enforcement in anticipation of Cinco de Mayo, Memorial Day, and high-school and college graduations.
The month of May kicks off heavier statewide enforcement, funded through the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety, during the summer when students are out of school and people travel to lakes and rivers, have backyard pool parties and barbecues, and celebrate holidays such as the Fourth of July and Labor Day.
“May is going to be a very busy (month),” Tempe Police Department DUI unit Sgt. Tim Bulson said. “We want to make sure that the streets are safe, and with all this celebration going on, the last thing we want to have is a tragedy out there because someone makes a poor decision and either seriously injures someone or takes someone’s life.”
In 2012, police arrested 3,129 people statewide on suspicion of driving under the influence between May 1 and May 31, according to data from the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety. Of those, 556 were over Memorial Day weekend and 267 were on Cinco de Mayo.
Local police agencies will be holding saturation DUI patrols in their cities tonight, and will team up for joint task forces across multiple cities on Sunday night for the Cinco de Mayo weekend. Most will double the normal amount of officers on the streets searching for people who choose to drink and drive.
“Obviously, it becomes a very festive weekend,” Bulson said. “We do anticipate that there will be people that make a poor choice and choose to drink and ... get behind the wheel. Obviously, we want to encourage people to have a good time, but be responsible.”
The Governor’s Office of Highway Safety provides grants to police agencies that make up 14 DUI task forces statewide to cover overtime costs. It also provides grants for training for field sobriety tests, drawing blood and drug recognition, and money for equipment such as motorcycles, speed-detection equipment and alcohol-testing machines.
The office will launch a “massive” public-education campaign this weekend to remind people of the dangers of driving impaired and the importance of getting a designated driver, said director Alberto Gutier. The campaign will include slogans like “Drive hammered, get nailed” displayed on freeway message boards across the state, and TV and radio commercials.
“We are really going to do a huge effort,” Gutier said, “and the big effort is going to start now because of summer coming up and the fact that Memorial Day is exactly where people start doing the fun stuff that they do and then we end up with more tragedies.”
Officials urged people who plan to go out drinking to plan ahead for a safe way to get home, including taking a cab or the light rail, or having a designated driver — who police said should be sober, not the “least drunk” person.
Of the all the drivers police stopped last May, there were 986 sober designed drivers, including 186 on Cinco de Mayo and 460 over Memorial Day weekend, according to Highway Safety Office data.
Roads can be more dangerous in May because of the increased likelihood of people driving impaired, so drivers who are sober still need to be aware of their surroundings, police said.
“Sometimes it seems the drunk driver that crashes into the person that hasn’t been drinking, they just weren’t aware that the person was there,” Chandler Police Department DUI unit Sgt. Charles Cote said.
Justice Dept. admits flaws in forensic testimony in Mississippi death-row case
By Spencer S. Hsu, Published: May 3
The Justice Department has acknowledged flaws in forensic testimony by the FBI that helped convict a man in the 1992 slayings of two Mississippi State University students, and federal officials have now offered to retest the DNA in the case.
The extraordinary admission and offer come just days before the man is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Tuesday and present a quandary for Mississippi officials about whether to stop the execution of Willie Jerome Manning, 44.
Manning’s lawyers asked Gov. Phil Bryant (R) for a stay. Bryant spokesman Mick Bullock said in a written statement Friday that the governor is reviewing the facts of the case.
Federal officials found Manning’s case as part of a broad review of the FBI’s handling of scientific evidence in thousands of violent crimes in the 1980s and 1990s.
The Justice Department announced last summer an effort to correct past errors in forensic hair examinations before 2000 — at least 21,000 cases — to determine whether agents exaggerated the significance of purported hair “matches” in lab reports or trial testimony.
The reviews were prompted by a series of articles in The Washington Post that found that the Justice Department ignored warnings about widespread problems in cases that relied on hair identification.
Manning’s case presents a difficult first test of the Justice Department review. Last week, the Mississippi Supreme Court denied a request by Manning’s lawyers to reexamine a rape kit, fingernail scrapings, hairs and fingerprint evidence in the case, ruling narrowly that even if Manning’s DNA was absent, that would not be enough to overturn his 1994 conviction.
“Our examination anew of the record reveals that conclusive, overwhelming evidence of guilt was presented to the jury,” Presiding Justice Michael K. Randolph wrote for the 5 to 4 majority.
Oktibbeha County District Attorney Forrest R. Allgood said Manning was separately convicted and sentenced to death for killing two elderly women in their apartment in 1993 in Starkville, Miss. He questioned the defense tactics and said any reconsideration of the students’ case should include consultation with the victims’ families.
“The bottom line is when you start looking at these things, there’s always something else you can do and it never ends,” Allgood said.
Manning defense attorney David Voisin said that both sets of convictions are on appeal and that new testing could identify the students’ actual attacker. While investigators could not detect biological evidence of rape two decades ago, the female victim was found with her pants and underwear pulled down, and DNA testing is far more sensitive today and could potentially identify a culprit, he said.
“I commend the FBI for being diligent, reviewing their prior work, and recognizing the need for testing,” Voisin said. “We’re hoping that the governor will do the same thing.”
Legal experts also praised federal authorities for undertaking the fuller review and urged Mississippi officials to press forward with the testing. “There is really no good reason not to allow DNA testing, particularly in capital cases,” said Myrna Raeder, a Southwestern University Law School professor and co-chair of the innocence committee of the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section. “We’re still not completely to the point where we’re willing to recognize that science may and should overrule some of our judicial rules that may make sense in terms of finality but make no sense in terms of determining innocence.”
Manning was convicted of kidnapping and killing students Jon Steckler and Tiffany Miller, whose bodies were discovered some distance from Mississippi State University’s campus on Dec. 11, 1992. Each was shot to death, and an FBI expert, Chester E. Blythe, testified that African American hair fragments were found in Miller’s car.
Manning is black. Steckler and Miller were white.
Randolph noted that prosecutors found that Manning was arrested after trying to sell Steckler’s leather jacket and class ring and a compact disc player from his car. Manning’s cousin and a jailhouse informer each said that Manning confessed to them.
Writing in dissent before federal authorities came forward, Mississippi Supreme Court Justice James W. Kitchens called for further testing, saying that otherwise, “the investigation of these horrible crimes will remain incomplete.”
Kitchens noted that Manning’s cousin gave several versions of his story, earlier implicating two other men and then stating that Manning confessed to the killings with a second man.
In addition, the jailhouse informer recanted his testimony, and Manning has maintained that he was selling property stolen by someone he didn’t know.
Fingerprints found in one victim’s car were not matched to Manning or the victims and have never been checked against government databases.
“The victims’ families and the public at large deserve to know whether another, or an additional, perpetrator was involved,” Kitchens wrote. “Interests far beyond Manning’s are at stake, and whatever potential harm the denial seeks to avert is surely outweighed by the benefits of ensuring justice.”
In a letter dated Thursday, John Crabb Jr., special counsel to the Justice Department, told lawyers in the case that Blythe “exceeded the limits of the science” when he testified that he could match a crime-scene hair to an individual with “a relatively high degree of certainty.”
“In the event that your office determines that further testing is appropriate or necessary, the FBI is available to provide mitochondrial DNA testing of the relevant hair evidence or [DNA] testing of related biological evidence” in some circumstances, Crabb wrote.
Allgood, the prosecutor, said that because Blythe said he could not “match” Manning to the crime-scene hairs because only fragments were recovered, the FBI’s acknowledgment of the error is irrelevant.
“Functionally it affects nothing, because he [Blythe] didn’t testify that this is the guy the hairs came from,” said Allgood, who has served as the county prosecutor since 1989 and tried Manning.
In a statement, the FBI said Manning’s case was reviewed this week after the FBI learned that Mississippi had set the May 7 execution date.
Late Friday, attorneys for the Mississippi Innocence Project and Manning’s brother asked the court to bar the state from destroying DNA evidence that could be retested even if the execution goes forward.
Baltimore’s detention center a victim of bad management
By Editorial Board, Published: May 3
THE MESS at the Baltimore City Detention Center, where corrections officers allegedly colluded (and had sex) with inmates amid a wide-ranging conspiracy to smuggle drugs and other contraband into the facility, is a disgrace. It was also highly preventable.
For starters, where were the jail’s gatekeepers? Why couldn’t they stop the deluge of cellphones, narcotics and other forbidden items that, according to a federal indictment, were regularly smuggled into the facility by at least 13 corrupt guards?
The government is still letting queasiness nullify evidence.
The immediate answer is that the gatekeepers included the very same officers who were allegedly in league with the inmates. The broader answer involves mismanagement by the jail’s corrections department administrators.
Under the system in place at the jail, corrections officers cycled through duty at the main entrance; in other words, the same guards who patrolled the cellblocks took turns working as gatekeepers. This ensured that bad apples — and it may turn out that there were more than 13 — periodically or frequently controlled what came inside the walls.
The result was that the guards now under indictment, who are female, could allegedly pass through the main entrance with contraband tucked into their hair or under clothes or concealed internally. As the indictment noted, they underwent pat-downs that were cursory at best, and much of the contraband, especially the drugs, did not trigger the metal detectors at the entrance.
It‘s a rudimentary precaution, and sound management, to require that guards at the gate are among the most trusted and carefully monitored of the jail’s 450 employees and that they do not rotate with guards inside the cellblocks.
Equally important is that the state establish a workable regime under which corrections officers are disciplined or fired when they flout the rules. According to the federal indictment, the guards who teamed up, and bedded down, with inmates in Baltimore faced no realistic prospect of punishment. Even though their actions were clearly prohibited and illegal, the indictment said, red tape “made the prospect of actual punishment very remote. Often suspected corrections officers were merely transferred to another facility in the immediate vicinity.”
The absurd situation described in the indictment took root at least partly because of a “bill of rights” for corrections officers, backed by Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) and enacted by the Maryland legislature in 2010 at the behest of the guards union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. This bill of rights grants extraordinary protections to guards, including shielding them from threats of prosecution, transfer, dismissal or even disciplinary action during questioning for suspected wrongdoing.
Aides to Mr. O’Malley have downplayed the role of the guards’ bill of rights in the jail scandal. But the FBI recorded at least one indicted officer, Kimberly Dennis, saying she had been transferred from one facility “basically because I’m dirty.”
Dirty officers should be fired, not transferred. At the least, state lawmakers should revisit the guards’ bill of rights.
Muzzling free speech about taxes
By George F. Will, Published: April 23
— James Madison, Federalist 48
The government has done this, and the court has declined to do its duty to enforce constitutional limits. Herewith an illustration of why conservatives must abandon their imprecise opposition to “judicial activism” and advocate for more vigorous judicial engagement in protecting liberty from the vortex of the regulatory state.
Spirit, Allegiant and Southwest are low-cost carriers that have thrived since the deregulation of the airline industry, which began in 1978. The government retains a narrow authority to prevent deceptive advertising practices. But as the airlines argued in petitioning the Supreme Court to hear their case, the government is micromanaging their speech merely to prevent the public from understanding the government’s tax burdens.
The government’s total price rule forbids the airlines from calling attention to the tax component of the price of a ticket by listing the price the airline charges and then the tax component with equal prominence. The rule mandates that any listing of the tax portion of a ticket’s price “not be displayed prominently and be presented in significantly smaller type than the listing of the total price.” The government is trying to prevent people from clearly seeing the burdens of government.
These three low-cost carriers compete for the most price-conscious travelers, and they want to tell those travelers which portion of a ticket’s cost the airlines control. The government, far from regulating to prevent customer confusion, is trying to prevent customers from understanding the taxes and fees that comprise approximately 20 percent of the average airline ticket.
Timothy Sandefur, of the public-interest, limited-government Pacific Legal Foundation, notes that decades ago the Supreme Court, without justification in the Constitution’s text, structure or history, created a binary First Amendment. So today the amendment gives different degrees of protection to two kinds of speech — strong protection to political speech, minimal protection to commercial speech.
The court has never clearly defined the latter but has suggested that commercial speech proposes a commercial transaction between the speaker and the audience. And the court has held that freedom of commercial speech cannot be abridged if the speech is neither false nor deceptive and if it is not related to an illegal activity.
Note two things. The airlines’ speech the government is regulating with the total price rule would be protected even if it were just commercial speech. And it actually is political speech: It calls its audience’s attention to, and invites disapproval of, government policy.
In permitting the government’s regulation of this speech, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held, 2 to 1, that the total price rule “does not prohibit airlines from saying anything; it just requires them to disclose the total, final price and to make it the most prominent figure in their advertisements.” But this ignores the government’s obvious purpose of preventing the airlines from drawing attention to the government’s exactions.
In their brief asking the Supreme Court to reverse the D.C. Circuit’s decision, the airlines noted that the government is forbidding them to do what virtually every American industry does — advertise the pre-tax price of their products. Shirts and shoes and salamis are sold with the pre-tax sum on the price tag.
D.C. Circuit Judge A. Raymond Randolph, dissenting from the court’s permission of this unauthorized and indefensible regulation, asked: How can the government’s supposed interest in consumers having “accurate” information be served by requiring “significantly smaller” typefaces for taxes and fees that make up a larger share of the prices of the low-cost airlines than of the older airlines? Randolph said the government’s purpose is “to control and to muffle speakers who are critical of the government.”
Government is violating one of the natural rights that the Founders said government is “instituted” (the Declaration’s word) to protect. This episode confirms conservatism’s premise that today’s government is guilty of shabby behavior until proven innocent. And conservatives enable such behavior when their unreflective denunciations of judicial “activism” encourage excessive judicial deference toward the modern executive’s impetuous vortex.
If you ask me it sounds like New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a racist who thinks Blacks and Latinos are criminals.
The Mayor on Stop-and-Frisk
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Published: May 3, 2013 62 Comments
Mayor Michael Bloomberg trotted out shopworn, discredited arguments this week while defending the constitutionally suspect police program under which hundreds of thousands of innocent New Yorkers have been detained and questioned on the streets every year. His speech, at 1 Police Plaza, castigated civil rights lawyers who oppose what they say is the practice of stopping people based on race instead of reasonable suspicion; Democratic mayoral candidates who want to rein in the stop-and-frisk program; and the City Council, which is considering a perfectly reasonable bill that would create the position of Police Department inspector general, with broad powers to review department policies.
Mr. Bloomberg denied that police officers stop people based on race, adding that members of minority groups were more likely to be stopped because minorities committed most of the crimes. But court documents in the three federal lawsuits that are moving through the judicial system tell another story entirely.
The data in the case of Floyd v. City of New York, a class action being heard in federal court in Manhattan, show that in tens of thousands of cases, officers reported stopping people based on “furtive movement,” a meaningless term that cannot be legally used to justify a stop. Officers also reported that they had made stops in “high crime areas,” when, in fact, some of those areas were not. In many cases, officers said that they had stopped people based on a “suspicious bulge” — suggesting a gun — in their clothing. Yet, according to court documents, officers found only one gun for every 69 stops in which they cited a “bulge.” And guns were seized in only 0.15 percent of all stops.
In addition, only 5.4 percent of all stops resulted in an arrest, and about 6 percent led to a summons. This means that in nearly 90 percent of cases, the citizens who were stopped were doing nothing illegal. In some cases, prosecutors declined to automatically prosecute arrests made in connection with the program because they knew that the stops were illegal.
Mr. Bloomberg’s suggestion that the program has been responsible for historic drops in crime is also implausible. Crime has declined all over the country, including in places that have not used New York’s aggressively invasive techniques. Besides, if crime rates and street stops had a strong correlation, the murder rate would have gone up in 2012, when stops declined by about 20 percent. In fact, the murder rate fell in 2012 to an all-time low.
Mr. Bloomberg’s implication that the program’s critics are more interested in vexing City Hall than in keeping the streets clear of murderers was especially reprehensible. No one is opposed to using effective, constitutional means of fighting crime. The problem is that over the last decade the Police Department has shown utter contempt for Fourth Amendment guarantees of freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. And worse, these tactics have been used largely against young black and Hispanic men.
Mr. Bloomberg may never change his views. But his stubborn refusal to see the program’s dangers has not stopped three civil rights lawsuits from going forward in federal court and the City Council from trying to curb the use of tactics that have alienated minority communities from the police and made law-abiding citizens feel like criminals in their own neighborhoods.
Phoenix police to hold gun-buyback event Saturday
New law soon will hinder similar efforts
By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Fri May 3, 2013 10:11 PM
Three months before a new state law goes into effect requiring police to sell any weapon they receive, Phoenix officials plan to destroy as many guns as residents bring them.
Those efforts begin Saturday with a gun buyback at three churches in the city, and two more events are scheduled later this month.
After that, gun buybacks coordinated with Phoenix police will likely cease.
A law Gov. Jan Brewer signed this week requires police to sell any weapons they receive, whether the guns are abandoned, lost or forfeited to the agency through a court order. A bill with the same intent — requiring agencies to sell weapons instead of destroying them — was approved last year, but officials in Phoenix, Tucson and other cities took a literal reading of that legislation and determined that it applied only to weapons that departments receive through court-ordered forfeiture.
Police have until the new law takes effect to continue their current practices. In Phoenix, that means destroying weapons.
“There’s been no emergency clause indicating that (the law) is going to go into effect immediately,” Phoenix police Sgt. Steve Martos said of the legislation.
The checks that police want to run on each weapon, which include records queries to ensure that the gun was not reported stolen and a ballis-tics test to determine if the weapon was used in a crime, will take additional time, Martos said.
“Obviously, there’s a little bit of pressure,” said Martos, a department spokesman.
The buyback is anonymous, with no information collected on the donor, and police ask that weapons arrive unloaded and in a trunk or pickup bed where officers can safely remove the guns.
As long as the guns are functioning, they can be exchanged for gift cards.
“It’ll almost be like a drive-through process,” Martos said.
The buybacks should not result in additional costs for police personnel.
The events will be staffed with Phoenix’s neighborhood-enforcement team officers who would already be on the clock and do not typically have “first-responder” duties, Martos said.
A group called Arizonans for Gun Safety donated $100,000 to purchase grocery-store gift cards that will be given out in exchange for weapons, including $200 for assault weapons and $100 for handguns, shotguns and rifles.
That’s far more than police have offered at similar past events, Martos said.
Phoenix police brought in a little more than 200 weapons at the city’s last buyback in 2011, when they had $10,000 worth of gift cards.
“We almost had to start turning people away because we were running out of gift cards,” Martos said.
An event in Tucson in January produced similar results — about 200 weapons for $10,000 worth of grocery gift cards — but came with an unanticipated wave of controversy.
Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik organized the event, which was paid for through private donations he coordinated in about two weeks.
Charles Heller, spokesman for a Tucson-based non-profit that promotes gun rights, said the event was a self-gratifying effort put on by people who want to believe that removing a few hundred weapons from circulation could somehow impact the crime rate.
The new legislation has spurred Tucson residents into action, Kozachik said.
He added that there is no shortage of ideas about how to get around the new law, including suggestions that the weapons be auctioned with a minimum bid of $100,000 to thwart buyers or sold for 1 cent to artists who will melt them down and use them in installations.
He applauded Phoenix’s effort to beat the legislative clock.
The buyback events will be held at from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Southminster Presbyterian, 1923 E. Broadway; Sunnyslope Mennonite Church, 9835 N. Seventh St.; and BetaniaPresbyterian, 2811 N. 39th Ave.
For more information, call 602-547-0976 or go to www.azfgs.com.
And of course just like the "war on drugs" this silly rule almost certainly violates the 10th Amendment.
Justice Department appealing morning-after pill decision
Associated Press Wed May 1, 2013 5:41 PM
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is appealing a judge's decision lifting all age limits on the Plan B morning-afer birth control pill and a cheaper generic.
The federal government says the judge who issued the ruling had exceeded his authority and that his decision should be suspended while the appeal is underway.
U.S. District Judge Edward Korman of New York had given the Food and Drug Administration until Monday to lift all age limits on Plan B and cheaper generic. The judge mandated that emergency contraception be sold just like aspirin.
On Tuesday, the FDA said anyone 15 or older could begin buying one brand, Plan B One-Step, without a prescription — two years younger than the current age limit of 17.
Women’s groups decry appeal on morning-after pill
Associated Press Thu May 2, 2013 7:32 AM
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s decision to appeal a court order lifting age limits on purchasers of the morning-after pill set off a storm of criticism from reproductive rights groups, who denounced it as politically motivated and a step backward for women’s health.
“We are profoundly disappointed. This appeal takes away the promise of all women having timely access to emergency contraception,” Susannah Baruch, Interim President & CEO of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project, said in a statement late Wednesday.
“It is especially troubling in light of the Food and Drug Administration’s move yesterday to continue age restrictions and ID requirements, despite a court order to make emergency contraception accessible for women of all ages. Both announcements, particularly in tandem, highlight the administration’s corner-cutting on women’s health,” Baruch said. “It’s a sad day for women’s health when politics prevails.”
The FDA on Tuesday had lowered the age at which people can buy the Plan B One-Step morning-after pill without a prescription to 15 — younger than the current limit of 17 — and decided that the pill could be sold on drugstore shelves near the condoms, instead of locked behind pharmacy counters. It appeared to be a stab at compromise that just made both sides angrier.
After the appeal was announced late Wednesday, Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, said, “The prevention of unwanted pregnancy, particularly in adolescents, should not be obstructed by politicians.” She called it a “step backwards for women’s health.”
Last week, O’Neill noted, President Barack Obama was applauded when he addressed members of Planned Parenthood and spoke of the organization’s “core principle” that women should be allowed to make their own decisions about their health.
“President Obama should practice what he preaches,” O’Neill said.
In appealing the ruling Wednesday, the administration recommitted itself to a position Obama took during his re-election campaign that younger teens shouldn’t have unabated access to emergency contraceptives, despite the insistence by physicians groups and much of his Democratic base that the pill should be readily available.
The Justice Department’s appeal responded to an order by U.S. District Judge Edward Korman in New York that would allow girls and women of any age to buy not only Plan B but its cheaper generic competition as easily as they can buy aspirin. Korman gave the FDA 30 days to comply, and the Monday deadline was approaching fast.
In its filing, the Justice Department said that Korman exceeded his authority and that his decision should be suspended while that appeal is under way, meaning only Plan B One-Step would appear on drugstore shelves until the case is finally settled. If Korman’s order isn’t suspended during the appeals process, the result would be “substantial market confusion, harming FDA’s and the public’s interest” as drugstores receive conflicting orders about who’s allowed to buy what, the Justice Department concluded.
Reluctant to get drawn into a messy second-term spat over social issues, White House officials insisted Wednesday that both the FDA and the Justice Department were acting independently of the White House in deciding how to proceed. But the decision to appeal was certain to irk abortion-rights advocates who say they can’t understand why a Democratic president is siding with social conservatives in favor of limiting women’s reproductive choices.
Current and former White House aides said Obama’s approach to the issue has been heavily influenced by his experience as the father of two school-age daughters. Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius have also questioned whether there’s enough data available to show the morning-after pill is safe and appropriate for younger girls, even though physicians groups insist that it is.
Rather than take matters into his own hands, the Justice Department argued to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that Korman should have ordered the FDA to reconsider its options for regulating emergency contraception. The court cannot overturn the rules and processes that federal agencies must follow “by instead mandating a particular substantive outcome,” the appeal states.
The FDA actually had been poised to lift all age limits and let Plan B sell over the counter in late 2011, when Sebelius overruled her own scientists. Sebelius said some girls as young as 11 were physically capable of bearing children but shouldn’t be able to buy the pregnancy-preventing pill on their own.
Sebelius’ move was unprecedented, and Korman had blasted it as election-year politics — meaning he was overruling not just a government agency but a Cabinet secretary.
More than a year later, neither side in the contraception debate was happy with the FDA’s surprise twist, which many perceived as an attempt to find a palatable middle ground between imposing an age limit of 17 and imposing no limit at all.
Any over-the-counter access marks a long-awaited change, but it’s not enough, said Dr. Cora Breuner of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which supports nonprescription sale of the morning-after pill for all ages.
“We still have the major issue, which is our teen pregnancy rate is still too high,” Breuner said.
Even though few young girls likely would use Plan B, which costs about $50 for a single pill, “we know that it is safe for those under 15,” she said.
Most 17- to 19-year-olds are sexually active, and 30 percent of 15- and 16-year-olds have had sex, according to a study published last month by the journal Pediatrics. Sex is much rarer among younger teens. Likewise, older teens have a higher pregnancy rate, but that study also counted more than 110,000 pregnancies among 15- and 16-year-olds in 2008 alone.
Social conservatives were outraged by the FDA’s move to lower the age limits for Plan B — as well as the possibility that Korman’s ruling might take effect and lift age restrictions altogether.
“This decision undermines the right of parents to make important health decisions for their young daughters,” said Anna Higgins of the Family Research Council.
If a woman already is pregnant, the morning-after pill has no effect. It prevents ovulation or fertilization of an egg. According to the medical definition, pregnancy doesn’t begin until a fertilized egg implants itself into the wall of the uterus. Still, some critics say Plan B is the equivalent of an abortion pill because it may also be able to prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus, a contention that many scientists — and Korman, in his ruling — said has been discredited.
‘N-bomb’ drug stirs fear in Phoenix area
If drugs were legal we would not have these problems.
How do you spell revenue - Cinco de Mayo drunks.
Local police agencies are drooling over the amount of revenue they will raise from DUI arrests in May from the Cinco de Mayo and other holidays.
We don't need no stinking evidence, we make it up - FBI??
Evidence??? We don't need no stinking evidence, we make it up - FBI???
Baltimore jail guards are corrupt????
Lots of sex and drugs in Baltimore jails
While we love to make fun of Sheriff Joe's Tent City gulag,
most jails across the United States are just as corrupt and badly run.
The only difference is that blow hard Sheriff Joe routinely brags
how corrupt his jails are, while other Sheriff's pretend that their prisons are fit for humans.
No First Amendment rights when it comes to taxes????
"The government’s total price rule forbids the airlines from calling attention to the tax component of the price of a ticket by listing the price the airline charges and then the tax component with equal prominence ... The government ... is trying to prevent customers from understanding the taxes and fees that comprise approximately 20 percent of the average airline ticket."
“The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity, and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.”
But under today’s regulatory state, which Madison could hardly have imagined, the legislature, although still a source of much mischief, is not the principal threat to liberty. Suppose a federal executive department flagrantly abused its regulatory powers for the unmistakable purpose of suppressing truthful speech that annoys the government. If you assume the Supreme Court would rectify this assault on the First Amendment’s core protection, you would be mistaken.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg - F*ck the Constitution
Mayor Michael Bloomberg - F*ck the Constitution, I am a royal ruler and can do what I want!!!
Mr. Bloomberg - "minority groups were more
likely to be stopped because minorities
committed most of the crimes"
And of course base on what is said in this article New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg also seems to think that the serfs he rules over shouldn't have any Constitutional rights.
Phoenix City Council members are gun grabbers
Phoenix City Council members are gun grabbers who want to flush the Second Amendment down the toilet???
I suspect this includes Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton,
Vice Mayor Bill Gates, Thelda Williams, Daniel Valenzuela,
Jim Waring, phoney baloney Libertarian Sal DiCiccio,
Michael Nowakowski, Tom Simplot and Michael Johnson.
Justice Department appealing morning-after pill decision
I think it is a violation of the 1st Amendment which makes it illegal to mix religion and government, when the FDA makes it illegal for women of any age to have access to birth control pills.
Riding High: Arizona's Zero-Tolerance Stance on Pot and Driving
Here is an interesting
article
on the legality of smoking marijuana and driving in Arizona.
A couple of interesting things from the article.
First while measuring you blood alcohol is a reasonable indicator of how stoned you are, measuring the tests for marijuana are almost worthless for gauging how stoned you are. A really stoned person can have a very low test level, and a perfectly straight person can have a high test level.
Second Arizona crime labs usually test for three molecules when examining blood for evidence of marijuana use: THC, its primary metabolite, hydroxy-THC, and the inactive metabolite carboxy-THC. Oddly carboxy-THC doesn't get you stoned.
Third, never, never admit to the cops that you are a medical marijuana users. They will use it against you in court. And never, never, never admit to the cops that you have smoked marijuana anytime in your life. Again that will be used against you in court.
Fourth if you are a pot smoker you probably know this, but marijuana doesn't effect your driving anywhere near the level that alcohol does.
Statistics compiled by the Arizona Department of Transportation each year show that alcohol impairment is believed by police to be responsible for five to 10 times the number of fatal and injury crashes statewide as all other illegally used drugs combined.
8 Reasons not to vote for Andrew Thomas for Governor
SourceTop Eight Reasons Why Nobody Should Vote for Andrew Thomas for Governor in 2014
By Ray Stern Fri., Apr. 26 2013 at 5:33 PM
Andrew Thomas is running for governor. Here are our eight top reasons why he shouldn't get a single vote.
Andrew Thomas followed up on last year's rumor that he might run for governor with an official announcement today.
Knowing that anything's possible in Arizona, the so-called meth lab of democracy, we thought we'd put out this helpful voting guide.
So, without further ado, we offer you our best eight reasons why you'd have to be nuts to vote for Thomas:
See also: Andrew Thomas, Disbarred and Disgraced Ex-Prosecutor, Is Actually Running for Governor
8. Two words: Cuckoo, cuckoo. When we heard he'd announced, we grew more worried than ever for his mental health. Powerful evidence he's lost it: Thomas said he believes a survey would show he's the most popular candidate among voters for the 2014 election. Since his disbarment, Thomas has been known to bring a piece of lumber to interviews like he thinks he's Buford Pusser.
7. He's a loser. Sure, Thomas won two elections to become county attorney, in 2004 and 2008. But his political career is better defined by his losses. Thomas blew a bid for Arizona attorney general in 2002, failing to win against Democrat Terry Goddard. Seeing that his political career was on shaky ground following his legal abuses from 2008-2010, Thomas resigned from his office in April of 2010 and launched another campaign for state attorney general. It was close, but he lost to Tom Horne. A couple of years later, Thomas lost the biggest the fight of his life -- for his law license. Thomas didn't even bother to appeal the state's decision to disbar him.
6. Thomas is a Harvard-educated moron. You know what we mean -- he's book-smart and very well-educated, but without a lick of common sense. Why did he think launching a dirty attack on a newspaper that criticized him (this one) would be a good idea? Of course he ended up making a public apology for that one. Stoo-pid!
5. Thomas has displayed a severe lack of judgment in picking his allies. He put a great deal of his trust in Dave Hendershott, Sheriff Arpaio's ultra-shady former chief deputy, who told others that Thomas was an "idiot."
4. Maricopa County voters have long though of themselves as "tough on crime." Thomas, an ideologue who once wrote a book on crime that suggested a return to public stockades, took the concept to abusive ends. He failed to make plea deals when appropriate, threw the book at nearly everyone and brought criminal charges when none were warranted. "He horrendously overcharged cases," says Valley lawyer Marc Victor. Back in 2007, Victor represented a woman who's brother loaded a gun without the woman's knowledge, leading to an accident in which the woman grazed her daughter with a bullet. Thomas' office wanted the woman convicted for a designated "dangerous" offense that would have given her mandatory prison time, even though the daughter hadn't wanted to press charges.
3. The bigoted policies he pushed against undocumented immigrants were a failure. Immigrant criminals were not deterred by the possibility that they might not be able to post bail. Immigrant smugglers continued to work the Phoenix metro area; the general decline in immigrants of the past few years is due to the weaker economy and boosted border enforcement, not fear of Thomas or Sheriff Arpaio. A scheme started by Thomas and continued by County Attorney Bill Montgomery that jails and prosecutes low-level immigrants for conspiracy to smuggle themselves into the country has brought only extra suffering to would-be workers, not stemmed the tide of immigrants.
2. Thomas is dishonest. He's a disgrace to the legal profession. He's a liar. He's a perjurer. He's a corrupt politician and grand-stander. He's incompetent. He's vindictive. He's a bad lawyer, in general. And that's just what the legal panel that disbarred him had to say about him. Some folks think he's even worse.
1. His misguided sense of "justice" and inability to play nice with others has cost Maricopa County many millions of dollars. The financial damage he could cause to the state if put in an even more powerful position could run into the billions. Just today, the Board of Supervisors voted to approve a hefty, $1.4 million settlement to more of the victims of Thomas and Arpaio's ill-fated political schemes. As we noted in a blog post about the settlement, Arizona simply could not afford Thomas as governor.
State Take-Back day gathers 13,000 lbs. of prescription medication
If these cops don't have any criminals to hunt down and the only useful thing they are doing is hanging out in supermarkets collecting unused prescription drugs, I don't think they are needed for the safety of the public and should be laid off.And remember these cops who are effectively working a janitors throwing away old unused drugs are very well paid. In Arizona most local cops start at $50,000 a year and many easily make over $100,000 a year. A few make $150,000 a year. Federal cops are paid much more.
State Take-Back day gathers 13,000 lbs. of prescription medication
Posted: Saturday, May 4, 2013 1:35 pm
Douglas W. Coleman, Special Agent in Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), announced Thursday that Arizonans turned in 60 percent more pills than last year's Take-Back event, demonstrating the public’s continued appreciation and need for the opportunity to discard unwanted, unused and expired prescription drugs from medicine cabinets, bedside tables and kitchen drawers.
On April 27, 13,069 pounds (6½ tons) of prescription medications were collected from members of the public at more than 95 locations manned by over 60 state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies that partnered with DEA on the event. When added to the collections from DEA’s previous five Take-Back events, more than 48,000 pounds (24 tons) of prescription medications have been removed from circulation.
“We are pleased at the response of our communities once again, and we thank them for participating and contributing to the battle against prescription drug abuse,” said DEA Special Agent in Charge Doug Coleman. “Our take-back events highlight the problems related to prescription drug abuse and give our citizens an opportunity to contribute to the solution. “These events are only made possible through the dedicated work and commitment of our state, local and tribal law enforcement partners, and DEA thanks each and every one of them for their efforts on behalf of the American people.”
The DEA’s Take-Back events are a significant piece of the White House’s prescription drug abuse prevention strategy released in 2011 by the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Disposal of unwanted, unused or expired drugs is one of four strategies for reducing prescription drug abuse and diversion laid out in Epidemic: Responding to America’s Prescription Drug Abuse Crisis. The other strategies include education of health care providers, patients, parents and youth; enhancing and encouraging the establishment of prescription drug monitoring programs in all the states; and increased enforcement to address doctor shopping and pill mills.
Want to score some dope??? Try the Baltimore jail
Want to score some dope??? Try the Baltimore jail, illegal drugs can easily be purchased there.Of course my point is that 1) the war on drugs is a dismal failure that never has worked and 2) the police are corrupt.
Baltimore jail case depicts a corrupt culture driven by drugs, money and sex
By Theresa Vargas, Ann E. Marimow and Annys Shin, Published: May 4
Inside a gray brick fortress, past a barbed-wire fence, two women in prison guard uniforms traded words about their pregnancies.
“Did he tell you we was having a son?” Tiffany Linder asked, according to court documents recounting the conversation. “Did you know about our baby?”
Chania Brooks said she didn’t care about that baby. That was their child, not hers.
“We having one, too,” she said. “So what?”
The two 27-year-old corrections officers at the Baltimore City Detention Center were sparring over an inmate who prosecutors said left both women with a permanent reminder of their allegiance to him.
To investigators, Tavon White is a thug who has been in and out of jail since he was 18, most recently on charges that he shot a fellow drug dealer four times. He is allegedly a high-ranking “bushman” in the Black Guerilla Family, a gang with a reputation for not just killing its enemies but also burning down their homes.
But during his three years at the state-run detention center, White, 36, was allegedly a figure who commanded respect, not only from fellow inmates in jumpsuits but also from many of the women in blue collared shirts and pressed slacks guarding him. Thirteen of them allegedly smuggled cellphones and drugs inside their hair, lunches and underwear for the man they called “Bulldog” or “Tay.” One tattooed his name on her neck, another on her wrist. Four have carried his children.
Through court documents, an affidavit from an FBI agent that contains transcripts of wiretapped conversations, and interviews with people familiar with White, the 13 officers indicted in April and the jail, a portrait emerges of a place where sex and drugs were swapped with stunning casualness, where thousands of dollars flowed in and out each week, and where one man’s power was, by all accounts, no match for a badge.
Just weeks before the two pregnant guards talked about the children they were expecting, a third allegedly pondered possible names for her son.
“What if I name the baby King?” Katera Stevenson, 24, asked in a wiretapped call to her sister recounted in the affidavit. “I like the name King. King Tavon White.”
‘A city within a city’
The Baltimore City Detention Center takes up most of a city block in East Baltimore, a little more than a mile from the Inner Harbor. The warren of seven buildings houses 2,000 or more prisoners awaiting trial for everything from writing bad checks to rape and murder.
It is a miserable place, with some parts more than 150 years old and conditions that state and local officials have been trying to fix for the past four decades. Its well-documented shortcomings have included rodent-infested cells, a lack of medical care for inmates and extreme temperatures.
In the winter, everyone shivers, former inmates say. In the summer, the heat can become unbearable in the parts of the facility that lack air conditioning. One former prisoner blogged about running a T-shirt under cold water, putting it on for a bit of relief, then within 15 minutes having to do it again.
In 1991, the state took over the detention center. In 2002, the Justice Department concluded that conditions there violated the constitutional rights of inmates.
Baltimore jail case depicts a corrupt culture driven by drugs, money and sex
“I hate going over there to visit clients, because it is so depressing,” said defense lawyer Warren A. Brown. The ventilation inside is so bad, he said, that past clients have told him what they appreciate most upon their release “is not their mama’s cooking but fresh air.”
The inmates vastly outnumber the 625 guards, who make a base salary of $35,000 to $45,000 a year but can earn considerably more through overtime. They receive five to six weeks of training before entering — without any weapons to protect themselves — what one former guard calls “a city within a city.”
After 2009 case, more than $1 million spent on anti-corruption measures; now legislators want investigation.
“It has its own government. It has its own rules. It has its own understanding,” said James McEachin, a former detention center corrections officer turned pastor. As a guard, he said, “once you go behind that door, it closes for you, too.”
It was here, in this troubled place, that White seized an opportunity. He used the jail’s lax security, its female guards and his unusually long three-year stay at the facility to build what prosecutors described as a lucrative drug-trafficking and money-laundering operation, complete with a “minister of finance.”
Some of the guards who allegedly conspired with White said they were in it solely for the cash.
“I am just about my money,” 25-year-old corrections officer Adrena Rice told White during a wiretapped call Feb. 10. She had no interest in relationships with inmates, who would want a cut of what she was earning by working for him. “Nah. I love money, Tay. I want my own money.”
The corruption extends far beyond the 13 women charged, the affidavit suggested, with one inmate estimating that as many as 70 percent of the corrections officers were compromised.
Gang members have long manipulated guards at Maryland’s prisons. Since 2010, 89 officers across the state, including five at the Baltimore detention center, have been terminated or forced to resign for fraternization or contraband, said state corrections spokesman Rick Binetti.
Gary D. Maynard, who was appointed head of the state’s troubled prison system by Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) in 2007, acknowledged how deeply rooted the problems at the jail are. “The collusion, corruption, riots were part of this system for a long, long time,” he said. “We have exposed it now.”
What investigators found at the Baltimore jail astounded law enforcement officials across the country, who described it as “bizarre” and “unbelievable.”
“In all my years, and I’ve been in the business since 1960, I have never heard of this level of complicity,” said Arnett Gaston, the former commanding officer of New York City’s Rikers Island detention facilities and a retired University of Maryland criminal justice professor.
With the ease of ordering takeout, White used a smuggled cellphone to arrange exchanges between outside drug dealers and corrections officers, who brought the contraband to him to be sold inside the jail at huge markups, the affidavit alleged. Percocet went for $30 a pill; one-gram bags of marijuana sold for $50. The gang’s control was so complete that any non-member who tried to get in on the action had to pay a tax or risk physical harm.
In one taped conversation, White boasted that he made $15,800 that month, less than normal. “This is my jail. You understand that?” he said to a friend. “I’m dead serious. . . . I make every final call in this jail. . . . Everything come to me.”
‘A hustle game’
Chania Brooks’s hands were shaking. She had just seen an inmate get attacked by a fellow gang member, blood spilling from his head, the affidavit said.
She needed advice, so she went to get it. Not from a supervisor. From White.
“I abandoned my post,” Brooks said in an intercepted call between her and White. “I said, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ I thought he was going to have to go 911.”
Brooks has denied the charges against her, including the allegation that White fathered her child. When a reporter went to her home after the indictment was unsealed, she peeked out a partially open door and said, “I don’t have a story to tell.”
Calls to the other women were not returned, and attorneys for some of them declined to comment. Among the guards, only Linder has entered a plea. She told a judge last week that she is not guilty.
Documents that investigators recovered from the Black Guerrilla Family detail how its new members are taught to target specific officers. Look for women, they are told, with “low self-esteem, insecurities, and certain physical attributes.”
The manipulation of young female officers often starts with a smile or a brief conversation, said a former inmate very familiar with the gang’s tactics. Then the inmate slips the guard a few hundred bucks in exchange for bringing him a pack of cigarettes.
“Once that door is open, you find your way in,” said the former inmate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of safety concerns. “It’s a hustle game.”
The gang also recruits relatives, girlfriends and fellow gang members without criminal records to apply for positions as corrections officers to establish a network of operatives within the prison walls, he said.
As many as 80 percent of corrections-officer applicants in the central region, which includes Baltimore, do not make it through the background investigation, said Binetti, the corrections spokesman.
Among those who do, women seem to dominate. More than 60 percent of the corrections officers in Baltimore’s jails are women, Maryland officials estimate. By comparison, women make up 37 percent of the guards in the District, a D.C. Corrections Department spokesman said.
Regardless of the jurisdiction, officials say, all guards receive training on how to deal with the con games they will encounter inside prisons. They are warned how easily a compliment can turn into a favor, which can turn into an obligation.
Jon Galley, a top Maryland corrections official, said he likes to show trainees a copy of a how-to guide, confiscated from an inmate’s cell, that lays out how to win over guards. The two pages of tips include dropping a “kite,” or love note, confessing to the officer that the inmate “felt a connection to her, that she was beautiful.”
James Gondles, executive director of the American Correctional Association, said he has little sympathy for the officers who ignored their training. They knew better.
“If they danced to the fiddler, they’ve got to pay the price,” he said. “And they danced to the fiddler.”
‘He’s a hunk’
After 2009 case, more than $1 million spent on anti-corruption measures; now legislators want investigation.
They danced, prosecutors said, to Tavon White.
Soon after White was born, court records show, his father began serving a life sentence for murder, and his mother struggled with drugs. He was raised largely by his grandparents and lived for a time in McCulloh Homes, a bleak public housing project in West Baltimore, said one family member.
His own troubles began early, court records show. He was expelled from middle school in eighth grade. By 19, he was a convicted murderer who would spend seven years behind bars.
It isn’t clear when his alleged gang ties began. His most recent charge — attempted murder — stems from a fight with one of his “boys” over a cocaine sale in 2009, according to court documents. White was charged with firing four bullets at close range into the man’s ankle, thighs and buttocks.
White, prosecutors said during his trial in December, wanted to make sure there was no doubt about who was in charge.
“Lesson learned: One shot at Tavon White’s ego gets you four in the body,” Assistant State’s Attorney Katie O’Hara told a Baltimore jury as White watched calmly from the defense table.
But White’s attorney, Melissa Phinn, raised doubts about the credibility and consistency of testimony from key witnesses, and the jury deadlocked on the attempted-murder charge. They had done the same in an earlier trial.
Now White is awaiting a third trial, scheduled for June, at the maximum-security North Branch Correctional Institution in Cumberland. Last week, he pleaded not guilty in federal court to racketeering, money-laundering and drug-dealing charges.
What his criminal history doesn’t reveal, a family member said, is the loyal grandson and doting father who attended PTA meetings, accompanied his children to church and took them to Six Flags and Sesame Place. (In January, White called his grandmother Bessie Timmons from the detention center to tick off the due dates of the guards he had impregnated, according to the affidavit.)
In jail, he played chess and read novels, court records show. Between prison stints, he cleaned swimming pools and packed boxes for a moving company. That is what he was doing when he met Danielle Hall at a Wendy’s down the street from McCulloh Homes. The two moved in together and had a daughter, who is now 7.
“Tavon will always be a good guy in my book,” said Hall’s mother, who asked not to be identified by name, because of safety concerns. She said she was floored by the allegations that White was a gang leader at the detention center but not by his appeal to so many of the female corrections officers.
“He’s a hunk,” she said. “He’s got a mean-looking body, a body that’s all that, that says, ‘Catch me if you can.’ ”
‘I’m dirty’
Jennifer Owens had her diamond ring and her flashy cars and the name of the man who had provided them tattooed on her neck, according to the indictment. The 31-year-old corrections officer, who lives in Randallstown, drove around in two Mercedes-Benzes — one black and one white — allegedly financed by the gang leader.
In return, she gave him two children in two years.
“Like really, who the [expletive] does that?” Owens said in an intercepted call to an unidentified woman in October. She called herself dumb but also said, “I don’t regret it.”
After 2009 case, more than $1 million spent on anti-corruption measures; now legislators want investigation.
Several former detention center guards said White could not have run such a large criminal enterprise without the help of higher-ups, tacit or explicit. But none have been implicated.
Maynard, the prison system chief, said that may change. State corrections officials are interviewing everyone to “cleanse” the detention center’s officer ranks. Some people will be polygraphed.
“They need to dig deep” to hold jail managers accountable, said Patrick Moran, president of Maryland Council 3 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the union that represents the corrections officers.
The challenge will be changing the culture of a place where, according to the affidavit, the names of 14 female guards were scrawled on a wall along with the price they allegedly charged for sexual favors: $150.
It is an environment, former corrections officers said, where it is hard to know whom to trust among the keepers and the kept.
When corrections officers report to work, they have to pass through a metal detector and receive a pat-down from a colleague, the affidavit noted. But they could simply wait for a friendly face before bringing in contraband.
At the detention center, corrections officers also had little fear of losing their jobs if they were caught smuggling. In one wiretapped call, an officer told an inmate about getting transferred from the jail to the intake center next door: “It ain’t nothing new. I got moved over there basically because I’m dirty.”
At least one of the 13 officers charged had been accused of gang ties at the detention center before. In 2008, inmate Tashma McFadden sued officer Antonia Allison, 27, for allegedly allowing a group of inmates who belonged to the Bloods to attack him in his cell. McFadden was stabbed 32 times; Allison, who denied having gang ties, remained on the job. Allison could not be reached for comment.
“We let her get a second chance. Why?” asked McFadden, who is no longer incarcerated and settled his suit with Allison. “The average guy in there, we’re not giving him a chance.”
Investigators were told that White and other gang leaders had informal agreements with jail officials: They would reduce violence inside the detention center and, in exchange, officials would “turn a blind eye to contraband smuggling and actively protect White and the [Black Guerilla Family] by warning them of investigations,” according to the affidavit.
One such warning allegedly came from Tiffany Linder, who had worked at Wal-Mart and Panera, her uncle said, before she was hired to be a guard three years ago. Investigators say the pregnant guard alerted White in January that cells were going to be searched.
“I just got a message saying they going to pull a shake-down tonight,” White said in a phone call afterward. “Let me call all these dudes in my phone and let them know.”
He quickly passed along the news to men with nicknames such as Hammer, Fatboy, Ack and Flatline.
An inmate’s legacy
In February, White was transferred out of the detention center. Last week, Maynard moved his office into the warden’s conference room.
On Friday, the prison chief arrived at the detention center at 6:30 a.m. so he could watch the morning shift report to work and go through security. Then Maynard went off to meetings with a leather folder tucked under his arm. Inside were business cards and important papers, including one sheet titled, “Why did this happen?” He said he intends to find out.
“If you have an issue and you fire somebody here or there and move on, you haven’t really solved the problem,” Maynard said. “Exposing ourselves to an internal investigation is risky and difficult, but it was the only way to get at the core problem.”
All 13 corrections officers who are awaiting trial have been suspended without pay. The case against them could take two months to lay out for a jury, prosecutors say.
No matter what happens in court or at the jail in the months to come, one fact remains indisputable: Tavon White ensured his legacy.
Tiffany Linder is due any day.
Peter Hermann and Jennifer Jenkins contributed to this report.
U.S. used severe torture on detainees
SourceMercury News editorial: U.S. used severe torture on detainees
Posted: 05/03/2013 01:00:00 PM PDT
It is indisputable that agents of our government used severe torture techniques on detainees suspected of having terrorist ties. That is the conclusion of a report by an independent panel after an intense, two-year investigation into America's treatment of detainees.
Most of us already figured that was the case, and some -- former Vice President Dick Cheney -- comes to mind -- probably don't care. But to have it confirmed by a credible source is agonizing.
The Constitution Project's Task Force on Detainee Treatment found that the interrogation techniques used were "cruel, inhuman or degrading" and violated U.S. laws as well as international treaties. They ran counter to the values of the Constitution Americans claim to hold sacred.
And despite assertions in the movie "Zero Dark Thirty," the report says little credible information was derived from such techniques, especially as to the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.
The panel acknowledges that it had no subpoena power and that some people claim national security prevents disclosure of what was truly learned. But the task force decided to accept the assertions of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which had access to sensitive documents, and found no connection.
The Constitution Project -- a watchdog group that has been around for about 15 years -- undertook the detainee project because no one else would.
Both President Barack Obama and Congress refused to do so. Obama said it would be "unproductive to look backward" and Congress rejected a proposal by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to investigate.
The report is the opposite of unproductive. An honest self-examination is vital to the very essence of democracy and informs future decisions.
For example, panel extensively examined issues surrounding the infamous U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; whether it should be closed and, if so, what should be done with the detainees who are there. Fortunately, Obama is again raising the topic of closing the prison. We suggest this report as good reading for him and Congress as they move forward.
The lengthy report is nonpartisan, fair and doesn't bash individuals. It notes that while much of the rendition activity was prompted by Sept. 11 fear and occurred during the Bush administration, such practices began in the Clinton administration. It also acknowledges that those who undertook questionable measures did so "as their best efforts to protect their fellow citizens."
The Constitutional Project has no veiled agenda. It is co-chaired by Asa Hutchison, a former Republican congressman who served in the Bush administration, and James Jones, a former Democrat congressman who Camp Delta military-run prison, at the Guantanamo Bay US Naval Base, Cuba. (Brennan Linsley/AP) was chairman of the House Budget Committee and later U.S. ambassador to Mexico. The membership list includes such luminaries as William Sessions, FBI director under three presidents. It conducted on-the-ground fact-finding in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Lithuania, Poland, the United Kingdom and, yes, Guantánamo Bay.
Every American should read the findings. The report is online at www.detaineetaskforce.org.
Former U.S. Rep. Renzi’s corruption trial set
SourceFormer U.S. Rep. Renzi’s corruption trial set
By Dennis Wagner The Republic | azcentral.com Sat May 4, 2013 9:28 PM
Six years after his congressional career ended amid an FBI corruption probe, former U.S. Rep. Rick Renzi is expected to get his day in court with a trial that opens on Tuesday in Tucson.
The three-term Republican House member, who pleaded not guilty, is accused of extortion, fraud, racketeering, money laundering and other crimes involving his insurance business and his conduct as a legislator.
The U.S. District Court case file reveals a web of political intrigue amid a tangle of legal complications. So far, three dozen attorneys have taken part in litigation, which has produced more than 1,145 motions, briefs, responses, judicial rulings and appeals.
Among the mysteries as the trial convenes: Who tipped off federal investigators? Why? What will Renzi’s defense strategy be? And will he take the witness stand?
The defense team declined comment, but it is clear from legal papers that the trial will involve contrasting depictions of the 54-year-old businessman turned politician.
Prosecutors are poised to describe Renzi as a manipulator who embezzled money from business customers, funneled the cash into his election treasury and used his legislative power to profit from an extortion conspiracy.
The defense is geared to present Renzi as a pragmatist whose private and public dealings overlapped but were not criminal; or, perhaps, as the victim of political enemies who dragged him down with help from overzealous federal agents.
Spelling out narratives likely will require more than a month of the trial, dozens of witnesses and tens of thousands of pages of evidence.
“This is just going to be fascinating,” said Mike Black, a Phoenix attorney who briefly represented one of Renzi’s co-defendants. “I might even go down there just to watch.”
Winding through appeals
Renzi was first indicted in February 2008 and eventually faced 49 felony counts.
The charges arise from two sets of allegations that, if true, would constitute a betrayal of the public trust and corruption of the U.S. political system: First, Renzi is accused of defrauding clients at his Patriot Insurance Agency by taking funds that were intended as premiums and using the money to win his first House race in 2002. Second, Renzi is charged with orchestrating a land-swap deal after taking office to benefit a real-estate investor who owed him money.
While it is not unusual for white-collar cases to defy the speedy-trial model of justice, Renzi’s litigation has been particularly glacial due to rare constitutional issues that come with prosecution of a former member of Congress.
Delays included two appeals handled by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and numerous hearings to resolve disputes.
Defense attorneys partially succeeded in efforts to get charges thrown out and evidence suppressed but failed in a bid to disqualify the Justice Department team based on claims of prosecutorial misconduct. Among the pretrial issues that had to be sorted out by U.S. District Judge David Bury:
FBI agents who monitored wiretaps improperly listened to phone calls between Renzi and his attorneys, destroyed their notes and misled a judge about the conversations. Bury found the government’s conduct egregious and suppressed all evidence from electronic surveillance. [Sadly the police routinely act like the criminals they are trying to arrest. When FBI agents and other cops routinely lie in their daily work, how can we possibly expect them to tell the truth in a trial.]
Defense attorneys contended that charges of embezzlement were bogus because, as Renzi’s companies were structured, he merely borrowed money. The Appeals Court agreed.
Perhaps most significantly, defense lawyers contended that all charges related to the land-swap deal should be dropped because a clause in the U.S. Constitution prohibits the criminal investigation of a federal lawmaker for legislative acts.
Under the so-called Speech or Debate Clause, Renzi’s attorneys argued, the Justice Department violated U.S. law not just by wiretapping the congressman, but by interviewing his staffers and obtaining his records.
The constitutional provision was drafted to prevent the executive branch from using its law-enforcement authority as a political weapon against opponents in Congress. Members of the House and Senate are generally immune to criminal prosecution for their legislative conduct.
In this case, House lawyers filed briefs supporting Renzi’s legal position while the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington argued on behalf of the government.
The Speech or Debate question went to the 9th Circuit, which ruled that Renzi’s conduct was not protected.
Still, the issue is likely to resurface during the trial, and House lawyers have asked to remain as players in future courtroom disputes.
Setbacks for prosecutors
The government has suffered a number of setbacks leading up to the trial.
Sixteen counts against Renzi have been dismissed so far, including a tax charge that was thrown out a few weeks ago. Andrew Beardall, Renzi’s lawyer in the insurance case, was acquitted. Dwayne Lequire, the insurance-company accountant, was found guilty but the Appeals Court overturned his verdict and issued an acquittal.
The investigation and prosecution have cost U.S. taxpayers and defendants untold millions. Lequire is now seeking more than $400,000 from the government as compensation for his legal expenses. His attorney, Mark Willimann, said the Justice Department keeps losing in Renzi’s case because prosecutors went “well beyond the realm of decency” in filing charges.
Although the case was launched under the administration of Republican President George W. Bush and former U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton, also a Republican, Willimann said he believes it was orchestrated by Democrats to oust a GOP incumbent.
“This is purely political,” he said. “Renzi did nothing wrong here. ... I think the government is in (cover-up) mode. They’ve got a tiger by the tail, and they didn’t realize the tail was long enough for Mr. Renzi to turn around and bite them.”
A Justice Department spokesman declined comment.
Controversial mine plan
Richard George Renzi, an insurance and real-estate entrepreneur who also owned a southern Arizona vineyard, was elected to Arizona’s 1st Congressional District in 2002, the year he got his law degree. He was viewed as a conservative Catholic with 12 kids and a wide-open political future.
In 2005, Resolution Copper Mining was seeking to trade about 5,000 acres of private property for 2,400 acres of government land near Superior — a parcel containing one of America’s richest remaining copper deposits. Mining plans call for excavation up to 7,000 feet underground to exploit an estimated $61 billion in ore, providing 3,700 jobs.
Such real-estate swaps require congressional approval.
According to prosecutors, Renzi vowed to block legislation unless Resolution purchased and included a 480-acre alfalfa field from business associate James Sandlin, who owed him money. On the other hand, if Sandlin’s property was part of the deal, Renzi ensured approval, according to prosecutors. [If you ask me that sure sounds like a conflict of interest.]
Sandlin, convicted by a Texas jury in 2008 on related charges of filing false financial information, is going to trial on Tuesday with Renzi to face additional charges. His attorney did not respond to an interview request.
The indictment says Resolution balked at Renzi’s extortion attempt. A group of other speculators, including former Arizona governor and ex-Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, then bought Sandlin’s land and agreed to make it part of the exchange, according to the indictment, and Renzi introduced legislation to authorize the deal.
That bill died after FBI agents raided Renzi’s home and news leaked of a possible indictment. It is impossible to say whether the scandal damaged future prospects for the controversial land swap. However, 11 bills have failed in Congress so far, opposed by some conservation groups, the Apache tribe and Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz..
In December, Resolution announced that it was dismissing 400 workers and essentially abandoning the project.
Two months later, Arizona’s congressional delegation offered a 12th version of the land-exchange bill. That, too, appears to be stalled.
Grijalva said he has repeatedly voted against the project because Resolution and its congressional sponsors will not agree to an environmental review and a more careful valuation of the copper reserves before the deal is struck. He said the Superior mine could have severe ecological impacts but would be nearly impossible to stop if land is transferred into private ownership.
Grijalva said Renzi’s trial may bring out more information about the land-exchange deal and the mining company’s role.
“It puts Resolution Copper front and center,” he said. “I think there’s some exposure that’s going to happen. ... And I believe the asset in the ground — the copper — is worth much, much more than the trade we’re getting.”
Grijalva and others said Resolution officials have been portrayed as “white hats” — good guys who blew the whistle on corruption — but Renzi’s defense attorneys likely will challenge their motives and credibility.
“This trial is as much a difficult situation for the company as it is for Renzi,” he said. “The defense is going to be vigorous, and it has to be against the company.”
Resolution Copper has been represented by lobbyist Ron Ober, a longtime Democratic Party operative who once served as chief of staff for former Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz. Ober works with public-relations specialist Troy Corder, a former staffer for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and former Arizona Govs. Fife Symington and Jane Dee Hull.
Neither Ober nor Corder would comment on the Renzi trial or its impact on the planned copper project in Superior.
Jennifer Russo, director of communications at Resolution’s parent company, Rio Tinto Copper Group, said the land-swap bill was affected by Renzi’s controversy while he was in office, but today’s legislation is moving forward with bipartisan support. She emphasized that, in the criminal case, Resolution “did nothing wrong and is a cooperating government witness.”
If a land swap is approved, Russo said, a full environmental report will be completed before mining gets under way.
“We are pleased with the progress being made in the 113th Congress,” she added, “and we are working through all issues and concerns that have been raised.”
Reach the reporter at dennis.wagner@arizonarepublic.com.
Timeline
2001
Republican Rick Renzi runs for Congress. Authorities later allege that he funneled money from insurance clients into his campaign treasury.
2002
Renzi wins election over Democrat George Cordova.
Federal Election Commission orders audit of Renzi campaign finances.
2004
FEC audit says Renzi made $369,000 in “impermissible” loans to his campaign.
Renzi is re-elected, defeating Paul Babbitt.
2005
Resolution Copper begins trying to orchestrate a real-estate swap to obtain copper-rich federal land near Superior.
Authorities allege that Renzi told Resolution that there will be no deal unless property owned by business associate James Sandlin is included. Resolution reportedly balks.
2006
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington names Renzi among 20 “most corrupt” members of Congress.
Department of Justice secretly approves FBI wiretaps and search warrants targeting Renzi.
News leaks of possible indictment.
Renzi is elected to a third term, defeating Ellen Simon.
2007
FBI raids Renzi’s business.
Renzi resigns from House Intelligence Committee, then announces he will not seek a fourth term.
2008
Renzi is indicted on 35 counts.
A superseding indictment lists 49 felonies.
2010
All wiretap evidence is suppressed from Renzi’s future trial due to FBI misconduct.
Judge refuses to disqualify Justice Department team for prosecutorial misconduct.
2011
9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refuses to throw out case based on claims of congressional immunity.
2012
After failure of 11 land-swap bills, Resolution Copper shuts down planned operations near Superior.
2013
Members of Arizona delegation introduce new land-exchange measure.
May 7: Renzi trial scheduled to begin.
Source: U.S. District Court records and Arizona Republic archives
California cities can ban pot shops
Source
State's high court: Calif. cities can ban pot shops
By Lisa Leff Associated Press Mon May 6, 2013 11:13 AM
SAN FRANCISCO — California cities and counties can ban pot shops, the state’s highest court ruled Monday in a unanimous opinion likely to further diminish California’s once-robust medical marijuana industry.
The California Supreme Court said neither the state’s voter-approved law legalizing medical marijuana nor a companion measure adopted by the Legislature prevent local governments from using their land use and zoning powers to prohibit storefront dispensaries.
The ruling came in a legal challenge to a ban enacted by the city of Riverside in 2010.
“While some counties and cities might consider themselves well-suited to accommodating medical marijuana dispensaries, conditions in other communities might lead to the reasonable decision that such facilities within their borders, even if carefully sited, well managed, and closely monitored, would present unacceptable local risks and burdens,” Justice Marvin Baxter wrote for the seven-member court.
The advocacy group Americans for Safe Access estimates another 200 jurisdictions statewide have similar prohibitions on retail pot sales. Many were enacted after the number of retail medical marijuana outlets boomed in Southern California after a 2009 memo from the U.S. Justice Department said prosecuting pot sales would be a low priority.
However, the rush to outlaw pot shops has slowed in the 21 months since the four federal prosecutors in California launched a coordinated crackdown on dispensaries by threatening to seize the property of landlords who lease space to the shops. Hundreds of dispensary operators have since been evicted or closed voluntarily.
Marijuana advocates have argued that allowing local governments to bar dispensaries thwarts the intent of the state’s medical marijuana law — the nation’s first — to make the drug accessible to residents with doctor’s recommendations to use it.
Riverside city lawmakers used their zoning authority to declare storefront pot shops as public nuisances and ban the operations in 2010. The Inland Empire Patient’s Health and Wellness Center, part of the explosion of retail medical marijuana outlets, sued to stop the city from shutting it down.
A number of counties and cities were awaiting the Supreme Court ruling before moving forward with bans of their own.
A mid-level appeals court previously sided with the city of Riverside, but other courts have come to opposite conclusions. Last summer, a trial judge ruled that Riverside County could not close medical marijuana dispensaries in unincorporated areas because the move did not give the shops any room to operate legally under state law.
Meanwhile, an appeals court in Southern California struck down Los Angeles County’s 2-year-old ban on dispensaries, ruling state law allows cooperatives and collectives to grow, store and distribute pot.
The Supreme Court’s decision might not be the last word on the issue, however. Pending legislation would establish a new statewide system for regulating and licensing the medical marijuana industry and clarify the role of dispensaries in it.
Activists also are in the early stages of planning a ballot initiative that would legalize the recreational use of marijuana and regulate it like alcohol, as voters in Washington and Colorado did last year.
How do you spell revenue??? DUI tickets
Cops raised almost a million dollars on the Cinco de Mayo by shaking down people for DUI tickets. With the minimum DUI fine now around $2,000 the 460 arrests over the Cinco de Mayo Sunday means the cops raised a minimum of $920,000 in revenue. Of course when you throw in the fines for extreme DUI the fines probably will easily exceed $1 million.With the ridiculously low limit of .08 a petite 100 pound woman is legally drunk after one beer.
When the crime of DUI was invented the legal limit was .15, which I certainly am drunk at.
Over the years the Federal government bribed the state government with money to lower the legal limit to .10 and then finally .08.
Valley police agencies ramping up DUI enforcement this month
By Jackee Coe The Republic | azcentral.com Mon May 6, 2013 1:32 PM
Police made 460 DUI arrests as part of statewide Cinco de Mayo saturation DUI patrol efforts over an extended holiday weekend, authorities said.
Officers were out in force Wednesday through Sunday night looking for people who chose to drink and drive. Several agencies conducted enforcement in their own cities, and many teamed up on Saturday and Sunday nights for joint task forces across multiple cities, including in Scottsdale and Avondale.
Of the 460 total arrests since Wednesday , 186 came Sunday night and early Monday morning, according to data from the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety. The total also included 67 drug DUI arrests, 53 aggravated DUIs, 148 extreme DUI arrests, which is a blood-alcohol content of 0.15 percent or higher, and 53 people who had prior DUI arrests.
The total arrests were down from last year’s 490 DUI arrests between May 2 and 7, 2012, data shows. The average blood-alcohol content this year was 0.151, compared to 0.145 last year.
Governor’s Office of Highway Safety director Alberto Gutier said the overall decrease in arrests indicates their public education efforts are working.
“The message that we’re trying to put (out) is not that we want to arrest people,” he said. “In fact, less numbers, to us, is a great improvement.”
Police departments have ramped up their DUI enforcement for May in anticipation of festivities celebrating Cinco de Mayo, Memorial Day, and high school and college graduations.
The month kicks off heavier statewide enforcement, funded through the highway safety office, during the summer when students are out of school and people travel to lakes and rivers, have backyard pool parties and barbecues, and celebrate holidays such as the Fourth of July and Labor Day.
The Governor’s Office of Highway Safety provides grants to police agencies that make up 14 DUI task forces statewide to cover overtime costs so officers can participate in DUI enforcement outside of their normal work hours. It also provides grants for training for field sobriety tests, drawing blood and drug recognition, and money for equipment such as motorcycles, speed-detection equipment and alcohol-testing machines.
The office launched a “massive” public-education campaign this weekend to remind people of the dangers of driving impaired and the importance of getting a designated driver, Gutier said. The campaign includes slogans like “Drive hammered, get nailed” displayed on freeway message boards across the state, and TV and radio commercials.
“The big effort is going to start now because of summer coming up and the fact that Memorial Day is exactly where people start doing the fun stuff that they do and then we end up with more tragedies,” he said.
The 1,205 cumulative officers who participated in the enforcements this weekend conducted a total of 6,581 traffic stops for things like DUI, speeding, stop sign violation, running a red light, and other traffic violations. Officers handed out 3,218 citations for non-DUI related traffic violations, 27 child restraint violations and 191 seat belt citations. There were 268 sober designated drivers.
Gutier, who spent time at command posts in Scottsdale and Avondale, said he just wants people to be responsible. He was impressed with how many people he saw using sober designated drivers and taking taxis when they left bars.
While driving through Scottsdale near Camelback and Scottsdale roads Sunday night, he said he was following behind “a bunch of taxis” and saw several groups of people come out of bars and get into taxis.
“That’s the message: Get a designated driver, get a taxi, sleep it off, but don’t get behind the wheel,” Gutier said. “It’s very encouraging to see people heeding the... message.”
Activists say pot ruling raises stakes for L.A. ballot measures
Source
Activists say pot ruling raises stakes for L.A. ballot measures
By Kate Linthicum and Joe Mozingo
May 6, 2013, 1:15 p.m.
A California Supreme Court ruling that cities have the authority to ban all medical marijuana dispensaries within their borders raises the stakes for a ballot measure battle over how Los Angeles should regulate the drug, backers of two measures said Monday.
An attorney for one of the measures says if none of the ballot initiatives pass on May 21, the City Council may revive its previous efforts to ban dispensaries.
“The City Council may be emboldened by the Supreme Court ruling and may seek to prohibit medical marijuana dispensaries all together as they did just a few months back," said Bradley Hertz, who represents the backers of Proposition D, which would allow only the 130 or so dispensaries that opened before a failed 2007 city moratorium on new pot shops.
Last year the council voted to ban the city’s estimated 700 medical pot shops. It later repealed the ban after a group of dispensary supporters collected enough signatures to put a measure on the ballot to overturn it.
Proposition D's supporters include a group of older dispensaries, a labor union of employees who work at those dispensaries and several council members.
An attorney for a competing measure called Proposition D “a Trojan horse” that is designed to shut down most of the city’s dispensaries immediately and then squeeze out the remaining dispensaries through council action and federal drug raids.
Attorney David Welch is supporting Measure F, which would allow unlimited dispensaries so long as they meet certain requirements. He cited a council vote last August that instructed police to work with the federal Drug Enforcement Agency "to deal with medical marijuana collectives." The next month, federal agents raided several pot shops in downtown and Eagle Rock, an area represented by Councilman Jose Huizar, a leading dispensary opponent.
Supporters of Proposition D say the prospect of more federal raids is a concern. But they said that by forcing the majority of the city's dispensaries to close, Proposition D would reduce the nuisance that has helped prompt federal action.
Jane Usher, a special assistant to City Attorney Carmen Trutanich, said if Proposition D passes, the city will not seek to shut down dispensaries that are following the law.
Dispensaries that opened before 2007 would be “immunized and could continue to operate,” Usher said.
She said the proposition “has been sanctioned” by Monday’s court ruling. If the state Supreme Court had ruled that municipalities could not legally ban dispensaries, Proposition D could have been challenged because it would outlaw the majority of the city’s pot shops, she said.
Meanwhile, a medical marijuana advocate said he expects little to change as a result of the ruling.
“This is pretty much what we expected,” said Dale Gieringer, director of the California chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. “There is no definite declaration in California law that dispensaries are permitted. It’s all very indirect and insinuating.”
He said that’s because the task force that came up with the Medical Marijuana Program Act, which was meant to clarify the medical marijuana situation, could not get a consensus on how the drug would be distributed. The law that ultimately passed in 2003 did not permit (nor explicitly prohibit) the type of commercial sales regularly conducted at dispensaries.
“We’re hoping that the state will adopt a state regulation system that will calm local concerns about permitting dispensaries and create clear regulations,” he said. “We’d like to see state regulations like they have in Colorado.”
He does not believe Monday’s ruling will change much. He suspects there will be more bans, but probably in places there are no dispensaries already.
“This has been the de-facto situation for a long time.”
The government did the same thing during it's failed war on booze, which was called the Prohibition. That is how the Feds send bootlegger Al Capone to prison.
Sadly in America, the government ofen will steal all your money if you can't prove you obtained it legally. Which is exactly opposite of the motto of "innocent until proven guilty", which this country was founded on.
Toy company co-owner sentenced for role in drug money laundering
By Adolfo Flores
May 7, 2013, 7:00 a.m.
The co-owner of a City of Industry toy company was sentenced to 14 months in custody for her role in laundering money for Colombian and Mexican drug traffickers in a scheme known as the black market peso exchange.
Dan “Daisy” Xin Li, 44, co-owner of Woody Toys Inc., was sentenced Monday to eight months in prison, followed by six months of home detention. The sentencing for Jia “Gary” Hui Zhou, 44, her husband, was delayed until Jan. 6.
“It appears to be a growing phenomenon,” said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles. Drug traffickers “are using legitimate businesses to launder money as opposed to literally smuggling giant bricks of cash back to Mexico.”
About $3 million, generated from U.S. drug sales, was deposited into the business' bank accounts from 2005 to 2011, according to court documents. The cash deposits of $10,000 or less were made to avoid having to report the funds to federal authorities.
Woody Toys would then purchase merchandise from "legitimate" companies in Colombia and Mexico with the money. The money would be funneled back to drug traffickers, Mrozek said.
Federal prosecutors declined to describe the drug traffickers further, Mrozek said. He declined to say whether cartels were involved.
Woody Toys was “the last 'spoke in the wheel,' that cleaned illicit proceeds and enabled drug trafficking organizations to convert their dirty dollars into clean pesos,” prosecutors said in a sentencing memo.
Zhou and Li pleaded guilty in September to conspiring to structure currency transactions with a U.S. financial institution to avoid filing a currency transaction report. As part of their deal with federal prosecutors, they forfeited $2 million in proceeds they made from the scheme.
Also as part of their deal their company instead of the couple was sentenced in November to five years of probation after pleading guilty to money laundering conspiracy charges involving drug proceeds.
“We always look for ways to interject the money going back to the drug traffickers,” Mrozek said. “You can either seize the drugs coming in or seize the money going back.”
Police officer accidentally shot in leg by fellow cop
By Rosemary Regina Sobol and Adam Sege Tribune reporters
7:33 a.m. CDT, May 7, 2013
A Chicago police officer was shot in the leg by a fellow officer who had fired at a charging dog Monday night in the Englewood neighborhood, authorities said.
The shooting happened about 9 p.m. in the 1200 block of West 72nd Place as Englewood District officers were responding to a call of a burglary in progress, according to a police statement.
Two officers and a supervisor went to the second-floor landing of the building, where they were confronted by a "vicious dog," according to police.
When the dog charged toward them, an officer fired a single shot that struck the dog and also hit another officer in the thigh, according to a police source. It was unclear if the bullet struck the officer or the dog first, the source said.
Paramedics took the 42-year-old officer in good condition to John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County, where he was treated and released, authorities said.
Investigators from the Chicago Independent Police Review Authority responded to the scene, spokesman Larry Merritt said.
chicagobreaking@tribune.com
Next if you are naive as a 3 year old you probably think
San Jose Police officer Sgt. Matthew Christian
was fired and sent to prison for his crimes.
Again don't make me laugh!!!
If you read up on the "9 Step Reid Method" you will discover
it is a modern variation of the old "beat em with a rubber hose"
method used to get confessions by the police.
Only the physical rubber hose is replaced with a "mental rubber hose",
and the physical beating is replaced by a "mental beating".
The "9 Step Reid Method" routinely gets false confessions.
San Jose poised to settle case involving cop and phony lab report
By Tracey Kaplan
tkaplan@mercurynews.com
Posted: 05/06/2013 06:12:00 PM PDT
SAN JOSE -- A local man who was held over for trial on the basis of a phony lab report cooked up by a police officer and presented in court by a prosecutor is poised to win a legal settlement with the city for $150,000.
On Tuesday, the San Jose City Council is expected to approve the settlement with Michael Kerkeles of San Jose. Under the agreement, the city must also pay Kerkeles' legal fees, which could be at least $1 million because the federal civil rights case dragged on for six years and included a hard-fought appeal.
Kerkeles declined to comment, but one of his lawyers said the case has taken a major toll on him. Not only was Kerkeles at work when the sexual assault of a developmentally disabled woman supposedly occurred, the lawyer said, but his wife also was in her home office, steps from where the alleged rape took place.
"It's a significant sum, but Mr. Kerkeles certainly wouldn't trade the money he got for what he went through," lawyer Matt Davis said.
Fake crime report
The evidence that Kerkeles' rights had been violated was bolstered last year when prosecutor Jaime Stringfield admitted she misled the court about the lab report. She was suspended for a month by the state Supreme Court, based on a recommendation by the State Bar, which licenses attorneys. She had already resigned from the District Attorney's Office to pursue a teaching career, but is currently licensed to practice
law.
However, the police officer, Sgt. Matthew Christian, remains on the job and is now assigned to the Traffic Investigations Unit, said SJPD spokesman Albert Morales.
The injustice unfolded after Kerkeles was accused in 2005 of sexually assaulting the developmentally disabled neighbor with the mental acuity of a 7-year-old.
In hopes of extracting a confession, Christian created a "ruse" crime report indicating that Kerkeles' semen had been found on a blanket, while the actual report revealed no semen. Such a tactic is legal -- at that stage of a case.
Kerkeles asked for an attorney, so the report was never actually used as a ruse. Instead, it was presented in court after the District Attorney's Office lost two preliminary hearings in the case.
'Huge mistake'
On both occasions, the judge found the woman was not a competent witness and there was insufficient evidence to hold Kerkeles over for trial on charges.
But at the third preliminary hearing, then-prosecutor Stringfield elicited testimony from officer Christian regarding the contents of the ruse report. The officer's testimony was that semen had been found on the blanket, prompting the court to find there was probable cause to hold Kerkeles over for trial.
"In our view, that was a huge mistake," San Jose City Attorney Rick Doyle said, referring to the presentation of the phony document in court and Sgt. Matthew Christian's testimony about it.
There were several indications that the report was false. For one thing, the officer used a phony name for the crime lab analyst. It was also dated within a day of the evidence being seized -- contrary to normal DNA examinations, which take considerably longer to complete. Stringfield had in her file a real report that did not find semen on the bedspread.
"It's a good number ($150,000) to settle the case for," the city attorney said, "given the (legal) risks."
Contact Tracey Kaplan at 408-278-3482. Follow her at Twitter.com/tkaplanreport.
When a person does their prison time the government should back off an leave them along.
Now "sex offenders" sounds like a really nasty, evil crime, but in Arizona the law says you are a "sex offender" if you have to go to the bathroom really bad and take a leak in an alley. So most of the sex offenders in Arizona, are not the perverts the law makes them out to be. I don't know what the law is in Florida where this article is from.
I wonder how the public would react if the cops decided to post signs in people yards notifying the world that they were dangerous pot smokers or jay walkers.
Home signs warn of presence of predators
Associated Press Tue May 7, 2013 4:42 PM
STARKE, Fla. — Brian Speer thought he had completed all of his obligations when he registered in Bradford County as a convicted sex predator after serving an eight-year prison sentence for child molestation.
But now, in addition to submitting to a public registry for sex offenders, he has a permanent reminder of his crime posted right in his front yard: a bright red sign reading, “Brian Speer is a convicted Sexual Predator and lives at this location.”
The sign is one of 18 the Bradford County Sheriff’s Office erected in mid-April outside the homes of convicted sex predators.
The signs have been praised by many residents in the small rural county southwest of Jacksonville, but some question whether the new measure reaches too far and could be harassment against people who have served jail terms and already submit to the public registry. Neighboring Baker County started a similar program six years ago.
“I think it’s a lot of bull,” said Speer, who was convicted of lewd or lascivious molestation in 2004. “I believe that anybody that has any criminal background should have a sign in front of their house if we have one in front of ours.”
Bradford officials say they are working within the discretion afforded by state statutes, which mandate that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement use the Internet to notify the public of all sexual predators and requires that a sheriff or police chief conduct community notification of a sexual predator’s presence.
It does not specify how that community notification must take place. It traditionally has been done through fliers, print and television media, and websites, but Bradford County Sheriff Gordon Smith thought his office could do more.
The federal Sex Offender and Registration Act, passed in 2006, sets minimum standards for sex offender notification across the country. There is no central database to track how agencies notify residents, but counties and towns in other states have tried sign programs with mixed success. Judges have ordered signs to be posted outside the homes of specific sex offenders in cases in Texas, Louisiana and Oregon.
Sign placement also has been shot down. In 2009, a Kansas appeals court overturned a judge’s order requiring a sex offender to post signs on both his home and vehicle.
In Bradford County, Smith said that when his chief of jails told him about Baker County’s sign program, he jumped at the idea.
Brad Smith, the office’s chief of operations, said the sheriff cleared it with the county attorney. The sheriff then floated the idea on social media in March, with an overwhelmingly positive response, and the first signs were posted April 16.
“We realized it was not only a good idea, but something important to ensure that a consistent notification was being made,” Brad Smith said. He said residents not living in Bradford County when original notifications go out could be unaware of a sexual predator’s presence. With permanent signs, that is less likely.
He also said cost was not an issue: The signs cost $10 each, and inmate labor is used to erect them.
[ie slave labor]
Baker County Sheriff Joey Dobson said he is proud of the new program and happy others are adopting it.
“I know the predators are not real fond of it,” he said. “I understand, but I think it’s important for the community to know where these people live.”
The signs are only for sexual predators, not for all sex offenders, Brad Smith said. Florida defines a sexual predator as someone who has been convicted of a first-degree sex crime such as child molestation or sexual battery or has been convicted of two second-degree sex crimes such as solicitation of a minor or lewd, lascivious, or indecent assault. A judge also can designate a person a sex predator.
Bradford County has 98 registered sex offenders, and 18 were predators at the time the signs were erected.
On the Facebook page for the sheriff’s office, about 1,000 people combined have “liked” a pair of posts about the new signs.
Mike Rowe, 27, recently moved to Bradford County. He said that though he doesn’t have children, he thinks the signs are positive. He said he was “fine with authorities doing whatever they can to notify us where these people live.”
Starke resident Rashonda Green, 26, has three children and lives down the street from sexual predator John Goodman, who has two convictions for lewd and lascivious exhibition. She said that because the community is small, most people were already aware of his status and that the sign was an invasion of privacy.
No one answered the phone at a number listed for Goodman.
“I felt embarrassed for him,” Green said. “It seems like it’s a little too much. Kids living in the neighborhood read (the sign) and are asking questions like ‘What is a sex predator?’ I think he should be able to live in peace at least. It’s a little over the top for me.”
For now, though, the signs aren’t going anywhere.
“If they’re a sexual predator, we’re not going to sugarcoat it or give anybody any preferential treatment,” Brad Smith said. “We’re going to put the sign out there.”
And the FBI is demanding that internet companies provide them with the capability to flush your 4th Amendment rights down the toilet.
U.S. Is Weighing Wide Overhaul of Wiretap Laws
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: May 7, 2013 305 Comments
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, resolving years of internal debate, is on the verge of backing a Federal Bureau of Investigation plan for a sweeping overhaul of surveillance laws that would make it easier to wiretap people who communicate using the Internet rather than by traditional phone services, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.
The F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, has argued that the bureau’s ability to carry out court-approved eavesdropping on suspects is “going dark” as communications technology evolves, and since 2010 has pushed for a legal mandate requiring companies like Facebook and Google to build into their instant-messaging and other such systems a capacity to comply with wiretap orders. That proposal, however, bogged down amid concerns by other agencies, like the Commerce Department, about quashing Silicon Valley innovation.
While the F.B.I.’s original proposal would have required Internet communications services to each build in a wiretapping capacity, the revised one, which must now be reviewed by the White House, focuses on fining companies that do not comply with wiretap orders. The difference, officials say, means that start-ups with a small number of users would have fewer worries about wiretapping issues unless the companies became popular enough to come to the Justice Department’s attention.
Still, the plan is likely to set off a debate over the future of the Internet if the White House submits it to Congress, according to lawyers for technology companies and advocates of Internet privacy and freedom.
“I think the F.B.I.’s proposal would render Internet communications less secure and more vulnerable to hackers and identity thieves,” said Gregory T. Nojeim of the Center for Democracy and Technology. “It would also mean that innovators who want to avoid new and expensive mandates will take their innovations abroad and develop them there, where there aren’t the same mandates.”
Andrew Weissmann, the general counsel of the F.B.I., said in a statement that the proposal was aimed only at preserving law enforcement officials’ longstanding ability to investigate suspected criminals, spies and terrorists subject to a court’s permission.
“This doesn’t create any new legal surveillance authority,” he said. “This always requires a court order. None of the ‘going dark’ solutions would do anything except update the law given means of modern communications.”
A central element of the F.B.I.’s 2010 proposal was to expand the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act — a 1994 law that already requires phone and network carriers to build interception capabilities into their systems — so that it would also cover Internet-based services that allow people to converse. But the bureau has now largely moved away from that one-size-fits-all mandate.
Instead, the new proposal focuses on strengthening wiretap orders issued by judges. Currently, such orders instruct recipients to provide technical assistance to law enforcement agencies, leaving wiggle room for companies to say they tried but could not make the technology work. Under the new proposal, providers could be ordered to comply, and judges could impose fines if they did not. The shift in thinking toward the judicial fines was first reported by The Washington Post, and additional details were described to The New York Times by several officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Under the proposal, officials said, for a company to be eligible for the strictest deadlines and fines — starting at $25,000 a day — it must first have been put on notice that it needed surveillance capabilities, triggering a 30-day period to consult with the government on any technical problems.
Such notice could be the receipt of its first wiretap order or a warning from the attorney general that it might receive a surveillance request in the future, officials said, arguing that most small start-ups would never receive either.
Michael Sussmann, a former Justice Department lawyer who advises communications providers, said that aspect of the plan appeared to be modeled on a British law, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000.
Foreign-based communications services that do business in the United States would be subject to the same procedures, and would be required to have a point of contact on domestic soil who could be served with a wiretap order, officials said.
Albert Gidari Jr., who represents technology companies on law enforcement matters, criticized that proposed procedure. He argued that if the United States started imposing fines on foreign Internet firms, it would encourage other countries, some of which may be looking for political dissidents, to penalize American companies if they refused to turn over users’ information.
“We’ll look a lot more like China than America after this,” Mr. Gidari said.
The expanded fines would also apply to phone and network carriers, like Verizon and AT&T, which are separately subject to the 1994 wiretapping capacity law. The FBI has argued that such companies sometimes roll out system upgrades without making sure that their wiretap capabilities will keep working.
The 1994 law would be expanded to cover peer-to-peer voice-over-Internet protocol, or VoIP — calls between computers that do not connect to the regular phone network. Such services typically do not route data packets through any central hub, making them difficult to intercept.
The F.B.I. has abandoned a component of its original proposal that would have required companies that facilitate the encryption of users’ messages to always have a key to unscramble them if presented with a court order. Critics had charged that such a law would create back doors for hackers. The current proposal would allow services that fully encrypt messages between users to keep operating, officials said.
In November 2010, Mr. Mueller toured Silicon Valley and briefed executives on the proposal as it then existed, urging them not to lobby against it, but the firms have adopted a cautious stance. In February 2011, the F.B.I.’s top lawyer at the time testified about the “going dark” problem at a House hearing, emphasizing that there was no administration proposal yet. Still, several top lawmakers at the hearing expressed skepticism, raising fears about innovation and security.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: May 8, 2013
An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of a former Justice Department lawyer who advises communications providers and commented on one aspect of the F.B.I.’s plan to overhaul surveillance laws. He is Michael Sussmann, not Sussman.
Bill allows state universities to research medical marijuana
By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez The Republic | azcentral.com Tue May 7, 2013 6:35 PM
State universities will be allowed to conduct federally approved research of medical marijuana under legislation signed Tuesday by Gov. Jan Brewer.
Senate Bill 1443 had the support of proponents of medical marijuana, who said universities provide safe places to research the drug and that it is too difficult to perform such research in other locations. The governor's signature is a victory for those proponents, especially Dr. Sue Sisley, a Scottsdale internist in private practice and assistant professor of psychiatry and internal medicine at the University of Arizona.
She plans to study the efficacy of marijuana on combat veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
“This is a triumph for the Arizona scientific community and proves there is the potential that science will win over politics,” Sisley said, adding that Brewer has opened the door to conduct a range of medical marijuana research that could be used nationally and internationally.
A voter-approved law allows patients with certain debilitating medical conditions to use medical marijuana; about 38,000 Arizonans particpate in the program.
President Obama has lied a number of times and said he wasn't going to have his DEA thugs shake down legal medical marijuana dispensaries.
Now Obama's jackbooted DEA thugs are trying to seize the property leased to one of California's oldest medical marijuana.
Feds sue landlord of longtime Berkeley pot dispensary
By Kate Mather
May 8, 2013, 1:17 p.m.
Federal prosecutors have filed a lawsuit attempting to seize property leased to one of California's oldest medical marijuana dispensaries, a rare step in the ongoing battle over who has authority over such facilities.
The forfeiture complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco alleges that Berkeley Patients Group violated federal law by operating a marijuana dispensary, making the property owner subject to seizure of the space.
The suit also says the dispensary is located within 1,000 feet of two preschools.
The 14-year-old facility's website bills it as "one of California's largest and most respected medical cannabis collectives" that has "provided safe access and fair prices to thousands of Northern California patients."
Berkeley Patients Group changed locations last year after its old landlord received a letter threatening seizure for the same reasons, the Oakland Tribune reported. The facility closed its doors in May and moved down the street, where it reopened at its current spot in December.
Berkeley City Council members Darryl Moore and Laurie Capitelli have recommended a resolution opposing the federal government's forfeiture action.
"The U.S. Attorney is ignoring the will of the people and continues to attack licensed dispensaries operating in compliance with all state and local laws," the proposal states. "The U.S. Attorney's current forfeiture action against BPG victimizes its patients, many of them Berkeley residents, who rely on it to provide the medication that they most desperately need."
The suit is similar to one filed last year against Harborside Health Center, the nation's largest pot dispensary, located in Oakland. That case has yet to be resolved.
Supporters of the Berkeley Patients Group planned a news conference Wednesday in Berkeley. The facility's chief operations officer, Sean Luse, said in a statement that "Berkeley Patients Group intends to vigorously defend the rights of its patients to be able to obtain medical cannabis from a responsible, city-licensed dispensary."
News of the lawsuit came days after the California Supreme Court gave local governments authority to zone medical marijuana dispensaries out of existence, in effect upholding bans in about 200 cities.
Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne is one of the government tyrants who is trying to flush Arizona's voter approved medical marijuana law down the toilet. That is Prop 203.
Horne pays $300 traffic ticket tied to probe
By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez The Republic | azcentral.com Wed May 8, 2013 10:54 PM
Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne announced Wednesday that he has settled a traffic ticket that arose as a result of a federal investigation into allegations of campaign-finance violations.
In a statement released by his press secretary, Horne said he paid a $300 fine and reiterated prior comments that the hit-and-run fender-bender last year in a downtown Phoenix parking garage “at most left a paint scratch and no dent.”
[I wonder if the cops would let me go if I claimed the hit and run accident I was in caused almost no damage. Probably not. I guess AG Tom Horne thinks he is special because he is a royal government ruler.]
Records from Phoenix Municipal Court indicate Horne pleaded no contest and will pay a total of $582, which includes the fine plus a surcharge.
[Wow those fine surcharges almost doubled the fine bumping it from $300 to almost $600 or $582 to be exact!]
Horne received a misdemeanor citation alleging that he caused paint damage to the bumper of a parked vehicle during the March 27, 2012, incident that he did not report. The citation was for one count of leaving the scene of a crash with an unattended vehicle, a Class 3 misdemeanor.
Horne had argued that he was being unfairly targeted for prosecution for the fender-bender.
[Why??? Does Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne think elected officials and government bureaucrats should be above the law???]
The accident was witnessed by two FBI agents who were tailing Horne as part of a joint investigation with the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office into the alleged campaign-finance violations. Last week, a county Superior Court judge ruled that the campaign-finance case against Horne and an aide that was due to be heard this week cannot move forward because of legal technicalities and procedural failings by the secretary of state.
The campaign-finance case now goes back for review to the Secretary of State’s Office, which has already determined that reasonable cause exists to believe a campaign-finance violation occurred and can still pursue the case through another prosecutor — after first submitting it to Horne in his role as state attorney general.
The FBI turned the information about the car accident over to the County Attorney’s Office, which referred the matter to the Phoenix Police Department.
Public records obtained by The Arizona Republic from the County Attorney’s Office detail the accident. County attorney’s Detective Mark Stribling wrote a memo in April last year describing how FBI Agents Brian Grehoski and Merv Mason watched the crash and the minutes leading up to it.
Stribling wrote that agents saw Carmen Chenal, a longtime Horne confidante and employee, leave the Attorney General’s Office during lunch hour, get into a borrowed Volkswagen car and drive to a downtown Phoenix parking garage.
Horne then left the office and drove his gold Jaguar into the same garage.
Horne and Chenal then left the garage, with Horne driving the vehicle originally driven by Chenal, Stribling wrote. Chenal was in the passenger seat. Horne was wearing a baseball cap as they drove to Chenal’s home.
After the accident at Chenal’s apartment complex, the Phoenix report states, Horne “stopped for an estimated 10 to 20 seconds.”
“Neither Tom nor Carmen got out or opened the windows to look out to see the damage,” the report said. “Tom pulled away and parked the vehicle in another area of the parking garage, and the two of them walked through the resident gate and went into Carmen’s apartment.”
Authorities concluded that Horne, a married man, did not leave a note so that he could hide a relationship with Chenal.
I guess not.
And I guess it's a lot safer for the cops to hunt down and arrest teenagers who take nude photos of themselves instead of hunting down real criminals like bank robbers and rapists.
Students Face Child Porn Charges in Nude Sexting Scandal
ETIWANDA, Calif. (KTLA) — They are nude self-portraits, taken by teenage girls, now on display in cyber space for everyone to see.
A sophomore boy at Etiwanda High School who tweeted nude pictures of at least four underage girls at nearby Rancho Cucamonga High created more than teenage Twitter drama.
His actions have now led to a criminal investigation.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department is investigating the incident as a suspected case of child pornography.
But it’s not just the teenage boy who tweeted the nude photos who may have committed a felony, according to a department spokesperson.
Any underage girl who takes a nude self-portrait and texts it from her phone is committing the same crime.
Fellow students believe the boy collected the nude pictures from the girls’ ex-boyfriends, then sent them out in order to gain popularity on Twitter.
–Carolyn Costello, KTLA News
Medical marijuana bill clears Illinois Senate committee
By Monique Garcia Tribune reporter
7:41 a.m. CDT, May 9, 2013
SPRINGFIELD --- A key panel of Senate lawmakers advanced legislation Wednesday that would allow patients with certain illnesses to use marijuana to ease their symptoms.
The measure was approved on a 10-5 vote by the Senate Executive Committee despite concerns raised by law enforcement officials that the bill would not prevent medical marijuana card holders from driving while under the influence. [Yea, and with liquor being legal there is nothing to prevent adults from driving under the influence of liquor.]
The proposal has already passed the House. Gov. Pat Quinn has said he is "open minded" to the legislation but must give the matter further review.
Under the bill, a four year pilot program would be established to allow doctors to prescribe patients no more than 2.5 ounces of marijuana over two weeks. Patients would have to buy from one of 60 dispensing centers across the state and could not grow their own.
Sponsoring Sen. Bill Haine, D-Alton, said the rules were the toughest in the nation. A former State's Attorney, Haine promised the bill is "not an opening to legalization" of recreational pot use. [Yea, the law sucks, but it's better then putting people in jail for smoking pot]
Opponents said they acknowledged the relief marijuana could provide but questioned unintended consequences.
The Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police and the Illinois Sheriffs' Association sent a letter to the governor and lawmakers warning the proposal would create a "public safety nightmare" because card holders could "take a toke then take the wheel." [Well then legalized liquor is just as dangerous, because with liquor being legal there is nothing to prevent people from buying a can of beer and drinking it at the wheel]
They argue the legislation should include blood and urine testing to allow police to determine whether a card holder had marijuana in their system while driving.
[Flushing the 4th Amendment down in the process]
Supporters of the legislation contend laws already exist to prosecute anyone who drives under the influence of marijuana while noting that there is no standard to determine a driver's level of impairment.
mcgarcia@tribune.com
Twitter @moniquegarcia
And of course unlike Kyrsten Sinema if these hard working Mexicans help you
score some medical marijuana they won't shake you down for a 300 percent tax.
Poll: undocumented immigrants more popular than Congress
Undocumented immigrants are more popular than Congress. No wonder. They work harder.
A New York Times/CBS poll last month found that a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants is favored by a whopping 83 percent.
What’s more, 56 percent of those who favored a path to citizenship said legal status should be offered while the border is being secured, not after the border is secure. So forget the triggers, Congress.
Or forget the public. That’s more likely.
And people know it.
Only 40 percent of those polled trust Republicans in Congress to make the right decisions about immigration. President Obama inched ahead with 43 percent saying he’d make the right choices on this issue.
Overall, only 17 percent approve of how Congress is doing its job.
Sixty-one percent disapprove of how Democrats in Congress are doing their job, and 69 percent disapprove of how the GOP is handling things.
The public is not pleased.
But the public doesn’t think Congress cares.
Only 9 percent said they think members of Congress are most interested in serving the people. But 85 percent said most members of Congress are more interested in serving special interests.
The public will on immigration reform is quite clear.
But Congress has a long history of ignoring the public will.
People have noticed.
So maybe we should just stop paying Congress. Turn off the lights. Shut down the phones. Let them hitchhike home.
Nothing is likely to get done right anyway.
Arizona medical official resigns, faces license suspension
By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez The Republic | azcentral.com Thu May 9, 2013 6:38 PM
A member of two state medical regulatory boards has resigned, just hours before his colleagues were scheduled to discuss a possible suspension of his naturopathic license because of recent criminal charges against him.
Robert Gear, an appointee of Gov. Jan Brewer, stepped down Wednesday evening from the Arizona Naturopathic Physicians Medical Board and the Arizona Acupuncture Board of Examiners. The naturopathic board voted Thursday to hold a formal hearing to determine whether Gear can keep his license pending the criminal allegations.
Typically, the board suspends licenses if there is a potential public safety risk, said Craig Runbeck, the naturopathic board's executive director.
Gear’s tenure on the naturopathic board was marked with controversy partly because of an investigation by the board into his professional conduct, as well as his public comments about how he would use his ties to the governor and her husband to advance his agenda. His conduct did not sit well with some members of the board, which regulates about 700 licensed naturopaths, who combine traditional and natural medicine. And his conduct became problematic for the Governor’s Office, which oversees appointments to that board and dozens of others.
The governor appointed Gear to the naturopathic board last year and to the chiropractor board in 2009, according to her office.
Brewer’s spokesman, Matthew Benson, would not comment on the resignation.
Nor would Gear. In his letter to Brewer, he wrote he has “enjoyed serving you and the people of the state of Arizona.”
“I am of the opinion the time has arrived for me to step down from these positions,” he wrote.
A grand jury in February indicted Gear on two felony counts stemming from a six-month investigation by the Navajo County Sheriff’s Office into medical marijuana collective Nature’s Harvest, which has offices in Payson and Lakeside. The investigation was dubbed “Cash for Compassion: The World’s Second Oldest Profession.”
Navajo County authorities allege employees were illegally selling medical marijuana, court records show. As part of that probe, Gear was charged with fraudulent schemes and artifices as well as forgery, according to the indictment obtained by The Arizona Republic. The website for Nature’s Harvest once listed Gear, a naturopath and chiropractor, as a consultant.
Jim Molesa, Navajo County sheriff’s chief deputy, said authorities investigated Gear over allegations that he did not ask for medical records from people who sought medical marijuana recommendations.
Gear’s attorney, Kimberly Kent, told naturopathic board members Thursday he did not act illegally or improperly, that patient care was not impacted by his actions and that it would be “wholly inappropriate” to suspend his license.
Kent said the charges against Gear are tied to protocols he uses while certifying patients for medical marijuana and stressed those certifications make up a small portion of his practice. She said Gear is willing to show the board that his protocols “are in strict adherence” with the state’s medical marijuana law.
“There’s no allegation that any patient has been harmed ...There’s no allegation of injury, there’s actually no patient who has complained of any untoward action,” Kent told the board. “There’s no victim, as there sometimes can be in criminal cases.”
Nature’s Harvest is operated by Sheelah Golliglee, whom the governor removed as a public board member from the naturopathic panel last year after The Republic started asking questions about her professional connections to Gear. Board rules forbid public board members such as Golliglee from having any connection to someone in the health field.
Golliglee, has told other media she did not violate the state’s voter-approved medical marijuana law, which allows people with certain medical conditions, including chronic pain, cancer and muscle spasms, to use the drug after obtaining a physician's recommendation.
Gear is scheduled to appear in Navajo Superior Court on May 17.
IRS apologizes for targeting conservative groups
Associated Press Fri May 10, 2013 9:03 AM
WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday.
Organizations were singled out because they included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups.
In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.
“That was wrong. That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. That’s not how we go about selecting cases for further review,” Lerner said at a conference sponsored by the American Bar Association.
“The IRS would like to apologize for that,” she added.
Lerner said the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias. After her talk, she told The AP that no high level IRS officials knew about the practice. She did not say when they found out.
Many conservative groups complained during the election that they were being harassed by the IRS. They accused the agency of frustrating their attempts to become tax exempt by sending them lengthy, intrusive questionnaires.
The forms, which the groups made available at the time, sought information about group members’ political activities, including details of their postings on social networking websites and about family members.
Certain tax-exempt charitable groups can conduct political activities but it cannot be their primary activity.
IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman told Congress in March 2012 that the IRS was not targeting groups based on their political views.
“There’s absolutely no targeting. This is the kind of back and forth that happens to people” who apply for tax-exempt status, Shulman told a House Ways and Means subcommittee.
Shulman was appointed by President George W. Bush. His 6-year term ended in November. President Barack
I suspect the legal system is pretty much the same. It has evolved from serving the people, to serving the judges, lawyers and government bureaucrats that run it.
Posted on May 10, 2013 2:36 pm by Robert Robb
Arias trial: Why does justice take so long and cost so much?
From the political notebook:
* I watched not a minute of the Arias trial. I followed the news about it only casually and haphazardly. It was a cultural phenomenon I was quite happy to just pass me by.
In the aftermath, what strikes my dull mind is the timeline and cost.
Travis Alexander was killed June 4, 2008, four years and 11 months ago. Jodi Arias was arrested for the murder July 15, 2008, four years and nearly 10 months ago. It was another three and a half years before she came to trial. The trial took another 4 months. It cost taxpayers millions.
Did it really require nearly five years and millions of dollars to decide whether Arias did the deed?
[A good example is the OJ trail. Even if OJ was innocent, the legal system is so expensive that it bankrupted him. For poor people who can't afford lawyers, the system usually just railroads them, because they don't have any money for the lawyers to grab]
The Arias trial is, of course, a monumental exception. Most criminal cases are disposed of through assembly-line justice. An overworked prosecutor strikes a plea bargain with an overworked public defender in a case regarding which both have only a passing familiarity.
[I think 99 percent of the criminal cases are done with plea bargains. People cop pleas because they can't afford a lawyer to properly defend themselves. And sadly most of these people were not arrested for real crimes, but for victimless drug war crimes.]
Does justice have to take so long and cost so much? Has it gotten so expensive that we can only afford it as an exception rather than the rule?
The same question plagues the civil justice system, except that there isn’t really an official assembly-line alternative. The civil justice system has become a place where large corporations can settle business disputes and severely injured people can receive compensation. The process is just too expensive and time-consuming for anyone else.
[One way around this is to use binding arbitration, which is offered, not by the government, but by the private sector. And ALL the parties must agree in advance to the conditions.]
So, we now have criminal and civil justice systems that don’t really dispense justice for average Jacks and Jills.
That’s obviously not a good thing. The problem with reform is that doing anything meaningful would probably require rethinking the adversarial ethos that is the heart of the American justice system.
In our system each side gets a lawyer-gladiator who is supposed to do his best, not to ensure that truth emerges, but to get the best result for his side. Public prosecutors are supposed to keep an eye out for justice, but the competitive nature of the process distorts the lens through which that is evaluated.
[That's a lie. Public prosecutors look out for themselves and the government, not the people they pretend to serve. I have posted numerous articles where people were framed by prosecutors who hid evidence that would have set them free. As of now 300+ people have been freed from death row when DNA testing proved they were framed by the police and prosecutors. I suspect that is just the tip of the iceberg]
In the American credo, everyone deserves his day in court, so there is great caution about limiting what the lawyer-gladiators can do. The result, however, is a justice system that is too costly and time-consuming for most people and most disputes.
Someone needs to be thinking about big reforms.
* Congressional Democrats are making a mistake in piling up the political sandbags on Benghazi.
Yes, Republican investigations into Benghazi are politically motivated. It’s Washington, D.C. That’s a given.
Nevertheless, there are three salient questions Republicans are raising:
Was security at the Benghazi consulate negligently neglected?
Could more have been done to save American personnel at the consulate during the attack?
How did a terrorist attack get inaccurately described as a protest over a video gone amuck?
The first two involve the kind of judgment calls for which clear-cut answers are unlikely.
There are always more legitimate requests for resources than there are resources. There’s at least some indication that the Benghazi consulate was partially, and perhaps principally, a CIA cover. There was no firepower close at hand that could have come to the rescue. Whether firepower elsewhere could have arrived in time, and whether it would have been wise to deploy it given the uncertainty on the ground, is speculative.
On the third question, however, things are starting to stink. At this point, it is clear that reporting from Libya and the conclusion of frontline analysts was, from the beginning, that this was a terrorist attack. The false video-protest-gone-amuck description was developed someplace higher up. Where and why are important and unanswered, although answerable, questions.
Congressional Democrats aren’t going to be able to protect the Obama administration on this. And there are risks to them in appearing indifferent to what frontline officials are risking their careers to say.
* The person who was most hurt by the false video-protest-gone-amuck story was U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who was put on all the weekend talk shows to spread it. At the time, she was being profiled to boost her chances to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. Instead, her appearances killed them.
Maybe she should be put in charge of finding out who in the administration decided that was to be the story.
IRS official knew in 2011 that tea party was targeted
Times staff and wire reports
May 11, 2013, 7:55 p.m.
WASHINGTON — A top Internal Revenue Service official knew as early as June 2011 that conservative groups seeking nonprofit status were being singled out for additional scrutiny, raising questions about when senior officials were informed and why the IRS allowed the agency's commissioner to deny the targeting effort in March 2012 testimony before Congress.
The IRS has said the commissioner was not aware of the targeting at the time, but it has not explained why the testimony was never corrected. Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, told reporters Friday that the agency had targeted conservative groups, but she struggled with questions about when she learned of the effort.
A report from the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration, which is expected to be released this week, concluded Lerner had known about the effort, which she acknowledged Friday was "absolutely inappropriate," for almost two years.
Rep. Charles Boustany Jr. (R-La.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee's oversight subcommittee, said the report "raises serious questions as to who at IRS, Treasury and in the administration knew about this, why this practice was allowed to continue for as long as it did, and how widespread it was."
On June 29, 2011, Lerner was told at a meeting that groups with "tea party," "patriot" or "9/12 Project" in their names were being flagged for additional review of their applications for tax-exempt status, according to a section of the inspector general's draft report obtained by the Associated Press. The 9/12 Project was started by conservative TV personality Glenn Beck.
Lerner instructed agents to change the criteria for flagging groups "immediately," the report says.
It wasn't until Jan. 25, 2012, however, that the criteria for flagging which groups to review was changed, the report says.
Efforts to reach Lerner on Saturday were not successful.
Throughout this period, conservative groups complained they were being harassed by the IRS and asked to fill out lengthy, intrusive questionnaires that sought information about donors and about members' political activities.
Several committees in Congress sent letters to IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman to express concern. At a congressional hearing on March 22, 2012, Shulman was adamant: "There's absolutely no targeting."
The IRS has not said when Shulman, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, found out tea party groups were targeted. Shulman's six-year term ended in November.
The IRS said in a statement Saturday that the agency believes the timeline in the report is correct.
"IRS senior leadership was not aware of this level of specific details at the time of the March 2012 hearing," the statement said. "The timeline does not contradict the commissioner's testimony. While exempt-organizations officials knew of the situation earlier, the timeline reflects that IRS senior leadership did not have this level of detail."
The IRS said lower-level staff at its Cincinnati office came up with the plan to flag keywords to deal with a surge in applications for nonprofit status in 2012, an outgrowth of Supreme Court decisions that allowed nonprofit social-welfare organizations, which do not have to disclose their donors, to participate directly in political activities. Those organizations, however, must have social welfare, not political activity, as their primary purpose. The IRS reviews sought to determine the primary purpose of the groups.
In all, about 300 organizations were set aside for additional review, Lerner told reporters on Friday. Of those, she said 75 were singled out because they had "tea party" or "patriot" somewhere in their applications.
Staff writers Lisa Mascaro and Richard Simon contributed to this report.
Say a pack of matches for the explosive part, some toilet paper tissue for the fuse part, and any small section of pipe for the bomb container.
The Feds use a similar broad based definition to arrest people who have parts that could be used to make a machine gun.
I have read that the way the BATF defines it, any car sitting in a junk yard could be defined as having the components needed to make a machine gun, and the owners of the junk yard could be arrested for not purchasing the tax stamp for those machine gun parts.
Of course the Feds probably won't use these laws to arrest everybody, but they certainly can use them to single out political enemies, like members of the Tea Party, the Libertarian Party or NORML and arrest them on trumped up charges of having bombs or machine guns. Not real bombs or machine guns, but bombs or machine guns as defined in Federal law.
I know Laro Nicol was arrested on charges like this because he was making fire crackers for his children. He copped a plea and spent two years in a Federal prison. He wanted to plead innocent, but because he was facing something like 60 years in prison for these trivial charges he decide not to risk spending the rest of his life in prison and copped a plea.
West, Texas, paramedic 'vigorously denies' link to explosion
By Molly Hennessy-Fiske
May 11, 2013, 1:50 p.m.
HOUSTON -- A paramedic arrested for possessing bomb-making materials after he responded to the massive fertilizer plant fire in West, Texas, has denied any connection between the fire and the charges he faces.
Bryce Reed, 31, released a statement through his attorney Saturday saying he "vigorously denies" charges filed against him Friday. He is accused of passing bomb-making materials to a resident in nearby Abbott, Texas, where they were discovered by the West bomb squad on Tuesday, according to a criminal complaint filed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives officials who arrested him.
The complaint detailed the materials found, including a 3.5-inch length of galvanized metal pipe with two galvanized end caps attached, one of which had a 1/8-inch hole drilled in it. There were also canisters containing hobby fuse, a lighter, a digital scale, a plastic spoon and six coils of metal ribbon.
There were also several pounds of chemical powders in individual bags, including potassium nitrate, potassium perchlorate, aluminum powder, red iron oxide, ammonium perchlorate, sulfur powder, air float charcoal and Eckart 10890 German dark aluminum. An ATF chemist and explosives expert confirmed the material could be used to make a bomb.
According to the complaint, Reed "admitted to possessing the components of the pipe bomb." But his attorney told the Los Angeles Times they were still investigating the information detailed in the complaint and that Reed "disputes the allegations."
Reed did not enter a plea when he appeared in Waco federal court on Friday via video conference, and said Saturday he planned to plead not guilty.
"At this point in time, we have not been able to obtain specific information about the extent of the allegations, but Mr. Reed anxiously awaits his day in court and his opportunity to address these allegations," said the statement released to The Times by Reed's Waco-based attorney, Jonathan Sibley.
The Texas Fire Marshal's office is still investigating what caused the April 17 fire and explosion, which killed 14 and injured more than 160 in the town of 2,800, about 76 miles south of Dallas.
On Friday, McLennan County Sheriff's officials and the Texas Department of Public Safety announced that they had opened a criminal investigation into the explosion.
Officials would not say whether they had linked Reed to the blast.
In his Saturday statement, Reed denied causing the explosion.
"Mr. Reed had no involvement whatsoever in the explosion at the West, Texas, fertilizer plant. Mr. Reed was one of the first responders and lost friends, family, and neighbors in that disaster. Mr. Reed is heartbroken for the friends he lost and remains resolute in his desire to assist in the rebuilding of his community," the statement said.
Reed had become a visible figure in West after the disaster, speaking to the media, including The Times, about losing a close friend: firefighter Cyrus Reed, 29, of Abbott, whom he also spoke about at a memorial last month. The paramedic appeared to face criticism and responded on his Facebook page by saying he was not trying to profit from the disaster.
"We ask that Mr. Reed's family, friends, and community not rush to judgment," the Saturday statement said. "Mr. Reed has been through significant hardship in the wake of the disaster in West and he has responded and served his community with honor and strength."
Reed remained at McLennan County Jail without bond Saturday pending a hearing at 2 p.m. Wednesday in Waco, Sibley said. If convicted, Reed could face up to a decade in federal prison and a maximum $250,000 fine.
From this article it sounds like the Scottsdale crime lab is being used to railroad who have been arrested for DUI.
I suspect the Scottsdale police, prosecutors and city council members are more concerned about raising revenue from DUI convictions, then giving people a fair trail.
And if the Scottsdale people lab is used to railroad people for DUI crimes, you would have to suspect it is also being used to railroad people for other crimes.
E-mails point to problems in Scottsdale crime lab
By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Sat May 11, 2013 11:04 PM
Scottsdale police crime-lab scientists and supervisors have spent five months arguing in court that blood-alcohol evidence processed in the lab can be trusted because the equipment works fine.
And if there are occasional errors, there are processes in place to prevent those mistakes before the evidence is sent out, they said.
The deputy county attorney defending the lab’s work made the same arguments to Maricopa County Superior Court Commissioner Jerry Bernstein on Friday during the closing stages of hearings about whether the lab’s blood evidence can be used in a series of drunken-driving cases.
“Not one question came from any of their mouths asking any of their own witnesses if the actual test results in these cases are inaccurate,” Deputy County Attorney Aaron Harder said.
“The state asked every criminalist that did the actual test in these cases, ‘Are these results accurate?’ and every single one of them explained they were.”
But internal e-mails between Scottsdale lab employees and their supervisors that were turned over to The Arizona Republic following a public-records request raise questions about some of those arguments.
The e-mails indicate that a machine in the lab failed a test but was logged as having passed, and results from tests run on the machine were published.
The e-mails also indicate that some employees believed one machine should be taken out of service and revalidated.
Another e-mail shows at least one lab employee mentioned problems with a blood-testing machine to the manufacturer, who wanted to correct the “malfunctioning equipment.”
Court documents indicate Scottsdale police knew for years of potential problems with the pricey blood-testing equipment.
For example, the equipment labeled vials with wrong names or numbers, quit running during tests and erased baseline information from measurements during test runs, according to court documents.
Some DUI attorneys began to notice inconsistencies in the lab’s procedures for handling blood evidence and filed motions to suppress the evidence, which were consolidated in the hearings before Bernstein.
The highly technical hearings have focused on the lab’s circumstantial failures as lawyers hope to convince Bernstein that the lab’s findings cannot be trusted.
If the evidence is disallowed, the lab’s equipment and work could be called into question in other cases, as well. A challenge of DUI-related equipment in the late 1990s resulted in the dismissal of more than 1,500 cases statewide.
The lab’s scientists and supervisors have argued that those errors did not produce enough flawed results to warrant taking the blood-alcohol testing machine, known as a gas chromatograph, out of service.
Joe St. Louis, an attorney working on behalf of the 11 defendants suspected of drunken driving in the consolidated cases, asked Bernstein on Friday where the “tipping point” should have come in the lab.
St. Louis said lab administrators recognized potential problems with the blood-testing machine and should have taken it out of service. But those problems might have never come to light without the work of DUI attorneys.
“We don’t just have this issue with the data, we have the machine not assigning the right names to the vials ... we have incorrect vial numbers,” St. Louis said.
“No one notices this until there is a defense-attorney interview, pointing it out to the analyst ... that is sort of a theme that runs through this. In so much of this, your honor, the quality control in Scottsdale is the defense bar.”
Harder and the lab’s employees have argued that structure of the lab puts scientists and managers in positions to serve as their own quality controls.
The faulty results from the blood-testing machine at the heart of the hearings were caught before they were published, Harder said, and the blood vials were retested to get accurate results. The DUI attorneys’ concerns about bad results being used in criminal cases were exaggerated, he said.
But an e-mail exchange included in the records released to The Republic indicates that test results from faulty equipment were released from the lab’s drug-testing unit. The controlled-substances unit is in a separate area and operates independently from the blood-alcohol lab, according to Scottsdale police.
“Last week, the Varian (gas chromatograph mass spectrometer) failed its weekly autotune check. An entry was made in the log stating that it had passed the check and casework was done using the instrument,” a lab employee wrote to managers on March 21.
“Some of the cases were tech reviewed, admin reviewed and reports were released last week based on results from the improperly functioning equipment.”
Sgt. Mark Clark, a Scottsdale police spokesman, said on Friday that lab managers repaired the 11-year-old drug-testing equipment as soon as the problem was recognized.
The DUI attorneys have also repeatedly hammered the lab for not taking the blood-alcohol testing machine that is prone to errors out of service for a “complete regression test,” as they say the lab’s accreditation requires.
Another e-mail exchange between Scottsdale lab employees in late 2012 discusses demands on the lab and whether administrators can afford to take equipment out of service.
Defense attorneys and their experts have argued that the lab’s caseload can influence the decision-making process when it comes to dealing with ineffective equipment.
A technician had replaced a keyboard on one of the lab’s blood-alcohol testing machines in November 2012 when a lab scientist asked the lab’s manager if any changes in the instrument should require “mini-validation” or full validation of the equipment, according to e-mails.
“Let me ponder this one if I can ... how long can we live with one GC (gas chromatograph) instrument?” the manager asked rhetorically before opining that a full validation might be necessary “in light of the court issues.”
The remainder of the e-mail is redacted.
The production demands on the lab come up in the scientist’s response, where she noted that the lab is getting more than 47 blood-alcohol tests per week, which means the lab needs to run two batches of tests, she wrote.
“In order for the batches to both be out on time they would need two instruments,” she wrote.
On Friday, Harder again scoffed at the notion that the machine was broken.
“It’s a ridiculous statement,” he said. “This instrument is working properly and accurately, and it’s shown over and over again.”
An e-mail that a representative from the machine’s manufacturer wrote to a scientist in May 2012 indicates that not everyone agrees with the prosecutor defending the lab’s work.
“Thank you very much for sharing your concerns about our HS-GC (headspace gas chromatograph) you have in your lab. Let’s work on resolving the issue quickly so you don’t have to face defense attorney’s challenges in court related to our malfunctioning equipment,” the manufacturer’s representative wrote.
Bernstein, who grew weary of the long-running hearings, cut off St. Louis midsentence on Friday when his allotted 15 minutes were up. He gave both sides until mid-July to file written closing arguments.
TSA Dog Bites Woman At Atlanta Airport
10:05 AM, May 11, 2013
Atlanta, GA -- A Rome, GA woman is still recovering after being bitten in the side by a TSA bomb-sniffing dog.
The incident happened on May 2nd in the south terminal baggage claim carousel at Hartsfield-Jackson airport.
Sue Dubitsky told 11Alive News she was standing in the baggage claim area and noticed the K-9 officer and handler standing beside her. She said she was barely paying them any attention when the dog suddenly lunged and bit her in the lower stomach.
According to an Atlanta Police report, Dubitsky was checked out by EMS on the scene however according to EMS first responders "the skin was broken, there was no bleeding and it just looked like a scratch."
But Dubitsky said the injuries were more serious; she said the bite left three cuts, bleeding and a bruise as big as her hand. She sent pictures of her injury to 11Alive.
"I don't remember feeling the cut," Dubitsky said. "I didn't really realize that he had pierced the skin."
Dubitsky said she wanted to speak out to keep this from happening to someone else.
"Can you imagine that [dog's mouth] around a child's neck?" she said. "And that, the height of my waistline, could easily be a child."
TSA provides and trains bomb-sniffing dogs for airport security. The dogs are handled by local law enforcement. In this case, the handler was an Atlanta Police officer.
Atlanta Police and the TSA are investigating the incident.
WXIA
Posted: 5:09 p.m. Friday, May 10, 2013
Explosives-sniffing dog bites woman at airport
By Rhonda Cook
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A Rome woman said Friday an explosives-detection dog working the baggage claim area at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport bit her, unprovoked.
Susan Dubitsky said she and her husband were waiting for her sister to arrive around 4:15 p.m. May 2. As an Atlanta police officer and the dog walked past, the dog bit her on the stomach. A little later, when the officer came back to check on her, Dubitsky said, “the dog tried to come at me another time.
“The dog just didn’t like me,” she said. “It was scary. There was no reason to go after me.”
Dubitsky said EMT’s at the airport treated her hand-size bite wound.
While the dog was working with APD, it is owned by the Transportation Security Administration.
TSA said in an email that is is “working with Atlanta PD to investigate the alleged incident with the canine.”
The dogs are trained by TSA to find explosives.
APD did not respond to an email request for comment.
Dubitsky said she had to have several shots but would not need rabies treatment because paperwork showed the dog has had its shots. The wound has now healed significantly, she said.
“I’m kind of upset about the whole thing,” said Dubitsky. “It shouldn’t have happened.”
So this should bring in $1.3 million in revenue for drug testing firms based on the 13,000 taxi drivers in Arizona.
It also sounds like a violation of the 4th Amendment.
Arizona Taxi drivers now subject to random drug testing
Posted: Wednesday, May 8, 2013 11:31 am
By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services | 3 comments
For the first time ever, drivers of taxi cabs and limousines in Arizona will soon be subject to random drug testing.
Gov. Jan Brewer on Tuesday signed legislation which will require those who own or lease out taxis and other vehicle for hire to screen applicants for drugs at the time they are hired or allowed to lease one of the vehicles. That is on top of an existing requirement for a criminal background check.
And drivers also will be subject to random tests at least once a year.
The measure takes effect later this year.
Kevin Tyne, director of the Department of Weights and Measures, stressed this is not some new government program with the state going out and stopping drivers. Instead, he said it's designed to make the owners of these vehicles more responsible.
But he said it is up to them to decide what to do with that information: Nothing in the new law prohibits a company from hiring or refusing to fire a driver who tests positive. That mirrors the existing laws on background checks, with no prohibition against hiring certain felons.
Tyne said, though, this is a big step for Arizona.
"Nearly every other jurisdiction that regulates and oversees and licenses 'for hire' vehicles like taxis and liveries and limousines have some sort of a basic drug testing requirement,'' he said. "Arizona was noticeably absent in that regard.''
He said many people use taxis and limousines, both local residents and visitors.
"Patrons ought to have some basic sense that the driver has at least been drug tested,'' Tyne said.
The legislation is unrelated to the mishap Saturday where five people riding in a limousine on the San Mateo Bridge south of San Francisco were killed in a fire. The cause of the blaze remains under investigation and there has been no indication at this point that the driver, who also was burned, was in any way responsible.
California officials said it appears the vehicle, which was licensed for eight passengers, had one more than the permitted number. There appears to be no similar laws in Arizona governing how many passengers can be in any particular vehicle.
According to the governor's office, there are 6,449 "for hire'' vehicles in Arizona. But the number of drivers is closer to 13,000.
Tempe gets 1st medical marijuana dispensary
By Weldon B. Johnson The Republic | azcentral.com Sun May 12, 2013 10:46 PM
The name, Harvest of Tempe, on the modest storefront in a south Tempe strip mall might suggest it is home to a food bank or perhaps a fresh-produce shop.
If you make it inside, though, your first impression might be of a secure bank.
That’s just what the owners want. Harvest of Tempe is the southeast Valley’s first medical-marijuana dispensary and is among a handful of dispensaries to open since Arizona voters approved the Medical Marijuana Act in 2010.
To enter, customers must pass through a magnetically locked door controlled from the inside. At that point, they must show their medical-marijuana card and other state-issued identification before they can pass through another locked door to the area where they meet with Harvest employees to discuss the type of marijuana needed.
Bulletproof glass protects the employees who handle money and dispense marijuana. Cameras record each transaction.
There are some samples of marijuana on display in that portion of the facility, but the rest is kept locked in a vault.
A large flat-screen monitor serves as a menu board, informing patients of the varieties of marijuana and edibles — brownies, cookies and candy containing the drug — that are available.
Reinforced concrete pillars have been installed at the rear of the building, at 710 W. Elliot Road, and similar planters have been placed in front to discourage any attempt to ram the facility with a vehicle to gain access.
Cameras cover the parking lots in the rear, side and front of the building, and capture anyone who enters.
The Ariz. law allows for the use of marijuana in the treatment of certain medical conditions, such as cancer or chronic pain.
“We’ve worked hard to make sure it’s not what most people would expect,” said Steve White, a member of the dispensary’s management group. “We’ve worked really hard with (Tempe) and the Police Department.
“We have safety precautions that are unlike any other place you’ll find in the state. We have taken it upon ourselves to create the nicest possible storefront.”
It is too early to know if the dispensary’s presence will lead to additional calls for police service, or if there will be an uptick in crime in the neighborhood.
Online reviews of the dispensary, which opened May 4, have been mostly positive. Randy Taylor, for example, said he loves the place.
“I’ve had my card for about two years,” Taylor said. “I’ve been to some of the caregiver clubs. This is a completely different deal. It’s nice to have a place like this where it’s just a regular transaction.”
Before the first dispensary opened in Glendale last December, more than 35,000 people who hold medical-marijuana cards could obtain the product legally only by growing it themselves or from caregivers who could grow the plants for as many as five patients.
Taylor said he was not comfortable with some of the other places where he’s obtained marijuana.
“Have you ever been to one of those clubs?” Taylor said. “It’s almost like you have to know a secret handshake, or you put money in a basket or you have to take a class. Some of those places in are not-so-nice neighborhoods, too. This place has a nice feel. It feels safe.”
White said that Tempe has placed requirements on its dispensaries beyond what state law mandates. Tempe also approved a facility on the north side of the city that has yet to open.
State law requires that there be only one entrance for customers, even if there is another entrance for employee use in the building. But in Tempe, there can only be one entrance to a dispensary.
As a result, the back door of the Harvest storefront has been removed and bricked over.
Tempe requires that patients accessing the facility be at least 21 years old. The state requirement is 18.
The menu monitor appears to be the only allusion in the facility to the illicit history of marijuana in this country.
Though Harvest employees won’t use words such as “pot” or “weed” to describe marijuana, the menu does contain the colorful names of strains such as AK47, Big Blackberry Rhino and Super Lemon Haze.
White said that some of those names make him cringe, and that Harvest has had to modify or change other names.
“There was a different culture of people who were naming these things at a time when it wasn’t legal,” White said. “So at some times, you’ll get names that will make you go, ‘That’s not going to work here.’ Our objective is to make this a professional, legitimate medical-cannabis dispensary. Having those types of names doesn’t work for us.
“We’ll tell people what they might have heard it called previously, but we really think that does a disservice to what we’re doing.”
So, when someone says that Harvest of Tempe isn’t what he or she expected, the owners take that as a compliment.
“We spent a lot of extra money to ensure we’re compliant with the state, compliant with the city and presented an atmosphere that patients will really like,” White said.
For more information, visit
harvestoftempe.com.
One problem not mentioned here is that because drugs are illegal they are super expensive and are sold at black market prices.
If drugs were legal these pregnant women wouldn't have to pay black market prices for their drugs and would have more of their money available to care for their babies.
Tenn. hospital treats drug-dependent babies
Associated Press Sun May 12, 2013 11:24 AM
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- He’s less than two weeks old, but he shows the telltale signs of a baby agitated and in pain: an open sore on his chin where he’s rubbed the skin raw, along with a scratch on his left check. He suffers from so many tremors that he’s been placed in a special area so nurses can watch him around the clock in case he starts seizing —or worse, stops breathing.
The baby is one of many infants born dependent on drugs. He is being treated at East Tennessee Children’s Hospital in Knoxville, where doctors and nurses are on the front lines fighting the nation’s prescription drug epidemic. Drug abuse in the state is ranked among the nation’s highest, according to some estimates, a fact underscored by the number of children born with signs of drug dependence.
In 2008, East Tennessee Children’s Hospital treated 33 infants at the hospital for drug dependence, known as neonatal abstinence syndrome. Officials there expect that number to skyrocket to 320 this year. Since 2008, the hospital has treated 538 infants who are dependent on drugs. Last year, the hospital treated 283 babies suffering from dependence.
“It blew us away,” Andrew Pressnell, a nurse at the unit, said of the dramatic increase. “We didn’t know what to do.”
In most cases at the hospital, which specializes in treating drug-dependent infants and has shared its methods with other facilities nationwide, mothers had abused prescription painkillers or anti-anxiety medicines while pregnant, including hydrocodone, oxycodone, Xanax and Valium.
States across the U.S. have passed laws to crack down on prescription drug abuse, including in the Appalachian region, where the drugs were easily available as they flowed north from so-called “pill mills” in Florida. Federal authorities have stepped up prosecutions, and states including Kentucky and West Virginia have passed laws in an effort to curb the problem.
Tennessee also is working swiftly to get a hold of the crisis, through both new laws and education about the dangers of abusing drugs while pregnant. It also is believed to be the first state to require all health care facilities to report every instance of a baby born dependent on drugs, according to Tennessee Health Department officials.
The federal government doesn’t track the number of babies born dependent on drugs. And until now, the state could provide only estimates because testing for drugs in a baby’s system can’t always tell whether the infant suffers from dependence.
The state estimates that nearly 1,200 drug-dependent babies have been born in Tennessee in 2010 and 2011, the last two years where data is available. State Health Department records show that drug-dependent babies were hospitalized 55 times in 1999, a figure that increased to 672 in 2011.
Compounding that is the fact that the most recent data shows only Alabama and Oklahoma have higher rates of narcotic use, according to Express Scripts, the nation’s largest pharmacy benefits manager.
The figures nationally are equally sobering: A study published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that more than 13,000 infants were affected across the U.S. in 2009. Tennessee is the first state to track the number of babies born dependent on prescription drugs, said Stephen W. Patrick, a neonatologist at the University of Michigan and one of the authors of the study.
“It’s important for us to understand in as near real time as we can the scope of this epidemic as it relates to babies born dependent on addictive drugs,” Tennessee Department of Health Commissioner John Dreyzehner said.
Dreyzehner, a medical doctor who practiced both occupational and addiction medicine, ordered all medical centers in the state to report every case of drug-dependent newborns.
The prescription drug epidemic that is sweeping the country began in Appalachia, Dreyzehner said, and Tennessee is in crisis because significant portions of the state are in that region. But other states, he said, are now starting to see problems with the babies as the pill epidemic moves outside its epicenters.
Officials have been estimating based on discharge data that showed symptoms that babies suffered while in a hospital. Now they’re going to get real-time data to see how widespread the problem really is in the state.
Part of the solution is better education — the health commissioner is part of a group lobbying the Food and Drug Administration to put a warning on prescription drug bottles of the dangers of taking drugs while pregnant.
The preferred way to treat drug-dependent babies at the Knoxville hospital is by giving them small doses of an opiate and gradually weaning them off, said Dr. John Buchheit, who heads the neonatology unit at East Tennessee Children’s. So every few hours, the staff will give the infants morphine to help them get their symptoms of withdrawal under control. They’ll be weaned off over a period of either days or weeks, Buchheit said. However, there is little research showing the best ways to treat such infants, or how they may be affected long-term.
On average, infants stay at the hospital for about four weeks’ time because they have to be watched so closely.
“The problem is the side effects of morphine,” Buchheit said. “The one we worry about — the biggie — is that it can cause you to stop breathing.”
[And of course that problem is caused by the insane war on drugs which has made heroin illegal. Heroin doesn't have this problem, and reduces pain without suppressing breathing like other opiate drugs do. And of course it is illegal for the hospitals to give the babies heroin, which is safer then morphine]
All that extra care adds up. Figures from TennCare, Tennessee’s Medicaid Program, show that it costs on average $62,973 to treat a baby with NAS compared with $7,763 for the care of an infant who is not dependent.
The influx of cases forced the hospital to develop its own set of protocols for treating infants, and those have been shared with other hospitals nationwide, Buchheit said.
“They have a well-oiled machine,” said Patrick, one of the authors of the national study, said of the Knoxville hospital unit.
And it has to be: Roughly half of the neonatal unit’s 49 infants are being treated for drug dependence. For those infants, the pain can be excruciating. The doctors and nurses who treat them say the babies can suffer from nausea, vomiting, severe stomach cramps and diarrhea.
“Diarrhea so bad that their bottoms will turn red like somebody has dipped them in scalding water and blistered and bled,” said Carla Saunders, a neonatal nurse practitioner who helps coordinate the treatment at the children’s hospital.
They have trouble eating, sleeping and in the worst cases suffer from seizures. Many suffer from skin conditions and tremors. Nurses place mittens on their hands because the babies get so agitated that they constantly scratch and rub their faces.
And they are inconsolable.
A small army of volunteers called “cuddlers” help the staff by holding the infants, rocking them and helping them ride out their symptoms.
Many of the babies have private, dark rooms with high-tech rocking machines to keep them calm.
Bob Woodruff, one of the 57 cuddlers the hospital relies on, gently rocks Liam, a 10-day old infant who was born drug-dependent. Liam sleeps soundly in the 71-year-old retired University of Tennessee professor’s arms. Woodruff moves from room to room, wherever he’s needed. He’ll swaddle the babies tightly, walk with them if it seems to settle them down or just let them feel a loving touch.
Woodruff, a grandfather who said he loves babies, wanted to do some volunteer work after he retired. “It’s very satisfying,” he said. “A big reason why I do it is because I believe it’s helping the babies.”
It is impossible to be unmoved by these infants, said Saunders, the neonatal nurse practitioner.
“If there is anything that could drive the people in our society to stop turning their heads to adult addiction,” she said, “it’s going to be the babies.”
Pot lobby’s talking points masking hidden dangers
By Ed Gogek My Turn Sat May 11, 2013 6:58 PM
A recent Liberty Mutual survey found that most teenagers believe they drive better, or at least no worse, high on marijuana. Research shows the opposite, that smoking pot impairs driving and can be as deadly behind the wheel as alcohol, but teens don’t read scientific journals.
[I think the survey found SOME teenagers think they can drive better after smoking pot, not MOST teenagers. But hey, who needs to stick to the facts when you are demonizing drugs.]
Apparently, neither do the pundits who repeat pro-marijuana talking points even when those points have been proved wrong.
The latest is syndicated columnist Froma Harrop, proclaiming legalization will boost state-tax revenue (“Marijuana sales sprouting taxes, savings for Colo.,” Opinions, April 30).
The marijuana lobby sold legalization to Colorado and Washington state with this same promise, that taxes on pot would fill state coffers and fund education. But experts now say legalization will cost those states money.
A study by the Colorado Futures Center, a Colorado State University think tank, concluded that “the costs of regulating recreational marijuana — plus possible extra costs for law enforcement, public health and human services — may exceed the tax revenue from the recreational marijuana industry.”
No one should be surprised.
According to a Rand Corp. report, taxes on alcohol cover less than 10 percent of alcohol’s cost to society.
Why would pot be different?
[Because there are major differences between the two drugs.
Alcohol is probably the second most destructive drug on the planet following tobacco.
Every year millions of people die from tobacco and alcohol related illness.
Of course year in and year out there are a big ZERO documented deaths
caused from using marijuana.
If the costs to the taxpayers were a reason to outlaw drugs,
liquor and tobacco would be the first drugs outlawed.]
Harrop also says states will save money spent on arrests,
prosecutions and incarcerations of pot smokers —
another pot lobby talking point that’s also untrue.
This should be obvious; police in America don’t go looking for pot smokers. They almost always find pot when arresting someone for another crime.
Three-fourths of all prison inmates are substance abusers, according to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, and many smoke pot. But most of them got arrested for crimes they committed because they were drunk or high, and that includes violent and property crimes. Even if drugs were legal, they’d still be in prison.
[That's like saying mothers milk causes crime and that because 99.9 percent of the people in prison drank mothers milk when they were babies]
Selling drugs gets people locked up, too, but possession — almost never. According to the Arizona Sentencing Report, fewer than 100 of Arizona’s 40,000 inmates are in prison solely for drug possession, and most of those pleaded down from a more serious charge. [yea, and that is 100 too many people in Arizona's prisons for victimless drug war crimes]
Besides, history shows that when drugs are legal, use and abuse increase. Since drug abuse causes most crime, legalization would actually increase criminal-justice costs.
[Wrong, it's not drug abuse that cause crime, it's the laws criminalizing drug use that cause crime. Legalize drugs and all these victimless crimes will disappear overnight!]
The marijuana lobby position that legalization will keep pot out of the hands of kids is equally wrong. Kids have no trouble getting legal alcohol. And data from the National Survey of Drug Use and Health shows teen marijuana use is 30 percent higher in “medical” marijuana states.
[Yea so what!!! Today despite the fact that marijuana is illegal, kids can still get marijuana easier then they can get liquor. So the bottom line is that the laws making marijuana illegal don't keep children from obtaining or using marijuana or any other drugs]
America has the choice between legalizing drugs, which would promote drug abuse and cost states money, or maintaining tough drug laws, which prevent crime and protect the next generation. The marijuana lobby is on one side of this debate. Good research is on the other.
[Again drugs don't cause crime!! The laws against drugs cause crime. And just because something is "legal" doesn't mean society promotes it's use. While alchol and tobacco are both "legal" drugs, society doesn't encourage people to be drunks are tobacco addicts]
Ed Gogek is an addiction psychiatrist and board member of Keep AZ Drug Free, a group that opposes drug legalization and medical-marijuana laws.
I wonder if the IRS also singled out groups for harassment that are critical of the "war on drugs" like NORML and the Libertarian Party??? And of course atheist groups who demand that the government honor the First Amendment and not mix religion and government.
IRS targeted groups critical of government, documents from agency probe show
By Juliet Eilperin, Published: May 12
At various points over the past two years, Internal Revenue Service officials singled out for scrutiny not only groups with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names but also nonprofit groups that criticized the government and sought to educate Americans about the U.S. Constitution, according to documents in an audit conducted by the agency’s inspector general.
The documents, obtained by The Washington Post from a congressional aide with knowledge of the findings, show that the IRS field office in charge of evaluating applications for tax-exempt status decided to focus on groups making statements that “criticize how the country is being run” and those that were involved in educating Americans “on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.”
The staffers in the Cincinnati field office were making high-level decisions on how to evaluate the groups because a decade ago the IRS assigned all applications to that unit. The IRS also eliminated an automatic after-the-fact review process Washington used to conduct such determinations.
Marcus Owens, who oversaw tax-exempt groups at the IRS between 1990 and 1999, said that delegation “carries with it a risk” because the Cincinnati office “isn’t as plugged into what’s [politically] sensitive as Washington.”
Owens, now with the firm Caplin & Drysdale, said that before the agency’s most recent reorganization, it had a series of “tripwires in place” that could catch unfair targeting, including the fact that the IRS identified its criteria for special scrutiny in a public manual.
“There’s no longer that safety valve, and as a result, the IRS has been rolling the dice ever since,” said Owens, who worked at the agency for nearly a quarter-century and now represents some organizations seeking tax-exempt status.
The IRS came under withering attack from GOP lawmakers Sunday. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a moderate Republican, described the practice as “absolutely chilling” and called on President Obama to condemn the effort.
“This is truly outrageous,” she said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” adding that even though White House spokesman Jay Carney has said the matter deserves an investigation, “the president needs to make crystal clear that this is totally unacceptable in America.”
In March 2012, then-IRS Commissioner Douglas H. Shulman, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, told Congress that the agency was not targeting conservative groups. On Sunday, the agency declined to answer questions about whether senior officials asked IRS exempt organizations division chief Lois G. Lerner and her staff in Cincinnati about this heightened scrutiny before testifying it did not take place.
“There has to be accountability for the people who did it,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” adding: “And, quite frankly, up until a few days ago, there’s got to be accountability for people who were telling lies about it being done.”
The appendix of the inspector general’s report — which was requested by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and has yet to be publicly released — chronicles the extent to which the IRS’s exempt organizations division kept redefining what sort of “social welfare” groups it should single out for extra attention since the 2010 Supreme Court ruling Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. That decision allowed corporations and labor unions to raise and spend unlimited sums on elections as well as register for tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, as long as their “primary purpose” was not targeting electoral candidates.
The number of political groups applying for tax-exempt status more than doubled in the wake of the Citizens United ruling, forcing agency officials to make a slew of determinations despite uncertainty about the category’s ambiguous definition.
Of the 298 groups selected for special scrutiny, according to the congressional aide, 72 had “tea party” in their title, 13 had “patriot” and 11 had “9/12.” Lerner, who apologized Friday for the targeting of such groups, described it as a misguided effort to deal with a flood of applications for tax-exempt status. She did not release the names of the groups.
On June 29, 2011, according to the documents, IRS staffers held a briefing with Lerner in which they described giving special attention to instances where “statements in the case file criticize how the country is being run.” She raised an objection, and the agency adopted a more general set of standards. Lerner, who is a Democrat, is not a political appointee.
But six months later, the IRS applied a new political test to social welfare groups, the document says. On Jan. 15, 2012, the agency decided to look at “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform movement,” according to the appendix in the IG’s report.
The agency did not appear to adopt a more neutral test for 501(c)(4) groups until May 17, 2012, according to the timeline in the report. At that point, the IRS again updated its criteria to focus on “organizations with indicators of significant amounts of political campaign intervention (raising questions as to exempt purpose and/or excess private benefit.)”
Campaign reform groups have been pressing the IRS for several years to conduct greater oversight of nonprofits formed in the wake of the Citizens United case, given that many have become heavily involved in elections. “But this isn’t the type of enforcement we want,” said Paul Ryan, a senior counsel at the Campaign Legal Center. “We want nonpartisan, non-biased enforcement.”
Loyola Law School professor Ellen Aprill, who specializes in tax law, said any groups that have applied for tax-exempt status has “opened themselves up to scrutiny” by the IRS. “It’s part of their job to look for organizations that may be more likely to have too much campaign intervention,” she said. “But it is important to try to make these criteria as politically neutral as possible.”
Aprill said one of the problems is the agency’s top officials have not provided clear enough guidelines on what constitutes too much political activity for a social welfare group because it’s been “a hot potato,” and that now with this new controversy, “it’s going to make it even more difficult to do so.”
Toby Marie Walker, president of the Waco Tea Party, said the IRS subjected her group to a series of unreasonable requests after it applied for tax-exempt status in June 2010. The requests came in early 2012, Walker said, after being initially informed by an official in the Cincinnati field office that he was “sitting on a stack of tea party applications and they were awaiting word from higher-ups as to how to process them.”
The agency asked the group’s treasurer to supply information on its “close relationship” with current candidates and elected officials as well as future candidates, along with detailed information about its contributors and members. It also asked for transcripts of any radio interviews its officials had done and hard copies of any news articles mentioning them.
“That would take me years to do,” Walker said, noting that in some cases, Chinese media outlets referred to her organization. “Am I responsible for every news article across the globe?”
The group had even more difficulty providing transcripts and details of speakers at its events, since they hosted informal gatherings such as “rant contests” where anyone could come and express their views.
While the IRS awarded the Waco Tea Party tax-exempt status about six weeks ago, Walker said the group was now considering suing the agency since the process not only consumed time and effort but prompted the group to scale back its 2012 get-out-the-vote operation. “We were afraid to do it and get in trouble,” she said.
Sal Russo, chief strategist for the Tea Party Express, said that even though the agency’s actions intimidated tea party adherents, he gives the IRS “credit for standing up and admitting” it targeted them. And while only two of the agency’s officials — the commissioner and the chief counsel — are political appointees, Russo said the administration needs to conduct better oversight.
“The culture is set at the top,” Russo said. “Obviously you can’t control what every employee does. But you have to set a standard, particularly with the IRS, to be squeaky clean.”
Josh Hicks and Julie Tate contributed to this report.
Discuss this topic and other political issues in the politics discussion forums.
Playing politics with tax records
By Editorial Board, Published: May 10
A BEDROCK principle of U.S. democracy is that the coercive powers of government are never used for partisan purpose. The law is blind to political viewpoint, and so are its enforcers, most especially the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service. Any violation of this principle threatens the trust and the voluntary cooperation of citizens upon which this democracy depends.
So it was appalling to learn Friday that the IRS had improperly targeted conservative groups for scrutiny. It was almost as disturbing that President Obama and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew have not personally apologized to the American people and promised a full investigation.
“Mistakes were made,” the agency said in a statement. IRS official Lois Lerner explained that staffers used a “shortcut” to sort through a large number of applications from groups seeking tax-exempt status, highlighting organizations with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names. The IRS insisted emphatically that partisanship had nothing to do with it. However, it seems that groups with “progressive” in their titles did not receive the same scrutiny.
If it was not partisanship, was it incompetence? Stupidity, on a breathtaking scale? At this point, the IRS has lost any standing to determine and report on what exactly happened. Certainly Congress will investigate, as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) promised. Mr. Obama also should guarantee an unimpeachably independent inquiry.
One line of questioning should focus on how the IRS’s procedures failed to catch this “shortcut” before its employees began using it. Another should center on how this misguided practice came to light, and on what the IRS planned and plans to do about it. Ms. Lerner was responding to a question when the news first came out; it’s not clear whether the government intended otherwise to disclose what had happened. Nor have officials been clear whether disciplinary measures have been taken.
Did some officials hope never to reveal this wrongdoing? Did others hope it could quickly get lost in the weekend news cycle? Misguided, if so. We hope to hear Democratic leaders as well as Republican ones loudly saying so.
The agency said that it now has rules in place to make sure this sort of thing never happens again. How could such basic safeguards not have existed in the first place? And what are the new rules? In response to our questions, officials did not say.
Thankfully, it’s a safe bet that the decision on whether to answer such questions won’t rest solely with the agency for much longer.
Lingering questions about the IRS targeting of conservative groups
By Josh Hicks, Published: May 13, 2013 at 6:00 am
The Internal Revenue Service left Washington abuzz over the weekend with a Friday admission that it singled out conservative groups for special scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status during the 2012 election cycle.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) is expected to release a report on the matter sometime this week, with the findings based on an audit the agency conducted at the request of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The Washington Post and other media outlets have obtained details of that report, but many questions remain about the targeting actions. We’ll get to those below, but first let’s review a few things about this development.
Lois G. Lerner, who heads the IRS division that reviews tax-exemption applications, has described the targeting efforts as an “absolutely inappropriate” means of dealing with the high volume of applications after the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court decision, which allowed corporations and labor unions to raise and spend unlimited sums, as well as to register for tax-exempt status as long as their “primary purpose” was not political.
Documents obtained from the upcoming report show that Lerner’s division repeatedly redefined what types of groups it should single out for special scrutiny.
The targeting of conservative groups started around March of 2010, according to the audit documents. But Lerner, a Democrat, “instructed that the criteria be immediately revised” after a briefing on the matter in late June of 2011.
The IRS adopted a more generic set of standards the next month, but it changed the criteria again in January 2012, deciding to look at “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform movement,” according to the audit documents.
In May 2012, the agency finally settled on a more neutral standard, targeting groups “with indicators of significant amounts of political campaign intervention,” the documents said.
The Washington Post has created a timeline to show how the search criteria changed and what IRS officials told Congress at various times.
Now for those lingering questions.
How high did this go?
No media outlets have provided an answer yet as to whether anyone in the White House or the Treasury Department, which oversees the IRS, knew about the targeting.
The White House has simply said it supports more formal investigations and disciplinary action, if necessary. Lerner has stated that she did not contact the Obama administration about the matter.
Did the IRS target liberal groups as well?
Documents from the inspector general’s report show that the IRS singled out groups with names containing “tea party,” “patriot,” and “9/12 Project,” as well as nonprofit organizations that criticized the government and sought to educate Americans about the U.S. Constitution. (9/12 Project was founded by right-wing political commentator Glenn Beck).
Those search criteria match the profile of conservative groups that were active during the 2012 election, but the latter two don’t necessarily rule out liberal organizations. For example, the left-leaning group Patriot Majority could have raised a flag, either by accident or deliberately.
The IRS targeted 298 groups for special scrutiny, according to a congressional aide with knowledge of the report. Seventy-two had “tea party” in their title, while 13 had “patriot” and 11 had “9/12,” the aide said.
The audit documents do not expressly state whether the IRS targeted liberal applicants, but it’s possible.
Why didn’t officials acknowledge targeting when lawmakers inquired?
At least three House Republicans asked the IRS about its policies toward reviewing tax-exemption applications after complaints that the agency was singling out conservative groups for intense scrutiny.
Darrel Issa (R-Calif.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) sent queries to Lerner from the Oversight and Government Reform committee, while Charles Boustany (R-La.), a member of the Ways and Means committee, demanded answers from the IRS.
On March 27, 2012, Issa and Jordan asked Lerner how the IRS selected groups for special scrutiny and which organizations were chosen.
Lerner’s reply didn’t mention the targeting of conservative groups — even though the audit documents show she knew about it by then — or name any entities that the IRS had singled out. Instead, she said identifying the targeted applicants that were ultimately approved would require additional work — a “manual review of each file” — and that IRS code prohibited her from providing information about groups that were not approved.
A timeline provided by the Ways and Means committee indicates that the IRS made no mention of targeting conservative groups in five separate responses to inquiries by Boustany.
Did the IRS commissioner talk to Lerner before testifying to Congress?
The Washington Post posed this question to the IRS, but the agency did not respond. Why does it matter?
In March 2012, IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman testified on this issue before a House Ways and Means subcommittee, adamantly denying that the IRS singled out groups for special scrutiny. “There’s absolutely no targeting,” he said. “This is the kind of back and forth that happens to people [who apply for tax-exempt status.]”
That testimony came nearly 10 months after Lerner instructed her division to change its search criteria. Had Shulman consulted her, he might have known about the agency’s targeting — assuming Lerner would not withhold that information.
For more federal news, visit The Federal Eye, The Fed Page and Post Politics. To connect with Josh Hicks, follow his Twitter feed, friend his Facebook page or e-mail josh.hicks@washpost.com. E-mail federalworker@washpost.com with news tips and other suggestions.
Government obtains wide AP phone records in probe
By Mark Sherman Associated Press Mon May 13, 2013 2:10 PM
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for the Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news.
The records obtained by the Justice Department listed incoming and outgoing calls, and the duration of each call, for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP.
In all, the government seized those records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown but more than 100 journalists work in the offices whose phone records were targeted on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.
In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies.
"There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of the Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP's newsgathering operations, and disclose information about AP's activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know," Pruitt said.
The government would not say why it sought the records. U.S. officials have previously said in public testimony that the U.S. attorney in Washington is conducting a criminal investigation into who may have leaked information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP story about a foiled terror plot. The story disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al-Qaeda plot in the spring of 2012 to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the United States.
In testimony in February, CIA Director John Brennan noted that the FBI had questioned him about whether he was AP's source, which he denied. He called the release of the information to the media about the terror plot an "unauthorized and dangerous disclosure of classified information."
Prosecutors have sought phone records from reporters before, but the seizure of records from such a wide array of AP offices, including general AP switchboards numbers and an office-wide shared fax line, is unusual and largely unprecedented.
In the letter notifying the AP received Friday, the Justice Department offered no explanation for the seizure, according to Pruitt's letter and attorneys for the AP. The records were presumably obtained from phone companies earlier this year although the government letter did not explain that. None of the information provided by the government to the AP suggested the actual phone conversations were monitored.
Among those whose phone numbers were obtained were five reporters and an editor who were involved in the May 7, 2012 story.
The Obama administration has aggressively investigated disclosures of classified information to the media and has brought six cases against people suspected of leaking classified information, more than under all previous presidents combined.
Justice Department published rules require that subpoenas of records from news organizations must be personally approved by the attorney general but it was not known if that happened in this case. The letter notifying AP that its phone records had been obtained though subpoenas was sent Friday by Ronald Machen, the U.S. attorney in Washington.
Spokesmen in Machen's office and at the Justice Department had no immediate comment on Monday.
The Justice Department lays out strict rules for efforts to get phone records from news organizations. A subpoena can only be considered after "all reasonable attempts" have been made to get the same information from other sources, the rules say. It was unclear what other steps, in total, the Justice Department has taken to get information in the case.
A subpoena to the media must be "as narrowly drawn as possible" and "should be directed at relevant information regarding a limited subject matter and should cover a reasonably limited time period," according to the rules.
The reason for these constraints, the department says, is to avoid actions that "might impair the news gathering function" because the government recognizes that "freedom of the press can be no broader than the freedom of reporters to investigate and report the news."
News organizations normally are notified in advance that the government wants phone records and enter into negotiations over the desired information. In this case, however, the government, in its letter to the AP, cited an exemption to those rules that holds that prior notification can be waived if such notice, in the exemption's wording, might "pose a substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation."
It is unknown whether a judge or a grand jury signed off on the subpoenas.
The May 7, 2012, AP story that disclosed details of the CIA operation in Yemen to stop an airliner bomb plot occurred around the one-year anniversary of the May 2, 2011, killing of Osama bin Laden.
The plot was significant because the White House had told the public it had "no credible information that terrorist organizations, including al-Qaida, are plotting attacks in the U.S. to coincide with the (May 2) anniversary of bin Laden's death."
The AP delayed reporting the story at the request of government officials who said it would jeopardize national security. Once government officials said those concerns were allayed, the AP disclosed the plot because officials said it no longer endangered national security. The Obama administration, however, continued to request that the story be held until the administration could make an official announcement.
The May 7 story was written by reporters Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman with contributions from reporters Kimberly Dozier, Eileen Sullivan and Alan Fram. They and their editor, Ted Bridis, were among the journalists whose April-May 2012 phone records were seized by the government.
Brennan talked about the AP story and leaks investigation in written testimony to the Senate. "The irresponsible and damaging leak of classified information was made ... when someone informed the Associated Press that the U.S. Government had intercepted an IED (improvised explosive device) that was supposed to be used in an attack and that the U.S. Government currently had that IED in its possession and was analyzing it," he said.
He also defended the White House's plan to discuss the plot immediately afterward. "Once someone leaked information about interdiction of the IED and that the IED was actually in our possession, it was imperative to inform the American people consistent with Government policy that there was never any danger to the American people associated with this al-Qa'ida plot," Brennan told senators.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Remember the police are experts at questioning people and do it day in and day out, and become experts at manipulating people. Many of the questions the police ask are rigged and any answer you give will be an admission of guilt, which can be used to arrest you.
Susan Sanchez who is a Maricopa County public defender told us about how the cops rig the questions they ask people suspected of drunk driving at the "Know your rights forums" she used to give for Phoenix Copwatch.
The cops ask people how drunk they are on a scale of one to ten. A person who has only had one beer or drink will answer "one".
And of course that is admitting you are legally drunk because under Arizona law ANY amount of liquor which impairs your driving ability is considered to make you guilty of the crime of DUI.
Of course the only way to answer the question is to say an answer that officer friendly doesn't give you when he asks the question, which is the answer of ZERO.
Remember the cop doesn't ask you how drunk you are on a scale of zero to 10, he asks how drunk you are on a scale of 1 to ten, because if you give him the answer he asked for that is all it takes for him to tell a jury you admitted to driving drunk.
Of course this all sounds like bullsh*t and it is bullsh*t, but when a jury hears the cop say that you admitted to being drunk when he questioned you, that will almost certainly cause the jury to convict you. And even if it doesn't it is going to cause your lawyer to do a lot of work to undo the damage you cause by telling the cop you were drunk.
So remember just say NO to any and all police questioning.
Last but not least, I wouldn't put it past the TSA thugs to have framed this guy by ripping out a page of his passport to use as a lame excuse to arrest the guy.
Saudi traveler with pressure cooker arrested at Detroit airport
By Tresa Baldas Detroit Free Press Mon May 13, 2013 12:48 PM
DETROIT -- Federal agents arrested a suspicious traveler with an altered Saudi Arabian passport at Detroit Metro Airport over the weekend after discovering a pressure cooker in his luggage.
According to a criminal complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court, the passenger, Hussain Al Khawahir arrived Friday at the Detroit airport from Saudi Arabia via Amersterdam. He had a visa and a Saudi Arabian passport and told officers in the baggage control area that he would be visiting his nephew at the University of Toledo, the complaint said.
In the baggage area, two customs officers interviewed the passenger and noticed a page had been removed from the man’s passport, the complaint said.
The man said he did not know how the page was removed and stated that the passport was locked in a box that only he, his wife and three minor children had access to in his home, the complaint said. His hometown was not listed in court documents.
While at the airport, customs and border officials also examined his luggage and found a pressure cooker inside. When questioned about it, the man initially said that he brought the pressure cooker for his nephew because pressure cookers are not sold in Saudi Arabia, the complaint said. The man then changed his story and admitted his nephew had purchased a pressure cooker in America before, but it “was cheap” and broke after the first use.
Pressure cookers were used in last month’s Boston marathon bombings.
Then a U.S. Customs and Border Protection enforcement officer read Khawahir his Miranda rights.
The man acknowledged that he understood those rights, both verbally and in writing at 4:25 p.m. Friday. A minute later, he invoked his right to remain silent, the complaint said.
On Monday afternoon, Kawahir was in federal court in Detroit, making his initial appearance on charges that he knowingly used an altered Saudi Arabian passport with missing pages, and made a materially false statement to a customs officer about the pressure cooker in his possession, all to gain entry into the United States.
Customs and Border Protection officials and the FBI declined comment.
On Christmas Day 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian student turned al Qaida operative, tried to blow up a Detroit-bound jetliner by concealing a bomb in his underwear. The bomb fizzled, a flight attendant put out the flames and passengers subdued him. He was sentenced Feb. 16, 2012, in U.S. District Court in Detroit to multiple life sentences.
Previous
articles
on Medical Marijuana and the evil Drug War.
More
articles
on Medical Marijuana and the evil Drug War.
Toy company owner sentenced for drug money laundering
Since it is difficult to find and arrest drug war criminals the government is making it illegal to have cash that MIGHT have been obtained from illegal drug sales, turning American into a bigger police state.
Police officer accidentally shot in leg by fellow cop
Remember, only police officers can be trusted with guns. Well at least that's what the cops want us to think.
San Jose cop frames man for rape with phoney lab report!!!
You expect a fair trial??? Don't make me laugh!!!!
However, the police officer, Sgt. Matthew Christian, remains on the job and is now assigned to the Traffic Investigations Unit, said SJPD spokesman Albert Morales.
If you are naive as a 3 year old you probably also think
that it is illegal for the cops to lie to people in an attempt to
get them to confess to crimes. Again you are totally wrong on
that. The police routinely lie to folks to pressure them into confessing
to crimes.
In hopes of extracting a confession, Christian created a "ruse" crime report indicating that Kerkeles' semen had been found on a blanket, while the actual report revealed no semen. Such a tactic is legal -- at that stage of a case.
The most common police technique in the world which is
used to get confessions from suspects is called the
"9 Step Reid Method". And cops that use the
"9 Step Reid Method" to get confessions routinely lie
to the people they question.
Government bureaucrats elect signs on homes of sex offenders
Hateful, mean spirited, petty government bureaucrats elect signs on homes of sex offenders.
F*ck the 4th Amendment the FBI has a God give right to spy on you!!!!
F*ck the 4th Amendment the FBI has a God give right to spy on you!!!! Well at least that's what the FBI thinks.
Bill allows state universities to research medical marijuana
Source
Feds sue landlord of longtime Berkeley pot dispensary
Emperor Obama is a liar and a hypocrite!!!!
Tom Horne pays fine for hit and run accident.
Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne pays fine for hit and run accident.
Students Face Child Porn Charges in Nude Sexting Scandal
Don't these pigs have any REAL criminals to hunt down???
Medical marijuana bill clears Illinois Senate committee
Source
Poll: undocumented immigrants more popular than Congress
This is pretty much a no brainier. Who is more popular, the crooks in Congress that steal your money on a daily basis and micromanage your life with a bunch of silly rules, or some hardworking Mexicans who give you high quality labor in exchange for reasonable pay?
Jan Brewer, medical marijuana and Doctor Robert Gear
Source
IRS apologizes for targeting conservative groups
If you are against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, against the insane and unconstitutional drug war, a member of the Libertarian or Tea Party, an atheist or member of other non-mainstream religious groups you can count on government thugs from the IRS shaking you down for your political beliefs.
Why does justice take so long and cost so much?
Governments almost always start out with the intent of serving the people they rule over. But over time they usually end up serving the elected officials, government bureaucrats and special interest groups.
IRS official knew in 2011 that tea party was targeted
If the the Federal government singles out Tea Party members to shake down
for political reasons I suspect they also single out members of groups that
want to legalize marijuana. Such as members of NORML or the Libertarian Party.
You can be arrested for having "bomb components"???
I suspect the Feds could use this law to arrest just about anybody who has a few trivial things that could be used to make a bomb.
E-mails point to problems in Scottsdale crime lab
You think you are going to get a fair trial??? Don't make me laugh!!!
TSA Dog Bites Woman At Atlanta Airport
Source
Arizona Taxi drivers now subject to random drug testing
A government welfare program for drug testing companies???
Probably!!!! I think these tests cost around $100 each,
and this should bring in lost of revenue for companies that test for drugs.
Tempe gets 1st medical marijuana dispensary
Marijuana is a stinking weed, not gold. But because of the stinking black market created by the insane and unconstitutional "war on drugs" marijuana, which should cost as much as a head of lettuce costs almost as much as gold. And that is why we have all this security which makes this new medical marijuana facility more like a bank then a produce market.
And of course some politicians like atheist US Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema make worse by attempting to tax the krap out of medical marijuana. When atheist Kyrsten Sinema was a member of the Arizona Senate she tried to slap a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana. You would figure that a 300 percent tax on marijuana that was something only a nut job Christian would come up with, but sadly some atheist are also big fans of the insane war on drugs.
Tenn. hospital treats drug-dependent babies
Of course if drugs were legal we wouldn't have any of these problems.
More drug war lies??? Marijuana is a dangerous drug???
Personally I think ALL drugs should be legalized. So obliviously I disagree with this editorial by Ed Gogek that supports continuing the nations insane and unconstitutional war on marijuana.
IRS targeted groups critical of government
While President Obama has always pretty much been a carbon copy clone of Emperor George W. Bush, sadly Emperor Obama now looks like he is also a clone of Richard M. Nixon!!!!
Playing politics with tax records
Source
Lingering questions about the IRS targeting of conservative groups
Source
Government obtains wide AP phone records in probe
Source
Two good reasons why you should take the 5th and refuse to answer all police questions!!!!
Both of the charges this guy was arrested for appear to be for lying to the police. If the guy would have taken the 5th Amendment and refused to answer any questions from the police I suspect he may have avoided being arrested entirely.