Homeless in Arizona

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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.

Boston cops inconvenience 4.5 million to catch 2 criminals???

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MBTA shuts down all services

By Gal Tziperman Lotan

Globe Correspondent

April 19, 2013

The MBTA’s early-morning decision to shut down all services until the remaining Boston Marathon bombing suspect is apprehended left commuters agitated, transit police officials said.

MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo said service will resume “When we’re told that service can be back up.”

Jonathan Cruz of Dorchester was on his way to his apprenticeship at Youth Build Boston, a program that teaches young people construction skills. An acquaintance stopped him on his way to the JFK/UMass Red Line station, warning him service was cancelled, but Cruz kept going, hoping to get more information at the station.

He arrived at the station at about 6:30 a.m. and found no signs about service cancelation and no employees, he said. His program has a very low tolerance for tardiness, and he was supposed to be in Roxbury by 7 a.m.

“I think they should have put signs up but the problem is, we have the Internet and we watch TV all the time, so they thought we would know,” he said.

He finally found information about the shutdown after scrolling through Facebook on his cell phone. He left a message for his boss and headed back home, saying he would gladly miss a day of work if his safety could be at risk.

Deniz Alagoez of Dorchester was on his way to catch a bus to Connecticut at South Station with a friend.

Finding the T’s doors locked was frustrating, he said.

“Is it easy to find a cab here?” he said. “Oh, I can’t believe it.”

He and his friend decided to try to get to South Station and see if non-MBTA busses were still running.

“He’s hiding out in Watertown? Why is the whole system shut down? I don’t get it,” Alagoez said.

Xheni Kurdari walked up the stairs at the JFK/UMass station and tried to open the station’s doors. No luck. She could not make the short commute to her job at State Street Bank and Trust Company in Quincy.

Kurdari said she went to bed early the previous night and did not hear the news of the police chase and shoot-out with the bombing suspects. She heard some sirens in the morning, but did not think much of them.

“I was wondering why there were no people around,” she said. “I’m gonna call my husband, I’m gonna wake him up, probably, and I’m gonna have him drive to work.”

Gal Tziperman Lotan can be reached at gal.lotan@globe.com.

U.S. uses the Bible as “an excuse for invading other countries.”

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.

U.S. officials said a special interrogation team for high-value suspects would question him without reading him his Miranda rights

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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.

Will cops torture Boston Marathon bombing suspect to get answers???

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.

U.S. uses the Bible as “an excuse for invading other countries.”

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.

DUI and "drug war" laws are a jobs program for cops????

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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.

Sens. Graham, McCain say Tsarnaev should be sent to Guantanamo

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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."

F*ck his Constitutional rights, he is a criminal!!!

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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.”

Half of all arrests are for 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.

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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.

"Alleged" ADHS computer crash shuts down pot dispensary

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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.

Fair trial??? Don't make me laugh!!!!!

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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

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

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

Phoenix city council bans gun ads at bus stops???

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Unlikely allies in Phoenix pro-gun advertisement case

By Dustin Gardiner The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Apr 20, 2013 10:32 PM

Two prominent legal watchdog groups are teaming up to fight Phoenix’s decision to remove 50 pro-gun advertisements from city bus shelters.

The large posters, which said “Guns Save Lives” and advertised a website for firearm-safety classes, were removed in 2010. Phoenix officials said the signs conveyed a political message, violating its policy against non-commercial advertising on buses and transit stops.

Arizona’s conservative Goldwater Institute has been waging a legal battle to overturn the city’s move, and it recently got a powerful ally in the case: the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The seemingly unlikely legal partners say the case has broader implications for free-speech rights in Arizona. They argue the city’s “vague” policy is unconstitutional and allows for censorship.

“It involves the scope of the Arizona Constitution’s grant to all persons of the right to freely speak, write and publish on all subjects,” the ACLU argued in a recent court brief.

The lawsuit stems from a dispute between the city and gun-rights activist Alan Korwin, who manages the website TrainMeAZ.com. After the 2010 passage of a state law expanding concealed-carry rights, Korwin and other gun-safety instructors created the website and launched the advertising campaign.

Korwin purchased ad space at city bus stops and the controversial posters went up across the city. He said the purpose of the ads was to capture business for the website, which links gun owners to training classes.

But Phoenix officials saw the message of the ads much differently, and the pro-gun posters were removed within days.

They said the ads, which had been installed by a billboard company that contracts with the city, did not have a commercial purpose, as required. City policy does not allow the use of transit ad space for political advertising or public-service announcements.

The ads said “Guns Save Lives” in large writing against the backdrop of a red heart. Below that, also printed in large lettering, were “Arizona Says: Educate Your Kids” and “Train MeAZ.com.” Smaller text promoted the state’s expansive gun-rights laws and the website’s offerings.

Last fall, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Mark Brain ruled in the city’s favor, stating that the city had created reasonable guidelines for what it will and won’t allow on transit billboards.

“What we want is advertiser’s commercial products that do not get into ideological, political debates as part of the proposed ad,” David Schwartz, an attorney for Phoenix, argued in court. “This is not going to stop (Korwin) from putting the ad, if he wants, anywhere else.”

Korwin and Goldwater are now challenging the ruling in state Appeals Court, and the case is expected to be argued later this year.

Goldwater and ACLU attorneys contend that Phoenix’s ban on non-commercial ads is too broad. They say content-based restrictions on ads should be stopped entirely or, at the least, the city should have a more objective standard.

“The city’s arbitrary decision making is exactly the type of censorship the U.S. and Arizona constitutions forbid,” said Clint Bolick, Goldwater’s vice president for litigation. “This odd-couple alliance between the Goldwater Institute and the ACLU highlights the importance of the case to our fundamental freedoms.”

Mesa city council lobbies for more drunks in Mesa???

Mesa Mayor Scott Smith wants more drunks in Mesa???

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.

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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.

Arizona National Guard supports rapists????

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Abuse protest set at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson

By Dennis Wagner The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Apr 23, 2013 11:42 PM

Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson has emerged as a focal point for national outrage over military justice since the placement there of a fighter pilot whose court-martial conviction for aggravated sexual assault was thrown out by his commander.

Lt. Col. James Wilkerson was transferred to Davis-Monthan amid a furor over the clemency decision following a sexual-assault verdict at Aviano Air Base in Italy.

Protect Our Defenders, an advocacy group pressing for reforms in military rape prosecutions, announced plans for a demonstration at the Tucson base on Thursday attended by members of the accuser’s family.

Wilkerson was found guilty in November of an attack against Kim Hanks, a civilian contractor who said she was abused while sleeping in a guest room at his residence on the U.S. military base in Italy. Hanks has testified before Congress on her case and has granted media interviews. Wilkerson, a former Air Force inspector general, was sentenced to a year in detention plus dismissal from the armed forces.

However, in February, Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin, commander of the 3rd Air Force in Europe, overturned the conviction and reinstated Wilkerson. A court-martial is the military version of a criminal trial. Franklin acted under a clause of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that gives convening authorities “absolute power to disapprove the findings and sentence.”

Hanks testified that she joined a social gathering at the combat pilot’s house in March 2012 and missed her ride home. After being invited to spend the night, she said, she awoke to find Wilkerson in the bed assaulting her.

Wilkerson, who could not be reached for comment, has consistently denied the allegation. He has been supported by numerous officers who wrote letters on his behalf.

In a statement, Hanks described the clemency process as a travesty and the overturned conviction as “appalling and disappointing.”

“Gen. Franklin’s decision sent a message to every single victim of sexual assault out there that it’s probably not worth it to go through what I had to go through,” she added.

Some military personnel are decrying the outcome. On Monday, the Air Force Times published an interview with the prosecutor, who said he was so stunned when Franklin overturned the conviction that he turned to a colleague and blurted, “We just lost military justice.”

An Air Force spokesman said Franklin is not responding to media inquiries.

The Pentagon acknowledges that an estimated 19,000 sexual assaults take place annually in the armed forces. Only about 3,200 victims report the attacks. In 2011, fewer than 200 cases resulted in court-martial convictions. Critics say perpetrators are often protected by cronyism among officers, while victims fear that reporting attacks will lead to reprisals.

Under political pressure, Franklin issued a detailed explanation saying he had thoroughly reviewed the case file and clemency records before finding reasonable doubt as to Wilkerson’s guilt. He overturned the verdict against the advice of his own legal counsel. Wilkerson was then reassigned as safety officer at the air base in Tucson, where Hanks’ family resides.

Those decisions set off protests from lawmakers and others striving to combat rampant sexual abuse in the military. Hanks turned to Protect Our Defenders for support.

In a letter sent Monday to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, organization President Nancy Parrish said the reversal of Wilkerson’s conviction was based on “failed and biased reasoning.” She issued a point-by-point rebuttal to Franklin’s rationale and called for the commander’s dismissal.

Parrish noted that a jury of five officers reached a guilty verdict as a result of court-martial proceedings, yet Franklin — who did not attend — threw out their decision based on his reading of records.

“In every case, the facts in evidence and the weight of the credible trial testimony directly contradict the statement Franklin makes to support the conclusion he reached,” she wrote. “His pathetic excuses and sophomoric logic leave no doubt that he did nothing more than protect a fellow pilot. ... He has destroyed the facade that commanders can be trusted to do what is right.”

No response was immediately available from Hagel. The Defense secretary already has proposed changing military codes to eliminate the power of commanders to overturn court-martial verdicts for serious crimes.

Congress also appears to be moving toward reform. Last week, with 83 Republican and Democrat co-sponsors, Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., reintroduced a measure known as the STOP Act, which would establish special prosecutors to replace chain-of-command control over sexual-assault cases in the military.

Capt. Justin Brockhoff, a public-affairs officer at the base, confirmed that Wilkerson has reported for duty and will serve as safety officer for the 12th Air Force (Air Forces Southern). “He’ll be treated like any other airman joining our staff,” Brockhoff said.

Dr. Stephen Hanks, a Tucson physician, said military officials did not tell his sister that Wilkerson was being sent there.

Maricopa County says F*ck the 1st Amendment

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Media kept from Phoenix-area eatery inspections

By Michelle Ye Hee Lee The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Apr 23, 2013 10:25 PM

Maricopa County no longer will allow outside observers, including media, to witness restaurant inspections.

County officials are unable to clarify whether it is a formal policy change or when it became effective, but they used it to reject a request by The Arizona Republic to accompany inspectors on an upcoming inspection.

John Kolman, director of the County Environmental Services Department, attributed the decision to the most recent federal food code released by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2009 and adopted by the county Board of Supervisors in March 2010.

That code states that “persons unnecessary to the food establishment operation are not allowed in the food preparation, food storage or ware-washing areas, except that brief visits and tours may be authorized by the person in charge if steps are taken to ensure that exposed food ... (is) protected from contamination.”

But that provision has not changed in years and was not a new addition to the code in 2009, according to FDA spokesman Jalil Isa. Interpretation of the guideline is up to local regulatory agencies, he said.

Local environmental health departments across the country allow certain third parties to ride along with inspectors on their restaurant visits, and it is largely viewed as a way to raise public awareness about inspection processes. The Denver Environmental Health Department, for example, recently increased public access by adding a ride-along program that allows citizens to shadow inspectors.

The county previously allowed media ride-alongs on a case-by-case basis during restaurant inspections. The Republic has participated in at least two since 2010. The county allowed media access as recently as last August. County spokeswoman Cari Gerchick said Tuesday that previous access should not have been approved and that the county had not followed its own rules.

County Manager Tom Manos supported Kolman’s decision to ban ride-alongs. He said third-party ride-alongs would jeopardize the county’s unannounced inspections.

“I don’t think we need to bring a media person to demonstrate to the public that we’re doing inspections correctly,” Manos said.

Supervisor Steve Chucri, who heads the Arizona Restaurant Association, raised concerns about transparency under the department’s new policy. He was unaware there was a change in the practice of allowing media ride-alongs until The Republic contacted him Tuesday.

Taking media, public-health professionals and health-board members on inspections provides good training for inspectors and is a branding opportunity for health workers, said Joe Russell, chairman of the National Association of County and City Health Officials’ food-safety work group.

MCSO deputy pleads guilty to theft, forgery-related charges

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MCSO deputy pleads guilty to theft, forgery-related charges

By Domenico Nicosia The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Tue Apr 23, 2013 8:00 PM

A Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office deputy has pleaded guilty to theft and forgery-related charges because he stole money to be paid to a confidential informant working with the office, according to court documents.

Sheriff’s deputies in March arrested Torrey McRae, who had worked there for four years.

Authorities said that McRae failed to account for more than $5,000 intended for a confidential informant and that he later tried to repay the money without being detected.

The investigation began after McRae's supervisor noticed discrepancies in an account used to transfer money to confidential informants, officials say.

The recent plea agreement accounts for all of the charges against McRae — one count of theft, two counts of forgery and two counts of misuse by a custodian of public money— all of which were felonies.

McRae, a former Chicago police officer, resigned when deputies arrived at his home to make the arrest. He will be sentenced on May 20, according to court documents.

Judge: Phoenix officers must do union work off the clock

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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.”

LA pays $2.1 million to women shot in Dorner case

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Los Angeles settles with women fired on in manhunt

Associated Press Tue Apr 23, 2013 9:23 PM

LOS ANGELES — The city of Los Angeles reached a $4.2 million settlement with a mother and daughter who were injured when police mistakenly opened fire on them while they were delivering newspapers during the manhunt for disgruntled ex-cop Christopher Dorner, officials said Tuesday.

The money will be split evenly, with $2.1 million going to each woman, said Frank Mateljan, a spokesman for the city attorney’s office.

The agreement must still be approved by the Los Angeles City Council.

Margie Carranza and her 71-year-old mother, Emma Hernandez, were delivering papers around 5 a.m. on Feb. 7 when LAPD officers guarding the Torrance home of a target named in an online Dorner manifesto blasted at least 100 rounds at their pickup.

Hernandez was shot in the back and Carranza had minor injuries.

The settlement means they cannot pursue any future injury claims against the city.

Dorner had vowed warfare on Los Angeles Police Department officers and their families for what he called an unfair firing.

He killed four people, including two law enforcement officers, during his nearly one-week run from authorities.

Attorney Glen Jonas, who represents the women, called the settlement amount fair and said it spared the city from defending a case that involved eight police officers and would have likely cost millions of dollars.

“The only certainty was the litigation was going to cost everyone a lot of money and a lot of time,” Jonas said.

Jonas sent a nine-page demand to the city more than a month ago that provided an opening to negotiations. He said he negotiated with City Attorney Carmen Trutanich for weeks before the deal was reached on Monday night.

“We’re two veteran trial lawyers trying to settle a case, and we both understand the reality of litigation and what it costs to both sides,” Jonas said.

Trutanich agreed the settlement was fair and said in a statement he was pleased by how swiftly it was reached.

“We hope Margie and Emma will be able to move on with their lives, the city will be spared millions of dollars in litigation expense and time, and this unfortunate chapter of the Dorner saga will be put to rest,” Trutanich said.

The women agreed to receive the payment after June 30 — the end of the fiscal year — to help the city with its budgeting, Jonas said. The agreement came in addition to a separate $40,000 settlement reached earlier for the loss of the women’s pickup truck.

“For them, the money is not the issue as much as (the city) just doing the right thing,” Jonas said. “Everyone agreed that they were wronged, but we didn’t know whether responsibility would be assumed … It’s pleasant to get that done without having to go through years of litigation.”

The eight officers remain assigned to non-field duties pending an internal investigation.

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Tami Abdollah can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/latams

DEA offers drop-off day for unwanted prescription drugs

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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.

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu spends our money like a drunken sailor????

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.

Medical marijuana will create 1,500 jobs in Arizona

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.

Source

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.”

Disbarred Maricopa County Attorney Thomas to run for governor

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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.

Andrew (Evan) Thomas (Mecham) for Governor

Andrew (Evan) Thomas (Mecham) for Governor

Andrew Thomas is Evan Mecham.

He may not know it. And unless you were living here in the late 1980s you may not know it either. But he is.

He is one of those politicians who comes around in Arizona every decade or so. (Or is it every year? Or every month? Or every minute?) Anyway, we get these politicians who adopt an extreme philosophy that catches on with a portion of the population. They rocket into the political stratosphere, self-destruct, and then, while plummeting back to earth, blame a conspiracy of “them” for the flame-out.

In the 1980s, after Mecham was impeached and removed from office he said, “I was in their way when I came in and followed through on my campaign promises. It didn’t take me too long to find out how this state operated.”

Andrew Thomas, the disbarred former Maricopa County Attorney who now wants to be governor saw the same type of conspiracy after he was dumped from the legal profession for having used his office to pursue political vendettas.

“Arizona continues to have some of the worst corruption in America,” he said.

Thomas played the martyr, like Mecham.

After being caught up in a shaky campaign loan and charges of obstruction of justice, Mecham said, “This whole thing (his impeachment) is a cooked-up deal.”

Thomas was even more sanctimonious.

“Other men, far greater than I, have gone to jail in defense of principles they believed in and so they would not kowtow to a corrupt ruler,” he said. “People like Gandhi, people like Dr. King, people like Solzhenitsyn, people like Thomas More, people who stood for something….and I’m going to stand firm.”

Gandhi?

Dr. King?

(Ironically, Mecham’s first act as governor was to rescind the previous governor’s decree of a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.)

Mecham said his downfall was due to the “pure and simple raw political power exercised by those groups who wanted to remain in control.”

Thomas, in turn, said, “The state Bar is run by a small clique of criminal defense lawyers and ACLU left-wing partisans who detest this office and my policies. And giving such people absolute regulatory power over the prosecutor’s office is to invite a debacle, and a debacle is what we have in my case.”

A debacle is also what we may have in the Republican primary for governor.

With that in mind, I asked readers on azcentral.com and Facebook to submit suggestions for an Andrew Thomas campaign slogan.

One suggested slogan, from reader Dave Smith, echoed the feelings of many readers:

“Just when you thought the bar (no pun intended) couldn’t be set any lower…”

John Walker came up with, “Who better to fight corruption than someone totally familiar with it?”

Reader Mike Martinez borrowed a line from the television series “Breaking Bad.”

His suggestion was: “You don’t want a criminal lawyer; you want a criminal lawyer.”

Not all of the suggestions were uncomplimentary. Although you probably could take this Thomas campaign slogan offered by reader Debbie Slater either way:

“Vote for me, at least I’m not a Democrat.”

Reader Carole Rosenblat suggested: “Helping keep Arizona politics embarrassing for years to come.”

John Juarez thought a line from the Marx Brothers might be appropriate:

“If you think this country’s messed up now, just wait ’til I get through with it.”

A few readers suggested a more direct approach.

Vicki Venhuizen’s idea was: “I’m Broke, Vote for Me!”

And I heard from several readers who were around during the Mecham era and thought Thomas could borrow the former governor’s much-repeated excuse in which he shifted the blame to his brother. One man told me he still had a bumper sticker from those days that Thomas could replicate. It reads:

“Willard did it.”

My personal favorite, however, comes from reader Juli Myers, who decided that a variation of the late Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater’s 1960 Republican convention speech might be appropriate for the Thomas campaign. She suggests:

“Corruption in the defense of insanity is no vice.”

(Column for May 2, 2013, Arizona Republic)

Maricopa County to settles Andrew Thomas Sheriff Joe lawsuit

County to settle another lawsuit over Thomas-Arpaio corruption probes

By Michael Kiefer and Michelle Ye Hee Lee The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Apr 26, 2013 10:26 PM

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors reached settlement Friday in the next to the last of the lawsuits filed in the wake of the 2008-09 battles among former County Attorney and current gubernatorial hopeful Andrew Thomas and Sheriff Joe Arpaio with county officials, judges and citizens associated with them.

Conley Wolfswinkel, a longtime Valley land developer, and two of his sons will receive $1.4 million to compensate for search warrants served on the developers’ offices by sheriff’s deputies looking for evidence of fraud. Wolfswinkel was a friend and business associate of former County Supervisor Don Stapley. Stapley, incidentally, is the remaining claimant against the county who has not yet settled.

“The board voted to settle this case to avoid incurring additional attorneys’ fees including the possible imposition of plaintiff’s attorneys’ fees at trial,” said county spokeswoman Cari Gerchick. “The cost to the county of defending this case is significant because there are seven different defendants who each required separate attorneys.”

Wolfswinkel’s is the ninth settlement stemming from the so-called corruption investigations carried out by Thomas’ and Arpaio’s offices. The county has now paid $4,190,110 in settlements for the lawsuits, according to Gerchick. Another settlement offer — $975,000 — approved for Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox has not been paid and is being disputed in court. Those totals do not include millions of dollars more in attorneys’ fees for the plaintiffs and costs to defend the county against the lawsuits.

“Conley and the family felt obligated to try to right this wrong,” said Lawrence Wright, one of the Wolfswinkels’ attorneys. “They felt the need to take a stand against the reign of terror that was being conducted by Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Andrew Thomas.”

Thomas still contends that he was only doing his job, rooting out corruption. He filed criminal charges against Stapley, Wilcox and Superior Court Judge Gary Donahoe, and filed a civil racketeering lawsuit in federal court against those same defendants and others. Many of the allegations had to do with the construction of the Superior Court’s south tower, which is now in service.

Thomas and one of his deputies were disbarred because of those actions; another deputy was sanctioned. Former sheriff’s Chief Deputy David Hendershott, who helped mastermind the corruption investigations, was fired.

Thomas announced Thursday that he will run for governor of Arizona.

Stapley was indicted twice. At the time that search warrants were served on the Wolfswinkels, Stapley faced 118 criminal counts related to properties and real-estate deals that prosecutors said he did not include in his annual financial-disclosure forms. Some of those deals related to business associations with Wolfswinkel, who was convicted of felony check-kiting in the 1990s and was a figure in the savings-and-loan scandals of the 1980s.

According to a search-warrant affidavit from 2009, investigators were looking for evidence of fraud and bribery involving Wolfswinkel. Investigators also believed Stapley voted on “land-related issues” regarding property in which he had business interests.

All of the criminal charges and the racketeering suit were dismissed.

What about Fifth Amendment rights?

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

34% of teens say pot improves driving

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.

Source

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.”

MCSO Commander Bob Rampy under hacking inquiry

Ex-MCSO commander under hacking inquiry

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Apr 25, 2013 10:59 PM

A former Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office commander whom the office suspects of hacking into its computer system is the subject of an ongoing federal investigation spurred by the security breach.

Federal investigators earlier this month served a search warrant on the home of former Cmdr. Bob Rampy, who federal court documents say is suspected of committing “fraud and related activity in connection with computers.”

Investigators searched Rampy’s home April 9 and recovered at least one hard drive, several computers, notebooks, e-mails and other computer-related materials, according to court documents.

Rampy, 56, retired last September from the Sheriff’s Office, where he commanded the technology bureau.

Rampy’s attorney and federal officials declined to comment on the investigation.

The federal search warrant contains few details about why FBI agents sought authorization in early April from U.S. District Judge Lawrence Anderson to serve the warrant. It includes only a single reference to a violation of U.S. criminal code for fraud, and prosecutors sealed a probable-cause statement in which they would typically describe the crime they believe was committed.

The warrant authorized investigators to seize records related to accessing the Sheriff’s Office’s secure network, information on the office’s digital network architecture, records on three specific devices that control access to computerized media and at least one Toughbook laptop computer of the type frequently assigned to sheriff’s deputies.

The Sheriff’s Office first noticed something amiss with its computer systems in January and asked the Department of Public Safety, which regulates access to criminal-justice databases, if something was wrong on the state’s end, said Lisa Allen, a spokeswoman for Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Allen said DPS assumed the problems were coming from the Sheriff’s Office.

“We clearly recognized then that there might have been some sort of security breach and that it was coming from outside the systems,” Allen said. “Looking at the type of breach it was, it obviously required some significant expertise to breach that system.” At that point, the Sheriff’s Office contacted the FBI, Allen said.

The Sheriff’s Office is conducting a criminal investigation of Rampy, Allen said. That investigation has not produced information that leads detectives to believe there are other employees involved in the breach, Allen said.

Rampy figured in some of the disputes between the Sheriff’s Office and other county agencies during the past five years. Some of those disputes led to allegations that Rampy used his expertise to violate the privacy of the office’s enemies.

In 2010, when the Sheriff’s Office and other agencies were embroiled in a dispute over who should have access to and control of a sensitive criminal-justice database, attorneys representing county administrators wrote a letter asking the Sheriff’s Office if Rampy was conducting surveillance on county officials.

“It has been brought to our attention that Commander Rampy has been observed on numerous occasions parked across from the Chambers Building watching (county Office of Enterprise Technology) employees from his unmarked SUV with radio and satellite equipment on the roof,” the letter stated.

Rampy claimed the letter, and its release to the media, was part of an orchestrated campaign among county administrators to smear him. He filed a notice of claim against the county in February 2011, calling the letter “the first salvo in a series of unwarranted, public attacks on Commander Rampy’s impeccable personal and professional reputation.”

He offered to settle the dispute for $750,000. The county never responded to the claim, and Rampy never filed suit.

Another dispute with Rampy arose in June 2011, involving allegations that his wife illegally accessed a criminal-justice database. The accusations were contained in a three-page handwritten complaint sent to Maricopa County supervisors and the FBI.

At the time, Rampy said the accusations took him by surprise. “Actually, using my wife as a mechanism like that doesn’t make any sense at all. When asked where I work, she doesn’t even say that I work for the Sheriff’s Office because some of the cases I work on are life-threatening,” Rampy said in a June 2011 interview. “It’s really bothering me. My laptop is secure; there’s nobody else that can get on it. I carry it with me.”

Rampy retired from the Sheriff’s Office last fall to work in the private sector, Allen said.

Federal officials announced in late August that they had closed a four-year investigation into allegations that Arpaio’s office engaged in civil-rights violations, misuse of public money and perjury. An assistant U.S. attorney said prosecution was declined because of a lack of evidence or an insurmountable burden of proof. Arpaio said at the time the investigation’s closure absolved him and members of his office of the accusations.

Yavapai County deputies had lied in probe

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.”

No bribery charges for Mesa justice of the peace Markel K. Chiles

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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.

Seattle Police Chief Jim Pugel is sorry he got caught

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Interim police chief apologizes for homeless video

Associated Press Thu Apr 25, 2013 9:39 PM

SEATTLE — Seattle’s new interim police chief apologized Thursday for participating in a 1986 Seattle police training video that “made light of homelessness.”

The video, released Thursday evening by the department, shows some officers dressed as homeless people under a viaduct. Set to the tune of “Under The Boardwalk,” the footage shows the “homeless” drinking, breaking into cars and being rousted by police as they sing the altered lyrics of “Under The Viaduct.”

Assistant Chief Jim Pugel, who will take over as interim chief when Chief John Diaz retires at the end of May, appears in the video as a wine-drinking homeless man. Pugel released a written apology.

“In 1986 I was one of the participants in an official Seattle Police Department Training video that made light of homelessness,” his statement said. “I regret my participation and have professionally apologized for my role in it. I do so now publicly. I am truly sorry.”

The video embarrassment comes as the police department faces a court-overseen monitoring plan to address the use of force by officers. The department has entered into a settlement agreement with the U.S. Justice Department that requires an overhaul of supervision, training and reporting of uses of force.

The lyrics include the lines, “Under the viaduct, we’ll be drinking our booze, under the viaduct, our sores continue to ooze,” as well as, “Under the viaduct, down by the bay, we’ll be drinking our T-Bird, all through the day.”

The skit “was created in a misguided attempt at humor and added to the end of a training video,” the department said in a disclaimer that precedes the video on a department website.

“Even by 1980s standards, the Seattle Police Department considered the video to be insensitive and inappropriate,” Pugel said. “All copies were ordered destroyed. A master copy was retained in our video unit.”

Video participants were reprimanded by then-Chief Patrick Fitzsimons, Pugel said.

“We are releasing this video today not because we were asked to do so, but because I feel it is important to show where this department has been and where it is going,” he added.

The 30-year department veteran was selected as interim chief earlier this month by Mayor Mike McGinn after Diaz announced he planned to retire. Pugel said he mentioned the video when the mayor asked whether any problems might crop up.

The officer said he has also discussed the video with Diaz, several Seattle-based homeless advocacy organizations and Merrick Bobb, the court-appointed monitor who is overseeing police reforms sought by the Justice Department.

A DOJ report found Seattle officers were too quick to reach for weapons such as flashlights and batons, even when arresting people for minor offenses, and that when Seattle police used force, they did so unconstitutionally about 20 percent of the time.

“I believe in social justice,” Pugel’s statement said. “I have a track record that mirrors this.” He added that he spent many hours doing volunteer work.

“As a police department, we have much work to do to strengthen our relationships in the community. Sometimes that means addressing an ugly piece of our history head on.”

Andrew Thomas for governor

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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:

“Dear Members of the Media:

“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”

Dear Mr. Thomas,

Thank you.

Bush’s legacy keeps getting worse

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Bush’s legacy keeps getting worse

By Eugene Robinson, Published: April 25

In retrospect, George W. Bush’s legacy doesn’t look as bad as it did when he left office. It looks worse.

I join the nation in congratulating Bush on the opening of his presidential library in Dallas. Like many people, I find it much easier to honor, respect and even like the man — now that he’s no longer in the White House.

But anyone tempted to get sentimental should remember the actual record of the man who called himself The Decider. [Reminds me of David Dorn. David Dorn is the guy who is accusing me of being a government snitch for the last 12 years.] Begin with the indelible stain that one of his worst decisions left on our country’s honor: torture.

Hiding behind the euphemism “enhanced interrogation techniques,” Bush made torture official U.S. policy. Just about every objective observer has agreed with this stark conclusion. The most recent assessment came this month in a 576-page report from a task force of the bipartisan Constitution Project, which stated that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture.”

We knew about the torture before Bush left office — at least, we knew about the waterboarding of three “high-value” detainees involved in planning the 9/11 attacks. But the Constitution Project task force — which included such figures as Asa Hutchinson, who served in high-ranking posts in the Bush administration, and William Sessions, who was FBI director under three presidents — concluded that other forms of torture were used “in many instances” in a manner that was “directly counter to values of the Constitution and our nation.”

Bush administration apologists argue that even waterboarding does not necessarily constitute torture and that other coercive — and excruciatingly painful — interrogation methods, such as putting subjects in “stress positions” or exposing them to extreme temperatures, certainly do not. The task force strongly disagreed, citing U.S. laws and court rulings, international treaties and common decency.

The Senate intelligence committee has produced, but refuses to make public, a 6,000-page report on the CIA’s use of torture and the network of clandestine “black site” prisons the agency established under Bush. One of President Obama’s worst decisions upon taking office in 2009, in my view, was to decline to convene some kind of blue-ribbon “truth commission” to bring all the abuses to light.

It may be years before all the facts are known. But the decision to commit torture looks ever more shameful with the passage of time.

Bush’s decision to invade and conquer Iraq also looks, in hindsight, like an even bigger strategic error. Saddam Hussein’s purported weapons of mass destruction still have yet to be found; nearly 5,000 Americans and untold Iraqis sacrificed their lives to eliminate a threat that did not exist.

We knew this, of course, when Obama became president. It’s one of the main reasons he was elected. We knew, too, that Bush’s decision to turn to Iraq diverted focus and resources from Afghanistan. But I don’t think anyone fully grasped that giving the Taliban a long, healing respite would eventually make Afghanistan this country’s longest or second-longest war, depending on what date you choose as the beginning of hostilities in Vietnam.

And it’s clear that the Bush administration did not foresee how the Iraq experience would constrain future presidents in their use of military force. Syria is a good example. Like Saddam, Bashar al-Assad is a ruthless dictator who does not hesitate to massacre his own people. But unlike Saddam, Assad does have weapons of mass destruction. And unlike Saddam, Assad has alliances with the terrorist group Hezbollah and the nuclear-mad mullahs in Iran.

I do not advocate U.S. intervention in Syria, because I fear we might make things worse rather than better. But I wonder how I might feel — and what options Obama might have — if we had not squandered so much blood and treasure in Iraq.

Bush didn’t pay for his wars. The bills he racked up for military adventures, prescription-drug benefits, the bank bailout and other impulse purchases helped create the fiscal and financial crises he bequeathed to Obama. His profligacy also robbed the Republican Party establishment of small-government credibility, thus helping give birth to the tea party movement. Thanks a lot for that.

As I’ve written before, Bush did an enormous amount of good by making it possible for AIDS sufferers in Africa to receive antiretroviral drug therapy. This literally saved millions of lives and should weigh heavily on one side of the scale when we assess The Decider’s presidency. But the pile on the other side just keeps getting bigger.

DPS report: Officer started Prescott bar brawl

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DPS report: Officer started Prescott bar brawl

By Dennis Wagner The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Apr 26, 2013 10:14 PM

A state police report on a Prescott saloon fight involving biker police officers says violence erupted when a Phoenix officer started throwing punches at another bar patron who asked about his motorcycle club’s patches.

Arizona Department of Public Safety detectives investigated the Dec. 22 fracas at the request of Prescott police because high-ranking members of several Yavapai County law-enforcement agencies also belong to the Iron Brotherhood motorcycle club and were involved in the brawl.

About 16 members of the law-enforcement club were celebrating the holidays on Whiskey Row when fighting broke out at Moctezuma’s Bar.

According to the DPS report, 23-year-old Justin Stafford was questioning Iron Brotherhood president Billy Fessler, who was Prescott Valley police chief at the time, about patches on his vest.

Suddenly, the report says, Phoenix police Officer Eric “Guido” Amato stepped in, grabbed Stafford by the throat and punched him several times, apparently breaking his nose.

The report says numerous witnesses, supported by video evidence, place blame for the outburst on Amato.

He and other club members told investigators that Stafford started the fight. “The dude got stupid, and he got touched. Did I want that to happen? No.”

Although DPS investigators did not issue criminal recommendations, their report identifies potential criminal “allegations” against four club members:

Amato, the club’s sergeant at arms: assault and disorderly conduct. A Phoenix police spokesman confirmed that his department also has an internal investigation under way, but he would not comment further.

Fessler, who has since resigned as police chief: obstructing a criminal investigation and false reporting.

William “Bill” Suttle III, club vice president who resigned from his job as a Yavapai County sheriff’s sergeant: obstructing and false reporting.

Greg Kaufman, a paramedic supervisor with Ajo Ambulance Services: assault and disorderly conduct.

A separate administrative review conducted by a Coconino County sheriff’s commander and released Thursday by the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office concluded that at least two Yavapai County sheriff’s deputies — Suttle and Capt. Marc Schmidt — hindered investigators by lying and withholding information.

None of the Iron Brotherhood members could be reached for comment.

DPS detectives referred their report to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, where spokesman Jerry Cobb said the information is under review. No one has been charged since the incident.

The Iron Brotherhood claims on its website to be a fraternity of motorcycle-riding law officers who do not associate with criminals.

The DPS report notes that numerous members of the club made statements that were contradicted by videotape, other evidence and civilian witnesses.

The report said Kaufman acknowledged taking part in the altercation and possessing a knife.

During the criminal probe, records show, some Prescott-area officers in the club sought to portray Stafford as a Hells Angels associate out to discredit the Iron Brotherhood, but there was no evidence behind the claims.

Besides criminal charges and administrative actions by employers, those involved could face sanctions from the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board. The regulatory agency is empowered to suspend or decertify officers for misconduct ranging from criminal offenses to lying or malfeasance.

Lyle Mann, the agency’s executive director, said the board will await completion of all investigations of the Whiskey Row incident before determining what actions to take against specific officers.

Miranda rights silenced Boston bombing suspect

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???

Source

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.

L.A. County deputies allege department hid FBI informant

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L.A. County deputies allege department hid FBI informant

By Robert Faturechi, Los Angeles Times

April 26, 2013, 9:38 p.m.

Two Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies say the department hid an inmate working as a federal informant from the FBI, according to a lawsuit they filed this week.

The allegations are the latest development in the ongoing question of whether top sheriff's officials obstructed an FBI investigation after learning that an inmate at Men's Central Jail was secretly collecting information on allegedly abusive and corrupt deputies.

In the summer of 2011, sheriff's deputies discovered the inmate's cellphone with a history of calls to the FBI. In an unusual move, sheriff's officials responded by transferring the inmate, a convicted bank robber, to a different jail under aliases, including Robin Banks.

Department officials assigned at least 13 deputies to watch the inmate around the clock, according to documents reviewed by The Times, and dubbed it "Operation Pandora's Box."

A federal criminal grand jury has been probing whether sheriff's officials were hiding the inmate and the phone from the FBI, or whether they were simply protecting the inmate from retaliation by jail deputies he was "snitching" on, as a sheriff's spokesman has said.

In the lawsuit, the two deputies, both from the jail's intelligence unit, allege that after the inmate's status as an informant was discovered, they were told by their boss to do things that would "keep the FBI out of the jails." They allege that officials also considered doing surveillance of interview rooms when the FBI or informants were present.

The lawsuit is the first public claim by sheriff's employees that the intent was to hide the inmate, Anthony Brown.

The lawsuit was filed by Deputies James Sexton and Michael Rathbun. Sexton is the son of Sheriff Lee Baca's newly hired homeland security chief.

The Times has previously reported that the two deputies collided with their boss after they reported allegations that another deputy was working as an operative for drug-smuggling skinhead gang members. After writing a memo about the tip, their boss shared the contents of the memo with the accused deputy rather than forwarding it along to internal criminal investigators, who could have conducted a sting operation.

Both men allege they were retaliated against for reporting misconduct to the FBI and others. Sexton says he has been the victim of threats and intimidation.

Rathbun, who is on paid administrative leave, alleges that officials are seeking to fire him over a drunk driving offense. According to the suit, other deputies who committed such misconduct were punished less severely. A video of that incident reviewed by The Times shows the deputy was belligerent as he was questioned by colleagues afterward.

Sexton remains on active duty.

Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said department officials have cooperated fully with the federal investigation of the county's jails and said the two deputies were not retaliated against.

"The sheriff has made it clear throughout the department that there won't be any retaliation whatsoever," Whitmore said.

robert.faturechi@latimes.com

Cops had to flush Dzhokhar Tsarnaev 5th Amendment rights????

Source

Legal options were few in handling of Boston bombing suspect

By David G. Savage and Richard A. Serrano, Washington Bureau

April 27, 2013, 5:00 a.m.

WASHINGTON — The federal rules say a person making an arrest "must take the defendant before a magistrate without unnecessary delay." And the Supreme Court has said the judicial process must begin within 48 hours. This rule aims to "prevent secret detention," wrote former Justice David H. Souter, adding that "no one with any smattering of the history of 20th-Century dictatorships needs a lecture on the subject."

Despite criticism from Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill that the questioning of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was prematurely curtailed, legal experts say the only way to have avoided triggering that process once he was arrested a week ago would have been to declare him an enemy combatant. But many experts doubt the courts would permit secret detention of a suspect who is a U.S. citizen and was taken into custody in connection to a crime on American soil.

"All of this was done pursuant to standard court procedure," said an Obama administration law enforcement official, who said that the administration believed it had little choice but to charge Tsarnaev, despite the considerable risk that he would stop talking and the frustration of a special team of federal agents who wanted to keep questioning him.

The time for questioning the 19-year-old suspect ended when federal Magistrate Judge Marianne B. Bowler came to his hospital room Monday, read him his rights and appointed a lawyer. He had been arrested April 19, and charges were filed and signed by the judge Sunday evening, within the 48-hour period.

Overnight Thursday, U.S. marshals moved Tsarnaev from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, where he was being treated for four bullet wounds, to a medical facility for federal prisoners at Ft. Devens, Mass. The prison, just west of Boston, is a special facility for injured or ill inmates needing long-term care.

During the weekend, agents had as many as 16 hours to question Tsarnaev about the bombing plot. Contrary to what many believe, the Miranda decision does not require investigators to warn a suspect of his rights before they question him. Instead, it says that a suspect's incriminating statements cannot be used against him at trial unless he was warned of his right to remain silent.

In Tsarnaev's case, investigators apparently had ample evidence, including surveillance cameras, that could be used to convict him. They probably did not need him to admit his guilt during an interview. Instead, they were eager to obtain information about the plot.

"First and foremost, your priority is to stop other threats and protect the public," said Michael Rosensaft, a former federal prosecutor in New York. "After that, you can focus on the prosecution." [Of I disagree with that. The Bill of Rights is designed to protect the PEOPLE from abuse cops, like in this case who have flushed Dzhokhar Tsarnaev 5th Amendment right down the toilet]

A series of Supreme Court decisions going back to 1984 establishes the so-called public safety exception to the Miranda rule, which allows the option of questioning the suspect without warning him of his rights, hoping to gather information on the plot. [Give me a break. The First Amendment doesn't have any clause in it that says it is null and void when it gets in the cops way of getting information from a suspect. And that what the 1st is for, to prevent abusive cops from forcing a person to answer questions]

"There is no constitutional requirement that Miranda warnings must be given upon arrest," said Steven Benjamin, a Virginia attorney and president of the National Assn. of Criminal Defense Attorneys.

"The constitutional rule goes to admissibility," he said. If the questioning does not qualify as a public safety emergency, a defendant's statements may be not be admitted as evidence if he had not been warned of his right to remain silent.

Charles Weisselberg, a UC Berkeley law professor, said the Miranda decision stands mostly as a symbol for legal rights. [Agreed, it is a symbol only. Our First Amendment rights pretty much have been flushed down the toilet as in the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev case.]

"Miranda provides very little protection for suspects," he said. "But it has become shorthand for saying: Are we going to treat him with the rights that we give people in the United States, or is he going to be treated as an enemy combatant with no rights?"

On Capitol Hill, critics of the administration say Tsarnaev should have been held as an enemy combatant and removed from the criminal justice system. [Huhhh??? The United States has not declared war on anybody since World War II, which ended in the 1940's!!!!]

"We need to know about any possible future attacks which could take additional American lives," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). "The least of our worries is a criminal trial which will likely be held years from now."

But terrorism cases since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks make it appear doubtful that the Supreme Court would approve such a move, many legal scholars believe.

david.savage@latimes

richard.serrano@latimes.com

San Jose: Rollout of curb-sitting policy urged by police auditor, community groups

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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.

Public servants or government parasites???

SF firefighter Lt. Gary Altenberg pulled in $363,000 this year which included $221,000 in overtime

SF firefighter’s smoking-hot OT — $221K and counting

If you’re looking for a poster boy for the San Francisco Fire Department’s out-of-whack overtime, meet Lt. Gary Altenberg of Station 39 on Portola Avenue.

Thanks largely to staffing shortages that had department management ordering up extra shifts, Altenberg pulled in $221,000 in overtime last year, raising his total paycheck to $363,000.

That’s nearly $50,000 more than what Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White made.

Frederick Binkley, a paramedic/firefighter at Station 51 in the Presidio, was his closest competition, picking up $191,000 in overtime to bring his pay for the year to $337,204.

Three battalion chiefs came next, earning $113,000 to $124,000 apiece in overtime. That boosted their pay to $316,000 to $332,000 each.

Such payouts are a big reason why the Fire Department has already burned through its $38 million overtime budget with more than two months to go in the fiscal year, and is asking the Board of Supervisors for the OK to spend another $4.1 million.

“It’s insane,” said Tom O’Connor, president of the San Francisco firefighters union.

O’Connor points the finger at chronic understaffing — caused by the department’s failure to fill 400 vacant positions — for requiring some firefighters to put in hundreds of hours of OT a year.

Hayes-White conceded that it has been “more efficient’’ to pay overtime than hire additional firefighters, but said, “I don’t think it’s sustainable … for someone time after time to accumulate more than 2,000 hours of overtime (a year). And as the fire chief, I don’t support it from a safety perspective or from a mental health perspective.’’

The department brass has repeatedly pledged to reduce its reliance on OT, however, and little has changed.

It takes some mighty long hours to rack up the bill. Top earner Altenberg, for example, worked the equivalent of about 1½ extra round-the-clock shifts a week.

“It’s mind-boggling,’’ O’Connor said. “You are getting some real important calls — a lot of cases involving congestive heart failure and elderly patients that tend to show up in the early-morning hours — so you are not getting a lot of sleep.’’

Altenberg’s overtime load last year totaled nearly three times the department’s supposed 633-hour cap, and this year he is actually picking up the pace. He has rung up 2,100 hours for an estimated $265,000 in OT this fiscal year, which doesn’t end until June 30.

Altenberg, through the union, declined to comment.

Firefighters are permitted to exceed the overtime cap if they volunteer for shifts that the department needs to fill, sparing others from having to work mandatory overtime.

“The only true way to solve the problem is to get more people in the department,’’ O’Connor said.

In December, Mayor Ed Lee promised to add at least one extra 48-member class of firefighter recruits every year for the next six years, with the goal being to fill many of those 400 vacant positions.

As a result, Hayes-White says said she has imposed a new “hard cap” of 1,100 hours of overtime a year per firefighter — meaning no more extra volunteering to prevent others from being called. That policy took effect April 15.

As usual, however, the new OT rule isn’t all that ironclad. Firefighters who hit the cap are still subject to mandatory overtime if there are staff shortages.

In other words, they’re right where they have been. And from what we’re told, Altenberg was among the first to get the call.

For more M&R, including what the guy told a San Francisco store clerk after somebody fired three shots at him, click here.

New film looks at ‘War on Whistleblowers’

By Joe Davidson, Published: April 23

The Obama administration’s approach to federal whistleblowers has been likened to “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

On the good doctor’s side, President Obama has important accomplishments in protecting the rights of whistleblowers. Yet whistleblower advocates are fuming at the administration’s actions against federal employees whom it considers to be leakers of national security information.

“There’s a schizophrenia within the administration,” said Tom Devine, legal director of the nonprofit Government Accountability Project. “It’s been Obama versus Obama on whistleblower policy. Until recently, there was a virtual free-speech advocacy for whistleblower job rights that’s unprecedented, more than any other president in history.

“At the same time,” Devine added, “he has willingly allowed the Justice Department to prosecute whistleblowers on tenuous grounds.”

That last point — the Mr. Hyde side — is the focus of the new film “War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security State.” (Disclosure: The documentary features comments by Dana Priest, a Washington Post colleague.) It is a project of the Brave New Foundation, a social justice advocacy organization. The film is being shown in theaters in New York City and Los Angeles, but the main distribution channels will be iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and cable systems.

The Justice Department rejects the notion that it is overzealous in its prosecution of those the government calls national security leakers.

“Unauthorized disclosures of classified information cause damage to our national security and we take the investigation and prosecution of such matters very seriously,” Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman, said via e-mail. “In these and all other cases, Justice Department investigators and prosecutors follow the facts and the law to determine whether charges are appropriate.”

The Justice Department does not target whistleblowers, he added: “However, we cannot condone the knowing and willful disclosure of classified information to the media or others not entitled to such information. An individual in authorized possession of classified information has no authority or right to unilaterally determine that it should be made public or otherwise disclose it.”

The film recognizes the president’s good side, with a quick nod by Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight. The “good news,” she said, is passage of the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, which Obama supported, and his directive providing protection for national security whistleblowers. That mention, however, is not until 59 minutes into the 66-minute film.

Balanced? No. But the stories about the government’s aggressive moves against federal employees who worked to uphold the finest traditions of public service are chilling and deserve the notice and outrage the film hopes to generate.

Franz Gayl’s is the first case presented. The Defense Department civilian employee was punished for his efforts to save the lives of U.S. troops at war.

“Hundreds of Marines were tragically lost and probably thousands maimed unnecessarily, so I said, let’s replace the Humvees with what are called MRAPs, Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles,” he says in the film.

After taking his concerns to Pentagon officials with no luck, he went to the news media. Then the blowback hit. He was stripped of his security clearance, the lifeline for national security workers, and suspended.

“They were using all these personnel actions against me,” he said. “I’m the substandard employee, bottom 3 percent, unreliable, untrustworthy, et cetera, et cetera. After investigations and after all these personnel actions and reprisals, I was placed on administrative leave.

“I was fearful. If I have to leave the government now and I don’t have security clearances, we’re gonna have to move away. I can’t get a job around here. You can’t do anything without a security clearance around [the] D.C. area. I knew that life was gonna go ‘foof,’ fall off a cliff.”

Gayl was fortunate to have whistleblower advocates who cushioned his fall. And in November 2011, after intervention by an Office of Special Counsel that was re-energized by Obama, the military’s threat to suspend Gayl indefinitely was lifted and his security clearance was reinstated.

There’s a lot left out of his story in this space, and similar stories of other whistleblowers can’t be mentioned at all. Gayl’s is a distressing tale of Uncle Sam playing the bully, making life hell for a federal employee who fought to better protect American troops.

“I’m now working back at the Pentagon in the office from which I was removed,” Gayl says at the end of the film. “I feel very lucky, because I received a lot of support from a lot of outsiders that I don’t think every person in my situation gets.”

The film makes you wonder how many more trampled, and largely unknown, federal whistleblowers like Gayl are out there.

Twitter: @JoeDavidsonWP

Previous columns by Joe Davidson are available at wapo.st/JoeDavidson.

Mexico vote-buying scandal threatens president's agenda of reforms

Mexico vote-buying scandal threatens president's agenda of reforms

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto faces crisis over PRI vote-buying scandal

By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times

April 23, 2013, 5:55 p.m.

MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on Tuesday faced the most serious political crisis of his young government, an explosive dispute with rival parties over electoral dirty tricks that could imperil his ambitious reform plans.

Peña Nieto's highly touted Pact for Mexico, a kind of blueprint for his administration's agenda that had seemed to have won consensus from most major political groups, was on the verge of collapse after fresh reports of vote-buying by the president's Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

The government was forced to cancel a series of public events under the auspices of the Pact for Mexico to avoid the embarrassment of a boycott by the main opposition factions.

The first casualty would appear to be a broad reform to overhaul Mexico's financial sector, which was scheduled to be unveiled Tuesday.

Peña Nieto's right-hand man, Finance Minister Luis Videgaray, went on early-morning television to assure domestic and international audiences that the financial reform was not dead and would be presented "in a few days." He also said he was confident that "dialogue" would resume soon.

Other reforms that are working their way through the legislative system or scheduled to be brought up this year — and which need political consensus — include curbing powerful telecommunications monopolies and modernizing oil production. The reforms are all considered essential to Mexico's prosperity and ability to compete in the global market.

The detonating dispute centers on audio recordings in which PRI elected officials can be heard discussing ways to use a government anti-poverty program to win votes in upcoming local elections.

The recordings involve officials in the coastal state of Veracruz and were made public by the rival National Action Party, or PAN, which held the presidency until Peña Nieto's election last year.

In one recording, a PRI official says citizens who get aid from the program, including food and stipends, must be immediately registered to vote so they feel obliged to support the party. Another official appears to be conditioning the distribution of government-supplied wheelchairs and dentures to party fealty. In another recording, the officials appear to be discussing ways of purging the social programs of non-PRI participants.

The message, one of the officials says, is "Help us, or else."

The shenanigans described are a throwback to tactics used throughout the seven decades the PRI held near-absolute power in Mexico. Peña Nieto has insisted that the party, which spent 12 years in opposition until regaining the presidency last year, is changed, having become more democratic and transparent. But the recordings cast doubt on such claims.

Gustavo Madero, national president of PAN, demanded the resignation of Rosario Robles, the Cabinet minister who oversees the poverty programs and whose officials are implicated in some of the recordings. Madero said his party was suspending participation in the Pact for Mexico until Robles, minister for social development, was removed from office.

"We have always said that the PRI wins with payoffs and lies," Madero said. "We have more evidence every day … that they are using federal [poverty and hunger] programs, structures and resources to promote PRI candidacies."

Madero said such tactics were being detected in all 14 states where local elections will be held this year. But the most damning evidence is in Veracruz, one of Mexico's most populous states and one with a long history of corrupt governments. The state has been controlled by the PRI since the party's founding in 1929.

The boycott by the conservative PAN was seconded by the other major opposition force, the leftist Democratic Revolution Party.

Peña Nieto probably hurt himself by initially minimizing the problem and by publicly backing Robles.

At an enormous gathering in Chiapas recently for the launch of a national anti-hunger crusade, which Robles oversees, Peña Nieto addressed her from the podium. "Don't worry," he said.

"You just have to put up with it, because the criticisms have started, the disqualifications from those who are caught up in politics and elections," he added dismissively.

By Tuesday, he had changed his tune. The president said he would "not tolerate" the use of social programs for electoral ends.

"We are committed to transparency, full accounting and the permanent evaluation of public policies," Peña Nieto said.

Robles, meanwhile, denied wrongdoing. She said she welcomed a judicial investigation and fired six of the officials running the programs in Veracruz.

wilkinson@latimes.com

Recorded interrogations should be the norm

Recorded 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.

Phoenix continues it's war against messy yard criminals

Phoenix looks to increase fees for blighted, vacant properties

By Betty Reid The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Apr 9, 2013 3:44 PM

Phoenix officials hope to tack on an additional $20 fee for property owners who end up in city court after refusing to clean up their blighted properties.

The Phoenix City Council will consider whether to add the fee this year.

If passed, the Neighborhood Services Department would create a new fund and collect an estimated $37,600 a year, which the city would pay to contractors to clean up properties citywide more quickly.

The properties include homes and commercial buildings.

The city has long battled blighted properties, especially since the recession, and is looking for ways to clean them faster.

When you see a burned-out commercial building or a home, “that’s because it’s vacant, and the windows are busted out and people go into the structures and when it’s cold, they build fires to warm up,” said Tim Boling, Neighborhood Services Department deputy director.

The city would use the new funds to fence the property, install a door, replace a window or trim the tall grass. That could help prevent squatters from getting onto the property, Boling said.

Code enforcement

Phoenix code-enforcement officers deal with violations involving overgrown weeds, trash and illegally-parked cars on a daily basis in some areas.

In much of the city, code enforcement is complaint-based. That means residents bring potential blight issues to the notice of city officials. Once the city is contacted, officials send an inspector out within 10 business days.

If the inspector finds a violation, the city alerts the owner. A majority of property owners resolve the issues.

However, it takes more time for officials to resolve the issues on vacant properties.

City officials have 15 days to find the property owner. They give the owner an additional 30 days to correct the violation, following state law.

The department uses water records, county records, titles and the Experian Data Base system to find the owner. If the city can’t locate the property owner, or if he or she ignores the notice, officials can put a lien on the property. The city hires a contractor to board up the house and sends the case to Phoenix Municipal Court.

New proposal

If the City Council approves the proposal, the courts would collect the $20 and turn over the money to the department.

Chris Hallett, Neighborhood Services director, said the department is using an existing law that says the city may charge property owners reasonable fees for inspections and other related issues.

The department issued 1,882 civil citations to property owners in fiscal 2012, according to a report given to the council’s Neighborhoods, Housing and Development subcommittee in February.

If a property owner decides to fight the citation in court, it’s up to the judge to decide the amount of the fine. If a property owner pleads guilty, they pay a $150 fine.

Boling said the proposal hatched because of public pressure. People complained the city wasn’t taking care of things quickly enough.

People report property to the city for varied reasons.

It could be a business owner who operates his retail store near a building with 3-foot-high weeds. It might be a school official who is tired of an open, vacant property with the missing door located across the street from a school.

The “house entices kids (students) to go there,” Boling said.

The department may use the $20 to address the overgrown weed or buy the front door, Boling said.

The collection would begin a month after the City Council approves the proposal, he said. Timing on consideration is not finalized.

‘Shy bladder’ syndrome leads to lawsuit

These government mandated drug tests are wrong, and I also suspect are also unconstitutional.

Source

‘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.”

Feds want to put "id tags" in gunpowder and explosives???

Source

A better way to track a bomber

By Tom Zoellner and Sam Kleiner

April 28, 2013

The mayhem in Boston the week of April 15 was a reminder of how an American city can be paralyzed by a homemade bomb. The same kinds of improvised explosive devices that menaced U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan can easily be deployed by freelance terrorists or madmen trying to send a message, incite panic or just create a media spectacle.

The Tsarnaev brothers were identified because of surveillance videotape, but the FBI might have been able to do it faster if tiny plastic markers had been part of the small-arms propellant packed into the pressure-cooker bombs. These little chips, called "taggants," have been around for close to 40 years, and their crime-solving capability is impressive. But they're not used today because of one formidable opponent: the National Rifle Assn.

The idea behind taggants is both benign and ingenious, and it can be credited to a chemistry professor and former 3M employee named Richard Livesay, who had been angered over the 1970 leftist bombing at the University of Wisconsin that killed a graduate student. Explosions always create residue, and Livesay figured out that gunpowder could be seeded with bits of melamine plastic, which cannot be destroyed or melted. Each particle is about a tenth of a millimeter across and contains a layering of eight to 10 colors. They look like pepper flakes, and the specific color signature can be read with an infrared scanner, telling an investigator where that batch of explosive was produced and perhaps even the retail store where it was purchased.

After the Oklahoma City bombing revived fears of domestic terrorists in 1995, the Clinton administration asked the Treasury Department to study how taggants might be used as a traceable element in dynamite and gunpowder. But the NRA complained that the program could result in a registry of gun owners (the same argument that sank the recent attempt at a universal background check for firearms purchases).

Jim Pasco, a former assistant director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said the NRA "objected to record-keeping." Manufacturers would have to keep logs of when and where different batches of explosives were distributed to retail outlets, which are already required to maintain records of purchases of explosives. The trail this generated would be broad — many retailers and many purchasers — but the process still came too close to the gun lobby's discomfort with government surveillance.

That the proposal came from the ATF also didn't help matters, according to William Vizzard, an emeritus professor of criminal justice at Cal State Sacramento and a former ATF special agent. The NRA's distrust of the federal law enforcement agency was so great, he said, that "if we suggested having a picnic, they would have immediately denounced picnics as a communist plot." [That is because the police have a track records of turning benign, seemingly harmless events into things that create a police state. Like demanding that hospitals grab the finger prints and DNA from new born infants, to "protect the infant" rather then the real reason of creating a national database that will be able to identify anyone born in the country. The police always use a theme of "protecting the children" to turn American into a police state.]

The NRA successfully pressured Congress to keep the ATF away from the issue, although it did participate in a National Academy of Sciences study of taggants in 1999. The outcome was a report that half-heartedly acknowledged that the plastic chips "could be of further assistance" in a forensic investigation and called for more research. The idea has lain dormant ever since.

Explosives manufacturers have no ideological opposition to taggants, but they do want to make sure the science is unassailable, the taggants don't interfere with the use of their products and the cost isn't prohibitive, said Christopher Ronay, the head of the Institute of Makers of Explosives, a lobbying and safety group. "Everyone would like to see a marker that's durable and readable," he said. As for NRA opposition, he said: "Frankly I don't know why that would bother anyone — tracing a product back to its manufacturer." When we asked the NRA last week if it stood by its decades of opposition to taggants, it declined to make a comment. [I doubt if this paragraph is true for most manufactors. Nobody likes it when government nannies require a bunch of silly regulations that make manufacturing more expensive and cumbersome, just to make the police and politicians happy.]

There is no doubt that requiring taggants would result in a marginally higher shelf price for gunpowder and dynamite; the ATF estimated the cost at 2 cents per pound of explosives in the mid-1970s, and that ratio has not changed. Although this isn't an apples-to-apples comparison, it's worth noting that economists have said closing down Boston for a day cost about $333 million; a few extra pennies are a bargain by comparison. [I suspect most freedom fighters and civil libertarians disagree with that 100 percent. I do.]

The NRA also suggested that taggants would be useless distractions to an investigation — "like finding a needle in a haystack" was the phrase a gun lobbyist used — but there is a case on the books that proves the opposite.

Federal agents were experimenting with taggants in 1979. They inserted them into explosives sold from a West Virginia plant. Later that year a steelworker in Baltimore named Nathan Allen was killed by a crude dynamite bomb placed under the seat of his truck. Taggants were found at the scene, and federal agents were able to narrow down a list of possible retailers, who then helped them figure out purchasers of the particular batch of explosives used. The list included Allen's uncle, who suspected that Allen was having an affair with his wife. The uncle was convicted, and a federal judge later noted that "the use of taggants in explosives rests upon well-established scientific principles."

After a bombing, police need every clue that a crime scene can yield. The 1993 World Trade Center bombing was quickly solved because of a clue in the wreckage: a serial number on a mangled axle that led the FBI to a Ryder truck dealership and then to the man who placed the bomb. Homicide detectives can trace the origin of a bullet by the unique groove markings of a gun barrel. Taggants would be a similar telltale signature. Just the fact of their presence would serve as a deterrent to kitchen-sink bombers.

Some courageous Republicans defied the NRA in 1996 to support a study on placing taggants in black powder. Congressman Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) was among them because, as he told a reporter, "I want my party to be the party of law and order, as it always has been, and not the party of the militias."

With the Boston bombings fresh in everyone's mind, Congress needs to stand up to NRA foolishness and resurrect this eminently good idea. [Sorry Congress needs needs to start obeying the Constitution and stop flushing the Bill of Rights down the toilet in their unconstitutional attempt to make America safer by turning it into a police state]

Tom Zoellner is an associate professor of English at Chapman University. Sam Kleiner is a student at Yale Law School.

US tries new aerial tools in Caribbean drug fight

Source

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.

US uses drug war to turn Mexico into a police state???

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!!!!

Source

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!!!!!

NYPD 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.”

10,000 cops in Los Angeles???

LAPD's 'magic number' of 10,000 officers losing some luster

By James Rainey and Joel Rubin, Los Angeles Times

April 28, 2013, 5:46 p.m.

In 1989, then-Los Angeles Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky unveiled an audacious plan to boost the city police force by more than 25% to 10,000 officers.

He couldn't have imagined that city leaders would chase that goal for nearly a quarter of a century until, at the start of this year, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced that he had pushed the LAPD over the long-illusive benchmark.

The two candidates vying to replace Villaraigosa in the May 21 election — City Controller Wendy Greuel and Councilman Eric Garcetti — have embraced the mayor's achievement, crediting the LAPD buildup in large measure for the city's lowest crime rates since the 1950s. Indeed, Greuel has committed to enlarging the police force another 20%, if the city treasury grows.

But increasingly, voices on the periphery of the mayoral campaign argue that rising police costs — up 36% to more than $2 billion over the last eight years, more than twice the rate of growth in such discretionary spending overall — raises two critical questions: Has the expansion been crucial to making Los Angeles safer? Has the relentless pursuit of more officers come at too great a cost to paramedic response times, paving streets and other basic services?

Among those raising such concerns are former police chief and current Councilman Bernard C. Parks, Councilman Paul Koretz, former first deputy mayor and businessman Austin Beutner, the police officers' union and, in a small irony, Yaroslavsky.

"If the Police Department does not lose any officers over the next few years, during this time of economic hardship, it's because the rest of city services have been eviscerated," said Yaroslavsky, now a Westside and San Fernando Valley representative on the county Board of Supervisors. "I don't think it's sensible to say that we cannot cut the Police Department by even one position."

There is little consensus among criminal-justice academics about the effect that changes in police staffing have on crime rates. Where officers are deployed and the assignments they are given appear to be as important as the number of cops on the payroll, said Jeremy M. Wilson, a Michigan State University criminologist. A recent report on police staffing levels coauthored by Wilson suggested that many departments simply guess the number of officers needed. "We determine how many officers we need," said one police official in the report, "by holding an envelope to our head."

Many criminologists who have studied big-city crime decreases credit longer prison sentences and the retreat of the crack-cocaine epidemic, among other reasons, as being most responsible for bringing down crime. They point to cities such as Seattle and Dallas that cut police staffing in the 1990s and still saw crime drop sharply.

But LAPD Chief Charlie Beck argues that there is an important correlation between officer staffing levels and lower crime rates. Cities such as San Jose, Long Beach and Oakland saw crime surge after cutting their police forces, he said.

Villaraigosa, whose legacy is tied to his record of expanding the Police Department, despite the the Great Recession, also draws a direct line between more cops and less crime. The city has had fewer than 300 murders each of the last three years, he notes, down from a high of nearly 1,100 in 1992.

"The numbers speak for themselves," Villaraigosa said. "A 49% drop in violent crime and homicides, a 66% drop in gang homicides. Growing our Police Department and ... community policing is a big reason why we are safer today."

But why 10,000 cops for L.A.?

Yaroslavsky latched onto the number after crack- and gang-fueled violent crime surged. Voters demanded action. The 10,000 figure lacked any analytical underpinning but was "a nice round number," Yaroslavsky chuckled in an interview. It also "takes the force from four digits to five digits." The goal stuck, becoming a lodestar of L.A.'s mayoral politics ever since.

Police Chief Willie L. Williams, hired three years after Yaroslavsky rolled out his plan, said he wanted to reach the mark by 2000. In 1993, mayoral candidate Richard Riordan suggested pushing the force past 10,000 officers by leasing Los Angeles International Airport to a private operator and diverting the income to the LAPD. His opponent, Councilman Michael Woo, pledged to reach the 10,000-officer target by shifting money away from other departments. Riordan won the contest but never added the 3,000 officers he had promised.

In 2005, mayoral contender Villaraigosa pledged 1,000 additional officers, which would have brought the LAPD to a force of 10,200.

To finally claw past the 10,000-cop threshold, his administration employed a bureaucratic sleight of hand — shifting 60 officers to the LAPD from the General Services Department, which patrols parks, libraries and other municipal buildings. The result: no net increase in officers, but effectively 10,000 wearing LAPD blue. (Due to routine fluctuations in staffing, the figure dipped to 9,976 last week.)

The department's highest-ever staffing comes with a notable asterisk. Because the city has all but eliminated funding for police overtime, cops must instead be compensated with time off, removing the equivalent of 400 or more officers from duty. That effectively reduces Villaraigosa's police buildup during his eight years in office by at least half, according to Beutner, the mayor's former first deputy.

Using the 10,000-officer figure, the LAPD now employs more than 2.5 officers per 1,000 residents. That's low compared to Chicago (4.7) and New York (4.3) but higher than other large western cities such as Houston (2.3), Phoenix (2.1) and San Diego (1.5). Criminologists warn that such ratios can be misleading because so many other factors — including geography and deployment patterns — are more important factors.

The LAPD, including the cost of benefits to retired officers, now consumes more than 55% of the $4 billion in revenue that city officials have discretion over, compared with 46% nine years ago.

The increased expenditures are worth it, Beck says, because public safety is the city's No. 1 priority. Current staffing is the "absolute minimum" needed to keep the city safe, he argues.

Others say its time to reconsider the trade-offs.

The city attorney's prosecutorial staff has declined from 300 to 200 attorneys over the last four years. Street repair and maintenance spending this year was 36% lower than when Villaraigosa took office. The Fire Department lost units at one-fifth of the city's stations in 2011, exacerbating increases in 911 response times to medical emergencies.

Both the city attorney and fire rescue operations "have been hacked to pieces," said Councilman Koretz. "Why should every other city department be pushed to the point where they can barely do their job when the LAPD is doing great? I don't think a modest decrease in their numbers will make that big a difference."

On that point, Koretz, a committed liberal, has become an unlikely ally with Parks, the council's leading budget hawk. The former police chief has tried, and failed, to get a majority of his council colleagues to consider allowing LAPD staffing to decline slightly.

Beutner, a one-time mayoral hopeful who raised concerns about paramedic response times, says a thorough review of police staffing is needed. "They should be looking at all the resources and factors," he said, "instead of just picking this one nice, round political-sounding number and assuming it's the right answer."

The Police Protective League, the union representing rank-and-file officers, has said the 10,000-officer goal was "pulled out of the air for political reasons." More effective staffing could be accomplished by fully funding overtime for current officers and hiring more civilians to free up cops filling desk jobs, the union says.

Beck disagrees strongly. Hiring more civilians at the expense of cops, he says, would not free up enough officers to make a significant difference. He added that it's far cheaper to sustain the current force — at the cost of about $10 million a year to fill vacant positions — than to fully fund overtime for $80 million a year. And a freeze on police hiring would mean losing momentum on crime-fighting gains, the chief said.

"For the past three years I have delivered unparalleled crime reductions while sticking to the worst budgets in decades," Beck said. "Why would anyone doubt what I say about how to best use the resources of the LAPD?"

Yaroslavsky suggested that a 500-officer reduction would save $75 million a year, enough to restore money for pothole repairs, removing dead animals, cleaning up graffiti and the like. The LAPD would still be the city's top spending priority, he said.

"The next mayor, I think, is going to have to be a little more open to putting all departments on the table when it comes to the budget," he said. "The LAPD is very good. But you can't tell me it can't find a way to help mitigate the crisis caused by the worst recession we have seen, at a time when crime rates are as low as they have been since the Eisenhower administration."

Beck said he could imagine a time when other city agencies have been so diminished that it would not be wise to protect police hiring. But he added: "I don't see us being anywhere close" to that point.

Villaraigosa agreed. "In a city that is still the gang capital of the United States of America, in a city where less than 20 years ago we were the most violent city in America, it's not worth taking a chance."

james.rainey@latimes.com

joel.rubin@latimes.com

How L.A. stacks up

Number of police officers per 1,000 population as of 2011:

City	Officers
Washington, D.C.	6.7
New Orleans	6.5
Baltimore	4.7
Chicago	4.7
Philadelphia	4.7
Newark	4.4
New York	4.3
St. Louis	3.9
Boston	3.7
Cleveland	3.6
Detroit	3.5
Atlanta	3.4
Milwaukee	3.4
Cincinnati	3.2
Los Angeles	2.5
Houston	2.3
Phoenix	2.1
Albuquerque	1.9
Las Vegas	1.8
San Diego	1.5

Source: FBI

The FBI wants to wiretap your internet viewing????

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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.

After Dorner claim, other fired LAPD cops want cases reviewed

After Dorner claim, other fired LAPD cops want cases reviewed

By Joel Rubin, Los Angeles Times

April 29, 2013

In the wake of Christopher Dorner's claim that his firing from the Los Angeles Police Department was a result of corruption and bias, more than three dozen other fired LAPD cops want department officials to review their cases.

The 40 requests, which were tallied by the union that represents rank-and-file officers, have come in the two months since Dorner sought revenge for his 2009 firing by targeting police officers and their families in a killing rampage that left four dead and others injured.

Dorner's allegations of a department plagued by racism and special interests left Chief Charlie Beck scrambling to stem a growing chorus of others who condemned Dorner's violence but said his complaints about the department were accurate. To assuage concerns, Beck vowed to re-examine the cases of other former officers who believed they had been wrongly expelled from the force.

Now, details of how the department plans to make good on Beck's offer are becoming clear. And, for at least some of the disgruntled ex-officers, they will be disappointing.

In letters to those wishing to have their case reviewed, department officials explain that the city's charter, which spells out the authority granted to various public officials, prevents the police chief from opening new disciplinary proceedings for an officer fired more than three years ago.

"Therefore the Department does not have the power to reinstate officers whose terminations occurred more than three years ago," wrote Gerald Chaleff, the LAPD's special assistant for constitutional policing. "You are being informed of this to forestall any misconceptions about the power of the department."

The reviews remain one of the unsettled postscripts to the Dorner saga. In February, three years after he was fired for allegedly fabricating a story about his partner inappropriately kicking a handcuffed suspect, Dorner resurfaced in violent fashion, bent on seeking revenge for his ouster.

After killing the daughter of the attorney who defended him at his disciplinary hearing and her fiance, Dorner killed two police officers and wounded three other people as he evaded capture during a massive manhunt. After more than a week on the run, Dorner was chased into a cabin in the mountains near Big Bear, where he died from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Dorner had posted online an angry manifesto of sorts in which he claimed that he had been a victim of a racist, corrupt police organization that protects its favored officers at the expense of those trying to report abuses. Those accusations tapped into deep wells of discontent and distrust that officers and minority communities have felt toward the department. Beck sought to reassure doubters that years of reforms had changed the department and buried the "ghosts" of the past. He then offered to review past discipline cases.

Fired officers who wish to have their terminations re-examined must first submit an affidavit or similar declaration within two months of receiving the letter from Chaleff, according to a copy obtained by The Times. The letter was sent in recent weeks to the former officers who have already come forward.

Using "clear and convincing language," the letter instructs ex-officers to explain "the new evidence or change in circumstances that would justify a re-examination of your termination."

LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith said Chaleff will conduct a review for anyone who follows the rules laid out in the letter. "We will do whatever it takes on the cases, including redoing interviews, if necessary," he wrote in an email.

The department and the Protective League declined to release the names of former officers who have requested reviews.

Gary Ingemunson, a longtime attorney for the League, used the case reviews as an opportunity to revive the League's perennial criticism that disciplinary hearings, called Boards of Rights, are stacked against officers.

"The Board of Rights system could be fair, but for the last few years the Department has consistently outdone itself in the attempt to completely skew the system against the officer. The Department wants to win. End of story," Ingemunson wrote in a column in the current issue of the union's monthly magazine.

One of the problems, Ingemunson and other union lawyers have said, is the makeup of the three-person panels that decide an officer's fate. Two of judges are senior-level LAPD officers, while the third is a civilian.

According to the critics, that arrangement is unfair because officers are sent to boards whenever the chief wants them fired and the officers on the panel will feel pressure to do as the chief wants.

Smith rejected that idea, saying board members are completely free to decide as they see fit. He pointed to department figures showing that over the last three years, officers sent by the chief to Boards of Rights were fired in only about 60% of the cases.

Smith defended the department's disciplinary system in general, saying it has been in place for decades and stood up under repeated scrutiny by oversight bodies.

Another allowance Beck made after Dorner's rampage, Smith noted, was to launch a broad review of disciplinary procedures to identify areas that officers believe are unfair and possibly make changes to address those concerns.

joel.rubin@latimes.com

Indiana cop accused in fatal drunk-driving crash arrested again

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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.

With Bags of Cash, C.I.A. Seeks Influence in Afghanistan

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.

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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.”

Menlo Park to install license plate readers at all city entrances???

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.

$40 million dollar solution for $10 problem???

Source

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

States repealing 'Blue Laws' that ban hunting on Sunday???

Most “blue laws’’ were enacted from pressure by religious groups who believed Sunday was a day to be used for prayer and reflection.

Source

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

Source

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.

Glendale city council - F*ck the public record laws, we are royal rulers!!!!

Source

Posted on April 25, 2013 9:02 am by West Valley Opinions

Our View: Private Council continues to rain on sunshine law

Four months in office, 14 scheduled executive sessions later, the Glendale City Council is still leaving us hanging out to dry.

The council has privately discussed an external audit, a forensic audit, the Jobing.com Arena management deal, the performance of two top city staffers, the Arizona Cardinals’ football training camp and more.

We get it; some matters need to be discussed away from the public’s prying eyes and ears. And many eyes and ears are locked on to Glendale’s negotiations with the NHL and potential buyers for the Phoenix Coyotes.

But that doesn’t mean every sensitive topic should be discussed behind closed doors. When the taxpayers’ business is being done, the law requires greater transparency, not less. Accountability requires greater transparency, not less. One council member, Norma Alvarez, requested all Coyotes discussions be done in public. Unfortunately, that has not been the case.

After an executive session April 9,Republic reporter Paul Giblin learned Beacon Sports Capital Partners, the consulting company handling the city’s arena-management negotiations, discussed its time line and the request for proposal process at the meeting.

Interim City Attorney Nick DiPiazza initially denied Giblin’s public-records request to see copies of materials presented during the session. DiPiazza even refused to disclose the nature of the documents.

DiPiazza only revealed Beacon Sports’ PowerPoint presentation after The Republic’s attorney David Bodney demanded Glendale abide by Arizona’s Open Meeting and Public Records laws.

Those laws forbid governmental bodies from making decisions shrouded in secrecy. According to the law, municipalities are supposed to favor public meetings and disclosure, with rare exceptions.

Under Arizona law, matters reserved for executive sessions include personnel matters; discussion of records exempt from public inspection; legal advice; litigation consultation; labor negotiations; international, interstate and tribal negotiations; and purchase, sale or lease of property.

Beacon Sports’ time-line presentation does not fall under those categories. Taxpayers, whose dollars pay for that consultation, deserved a hearing.

Glendale residents got an idea of what was discussed more than a week later when the city made the request for proposal public April16. The document states Glendale will accept proposals through May24, and the city expects to have an arena manager, be it hockey-related or not, by July 1.

We will continue to hold on to our Coyotes pride during the last week of the regular season. But more important than our NHL dreams is Glendale’s obligation to its residents. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, where is the “transparent” council that Glendale residents were promised in November?

The Arizona Republic Editorial Board, West Valley

Racist cops murder Black teenager????

Source

Phoenix police bias claimed in shooting of teenager

By JJ Hensley and Chris Cole The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Apr 30, 2013 10:57 PM

Questions and accusations continued to swirl Tuesday about the fatal police shooting of a teenager, even as he was laid to rest.

About 70 friends and family members of Alexander Wilson’s read poems, sang and spoke of the teenager’s ever-present smile at the service at Emmanuel Church of God in Christ in south Phoenix. But some of them could hardly contain their anger over what they view as the racially motivated police shooting of an unarmed youth.

An Arizona Department of Public Safety officer shot Wilson on April 7 near 35th Avenue and Camelback Road when officials say Wilson drove an SUV toward the officer.

The SUV was stolen, which is why the officer attempted to stop the car about a mile from where the fatal shooting took place.

But Wilson’s friends and family members, who last month protested the shooting at the state Capitol and outside Phoenix police headquarters, believe the incident was motivated by racial bias.

Wilson and his passenger in the SUV are Black, and the 31-year-old officer who shot into the car is White.

Many at Tuesday’s service spoke through tears and fondly recalled Wilson’s spirit and seemingly constant smile.

But in his eulogy, the Rev. Jarrett Maupin called for justice for the youth’s life and preached an end to racial profiling.

Maupin said that Wilson was a “victim of police brutality” and that he was “shot down by a bully with a badge.”

Initial police reports indicated Wilson was 15 years old, but Maupin said family members assured him Wilson was 16.

Maupin called for the DPS officer’s identity to be revealed and for a transparent investigation. He also compared Wilson’s death to the case of Trayvon Martin, the Florida youth who was fatally shot last year by a neighborhood-watch volunteer.

Phoenix police are conducting an investigation into Wilson’s shooting.

The Rev. Oscar Tillman, president of the Maricopa County branch of the NAACP, said the family members had requested the investigation. Tillman declined to make any other comments until that investigation is complete.

A DPS spokesman declined to comment, citing the ongoing nature of the investigation.

According to police, Wilson was driving a Chevrolet Tahoe near 27th Avenue and Camelback Road when an eight-year DPS veteran encountered the SUV at about 9:30 p.m. on April 7. The officer ran the SUV’s plates and learned that it had been reported stolen a couple of days earlier.

The officer requested backup and continued to follow the SUV, which pulled into a gas station on the southwest corner of 35th Avenue and Camelback, according to police.

Investigators believe that Wilson turned off the SUV and that the officer took a position between the truck and the street while he waited for backup to arrive. But before other officers got to the scene, Wilson started the SUV again and revved the engine, according to police. The SUV was in neutral and jerked into drive, lunging toward the officer, who felt threatened and fired his AR-15 rifle.

The bullet struck Wilson in the head, killing him.

Wilson’s passenger, William Brown, 18, fled the scene and later turned himself in to police.

Brown, who was interviewed about the shooting and later released, recounted that Wilson said he was going to “slam it” as the two waited in the SUV under the gas-station awning, according to a police account of Brown’s interview.

Police interpreted Brown’s statement to mean Wilson intended to drive at the officer.

Brown was one of four people named in a 12-count indictment handed up a week after the shooting that alleged his involvement in a street gang and an armed-robbery conspiracy.

Wilson also had an outstanding felony warrant on armed-robbery charges at the time of his death, according to police, and he pleaded guilty to a similar offense last year.

The DPS officer who shot Wilson wasn’t aware of either youth’s prior violations or pending charges, according to police, and only knew of the stolen SUV.

Maupin said the family has hired an attorney.

How do you spell revenue - DUI tickets!!!!

Source

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.

New hearing set for Horne, aide

New hearing set for Horne, aide

By Lindsey Collom The Republic | azcentral.com

Tue Apr 30, 2013 10:04 PM

A Maricopa County Superior Court judge will hear arguments Wednesday over separate petitions for special action filed by Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne and an aide that seek to derail a campaign-finance case against them and prevent County Attorney Bill Montgomery from taking any further action.

The hearing before Civil Presiding Judge John Rea comes less than a week before Horne and supporter-turned-employee Kathleen Winn are scheduled to defend themselves before an administrative law judge.

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.

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.

The pair, who continue to deny any wrongdoing, appealed the compliance order to the Arizona Office of Administrative Hearings, an independent arbiter over decisions made by certain state agencies, boards and commissions.

Chief among Horne and Winn’s complaints was the process used to take civil enforcement action against them.

Because the case involved a statewide office, they argued, Secretary of State Ken Bennett was required by law to refer the matter to the Attorney General’s Office, not to the Maricopa County attorney.

Administrative Law Judge Tammy Eigenheer was initially persuaded by Horne and Winn’s arguments and recommended the case for dismissal, which Montgomery later rejected.

Eigenheer reaffirmed last week that an evidentiary hearing will begin May 7.

In seeking relief in Superior Court, attorneys for Horne and Winn said Montgomery’s rejection was incorrect in part because the county attorney “has no jurisdiction to enforce civil campaign-finance laws with respect to campaigns for statewide office” and “Montgomery has been a dramatic and avid advocate to the press and the public in this case, and this disqualifies him for acting as a judge in the same case.”

In his response, Montgomery countered that Horne’s conflict of interest is “so severe that his quest to appoint his own prosecutor is ‘shocking to the universal sense of justice.’ ”

Montgomery said that if Rea were to prevent Eigenheer from hearing the case, it would “cause irreparable injury to the public trust vested with elected officials in enforcing the law.”

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Maricopa County attorney gathered compelling evidence of egregious campaign-finance violations during a yearlong investigation, which has been reported by the press,” he wrote. “In light of the plaintiffs’ vehement and very public denials of any wrongdoing, the public has a right to have the evidence heard.”

3 reasons why the "drug war" is impossible to win!!!

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.

U.S. role in Mexico drug war will be a topic of Obama visit

Source

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

LA County Sheriff just as corrupt as Maricopa County Sheriff???

Source

Top Baca aide, pushed to quit, offers harsh appraisal of sheriff

By Robert Faturechi, Los Angeles Times

April 30, 2013, 9:58 p.m.

Paul Tanaka, the Los Angeles County undersheriff accused of fostering a culture of jailhouse abuse, offered a searing critique of his boss Sheriff Lee Baca, calling him a confused and erratic leader who cares more about politics than public safety.

In his first extensive comments since being pressured to step down, Tanaka told The Times that Baca pushed subordinates to hire his friends and relatives and undermined public safety to settle political spats. For example, Tanaka said Baca demanded that all sheriff's deputies be removed from joint crime-fighting operations with the FBI as payback for a federal investigation of the jails — an order Tanaka said he refused to carry out.

Tanaka, who is considering a run against Baca in 2014, said he was speaking out because he feels he has been made a scapegoat for many of the agency's problems. Indeed, a blue-ribbon report last year blamed him and Baca for an abusive atmosphere inside the agency's jails. Several current and former sheriff's officials publicly singled out Tanaka for creating a climate in which aggression was prized, loyalty was placed above merit and discipline discouraged.

Tanaka said his reputation was unfairly tarnished by sheriff's officials who were upset that he was holding lazy supervisors accountable.

"They're not used to that," said Tanaka, who will remain on the county payroll as undersheriff until August. "In this organization, they're used to the higher you go, the less responsibility."

For years, Tanaka was one of Baca's most trusted advisors, rising in the ranks to run day-to-day operations as Baca's second in command. He said he and others kept the department running while Baca paid little attention to the agency and took numerous international trips that brought little benefit to Los Angeles County. Baca, he said, would boast about how "he gets to see the world without paying anything."

Tanaka said that after years of being a detached boss, Baca — in the face of scandal — has now become an unpredictable micromanager whose fits of anger have scared subordinates into inaction.

As a result, he said, the Sheriff's Department is a "house of cards that's on the verge of crumbling."

Baca's spokesman declined to discuss Tanaka's allegations in detail but said "the sheriff finds it very sad that his former undersheriff has raised these false charges motivated apparently by his personal disappointment and ambition. None of these allegations were made while he served as undersheriff. He raises them only now as he contemplates a run for sheriff."

Tanaka said he did not do so because Baca specifically ordered him and others not to speak to The Times.

Tanaka said Baca frequently gave subordinates contradictory or foolish orders that they had to ignore because they violated department policy or common sense. A few months ago, for example, he said Baca was in a meeting with command staff, talking about the department's budget shortfall, when he asked a subordinate to study the cost savings that would come from eliminating the agency's community policing unit.

A week later, at another meeting, that captain began discussing his findings about cutting the unit, when Tanaka says Baca interrupted.

"He stops and he says 'What did you say? What are you talking about?...I would never do anything like that,' " Tanaka recounted Baca as saying.

Tanaka said he had to call the sheriff later and remind him that the captain was "following your orders and you... embarrassed him."

Tanaka said the sheriff was silent on the other end of the phone, before meekly saying "Oh."

At other times, Tanaka said, the sheriff pressured underlings to be unethical for his benefit.

The Times has reported on two recruits, both with connections to Baca, who were hired under unusual circumstances. In one case, an applicant with ties to Baca's son was hired during a hiring freeze. In the other, Baca's nephew was hired although background investigators noted a fight with San Diego police, theft and arrests on suspicion of drunk driving and burglary.

In both cases, Baca said he wasn't involved in the hirings.

"I know he said he wasn't, but that's not true," Tanaka said, accusing Baca of pressuring subordinates to put both recruits through the academy.

In the case of Baca's nephew, Tanaka said a background investigator flagged the fight with police, but Baca took his nephew's side, saying it was the officer who was overly aggressive. (Since being hired, Baca's nephew has had a checkered career as a deputy, and he is being criminally investigated over force he used on an inmate in an incident caught on tape.)

"The sheriff treats this organization as his own personal employment agency. He brings in people he meets, these consultants, and he says 'Paul, I want them to have a contract, I want them to have a job,' " Tanaka said. "We're constantly over the years scrambling around trying to get people employed."

If he runs against Baca, Tanaka, who confirmed that he was pushed out, said he would focus on crime reduction and fiscal responsibility. He said he wanted to replicate his successes reducing the crime rate in Compton throughout the rest of the county.

He said the county commission examining jail abuse that slammed him last year relied on dishonest witnesses.

Richard Drooyan, the panel's general counsel, denied that characterization. "I stand by what's reflected in the report," he said. "It's up to ... the public to evaluate his comments and the timing of his comments."

One of the jail commission's primary witnesses against Tanaka, Capt. Patrick Maxwell, rejected Tanaka's assertion that the testimony was inaccurate: "If I told any lies in that commission, I could have been fired and I stand by my testimony."

Since the jail abuse scandal broke out, Baca has begun implementing a sweeping set of reforms to improve oversight, accountability and jailer conduct. The sheriff hired an outside corrections expert to take over his jails — and some critics praised his decision to push Tanaka out.

Tanaka also said that the sheriff played an intimate role in the department's handling of an inmate who was found to be secretly collecting information on allegedly abusive and corrupt jail deputies for the FBI. After a phone he was using to call his FBI handler was discovered, blowing his cover, sheriff's officials changed the name under which the inmate was being held and transferred him to a different jail.

A federal criminal grand jury has been investigating whether sheriff's officials were hiding the inmate and the phone from the FBI, or whether they were protecting the inmate from retaliation by jail deputies he was "snitching" on, as a sheriff's spokesman has said.

Tanaka said Baca ordered subordinates to keep the inmate from the FBI until the department finished with him. He said the sheriff explicitly denied a request from a federal official to return the phone.

"I want the inmate interviewed. I don't want him leaving our custody. I want the phone, all of the information removed from it and I don't want the phone to go anywhere," Baca said, according to Tanaka.

Asked if the sheriff was obstructing the FBI investigation, Tanaka said that he and other subordinates "had to really weigh" Baca's orders to avoid "cross[ing] the line of doing anything wrong."

robert.faturechi@latimes.com

More on the US/Mexico drug war!!!!

Source

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.

You have a right to a speedy trial??? Don't make me laugh!!!!

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.

White House shooter upset about pot policy?

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.

Source

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.

It wasn't a $100,000 bribe - It was a $100,000 campaign contribution. Honest!!!!

Va. Gov. McDonnell says no special treatment given to big campaign donor under investigation

By Associated Press, Published: April 30

RICHMOND, Va. — Gov. Bob McDonnell said Tuesday his administration never gave special treatment to a dietary supplement company that is under a federal securities investigation and whose chief executive gave more than $100,000 in political contributions and thousands of dollars more in gifts to McDonnell’s family.

McDonnell said on WTOP radio he and first lady Maureen McDonnell have been friends with Star Scientific CEO Jonnie Williams for four or five years. He acknowledged receiving gifts from Williams, including a $15,000 check to his daughter to help her pay for her June 2011 wedding.

Williams’ gifts to McDonnell and to state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, both Republicans, have come under growing scrutiny in the past two months. It intensified after the former Executive Mansion chef Todd Schneider was charged with stealing food from the mansion and alleged that his prosecution by Cuccinelli was politically motivated.

Cuccinelli is running for governor this year; McDonnell, elected in 2009, can’t run because Virginia is the only state that doesn’t allow its governor to serve consecutive terms.

The FBI is looking at the relationship between McDonnell and Williams, according to two people who spoke on condition of anonymity because their roles preclude them from talking publicly. Neither is charged with wrongdoing.

Federal authorities began questioning people close to the McDonnells as an outgrowth of the securities probe, the two people said. FBI agents have asked about gifts the McDonnells received and whether the governor or his administration aided the company in return.

McDonnell said he appeared at an event promoting Star Scientific at the Executive Mansion in August 2011, but said the company has received no state economic development incentives from his administration.

“During my time as governor, neither Jonnie Williams nor Star Scientific or any other person or any other company that’s come before our administration for something regarding the budget or legislation or anything else has been given any special treatment,” McDonnell said on his monthly call-in radio show.

News of the FBI probe was first reported Monday by The Washington Post. A day later, Circuit Judge Margaret Spencer barred attorneys from discussing the case.

The investigation was revealed after the former chef at the Executive Mansion alleged in court papers that he gave FBI and state police investigators evidence a year ago of wrongdoing by McDonnell and his family. It included documents showing Williams paid Schneider’s private catering company $15,000 for McDonnell’s daughter Cailin’s wedding reception, court records showed. Schneider had been the mansion chef.

McDonnell did not disclose the gift on his January 2012 statement of economic interests, saying state law does not require the disclosure of gifts to family members.

“I made the determination — and I believe it was correct — that it was a gift to my daughter, and therefore under the current laws it did not need to be disclosed. I think obviously from the attention it has gotten, it has certainly now been disclosed,” he said.

McDonnell has acknowledged signing the catering contract. Court documents filed by Schneider claim he paid a deposit for the services and Maureen McDonnell received a $3,500 check for overpayment of catering expenses.

Asked if he’d allow his daughter to accept the gift again, McDonnell struggled with the reply.

“That’s hard to say in retrospect. Obviously there’s been a lot of attention to that. It’s caused a fair amount of pain for me personally I’m a governor but I’m a dad and I love my daughter very much,” he said.

Williams has given McDonnell’s political action committee nearly $80,000 and gave his 2009 campaign for governor $28,584, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, a nonprofit group that tracks of money in Virginia politics. McDonnell received personal gifts totaling $7,382 from the company in 2012, according to the group.

Based just outside of Richmond, Star Scientific started as a cigarette company in 1990, focused on ways to remove harmful compounds from tobacco. The company incurred annual losses for most of that time, including a $22.9 million loss last year.

In November, Williams, who has been CEO since 1999, announced he was cutting his salary from $1 million a year to $1 a month until the company becomes profitable. A month later, the company, which has 23 full-time employees, said it would shift its focus to its anti-inflammatory supplement, Anatabloc.

Schneider headed the mansion kitchen operations from 2010, when McDonnell moved in, until last year, when he was dismissed during a state police probe. He was later charged with four counts of taking state property worth $200 or more.

Schneider’s motion said he told federal and state investigators that the mansion staff and other state employees had witnessed him being instructed to take state-purchased food as payment for personal services, and that they saw others “openly taking cases of food and other supplies from the governor’s mansion.”

The motions said the charges against him should be dismissed on the grounds that Cuccinelli had a conflict of interest because he had also accepted thousands of dollars in gifts from Williams and Star Scientific.

Cuccinelli filed a motion last week to recuse his office from prosecuting Schneider. A hearing was scheduled Thursday.

Political and official aides to Cuccinelli dismissed the motion by Schneider’s attorney, Steven D. Benjamin, as a further effort to politicize and sensationalize a criminal trial. Brian Gottstein, a spokesman for the Virginia attorney general’s office, said the case “will be tried in court and not in the media.”

Just before Schneider’s indictment in March, defense lawyers said Cuccinelli’s office ignored Schneider’s information “concerning the use of the mansion by Williams, the promotion of Williams’ food supplement by the governor and first lady,” according to the motion.

Benjamin said Cuccinelli sold 1,500 shares of Star Scientific stock last summer at a profit of $7,000. He also noted Cuccinelli’s free use of Williams’ Smith Mountain Lake vacation lodge for a summer 2012 vacation worth $3,000 and another stay there for Thanksgiving in 2010, complete with a catered holiday dinner worth $1,500.

Cuccinelli did not disclose the gifts until last week.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

180 arrested, cash and drugs seized in central Phoenix crime sweep

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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

• Arrests: 180
• Tows: 64
• New Civil Violation Citations: 358
• Cash Seized: $830,054
• Guns Seized: 18
• Vehicles Seized: 3
• Cocaine: 1 pound, 3 grams
• Marijuana: 938 pounds
• Spice vials: 36
• Heroin: 5 pounds
• Hash: 50 pounds
• Property seized: Scales, syringes, ballistic vests, rocket launcher

Source: Phoenix Police

County attorney blocked from Horne campaign case

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

Posted 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.

Sanctions upheld against Thomas aide Alexander

Source

Sanctions upheld against Thomas aide Alexander

By Sean Holstege The Republic | azcentral.com Thu May 2, 2013 9:57 PM

The Arizona Supreme Court upheld sanctions Thursday against a former Maricopa County prosecutor who was involved in then-County Attorney Andrew Thomas’ corruption investigations against judges and county officials.

After a lengthy 2012 hearing, Rachel Alexander was suspended for six months and a day by a court disciplinary panel for her role in bringing a doomed federal racketeering lawsuit against Thomas’ perceived political enemies.

However, the high court reduced the suspension by one day. That means Alexander won’t have to go through a rigorous rehabilitation to work again as a lawyer. The judges reasoned that such penalties have been reserved for cases when a lawyer knowingly misled a jury. She was also ordered to take 10 hours of ethics course work.

The court agreed that Alexander violated six rules of conduct. Her transgressions include filing a frivolous case, incompetence and interfering with the course of justice.

Judges wrote that Alexander had not exhibited a pattern of misconduct or acted with malice or dishonestly. Nor had she breached four other rules of conduct, the court ruled, reversing the findings of the court’s Office of the Presiding Disciplinary Judge, after an independent investigation on behalf of the State Bar of Arizona.

Thursday’s rulings stem from Alexander’s handling of a 2009 civil Racketeer Influenced, Corrupt Organizations case that fizzled three months after it was filed.

“Alexander’s most serious misconduct was maintaining the RICO lawsuit while knowing it lacked legal and factual merit, thereby violating the duties she owed to the public and the legal system,” the court ruled.

In that case, then-Deputy County Attorney Lisa Abuchon alleged that county officials, including elected supervisors, conspired with their attorneys to commit bribery and extortion. The theory was that county officials were illegally trying to thwart a joint investigation by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and County Attorney’s Office into corruption allegations related to the building of a new court tower.

When the case went nowhere, the county attorneys added the names of judges to the list of defendants. The case was dropped, and none of the allegations stuck.

Abuchon and Thomas were disbarred. Abuchon appealed, and that case is pending. Thomas did not. Last week, another deputy county attorney and Alexander’s boss, Peter Spaw, accepted a two-year probation for his role.

Alexander could not be reached by phone or e-mail for reaction to the decision, which can only be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In her appeal to the state Supreme Court, Alexander tried to shift blame onto superiors. She argued that she acted on their advice and under their direction.

The Supreme Court disagreed.

“She was ethically required to assess her legal skill level and refuse the assignment as beyond her capabilities,” the court wrote.

It based that finding on the fact that Alexander had never tried a case. Before taking over from Abuchon, she had served on a grant committee, worked on the department’s social-media outreach and made community presentations.

The court noted that Spaw and outside attorneys told Alexander that the racketeering complaint was “dead on arrival” and that she needed to beef up the allegations with solid facts or it would be like “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.”

But, in preparing a motion to keep the case alive, Alexander never got Abuchon’s investigative file, help from case investigators or saw a police report, the court found. Instead, when asked in an earlier disciplinary hearing to back up the allegations, she could not recall specific facts and vaguely cited “hundreds of documents.”

Lives were damaged by her refusal to drop the case. The court cited three examples:

A lawyer accused of bribing a judge spent $300,000 to clear his name and had his reputation maligned.

A judge “became severely depressed.”

Another judge resigned rather than let her presence on the bench tarnish the court and her colleagues.

“Alexander impeded the administration of justice by demonstrating to all judges in Maricopa County that they risked having to defend against a civil damages suit if they made rulings that displeased MCAO,” the court ruled.

Things are f*cked up in the Arizona National Guard???

Yea, things are f*cked up royal, but give us another 50 or 100 years, and everything will be working fine and dandy.

Of course that is the usual line of BS we always get from our government masters.

Source

Guard report confirms multiple issues, cites effort to improve

By Dennis Wagner The Republic | azcentral.com Fri May 3, 2013 12:14 AM

A Department of Defense agency’s report on corrupt conduct in the Arizona National Guard says the state military organization suffers from lax discipline, unethical behavior by commanders, a failure to assist victims of sexual abuse and many other problems.

Gov. Jan Brewer released the report on Thursday, announcing with it that Maj. Gen. Hugo Salazar, Arizona’s adjutant general, is preparing to retire this year after three decades of military service.

The 107-page National Guard Bureau assessment contains investigative findings from a team of military officers commissioned by Brewer after an Arizona Republic series in October documented extensive criminal and ethical violations that whistle-blowers blamed on failed discipline and a corrupt culture.

The report verified newspaper accounts of fraud, fraternization, sexual abuse, assault and numerous other crimes, along with favoritism and inconsistent discipline. However, it also concludes that commanders overall are trying to address misconduct and “have been working diligently to improve their practices.”

In a statement released with the report, Brewer declared, “It is clear that the Arizona National Guard is not ‘broken.’ The findings are not an indictment of the Arizona National Guard, nor its leadership. ... Nonetheless, significant concerns were identified, and they will be remedied.”

Brewer added that the level of wrongdoing is “unacceptable,” and she directed Salazar to submit a plan for reform by May 17. “I have depended upon his leadership of the Arizona National Guard,” she added, “and will look for him to provide a steady hand and wise counsel as he transitions to planned retirement.”

However, Lt. Col. Paul Forshey, who recently retired as the National Guard’s top lawyer, or JAG officer, said the report represents a clear indictment of Guard leadership as unethical. He said he was interviewed by investigators, is aware of others’ testimony and has read the report.

“How the governor can reach the conclusion she has is beyond reason or logic,” he wrote in an e-mail.

Salazar declined comment. The report says he “acknowledged there was an ethical leadership issue” when interviewed by team members, and in January published a new conduct code for the Guard.

However, that code restricts whistle-blower activities, barring discussion of internal matters with the media. Guard members contacted on Thursday declined comment because they feared retribution.

In a letter to Brewer, Salazar described the latest assessment as “comprehensive,” adding, “In general, I concur with the majority of findings and recommendations ... I believe the report shows that we are on the right track but that there is more that we can do.”

The investigation was conducted by Maj. Gen. Ricky Adams and a team of officers who interviewed 35 witnesses and pored over military records between November 2012 and February. The review team found significant weaknesses in accountability, the reporting of misconduct, administrative actions, military justice and command ethics.

Findings and recommendations were submitted to Brewer by Col. Christian Rofrano, chief counsel for the National Guard Bureau based in Virginia.

Among the key points:

Senior leaders in the Guard have engaged in ethical misconduct, especially sexual relations with subordinates, that “clearly violated” military regulations. “This misconduct created the perception that leadership lacked the moral high ground to take appropriate steps when disciplinary matters arose.”

Full-time soldiers and airmen who committed serious wrongdoing rarely suffered military punishment. Instead, they were allowed to quit their jobs and remain in the National Guard. “Thus the misconduct would continue to permeate the good order and discipline of the organization.”

Prior to 2009, the Arizona Guard did not conduct military courts-martial because of a shortage of funds and a lack of judges. Systemic problems blocked commanders from meting out severe non-judicial punishment.

Victims of sexual abuse said their complaints were neglected or covered up. “Identified victims of sexual assault and harassment stated that they had been victimized twice: Once by the perpetrator and once by the leadership that was unable to address their needs.”

Ethical and criminal violations were “prevalent” among non-commissioned officers who abused their authority and committed fraud that included recruiting graft and forgeries of military records.

The recent culture of the Arizona Guard “did not encourage members to report misconduct,” and those who did were hindered by retaliation from above. “They were specifically told to ‘get on board’ or ‘quit making waves.’” That problem was exacerbated by “a lack of trust in the inspector general and legal offices,” which are supposed to protect victims and whistle-blowers.

Because the Guard does not track civilian criminal cases involving personnel, some soldiers and airmen accrued three or four drunken-driving convictions with no military consequences.

The report recommends new disciplinary policies and procedures, a revision of the Arizona Code of Military Justice, additional training in ethics and leadership, assignment of an advocate to work with victims of sexual abuse or reprisal, and greater coordination with civilian law enforcement.

State Sen. Debbie McCune Davis, D-Phoenix, who recently called for legislative hearings, said the report “validates concerns I’ve heard from many Arizona Guardsmen.”

“There is a fundamental problem with the organization,” she added. “The governor needs a plan of action to repair it. The question is whether Salazar is the one to develop it.”

Findings released Thursday do not identify perpetrators but list more than 200 individuals accused of past military offenses. That includes a dozen Guard members who were given honorable or general discharges even after being convicted in a drug-smuggling conspiracy.

The report’s overall contents mirror earlier reporting by The Republic. Using Guard records, the newspaper documented drug-smuggling, embezzlement, substance abuse, paintball attacks on civilians, drunken driving and other offenses. It also described how soldiers and airmen who reported wrongdoing became targets of retaliation.

As part of its review, the assessment team surveyed Guard personnel. About half of the respondents described morale as high. Nearly half called for improved leadership ethics, especially regarding fraternization, abuse of authority and fraud. Forty-five percent said favoritism is apparent.

Four out of 10 soldiers and airmen said leaders do not adhere to core values of the military.

There are about 8,000 Guard personnel. Of 2,176 who completed the survey, 15 told of being victimized by an unreported sexual assault within the prior year; 79 told of sexual harassment; 158 said they were victims of discrimination; more than 400 reported racist or sexually offensive displays.

Investigators said they met with numerous victims of adultery between supervisors and subordinates. “Each story was compelling in its impact on the families and the units involved,” they wrote. “Most disturbing was the apparent lack of discretion exhibited by service members that blatantly violated fraternization policies.”

“Fraternization, when engaged in by senior leaders, lays the groundwork for harassment ... and creates a permissive environment where misconduct can occur,” the report said.

A segment of the findings addressed Salazar’s decision to fire Brig. Gen. Michael Colangelo as head of the Air Guard last August after Colangelo dismissed two aviation commanders. A colonel in charge of Predator drone operations was ousted after his pilots allegedly collected $1.1 million in unlawful living expenses. A brigadier general was fired for his handling of a sexual-harassment incident involving the Guard’s only female F-16 pilot.

The Air Force inspector general found Colangelo culpable for abuse of authority. After Colangelo was fired by Salazar, he complained to Brewer. The National Guard Bureau report says Colangelo’s actions were not an abuse of authority because they had been approved by Salazar, military lawyers and Brewer’s staff. The report says that information was withheld from Air Force inspectors, causing them to reach an incorrect finding.

Reach the reporter at dennis.wagner@arizonarepublic.com.

Chicago Mayor Emanuel reports gifts from the rich and famous

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Emanuel reports gifts from the rich and famous

By Bill Ruthhart, Chicago Tribune reporter

9:46 p.m. CDT, May 2, 2013

A stay at the house of a Hollywood entertainment mogul, transportation on the tabs of millionaire venture capitalists and, for the second straight year, sports tickets, meals and more from his close adviser Michael Sacks.

These perks and others are listed on Mayor Rahm Emanuel's annual economic interest statement, and once again illustrate how Chicago's chief executive moves in some of the country's elite entertainment and financial circles.

Emanuel's 2012 statement filed this week with the Cook County clerk's office requires disclosure of any gifts valued at more than $500 and any capital asset from which he earned at least $5,000 during the year.

The list of gifts was full of top executives covering transportation costs for Emanuel, but state law does not require the mayor to provide any additional detail. Although the mayor frequently touts his administration's transparency, a spokesman did not provide requested details about the transportation gifts, including the purpose and whether the rides were on private jets, commercial airliners or some other form of transit.

One of the marquee names on the mayor's gift list was music executive and film producer David Geffen. Emanuel listed Geffen's name with the notation "house guest" to describe the gift.

The mayor was also a houseguest of Chicago law firm partner Sidney "Skip" Herman and of Chicago medical products company CEO Jim Abrams, according to the report.

For the second year, Emanuel reported taking sports tickets, meals and transportation from Sacks, who leads the World Business Chicago economic development board for the mayor. Sacks is CEO of the Chicago hedge fund firm Grosvenor Capital Management.

Not surprisingly, most of the gift-givers who dot Emanuel's economic interest statement also have been major campaign donors, including Herman and Abrams, who is chief operating officer of Medline Industries Inc.

Geffen and Sacks are among Emanuel's biggest donors, each contributing $100,000 during his campaign, according to state records.

Emanuel also reported receiving transportation from major political donor Kenneth Griffin, the founder of the Chicago hedge fund firm Citadel LLC. Griffin and his wife, Anne Dias Griffin, the founder of Chicago hedge fund firm Aragon Global Management, have donated millions of dollars to Republican causes but also contributed $200,000 to Emanuel's campaign in 2011.

The mayor also reported having separate transportation costs picked up by Groupon co-founders Brad Keywell and Eric Lefkofsky, who also founded the Chicago venture capital firm Lightbank.

Emanuel also reported accepting transportation from Chicago finance magnate Jim Crown, a co-chair of President Barack Obama's 2008 Illinois finance committee. Crown and top executives with private investment firm Henry Crown & Co. have contributed more than $100,000 to Emanuel's campaign.

Sam Mencoff, a co-CEO of the Chicago private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners, and Bob Clark, chairman and CEO of construction firm Clayco, also covered transportation costs for Emanuel, according to the mayor's report. Both men are Emanuel campaign contributors as well.

Emanuel held a news conference with Clark in January to announce that the St. Louis firm was moving its headquarters to Chicago. The firm is seeking infrastructure business in Chicago and elsewhere.

Emanuel also listed gifts from the investment bank Allen & Co. for transportation and being a guest at a conference. The mayor attended the firm's annual media and technology conference in the resort town of Sun Valley, Idaho.

The mayor also reported receiving at least $5,000 each from investments in two J.P. Morgan mutual funds.

Tribune reporter Hal Dardick contributed.

bruthhart@tribune.com Twitter @BillRuthhart

Prison plan: Filed 'under protest,' it could undermine public safety

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Prison plan: Filed 'under protest,' it could undermine public safety, Brown warns

By Don Thompson

Associated Press

Posted: 05/03/2013 05:29:51 AM PDT

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- California may speed up the release of some inmates while allowing other inmates with a violent history to become firefighters, under a proposal to cut crowding in state prisons filed by Gov. Jerry Brown late Thursday night.

Brown filed the plan "under protest," said Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard. Brown warned that the options he presented to the court would undermine public safety, and Beard reiterated that the state plans to appeal in an attempt to avoid going through with the measures.

The governor's plan calls for increasing early release credits for inmates and paroling elderly and incapacitated prisoners, while slowing the return of thousands of inmates who are being held in private prisons in other states.

Federal courts required the state to outline by midnight Thursday how it intends to meet a court-ordered population cap by the end of the year. A panel of federal judges threatened last month to hold the Democratic governor personally accountable if they decide he is not complying with their long-standing order, which already has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The state already is sentencing thousands of lower-level offenders to county jails instead of prison. But the judges ruled that it must reduce its prison population by an additional 9,300 inmates to improve medical and mental health care for inmates.

The state's plan includes:

-- Expanding the number of inmate firefighters by allowing participation by some offenders convicted of serious and violent crimes.

-- Granting more early release or "good time" credits to inmates, including second-strike inmates who have serious prior convictions.

-- Paroling elderly and medically incapacitated inmates.

-- Increasing the use of drug treatment centers.

-- Paying to house more inmates at county jails with extra space, and possibly at private prisons within California.

-- Slowing the return of the 8,400 inmates who are being housed in private prisons in three other states at an annual cost of about $300 million.

Two other existing measures already will help reduce crowding.

The state will add space for 1,700 sick and mentally ill inmates when a new $840 million treatment facility opens in Stockton this summer. And the state projects that about 900 inmates will be freed because voters in November softened the state's tough three-strikes lifetime sentencing law for career criminals. Third-strikers with lesser offenses can apply for shorter sentences.

The administration argued against many of the proposals even as it presented the options to the court in a series of legal filings.

Most would require legislative approval, but the administration argued that Brown cannot be expected to "advocate for the Legislature to pass measures that would jeopardize public safety...." However, the court has said it could waive state laws if lawmakers don't agree.

"It's still pretty defiant," said Michael Bien, one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit over prison crowding. "They're saying we're not going to comply willingly, you're going to have to force us in some way, shape or form."

Brown said in a one-sentence Twitter message that "the state's filing speaks for itself."

Under the court order, the state must reduce the population in its 33 adult prisons to about 110,000 inmates by year's end.

The population already has been reduced by about 25,000 inmates under a two-year-old law that is sending felons convicted of what are deemed to be non-serious, non-violent and non-sexual offenses to county jails instead of state prisons.

Brown argued that most of the less serious offenders already have been removed from the state prison system, and that the state can no longer afford to provide expensive care in prisons at the expense of schools and other social services.

The federal judges ruled that the state can further reduce the prison population without increasing crime.

Evidence??? We don't need no stinking evidence to charge you with arson!!!!!

And of course that means solving as many arson cases as possible by arresting the main suspect, even if their isn't any stinking evidence to back up arresting the suspect.

I suspect the same thing happens in all high profile crimes such as murder, where the main suspect is arrested even if their isn't any physical evidence to back up the arrest. Cases like this are the murder case of Kim Anacona who worked as a waitress at the CBS Lounge in Phoenix where Ray Krone, the "snaggle tooth killer" was falsely arrested and the Wat Promkunaram Buddhist Temple murders where Maricopa County Sheriff Tom Agnos and Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley falsely arrested Mike McGraw, Leo Bruce, Mark Nunez, and Dante Parker of Tucson, after a tip came in from a resident of a mental institution in Tucson accusing them of committing the worst murders in the history of the Phoenix area.

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FBI looks into wrongful-arrest claims in 2 Phoenix fires

By Wendy Halloran 12 News | azcentral.com Sat May 4, 2013 2:36 AM

The FBI is investigating allegations that members of the Phoenix Fire Department violated the civil rights of two people who were arrested and charged with arson despite no evidence connecting them to the burnings of their homes.

The cases against Barbara Sloan and Carl Caples were dropped by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. Sloan said she spent $300,000 to defend herself; Caples spent 16 months in jail awaiting trial.

In April, Sloan and Caples filed complaints against the Fire Department with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Phoenix.

Phoenix Fire Chief Bob Khan sent a memo, dated April 15, to City Manager David Cavazos announcing that he had formed a Fire Investigation Review Committee.

Document: Creation of review committee

The panel will review the methods, data and performance used to calculate the department’s arson-case clearance rate — the percentage of fires determined to be arson that result in arrests.

The department in May 2012 said that it had one of the highest arson clearance rates in the country, at 57 percent.

Khan will head the committee, which will include retired Superior Court Chief Justice Jim Keppel, Mesa Assistant Police Chief Heston Silbert and six others.

The Fire Department’s internal investigation follows a 12 News investigation that aired in February profiling the Sloan case.

Sloan’s home, near Roma Avenue and Camelback Road, burned down May 13, 2009. Two Phoenix arson investigators, Capt.Sam Richardson and Capt. Fred Andes, concluded that Sloan had committed arson after she wasn’t able to sell the home.

The County Attorney’s Office dropped the charges on Oct. 15, 2010, after Richardson admitted he had Sloan arrested solely because she was the homeowner and that he had no evidence tying her to the fire.

Richardson’s and Andes’ colleagues and two independent arson experts determined the fire started in Sloan’s car, which was parked in the garage. No accelerant was found.

Richardson also was the lead investigator in the Caples case.

The home Caples was renting near 19th Avenue and Union Hills Drive burned May 7, 2009.

Richardson concluded that Caples poured gasoline on three areas in the back of the home. A separate investigation by Caples’ defense expert concluded that the fire started in the attic and was caused by a short in the electrical system.

On Sept. 27, 2010, the day Caples’ trial was to begin, the County Attorney’s Office dropped the charges.

The FBI has no timetable for its investigation.

Khan said the executive review committee will present its findings and recommendations by the end of the summer.

The members of the Fire Investigation Review Committee are: Dan Brown, lawyer city of Phoenix, Phoenix Fire Department Chief Bob Khan, Phoenix auditor Bill Greene, Judge Jim Kepper, CEO Mark Garlieb, Mesa Assistant Fire Department Chief Heston Silbert, ASU Professor Ron Perry, and Phoenix Fire Department Chief Assistant Kara Kalkbrenner.

‘N-bomb’ drug stirs fear in Phoenix area

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.

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‘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.

How do you spell revenue - Cinco de Mayo drunks.

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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.

We don't need no stinking evidence, we make it up - FBI??

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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 jail guards are corrupt????

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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.

No First Amendment rights when it comes to taxes????

Source

Muzzling free speech about taxes

By George F. Will, Published: April 23

“The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity, and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.”

— 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.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg - F*ck the Constitution

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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 City Council members are gun grabbers

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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.

3 reasons you should always refuse to talk to the police.

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FBI: 3 removed backpack from Boston suspect’s room

Associated Press Wed May 1, 2013 1:22 PM

BOSTON — Three college friends of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were arrested and accused Wednesday of removing a backpack containing fireworks emptied of gunpowder from Tsarnaev’s dorm room three days after the attack to try to keep him from getting into trouble.

In court papers, the FBI said one of them threw the backpack in the garbage — it was later found in a landfill by law enforcement officers — after they concluded from news reports that Tsarnaev was one of the bombers.

Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev were charged with conspiring to obstruct justice. A third man, Robel Phillipos, was charged with lying to investigators about the visit to Tsarnaev’s room.

A court appearance for the three was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. Their lawyers refused to comment ahead of the hearing.

Three people were killed and more than 260 injured on April 15 when two bombs exploded near the finish line. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died after a gunfight with police days later. His younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, was captured and lies in a prison hospital.

Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev, who are from Kazakhstan, have been held in jail for more than a week on allegations that they violated their student visas by not regularly going to class at UMass. All three men charged Wednesday began attending UMass with Tsarnaev at the same time in 2011, according to the FBI.

The three were not accused of any involvement in the bombing itself. But in a footnote in the court papers, the FBI said that about a month before the bombing, Tsarnaev told Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev that he knew how to make a bomb.

Investigators have not said whether the pressure cooker bombs used in the attacks were made with gunpowder extracted from fireworks.

Authorities allege that on the night of April 18, after the FBI released photos of the bombing suspects and the three men suspected their friend was one of them, they went to Tsarnaev’s dorm room.

Before Tsarnaev’s roommate let them in, Kadyrbayev showed Tazhayakov a text message from Tsarnaev that stated, “I’m about to leave if you need something in my room take it,” according to the FBI.

When Tazhayakov learned of the message, “he believed he would never see Tsarnaev alive again,” the FBI said in the affidavit.

It was not clear from the court papers whether authorities believe that was an instruction from Tsarnaev to his friends to destroy evidence.

Once inside Tsarnaev’s room, the men noticed a backpack containing fireworks, which had been opened and emptied of powder, the FBI said.

The FBI said that Kadyrbayev knew when he saw the empty fireworks that Tsarnaev was involved in the bombings and decided to remove the backpack from the room “in order to help his friend Tsarnaev avoid trouble.”

Kadyrbayev also decided to remove Tsarnaev’s laptop “because he did not want Tsarnaev’s roommate to think he was stealing or behaving suspiciously by just taking the backpack,” the FBI said in court papers.

After the three men returned to Kadyrbayev’s and Tazhayakov’s apartment with the backpack and computer, they watched news reports featuring photographs of Tsarnaev.

The FBI affidavit said Kadyrbayev told authorities the three men then “collectively decided to throw the backpack and fireworks into the trash because they did not want Tsarnaev to get into trouble.”

Kadyrbayev said he placed the backpack and fireworks along with trash from the apartment into a large trash bag and threw it into a garbage bin near the men’s apartment.

When the backpack was later found in a landfill last week, inside it was a UMass-Dartmouth homework assignment sheet from a class Tsarnaev was taking, the FBI said.

Meanwhile, Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s relatives will claim his body now that his wife has agreed to release it, an uncle said. The body of Tsarnaev, 26, has been at the medical examiner’s office in Massachusetts since he died after a gunfight with authorities more than a week ago.

Amato DeLuca, an attorney for his widow, Katherine Russell, said Tuesday that his client had just learned that the medical examiner was ready to release Tsarnaev’s body and that she wants it released to his side of the family.

Tsarnaev’s parents are still in Russia, but he has other relatives in the U.S.

8 Reasons not to vote for Andrew Thomas for Governor

Top 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.