Homeless in Arizona

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Man convicted in deadly Tucson fire released after 41 years

By Richard Ruelas The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Apr 3, 2013 12:18 AM

TUCSON — He was a teenager when he entered prison in 1972, a juvenile delinquent authorities called incorrigible. He was convicted of intentionally starting a fire on the fourth floor of the Pioneer Hotel, turning it into an inferno that killed 29 people.

On Tuesday, Louis Taylor, now a 59-year-old man with a bald head and muscular arms, walked out of prison after serving more than 42 years behind bars for murder. Taylor won his freedom, if not his exoneration.

During a hearing called in light of new questions about whether the fire had been caused by arson, prosecutors chose not to pursue a new trial, and Taylor chose not to risk one.

Instead, he spoke the words “no contest” 28 times, once for each time a Pima County Superior Court judge read a charge of murder, listing the name of each victim in what became a roll call for what has been called the deadliest disaster in Tucson’s history. After the pleas, Judge Richard Fields sentenced Taylor to the time he had served and ordered that he be released.

Outside the gates of the Arizona State Prison Complex-Tucson, just before 3 p.m., Taylor said, “It feels good just to feel Mother Earth underneath my feet, free Mother Earth.”

Taylor said the full story of the December 1970 fire had not been told or understood. “It’s two tragedies,” he said, “the Pioneer Hotel fire and me getting convicted for it.”

Volunteer attorneys with the Arizona Justice Project had raised doubts about the evidence, asking a Pima County Superior Court judge to vacate the original convictions and consider trying Taylor again in light of the new evidence.

County Attorney Barbara LaWall said that much of the evidence in the 42-year-old case had been destroyed and that many witnesses had died.

But in a news conference after the hearing, she said she had no doubts about what happened at the hotel, even if the case could not go to trial now.

“A fire was willfully and deliberately set, and Louis Taylor was the person who did that,” she said.

Despite the passage of time, Taylor’s case unearthed strong emotions — memories of a fire that claimed whole families, racially charged controversy over the evidence and a dramatic hearing in which victims faced the man who was about to be set free.

Paul d’Hedouville was 4 when his father died in the fire. In court Tuesday, he gave Taylor parting words of advice.

“Do as you choose, Mr. Taylor,” he said, “but choose wisely and do not waste your new beginning of life.”

A Tucson tragedy

The fire started on the fourth floor of the hotel on a December evening. From there, it raced up the open stairways, which acted like chimneys, said Al Pesqueira, a Northwest Fire/Rescue District assistant chief who co-produced a documentary about the blaze.

Rescue efforts were hampered because the Fire Department’s tallest ladders could only reach the ninth floor of the 11-story hotel.

Most of those killed in the fire were found in the hotel’s hallways or in their rooms, dead of burns and smoke inhalation. Among the dead were the hotel’s owners, who had been assured by the front desk that the fire was under control. Some people leaped to their deaths from their room windows.

Two families, one of five and one of six, were among the dead. In one case, Pesqueira said, it appeared the parents had thrown mattresses to the sidewalk and then tossed the children down in an attempt to save them. The parents were found inside the room, he said, possibly after realizing their attempt was futile.

Taylor was taken into custody after the fire, according to his attorneys, because a hotel employee reported seeing a suspicious African-American youth at the hotel and Taylor could not give police a good reason why he was at the hotel. He was questioned for six hours, then arrested on juvenile charges of trespassing.

Taylor was known by police to frequent the downtown Tucson area. The grade-school dropout had been committed four times to juvenile halls for various crimes, including strong-arm robbery at age 13.

According to a 1970 story in the Tucson Daily Citizen, Taylor was called “utterly incorrigible” by a reform-school superintendent.

He was charged with 28 counts of murder. One of the victims, a nurse, died of smoke inhalation months after the fire, but Taylor was never charged with her death.

The trial was moved to Phoenix because a judge decided Taylor could not get a fair trial in the city that had just lost many of its prominent citizens and a downtown landmark.

At Taylor’s 1972 trial, the custodian of the hotel testified that the teenager acted heroically during the early-morning fire, helping him try to extinguish it, according to a story from the Arizona Daily Star. The hotel’s beverage manager testified that Taylor helped him carry injured guests to safety, another story said.

Taylor testified on his own behalf, proclaiming his innocence. “All that I was doing was helping,” he testified.

After a jury found him guilty, the trial judge told a reporter: “The evidence supports a conviction, but I would not have convicted him myself.”

New questions arise

Taylor, who entered prison on March 30, 1972, was far from a model inmate. His prison record shows 26 major infractions, including narcotics possession, stealing, fighting and arson. In September, he was moved from medium to maximum security, prison records show.

Taylor’s case was featured nationally on “60 Minutes” on Sunday. The CBS newsmagazine had raised questions about his case in a story that aired in 2002. That story attracted the attention of the Arizona Justice Project, whose volunteer attorneys have worked since to free Taylor.

Part of the work focused on advances in fire science since the 1970s. “By today’s standards, there is no evidence that arson caused the Pioneer Hotel fire,” Taylor’s attorneys wrote in a court motion.

In November, attorney Edward Novak, an attorney who volunteered his time to the Justice Project, questioned Cyrillis Holmes, a fire expert from California who initially testified the fire was arson, set in two spots along a fourth-floor hallway. In a sworn deposition, Holmes told Novak that when he met with Tucson officials, he said their suspect was likely an African-American who was 18. That meeting was the first day of Holmes’ investigation, days after Taylor’s arrest.

Holmes testified he determined this because, “Blacks, at that point, their background was the use of fire for beneficial purposes.”

Holmes said arson fit the profile of Black youths of that era. “If they get mad at somebody, the first thing they do is use something they’re comfortable with,” he testified. “Fire was one of them.”

Holmes, reached last week at his California home, said he stood by his profiling of the potential suspect. He also stood by the science of his methods, saying that even using today’s fire-science methods, he would have determined arson.

Attorneys for Taylor said in a motion that Holmes’ methods were faulty. They also introduced their own expert evidence that questioned whether the fire could be conclusively called arson.

Marshall Smyth, who investigated the fire for an insurance company the afternoon after it started, originally ruled the fire was intentionally set at one spot along a fourth-floor hallway. But he re-examined the case and testified last year that he could no longer say it was arson.

Smyth, in a phone interview, said fire investigators at the time had no real science behind their methods.

“It was all guesswork,” he said.

Fire investigators didn’t understand the concept of “flashover” fires until the early 1990s, Smyth said.

Those fires occur when gases catch fire and engulf a room. Before that concept was understood, many fires were mistakenly labeled as arson, he said.

Memories and questions

The plea of “no contest” allowed Taylor to maintain his innocence, attorney Novak told the judge Tuesday. But Taylor did not take that opportunity, preferring not to speak in court.

In the hearing, d’Hedouville, the young son of one of the victims, said he did not want those who died to simply be a list of names.

“Those 29 souls are inexorably linked together by history,” he told the court. “May their souls rest in peace.”

D’Hedouville said his father had expected his family to celebrate Christmas at the Pioneer and had presents in his suite.

His father ended up being buried on Christmas Eve, his son said. He woke up Christmas morning asking his mother who would play Santa Claus since his father was gone.

On Tuesday, d’Hedouville wore a tie clip of the scales of justice worn by his father, who had just made partner in a law firm when he died.

“I harbor no feelings of ill will or vengeance against you,” he said from the witness stand, addressing Taylor directly.

When d’Hedouville returned to his seat after making his statement, his hand visibly shook as he drank from a bottle of water.

He and his wife, and relatives of two other victims, were set to tour the Pioneer Hotel building, which has retained the name but has been turned into an office building, a facade covering the original charred walls.

There did not appear to be any family members of Taylor’s in the courtroom or waiting for him when he was released from prison hours later.

Michael Fierro, 29, who served prison time with Taylor, stood in the gallery of spectators at the hearing, grimacing to hold back tears.

Fierro said that Taylor was well-respected in prison and that he was glad to see him set free.

“He said he would show his innocence one way or another,” Fierro said. “He had it deep down that he was innocent.”

Fierro said Taylor did not have any family he knew of.

He only kept contact with a handful of friends whom he met in prison, Fierro said.

LaWall, the Pima County attorney, said Tuesday that comments by Holmes, the fire expert, might have hurt the prosecution’s case in court.

David Smith, who runs a fire-investigation business in Bisbee and is a city councilman there, said when re-examining old blazes, no one can pinpoint an exact cause.

“There’s not enough data to be able to say what it was,” Smith said in an interview Monday. “You can just say there’s no way in hell they reached the conclusion they did.”

Smith was a policeman during the Pioneer Hotel fire but switched careers after becoming intrigued with fire science.

As a juvenile detective in 1970, he questioned Taylor the night of the fire, which left him feeling conflicted about Tuesday’s release.

He knows that the science isn’t there to conclusively prove arson, he said, but the police officer in him was still suspicious of the 16-year-old he questioned hours after the fire.

One oddity still stands out more than 42 later, Smith said — a point that was key to prosecutors’ arguments at trial. Officers were strip-searching Taylor that night and searching his clothes.

“(Taylor) reached in front of his jockey shorts and pulled out five books of matches,” Smith said, “and handed them to me and smiled at me.”

KVOA in Tucson contributed to this article.

Phoenix rally to protest prison expansion

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Phoenix rally to protest prison expansion

The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Apr 2, 2013 10:06 PM

PHOENIX -- The American Friends Service Committee and the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona will host an 11 a.m. rally Wednesday at the Capitol to urge Gov. Jan Brewer to block the addition of 500 maximum-security prison beds.

The groups said they have collected a petition with 2,300 signatures.

Brewer has no intention of ending the construction, approved by the 2012 Legislature. “The state needs these maximum-security beds to house some of the state’s most violent and dangerous offenders,” said Matthew Benson, Brewer’s spokesman. “They are isolated in these cells to protect themselves, other inmates and prison officers.”

The state is in the design and construction phase for the beds, which will be built at the Lewis complex in Buckeye.

Ex-Mesa officer pleads not guilty to sex crimes

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Ex-Mesa officer pleads not guilty to sex crimes

Posted: Tuesday, April 2, 2013 2:24 pm

Associated Press

A retired Mesa police sergeant has pleaded not guilty to charges of child molestation and sexual exploitation of a minor.

Russell Millsaps entered the plea Monday morning in Maricopa County Superior Court.

Mesa police say the arrest of Millsaps last month was part of an interstate federal child-pornography investigation.

Court documents show the case against Millsaps stems from pornographic images that authorities discovered on his cell phone. He is charged with six counts of child molestation and two counts of sexually exploiting a minor.

Authorities say Millsaps was a longtime patrol sergeant who retired from the Mesa Police Department in 1995. He had worked as an officer for more than 25 years.

GOP should stand firm against drug legalization

But that is a lie. I always have been against the drug war since I was in high school.

In this case I am just the bearer of bad news.

Of course if you ask me the Arizona Libertarian Party should rename it's self the "George W. Bush Wing" of the Libertarian Party. Maybe you can have publicity hound Ernie or his financier David be your supreme "decider". Obviously you phoney baloney alleged Libertarians don't believe in the NIFF principle or the Non Initiation of Force or Fraud principle.

Translation - Republic's love businesses, and they want to continue the insane and unconstitutional "drug war" because it is a government welfare program for the corporations in the military industrial complex which make billions every year supplying the government with the tools of the trade needed to fight the insane and unconstitutional "war on drugs".

And of course the "drug war" is also a government welfare program for the corporations that build prisons. Without the drug war we wouldn't need new prisons to warehouse people that commit the victimless crime of using or selling illegal drugs.

And of course the "drug war" is also a jobs program for police officers and members of the military who routinely vote Republican.

If you are against the insane "war on drugs" the only political party that will help you is the Libertarian Party who platform has always advocated 100 percent legalization of ALL drugs.

Forget the Democrats and Republicans, they created the insane war on drugs and they can't be counted on ending it.

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GOP should stand firm against drug legalization

By Peter Wehner, Published: April 2

Peter Wehner is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He was director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives in the George W. Bush administration and special assistant to the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy during the George H.W. Bush administration.

Some say that the Republican Party needs to find new issues to champion if it hopes to become America’s majority party. There is something to this. But being a conservative party, the GOP should also look to the past, where wisdom often resides.

In that spirit, Republicans once again should take a strong stand against drug use and legalization. Virtually no lawmaker in either party is doing so.

For his part, President Obama has said more about the NCAA men’s basketball bracket than he has about the dangers posed by illegal drugs. Gil Kerlikowske, the president’s “drug czar,” said last month that “The administration has not done a particularly good job of, one, talking about marijuana as a public health issue, and number two, talking about what can be done and where we should be headed on our drug policy.”

This is a startling admission, and there is a cost to abdication.

The drug-legalization movement is well-funded and making inroads. Voters in Washington state and Colorado passed ballot initiatives in November legalizing marijuana for recreational use. A bill to legalize marijuana was introduced in the Maryland House of Delegates last month. And Democrats in Congress have introduced legislation to end federal prohibitions on marijuana use.

This is the perfect time for Republicans to offer counterarguments grounded in medical science, common sense and human experience.

For example: One of the main deterrents to drug use is because it is illegal. If drugs become legal, their price will go down and use will go up. And marijuana is far more potent than in the past. Studies have shown that adolescents and young adults who are heavy users of marijuana suffer from disrupted brain development and cognitive processing problems.

Drug legalization will lead to more cases of addiction, which shatters lives. The vast majority of people who are addicted to harder drugs started by using marijuana. John P. Walters, the drug czar in the George W. Bush administration, noted last year, “Legalization has been tried in various forms, and every nation that has tried it has reversed course sooner or later.”

Strong, integrated anti-drug policies have had impressive success in the United States. Both marijuana and cocaine use are down significantly from their peak use in the 1970s and ’80s.

So the policy arguments against drug legalization are all there; they simply need to be deployed.

But there is another, deeper set of arguments to be made.

In his dialogues, Plato taught that no man is a citizen alone. Individuals and families need support in society and the public arena. Today, many parents rightly believe the culture is against them. Government policies should stand with responsible parents — and under no circumstances actively undermine them.

Drug legalization would do exactly that. It would send an unmistakable signal to everyone, including the young: Drug use is not a big deal. We’re giving up. Have at it.

In taking a strong stand against drug use and legalization, Republicans would align themselves with parents, schools and communities in the great, urgent task of any civilization: protecting children and raising them to become responsible adults.

But the argument against drug legalization can go even further. As the late social scientist James Q. Wilson noted, many people cite the “costs” of and “socioeconomic factors” behind drug use; rarely do people say that drug use is wrong because it is morally problematic, because of what it can do to mind and soul. Indeed, in some liberal and libertarian circles, the “language of morality” is ridiculed. It is considered unenlightened, benighted and simplistic. The role of the state is to maximize individual liberty and be indifferent to human character.

This is an impossible stance to sustain. The law is a moral teacher, for well or ill, and self-government depends on certain dispositions and civic habits. The shaping of human character is preeminently — overwhelmingly — the task of parents, schools, religious institutions and civic groups. But government can play a role. Republicans should prefer that it be a constructive one, which is why they should speak out forcefully and intelligently against drug legalization.

Naperville weighs drug tests at high schools

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Naperville weighs drug tests at high schools

By Melissa Jenco, Chicago Tribune reporter

7:56 a.m. CDT, April 3, 2013

Some high school athletes in Naperville may eventually be subjected to random drug tests.

Officials from Naperville North and Central high schools say marijuana use has become "rampant," and they would like to be more proactive.

The issue came up as a committee of administrators, coaches, parents and students performed an annual review of Naperville Unit District 203's co-curricular code.

"The code isn't always acting as the deterrent that we'd like it to," Bob Ross, assistant superintendent for secondary education, told the school board this week.

Ross said group members asked what could be done to make it easier for students to make good decisions and would like to explore the possibility of random drug tests. The tests would apply not only to athletes but to students involved in other extracurricular activities as well.

Naperville North Athletic Director Jim Konrad said there have been 30 violations of the co-curricular code at his school this year, of which 24 were marijuana-related.

"Our biggest concern is the pressure on kids is pretty severe now," Konrad said. "Marijuana is rampant in the schools. If there's anything we can do to assist parents and assist the kids to say no, I think it's a positive thing."

Central Athletic Director Andy Lutzenkirchen characterized the problem at his school in the same way.

Board member Terry Fielden asked whether students caught with drugs in their systems would be turned over to police.

"I don't think I could support anything other than giving them help and trying to get them some benefit from it as opposed to some other action," he said. [But I suspect they will them over to the police after try to force their help on them]

Konrad said the code currently calls for students who are caught using drugs to be referred to a drug and alcohol counselor in addition to being suspended from extracurricular participation. Officials said they have not discussed whether there would be any legal consequences.

Board member Susan Crotty said she was not yet taking a position on the proposal but believes the line between parenting and the actions of school officials seems to blur.

Konrad said that while some parents think the code should be done away with entirely, others say they like being able to remind their children their actions can affect their ability to participate in their sport or activity.

School board President Mike Jaensch said that in his eyes, drug testing would be "a tool for the parent first and foremost with our support."

Konrad and Lutzenkirchen plan to talk to other districts about whether they drug test and how they go about doing so. Officials also will research legal and privacy issues as well as costs.

The district plans to continue the discussion at the June 17 school board meeting.

mjenco@tribune.com

Advances in Science of Fire Free a Convict After 42 Years

Advances in Science of Fire Free a Convict After 42 Years

By FERNANDA SANTOS

Published: April 2, 2013

TUCSON — Prosecutors who seek a conviction on a charge of arson must first prove that a fire was intentionally set, and then that the defendant was the one who set it.

Louis C. Taylor was facing arson charges 42 years ago, and he left court convicted on multiple felony murder counts for sparking a hotel fire that claimed 29 lives. He has always professed his innocence, and on Tuesday, advances in the science of fire investigations finally set him free.

He was serving 28 life sentences for starting the deadliest fire in Arizona history.

Mr. Taylor’s release offered him only a small measure of redemption. Under an agreement with prosecutors in Pima County, he entered a no-contest plea during an hourlong court hearing, which set aside his original conviction and gave him credit for the time he had spent behind bars. The arrangement means that he did not admit guilt, but because he did not contest the charges, he is effectively barred from suing anyone who had a role in his conviction.

As the hearing came to a close, Judge Richard S. Fields of Pima County Superior Court said, “Welcome back, Mr. Taylor.”

Four hours later, Mr. Taylor, wearing a light blue shirt, emerged from a state prison here to cheers from his lawyers, who had been waiting to greet him.

“It’s two tragedies,” he said during a brief stop by the prison’s gates. “The Pioneer Hotel fire, and me being convicted.”

Mr. Taylor, 58, who did not even know how to drive when he went to prison at the age of 16, is facing a bleak future in an entirely unfamiliar world. His case is among several in recent years to call into question some of the scientific principles that once guided fire investigations — including the idea that multiple and independent points of a fire’s origin were proof of arson, a decisive element of Mr. Taylor’s prosecution.

Last year, a committee in Texas began a review of arson convictions after a report revealed that a man executed in 2004 for setting a blaze that killed his three children may not have been guilty. The committee concluded that evidence that the fire was intentionally set had been based on faulty science.

Just last week, Texas’s highest criminal court ordered a new trial for another man convicted of starting the fire that killed his stepsons, over similar doubts.

“What we’re going after, more than anything else, is a pervasive prosecuting practice, not some isolated mistake that happened in the past,” said Jeff Blackburn, founder and chief counsel to the Innocence Project of Texas, the legal advocacy organization that is helping forensic scientists and the Texas fire marshal’s office carry out the review.

Debunking junk science in arson and other criminal convictions, Mr. Blackburn said, “is really the next wave of innocence work.”

A few years ago, the National Academy of Sciences turned its attention to the misuse of science in courtrooms, saying that pseudoscientific theories had been used to convict people of crimes they may not have committed. By then, a small group of fire engineers had already begun to discredit many of the assumptions employed in fire investigations, like the practice of using the amount of heat radiated by a fire to assess if an accelerant had been used.

Unlike DNA evidence, which can exonerate one person and sometimes incriminate another, the evidence collected in some arson investigations does not yield precise results. Often much of the evidence has been lost or destroyed. In the case of the hotel fire here, all that is left are photographs, reports and chemical analysis, all of them assembled to prove arson.

As a result, “we can’t definitely say what really caused the fire,” said John J. Lentini, a veteran fire investigator who wrote a report on Mr. Taylor’s case. “But what we can do is discredit the evidence” used to support the charge.

Race and questionable investigative practices may have also played a role in Mr. Taylor’s conviction. He was a black man convicted by an all-white jury at a time of racial strife in Tucson; four years later, a lawsuit would force the city to confront segregation in the largest of its school districts.

After Mr. Taylor’s arrest, Cyrillis W. Holmes Jr., a fire investigator hired by the state, offered a profile suggesting that the arsonist was a young black man. (Mr. Holmes reaffirmed his theory during a deposition five months ago, saying that “blacks, at that point, their background was the use of fire for beneficial purposes.”)

During the trial, another investigator testified that an accelerant had been used to ignite the flames, a finding not backed by laboratory tests on debris from the hotel, which Mr. Taylor’s lawyers did not know existed.

The fire at the downtown hotel, the Pioneer International, broke out just after midnight on Dec. 20, 1970, as an aircraft company was holding a holiday party for 350 people. Rooms were full of guests, many of them Mexican tourists visiting Tucson to do Christmas shopping.

By his admission, Mr. Taylor went to the Pioneer to try to get free drinks. After the fire began, he was found knocking on doors, rousing guests, escorting them outside and helping the injured onto stretchers.

On the upper floors, some people fashioned ropes out of bedsheets, while others jumped out of windows in a desperate bid to escape. Firefighters’ ladders were too short to reach them.

In court on Tuesday, Paul D’Hedouville II choked up as he described losing his father in the fire when he was 4. Still, he told Mr. Taylor, “I harbor no feeling of ill-will or vengeance for you.”

“Do as you choose, Mr. Taylor, but choose wisely,” Mr. D’Hedouville said. “Do not waste your new beginning on life.”

Prosecutors, in filings and at Tuesday’s hearing, said they still believed Mr. Taylor was guilty, but chose to accept the agreement because they would not have been able to pursue a new trial. The evidence is too old and scarce, and there are not enough living witnesses, they said.

Mr. Taylor was represented by the Arizona Justice Project, which helps inmates believed to have been wrongfully accused. In court, Edward F. Novak, who led the legal team, told Judge Fields, “Mr. Taylor does maintain his innocence, and the no-contest plea allows him to do that.”

BP thugs bust woman for having chicharrones????

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Woman accused of trying to smuggle chicharrones across border

Arizona Daily Star

Border agents used to intercepting massive loads of drugs and piles of money busted a woman with unusual contraband — chicharrones.

The pork treats were found wrapped in a towel and stuffed inside a cereal box Monday as the woman tried to drive across the Mariposa port of entry in Nogales, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a news release.

The woman had told officers she had nothing to declare, but an agriculture canine sniffed out the concealed meat.

The pork was destroyed and the woman was fined.

Marijuana legalization wins majority support nationwide

Marijuana legalization wins majority support nationwide

By David Lauter

April 4, 2013, 9:13 a.m.

WASHINGTON – A majority of Americans support legalizing marijuana, a new poll shows, with the change driven largely by a huge shift in how the baby boom generation feels about the drug of their youth.

By 52%-45%, adult Americans back legalization, according to the survey released Thursday by the Pew Research Center. The finding marks the first time in more than four decades of Pew's polling that a majority has taken that position. As recently as a decade ago, only about one-third of American adults backed making marijuana legal.

Two big shifts in opinion go along with the support for legalization and likely contribute to it. Most Americans no longer see marijuana as a "gateway" to more dangerous drugs, and most no longer see its use as immoral. As recently as 2006, half of Americans said in a Pew survey that marijuana use was “morally wrong.” Now, only one-third do, while half say that marijuana usage is “not a moral issue.”

By an overwhelming margin, 72%-23%, Americans say the federal government’s efforts against marijuana “cost more than they are worth.”

Similarly, by nearly two-to-one, Americans say the federal government should not enforce its anti-marijuana laws in states that allow use of the drug. The Obama administration has been vague on what stand it will take on federal law enforcement in states such as Washington and Colorado, which have legalized marijuana for recreational use, or in states such as California that allow medical use. Federal prosecutors in California have brought charges against some sellers of medical marijuana.

Read the full survey from Pew Research

In December, Atty. Gen. Eric Holder acknowledged a “tension between federal law and these state laws” and said that a clarification of federal policy would come “relatively soon.” That has not yet happened. So far, 24 states and the District of Columbia either have decriminalized personal use of marijuana, legalized it or allowed it to be used for medical purposes. Federal law currently treats marijuana as a dangerous drug with no legitimate medical uses.

The poll suggests a shift in federal law may be slow. A notable political split exists on the issue, with conservative Republicans heavily against legalization, while majorities of Democrats, independents and liberal and moderate Republicans back it. Conservatives have strong sway among Republicans in the House.

But on two issues, opinion is more uniform: the belief that current enforcement efforts are not worth the cost and acceptance of the idea that marijuana has legitimate medical uses. By 77%-16%, Americans said they agree on that, with support for medical marijuana cutting across partisan and generation lines.

Support for legalization is strikingly uniform among states, with the percentage virtually the same in the states that have decriminalized, legalized or allowed medical use and in the 26 where marijuana remains fully illegal. There is little variation among various regions of the country either – a sharp contrast with other cultural issues where coastal states tend to be more liberal and the South more conservative.

That finding contradicts the strategy that supporters of marijuana legalization have followed over the past decade in which they have pushed first to allow medical marijuana in the belief that states that have taken that step would more likely back full legalization. The new data suggests either that such careful strategizing was unnecessary or that a broader cultural shift in favor of full legalization has made it obsolete.

The percentage of people who say they have used marijuana in the past year (about one in 10) or at any point in their lives (about half) is virtually identical in states that have legalized some marijuana use and those that have not, suggesting that more liberal laws have simply made usage more visible, not increased it, as some have feared.

The main divisions on marijuana legalization are those of age: Younger Americans back legalization more than their elders, although the poll shows legalization gaining support among all generations.

Among those aged 30-49, parents are less likely to support legalization than non-parents. Those with children 18 or younger at home are closely divided, 50%-47%, while those without children at home support legalization by 62%-35%.

The impact of parenthood may also be part of the most striking shift in opinion – the change among members of the baby boom generation. During the 1970s, when baby boomers were in their teens and 20s, a plurality supported legalizing pot, with support hitting 47% in a 1978 survey. But as they aged, boomers changed their minds, with support for legal marijuana dropping to fewer than one in five baby boomers by 1990, when members of the generation were in their 30s and 40s. Since then, they've shifted again, and the new poll shows 50% now support legalizing the drug.

Contrary to the image of boomers turning to pot to assuage the aches and pains of middle age, however, only 7% of those aged 50-64 said they had used marijuana in the past year.

Overall, 48% of adults said they had used marijuana at some point in their life. Those who admit using the drug are far more likely to support legalization than those who say they never have used it, although support for legalization has grown among both groups.

The percentage now saying they have used marijuana at some point is up considerably from the 38% who said so a decade ago. The poll does not make clear how much of that shift involves an increase in recent usage versus people being more willing to admit past marijuana use or, simply, the passing of an older generation that was much less likely to have used the drug.

Just over one in 10 people in the current survey said they had used marijuana in the past year. Among those younger than 30, more than one in four said they had done so. Among those who had used marijuana in the past year, just over half said they had done so at least in part for medical reasons, with 47% saying they had done so “just for fun.”

The Pew survey was conducted March 13-17 by telephone, including cell phones and land lines, among 1,501 American adults. The results have a margin of error of +/-2.9 percentage points.

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david.lauter@latimes.com

Twitter: @davidlauter

Conn. governor signs sweeping new gun bill into law

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Conn. governor signs sweeping new gun bill into law

Tribune newspapers and wire reports

11:44 a.m. CDT, April 4, 2013

Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy today signed a tough new gun law that, among several key provisions, restricts sales of the sort of high-capacity ammunition clips that a gunman used to massacre 26 people in minutes in a December attack on a school.

Lawmakers in the state's Democratic-controlled House approved the measure, which supporters described as one of the toughest such laws in the United States, early on Thursday morning. The Senate approved the measure hours earlier.

The House debate stretched past midnight, with opponents of the law arguing that it infringed on the rights to gun ownership protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and that efforts to prevent attacks such as the Newtown, Conn., school shooting should focus on providing better mental-health services.

Connecticut's law passed hours after Maryland's House of Delegates on Wednesday approved their own gun law, which also limits magazine size and requires that gun buyers be fingerprinted.

The Connecticut law also requires background checks for private gun sales, expands the number of guns covered by the state's assault-weapons ban and establishes a $15 million fund to help schools improve security infrastructure.

It bans specifically the sale of ammunition clips that hold 10 bullets or more and requires owners of such clips to register them by January 1, 2014. After that date, owning an unregistered high-capacity clip will become a felony offense.

The legislation was proposed after the Dec. 14 slayings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in which a gunman used clips that held 30 bullets to fire off 154 rounds in less than five minutes. "The content of this legislation speaks for itself as really the strongest gun control legislation in the country," House Speaker Brendan Sharkey, a 50-year-old Hamden Democrat, said in a statehouse interview. "The details of this package, when reviewed by other states, will be a terrific blueprint for how to do this in a comprehensive way."

Newtown school massacre

Passage came more than three months after gunman Adam Lanza, 20, stormed into the Newtown school and mowed down students and teachers, reviving debate over gun control. Connecticut joins New York and Colorado in tightening firearms limits in the wake of the tragedy. Maryland’s House of Delegates passed a similar measure yesterday.

In Washington, congressional action on the issue has been stymied by opposition from the National Rifle Association, the nation’s biggest gun-rights lobby. President Barack Obama went to Colorado yesterday to praise that state’s new restrictions, and plans to visit Connecticut next week to pressure Congress

"Colorado is proving a model of what's possible," Obama said in Denver. "It's now been just over 100 days since the murder of 20 innocent children and six brave educators in Newtown, Connecticut, an event that shocked this country."

Lanza carried 10 30-round magazines into Sandy Hook, court documents show. He reloaded six times and fired 154 bullets from his Bushmaster AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle in less than five minutes, according to the documents. The measure approved yesterday bans sales of the weapon and similar models.

Lanza's victims front and center in debate

This week, some parents of Lanza's victims handed out pictures of their children to lawmakers who met April 1 to review the limits proposed in an accord hammered out by legislative leaders. Family members sought an outright ban on possession of high-capacity magazines, rather than the registration requirement that’s part of the final measure.

During one of the most emotional moments of the six-hour Senate debate yesterday, John McKinney, the Republican leader who represents Newtown, explained why he pins a green ribbon and a guardian angel on his lapel.

"I try to put it on my jacket every day to remember those that we've lost because I stand here, I stand here as their voice," McKinney, 49, said. He then read the names of each of the Sandy Hook victims, his voice wavering a times. Six of the 14 Republicans in the chamber voted for the measure.

Before the voting began, activists on opposite sides of the issue sparred verbally in the Capitol’s hallways.

A poll released on Thursday found that 91 percent of U.S. voters support regulations requiring all gun buyers to undergo background checks. However, 48 percent of all respondents and 53 percent of those owning guns said those checks could lead to the government's confiscating legally owned weapons.

That Quinnipiac University poll of 1,711 registered voters was conducted from March 26 to April 1 and had a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points.

Vote makes 'everyone in this room a criminal'

"I don’t want 30-round magazines that can wipe out our children," said Dan Garrett, 53, of Hamden, speaking to a group of men wearing Connecticut Citizens Defense League stickers. Greg Kozeman, 44, of New Britain said improving mental-health access is a better solution than tighter gun limits.

Earlier, gun-rights advocates filled statehouse lobbies.

"The vote on this bill will make everyone in this room a criminal," said Warren Stevens, 58, a Plantsville gun owner. He wouldn’t say what type of guns he owns or how many.

“It is no business of the state what I own,” he said. "Their authority does not extend into my house."

Connecticut, with a long history of weapons production, is still home to six gunmakers. The companies include Sturm Ruger & Co., Connecticut Shotgun Manufacturing Co., Colt Defense LLC, Stag Arms, Charter Arms, O.F. Mossberg & Sons Inc., and Ammunition Storage Components LLC, which makes 30-round magazines. Some have threatened to leave if the new limits pass.

The industry employs about 7,300 people in the state and contributed $119 million in tax revenue in 2011, according to the Newtown-based National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group. Charter Arms calls the region “the cradle of the American firearms industry.”

Reuters and Bloomberg

Saudi Arabia's punishment by paralysis

Religions always seem to come up with really sick things

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Saudi Arabia's punishment by paralysis condemned as 'grotesque'

By Emily Alpert

April 4, 2013, 10:34 a.m.

Alarmed by reports that Saudi Arabia will paralyze a man as punishment for allegedly stabbing a friend who ended up paralyzed, Britain urged the kingdom Thursday to abandon the “grotesque punishment.”

The Saudi Gazette reported last week that Ali Khawahir was sentenced to be paralyzed if he could not pay 1 million riyals – roughly $270,000 – to the friend he allegedly stabbed a decade ago. Khawahir was reportedly 14 years old when he was first jailed.

Amnesty International called the eye-for-an-eye punishment “utterly shocking” and a violation of international law. “Paralyzing someone as punishment for a crime would be torture,” its Middle East and North Africa deputy director Ann Harrison said in a statement Tuesday.

The British Foreign Office echoed the human rights group. “Such practices are prohibited under international law and have no place in any society,” it wrote Thursday on its website.

The BBC called it "an unusually strong plea," noting that "British governments have struggled at times to harmonize their concerns about human rights in Saudi Arabia with the fact that the kingdom remains a key ally." The U.S. State Department did not appear to have issued any statement on the punishment as of Thursday morning.

Saudi Arabia has been excoriated by rights activists for its harsh punishments, which include amputation, flogging and the death penalty. In “retribution” cases such as this, victims can demand punishment, seek payment or pardon the convict, according to Amnesty International.

The human rights group said it was unclear whether a paralysis sentence imposed in a different case in 2010 was carried out. The Saudi Gazette reported that in August of that year, a court in the city of Tabuk rejected demands for such a punishment, saying it was “impossible to conduct such an operation.”

Supporters have started a campaign to raise the money for Khawahir to avoid suffering paralysis, the Saudi Gazette reported. “We don't have even a 10th of this sum," his mother told the Al Hayat daily, according to a translation by Reuters.

Coconino County Sheriff Bill Pribil gun is stolen

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Coconino sheriff not sure if truck where gun was stolen was locked

By Cecilia Chan and Trisha Hendricks The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Wed Apr 3, 2013 7:21 PM

Coconino County Sheriff Bill Pribil, whose service weapon was stolen from his pickup truck, said Wednesday that he is now not so sure if he had locked the vehicle.

Pribil, first elected in 2004, reported his 9mm Glock pistol stolen on Easter Sunday, according to Flagstaff police. The sheriff’s spokesman said Tuesday that Pribil remembered locking the door. Pribil told 12 News on Wednesday that he was unsure if the vehicle was locked.

On Sunday, Pribil went outside his Flagstaff home and found that his personal truck was unlocked and that the handgun had been taken from the center console, according to a police report.

"It's clearly embarrassing and it's something that shouldn't happen," Pribil said Wednesday. “It was a very sinking feeling. When a gun is stolen you now have a weapon in the hands of obviously a criminal and you know that raises concern.”

Pribil said until the gun is recovered, the idea that it can be used in a crime disturbs him.

There was no sign of forced entry and nothing else was taken from his truck, police said.

Pribil's neighborhood has been the target of burglars in recent days and he could be one of the victims, according to police.

Gun-store owner Phillip Scavo said the particular type of handgun is popular among law enforcement and target shooters because it is inexpensive.

The value of the Glock was stated as $500 on the police report.

Pribil said he plans to practice what he preaches to residents: take the gun out of the vehicle and lock it up when at home.

“We’ve told people over the years if you have valuables make sure that they are out of sight,” he said.” I’m going to change that now and just say don’t leave valuables in your car because it doesn’t matter if they are out of sight or not, people who want them will get them.”

Mesa JP Markel K. Chiles busted for shoplifting

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Mesa Justice of the Peace cited in shoplifting case

By Jim Walsh The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Thu Apr 4, 2013 2:03 PM

An east Mesa Justice of the Peace who was recently cited by police on a misdemeanor shoplifting charge will not return to the bench to hear the rest of Thursday’s calendar.

Mesa police suspect Judge Markel K. Chiles of shoplifting a $43 speaker at a Mesa Walmart store at 4 a.m on March 28, said Detective Steve Berry, a police spokesman.

Maricopa County Justice Court officials were shocked to learn of the Chiles arrest on Thursday. Officials said he would not return to the bench and a judge pro-tem will take his place.

On March 28, a Walmart loss prevention officer watched as Chiles took the speaker out of a package and put it under a coat or some other item in his cart, Berry said.

Chiles paid for the other items but left the store without paying for the speaker, he said.

The loss-prevention officer wrote down the license plate number of Chiles’ motorcycle as he drove away at about 6 a.m.

Mesa police said Chiles was cited on Monday by a police officer who investigated the incident using surveillance tapes and statements from the store loss-prevention officer.

Chiles was arrested but not taken into custody, standard procedure on routine shoplifting cases, Berry said.

Talking on cell phone while driving causes pot smuggler to be busted.

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Traffic stop for cellphone violation lands federal drug suspect from Emeryville in jail

By Gary Klien, Marin Independent Journal

Posted: 04/05/2013 07:53:28 AM PDT

"Distracted Drivers Awareness Month" apparently caught Winslow Lazer Norton unawares. Now he has another distraction.

Norton is a marijuana merchant who is facing federal drug trafficking and money laundering charges related to a 2007 pot dispensary raid in Cherryland, near Hayward. He was arrested in San Rafael on Wednesday after a California Highway Patrol officer saw him using a cellphone while driving, then found about 2 pounds of marijuana and $15,000 in his car.

The arrest happened Wednesday afternoon, when a CHP officer was looking for cellphone violators on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. Police are cracking down on drivers using cellphones during the month of April, also known as Distracted Drivers Awareness Month.

The officer spotted a westbound driver using a cellphone and stopped the car on the off-ramp to San Quentin and Francisco Boulevard.

Smelling marijuana in the car, the officer searched the vehicle and found the marijuana and about $15,000 in cash, said CHP Officer Andrew Barclay. The driver was identified as Norton, a 32-year-old Emeryville resident.

Norton was booked into Marin County Jail on suspicion of selling or transporting marijuana and possession of marijuana for sale. He was also booked for an outstanding warrant for failing to appear in court in a traffic case.

Norton was released on bail. The Marin County District Attorney's Office was still reviewing the case Thursday for potential charges.

Norton and his brother Abraham are in a longstanding legal fight over a 2007 federal indictment charging them with drug distribution, money laundering and conspiracy. Federal authorities said the brothers' Hayward-based business -- the Compassionate Collective of Alameda County, or the Compassionate Patients' Cooperative -- was a large-scale trafficking operation.

Authorities said the operation's revenues shot from $74,000 in 2004 to $21.5 million in 2006 and $26.3 million in the first half of 2007. Investigators seized several hundred pounds of marijuana, $200,000 in cash, bank accounts, IRAs, real estate and two Mercedes.

In addition, the state Board of Equalization lists the brothers on its roster of the top 500 sales- and use-tax delinquents. The board's website reports balances of $1,002,719.96 for the brothers and $1,007,501 for the Compassionate Patients' Cooperative.

In a 2010 interview in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the brothers said they ran the operation like a legal business -- voluntarily paying taxes, complying with permits and providing security.

They said they went into arrears on their state taxes because federal authorities confiscated a tax payment along with their other assets, leaving them unable to pay.

"They stole the money," Winslow Norton told the newspaper.

Neither he nor his lawyer, Doron Weinberg, could be reached for comment Thursday evening.

The next hearing in the federal case is set for June 6.

Contact Gary Klien via email at gklien@marinij.com

Cheap Drones Made in China Could Arm US Foes

Cheap Drones Made in China Could Arm US Foes

By Jeremy Hsu, TechNewsDaily Senior Writer | LiveScience.com

Cheap drones made in China could end up arming potential U.S. foes such as North Korea, Iran and terrorist organizations.

China already makes drones that don't quite match up to U.S. military drones, but for a fraction of the cost. The Chinese military envisions such unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAVs) scouting out battlefield targets, guiding missile and artillery strikes, and swarming potential adversaries, such as U.S. carrier battle groups.

"In whatever future conflict scenario we're in five or 10 years from now, the proliferation of UAVs is going to complicate things for the U.S. military," said Ian Easton, a research fellow at the Project 2049 Institute.

China has built a huge military-industrial complex to support its growing drone fleet, which consisted of about 280 military drones as of mid-2011, according to a report released by the Project 2049 Institute on March 11. Chinese manufacturers supplying the military and state agencies also have begun seeking foreign buyers in a global drone market that aerospace and defense market research firm Teal Group estimates to be worth $89 billion over the next 10 years.

Retired Chinese generals have stated on Chinese state television station CCTV that Chinese drone technology lags American technology by about five years, Easton said. However, Chinese manufacturers are touting their plans to build drones five or even 10 times cheaper than comparable U.S. drones, whose hardware alone costs $5 million to $10 million. [Video: RoboBees: Design Poses Intriguing Engineering Challenges]

The idea of cheap, China-made drones may not tempt countries such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia or NATO allies that want to buy the best U.S. or Israeli drone hardware. Instead, China is seeking buyers in the Middle East and Africa at glitzy expositions such as China’s biennial Zhuhai Air Show.

"In the area of the Middle East, there could be direct competition, and the Chinese would have an advantage because they can apparently make UAVs cheaper," Easton told TechNewsDaily. "For countries that don't demand the best technology, good enough would be good enough."

That means countries such as Syria might obtain Chinese drones for the surveillance or oppression of their own citizens, Easton said. He added that Chinese drones also could end up in the hands of North Korea or Iran — regional hotspots where the U.S. military may potentially find itself embroiled in future conflicts.

Iran has already sold its own crude drones to countries such as Syria and organizations such as Hezbollah, a militant group based in Lebanon and backed by Iran. In addition, China-made drones would allow countries like Iran and North Korea to obtain technology which Western countries refuse to sell.

"It's bad enough that China has that kind of capability, but the same capability could end up in the hands of the Iranians or North Koreans or a terrorist group like Hezbollah that Iran is cooperating with," Easton said.

The U.S. has already shown the world how battlefield drone surveillance and drone strikes can prove both effective and controversial. Still, the U.S. military faces a new challenge in detecting swarms of China-made drones during future conflicts, Easton said. Some drones may go undetected by radar because they can fly extremely low and may come in small sizes.

This story was provided by TechNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow TechNewsDaily on Twitter @TechNewsDaily, or on Facebook.

F*ck justice, we want the money - Scottsdale Police

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Scottsdale DUIs in question over lab methods

Hundreds of cases at risk in Scottsdale

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Apr 5, 2013 11:28 PM

Hundreds of drunken-driving cases from the past four years could be called into question if a legal effort challenging the accuracy of the Scottsdale Police Department’s blood-testing equipment is successful.

Eleven felony DUI cases in Scottsdale have been consolidated into an ongoing Superior Court evidentiary hearing to examine a single issue: whether a crime-lab technician’s decision 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.

Scottsdale police declined to comment on the cases but issued a statement Friday saying that the lab has been accredited since 1996 because its practices for maintaining equipment meet or exceed national standards. Prosecutors also declined to discuss the matter because of ongoing litigation.

But attorneys for 11 defendants involved in the consolidated case, along with other area DUI lawyers who have joined the cause, question whether the lab should be accredited, because employees allegedly did not follow the agency’s own protocol for testing and installing new equipment.

“We have a laboratory where the blood results are being used to decide whether people go to jail or prison. For the last going on four years now, at least once a month, every month, there’s some huge error where there’s an unexpected result,” said Joseph St. Louis, a Tucson defense attorney involved in the case. “Instead of trying to solve the problem to make sure the results are accurate, they simply rerun the tests, and if the second time the results seem to be more normal or accurate, they go with those.”

Defense attorneys say the outcome of the challenge could have a broad impact on the treatment of forensic evidence in Arizona courts.

Court documents indicate Scottsdale police have been aware of potential problems with the high-priced blood-testing equipment for years. 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.

“The concern is: Why are they hiding it? When we look at it, other defendants’ chromatograms are drastically flawed,” said Craig Rosenstein, an attorney who specializes in DUIs.

Rosenstein is not involved in the cases, but the matter has drawn the attention of anyone involved in DUI defense, he said.

“There are major, complex software issues, just crazy things that are going on. But we only see them when someone in the community is looking for these results,” he said.

The problems date to 2009, when a Scottsdale crime-lab supervisor decided to use software from an old machine on a newer blood-testing machine called a gas chromatographer because lab employees, police and attorneys were used to reading the reports from the old machine, according to court documents.

But by summer 2010, the supervisor determined that the old software was incompatible with the new equipment because “50 percent of the information (on the reports) is gobbley-gook,” according to testimony the supervisor gave in a related case.

The lab stopped printing those reports that summer, and the equipment’s manufacturer, Massachusetts-based PerkinElmer, sent a technician to Scottsdale to try to fix the problem. The technician installed a “patch ... to overlap the problem or to conceal or eliminate its effects,” according to court documents.

“He did not fix the problem,” the lab supervisor said during August 2011 testimony in an unrelated case. “It still happens.”

The software patch also came with a disclaimer that said the remedy had not been through a complete test and that the company made no representations about the patch’s performance, nor would PerkinElmer accept any liability for problems with the software.

A spokeswoman for the company did not respond to requests for comment Friday. A forensic scientist with Scottsdale’s crime lab, during testimony in an unrelated case last month, said Scottsdale police asked to exchange the equipment after the software patch failed, but the manufacturer refused.

Those two steps alone — bootstrapping the old software onto the new machine and using a patch that had not been thoroughly tested — put the lab in violation of its own policies that require modifications to be tested at least 25 times before being peer-reviewed and critiqued by an outside laboratory, according to court documents. The modification could also put the lab in violation of accreditation standards, said Lawrence Koplow, a Phoenix defense attorney involved in the case.

“They just keep saying, basically, ‘We make our own rules,’ ” Koplow said.

The crime lab’s manager told a lawyer in writing that there are no comprehensive “error logs” that would indicate how often the equipment produces incorrect test results, according to court records.

“The extent of how often these machines mislabel bottle numbers, no one knows,” Koplow said. But the alleged problems with the equipment might never have been exposed without a confluence of factors that put felony DUI cases in the hands of experienced attorneys.

Scottsdale police issued citations for more than 2,500 DUIs last year, according to the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety, but about 150 of those were the type of felony DUIs that end up in Maricopa County Superior Court. The vast majority go to Scottsdale City Court where attorneys say most judges don’t let juries hear information about potential problems with crime-lab evidence.

“Forget about suppressing, they’re not even letting juries know this is going on,” Koplow said. “They’re letting juries hear from the crime lab, ‘We’re confident that this machine is accurate within 5 percent,’ when the reality is there’s all this evidence to the contrary.”

And the potential flaws with the blood-testing equipment are just as big a concern for those suspects who see their blood-test results and accept them at face value before pleading guilty, St. Louis said.

All 11 of the consolidated cases involve serious DUI allegations, according to court documents. At least two of the suspects submitted themselves to preliminary breath tests, and their blood-alcohol content registered more than 0.20 percent, more than twice the legal limit.

At least eight of the 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 about 8:30 p.m. in late March 2011. Her preliminary breath tests put her over twice the legal limit.

The outcome of ongoing evidentiary hearings, scheduled for later this month, could affect whether any of those drivers are punished for their alleged crimes. The court’s ruling will almost certainly be appealed, regardless of the outcome, but attorneys say it has the potential to change the way forensic evidence is handled and presented to a court in all types of cases.

“As we’re starting to get this information, the world around the lab rats is changing. We’re not taking what they say on the stand at face value. At that point, we get better lab reports and either solid convictions or solid acquittals,” said Ed Conter, a Phoenix defense attorney.

A Secret Deal on Drones, Sealed in Blood

A Secret Deal on Drones, Sealed in Blood

By MARK MAZZETTI

Published: April 6, 2013 Comment

The C.I.A. has carried out hundreds of strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas.

On a hot day in June 2004, the Pashtun tribesman was lounging inside a mud compound in South Waziristan, speaking by satellite phone to one of the many reporters who regularly interviewed him on how he had fought and humbled Pakistan’s army in the country’s western mountains. He asked one of his followers about the strange, metallic bird hovering above him.

Less than 24 hours later, a missile tore through the compound, severing Mr. Muhammad’s left leg and killing him and several others, including two boys, ages 10 and 16. A Pakistani military spokesman was quick to claim responsibility for the attack, saying that Pakistani forces had fired at the compound.

That was a lie.

Mr. Muhammad and his followers had been killed by the C.I.A., the first time it had deployed a Predator drone in Pakistan to carry out a “targeted killing.” The target was not a top operative of Al Qaeda, but a Pakistani ally of the Taliban who led a tribal rebellion and was marked by Pakistan as an enemy of the state. In a secret deal, the C.I.A. had agreed to kill him in exchange for access to airspace it had long sought so it could use drones to hunt down its own enemies.

That back-room bargain, described in detail for the first time in interviews with more than a dozen officials in Pakistan and the United States, is critical to understanding the origins of a covert drone war that began under the Bush administration, was embraced and expanded by President Obama, and is now the subject of fierce debate. The deal, a month after a blistering internal report about abuses in the C.I.A.’s network of secret prisons, paved the way for the C.I.A. to change its focus from capturing terrorists to killing them, and helped transform an agency that began as a cold war espionage service into a paramilitary organization.

The C.I.A. has since conducted hundreds of drone strikes in Pakistan that have killed thousands of people, Pakistanis and Arabs, militants and civilians alike. While it was not the first country where the United States used drones, it became the laboratory for the targeted killing operations that have come to define a new American way of fighting, blurring the line between soldiers and spies and short-circuiting the normal mechanisms by which the United States as a nation goes to war.

Neither American nor Pakistani officials have ever publicly acknowledged what really happened to Mr. Muhammad — details of the strike that killed him, along with those of other secret strikes, are still hidden in classified government databases. But in recent months, calls for transparency from members of Congress and critics on both the right and left have put pressure on Mr. Obama and his new C.I.A. director, John O. Brennan, to offer a fuller explanation of the goals and operation of the drone program, and of the agency’s role.

Mr. Brennan, who began his career at the C.I.A. and over the past four years oversaw an escalation of drone strikes from his office at the White House, has signaled that he hopes to return the agency to its traditional role of intelligence collection and analysis. But with a generation of C.I.A. officers now fully engaged in a new mission, it is an effort that could take years.

Today, even some of the people who were present at the creation of the drone program think the agency should have long given up targeted killings.

Ross Newland, who was a senior official at the C.I.A.’s headquarters in Langley, Va., when the agency was given the authority to kill Qaeda operatives, says he thinks that the agency had grown too comfortable with remote-control killing, and that drones have turned the C.I.A. into the villain in countries like Pakistan, where it should be nurturing relationships in order to gather intelligence.

As he puts it, “This is just not an intelligence mission.”

From Car Thief to Militant

By 2004, Mr. Muhammad had become the undisputed star of the tribal areas, the fierce mountain lands populated by the Wazirs, Mehsuds and other Pashtun tribes who for decades had lived independent of the writ of the central government in Islamabad. A brash member of the Wazir tribe, Mr. Muhammad had raised an army to fight government troops and had forced the government into negotiations. He saw no cause for loyalty to the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, the Pakistani military spy service that had given an earlier generation of Pashtuns support during the war against the Soviets.

Many Pakistanis in the tribal areas viewed with disdain the alliance that President Pervez Musharraf had forged with the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They regarded the Pakistani military that had entered the tribal areas as no different from the Americans — who they believed had begun a war of aggression in Afghanistan, just as the Soviets had years earlier.

Born near Wana, the bustling market hub of South Waziristan, Mr. Muhammad spent his adolescent years as a petty car thief and shopkeeper in the city’s bazaar. He found his calling in 1993, around the age of 18, when he was recruited to fight with the Taliban in Afghanistan, and rose quickly through the group’s military hierarchy. He cut a striking figure on the battlefield with his long face and flowing jet black hair.

When the Americans invaded Afghanistan in 2001, he seized an opportunity to host the Arab and Chechen fighters from Al Qaeda who crossed into Pakistan to escape the American bombing.

For Mr. Muhammad, it was partly a way to make money, but he also saw another use for the arriving fighters. With their help, over the next two years he launched a string of attacks on Pakistani military installations and on American firebases in Afghanistan.

C.I.A. officers in Islamabad urged Pakistani spies to lean on the Waziri tribesman to hand over the foreign fighters, but under Pashtun tribal customs that would be treachery. Reluctantly, Mr. Musharraf ordered his troops into the forbidding mountains to deliver rough justice to Mr. Muhammad and his fighters, hoping the operation might put a stop to the attacks on Pakistani soil, including two attempts on his life in December 2003.

But it was only the beginning. In March 2004, Pakistani helicopter gunships and artillery pounded Wana and its surrounding villages. Government troops shelled pickup trucks that were carrying civilians away from the fighting and destroyed the compounds of tribesmen suspected of harboring foreign fighters. The Pakistani commander declared the operation an unqualified success, but for Islamabad, it had not been worth the cost in casualties.

A cease-fire was negotiated in April during a hastily arranged meeting in South Waziristan, during which a senior Pakistani commander hung a garland of bright flowers around Mr. Muhammad’s neck. The two men sat together and sipped tea as photographers and television cameras recorded the event.

Both sides spoke of peace, but there was little doubt who was negotiating from strength. Mr. Muhammad would later brag that the government had agreed to meet inside a religious madrasa rather than in a public location where tribal meetings are traditionally held. “I did not go to them; they came to my place,” he said. “That should make it clear who surrendered to whom.”

The peace arrangement propelled Mr. Muhammad to new fame, and the truce was soon exposed as a sham. He resumed attacks against Pakistani troops, and Mr. Musharraf ordered his army back on the offensive in South Waziristan.

Pakistani officials had, for several years, balked at the idea of allowing armed C.I.A. Predators to roam their skies. They considered drone flights a violation of sovereignty, and worried that they would invite further criticism of Mr. Musharraf as being Washington’s lackey. But Mr. Muhammad’s rise to power forced them to reconsider.

The C.I.A. had been monitoring the rise of Mr. Muhammad, but officials considered him to be more Pakistan’s problem than America’s. In Washington, officials were watching with growing alarm the gathering of Qaeda operatives in the tribal areas, and George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director, authorized officers in the agency’s Islamabad station to push Pakistani officials to allow armed drones. Negotiations were handled primarily by the Islamabad station.

As the battles raged in South Waziristan, the station chief in Islamabad paid a visit to Gen. Ehsan ul Haq, the ISI chief, and made an offer: If the C.I.A. killed Mr. Muhammad, would the ISI allow regular armed drone flights over the tribal areas?

In secret negotiations, the terms of the bargain were set. Pakistani intelligence officials insisted that they be allowed to approve each drone strike, giving them tight control over the list of targets. And they insisted that drones fly only in narrow parts of the tribal areas — ensuring that they would not venture where Islamabad did not want the Americans going: Pakistan’s nuclear facilities, and the mountain camps where Kashmiri militants were trained for attacks in India.

The ISI and the C.I.A. agreed that all drone flights in Pakistan would operate under the C.I.A.’s covert action authority — meaning that the United States would never acknowledge the missile strikes and that Pakistan would either take credit for the individual killings or remain silent.

"In Pakistan, things fall out of the sky all the time." PERVEZ MUSHARRAF, the Pakistani president whose government reached a deal with the C.I.A., allowing it to carry out secret drone strikes in Pakistan.

Mr. Musharraf did not think that it would be difficult to keep up the ruse. As he told one C.I.A. officer: “In Pakistan, things fall out of the sky all the time.”

A New Direction

As the negotiations were taking place, the C.I.A.’s inspector general, John L. Helgerson, had just finished a searing report about the abuse of detainees in the C.I.A.’s secret prisons. The report kicked out the foundation upon which the C.I.A. detention and interrogation program had rested. It was perhaps the single most important reason for the C.I.A.’s shift from capturing to killing terrorism suspects.

The greatest impact of Mr. Helgerson’s report was felt at the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorism Center, or CTC, which was at the vanguard of the agency’s global antiterrorism operation. The center had focused on capturing Qaeda operatives; questioning them in C.I.A. jails or outsourcing interrogations to the spy services of Pakistan, Jordan, Egypt and other nations; and then using the information to hunt more terrorism suspects.

Mr. Helgerson raised questions about whether C.I.A. officers might face criminal prosecution for the interrogations carried out in the secret prisons, and he suggested that interrogation methods like waterboarding, sleep deprivation and the exploiting of the phobias of prisoners — like confining them in a small box with live bugs — violated the United Nations Convention Against Torture.

“The agency faces potentially serious long-term political and legal challenges as a result of the CTC detention and interrogation program,” the report concluded, given the brutality of the interrogation techniques and the “inability of the U.S. government to decide what it will ultimately do with the terrorists detained by the agency.”

The report was the beginning of the end for the program. The prisons would stay open for several more years, and new detainees were occasionally picked up and taken to secret sites, but at Langley, senior C.I.A. officers began looking for an endgame to the prison program. One C.I.A. operative told Mr. Helgerson’s team that officers from the agency might one day wind up on a “wanted list” and be tried for war crimes in an international court.

The ground had shifted, and counterterrorism officials began to rethink the strategy for the secret war. Armed drones, and targeted killings in general, offered a new direction. Killing by remote control was the antithesis of the dirty, intimate work of interrogation. Targeted killings were cheered by Republicans and Democrats alike, and using drones flown by pilots who were stationed thousands of miles away made the whole strategy seem risk-free.

Before long the C.I.A. would go from being the long-term jailer of America’s enemies to a military organization that erased them.

Not long before, the agency had been deeply ambivalent about drone warfare.

The Predator had been considered a blunt and unsophisticated killing tool, and many at the C.I.A. were glad that the agency had gotten out of the assassination business long ago. Three years before Mr. Muhammad’s death, and one year before the C.I.A. carried out its first targeted killing outside a war zone — in Yemen in 2002 — a debate raged over the legality and morality of using drones to kill suspected terrorists.

A new generation of C.I.A. officers had ascended to leadership positions, having joined the agency after the 1975 Congressional committee led by Senator Frank Church, Democrat of Idaho, which revealed extensive C.I.A. plots to kill foreign leaders, and President Gerald Ford’s subsequent ban on assassinations. The rise to power of this post-Church generation had a direct impact on the type of clandestine operations the C.I.A. chose to conduct.

The debate pitted a group of senior officers at the Counterterrorism Center against James L. Pavitt, the head of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service, and others who worried about the repercussions of the agency’s getting back into assassinations. Mr. Tenet told the 9/11 commission that he was not sure that a spy agency should be flying armed drones.

John E. McLaughlin, then the C.I.A.’s deputy director, who the 9/11 commission reported had raised concerns about the C.I.A.’s being in charge of the Predator, said: “You can’t underestimate the cultural change that comes with gaining lethal authority.

“When people say to me, ‘It’s not a big deal,’ ” he said, “I say to them, ‘Have you ever killed anyone?’

“It is a big deal. You start thinking about things differently,” he added. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, these concerns about the use of the C.I.A. to kill were quickly swept side.

The Account at the Time

After Mr. Muhammad was killed, his dirt grave in South Waziristan became a site of pilgrimage. A Pakistani journalist, Zahid Hussain, visited it days after the drone strike and saw a makeshift sign displayed on the grave: “He lived and died like a true Pashtun.”

Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, Pakistan’s top military spokesman, told reporters at the time that “Al Qaeda facilitator” Nek Muhammad and four other “militants” had been killed in a rocket attack by Pakistani troops.

Any suggestion that Mr. Muhammad was killed by the Americans, or with American assistance, he said, was “absolutely absurd.”

This article is adapted from “The Way of the Knife: The C.I.A., a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth,” to be published by Penguin Press on Tuesday.

Did you really expect a cop to be charged with manslaughter

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No charges filed vs. PInal deputy in fatal crash

By Lindsey Collom The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Apr 5, 2013 9:49 PM

The Pinal County Attorney’s Office won’t prosecute a sheriff’s deputy who was involved in a fatal, on-duty crash last year, despite a recommendation from Arizona Department of Public Safety investigators that he be charged with manslaughter and reckless endangerment.

County Attorney Lando Voyles, who defeated James Walsh last year after a campaign marked by accusations that Walsh didn’t prosecute cases recommended by law enforcement, said Friday that his office “focused on the prospective occurrence, rather than (taking) a hindsight perspective” in deciding whether to charge Deputy Robert Steele in the Aug. 30 incident.

Voyles ran on a “Law and Order” ticket with Sheriff Paul Babeu.

According to the DPS report, Steele was traveling nearly 100 mph on U.S. 60 when his patrol car collided with a truck that had turned left in front of him at about 9:40 p.m. Jeffrey Sorenson was killed, and Steele was seriously injured. A driver who was 8 months pregnant received minor injuries when she sideswiped the patrol car.

Steele was not responding to a call, his lights and sirens were not activated and investigators determined he never applied his brakes. The Sheriff’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.

Sorenson’s family has filed a $4 million notice of claim with the county.

An analysis revealed Sorenson’s blood-alcohol content was 0.23, nearly three times the legal limit of 0.08.

“Our review looked at the case from the perspective of an acceptable investigating patrolling activity at the time of the accident and then the results of the accident,” Voyles said in a prepared statement. “We did not look at the results of the accident and then, decide after the tragedy whether the patrolling activity was illegal.

“Based on that view, this office refuses to criminalize the officer’s patrolling activity. It is not clear that if the officer had been traveling at 65 mph that this accident would not have occurred, since there was an impaired driver of more than 3 times the legal limit, who was not wearing a seatbelt.“

Police teach tactics for handling 'sovereign citizens'

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Police teach tactics for handling 'sovereign citizens'

By David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times

April 5, 2013, 4:14 p.m.

GREENSBORO, N.C. — With his shaggy hair, bushy mustache and obstinate ways, Jeffrey Allen Wright was well known to sheriff's deputies in Santa Rosa County, Fla.

Wright, 55, drove around with a phony license plate. When stopped, he refused to produce a driver's license. Once he threatened to sue a deputy who pulled him over.

After he was fined for traffic offenses in September, Wright paid with counterfeit money orders. When deputies served warrants for felony counterfeiting March 8, Wright barricaded himself in his garage and declared that he would not be "a servant of the king."

He broke out windows with a handgun, then pointed the weapon at officers, police said. Three deputies fired, killing Wright.

When Det. Rob Finch of the Greensboro police department heard about the incident, two words came to mind: sovereign citizen.

Finch teaches police and public officials around the country how to deal with self-described "sovereign citizens" like Wright. Finch and his partner, Det. Kory Flowers, have trained nearly 15,000 police and 5,000 public officials to combat sovereigns, zealots who refuse to recognize government authority in virtually any form.

Violent confrontations are rare, but the FBI says at least six police officers have been killed by sovereigns since 2000. A man tied to the movement shot and killed a California Highway Patrol officer who stopped him in Contra Costa County last year. A responding officer shot and killed the assailant.

The agency calls sovereigns — who number between 100,000 and 300,000 — a "domestic terrorist movement."

This time of year has federal authorities on alert, since a central tenet of the sovereigns movement is that its adherents believe they owe no income taxes.

Sovereigns assert that the U.S. Treasury has set up a secret money account for every American, which can be reclaimed through a bizarre set of legal filings known as redemption. They say everything from taxes to traffic tickets can be disposed of by drawing on the secret Treasury accounts through elaborate legal claims and mountains of paperwork.

Many sovereigns file invoices with police or judges, demanding hundreds of dollars an hour for time spent stopped by officers or when in court to answer charges.

Finch, 31, said his training sessions began after several sovereigns pulled over by Greensboro police in 2008 and 2009 refused to produce driver's licenses. They demanded that officers recite oaths of office and fill out long questionnaires.

"To them, a police officer is just a man in a Halloween costume," Finch said.

Other police departments began requesting their eight-hour seminars. Finch and Flowers now train agents of the FBI, DEA, ATF and Homeland Security — as well as district attorneys, clerks of court, judges and registrars nationwide. Finch says they are the only officers in the country who offer such street-level training.

They teach police to recognize sovereigns by their convoluted legal jargon and "mouthy" defiance. "Sovereign citizens are more likely not to obey their commands and more likely to commit violence during a traffic stop," Finch said.

Finch and Flowers often cite the 2010 deaths of two police officers in West Memphis, Ark., who were shot by a father-son sovereign team during a traffic stop for a bogus license plate. One officer had become distracted by a thick sheaf of papers thrust at him by one of the sovereigns.

Finch said he instructs officers to ignore paperwork other than license and registration. "Your antennae should immediately go up," he tells officers. "They refuse to recognize your authority, and that creates a dangerous situation."

As recently as August, two sheriff's deputies in Laplace, La., were shot and killed in an ambush. Police said at least two of the five men accused in the killings were sovereign citizens.

In Florida, police approached Wright carefully because he had told them in past encounters that he was not subject to police authority. Wright paid his taxes with a handwritten "coupon for payment," said Deputy Richard Aloy of the Santa Rosa Sheriff's Department. He had renounced his U.S. citizenship.

"They knew they had a bad individual, and they took the necessary precautions," Finch said.

Even nonviolent sovereigns can cause headaches through what Finch calls "paper terrorism." Some squat in foreclosed homes and file phony deeds claiming ownership, "paying" with photos of silver dollars. Sovereigns believe U.S. currency has no value but recognize precious metals as valid currency.

Many sovereigns — including the father-son team in the Arkansas shooting — hold seminars of their own in which they charge for lessons on redemption and tax avoidance. "You pay them in cash for them to tell you money has no value," Finch said.

Officials from Greensboro and other cities pushed for a new North Carolina law that makes filing false liens a felony rather than a misdemeanor. Finch said the law, coupled with training of court officials, has helped block or dismiss many phony liens and nuisance lawsuits.

But sovereigns continue to file suits and liens, hoping to claim property and damages, Finch said.

At one meeting Finch attended, a charismatic sovereign citizen told a rapt audience that U.S. currency has no value. But he also explained how to redeem millions of dollars from secret U.S. Treasury accounts, and how to use the courts to evade government control and taxes.

Afterward, Finch said, he asked the man what he did for a living. He was a U.S. Postal Service worker.

Finch asked how he justified working for a government he considered illegitimate. "He told me he needed the money to live out his ideology," he said.

david.zucchino@latimes.com

2 deputies charged with lying about drug arrest

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2 deputies charged with lying about drug arrest

By Richard Winton and Robert Faturechi, Los Angeles Times

April 5, 2013, 8:09 p.m.

Two Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies have been criminally charged with lying about a drug arrest after a videotape of the incident appeared to contradict their account, authorities said.

Deputies Robert G. Lindsey, 31, and Charles G. Rodriguez, 38, were each charged with one count of filing a false report and one count of conspiracy in connection with the June 3, 2011, drug arrest. The deputies, who were arrested and released on their own recognizance, are expected to be arraigned May 13. If convicted, they face a maximum of three years in prison.

Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said Lindsey and Rodriguez have been relieved of duty without pay.

"We take this very seriously," he said. [yea, next time they will try to destroy any evidence that implicates the crooked cops]

Rodriguez and his attorney could not be reached for comment. Lindsey's attorney, Richard Shinee, declined to comment.

The charges against the deputies stem from their arrest of Abraham Rueda. According to the arrest report written by Lindsey, an informant had told them a man called Abraham was selling cocaine in the parking lot of a Huntington Park bar. When they arrived, the report said, they spotted Rueda standing next to the driver's side door of a Lexus SUV.

Lindsey wrote that he approached Rueda, "looked inside the driver's window" and saw "a plastic baggie containing white powder cocaine in the air vent under the car stereo." Lindsey stated he then took Rueda into custody on suspicion of narcotics possession and searched the car.

As Rueda's trial on drug charges approached, his attorney provided prosecutors with a videotape from a security camera at the parking lot that appeared to contradict the deputies' account of the arrest. The tape showed that Lindsey made contact with Rueda at the rear of the SUV, not by the driver's side door. And it showed that he was not in the position he stated he was in when he allegedly spotted the drugs, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors allege that Rodriguez lied in another report in which he wrote that a tow truck had taken the SUV from the bar parking lot to be impounded. Prosecutors allege in court documents that Lindsey drove the SUV from the scene.

As a result of the video, prosecutors dropped the charges against Rueda and referred the matter to the Sheriff's Department for further investigation.

Whitmore said he did not know why the deputies, who were assigned to the Century Station, were in Huntington Park, a city with its own police department. Lindsey is an eight-year department veteran whose father is a retired sheriff's commander, Whitmore said. Rodriguez is an 11-year veteran of the department.

richard.winton@latimes.com

robert.faturechi@latimes.com

Widow files claim vs. Arizona in husband’s prison death

Widow files claim vs. Arizona in husband’s prison death

By Wendy Halloran 12 News | azcentral.com Fri Apr 5, 2013 10:54 PM

Attorneys for the widow and daughter of a deceased Arizona prisoner have notified the state that they plan to sue the Department of Corrections for $10 million.

Inmate Anthony Brown’s widow, Jami Brown, and his daughter, Jenna Jumper, contend that Anthony was denied prompt medical treatment after he suffered a skull fracture in October 2012 and bled into his brain after suffering seizurelike symptoms. He was incarcerated in 2005 and was serving a 10-year sentence for aggravated assault. The inmate was eligible for early release from prison later this year.

Anthony Brown was taking morphine prescribed by a prison doctor to help with pain from esophageal cancer. A notice of claim, filed March 29, said a nurse assigned to the Lewis state prison accused Brown of drug-seeking and faking pain. When the prison ran out of morphine on Oct. 4, 2012, the claim said, Brown was switched to a different drug, Lortab. Medical records indicate he began to exhibit bizarre behavior after the medication was changed.

Prison officials found him unresponsive in his cell on Oct. 7, 2012. According to Corrections records, when officers called for help, the nurse on duty refused to go to the cell. Brown suffered a heart attack and died the next day at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center.

A notice of claim is a precursor to a lawsuit, putting those named on notice that a lawsuit is intended to be filed in Maricopa County Superior Court. Those named include the Department of Corrections, Wexford Health Sources, which at the time was contracted with Arizona to provide medical care at state prisons, and Wexford medical staff.

Corrections officials declined to comment on the notice of claim. Wexford could not be reached.

Maricopa County official agrees to probation in ethics complaint

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Maricopa County official agrees to probation in ethics complaint

By Michelle Ye Hee Lee The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Apr 5, 2013 9:58 PM

Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Peter Spaw has agreed to spend two years on Arizona State Bar disciplinary probation to settle an ethics complaint regarding his role in prosecuting a 2010 federal racketeering suit.

In Friday’s filing with the Arizona Supreme Court, Spaw also agreed to pay $17,059.55 to reimburse the state Bar for administrative fees and the cost of disciplinary proceedings.

Maricopa County, where he remains employed, has agreed to pick up the cost. Spaw also agreed to attend a one-day ethics enhancement program at his own expense.

Spaw was unavailable Friday to comment on the agreement, which still needs approval from Presiding Disciplinary Judge William O’Neil.

The Independent Bar Counsel agreed to dismiss three of seven claims against Spaw in exchange for his admission that his conduct violated ethics rules related to meritorious claims and contentions; competence; duties as a supervisor over Rachel Alexander, one-time deputy to former County Attorney Andrew Thomas; and conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice.

Spaw will remain in his current job. The probation does not affect his assignment or duties, according to office spokesman Jerry Cobb.

The Independent Bar Counsel had alleged that even though Spaw knew a racketeering suit brought against retired judges and county officials was not viable, he nonetheless helped Thomas and Alexander prepare the suit. Details of Spaw’s role came to light during testimony in Bar misconduct hearings for Thomas, Alexander and another former Thomas deputy, Lisa Aubuchon.

Both sides have agreed Spaw “negligently participated and assisted” in the racketeering suit.

The Bar complaint was the fourth against county prosecutors relating to the racketeering suit. Thomas and Aubuchon were disbarred for pursuing the suit and other prosecutions against county officials, supervisors and judges. Alexander was suspended for six months and a day.

Thomas criticized Friday’s agreement, saying Spaw did nothing wrong. County Attorney Bill Montgomery called the agreement “appropriate” and said his office has a renewed focus on ethics.

Less Culpable, but With Longer Sentences

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Less Culpable, but With Longer Sentences

Joshua Lott for The New York Times

By FERNANDA SANTOS

Published: April 5, 2013

PHOENIX — Members of a white supremacy group descended on a home here 11 years ago to scare a man into paying back the $200 his roommate had accused him of stealing. The attack ended in the man’s death.

Jeremy Johnson. Mr. Johnson, Ms. Nelson and Mr. Gaines killed a man in Phoenix, but brokered plea deals and were able to avoid trials. They could all be out of prison by 2028.

Three of the four people who were eventually arrested brokered plea deals, avoiding a trial. The roommate, Jessica Nelson, 37, who instigated the beating, and a skinhead recruit named Jeremy Johnson, 30, who pummeled the man, Mark Mathes, with a baseball bat, could be out of prison in four years. Sean Gaines, who shot Mr. Mathes as he was thrown naked from a car onto a county road, is scheduled for release in 2028, at the age of 47.

Only one of the perpetrators, a young man who by all accounts was not directly involved in the killing, received the death penalty. Patrick Bearup, 36, who helped dispose of Mr. Mathes’s body and severed one of its fingers to retrieve a ring, was convicted of kidnapping and first-degree murder.

Such cases, in which a defendant with lesser culpability draws the harshest sentence, are not uncommon in Arizona, and elsewhere around the country. Of the six inmates executed in this state last year, four were equally or less culpable than co-defendants implicated in the same crimes, according to Dale A. Baich, the supervisor of the capital habeas unit in the federal public defender’s office, which handles appeals of capital cases in federal court. (Prison records show that three of those four co-defendants have been released.)

In many of the 32 other states that carry the death penalty, similar stories unfold as prosecutors, when deciding whom to charge, weigh the cost of mounting a capital trial, which can reach $1 million, against the likelihood of a conviction.

In 2011 in Ohio, Gov. John R. Kasich, using his clemency powers, commuted to life in prison the death sentence of a man convicted of killing two people. The governor, a Republican, said it was unclear if he had been the one to actually commit the murders. Another Ohio inmate, John Getsy, was executed in 2009 for killing the mother of his intended target in a murder-for-hire plot, despite a clemency recommendation by the state parole board, which said that other participants in the crime, including its architect, had not been sentenced to die. (The governor at the time, Ted Strickland, a Democrat, overruled the board.)

Mr. Bearup’s case was one of 135 pending capital cases in Maricopa County in 2006, more than the combined number of cases in the next three jurisdictions at the top of the list: Los Angeles County and Clark County, Nev., each with 36; and Harris County, Tex., with 17.

“In an ideal world, the prosecution would have ironclad proof against all the co-defendants to be able to pick the worst for the death penalty, but we have an inequitable system, a bargaining system,” said Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, which tracks the number of executions across the country.

“If you give the prosecution some help,” Mr. Dieter said of defendants in such cases, “you’ll get something out of it.”

In 1972, the Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 to invalidate all death penalty laws in the country because they had been too arbitrarily applied. One of the concurring justices, Potter Stewart, wrote that the Constitution could not “permit this unique penalty to be so wantonly and freakishly imposed.” States moved to rewrite their statutes, narrowing their definition of first-degree murder or the number of aggravating factors used to define a capital crime. The idea was to make sure the death penalty would be reserved for the worst of the worst.

In an interview, the Maricopa County attorney, Bill Montgomery, who was elected in 2010, said his prosecutors, who handle most death penalty cases in the state, abide by a guiding principle: “Is this a case where the death penalty would be a just punishment in light of how we’ve handled similar cases,” based on the “brutality of the particular case in question?”

It is not a “side-by-side” comparison, he said, but a decision based on whether the evidence can prove a capital crime and whether the death penalty is supported. (His office currently has 68 pending capital cases.)

Defense lawyers have long argued that the state’s statute leaves too much of the decision in prosecutors’ hands.

In a motion filed before the state’s Superior Court last month, Susan L. Corey and Garrett Simpson, public defenders in Maricopa County, which accounts for 63 percent of the inmates on Arizona’s death row, said the problem was that the law was too broad.

They pored over more than 200 first-degree murder cases from 2010 and 2011 to check if the aggravating factors — the state has 14, up from 6 in 1973 — separated the most egregious from the rest. What they found was that virtually every one could have been tried as a capital murder.

“The point I’m trying to make is, it can’t be random,” Ms. Corey said.

Sometimes, money determines whether a defendant’s life is on the line. Last year, Greg McPhillips, the deputy attorney in Mohave County, in northwestern Arizona, said in a motion that because of a “budgetary crisis,” the county could not afford to try more than one death penalty case at a time. He gave up on seeking the death penalty against a man facing charges of first-degree murder, child abuse and sexual assault in the 2010 death of his infant son, choosing instead to pursue a capital case against a man accused of killing a teenage girl and injuring her mother.

“Do people who commit equally heinous crimes get the same results? The answer is unquestionably no,” said Christopher Dupont, a lawyer in Phoenix who has served as a consultant in death penalty cases in several states, including California and Nevada. “It’s a total mystery who is going to face the death penalty and who is not.”

Mr. Bearup’s case was dogged by challenges from the start: an inexperienced lawyer, an implausible defense of not being there for the attack and a decision to represent himself at sentencing and offer no mitigating evidence which jurors could weigh against the death penalty.

Last summer, he filed a motion to waive all legal challenges to his sentence. Judge Warren J. Granville, who had presided over Mr. Bearup’s trial, ordered a doctor to assess his competency. The doctor’s diagnosis of bipolar disorder was challenged by the prosecutor. A hearing is scheduled for May 10.

Judge Granville, as the statute requires, had reviewed the legality of Mr. Bearup’s sentence, which he affirmed, though not before rebuking Andrew Thomas, the former county prosecutor, for pursuing a capital case against a man who “even under the state’s theory, did not cause the physical death” of Mr. Mathes. (Mr. Thomas was disbarred last year, over malicious criminal and civil charges brought against political opponents.) “Justice,” Judge Granville wrote, “was not done for Mr. Bearup.”

From death row, Mr. Bearup has been studying to become a pastor, a course he is set to finish as a motion challenging his conviction is due, in June. It is his last chance at challenging his conviction in the state courts.

Once upon a time there was no drug-related crime in the United States.

Letter: Is the war on drugs a war on logic?

Posted: Sunday, April 7, 2013 12:17 pm

Letter to the Editor

Once upon a time there was no drug-related crime in the United States.

Every day people could purchase all the heroin, cocaine, marijuana or morphine they wanted at the corner grocery store for pennies per dose with no questions asked.

Back then we had 1.3 percent of our adult citizens addicted to drugs.

Because of that the U.S. Congress passed the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914. Because of that drug addiction went from being a health problem to becoming a criminal justice problem. And because of that our overall crime rate soared.

And in 1970 we still had a drug addiction rate of 1.3 percent. Because of that Congress passed the Narcotics Control Act of 1971. Because of that the United States became the most incarcerated nation in history with 2.3 million prisoners.

Today we still have 1.3 percent of our adults addicted to drugs. So far, we have spent more than a trillion dollars attempting to nullify the law of supply and demand.

Should we throw another trillion dollars down the drug war rat hole? Or do something different?

I strongly suggest that the readers Google or go to Youtube.com and search for: “Retired police Captain demolishes the war on drugs.”

Kirk Muse

Mesa

[Note: I think that Congress passed the "Narcotics Control Act of 1971" because both the "1914 Harrison Narcotics Tax Act" and "1937 Marihuana Tax Act" were declared unconstitutional as a result of Timothy Leary's arrest in 1968, 1969 or 1970. But I am sure any legal expect on the side of freedom will also tell you that the "Narcotics Control Act of 1971" is almost certainly unconstitutional per the 10th Amendment. Of course don't expect the Supreme Court to agree with them on that, they consistently rule that the Interstate Commerce clause of the Constitution give Congress the power to do anything under the sun.]

Proof of citizenship to flip hamburgers in Arizona????

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Culinary students limited by law

By Michelle Ye Hee Lee The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Apr 6, 2013 9:33 PM

A 2011 change in state requirements for food-handler cards has forced students who can’t prove legal U.S. residency out of culinary training programs at Valley public schools.

Some school-district officials are now asking Maricopa County leaders to find a solution that would give students permission to handle food in public places while they are in high school. That would allow most students, regardless of residency status, into district culinary programs.

But county officials say their hands are tied. The county Environmental Services Department, which issues food-handler cards, must adhere to state law.

It is illegal for public-school administrators to discriminate against students based on their legal status. But the new requirement forces schools to be discriminatory in allowing students access to a full culinary program.

“It’s wreaked havoc at the culinary programs at schools,” Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox said. “Nobody is denying the undocumented the ability to go to school, but now they’re being denied training.”

Most advanced culinary programs require students to obtain the same full food-handler card that businesses require, because they work in commercial kitchens that are licensed through the county. While the students are not paid, obtaining the card is currently a requirement of the programs.

In order to avoid publicly discriminating, the district has added language to culinary course descriptions that outlines the residency requirement, as a warning to those who may not qualify. In some schools, counselors tell students about the requirement before they begin selecting classes, to avoid uncomfortable — and potentially illegal — situations.

Students self-select out of the program if they know they do not have the appropriate proof-of-residency documents, said Kate McDonald, principal of Metro Tech High School, Arizona’s largest vocational school. Metro Tech is part of the Phoenix Union High School District, the Valley’s largest. More than 150 students are enrolled in Metro Tech’s culinary program, which requires food-handler cards.

The residency requirement also applies to about 800 district high-school students in programs that serve food to children at licensed day-care centers.

“Give our kids a chance to get educated. That’s all we’re asking for,” said Pamela Richards, who oversees career and technical-education programs for Phoenix Union.

Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, sponsored 2011 legislation enacting the requirement. It was an anti-illegal-immigration bill designed to prevent undocumented residents from working in the food and hospitality industries.

A Senate bill now moving through the Legislature, sponsored by Sen. Katie Hobbs, D-Phoenix, could address some of the educators’ concerns.

Senate Bill 1404 has been described as adding an exemption to allow Canadian snowbirds and legal residents with out-of-state driver’s licenses to volunteer at food establishments.

The wording leaves room for interpretation of whether proof of legal residency would be required for volunteer food-handler’s cards.

According to Kavanagh, the bill would allow people to obtain volunteer food-handler cards regardless of their legal status. He said he supports it because volunteer cards would not qualify their holders to get permanent jobs.

“Anything that lets an illegal immigrant get a job and get paid encourages them to stay. This (bill) doesn’t let them do that,” Kavanagh said.

Maricopa County maintains it will not change its requirements for issuing food-handler cards without a legal review of statutory changes.

The Glendale Union High School District has about 1,200 culinary students. In the past, all were required to have food-handler cards to work in the program’s catering service. Now, beginner-level students without cards can learn food preparation and food safety by preparing dishes for themselves. Only those who are able to obtain the cards move on to advanced courses in which they serve others.

Volunteer cards without the residency requirement would help the program expand the number of students participating in advanced course work, said Amanda Shively, the district’s director of career and technical education.

“It’s kind of a catch-22,” Shively said. “There is that argument that we don’t want to prepare people who aren’t here legally for employment purposes. Yet we have those people in our schools, and our schools are charged with giving everyone the best education we can. So that’s my job. Unfortunately, we’re caught in the middle.”

But culinary students with volunteer cards still would not be able to enroll at the East Valley Institute of Technology, a public education district that provides career and technical education for 10 school districts in the East Valley.

EVIT’s facility is a licensed commercial business. The culinary program is intensive and trains students to be employable entry-level candidates. The district’s funding is tied to the number of students placed into jobs upon graduation.

The district adapted to the 2011 change in card requirements and warned students about it. Students weeded themselves out. Putting students through rigorous training for a field in which they had little prospect of employment would not be doing them a favor, said Michael Turcotte, executive chef instructor at EVIT.

“By not giving them all the up-front truth, ... honestly, we’re setting them up to fail,” Turcotte said.

Gun grabbers want to flush 2nd Amendment with taxes???

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, a Democrat, says 30% of the hospital's trauma patients have gunshot wounds and it costs about $52,000 for initial treatment for each. The tax won't necessarily serve as a deterrent to gun buyers, she says, but "it's an acknowledgment that we as a society pay a terrible price for the proliferation of guns."

A group of gun sellers and owners sued to block the gun tax, saying it violates the Second Amendment right to bear arms. Circuit Court Judge David Atkins denied a temporary restraining order, saying the lawsuit didn't show "that this right is threatened by the tax."

Gun and ammunition purchases are subject to local sales taxes, and manufacturers pay a federal excise tax — 10% for pistols and revolvers, 11% for other guns, shells and cartridges — that funds wildlife programs.

Lawrence Keane, general counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which represents gun manufacturers, distributors and retailers, says proposals for new gun taxes are "a coordinated effort by gun-control groups to try to impose a poll tax on the exercise of the Second Amendment."

Such taxes don't create safer communities, Keane says. "They burden and frustrate the exercise of a constitutional right," he says.

Legislation introduced in Congress would add a 10% tax to handgun purchases to pay for gun buybacks and other programs. Bills creating new taxes are pending in state legislatures in New Jersey and Washington state. Elsewhere:

• California Assembly member Roger Dickinson, a Democrat, introduced a bill that would add a 5-cent tax to the sale of every bullet. A hearing is set for April 15. Much of the $50 million in estimated revenue would go to restore funding for mental health screening programs in elementary schools, he says.

Proposing a new tax is "a delicate question at any time," he says, but the political risks are "worth paying."

• A committee heard testimony last week on a Nevada bill that would create a $25 tax for gun sales and a 2-cent tax on each round of ammunition. Funds would benefit victims' services and mental health programs.

• Massachusetts state Rep. David Linsky, a Democrat, proposed a 25% sales tax on ammunition and firearms, with the money going to mental health and victims' programs, police training and firearms licensing. "We tax cigarettes, we tax alcohol, we tax other items that have a negative effect on society," he says.

• The Maryland General Assembly passed a bill that includes a fee of up to $25 for handgun licenses. Delegate Jon Cardin, a Democrat, also proposed a 50% tax on ammunition purchases to increase funding for mental health programs and to modernize permitting and licensing procedures.

"This is not taking away people's guns," Cardin says.

Medical-marijuana bill nixed by tyrant Senator Kimberly Yee

Medical-marijuana bill nixed by sponsor

By Lindsey Collom The Republic | azcentral.com Sun Apr 7, 2013 10:02 PM

An Arizona senator has withdrawn a bill that would require police to destroy medical marijuana seized or forfeited in criminal investigations.

Instead of attacking the issue of what police should do with seized medical-marijuana plants and drugs through legislation, policy makers have decided to let it play out in the courts.

Sen. Kimberly Yee, R-Phoenix, withdrew Senate Bill 1441 after a state prosecuting-attorneys group outlined a potential conflict between state and federal laws and joined the case that gave rise to Yee’s bill. The bill was the outgrowth of a case in which a Yuma County Superior Court judge ordered the Sheriff’s Office to return marijuana seized from a California woman who had permission to use the drug for medical purposes. That case is now before the Arizona Supreme Court.

Prior to the withdrawal, the bill had stalled in the House Rules Committee, in part because of due-process concerns echoed by dispensary owners and the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona.

Authorities found cannabis in Valerie Okun’s vehicle when she was stopped in 2011 at a Border Patrol checkpoint near Yuma. She was cited for violating Arizona drug laws and the case was turned over to Yuma County officials, but the charges were dismissed after Okun proved she was authorized to possess marijuana under California law. The Arizona Medical Marijuana Act honors other states’ medical-marijuana cards and allows users to possess up to 21/2 ounces of the drug.

After the charges were dropped, Okun asked sheriff’s officials to return her marijuana, and the Superior Court granted her request; the Arizona Court of Appeals affirmed that decision. But the Yuma County sheriff argued that he could not return the pot because doing so may violate the federal Controlled Substances Act, which makes the possession, sale or use of marijuana a crime.

In explaining the issue before the state House Judiciary Committee last month, Kimberly MacEachern, staff attorney for the Arizona Prosecuting Attorneys’ Advisory Council, said that marijuana is considered medical only when in the possession of a licensed dispensary or an authorized medical-marijuana cardholder.

“But once it comes into the hands of law enforcement, it is no longer medical,” MacEachern said. “The Arizona Medical Marijuana Act creates a parallel system within the state of Arizona to the federal act, and under federal requirements marijuana is still contraband.”

The attorneys group, which represents more than 800 state, county and municipal prosecutors, has filed an amicus brief in the Okun case opposing previous court rulings.

“It’s come full circle, really,” Yee said. “We tried through (SB) 1441 to address specific implementation issues. Seeing this amicus brief is in play, I think it would be beneficial to wait on that ruling and see how we should move forward. We may have this court ruling, and then we don’t need the bill.”

Yee had sponsored the bill because law-enforcement agencies around the state sought clarification on how to handle seized or forfeited medical-marijuana plants and products. Typically, marijuana is stored during an investigation and ultimately destroyed after the inquiry. Plants, for example, are stored but not cared for.

Emperor Obama is a blood thirsty murderer just like George W. Bush!!!!

Rise of the Predators

Targeted Killing Comes to Define War on Terror

By SCOTT SHANE

Published: April 7, 2013 51 Comments

WASHINGTON — When Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, a son-in-law of Osama bin Laden, was taken into American custody at an airport stopover in Jordan last month, he joined one of the most select groups of the Obama era: high-level terrorist suspects who have been located by the American counterterrorism juggernaut, and who have not been killed.

John O. Brennan, now C.I.A. director, said last year the preference was to use lethal force only when capture was not feasible.

Mr. Abu Ghaith’s case — he awaits a federal criminal trial in New York — is a rare illustration of what Obama administration officials have often said is their strong preference for capturing terrorists rather than killing them.

“I have heard it suggested that the Obama administration somehow prefers killing Al Qaeda members rather than capturing them,” said John O. Brennan, in a speech last year when he was the president’s counterterrorism adviser; he is now the C.I.A. director. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

In fact, he said, “Our unqualified preference is to only undertake lethal force when we believe that capturing the individual is not feasible.”

Despite Mr. Brennan’s protestations, an overwhelming reliance on killing terrorism suspects, which began in the administration of George W. Bush, has defined the Obama years. Since Mr. Obama took office, the C.I.A. and military have killed about 3,000 people in counterterrorist strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, mostly using drones. Only a handful have been caught and brought to this country; an unknown number have been imprisoned by other countries with intelligence and other support from the United States.

This policy on targeted killing, according to experts on counterterrorism inside and outside the government, is shaped by several factors: the availability of a weapon that does not risk American casualties; the resistance of the authorities in Pakistan and Yemen to even brief incursions by American troops; and the decreasing urgency of interrogation at a time when the terrorist threat has diminished and the United States has deep intelligence on its enemies.

Though no official will publicly acknowledge it, the bottom line is clear: killing is more convenient than capture for both the United States and the foreign countries where the strikes occur.

The drone strikes have become unpopular abroad; in a Pew Research Center poll last year, just 17 percent of Pakistanis supported them against leaders of extremist groups. And domestic critics have attacked from two different directions: Some Republicans in Congress accuse Mr. Obama of adopting a de facto kill preference because he shut down the C.I.A.’s overseas prisons and does not want to send more detainees to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Human rights advocates argue that some drone strikes have amounted to extrajudicial killings, the execution without trial of people suspected of being militants whose identities American officials often do not know and who sometimes pose little threat to the United States.

But with the American public, the strikes remain popular. Even as some senior former American security officials question whether the strikes are beginning to do more harm than good, 65 percent of Americans questioned in a Gallup poll last month approved of strikes to kill suspected foreign terrorists; only 28 percent were opposed.

Mr. Brennan’s criterion for capture — when it is “feasible” — is a very subjective judgment, said Matthew C. Waxman, a former Defense Department official who is now at Columbia Law School.

“Those simple statements about a preference to capture mask a much more complicated story,” Mr. Waxman said. “The U.S. military and intelligence community can do a great deal if they’re directed to do it. Sometimes where we say it’s infeasible, we mean it’s too risky.”

But he believes the hazards of a capture strategy are real. “I think in most cases we could not capture people without significant risk to our own forces or to diplomatic relations,” he said.

The uncertainties were evident nine months into Mr. Obama’s first term, when intelligence agencies tracked down Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a suspect in the attacks on two American embassies in East Africa in 1998.

The original plan had been to fire long-range missiles to hit Mr. Nabhan and others as they drove in a convoy from Mogadishu, Somalia, to the seaside town of Baraawe. But that plan was scrubbed at the last minute, and instead a Navy SEALs team helicoptered from a ship and strafed Mr. Nabhan’s convoy, killing him and three others. The SEALs landed to collect DNA samples to confirm the identities of the dead.

The episode raised uncomfortable questions for some at the Pentagon. If the United States took the risk to land troops in Somalia, they wondered, why did they not capture Mr. Nabhan instead of killing him?

Or consider the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni-American cleric who had joined the Qaeda branch in Yemen. In September 2011, when American intelligence located him, it might conceivably have been possible to organize a capture by Yemeni or American commandos. But a drone strike was politically far less complicated for both countries, said Gregory D. Johnsen, an expert on Yemen at Princeton.

If American forces captured him, their presence on Yemeni soil might have spurred unrest, Mr. Johnsen said. If the forces of the Yemeni president at the time, Ali Abdullah Saleh, caught him, he said, “Does he turn him over to the Americans and risk a backlash? Does he hold him? It was easier for Saleh to let the Americans take a shot at Awlaki than to send his troops to catch him.”

The trade-offs have not changed under Yemen’s new president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who lauded the precision of drone strikes in a 2012 speech in Washington. Two months later, an American strike killed Adnan al-Qadhi, a well-connected Qaeda supporter, even though he was in a town near the capital, Sana, where several high-level officials live. Neighbors told reporters that he could easily have been captured.

In Pakistan, where the SEAL raid that killed Bin Laden sent Pakistani-American relations into a tailspin, drone strikes — though deeply unpopular — are tolerated by the security establishment. “There’s an intangible notion that a drone flying over is less of an intrusion than troops on the ground,” said Ashley S. Deeks, a University of Virginia law professor and a former State Department lawyer.

Then there is the question of very real danger to Americans in capturing heavily armed terrorists. The SEALs sent to Abbottabad were instructed that if Bin Laden immediately surrendered, he should be detained, according to Matt Bissonnette, a member of the SEAL team who wrote a book on the raid. But if Americans died trying to catch a midlevel militant — when drones were available but went unused — there would be a huge public outcry, most officials believe.

Only in the drone era has killing terrorism suspects become routine. In the 1980s and 1990s, counterterrorism officers captured several suspects overseas and brought them back to the United States for trial.

Brad Garrett, a former F.B.I. agent, was on the teams that caught both Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, an organizer of the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, and Mir Aimal Kansi, who shot five C.I.A. employees, two of them fatally, outside the agency’s headquarters in Virginia the same year. Teams of American and Pakistani officers caught the men by kicking down doors at their guesthouses, and “no shots were fired in either case,” he said.

As an investigator, Mr. Garrett said, “I’ve spent my life talking to live people. That’s the downside of drones. There’s no one left to talk to.” But he said that catching a solo suspect in an urban setting, while risky, was far less hazardous than confronting a gang of heavily armed men in the hostile territory of Pakistan’s or Yemen’s tribal areas. “I don’t think you can really compare them,” he said.

When Mr. Obama closed the C.I.A. prisons and banned coercive interrogations, Republicans complained that there was nowhere left to hold and question terrorists, a charge that resonated with some military and C.I.A. officers. The president countered by creating a High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, an elite group of analysts and interrogators that officials say has been sent about two dozen times to question detainees at home and abroad. That is a tiny number compared to the frequency of drone strikes, of course, but officials say the secretive group has been successful.

An even smaller number of those questioned by the interrogation group have been brought back to the United States to face criminal charges, including Mr. Abu Ghaith, the Bin Laden son-in-law, and Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a Somali commander of the militant group Shabab.

By all accounts, Mr. Warsame’s handling is a powerful illustration of the value of capturing rather than killing a terrorism suspect. He first began providing information to American counterterrorism officials after being caught on a ship in April 2011. He has never stopped talking about both the Shabab and the Qaeda branch in Yemen, officials say, and he knows that his ultimate sentence will depend on his cooperation.

There are signs that the Obama administration may itself have grown wary of the convenience of targeted killing — or may be running out of high-level targets. After a sharp rise in Mr. Obama’s first two years, the total number of drone strikes is now in sharp decline.

In Pakistan, strikes peaked in 2010 at 117; the number fell to 64 in 2011, 46 in 2012, with 11 so far this year, according to The Long War Journal, which covers the covert wars. In Yemen, while strikes shot up to 42 in 2012, no strikes have been reported since a flurry of drone hits in January, according to several organizations that track strikes.

In his State of the Union address in February, Mr. Obama pledged more transparency for the drone program, and he and his aides have hinted that changes are coming. It remains unclear what the administration has in mind, but the president has spoken of the treacherous allure of the drone.

Decisions on targeted killing, he told CNN in September, are “something that you have to struggle with.”

“If you don’t, then it’s very easy to slip into a situation in which you end up bending rules thinking that the ends always justify the means,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s not who we are as a country.”

Phoenix fire official sues city over genitalia-shaped pasta

Phoenix fire official sues city over genitalia-shaped pasta

Associated Press Fri Apr 5, 2013 10:59 AM

A Phoenix fire deputy has sued the city for sexual harassment after he says he was demoted for complaining about a prank involving genitalia-shaped pasta.

Deputy Chief Frank Cheatham alleges in the lawsuit served against the city this week that the fire department has a pattern of retaliating against employees who complain of workplace discrimination.

Cheatham alleges that he first complained of sexually offensive conduct in 2009 after someone openly displayed drawings of genitalia at a city fire station.

Cheatham was then told not to eat with the other firefighters. He soon was sent interoffice mail containing two small pieces of pasta resembling genitalia. Cheatham says someone wrote his name on the pasta.

Cheatham says he was demoted in 2010.

City officials would not comment on the lawsuit Friday.

Santa Clara County DA committed violation, possible crime

Attorneys union: Santa Clara County DA committed violation, possible crime

By Tracey Kaplan

tkaplan@mercurynews.com

Posted: 04/07/2013 09:16:33 PM PDT

In an extraordinary email blast Sunday, a lawyer for the union that represents prosecutors and other Santa Clara County government lawyers accused District Attorney Jeff Rosen -- the county's top law enforcement official -- of committing a serious civil violation as well as a possible crime, both involving public funds.

Rosen did not react directly to the union's incendiary accusations. But in a brief statement Sunday, he suggested he'd acted within his authority when he gave his supervising attorneys extra time off to make up for a pay cut. Rosen did not comment on the aspect of his move that allows the attorneys to preserve a portion of their vacation time and cash it in later to make up for the cut.

The email from the Government Attorneys Association contends that what Rosen did amounted to making a gift of public funds to about 15 of his supervising deputy district attorneys in violation of the state government code section barring the use of public resources for a purpose not authorized by law. Those attorneys also belong to GAA.

The maneuver could cost the county the money it was trying to save when it negotiated a pay reduction with the attorneys union. And according to county records, one supervising attorney who retired last year may already have cashed out at least a portion of the benefit.

The email also contended Rosen "may have'' committed the crime of misappropriating public funds for the same action.

New investigation

In his statement, Rosen said he had the authority to grant the leave. Saturday, he described the supervising attorneys, including the homicide chief and head of the gang unit, as extremely hardworking, committed prosecutors who are on call 24 hours a day and are essential to the office's operation and to public safety. He said he did not regret finding a way to compensate them.

"The MOU (Memo of Understanding) signed by the County and GAA, did not eliminate administrative leave or the District Attorney's discretion to grant administrative leave,'' Rosen stated. "In fact, County Executive Jeff Smith and Deputy County Executive Luke Leung have both stated that the District Attorney has the authority to grant administrative leave."

In the union's email, lawyer Christopher E. Platten recommended that the managers "immediately offer to re-credit the county for the administrative leave'' and cooperate with any investigation.

Smith, the county's top administrator, is investigating the matter, which surfaced late last month via an anonymous letter to his office. On Sunday afternoon, Smith emailed Rosen and Public Defender Molly O'Neal, directing them to preserve any records related to the issue dating back three years, including emails.

The GAA also represents public defenders and child-support lawyers, and the contract cutting the bonus payment for supervising attorneys applied to them as well. But even though O'Neal and her predecessor also were unhappy about the cuts, they swallowed them. The public defender is appointed by the Board of Supervisors, not elected like Rosen.

Table has turned

Sunday's developments had a surreal quality. Just last month, Rosen was castigating another county elected official, former county Supervisor George Shirakawa Jr., for misappropriating public funds in a case involving outright corruption and serious fraud. Shirakawa pleaded guilty to five felonies, seven misdemeanors and 10 violations of the state's Political Reform Act and resigned after an investigation by Rosen's office.

At a press conference announcing the plea deal with Shirakawa, Rosen strongly criticized county officials for failing to notice that the supervisor had gambled away more than $100,000 in political and public funds over the past five years -- a pattern of "prolonged deception" aided by a secret slush fund, untraceable cash, forged signatures and false and perjured campaign filings. Sources said the criticism deeply embarrassed county officials, however warranted it may have been.

Now, the table has turned, and Smith is investigating Rosen, though for far less serious allegations.

For decades in the DA's office, supervising deputy attorneys earned 5 percent more than line deputies for a total salary of roughly more than $193,000 a year. But the GAA chose to eliminate the pay differential until June 24 under a two-year contract ending in September as part of a larger package of cuts and concessions. All 22 of the county's bargaining units took equivalent temporary cuts, saving the county about $75 million. But each union could choose how to spread the pain.

"I agree with Jeff that everyone in his office works very, very hard; that's not the point,'' Platten said. "Jeff is elected to run the office, he's not elected to give away public money. He's got to operate within the context of the budget and the union agreement.''

Contact Tracey Kaplan at 408-278-3482. Follow her at Twitter.com/tkaplanreport.

DOC van rolls on I-10: 10 hurt

Source

DOC van rolls on I-10: 10 hurt

Arizona Department of Correction's van rolls on I-10: 10 hurt

Interstate 10 reopened after crash south of Riggs Road

By Danielle Grobmeier The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Fri Apr 5, 2013 11:12 AM

All lanes have reopened on Interstate 10 about 5 miles south of Riggs Road after a Department of Corrections van rolled, injuring all 10 of its occupants on Friday morning, officials said.

According to DOC, a van filled with nine DOC officers plus the driver were returning home from work at the Eyman Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence when a tire blew out and the van rolled.

DOC spokesman Bill Lamoreaux said the department runs a statewide program of van pools that operates 92 vans throughout Arizona. He said these vans are driven by department staff members.

Officials said none of the injuries suffered by the occupants were reported to be life-threatening.

The crash had forced the closure of eastbound lanes and one westbound lane.

Delays are to be expected, as numerous rescue crews were at the scene of the wreck, and traffic was badly backed up.

DPS is investigating the incident.

Note to thief: Follow law

Note to thief: Follow law

Thu Apr 4, 2013 6:40 PM

To the person who stole the gun from the sheriff of Coconino County: Don’t forget to submit to a background check. The politicians will be requiring you to do so! (Now, doesn’t that sound stupid)?

Robert Lefrancois
Congress

Perverted Phoenix Park Employee

After a little research it turns out we were kicked out of the park for not having an imaginary permit required for an imaginary law.

For more on that check out: NORML photo shoot

Source

Phoenix police: Man arrested for child sex abuse from 1995-98

By Chris Cole The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Thu Apr 4, 2013 10:37 PM

A longtime Phoenix Parks and Recreation employee first accused of sexual misconduct with three underage boys 12 years ago was fired Thursday following his arrest over the weekend on suspicion of the acts.

Arthur Rey Juarez, 42, was arrested Saturday on suspicion of one count of sexual conduct with a minor, three counts of molestation of a child, two counts of sexual abuse and one count of attempt to commit molestation of a child, according to Phoenix police.

His bail was set at $150,000.

The boys were 13, 14 and 15 years old at the time of the incidents, which took place from 1995 to 1998, police said.

Police spokesman Trent Crump said Juarez met the teenagers through his job. All of the incidents occurred in Juarez’s Phoenix home, police said.

Crump said there was no indication of additional allegations, but the investigation was ongoing.

Phoenix Parks and Recreation Department spokesman David Urbinato said Juarez was hired as a recreation leader in 1988 and worked part-time throughout his tenure.

Juarez was fingerprinted and underwent a background check in 1996, according to his personnel record, which only dates back to that year, Urbinato said. His background check came back with nothing to disqualify him from working with the department, Urbinato said.

It was not clear whether Juarez interacted with children as part of his official job duties. Urbinato said officials were still piecing together “exact details” of his job responsibilities, but a 1997 performance evaluation noted that Juarez was “doing a good job with teens and (the) teen council at Maryvale.”

Urbinato said Juarez’s duties over the years included building and field supervision such as turning on lights and monitoring park conditions. He worked 10 years at the Phoenix Center for the Arts as a building supervisor, Urbinato said.

Crump said the allegations were first reported to the Police Department’s child-sex crime unit in 2001, but the case sat dormant until 2005.

“We can’t explain why there was no activity during that time, other than we don’t think the case was getting the detective’s full attention,” Crump said. He said the detective is no longer with the department. Crump added that the Police Department in 2001 never informed the Parks and Recreation Department of the allegations.

In 2005, detectives again contacted the victims, who were reluctant to come forward, Crump said.

The case was reopened this year by the Child Crimes Task Force set up by Mayor Greg Stanton to review old cases to ensure they were properly handled. An internal audit in 2012 showed the department handled cases involving children poorly. The department has so far finished reviewing 972 of the 2,845 old cases, police said. The reinvestigations have resulted in 12 arrests.

Detectives last month re-interviewed the three alleged victims in the Juarez case, leading to his arrest.

At a news conference Thursday at police headquarters, Stanton said: “I am the father of two young children. This is heartbreaking for every parent who has heard about this.

“I am outraged by what I have learned here today about the allegations against a city of Phoenix employee, who has been terminated today.”

Police Chief Daniel V. Garcia said the department takes full ownership of the mismanaged cases.

“This is not the quality of work we want,” Garcia said. “We will review all 2,845 cases. We owe it to the victims to bring them justice and we have to bring these perpetrators to justice.”

He said the department anticipated some “tragic stories” to come forward as a result of the reviews.

Garcia has instituted safeguards to protect future child-sex crime cases, including that detectives now need to have approval from two supervisors before suspending or closing a case. He has also increased the number of detectives to 55 from 27 and increased the number of Spanish-speaking detectives to 15 from five.

Bulletproof vests for elected officials???

Maybe that's why Republican Bob Thorpe said he wanted to provide Democratic and Republican members safety options. Source

Arizona lawmaker cancels bulletproof vest demo

By Bob Christie Associated Press Mon Apr 8, 2013 1:38 PM

PHOENIX — An Arizona lawmaker invited a bulletproof vest retailer to do a demonstration at the state Capitol but canceled the event on Monday after a legislative lawyer advised him that making a sales pitch to lawmakers on state property was improper.

Freshman Republican Rep. Bob Thorpe called his idea a “rookie mistake” and said he instead plans to provide contact information for the retailer to fellow members of the Arizona House and Senate.

“In the future, before I set something like this up I’ll certainly go out and I’ll talk to some folks that have been around longer than me and just make sure that I’m not doing something that might look like it was inappropriate,” he said.

Thorpe said he wanted to provide Democratic and Republican members safety options in light of the shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011 and the recent fatal shooting of a Texas prosecutor and his wife. He sent the email to all House and Senate members last Thursday inviting them to visit the Capitol basement on Wednesday to be fitted for a vest if they wanted to buy one.

“In the wake of Tucson shooting, I have been researching body armor in order to inform our members about the costs and options for those wishing to purchase a vest for their personal use, for example, at town halls, parades and other public events,” the email said.

Thorpe was criticized by Democratic state Rep. Ruben Gallego, a former Marine who served in the Iraq war

“We’re here to be in the public, and it’s not our job to be paranoid all the time thinking that someone is out to get us,” Gallego told abc15.com. “I think the best defense is actually to have a good, well-trained police force and some good gun laws.”

Thorpe said he’s not suggesting that lawmakers come to work armed, as some have done in recent years. He just said he believed fellow legislators might feel safer in some situations with body armor.

Thorpe said he understands that some might criticize the move, especially since the Legislature has rejected every effort to tighten gun laws in Arizona in recent years. But he said his view is that mental health issues are behind most violent events, like Giffords’ shooting.

“I support people owning guns and doing that lawfully, but we’ve got some wackos out there,” he said.

Thorpe said he’s supporting a stalled effort in the state Legislature to appropriate $250,000 to expand a program to train teachers, first-responders and others to recognize people having a mental health crisis and intervene. Giffords’ attacker, Jared Lee Loughner, suffered from mental illness.

While rejecting gun control measures, he said he’s open to more action on keeping the mentally ill from obtaining guns.

“I’m very interested in trying to pass some piece of legislation which would cause our government officials, whether its teachers or law enforcement, to keep track of people where’s there’s red flags being raised,” he said. “And that certainly didn’t happen with Loughner.”

Bulletproof vests for elected officials???

Arizona Legislature invited to … a body armor party?

In the wake of Newtown, the state of Connecticut on Thursday enacted what some are calling the strongest gun laws in the nation, including limits on the size of magazines, a ban on armor piercing bullets and universal background checks.

“Democrats and Republicans were able to come to an agreement on a strong, comprehensive bill,” Senate President Don Williams, a Democrat, said as the bill awaited a final vote. “That is a message that should resound in 49 other states, and in Washington, D.C., and the message is we can get it done here and they should get it done in their respective states and nationally in Congress.”

Meanwhile, in the state of Arizona, a legislator on Thursday offered a response to our own massacre.

“In the wake of Tucson shooting, I have been researching body armor in order to inform our members about the costs and options for those wishing to purchase a vest for their person use, for example, at town halls, parades and other public events,” Rep. Bob Thorpe wrote, in an e-mail to fellow legislators. “These vests have prices ranging from about $600-$800 and options that include their weight and comfort, bullet stopping ability and colors.”

You’ve heard of Tupperware parties? Thorpe, a Flagstaff Republican, has invited members of the Arizona Legislature to a body armor party. Next Wednesday, a representative of AZ Tactical will be on hand in basement of the Arizona House to extol the virtues of various vests and take orders.

“Mr. (Mike) Arthur is offering the same discounted prices to our members as he provides to members of law enforcement …,” Thorpe wrote.

“These vests are rated for a five year life but it is my opinion that legislators could wear them much longer because the five year life assumes almost daily law enforcement use. Prior to placing an order, you will be measured for the proper size vest.”

Next up: Uzi sales in the Senate. Which, by the way, earlier week strafed proposals to expand background checks, limit the size of magazines and bar those convicted of domestic violence from possessing guns.

The Senate also rejected a bid to require basic firearms-safety training in order to carry a concealed weapon.

Thus, the need, I suppose, for legislative body armor — to protect our leaders from the public.

If only there were a way to protect the public from our leaders…

Prudes on Scottsdale City Council try to stamp out prostitution???

Source

City's ordinance on escorts, massages being beefed up

By Julian Osorio The Arizona Republic - 12 News Breaking News Team Mon Apr 8, 2013 2:37 PM

Scottsdale officials have been drafting a revised ordinance that would more strictly regulate massage facilities and escort services that operate in the city.

The move, city officials say, is designed to deter illegal activity, such as prostitution, conducted behind the business doors of some operators.

The changes would include tougher permitting requirements to operate and a new fee schedule.

The proposed changes would allow the city to strengthen the integrity and professionalism of each industry, according to the city’s website.

The Scottsdale Police Department has been investigating prostitution complaints in the escort and massage industries for years, said Sgt. Mark Clark, spokesman for the Scottsdale Police Department.

The proposed ordinance is a collaborative effort between the City Attorney’s Office and the Police Department, he said.

Officials have identified detrimental secondary effects from escort operations, including violent crimes, drug use, and health risks through the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, according to the proposal.

The goal of the ordinance is to halt prostitution, protect legitimate escort patrons, and preserve the health and welfare of the community, a draft of the proposal says.

Among the proposed revisions to the escort industry is added mandatory jail time for individuals convicted of certain crimes, expanded list of violations, a requirement that any escort service post its city-permit license number in any advertisement, revised definitions and permit requirements for escort assistants, and a stipulation that no permit or license can be issued to a person convicted of prostitution as early as 10 years before an application submission.

Scottsdale last updated its escort services ordinance in 1988.

According to a report released by the Scottsdale Police Department, there have been 21 escort-related charges in Scottsdale since 2011. The majority were for lack of proper identification and permits.

A separate proposal targets unprofessional practices at massage facilities.

The requested ordinance includes requirements that a licensed on-site manager is present at a facility when any massage therapy is being performed.

In addition, all doors must be unlocked during massage therapy and mobile massage units will not be allowed to park on public streets except during special events.

Other changes includes verbiage regulating massages. The new language states that it is illegal to touch any other person’s genitals or anus, conduct any actions intended to sexually arouse or appeal to sexual desires, according to the proposal.

The current ordinance allows city officials to inspect any massage facility during normal business hours.

No specific incidents sparked the evaluation of the city ordinance but the city felt it was time to clarify and tighten up the ordinance, said Caron Close, Scottsdale city prosecutor.

Several massage therapists in Scottsdale contacted for this article said they supported city efforts to crack down on unsavory businesses, but none wanted to be identified and quoted.

The proposed changes are scheduled to be considered by the City Council on June 4.

Proposed fees

Here are proposed fees for massage businesses and escort services under a draft being consideration by Scottsdale. The City Council will review the proposal in June:

Escort bureau application, $100; massage facility application, $100.

Annual escort bureau license, $175. Annual massage facility license, $300.

Escort and assistant application, $100; late renewal penalty, $200.

Escort and assistant permit, $100.

City fingerprinting fee, $10; on-site manager ID card, $10; escort and assistant ID card, $10; change of location fee, $50.

Source: Scottsdale.

Millions of imaginary constituents complaining about gay marriage???

Source

Few wrote 3 legislators over Bisbee civil unions

By Alia Beard Rau The Republic | azcentral.com Mon Apr 8, 2013 11:36 PM

Three state lawmakers who cited constituents’ concerns in triggering threats of a lawsuit against Bisbee for passing a new ordinance allowing civil unions received very few official calls or e-mails from people in their district.

A public-records request by The Arizona Republic showed only one e-mail opposing last week’s City Council approval of the ordinance and a phone call questioning its legality, while another e-mail supported allowing civil unions.

Two of the lawmakers, however, said they had been personally approached by constituents concerned about the constitutionality of the ordinance and asking them to look into it. They did not say how many people had approached them or under what circumstances.

Hours before the Bisbee City Council passed the ordinance to allow the city clerk to issue civil-union certificates that would allow gay couples to have official recognition of their partnerships, House Majority Leader David Gowan, R-Sierra Vista; Rep. David Stevens, R-Sierra Vista; and Sen. Gail Griffin, R-Hereford, sent Republican Attorney General Tom Horne a letter asking him to investigate whether the ordinance would violate state law and the state Constitution.

“We have been contacted by constituents who are expressing concerns that this proposed ordinance may be in violation of Arizona law and the Arizona Constitution,” read the letter from the three lawmakers, who represent the Legislative District 14 that includes Bisbee.

The Attorney General’s Office, which warned Bisbee not to proceed, is expected to file a lawsuit alleging the City Council’s decision violates the state Constitution’s definition of marriage, among other things, possibly later this week.

Bisbee resident Gayle Schasteen copied the lawmakers on a letter she sent to the Bisbee council opposing civil unions for religious reasons.

Another Sierra Vista resident sent Stevens an e-mail saying that she supports civil unions and opposed his getting involved.

Griffin’s legislative office got one phone call from someone asking if Bisbee had the legal right to pass such an ordinance, but not taking a stance one way or the other.

Griffin declined to comment on what prompted her to call on Horne to look into the matter. Both Stevens and Gowan said they had heard in person from constituents when they were back in their home communities.

Bisbee resident James Coull, who supports the ordinance, last week criticized state leaders for getting involved in a city issue.

“I don’t see how it affects them,” he said. “This state is always wishing the (federal) government would stay out of their business, yet they don’t stay out of the business of their municipalities.”

Legislative District 14 covers a large and mostly conservative block of southeastern Arizona that includes Safford, Willcox, Sierra Vista and Benson, as well as the more liberal Bisbee.

“Some people over the weekend asked me about it, so I looked into it,” Stevens said. “It violates the state Constitution and seven (state) statutes.”

Both the state Constitution and federal law define marriage as between only one man and one woman. [But the US Constitution doesn't even address the issue, meaning the Federal law is probably unconstitutional] Stevens said he took an oath as a state representative to uphold state and federal law, and that’s why he got involved with the Bisbee issue.

“Just like I would have if they had an ordinance that allowed bank robberies,” he said.

Gowan, who said he lives about 30 miles from Bisbee, said he also had constituents ask him to look into the legality of the ordinance.

“The vast majority of my district believes in the Constitution,” he said. “This is coming from me because it’s a constitutional issue. We told them we’d look into it.”

Bisbee became the first city in the state to legalize same-sex civil unions last week on a 5-2 vote of the City Council after more than three hours of emotional pleas from residents on both sides of the issue.

Bisbee’s ordinance, which goes into effect in May, creates a civil union recognized only within city limits. Any two unrelated, unmarried adults can seek a civil-union certificate from the city clerk for $76. It grants same-sex couples a civil-union certificate and allows them some of the rights of married couples.

Cop stood on porch nude, police say

So here we have another case of "Do as I say, not as I do" from our government masters.

Source

Cop stood on porch nude, police say

Associated Press Mon Apr 8, 2013 5:11 PM

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — A Newport News police officer accused of standing nude on a porch has been charged with indecent exposure.

Police spokesman Lou Thurston says Newport News officers arrested 41-year-old Christopher Roush on Sunday morning.

Thurston said Monday in a news release that witnesses told police a man was standing nude on the front porch of a residence. One officer saw a nude man shut the front door as he approached the residence.

Roush was released on his signature. An arraignment is set for April 24 in Newport News General District Court.

Thurston says Roush has been with the police department for nine years. The department’s Professional Standards Office will conduct and administrative investigation.

Why is North Korea our problem?

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

Source

Why is North Korea our problem?

As tensions mount, this question is being asked too infrequently: Why is North Korea primarily a U.S. problem?

At the moment, it is inescapably a U.S. problem. The leader of the country is threatening to lob nukes at us. We may doubt his seriousness or capabilities. Nevertheless, the threat cannot be ignored. [Rubbish!! They can't even feed their own people, much less lob nukes at the USA]

But did it have to end up this way?

North Korea is an extortionist regime. It saber-rattles at least in part to get other countries to give it stuff to stop.

The United States, under both the Clinton and Bush II administrations, played North Korea’s game. Since 1995, U.S. taxpayers have given North Korea over $1 billion in food and energy assistance, supposedly in exchange for it mothballing its nuclear programs.

North Korea poses a more credible threat to South Korea and Japan than to the United States. But a threat to those countries is, at least in some respects, a threat to the United States, since we have provided both countries with security guarantees – a commitment reiterated and made explicit recently by Secretary of State John Kerry.

Why is it in U.S. interests to make a threat to them automatically a threat to us that we have to handle? [It's not, but it is a lame excuse for the corporations in the military industrial complex to lobby for more money. And of course it is also a lame excuse for the Admirals and Generals to demand more money for their fiefdoms.]

South Korea has twice as many people as North Korea and an economy that’s 40 times larger. Japan has a population five times that of North Korea and an economy more than 100 times larger.

Both South Korea and Japan have ample resources to provide for their own security, particularly with respect to any conventional threat posed by North Korea.

There are two complicating factors: China and the North Korean nukes.

The North Korean extortionist regime would collapse without China propping it up. China keeps it alive in part out of a domestic fear of a giant refugee headache if it failed. But also as a strategic buffer against perceived encroachment by the United States.

The Obama administration has famously pivoted to the Asian Pacific. China perceives that this is to contain its regional influence. The administration unpersuasively denies this. What other regional strategic threat is there that would warrant an ongoing enlarged U.S. military presence?

China’s neighbors worry that it has hegemonic ambitions. But the other major powers in the region – India and Australia in addition to South Korea and Japan – collectively roughly match China in population, economic size and current military spending. Except for India, the other regional powers also have GDP per capita about three times higher than China’s. That means that they have greater capacity to enhance military capabilities than China, if necessary.

Without an oversized U.S. presence and role, China’s calculation regarding North Korea might be different. North Korea is a drain on China’s resources. South Korea and Japan are a $200 billion export market for it.

The U.S. position is the fewer nuclear powers in the world the better. So, we extend our nuclear deterrent to allies facing a nuclear threat. We don’t want even more good guys to have nukes. [Personally I don't think ANY good guys have nukes. The American Empire is just as evil and corrupt as the Soviet, Chinese, Pakistan, English, French, Israeli and Indian governments]

But making that deterrent credible and unexercised requires us to get involved in virtually any regional dispute involving a nuclear bad guy.

If the United States had more robustly developed missile defense capabilities over the last decade or so, we might be in a position to argue to good guys (or even not so good guys) facing nuclear bad guys that missile defense was a sufficient deterrent. But we’ve slow-walked missile defense development and that’s a claim currently open to doubt. [Give me a break!!! We don't need a "Star Wars" missile shield to protect us from a bunch of starving North Koreans who even if they could, wouldn't lob a nuke at the US because they know it is guaranteed suicide.]

If bad guys are going to proliferate, and if missile defense provides insufficient assurance, the United States may need to rethink its view that no new good guys, regardless of circumstances, should go nuclear. A nuclear South Korea and Japan would pose no threat to the United States, but it might relieve us of the need to truck with the likes of North Korea.

It’s been six decades since the end of the Korean War. It’s been four decades since Nixon went to China. It’s been over two decades since the Soviet Union dissolved and the Cold War ended.

At this point, North Korea shouldn’t be primarily our problem.

Background checks on knife purchases????

Source

Student charged in Texas college stabbing attack

Associated Press Wed Apr 10, 2013 7:54 AM

CYPRESS, Texas — A 20-year-old man from suburban Houston has been charged in a stabbing spree at a Texas community college that injured at least 14 people.

Sheriff’s officials say Dylan Quick is charged with three counts of aggravated assault in the Tuesday attack at Lone Star Community College in Cypress. The city is about 20 miles from Houston.

The Harris County Sheriff’s Office says in a statement that Quick used a “razor-type knife” to cut his victims, and pieces of the blade were found at the scene.

The sheriff’s office says Quick told investigators he’d had fantasies about stabbing people to death since he was in elementary school.

Investigators also say Quick indicated he’d been planning the attack for some time

Rep. Bob Thorpe tries to protect his fellow crooks from us serfs???

Source

Posted on April 9, 2013 3:30 pm by Laurie Roberts

Rep. Bob Thorpe looking for protection — and not just from bullets

In the wake of Sandy Hook, the state of Connecticut last Thursday enacted some of the strongest gun laws in the country, including limits on the size of magazines, a ban on armor piercing bullets and universal background checks.

Meanwhile, in the state of Arizona, a legislator on Thursday offered a response to our own massacre.

“In the wake of Tucson shooting, I have been researching body armor in order to inform our members about the costs and options for those wishing to purchase a vest for their personal use, for example, at town halls, parades and other public events,” Rep. Bob Thorpe, wrote, in an e-mail to fellow legislators. “These vests have prices ranging from about $600-$800, and options that include their weight and comfort, bullet stopping ability and colors.”

You’ve heard of Tupperware parties? Thorpe invited the Arizona Legislature to a body armor party. On Wednesday, a salesman from Arizona Tactical was supposed to be on hand in the House basement to offer discounts and take orders on the latest in tactical fashion.

Alas, legislative lawyers put the kibosh on Thorpe’s sale-a-thon. It’s seems you’re not supposed to use the state Capitol to sell bulletproof vests. Or anything else.

Now Thorpe is apparently steamed that his “internal” e-mail invite – the one sent out on his public e-mail account — wound up in the hands of the media.

“I’d love to know who leaked my email to the press, because I want to present them with a ‘Members Only’ jacket, as a reminder that some things, like my internal e-mail invitation, are intended for members only,” the Flagstaff Republican wrote in an e-mail on Tuesday.

Like his first e-mail, this one made it to my inbox within 15 minutes of his sending it.

Thorpe is a freshman legislator who made headlines earlier this year for his bill to require students to sign a loyalty oath before they could graduate from school — a bill he withdrew once somebody explained to him that it was blatantly unconstitutional. He’s a Tea Party guy who ran on a platform of protecting the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law.

Including, presumably, the law that says the Arizona Legislature is a public body – not the Augusta National Golf Club. And the one that says e-mail sent out on a government account is government business.

Or put another way: the public’s business.

Thorpe didn’t return my call to discuss public records and body armor and such. Pity, as I would have liked to ask him if that Members Only jacket would be outfitted in Kevlar.

In his Tuesday e-mail, Thorpe takes a shot at Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego — whom he suspects of “leaking” his e-mail – and notes that he arranged to have the body armor salesman come to the Capitol after a Democratic legislator told him she’d requested a police presence at a recent town hall meeting.

“She was concerned about her personal safety,” he wrote. “By the way, I sent out my e-mail invitation to all the House and Senate legislators, both Democrats and Republicans, because of my concern for the safety of all our members.”

Given his concern for safety, Thorpe might want to take up the cause for banning the sort of ammunition that would blast right through those bulletproof vests he’s hawking.

Sadly, his Senate colleagues rejected a ban on armor piercing bullets last week, along with a ban on high-capacity magazines and a call for universal background checks.

The irony wasn’t lost on Democrats.

“There are just so many other things that we should be working on and not just focused on our own personal safety but the personal safety of the public and for the children in our schools,” said Gallego, D-Phoenix.

“It’s is sad to see that we are almost at the 100th day of our session and yet we have not had a comprehensive discussion on gun violence for our constituents of Arizona,” Sen. Anna Tovar, D-Tolleson, told me.

For his part, Thorpe has provided his fellow legislators with the name and number for his body armor salesman. “His store is about a 10-minute drive from the Capitol and he’d like to try and arrange a time where perhaps 5 (or more) legislators can come in at a time for a joint briefing in one of their classrooms,” he wrote.

No doubt, Thorpe’s pal will have plenty of takers.

In addition to strafing other gun bills last week, the state Senate also rejected a bid to require basic firearms-safety training before you can carry around a concealed weapon.

Thus, the need, I suppose, for legislative body armor — to protect our leaders from the public.

Now, if only there was a way to protect the public from our leaders…

Government has a God given right to tax everything you do???

Source

L.A. County aims to restrict lawn sales

By Jason Song, Los Angeles Times

April 9, 2013, 6:34 p.m.

Los Angeles County supervisors agreed Tuesday to explore ways to restrict illegal vending and lawn sales, a move that could give sheriff's deputies more power to seize goods and issue fines.

Selling used clothes or fruit from front yards or carts on busy streets has been common in Los Angeles for years. But Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas and law enforcement officials say the tradition has evolved into a problem, especially in communities around Watts, where informal flea markets have developed on some blocks.

Ridley-Thomas and some residents say the illegal vendors hurt legitimate businesses, dodge sales tax laws and increase traffic in residential neighborhoods.

Sheriff's Capt. Joseph Gooden, who oversees the station that patrols Watts, told supervisors that his deputies receive as many as 40 calls a day about unlicensed sales, making it one of their most frequent citizen complaints.

Gooden said vendors often leave when they are questioned by deputies only to return a short time later. He said deputies need stricter codes to assess penalties, such as heftier fines and the power to seize goods, that could bring about lasting changes. [Translation - We need to make LA County just like the Soviet Union or Red China where the cops can throw you in prison and steal all your money and property unless you can prove you are not a criminal.]

"What became abundantly clear to us was that we needed to have more bite, if you will, from the county ordinance," Gooden said.

Gooden also said he would like to reinstate and expand a task force to combat the problem. Street sales have increased ever since a quality-of-life unit of five deputies was disbanded about a year ago due to budget cutbacks, Gooden said.

Several speakers at Tuesday's meeting said that the illegal vendors are setting up unsanitary restaurants in the street, leaving behind trash and grease, and that others set their wares up in front of lawful businesses and draw customers away from them.

"It's out of control," said Efren Martinez, the executive director of the Florence-Firestone/Walnut Park Chamber of Commerce.

Martinez said business owners are sometimes threatened when they try to speak with people selling goods on the street.

Illegal vendors tell owners to "get back into their business or else they will come back tomorrow to nothing but ashes," Martinez said.

Antonio Moreno owns a small market on Compton Avenue and said that street vendors often sell the same items he offers in his store.

"At this point, I'm in danger of closing my business because I don't have [any] sales on the weekends," he said.

But some community advocates said increased regulation could hurt residents who have few other economic opportunities.

"People are deciding to say: 'Hey, I need to create my own job. I need to start selling things to pay my bills and take care of my family,'" said Rudy Espinoza, executive director of the Leadership for Urban Renewal Now nonprofit group.

Espinoza also said the vendors "make our streets safer because they're bringing people on the street... We see that, especially in South L.A., oftentimes street vendors are the only ones out at night. They are putting out lights, putting out chairs, bringing people out. That's a good thing for us."

But Ridley-Thomas said the county has an obligation to make sure that public safety and health codes are being met and legal businesses are protected.

"There shouldn't be any compromising on those standards," he said. jason.song@latimes.com

Constitutional Safeguards??? Don't make me laugh!!!!!

Source

An Assurance of Constitutional Safeguards

Faiza Patel

April 9, 2013

New York City has become safer over the last decade. Yet relations between the police and minority communities have become ever more strained.

Much of the tension stems from the N.Y.P.D.’s stop and frisk policy, which disproportionately targets black and Latino men. Muslim communities are troubled by the NYPD’s intelligence operation, which collects information about their daily lives that often seems to have no link to terrorism or crime.

Oversight of N.Y.P.D. activities like stop and frisk and the surveillance of Muslims shouldn't require decades of litigation.

An inspector-general could help the police ease these concerns and hew closer to constitutional requirements in their efforts to keep the city safe.

Crucial constitutional protections — like the requirement of equal treatment and the need for reasonable suspicion before searching someone — have been codified into specific rules for the N.Y.P.D. But we have little assurance that they are followed.

As part of the 2003 settlement of the first stop and frisk lawsuit, Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly issued an order forbidding the N.Y.P.D. from relying on race, color, ethnicity or national origin as the determinative factor in undertaking action. Yet since these rules were adopted, the stop and frisk program has grown 450 percent, with nearly five million people — 81 percent of whom are minorities — stopped, questioned and searched.

These numbers have led many to ask whether the police are following the racial profiling ban. An inspector general would be ideally situated to audit the records of stop and frisk encounters for compliance.

Similarly, the N.Y.P.D.’s surveillance of Muslim communities has raised questions about police fidelity to the prohibition on religion-based targeting and to a 1985 consent decree that restrains their monitoring of First Amendment activities. Documents recently filed in this case show that the N.Y.P.D. has informants or undercover officers in at least 30 area mosques. Interested citizens cannot delve into police files to evaluate whether the widespread use of informants was justified or a reflection of biases. But an inspector general can do just that.

The lawyers challenging these practices know the difficulty of ensuring that police comply with rules and have asked for court-appointed police monitors to do so. We should not have to wait for decades of litigation to obtain oversight of N.Y.P.D. activities.

On these and other police operations, an inspector general would serve as front-end protection against illegality. Periodic reports from the inspector general would increase much-needed, impartial public information about police practices, helping elected officials perform their own oversight duties.

And, while an inspector general’s recommendations are not binding, the experience of the F.B.I. and the Los Angeles police, among others, shows that they can be highly influential in shaping lawful and effective law enforcement practices.

As the nation’s premier police department, the N.Y.P.D. should embrace the best practices developed by its peers and commit to working unreservedly with an inspector general to create an even better police force.

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan is a liar who will say anything to get elected!!!

Source

Quan flubs crime stat, again

Post has been updated as of 5:50 p.m.

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan has gained a reputation for citing crime statistics that don’t always add up or making statements to the press she later says were taken out of context.

It’s happened again.

In an interview with KCBS radio broadcast on Monday, Oakland’s mayor said the following:

For the last 2 months, violence in Oakland has been way down. It seems to come in these spurts. So like for six weeks there had been no murders east of High Street in East Oakland.

Problem is, there have been seven homicides east of High Street over the past six weeks, according to Shine in Peace, an online journalism project launching soon that’s tracking shootings and homicides in Oakland and noticed Quan’s statement.

“There’s no six-week period in 2013 where there were no homicides east of High Street,” said Susie Cagle, the project director.

Cagle said the homicides over the past six weeks included the following:

• Lionel Ray Fluker, 54, killed on April 4 near MacArthur Boulevard and Seminary Avenue.
• Qiunn Boyer, 34, died on April 4, two days after being shot near Keller Avenue and Hansom Drive.
• John Sunny Davis, 31, killed on Mar. 31 near 68th Avenue and Avenal Avenue.
• unidentified, killed on Mar. 31 near 70th Ave. and Hawley Street.
• unidentified, killed Mar. 31 on the 8900 block of International Boulevard.
• Noe Garcia, 28, killed on Mar. 2 near Apricot Street and Blenheim Street.
• Trisha Forde, 34, killed on Mar. 2 near Apricot Street and Blenheim Street.

Sean Maher, Quan’s spokesman, said the quote to KCBS was taken out of context in two important ways. Quan was only talking about gang-related homicides because she was discussing the effectiveness of Ceasefire, an anti-gang prevention program, Maher said.

Secondly, the mayor was talking about a specific period of time, Feb. 22 through Mar. 30. During that period, only the Mar. 2 double homicide killing Forde and Garcia occurred east of High Street in East Oakland — the target area of the gang-prevention efforts, Maher said. Police have said that homicide was not gang-related, he said.

Maher acknowledged that the period of time Quan referred to was only five weeks.

“Unfortunately, the KCBS report cuts their interview in a way that can be misleading,” said Maher. “Obviously, the mayor is aware of the recent spate of homicides that began on Easter Sunday.”

Cagle said her project’s data corroborates what Maher said. But she noted that there were five homicides east of High Street on Mar. 31 through Apr. 4. She said that hardly conveys success in reducing homicides.

“It seems like an odd thing to even be publicizing,” she said.

The IRS is monitoring your Facebook and Twitter accounts???

For those of you who wish to use Google Analytics to see if the government is spying on you it is free and this link will tell you how to install the software.

To get Google Analytics working on your web site all you have to do is create a free account with them and then put the following lines of code on each of your web pages.

I suspect if enought people start doing this Uncle Sam's goons will cut a deal with Google Analytics and order them not to tell you that Uncle Sam's goons are spying on you.

Source

Google Maps reveals tax cheats

By Liudas Dapkus

Associated Press

VILNIUS, Lithuania -- As soon as Google (GOOG) Maps Street View was rolled out in Lithuania earlier this year, tax authorities were ready.

Sitting in the comfort of their own offices, inspectors used the free Internet program for a virtual cruise around the streets of some of the Baltic country's big cities, uncovering dozens of alleged tax violations involving housing construction and property sales.

They identified 100 homeowners and 30 construction companies as suspected tax dodgers thanks to Street View, finding homes where they shouldn't be and other suspicious activity, Darius Buta, spokesman for the State Tax Inspectorate, said Wednesday.

"Our inspectors track these buildings on the Internet, and if a violation seems obvious, they visit the sites. This saves lots of time and resources," Buta said.

Lithuanian officials said they were unaware of any other country where revenue collectors had used Google's Street View, saying they didn't draw on anyone else's experience. Still, tax authorities across the world are turning to high-resolution maps, online databases, and social media in a bid to catch out cheats.

In the United States, the Internal Revenue Service has said it would be cross-referencing information from taxpayers' Facebook and Twitter accounts if their returns threw up any red flags.

In Britain, tax officials have revealed they are using Web crawling software to trawl auction websites for undeclared sales, while in Greece authorities have been using satellite imagery to locate undeclared swimming pools in wealthy neighborhoods.

Among the tax cheats caught in Lithuania were a couple in Kaunas, Lithuania's second largest city, who didn't register the sale of buildings and avoided $91,000 in taxes, said Vaimaira Jakiene, the coordinator of the new program.

Another couple declared a sale of land but didn't mention a new house built on the property that was sold via a separate deal, said Jakienie. They are looking at a tax bill of $50,000, she added.

Tax officials said they planned to use Street View to take a peek at properties purchased from dubious construction companies over the past two years.

Google has had scrapes with European governments over Street View, with the Germans and French in particular concerned that the company's practice of deploying camera-mounted cars and bicycles to collect images and information for the application intrudes on privacy.

But the Lithuanian revenue agency dismissed any claims that its new approach violated privacy rights.

"We conducted precise legal consultations. There are no rights violations," Buta said, added that tax authorities also discussed privacy and security concerns with Google officials in Lithuania.

Human rights advocates in the Baltic state seemed to agree.

"We do not see violations here since inspectors use the Google application only to look at suspicious places -- then they visit them," said Karolis Liutkevicius, a lawyer at the Human Rights Monitoring Institute in Vilnius. "If they were using it as the sole tool, then it could possibly be qualified as a violation. But in this case it's just using a modern resource."

Obama proposes 94-cent tax hike on cigarettes

Of course with Kyrsten Sinema in Congress, I suspect she will rubber stamp any tax Obama wants. H*ll, I suspect Kyrsten Sinema will rubber stamp any tax proposed by anybody with her history of loving taxes.

Of course when you slap a high tax on an addictive drug like tobacco it won't stop addicts from using the drug. Instead tobacco addicts will turn to illegal markets, such as cigarettes smuggled into the US from Mexico or Canada, and a health problem will quickly be transformed into a criminal problem.

The cops, prosecutors, probation officers and prison guards will love it because it will create more high paying jobs for them. But for the rest of it will just create a new "war on tobacco" which will be a dismal failure like the "war on drugs"

Source

Obama proposes 94-cent tax hike on cigarettes

By Stephen Ohlemacher Associated Press Wed Apr 10, 2013 1:41 PM

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s budget plan would increase taxes by $1 trillion over the next decade, including a new tax on cigarettes and familiar proposals to increases taxes on the wealthy and some corporations.

The president said his plan includes $580 billion in tax increases to help reduce government borrowing. But the tax hikes don’t stop there. Obama’s budget proposal would also impose an additional $400 billion in tax increases. Much of it would be used to pay for more spending.

Obama’s proposal would increase the federal tax on cigarettes from $1.01 a pack to $1.95. The new cigarette tax would raise an estimated $78 billion over the next decade to pay for pre-school programs for children.

Obama says his tax plan is part of a balanced approach to deficit reduction that includes painful cuts to benefit programs like Social Security and Medicare. Most GOP lawmakers adamantly oppose new taxes, which means his plan has little chance of passing Congress.

Obama already got Congress to increase taxes by $600 billion in January. His budget would add to those tax hikes.

“To be clear, the package I am offering includes some difficult cuts that I do not particularly like,” Obama says in his budget message. “But these measures will only become law if congressional Republicans agree to meet me in the middle by eliminating special tax breaks and loopholes so millionaires and billionaires do their fair share to cut the deficit.”

In his budget, Obama calls for an overhaul of the nation’s tax laws that would cut tax rates and simplify the system while generating additional revenue to help reduce government borrowing. The plan, however, provides few details on how the rate cuts would be financed.

There is a growing movement in Congress to do tax reform but there is much disagreement over whether it should result in higher overall tax receipts. Many Democrats, including Obama, want to use tax reform to raise taxes. Most Republicans oppose higher taxes.

Obama’s budget would create a fund of about $100 billion that would be used to finance lower corporate tax rates. The fund, however, is more symbolic than substantive because $100 billion would only cover the cost of lowering the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 34 percent.

Obama has said his goal is a corporate income tax rate of 28 percent.

Obama’s proposed tax increase on cigarettes is popular among health care advocates who believe it provides the additional benefit of encouraging smokers to cut back or quit. In addition to the direct revenue from the tax, the Congressional Budget Office analysis concluded that health improvements related to less smoking would save the government about $1 billion over 10 years and generate additional revenue of $3 billion because of a boost in earnings from healthier workers.

The tobacco industry promptly criticized the proposal.

“The idea of increasing taxes on low- to middle-income Americans at this time is ludicrous,” said Bryan Hatchell, a spokesman for Reynolds American Inc., the nation’s second-biggest tobacco company. “As middle-income Americans struggle to make ends meet in a very slow economic recovery period, this is not the time to hit them with higher taxes.”

The biggest tax increase in Obama’s budget would limit the value of itemized deductions for wealthy families. The limits would apply to all itemized deductions, including those for mortgage interest, charitable contributions and state and local taxes. They would also apply to tax-exempt interest, employer-sponsored health insurance and income exclusions for employee retirement contributions.

The proposal would raise $529 billion over the next decade.

Charitable groups have already mounted a lobbying campaign to oppose the limits because they are worried they would discourage wealthy people from donating. Obama has made similar proposals in previous budgets and received lukewarm responses from fellow Democrats. Most Republicans oppose it.

Among the other tax changes, Obama’s budget would:

— Impose the “Buffett Rule,” named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett, an Obama supporter who favors higher taxes. The rules say people making more than $1 million must pay at least 30 percent of their income in federal taxes. The rule would raise $53 billion over the next decade.

— Prohibit tax-free contributions to retirement accounts once the account’s assets reach a certain limit. The initial limit would be set at $3.4 million. The proposal would raise about $9 billion over the next decade.

— Eliminate a series of tax breaks for oil, gas and coal companies, raising $44 billion over the next decade.

— Change accounting rules for the way companies value their inventories for tax purposes. The change would raise $81 billion over the next decade.

— Expand and make permanent the research and development tax credit, saving businesses $99 billion over the next decade. The current credit expires at the end of the year, though it is routinely extended.

— Make permanent rules that allow small businesses to more quickly write off expenses, saving business $69 billion over the next decade.

Judge Richard Baumgartner loves sex and drugs!!!!!

But as usual our government masters are hypocrites who expect you to obey laws they routinely break. So I guess this is another one of those "Do as I say, not as I do" articles from our government masters.

This is a perfect example on why we need to end all the laws that throw people into prison for victimless crimes like drug use or prostitution.

Source

Ex-judge sentenced in drugs, sex scheme

Associated Press Wed Apr 10, 2013 12:07 PM

GREENEVILLE, Tenn. — A former county judge in Tennessee has been sentenced to six months in federal prison for lying to cover up a scheme that provided him with painkillers and sex.

Richard Baumgartner expressed remorse at sentencing Wednesday in federal court, saying he was greatly shamed and regretted his actions. The 65-year-old former Knox County judge was convicted in November of five counts of misprision of a felony. [What rubbish!!! He is probably remorseful because he got caught!!!]

Authorities said he lied to cover up a conspiracy involving a defendant from his court, a woman about half his age who had supplied him with pills and sex.

An investigation also found he was using large amounts of painkillers while presiding over trials and had purchased drugs inside the county courthouse building starting around 2007 until he stepped down in 2011.

“I will forever be remorseful for any disgrace I have brought to that profession,” the disgraced judge said, speaking at his sentencing hearing in Greeneville. [What rubbish!!! He almost certainly is thinking “I will forever be remorseful because I got caught and have to do six months in the slammer”]

Baumgartner resigned from the bench and pleaded guilty in March 2011 to a state charge of official misconduct after a probe by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation found he was addicted to painkillers and purchased pills from Deena Castleman, who had graduated from his drug court program. He did not receive jail time for that plea.

Federal prosecutors had requested Baumgartner serve two years in prison, saying his actions severely disrupted the Knox County courts and required retrials of half a dozen people. In particular, retrials were ordered for two defendants in highly publicized trials involving the 2007 torture slayings of a young Knoxville couple.

The prosecutors told U.S. District Judge J. Ronnie Greer in a memo that “Baumgartner engaged in despicable conduct that has shaken the public’s confidence in the criminal justice system.”

But Baumgartner’s attorney, Donald Bosch, pleaded for probation. The defense attorney said Baumgartner had already been publicly humiliated, financially ruined, debarred and now is a convicted felon.

In sentencing Baumgartner to prison, Greer said the defendant should serve some prison time because judges should be held to a higher standard. Greer said Baumgartner also must undergo drug testing and drug and mental health treatment upon his release.

First appointed to the Knox County Criminal Court in 1992, Baumgartner once presided over many high-profile criminal cases in Knoxville. He also launched the county’s drug court.

BP murdered 16 year old Jose Rodriguez????

Source

New details in Mexico teenager's death by Border Patrol

By Bob Ortega The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Apr 11, 2013 12:18 AM

A new witness and new evidence seem to bolster the case that a Mexican teen shot to death by the Border Patrol in October in Nogales, Sonora, was walking down the street at the time he was killed — not, as the Border Patrol has maintained, throwing rocks over the fence at agents.

The new information also suggests that more than one agent may have opened fire on Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, 16. That information arrived as the family of the youth held a march on Wednesday in Nogales to protest what they called the FBI and Border Patrol’s “veil of silence” about the killing.

Both the bureau and the patrol have declined to comment on the boy’s death, citing an ongoing FBI investigation. They have declined to identify the agent or agents involved and have declined to release a surveillance video of the incident, shot by cameras mounted above the border fence.

Agents, along with Nogales, Ariz., police, were chasing two men they believed were fleeing back to Mexico after climbing over the fence to the U.S. side with drugs. The agents said rocks began flying over the fence at them as they tried to arrest the men climbing back over the fence.

The new witness, Isidro Alvarado, a private security guard, said on the night of Oct. 10, he was walking about 20 feet behind Elena Rodriguez down Calle Internacional, which runs parallel to the border fence, when two other youths suddenly ran past them. Then, he said, he heard gunshots from two separate places by the fence and saw Elena Rodriguez fall.

Alvarado said his brother, a Nogales police officer, persuaded him to come forward and speak to the Sonora Attorney General’s Office. Alvarado’s statements were first reported by Nogales radio station XENY. He also spoke at a news conference Wednesday in Nogales, Sonora.

Luis Parra, a Nogales, Ariz., attorney representing the Elena Rodriguez family, said he recently interviewed Alvarado and then confirmed with an attorney from the Sonora Attorney General’s Office that the first call to Nogales police reporting the shooting, immediately after it happened, came from Alvarado’s cellphone.

“But what has made the family even more distraught,” he said, “are the indications that two agents were involved in the shooting and that he (Elena Rodriguez) had to have been lying on the ground when five bullets penetrated his back.”

In a forensic scene-analysis report, investigators for the Sonora Attorney General’s Office concluded that at least five shots into Elena Rodriguez’s back must have hit him while he was lying on the sidewalk. This jibes with findings in an autopsy, previously reported by The Arizona Republic, that all but one of the bullets that hit the boy entered from behind and most at an angle suggesting he was prone when hit.

In their forensic report, investigators also describe how they climbed the story-and-a-half-high bluff on which the border fence sits and looked through the fence as Border Patrol agents and Nogales, Ariz., police conducted their investigation on the U.S. side of the fence.

They describe an area next to the fence, cordoned off with police tape, where they counted 11 shell casings, and another taped-off area, about 28 feet away, where they could see three more casings. This seems to suggest, Parra said, that agents fired from two different spots along the fence.

A Sonora ballistics report, meanwhile, describes the nine bullets recovered by Mexican police — six from the boy’s body, and three from the street — as hollow-point, .40-caliber slugs fired from one or more polygonal-rifled guns.

Michael Haag, a forensic scientist and ballistics expert based in Albuquerque, reviewed the report. He said this is a relatively uncommon type of rifling, a type used in the Heckler & Koch P2000 handgun, among others.

That is the standard-issue Border Patrol sidearm, a spokesman confirmed.

The ballistics report said polygonal rifling, which leaves a much smoother barrel than conventional rifling, makes it harder to distinguish whether all the bullets were fired by the same gun or different guns.

“Because it leaves no good marks on the bullets, it’s very rare by forensic science to identify the bullets back to a specific gun,” Haag agreed. He added, “You can ID it sometimes, so it should be attempted.”

He also noted that each Border Patrol agent should have told the FBI whether he or she fired shots that night.

The Sonora ballistics report identified the bullets as Starfire hollow points, but Haag said the poor-quality photocopies of the bullets show cannelures — a ring that runs around the circumference of the bullet — that are not found on Starfire rounds but are consistent with the similar Federal Premium HST .40-caliber rounds.

Those are standard-issue ammunition for the H&K P2000 handgun, a Border Patrol spokesman confirmed.

The Department of Homeland Security expects shortly to complete a review of the Border Patrol’s use-of-force policy, which allows agents to fire at rock-throwers, Secretary Janet Napolitano said in an interview with The Republic last week.

There have been eight incidents in the past three years in which agents have shot and killed alleged rock-throwers, among 20 deaths caused by agents since the beginning of 2010. In all but three of those cases, the FBI investigations remain open and the Border Patrol and the DHS have declined to release any information, including the names of the agents involved.

Reach the reporter at bob.ortega@arizonarepublic.com

NRA - Worlds largest gun control organization???

Some people like to say that the NRA is the worlds largest gun control organization.

I think this editorial cartoon by Steve Benson on April 11, 2013 gives credibility to that.

In the cartoon NRA leader Wayne LaPierre is picture on TV saying

We think it is reasonable to provide instant criminal background checks for every sale at every gun show. No loopholes anywhere for anyone.

Who is that idiotic bobblehead.

It's you Wayne, don't you remember.

Testimony before House Judiciary Committee on Crime, 27, May 1999

La mayoría de estadounidenses favoreció la legalización de marihuana

La mayoría de estadounidenses favoreció la legalización de marihuana

Los conocidos como "generación X", nacidos entre 1965 y 1980, también muestran un apoyo mayoritario, aunque ligeramente menor, un 54%.

Por primera vez en cuatro décadas una mayoría de estadunidenses favorece la legalización del uso de la marihuana, con un 52% a favor frente a un 45% en contra, evidenciando un creciente cambio de actitud aún entre personas de edad avanzada, reveló una nueva encuesta publicada por el Centro Pew de Investigaciones.

La encuesta reveló que este respaldo se incrementó en 11% desde el 2010, aunque el alcance de la medición resultó dramático al compararse con el respaldo de apenas 12 por ciento que registraba en 1969, según la institución privada.

Se trata de la primera vez en las más de cuatro décadas durante las cuales el Centro Pew ha realizado esta encuesta, que se registra una mayoría de ciudadanos a favor de la legalización de su consumo.

Por generaciones, el mayor respaldo proviene de los más jóvenes, quienes tienen ahora entre 18 y 32 años, con un 65% de apoyo a su legalización.

Qué sector lo apoya

Los conocidos como "generación X", nacidos entre 1965 y 1980, también muestran un apoyo mayoritario, aunque ligeramente menor, un 54%.

El sondeo reveló también que un mayor número de estadounidenses reconocen ahora el uso de la droga, tanto para fines recreacionales como médicos.

Un 48% de los entrevistados dijo haber consumido alguna vez marihuana contra 38 por ciento que lo declaró una década atrás.

Entre quienes dijeron haber consumido marihuana en el último año, 47% dijo haberlo hecho con fines recreacionales y un 30% con fines médicos.

El apoyo a la legalización del consumo de marihuana parece derivar también de una creciente noción sobre la ineficacia de las actuales políticas antidrogas del gobierno.

Para un 72% de los estadounidenses, el costo de los esfuerzos del gobierno para hacer valer estas leyes es mayor que los resultados que arroja.

En este mismo sentido, un 66% consideró que el gobierno federal debería respetar la decisión de estados como Colorado y Washington donde sus residentes aprobaron legalizar el consumo de marihuana para uso personal.

La encuesta fue llevada a cabo entre el 13 y 17 de marzo entre 1,501 adultos.

Know the enemies of the Second Amendment!!!

Source

Gun reform needed now

Wed Apr 10, 2013 6:59 PM

Regarding “Arizona’s gun divide” (Republic, Friday):

As leaders of grass-roots gun-safety groups, we must address some false impressions that may have been left by the article.

First, Maricopa Gun Club President Lisa Durst represents a small minority. Only 15 percent of women — and just 34 percent of households — own guns. Background checks are supported by 91 percent of Americans, including 88 percent of gun owners. [Yea and 90 percent of Americans are Christians, but that wouldn't make it right to round up the 10 percent of Americans that are atheists and force them to believe in the silly Christian god!!!]

Second, the term “assault weapon” was defined in the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 and is refined in AWB 2013. Under NRA lobbying pressure, Congress allowed the 1994 ban to expire in 2004. “Modern sporting rifle” is an industry marketing term. [Yea, and “assault weapon” is a scarey sounding term used by people who want to flush your Second Amendment rights down the toilet and take your guns!!!]

There were 8,583 firearm murders in the U.S. in 2011, excluding thousands of suicide and accidental gun deaths. Gun deaths now exceed traffic fatalities in Arizona and four other states. [So it is time to ban automobiles in those 45 states???]

We stand with the majority of Americans, including Arizonans, for change. There were bipartisan victories last week in Connecticut and elsewhere.

On Friday, we delivered two petitions with more than 150,000 signatures to Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake, demanding universal background checks, assault-weapon and high-capacity magazine bans, and federal prosecutions of gun trafficking. [John McCain, Jeff Flake didn't they both support invading Iraq and Afghanistan in which the American government murdered thousands, and probably millions of innocent civilians with American GUNS!!! Asking John McCain and Jeff Flake to protect you is like asking Hitler to protect the Jews]

— Kara Pelletier, Scottsdale
(Moms Demand Action, Phoenix)

— Hildy Saizow, Phoenix
(Arizonans for Gun Safety)

— Mari Bailey, Phoenix
(Greater Phoenix Million Moms March)

— Ellen Davis, Phoenix
(Arizona People Acting for a Safer Society)

Package addressed to Arpaio had explosive materials

Flagstaff police: Package addressed to Arpaio had explosive materials

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Apr 11, 2013 11:39 PM

A package addressed to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio containing explosive materials was found at a Flagstaff post office on Thursday, according to local and federal authorities.

Investigators believe the package was picked up on Thursday at a rural post office box and arrived at a post office in Flagstaff by late Thursday afternoon, said sheriff’s Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan.

A postal worker believed the package, addressed to the sheriff’s headquarters in downtown Phoenix, looked suspicious, and a test for explosive residue confirmed the package contained black powder, said Tom Mangan, a spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Flagstaff police responded with federal agents, and an X-ray of the package led explosive teams to detonate the package with a water cannon, Mangan said.

No one was injured, authorities said.

Investigators will now start piecing the device back together, Mangan said.

Flagstaff police declined to comment on the investigation late Thursday.

Flagstaff police are working on the investigation with U.S. postal inspectors, sheriff’s investigators and FBI agents, according to a federal spokesman.

Arpaio has received numerous threats to his life during his 20-year tenure in the office. Some turned out to be hoaxes — like the sculpture of a spider that a bomb squad destroyed outside his Scottsdale home in 1999. But other threats against Arpaio, including a series that took place during the 2012 election cycle, were serious enough to result in arrests.

Sheridan said the device discovered Thursday was the first of the threats that actually contained an explosive.

“We’ve had suspicious packages with powder in them, but they turned out to not be anything,” Sheridan said. “This was one was a real explosive devices. It could have seriously injured someone, had they opened it.”

Lisa Allen, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Office, said the agency is constantly taking steps to minimize threats to Arpaio, including delaying the release of information about public appearances and varying his schedule and routine.

Last week Arpaio told The Arizona Republic: “It is very disheartening what’s going on with the elected officials (around the nation), and I hope they catch those perpetrators,” Arpaio said. “We have to take precautions. I don’t expect any (security) increase, but it’s up to them (the security detail). It doesn’t bother me, but you still have to be concerned when you have all these threats.”

Flushing the 4th Amendment down the toilet????

Source

Search-warrant process in DUIs faster for Phoenix police

By Cecilia Chan The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Thu Apr 11, 2013 8:37 PM

Phoenix police officers can now get a signed search warrant for a blood sample from a suspected drunken driver within minutes from their patrol car.

Officers don’t have to drive to a station, type or write up a warrant, fax it to the court and then wait up to an hour or more for a faxed approval from a judge.

“We see an extreme benefit to our department from an efficiency standpoint, putting cops back quicker on the streets and collecting evidence quicker,” police spokesman Steve Martos said. “From our standpoint it has worked incredibly well for us.”

An officer stopping a suspected impaired driver must obtain a search warrant if the driver refuses to provide a blood sample.

The results of a blood test can take up to six weeks to process and are use in court, Martos said.

An officer makes a DUI arrest based several factors including witness observation of the driving behavior, bloodshot watery eyes, odor of intoxicating liquor, driver’s statement and failing a field sobriety test, he said.

“When we used breathalyzers, we still needed an accumulation of different factors in order to use the breathalyzer,” Martos said. “Blood is now taken in lieu of the breathalyzer as it is a more accurate read on the operator’s blood alcohol content.”

The eSearch Warrant Application allows an officer to send a warrant from a patrol car’s computer directly to a judge, who can approve or reject the document on a laptop from the bench in between cases, Martos said. The court’s Search Warrant Center is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The Maricopa County Superior Court and the Phoenix Police Department launched the pilot program last fall with seven police DUI vans and recently rolled it out to all patrol officers. Cost to implement the program was not readily available.

“Over the course of the last few months, it’s taking around 10 minutes to get (a warrant) back,” Martos said.

And time is of essence when dealing with a DUI case where the evidence is degradable, Superior Court Presiding Judge Norman Davis said.

“Blood alcohol dissipates over time,” Davis said. “It’s in everyone’s interest, police and the defendant, to get timely accurate results for evidentiary purposes later on.”

Davis said the court has applied for a $40,000 state grant to expand the program to all Valley law enforcement agencies. If funding is available the system could be in place next year, he said.

Davis added that the streamlined process has reduced the court’s time to process each request.

Martos said the department doesn’t track how m any search warrants for blood samples are processed.

But, Martos said, the department handled more than 6,100 DUI cases last year and “we do have to draw search warrants often for these types of cases.”

Once a warrant is granted, the driver’s blood is taken by an officer trained to do the procedure. The department has 110 trained officers, Martos said.

Phoenix Police Department exclusively uses blood tests in DUI cases and breath tests only in situations where blood can’t be taken, Martos said.

Blood tests in DUI cases are more accurate and hold up better in court, he said. The department transitioned to blood-only evidence in 2010, joining Valley agencies, including Mesa, Chandler, Scottsdale, Gilbert and Peoria police.

Davis said the court next year, depending on funding, will look at other warrants where the improved technology makes sense.

The court issued approximately 680 search warrants per month in fiscal year 2010, according to the court website.

Police can now draw your blood to prove your drunk???

Source

Search-warrant process in DUIs faster for Phoenix police

By Cecilia Chan The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Thu Apr 11, 2013 8:37 PM

Phoenix police officers can now get a signed search warrant for a blood sample from a suspected drunken driver within minutes from their patrol car.

Officers don’t have to drive to a station, type or write up a warrant, fax it to the court and then wait up to an hour or more for a faxed approval from a judge.

“We see an extreme benefit to our department from an efficiency standpoint, putting cops back quicker on the streets and collecting evidence quicker,” police spokesman Steve Martos said. “From our standpoint it has worked incredibly well for us.”

An officer stopping a suspected impaired driver must obtain a search warrant if the driver refuses to provide a blood sample.

The results of a blood test can take up to six weeks to process and are use in court, Martos said.

An officer makes a DUI arrest based several factors including witness observation of the driving behavior, bloodshot watery eyes, odor of intoxicating liquor, driver’s statement and failing a field sobriety test, he said.

“When we used breathalyzers, we still needed an accumulation of different factors in order to use the breathalyzer,” Martos said. “Blood is now taken in lieu of the breathalyzer as it is a more accurate read on the operator’s blood alcohol content.”

The eSearch Warrant Application allows an officer to send a warrant from a patrol car’s computer directly to a judge, who can approve or reject the document on a laptop from the bench in between cases, Martos said. The court’s Search Warrant Center is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The Maricopa County Superior Court and the Phoenix Police Department launched the pilot program last fall with seven police DUI vans and recently rolled it out to all patrol officers. Cost to implement the program was not readily available.

“Over the course of the last few months, it’s taking around 10 minutes to get (a warrant) back,” Martos said.

And time is of essence when dealing with a DUI case where the evidence is degradable, Superior Court Presiding Judge Norman Davis said.

“Blood alcohol dissipates over time,” Davis said. “It’s in everyone’s interest, police and the defendant, to get timely accurate results for evidentiary purposes later on.”

Davis said the court has applied for a $40,000 state grant to expand the program to all Valley law enforcement agencies. If funding is available the system could be in place next year, he said.

Davis added that the streamlined process has reduced the court’s time to process each request.

Martos said the department doesn’t track how m any search warrants for blood samples are processed.

But, Martos said, the department handled more than 6,100 DUI cases last year and “we do have to draw search warrants often for these types of cases.”

Once a warrant is granted, the driver’s blood is taken by an officer trained to do the procedure. The department has 110 trained officers, Martos said.

Phoenix Police Department exclusively uses blood tests in DUI cases and breath tests only in situations where blood can’t be taken, Martos said.

Blood tests in DUI cases are more accurate and hold up better in court, he said. The department transitioned to blood-only evidence in 2010, joining Valley agencies, including Mesa, Chandler, Scottsdale, Gilbert and Peoria police.

Davis said the court next year, depending on funding, will look at other warrants where the improved technology makes sense.

The court issued approximately 680 search warrants per month in fiscal year 2010, according to the court website.

Obama - addicted to taxes

You get a fair trial??? Don't make me laugh!!!

The government views you as either an enemy that belongs in prison, or a source of cash with a big wallet they want to steal. And in both cases they ain't going to let a fair trial get in their way of putting you in prison and stealing your wallet.

Source

Guantanamo dogged by new controversy after mishandling of e-mails

By Peter Finn, Published: April 11

The military justice system at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which has been dogged by charges of secret monitoring of proceedings and defense communications, became embroiled in a fresh controversy Thursday when it was revealed that hundreds of thousands of defense e-mails were turned over to the prosecution.

The breach prompted Col. Karen Mayberry, the chief military defense counsel, to order all attorneys for Guantanamo detainees to stop using Defense Department computer networks to transmit privileged or confidential information until the security of such communications is assured.

Army Col. James Pohl, the chief judge at Guantanamo, also ordered a two-month delay in pre­trial proceedings in the military-commission case against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is accused of organizing the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. Defense attorneys in the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed , the professed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and four co-defendants filed an emergency motion — via a handwritten note — seeking a similar pause in proceedings.

Pretrial hearings in both cases were set to resume this month.

“Is there any security for defense attorney information?” said James Connell, attorney for Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, one of the Sept. 11 defendants. “This new disclosure is simply the latest in a series of revelations of courtroom monitoring, hidden surveillance devices and legal-bin searches.”

The inappropriate transfer of the e-mails follows other questions about government intrusion and secrecy that have undermined the legitimacy of a judicial process that has struggled to establish itself as an effective forum for the prosecution of some terrorism cases.

In February, a military lawyer acknowledged that microphones were hidden inside devices that looked like smoke detectors in rooms used for meetings between defense counsel and their clients. The military said the listening system was not used to eavesdrop on confidential meetings and had been installed before defense lawyers started to use the rooms. The government subsequently said it tore out the wiring.

That same month, Pohl learned that the soundproofed courtroom at Guantanamo was wired with a “kill switch” that allowed an unknown government entity, thought to be the CIA, to cut audio feed of the trial to the public gallery. Pohl ruled that in the future only he could turn off the audio feed to protect classified information. But defense lawyers questioned whether the audio equipment in the courtroom had been manipulated to allow the government to monitor attorney- client conversations.

In the latest controversy, the prosecution gained access to about 540,000 e-mails from defense teams. It is not clear which cases or lawyers the e-mails concerned; a Pentagon spokesman declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation.

Defense attorneys said prosecutors told them that they stopped looking at the e-mails as soon as they realized that the messages contained confidential defense information.

The mishandling of the e-mails was detected when IT specialists were conducting a search of the government’s computer system on behalf of prosecutors in a particular case. When they did so, they came across not only the e-mails they were seeking but also those between defense lawyers.

Defense attorneys said military IT personnel unsuccessfully tried to refine their search parameters two more times — and in each case discovered more confidential defense material.

In another controversy, defense counsel recently complained that huge volumes of work files were lost when the Defense Department tried to upgrade its network and mirror at Guantanamo the computer system that is available to defense lawyers handling detainee cases in the Washington area.

“Entire files, months of work was just gone,” said Navy Cmdr. Stephen C. Reyes, an attorney for Nashiri. “I have no evidence of any nefarious conduct, but it demonstrates again that we don’t have confidence that our files and communications are secure.”

Reyes noted that a prosecution file also was recently found in the defense computer system.

The latest delay in the commission hearings comes as the Obama administration faces a widening hunger strike among the detainees at Guantanamo.

Attorneys for the detainees and the military have clashed over the number of participants in the protest. The Pentagon said Thursday that 43 of the 166 detainees were on hunger strike, of whom 11 are being force-fed, while defense attorneys said the overwhelming majority of the 120 or so detainees in Camps 5 and 6 are on hunger strike.

The military has refused requests from the media, including The Washington Post, to allow reporters to observe conditions at the camps. Human Rights groups also have requested unfettered access to the camps.

A team from the International Committee of the Red Cross is visiting the camp, but the organization does not make its recommendations public.

ICRC President Peter Maurer said Thursday in an interview at The Post that the hunger strike is born of detainees’ frustration at being held indefinitely without any further review, even in cases in which they have been cleared for transfer out of Guantanamo.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio: Explosive device mailed to him

Sheriff Joe Arpaio: Explosive device mailed to him nature of business, 1 of many threats

By Associated Press, Updated: Friday, April 12, 8:19 AM

PHOENIX — Authorities are investigating what was reported to be an explosive device addressed to Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the self-proclaimed “toughest sheriff in America” known for his strict treatment of jail inmates and cracking down on illegal immigration.

The device intercepted in Flagstaff late Thursday was in a package addressed to Arpaio at his downtown Phoenix office, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

It appeared suspicious, so it was X-rayed and the device was detected. A bomb squad team neutralized the explosive, the statement said.

Postal Inspector Patricia Armstrong said investigators were examining debris from the package. “We don’t know if it was an actual device of some sort,” she said.

Armstrong said authorities were alerted by a “very astute” carrier who observed “something suspicious” about the package when the carrier emptied a collection box in the Flagstaff area.

Flagstaff is about 140 miles north of Phoenix.

Armstrong didn’t elaborate, but Tom Mangan, a spokesman in Phoenix for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said initial reports indicated that the package was a box that may have been damaged in transit and leaked gunpowder.

Arpaio said the mailing of an explosive device addressed to him comes with his line of work. He cited the recent killings of a West Virginia sheriff, Colorado’s corrections director and two prosecutors in Texas.

“That’s the nature of the business,” he said. “I’m getting many threats. This isn’t the first time.”

Following the killing of a West Virginia sheriff last week, Arpaio said elected law enforcement officials across the nation seem to be targeted.

Numerous threats against Arpaio, a hero to many conservatives on immigration, prompted the need for a security detail for the lawman also known for dressing jail inmates in pink underwear and making them sleep in tents in the heat of the Arizona desert.

A campaign to recall Arpaio began just weeks after he started his sixth term in January.

Critics contend Arpaio should be ousted because his office failed to adequately investigate more than 400 sex-crimes cases, allegedly racially profiled Latinos in its trademark immigration patrols and has cost the county $25 million in legal settlements over treatment in county jails.

Arpaio has denied that his deputies racially profiled Latinos in traffic patrols targeting illegal immigration. His office has moved to clear up the sex-crime cases and moved to prevent the problem from happening again, he said.

U.S. tells N.Korea new missile launch would be "huge mistake"

Personally in the interest of peace I think it would be the best thing in the world if the North Koreans got a nuclear weapon that they could hit the United States with. It would prevent the American Empire from invading them like we did to Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam and numerous other Central American countries.

While the American government is run by tyrants, those tyrants are certainly smart enough not to pick on people that can defend themselves with nuclear weapons.

Yea, the North Korean government is run by a bunch of tyrants, just like Iraq and Afghanistan, but that doesn't mean the American Empire has the right to invade them.

Source

U.S. tells N.Korea new missile launch would be "huge mistake"

Arshad Mohammed and Jack Kim Reuters

10:11 a.m. CDT, April 12, 2013

SEOUL (Reuters) - Secretary of State John Kerry warned North Korea on Friday it would be a "huge mistake" to test launch a medium-range missile and said the United States would never accept the reclusive country as a nuclear power.

Addressing reporters after talks with South Korea's president and leaders of the 28,000-strong U.S. military contingent in the country, Kerry also said it was up to China, North Korea's sole major ally, to "put some teeth" into efforts to press Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

Kerry, like other U.S. officials, played down an assessment from the Pentagon's intelligence agency that the North already had a nuclear missile capacity.

The United States, he said, wanted to resume talks about North Korea's earlier pledges to halt its nuclear program.

But he also stressed that Washington would defend its allies in the region if necessary and pointedly said that Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, "needs to understand, as I think he probably does, what the outcome of a conflict would be".

North Korea has repeatedly said it will not abandon nuclear weapons which it said on Friday were its "treasured" guarantor of security.

Kerry's visit coincided with preparations for Monday's anniversary of North Korean state founder Kim Il-Sung's birth date, a possible pretext for a show of strength, with speculation focusing on a possible new missile test launch.

Kerry, who flies to China on Saturday and to Japan on Sunday, said that if North Korea's 30-year-old leader went ahead with the launch, "he will be choosing, willfully, to ignore the entire international community".

"I would say ahead of time that it is a huge mistake for him to choose to do that because it will further isolate his country and further isolate his people, who frankly are desperate for food, not missile launches."

SHRILL RHETORIC

The North has issued weeks of shrill threats of an impending war following the imposition of U.N. sanctions in response to its third nuclear test in February. Kerry said the threats were "simply unacceptable" by any standard.

"We are all united in the fact that North Korea will not be accepted as a nuclear power," he said.

Kerry later told U.S. executives in Seoul that China, as an advocate of denuclearization, was in a position to press for a change in the North's policy.

"The reality is that if your policy is denuclearization and it is theirs as it is ours, as it is everybody's except the North at this moment ... if that's your policy, you've got to put some teeth into it," he told the gathering.

But North Korea showed little inclination for further talks.

Rodong Sinmun, the mouthpiece of the ruling Workers' Party, said Pyongyang would never abandon its nuclear program.

"The DPRK will hold tighter the treasured sword, nuclear weapons," it said, referring to the country by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS

North Korean state television showed footage of newscasts from other countries depicting the trajectory a North Korean missile launch might take.

It also showed preparations for the Kim Il-Sung birthday festivities, including floral tributes, and a stadium of thousands of school children of the Korean Children's Union, each wearing a red scarf and saluting and marching in unison.

Speculation has mounted of an impending medium-range missile test launch in the North after reports in South Korea and the United States that as many as five medium-range missiles have been moved into position on the country's east coast.

Officials in both countries believe the North is preparing to test-launch a Musudan missile, whose range of 3,500 km (2,100 miles) or more would put Japan within striking distance and may threaten the island of Guam, which houses U.S. military bases.

The North has been angry about annual military drills between U.S. and South Korean forces, describing them as a "hostile" act. The United States dispatched B52 and B2 stealth bombers from their bases to take part.

Hours before Kerry's arrival, a U.S. lawmaker quoted a report by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, one of the 17 bodies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, as saying it had "moderate confidence" that North Korea had developed a nuclear bomb that could be fitted on a ballistic missile.

But Kerry poured cold water on the report said it was "inaccurate to suggest that the DPRK has fully tested, developed capabilities" as set down in the document.

South Korea's Defence Ministry said it did not believe North Korea could mount a nuclear warhead on a missile.

A U.S. official had earlier suggested that Washington's greatest concern was the possibility of unexpected developments linked to Kim Jong-un's "youth and inexperience". Asked if war seemed imminent, he replied: "Not at all."

South Korean President Park Geun-hye, meeting officials from her ruling Saenuri Party before her talks with Kerry, struck a conciliatory note by suggesting Seoul should at least listen to what North Korea had to say.

"We have a lot of issues, including the Kaesong industrial zone," local media quoted her as saying. So should we not meet with them and ask: "Just what are you trying to do?'"

The president was referring to North Korea's closure this week of the jointly run Kaesong industrial park, with the loss of 53,000 jobs.

Kerry said the United States would not object to the South talking to the North. He also did not rule out the possibility of U.S. aid some day flowing to the North, but suggested this could only happen if Pyongyang undertook real denuclearization.

Kerry sounded upbeat about resolving a dispute between the United States and South Korea over a civil nuclear cooperation agreement that expires next year, saying he thought a compromise could be found by Park's visit to Washington next month.

South Korea is believed to want the right to reprocess its spent nuclear fuel, which would allow it to deal with a mounting stockpile of nuclear waste.

However, this could also allow it to produce bomb-grade fissile material, a step Washington is loathe to see it take in part because of its nuclear standoffs with Iran and North Korea.

"We are ... very concerned at this time about not having any ingredients that could alter our approach ... to either of those," he said. But Kerry added that he was "confident that one option or another will be able to come to fruition (with South Korea) by the time that President Park comes to Washington."

(Additional reporting by Ju-min Park in SEOUL, Sui-Lee Wee in BEIJING, John Ruwitch in SHANGHAI, and Patricia Zengerle, Mark Hosenball and Jeff Mason in WASHINGTON; Writing by Ronald Popeski and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Nick Macfie and Jon Hemming)

You get a fair trial??? Don't make me laugh!!!

Source

Guantanamo dogged by new controversy after mishandling of e-mails

By Peter Finn, Published: April 11

The military justice system at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which has been dogged by charges of secret monitoring of proceedings and defense communications, became embroiled in a fresh controversy Thursday when it was revealed that hundreds of thousands of defense e-mails were turned over to the prosecution.

The breach prompted Col. Karen Mayberry, the chief military defense counsel, to order all attorneys for Guantanamo detainees to stop using Defense Department computer networks to transmit privileged or confidential information until the security of such communications is assured.

Army Col. James Pohl, the chief judge at Guantanamo, also ordered a two-month delay in pre­trial proceedings in the military-commission case against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is accused of organizing the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. Defense attorneys in the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed , the professed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and four co-defendants filed an emergency motion — via a handwritten note — seeking a similar pause in proceedings.

Pretrial hearings in both cases were set to resume this month.

“Is there any security for defense attorney information?” said James Connell, attorney for Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, one of the Sept. 11 defendants. “This new disclosure is simply the latest in a series of revelations of courtroom monitoring, hidden surveillance devices and legal-bin searches.”

The inappropriate transfer of the e-mails follows other questions about government intrusion and secrecy that have undermined the legitimacy of a judicial process that has struggled to establish itself as an effective forum for the prosecution of some terrorism cases.

In February, a military lawyer acknowledged that microphones were hidden inside devices that looked like smoke detectors in rooms used for meetings between defense counsel and their clients. The military said the listening system was not used to eavesdrop on confidential meetings and had been installed before defense lawyers started to use the rooms. The government subsequently said it tore out the wiring.

That same month, Pohl learned that the soundproofed courtroom at Guantanamo was wired with a “kill switch” that allowed an unknown government entity, thought to be the CIA, to cut audio feed of the trial to the public gallery. Pohl ruled that in the future only he could turn off the audio feed to protect classified information. But defense lawyers questioned whether the audio equipment in the courtroom had been manipulated to allow the government to monitor attorney- client conversations.

In the latest controversy, the prosecution gained access to about 540,000 e-mails from defense teams. It is not clear which cases or lawyers the e-mails concerned; a Pentagon spokesman declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation.

Defense attorneys said prosecutors told them that they stopped looking at the e-mails as soon as they realized that the messages contained confidential defense information.

The mishandling of the e-mails was detected when IT specialists were conducting a search of the government’s computer system on behalf of prosecutors in a particular case. When they did so, they came across not only the e-mails they were seeking but also those between defense lawyers.

Defense attorneys said military IT personnel unsuccessfully tried to refine their search parameters two more times — and in each case discovered more confidential defense material.

In another controversy, defense counsel recently complained that huge volumes of work files were lost when the Defense Department tried to upgrade its network and mirror at Guantanamo the computer system that is available to defense lawyers handling detainee cases in the Washington area.

“Entire files, months of work was just gone,” said Navy Cmdr. Stephen C. Reyes, an attorney for Nashiri. “I have no evidence of any nefarious conduct, but it demonstrates again that we don’t have confidence that our files and communications are secure.”

Reyes noted that a prosecution file also was recently found in the defense computer system.

The latest delay in the commission hearings comes as the Obama administration faces a widening hunger strike among the detainees at Guantanamo.

Attorneys for the detainees and the military have clashed over the number of participants in the protest. The Pentagon said Thursday that 43 of the 166 detainees were on hunger strike, of whom 11 are being force-fed, while defense attorneys said the overwhelming majority of the 120 or so detainees in Camps 5 and 6 are on hunger strike.

The military has refused requests from the media, including The Washington Post, to allow reporters to observe conditions at the camps. Human Rights groups also have requested unfettered access to the camps.

A team from the International Committee of the Red Cross is visiting the camp, but the organization does not make its recommendations public.

ICRC President Peter Maurer said Thursday in an interview at The Post that the hunger strike is born of detainees’ frustration at being held indefinitely without any further review, even in cases in which they have been cleared for transfer out of Guantanamo.

With Police in Schools, More Children in Court

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With Police in Schools, More Children in Court

By ERIK ECKHOLM

Published: April 12, 2013 175 Comments

HOUSTON — As school districts across the country consider placing more police officers in schools, youth advocates and judges are raising alarm about what they have seen in the schools where officers are already stationed: a surge in criminal charges against children for misbehavior that many believe is better handled in the principal’s office.

Since the early 1990s, thousands of districts, often with federal subsidies, have paid local police agencies to provide armed “school resource officers” for high schools, middle schools and sometimes even elementary schools. Hundreds of additional districts, including those in Houston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, have created police forces of their own, employing thousands of sworn officers.

Last week, in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shootings, a task force of the National Rifle Association recommended placing police officers or other armed guards in every school. The White House has proposed an increase in police officers based in schools.

The effectiveness of using police officers in schools to deter crime or the remote threat of armed intruders is unclear. The new N.R.A. report cites the example of a Mississippi assistant principal who in 1997 got a gun from his truck and disarmed a student who had killed two classmates, and another in California in which a school resource officer in 2001 wounded and arrested a student who had opened fire with a shotgun.

Yet the most striking impact of school police officers so far, critics say, has been a surge in arrests or misdemeanor charges for essentially nonviolent behavior — including scuffles, truancy and cursing at teachers — that sends children into the criminal courts.

“There is no evidence that placing officers in the schools improves safety,” said Denise C. Gottfredson, a criminologist at the University of Maryland who is an expert in school violence. “And it increases the number of minor behavior problems that are referred to the police, pushing kids into the criminal system.”

Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of students are arrested or given criminal citations at schools each year. A large share are sent to court for relatively minor offenses, with black and Hispanic students and those with disabilities disproportionately affected, according to recent reports from civil rights groups, including the Advancement Project, in Washington, and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, in New York.

Such criminal charges may be most prevalent in Texas, where police officers based in schools write more than 100,000 misdemeanor tickets each year, said Deborah Fowler, the deputy director of Texas Appleseed, a legal advocacy center in Austin. The students seldom get legal aid, she noted, and they may face hundreds of dollars in fines, community service and, in some cases, a lasting record that could affect applications for jobs or the military.

In February, Texas Appleseed and the Brazos County chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. filed a complaint with the federal Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. Black students in the school district in Bryan, they noted, receive criminal misdemeanor citations at four times the rate of white students.

Featured in the complaint is De’Angelo Rollins, who was 12 and had just started at a Bryan middle school in 2010 when he and another boy scuffled and were given citations. After repeated court appearances, De’Angelo pleaded no contest, paid a fine of $69 and was sentenced to 20 hours of community service and four months’ probation.

“They said this will stay on his record unless we go back when he is 17 and get it expunged,” said his mother, Marjorie Holmon.

Federal officials have not yet acted, but the district says it is revising guidelines for citations. “Allegations of inequitable treatment of students is something the district takes very seriously,” said Sandra Farris, a spokeswoman for the Bryan schools.

While schools may bring in police officers to provide security, the officers often end up handling discipline and handing out charges of disorderly conduct or assault, said Michael Nash, the presiding judge of juvenile court in Los Angeles and the president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.

“You have to differentiate the security issue and the discipline issue,” he said. “Once the kids get involved in the court system, it’s a slippery slope downhill.”

Mo Canady, the executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers, defended placing police officers in schools, provided that they are properly trained. He said that the negative impacts had been exaggerated, and that when the right people were selected and schooled in adolescent psychology and mediation, both schools and communities benefited.

“The good officers recognize the difference between a scuffle and a true assault,” Mr. Canady said.

But the line is not always clear. In New York, a lawsuit against the Police Department’s School Safety Division describes several instances in which officers handcuffed and arrested children for noncriminal behavior.

Many districts are clamoring for police officers. “There’s definitely a massive trend toward increasing school resource officers, so much so that departments are having trouble buying guns and supplies,” said Michael Dorn, director of Safe Havens International, in Macon, Ga., a safety consultant to schools.

One district in Florida, Mr. Dorn said, is looking to add 130 officers, mainly to patrol its grade schools. McKinney, Tex., north of Dallas, recently placed officers in its five middle schools.

Many judges say school police officers are too quick to make arrests or write tickets.

“We are criminalizing our children for nonviolent offenses,” Wallace B. Jefferson, the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, said in a speech to the Legislature in March.

School officers in Texas are authorized to issue Class C misdemeanor citations, which require students to appear before a justice of the peace or in municipal court, with public records.

The process can leave a bitter taste. Joshua, a ninth grader who lives south of Houston, got into a brief fight on a school bus in November after another boy, a security video showed, hit him first. The principal called in the school’s resident sheriff, who wrote them both up for disorderly conduct.

“I thought it was stupid,” Joshua said of the ticket and his need to miss school for two court appearances. His guardian found a free lawyer from the Earl Carl Institute, a legal aid group at Texas Southern University, and the case was eventually dismissed.

Sarah R. Guidry, the executive director of the institute, said that when students appeared in court with a lawyer, charges for minor offenses were often dismissed. But she said the courts tended to be “plea mills,” with students pleading guilty in the hope that, once they paid a fine and spent hours cleaning parks, the charges would be expunged. If students fail to show up and cases are unresolved, they may be named in arrest warrants when they turn 17.

In parts of Texas, the outcry from legal advocates is starting to make a difference. Jimmy L. Dotson, the chief of Houston’s 186-member school district force, is one of several police leaders working to redefine the role of campus officers.

Perhaps the sharpest change has come to E. L. Furr High School, which serves mainly low-income Hispanic children on the city’s east side. Bertie Simmons, 79, came out of retirement 11 years ago to try to turn around a school so blighted by gang violence that it dared not hold assemblies.

“The kids hated the school police,” said Ms. Simmons, the principal. They arrested two or three students a day and issued tickets to many more.

Ms. Simmons searched for officers who would work with the students and build trust. She found them in Danny Avalos and Craig Davis, former municipal police officers who grew up in rough neighborhoods, and after years of effort, the campus is peaceful and arrests and tickets are rare. Discipline is usually enforced by a principal’s court with student juries, not summonses to the criminal courts.

“Writing tickets is easy,” Officer Avalos said. “We do it the hard way, talking with the kids and coaching them.”

With new guidelines and training, ticketing within the Houston schools was reduced by 60 percent in one year. Citations for “disruption of classes,” for example, fell to 124 between September and February, from 927 in the same period last year.

“Our role is not to be disciplinarians,” Chief Dotson said in an interview. “Our purpose is to push these kids into college, not into the criminal justice system.”

Government rulers all talk, no action on public records.

Arizona's public records laws, or freedom of information act which is A.R.S 39 §121 requires government bureaucrats and elected officials to answer all requests for public records as quickly as possible. That's the good news.

The bad news is there is no criminal or civil penalties for government bureaucrats and elected officials who refuse to obey the law.

And you can't call the cops to enforce the public records law. The only way you can do that is for YOU to sue the bureaucrat who refused to honor your request for public records.

And the Arizona's public records law doesn't even guarantee that your expenses for suing will be covered. It says "The court MAY award attorney fees and other legal costs"

Source

San Jose fights disclosure of email, text message records

By John Woolfolk

jwoolfolk@mercurynews.com

Posted: 04/12/2013 06:21:01 AM PDT

SAN JOSE -- San Jose drew praise for its progressive approach to open government in the digital age by adopting a policy three years ago making elected officials' personal email and text messages about city business public records subject to disclosure.

But the City Council this week voted unanimously to appeal a judge's ruling last month that effectively applies that policy to the whole city workforce by declaring government employees' communications about public business subject to the California Public Records Act whether on official or private devices.

The case sets up a showdown that will be watched statewide and beyond over what open-government advocates say has become a gaping hole in public records law that was written in the typewriter era and didn't contemplate officials with Gmail, Facebook and iPhones. And they say, bring it on.

"I'm glad the city is appealing the ruling, since it is likely to be affirmed on appeal," said Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition in San Rafael. "That will force all California cities and counties to treat emails about government business as public records, regardless of the status or ownership of the email accounts or devices. What matters is the substance of the message -- is it about government business or is it purely personal? -- not the technology."

San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, who ran as an open-government champion, had made the same argument in 2010 when he pushed a policy that would require disclosure of messages about city business sent or received by the mayor, council members and their staffs whether they were communicated on personal or city phones and networks. The City Council approved the policy unanimously in March 2010 on a trial basis and, citing no problems since, made it permanent in December.

Scheer said at the time the council adopted the policy that he knew of no other city that had gone so far in updating public records policy to account for modern technology. Most cities have fought efforts to force disclosure of officials' messages on private networks, citing both privacy concerns and practical questions of how a government could search for relevant documents and messages on phones and email networks it doesn't control.

Reed said that such disclosure rules covering private devices and networks can be justified and managed on a small scale involving a few dozen elected officials and their staffs. But he said the council appealed out of concern that applying those rules throughout a city organization of 5,500 full-time employees -- the practical effect of a decision that personal emails are subject to the California Public Records Act -- would be invasive and burdensome.

"It's about the scope of it," Reed said. "I think it's too broad. It sets up practical problems."

The case originated in June 2009 when activist Ted Smith requested voice mails, text messages, and emails sent or received by the mayor and council members related to a downtown redevelopment project in San Jose, whether on official or personal networks and devices. He sued in August that year when the city claimed it lacked authority to access any records on officials' private personal accounts.

Last month, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James P. Kleinberg ruled in Smith's favor, stating that under the city's interpretation of public records law, "a public agency could easily shield information from public disclosure simply by storing it on equipment it does not technically own."

"Regardless of where a record is retained, if it is drafted by a public official," Kleinberg wrote, it "constitutes a 'public record.' "

Scheer said that while the practical and privacy concerns cities have raised are legitimate, they can easily be overcome by requiring public officials to copy messages about public business to their official email where the city can search for and retrieve it.

In the city's petition with the Sixth District Court of Appeal, San Jose argues that the council disclosure policy for private email and phone networks is irrelevant to Smith's case because it was adopted 10 months after his records request and was not retroactive. The city added that "local policies simply do not affect the courts' interpretation of the Public Records Act," and that the council had chosen to limit its policy to affect about 30 city employees.

But San Jose also advanced arguments that seemingly conflict with the policy that the council adopted for itself.

"A council member is not a governmental entity," San Jose's appellate filing stated. "A council member is an individual public official with no authority to act alone on behalf of the city. Consequently, emails and documents found on a council member's personal computer or personal electronic device do not fall within the definition of a public record because any record personally and individually created by a council member is not a documentation of a transaction or activity of the city as a local agency."

Contact John Woolfolk at 408-975-9346. Follow him on Twitter at Twitter.com/johnwoolfolk1.

Is Janet Napolitano smoking that medical marijuana???

www.prensahispanaaz.com

We need answers in Border Patrol murders???

The crime I vividly remember happened around November, 2004 when a News 12 helicopter caught some Phoenix Police beating up a Mexican they arrested for hijacking a car. They had the evidence they needed to nail those crooked Phoenix cops on tape, but I believe Rick Romney who was then Maricopa County attorney decided not to press charges. See News 12 video tapes Phoenix Police beating and Assault by police claimed

Yes, the Mexican who hijacked the car was a criminal. But so were the Phoenix Police officers who beat him up for his crime.

And of course we have Sheriff Joe's goons who routinely murder innocent people in his tent city gulag. Yes, Maricopa County has paid millions in out of court settlements for those murders, but I don't think the police criminals that committed the murders have received anything more then a slap on the wrist and a stern warning not to do it again [well except to criminals who deserve it, like the people they murdered - and that's from Sheriff Joe, not me]

Source

Linda Valdez

Posted on April 11, 2013 10:13 am by Linda Valdez

We need answers in Border Patrol killing

The Border Patrol is a fast growing national police force whose power and secrecy should worry civil libertarians.

After six months, the public that funds this national police force doesn’t even know the identity of the agent or agents involved in killing a youth in Nogales, Mexico, with a barrage of bullets fired across the border.

It smacks of cover-up. [Smacks??? It IS a COVER-UP!!!]

Can you imagine the outrage if Mexican police had gunned down an American youth with equal gusto?

Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, 16, was shot numerous times — and as many as 11 bullets hit him from behind.

The Border Patrol alleges he was throwing rocks at them – an activity that the distance and angle of the border fence would have made more futile than threatening.

A witness has come forward, according to reporting by the Republic’s Bob Ortega, to say Elena Rodriguez was not throwing rocks.

Does anybody know for sure?

After six months, does anybody believe the FBI investigation hasn’t found some answers? If that’s the case, somebody send the FBI some coffee. They need to get moving.

Or are they – and Homeland Security — just hoping the whole thing blows over?

Protests yesterday at the border show that this is not going to go away. Nor should it.

The Border Patrol has extraordinary power, and there have been other deadly encounters where rocks were met with bullets.

According to Ortega:

“There have been eight incidents in the past three years in which agents have shot and killed alleged rock-throwers, among 20 deaths caused by agents since the beginning of 2010. In all but three of those cases, the FBI investigations remain open and the Border Patrol and the DHS have declined to release any information, including the names of the agents involved.”

We need answers. We need them now. [I agree with you Linda, but it ain't going to happen]

Those who paint dystopian scenarios about an out-of-control national government threatening civil liberties are often the same people who demand tougher border security. They ought to be careful what they ask for.

The Border Patrol needs to be accountable. Not secretive. [Again it ain't going to happen. This is why we need the Second Amendment. When the government becomes tyrannical and the police and elected officials are above the law the only way to fix things is with armed citizens physically ousting the government tyrants]

Phoenix officers to begin wearing video cameras

That happened in the case when the Fullerton, California police beat up and murdered Kelly Thomas. But normally cops are smart enough to turn off their cameras before they commit any crimes. Or "accidentally lose and destroy the cameras" if they do forget to turn them off when they commit a crime.

Source

Some Phoenix officers to begin wearing video cameras

By Cecilia Chan The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Fri Apr 12, 2013 4:43 PM

Police officers in the Maryvale Precinct of west Phoenix will begin wearing video cameras on Monday to record their interaction with the public.

Phoenix Police Department teamed with Arizona State University to purchase 50 on-officer cameras with a $500,000 federal grant to study the impact of the cameras on crime and accountability. The cameras will be worn for about a year.

“The whole purpose of the test is to really find out what type of impact it has on law enforcement,” police spokesman Tommy Thompson said. “Is there really a need for this kind of technology?”

The camera is about the size of a pager and will be clipped in the middle of an officer’s shirt area, Thompson said. The officer will turn the camera on when dealing with the public and download the footage onto a computer at the end of the shift. The footage can not be edited. [So the cop will decide when to turn the camera on and off. Obviously most criminals, especially police criminals are smart enough to turn off the cameras before committing crimes, such as beating up a suspect!!!!]

Arizona law requires that only one person be aware that they are being recorded, but officers will disclose they are recording an interaction if asked, officials said. [Yea, sure they will. Just like they will always turn on the cameras before they commit any crimes!!!]

The Maryvale Precinct was chosen because it has two squad areas. One squad will wear the cameras and the other, as a control group, will not, Thompson said.

The data obtained from the two groups will help determine if cameras enhance an officer’s ability to conduct domestic violence and other criminal investigations, he said.

Thompson said many times in a domestic violence situation, a victim will later change the story in court because of financial dependency on the abuser.

The data also will show if the cameras measurably impact how officers and citizens behave, he said.

The department first tested the cameras in 2011 for 90 days with 18 officers in the South Mountain and Cactus Park precincts. The three-month trial period resulted in 860 hours of video, where footage was used as court evidence in 62 cases, according to police.

The pilot program was spurred by the recommendation of a task force created after a March 2010 controversy over an officer's confrontation with Phoenix Councilman Michael Johnson at the scene of a fire.

Other police departments in Mesa, Surprise and Peoria are testing or implementing digital cameras that officers wear to record virtually everything an officer does during a shift.

Legal pot draws tourists to U.S. states this weekend

Legal pot draws tourists to U.S. states this weekend

Associated Press Mon Apr 15, 2013 7:07 AM

DENVER — Thousands of people are expected to join an unofficial counterculture holiday celebrating marijuana in Colorado and Washington this coming weekend, including out-of staters and even packaged tours. The events and crowds will test the limits of new laws permitting pot use by adults.

More than 50,000 are expected to light up outdoors in Denver’s Civic Center Park on April 20 to celebrate marijuana legalization. Thousands more are headed to the nation’s first open-to-all Cannabis Cup, April 20-21, a U.S. version of an annual marijuana contest and celebration in Amsterdam. Expected guests at the Cannabis Cup, a ticketed event taking place inside the Denver Convention Center, include Snoop Lion, the new reggae- and marijuana-loving persona for the rapper better known as Snoop Dogg.

Marijuana activists from New York to San Francisco consider April 20 a day to celebrate the drug and push for broader legalization. The origins of the number “420” as a code for pot are murky, but the drug’s users have for decades marked the date 4/20 as a day to use pot together.

Marijuana remains illegal under federal law, and its sale without a doctor’s recommendation isn’t allowed yet in Colorado or Washington. Neither state allows open and public use of the drug. But authorities largely look the other way at public pot-smoking, especially at festivals and concerts, and entrepreneurs are finding creative ways to capitalize on new marijuana laws.

One of them is Matt Brown, co-owner of Denver’s new “My 420 Tours,” which gives traveling pot users everything but the drug. Brown has sold 160 tour packages to visiting pot smokers for the April 20 weekend. Prices start at $499, not including hotel or air.

The tour sends cannabis tour guides to pick up marijuana tourists at the airport in limousines, escort them to Cannabis Cup and other Denver-area marijuana celebrations and deposit them at a hotel where smoking — tobacco or reefer — is permitted on room patios.

Marijuana tourists on Brown’s tour can add extra days of touring medical marijuana dispensaries and commercial growing operations. A cannabis cooking class is another option. Five-day tours run $649 to $849.

“People are fascinated by what’s happening here, and they want to see it up close,” Brown said. “We want to make sure people don’t come here, land at the airport, rent a car and drive around stoned all weekend.”

Celebrations were planned in Washington state, too, though April 20 isn’t as broadly celebrated as Seattle’s annual Hempfest, which draws hundreds of thousands of people to a waterfront park every summer.

———

Associated Press writer Gene Johnson contributed from Seattle.

———

Kristen Wyatt can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/APkristenwyatt. Johnson can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/GeneAPSeattle.

Cop murders boyfriend and son

Source

NYPD officer, 1-year-old son, boyfriend dead in apparent double murder-suicide; teen escaped

By Associated Press, Updated: Monday, April 15, 8:40 AM

NEW YORK — A New York City police officer shot her boyfriend, turned the gun on her 1-year-old son and then shot herself in an apparent double murder-suicide at her home Monday morning, police said.

The bodies were discovered after her 19-year-old son heard an argument between the two adults, escaped out a window and called 911. By the time police arrived moments later, the three were dead.

The body of the boyfriend, believed to be about 33 years old, was found in the entry of the first-floor apartment on a quiet street in the Flatlands section of Brooklyn, said chief police spokesman Paul Browne. The bodies of the woman and her baby boy were found face up on the bed in her bedroom.

The officer and child were apparently shot in the chest. It’s not clear where the man was struck, or how many rounds were fired. The teenager, who is the officer’s son from a previous relationship, was uninjured.

It’s not clear what prompted the dispute. Police were still investigating.

The officer worked in Queens for at least the past 13 years.

Only the police should have guns!!!!

Source

Officer Killed Her Boyfriend and Son in Murder-Suicide, Police Say

By WENDY RUDERMAN

Published: April 15, 2013

An off-duty police officer was believed to have shot and killed her boyfriend and their 1-year-old son, and then turned the gun on herself in an apparent murder-suicide at their Brooklyn home on Monday morning, investigators said.

The officer’s 19-year-old son managed to escape the three-story house on East 56th Street by fleeing through a bedroom window after hearing the sound of gunshots, said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman.

The son, who had been asleep in a rear bedroom, called 911 at about 8:30 a.m., and met responding officers at the front of the house in the Flatlands neighborhood, where the family rented a first-floor apartment, Mr. Browne said.

The bodies of the officer and baby were found, face up, on a bed in a bedroom that investigators believe the couple shared with their young child; a crib sat near the bed against a bedroom wall, Mr. Browne said. Officers discovered the body of the infant’s father lying just inside the home’s entrance in the front hallway.

“It was a tough crime scene,” said Mr. Browne, his words slightly halted.

The officer, identified by sources and property records as Rosette M. Samuel, 43, joined the police force in September 2000 and was most recently assigned to the 108th Precinct in Queens.

The 19-year-old, who was not identified, is Ms. Samuel’s son from a previous relationship. The infant’s father was also not identified.

There was nothing in the officer’s departmental record to suggest that she was troubled, the police said.

Joseph Goldstein, J. David Goodman and Nate Schweber contributed reporting.

Electronics ban starts today at Cook County courthouse

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Electronics ban starts today at Cook County courthouse

By Jennifer Delgado Tribune reporter

7:07 a.m. CDT, April 15, 2013

A crackdown on cellphones and other electronics in Cook County criminal courthouses begins Monday at the busiest criminal court facility in the country.

The ban on smartphones, computer tablets and other electronic devices takes effect Monday at the Leighton Criminal Court Building at 26th Street and California Avenue.

The hard-line policy was set to begin in January, but Circuit Chief Judge Timothy Evans delayed its implementation for three months after critics attacked the plan.

After the announcement last December, other county officials appeared caught by surprise by the change and expressed concern mostly about a shortage of kiosks for cellphone storage. Evans offered the three-month grace period to work out those kinks.

At the criminal courthouse at 26th and California, three cash-operated vending machine-style units, each able to hold 60 cellphones — at a cost of $3 a pop — have been set up, said sheriff's spokeswoman Eleni Demertzis.

The spokeswoman said the sheriff's office has no idea what to expect Monday at 26th and California.

"We're just hoping that the word gets out" about the ban, Demertzis said.

Deputies will not allow anyone with a cellphone inside the courthouse once the storage space runs out, she said.

Eventually the ban will be extended to 12 other criminal court facilities, but Evans' office offered no timetable for that.

Current and former judges, attorneys, government employees, reporters and people reporting to jury duty are among those exempt from the ban.

Cellphones will still be allowed in the Daley Center, where mostly civil matters are handled. Evans insists the policy is designed to safeguard criminal courthouses, but he has offered few details to support the need for the ban. His office said he was unavailable Thursday to take questions.

When he first announced the change in December, Evans said some judges had complained that spectators in courtrooms had photographed witnesses, jurors and judges and in other instances had texted testimony to upcoming witnesses waiting outside.

When asked for specifics, his office said Thursday it did not track that information.

"This ban is important to uphold our justice system and the safety of our courts," a news release quoted Evans as saying. "Intimidation will not be tolerated." jmdelgado@tribune.com

Twitter: @jendelgado1

Opium Production in Afghanistan Increases for Third Year

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Opium Production in Afghanistan Increases for Third Year

By ROD NORDLAND

Published: April 15, 2013

KABUL, Afghanistan — For the third year in a row, opium cultivation has increased across Afghanistan, reversing earlier drops stemming from a decade-long international and Afghan government effort to combat the drug trade, according to a United Nations report released on Monday.

The report’s findings raised concerns among international law enforcement officials that if the trend continued, opium would be the country’s major economic activity after the departure of foreign military forces in 2014, leading to the specter of what one referred to as “the world’s first true narco-state.”

Afghanistan is already the world’s largest producer of opium, and last year accounted for 75 percent of the world’s heroin supply. “The assumption is it will reach again to 90 percent this year,” said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the United Nations’ top counternarcotics official here.

The report, the Afghanistan Opium Risk Assessment 2013, issued by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and based on extensive surveys, found that opium cultivation has increased in 12 of the country’s 34 provinces. Herat, in western Afghanistan, is the only province in which cultivation is expected to decrease, the report said.

The report suggests that Taliban insurgents took advantage of insecurity in several provinces to assist opium farmers and win over popular support — plus protecting an important form of income for their operations. Opium cultivation has increased most wherever there has been insecurity.

Over all, the number of acres devoted this year to opium poppy cultivation is expected to top the figure in 2008, when poppy plantings reached a peak of 388,000 acres, Mr. Lemahieu said. After 2008, eradication efforts, as well as a cash incentive program for provinces that eradicatedopium poppy crops, helped reduce cultivation dramatically through 2010.

This year three provinces — Balkh, Faryab and Takhar in the north and west — are in danger of losing their poppy-free status, according to the United Nations. report. They are among 16 provinces that had been declared poppy-free; such provinces receive $1 million awards from the American Embassy, paid directly to the governor’s office.

In February, the State Department announced that it was handing out $18.2 million in Good Performers Initiative Awards for reducing poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. There was no immediate response from American Embassy officials on how the program would be affected by the new United Nations data.

Opium production has become particularly high in Helmand Province in the south, the country’s major opium-producing area, and in Kandahar Province. In both places, the surge of American troops helped to beat back Taliban influence, but as those troops returned home last year, cultivation increased dramatically. More than 70 percent of opium production now takes place in three provinces where the surge occurred.

“This country is on its way to becoming the world’s first true narco-state,” said one international law enforcement official, who did not want to be quoted criticizing the Afghan government. “The opium trade is a much bigger part of the economy already than narcotics ever were in Bolivia or Colombia.”

But Mirwais Yasini, former head of counternarcotics for the Afghan government and now a prominent member of Parliament, said, “I wouldn’t go that far.”

“But if it goes on like this in the future, I am worried about that happening,” he said.

Mr. Yasini said eradication efforts had been countered by insecurity, compounded by corruption at local, provincial and national levels. “I don’t see anything tangible that has been done; there is no meaningful crop substitution and no effective enforcement,” he said.

The United Nations has estimated in the past that opium trafficking makes up 15 percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product, a figure that is expected to rise as international military and development spending declines with the NATO withdrawal at the end of 2014.

The mining sector, the other big hope of economic self-sufficiency for Afghanistan, is still moribund as the Afghan Parliament continues to bicker over a mining law, and lack of security and legal clarity has prevented the large-scale exploitation of mineral resources.

The increase in opium poppy cultivation is attributed mainly to historically high prices for opium, coupled with insecurity. Prices began rising dramatically in 2010 when a poppy blight severely reduced crop yields, but they have remained high since. Farmers earn as much as $203 a kilogram for harvested opium, compared to only 43 cents a kilogram for wheat or $1.25 for rice, according to the report.

Mr. Lemahieu praised efforts of the Afghan Ministry of Counternarcotics, but said international donors had greatly underfunded key programs to combat trafficking, with only $300,000 of a requested $11 million pledged this year.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 15, 2013

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the proportion of Afghanistan’s opium production that comes from three provinces where the “surge” of extra American troops were deployed to beat back the Taliban. It is more than 70 percent, not more than one-third.

Medical-marijuana-packaging bill loses prosecutors’ support

Medical-marijuana-packaging bill loses prosecutors’ support

By Lindsey Collom The Republic | azcentral.com Sun Apr 14, 2013 10:03 PM

The complexity of the legal debate over whether federal law trumps the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act has prompted the state’s prosecuting-attorneys association to withdraw its support of legislation their members had helped craft to protect children from accidentally eating medical cannabis.

A bill to enforce bland wrapping on candy containing marijuana will likely die, as attorneys say that it’s too difficult to keep legislating medical marijuana in an atmosphere of legal challenges and that the issue needs to be decided in the courts. The same argument was made last week when a bill to require police to destroy medical marijuana seized in criminal investigations was withdrawn by its sponsor.

The Arizona Prosecuting Attorneys’ Advisory Council voted last week to no longer support Senate Bill 1440. The council did so because it conflicts with an argument prosecutors are making in a case before the Arizona Supreme Court stemming from when a Yuma County Superior Court judge ordered the Sheriff’s Office to return marijuana seized from a California woman who had permission to use the drug for medical purposes.

In an amicus “friend of the court” brief filed earlier this month, Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk argued that because the state’s medical-marijuana law sets up a procedure for its cultivation, distribution and use, it is “in complete conflict with the federal law and regulations that govern the classification, production, distribution, marketing and use of drugs and medicine in the United States.”

With the attorneys association’s move and growing opposition among lawmakers following calls by dispensary owners to block the measure, the bill is all but dead.

SB 1440 would require medical-marijuana products to be dispensed in white, opaque wrappers with black lettering in order to conceal medicine made to look like candy or sweet treats. It would expand current health-department rules that, in part, require dispensaries to place a standard warning label on their products similar to those found on cigarettes.

Dispensary owners have been trying to block the legislation, calling it a “backdoor attempt” to shut down the industry because of a clause that would revoke a dispensary’s license for a single infraction. On Friday, the Regulated Dispensaries of Arizona Association issued a statement applauding the attorneys association for concluding “SB 1440 was a bad bill with a good intention.”

“It was horribly anti-business, forcing the termination of a state-regulated dispensary and the patients that depend upon it for a single infraction,” the statement said, adding that the group “will continue to be supportive of additional legislation so long as it isn’t an attempt to shut down the popular, important and voter-approved dispensary program.”

M. Ryan Hurley, an attorney for the Regulated Dispensaries of Arizona Association, said the industry favors establishing packaging rules to prevent medical marijuana from falling into children’s hands, but “the way the bill was drafted, it has nothing to do with those products specifically, and it doesn’t really deal with the problem they’re going after.”

In a memo to legislators on Wednesday, Hurley said most dispensaries appear to be complying with SB 1440 by prepackaging medical marijuana in prescription bottles or heat-sealed cellophane packets so that “patients can be assured that what they are getting is what they paid for.” Dispensary agents then place the items in a white, opaque bag “similar to what you would get leaving a pharmacy,” Hurley said.

But the bill’s primary sponsor, Sen. Kimberly Yee, R-Phoenix, said an opaque bag doesn’t go far enough.

“The intent was to provide that all packaging look the same so when it’s on a kitchen counter and you’ve got kids in the house, they can see it’s in a sealed container,” Yee said. “That’s sort of the sticking point. We were trying to work out a compromise of what they (dispensary owners) would be comfortable with.”

Kimberly MacEachern, a staff attorney at the prosecuting-attorneys association, said it ultimately didn’t make sense to negotiate with dispensaries about packaging marijuana as medicine, particularly when there are federal guidelines for medicine delivery.

“While all that discussion was going on, we were filing these briefs and doing this research and coming to these conclusions contemporaneously,” MacEachern said. “At some point, we realized the mere act of negotiating is creating a conflict because our position is it (marijuana) isn’t medicine.”

Scottsdale uses sex laws to create jobs for cops????

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Scottsdale drafting ordinance to more strictly regulate escort, massage services

By Julian Osorio The Arizona Republic - 12 News Breaking News Team Mon Apr 8, 2013 5:55 PM

Scottsdale officials have been drafting a revised ordinance that would more strictly regulate massage facilities and escort services that operate in the city.

The move, city officials say, is designed to deter illegal activity, such as prostitution, conducted behind the business doors of some operators. [Well and create jobs for cops and prosecutors who would enforce the law]

The changes would include tougher permitting requirements to operate and a new fee schedule.

The proposed changes would allow the city to strengthen the integrity and professionalism of each industry, according to the city’s website.

The Scottsdale Police Department has been investigating prostitution complaints in the escort and massage industries for years, said Sgt. Mark Clark, spokesman for the Scottsdale Police Department.

The proposed ordinance is a collaborative effort between the City Attorney’s Office and the Police Department, he said. [Yea, to create more high paying police and prosecutor jobs]

Officials have identified detrimental secondary effects from escort operations, including violent crimes, drug use, and health risks through the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, according to the proposal. [Well if you legalized prostitution all of those problems except the sexually transmitted diseases would disappear over night. And even if these government morons made ALL sex illegal there is no way to stop the problem of sexually transmitted diseases, other then with education, which isn't solved by arresting people who have sex]

The goal of the ordinance is to halt prostitution, protect legitimate escort patrons, and preserve the health and welfare of the community, a draft of the proposal says. [Yea, and MOSTLY TO CREATE JOBS FOR COPS!!!!!]

Among the proposed revisions to the escort industry is added mandatory jail time for individuals convicted of certain crimes, expanded list of violations, a requirement that any escort service post its city-permit license number in any advertisement, revised definitions and permit requirements for escort assistants, and a stipulation that no permit or license can be issued to a person convicted of prostitution as early as 10 years before an application submission.

Scottsdale last updated its escort services ordinance in 1988.

According to a report released by the Scottsdale Police Department, there have been 21 escort-related charges in Scottsdale since 2011. The majority were for lack of proper identification and permits. [Big stinking deal!!! That is less then one charge a month!!! And it looks like they lied earlier in the article when they said the major problems were drug use, violent crimes and sexually transmitted diseases]

A separate proposal targets unprofessional practices at massage facilities. [That sounds like a problem that could be handled better in the private sector with say the BBB or Better Business Bureau, rather then the police!]

The requested ordinance includes requirements that a licensed on-site manager is present at a facility when any massage therapy is being performed.

In addition, all doors must be unlocked during massage therapy and mobile massage units will not be allowed to park on public streets except during special events.

Other changes includes verbiage regulating massages. The new language states that it is illegal to touch any other person’s genitals or anus, conduct any actions intended to sexually arouse or appeal to sexual desires, according to the proposal.

The current ordinance allows city officials to inspect any massage facility during normal business hours. [F*ck the 4th Amendment. I guess it's null and void in Scottsdale]

No specific incidents sparked the evaluation of the city ordinance but the city felt it was time to clarify and tighten up the ordinance, said Caron Close, Scottsdale city prosecutor.

Several massage therapists in Scottsdale contacted for this article said they supported city efforts to crack down on unsavory businesses, but none wanted to be identified and quoted.

The proposed changes are scheduled to be considered by the City Council on June 4.

RELATED INFO

Proposed fees

Here are proposed fees for massage businesses and escort services under a draft being consideration by Scottsdale. The City Council will review the proposal in June:

Escort bureau application, $100; massage facility application, $100.

Annual escort bureau license, $175. Annual massage facility license, $300.

Escort and assistant application, $100; late renewal penalty, $200.

Escort and assistant permit, $100.

City fingerprinting fee, $10; on-site manager ID card, $10; escort and assistant ID card, $10; change of location fee, $50.

Source: Scottsdale.

Travis County DA pleads guilty to DWI

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Travis County DA pleads guilty to DWI

Associated Press Mon Apr 15, 2013 10:20 AM

AUSTIN, Texas — The Travis County district attorney has plead guilty to a drunken driving charge two days after a 911 caller alerted authorities to a vehicle weaving and crossing into oncoming traffic.

In a letter to the prosecutor and the court, Rosemary Lehmberg said Monday her plea was unconditional and to any charge the prosecutor felt was supported by the facts.

Lehmberg was booked into the county jail early Saturday after being arrested for driving while intoxicated. She was released on $3,000 bond.

An arrest affidavit said she performed a field sobriety test and told deputies that she consumed two vodka drinks. Lehmberg was re-elected to a second four-year term last May.

Her letter said she guilty of DWI and of acting unreasonably and that the fault is her own

Tempe assistant prosecutor, boyfriend held in assaulting each other

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Tempe assistant prosecutor, boyfriend held in assaulting each other

By Cecilia Chan The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Fri Apr 12, 2013 10:08 PM

A Tempe assistant city prosecutor and her live-in boyfriend were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of assaulting each other, according to Tempe police.

Kathy Matz and Keith Walls were arrested late Wednesday night at the Tempe home they shared and transported to the city jail, according to a police report. Both had been drinking, police said.

Each posted a $500 bail Thursday, police spokesman Michael Pooley said.

Police arrived at the home at about 11:10 p.m. Wednesday after Matz called 911.

According to the report, Walls and Matz were on the bed, watching television when he asked Matz to move over. When he returned from the bathroom, she still had not moved and as he laid down in bed, she told him to get out and sleep on the couch, the report said.

Walls told police he refused and when he sat up in bed, Matz punched him in the back of his head.

They both got out of bed and Matz began shouting obscenities and swinging her closed fists at him, hitting him in the eye and kneeing him in the groin, he said.

Walls said he then threw water on Matz from a cup before he walked out of the room and proceeded to pack his clothes.

Matz told police that Walls was upset with her being on his side of the bed and he began to push her off the bed causing her to fall to the floor.

The report said Matz told police that Walls also threatened to shoot her with her gun that she kept under her side of the bed. She then pushed Walls away from her and he picked up a plastic cup of water and threw it at her, hitting her in the eye, the report said.

Police found no visible injuries on Matz when they arrived, but doctors found a bruise on the back of her head that she claimed was from hitting the headboard when she was being assaulted by Walls, according to the report. Doctors were unable to determine when she received the contusion and she never told officers on scene about the injury, police

Matz also complained that Walls gave her two bruises to her left wrist when he grabbed her. But police said they were unable to determine when she received the injuries and she did not tell officers on scene about the bruises.

Walls had a small bruise under his right eye, according to the report.

Matz will be placed on paid administrative leave while the matter is reviewed under the city’s Personnel Rules and Regulations, according to the city spokeswoman Nikki Ripley.

Her case will be transferred to a different jurisdiction in Maricopa County, she said.

Matz has worked for the city since 1998 in a number of roles, including city clerk and assistant to former Mayor Neil Giuliano, Ripley said. Her current salary is $115,045 and she is one of seven prosecutors on the city staff.

Both Walls and Matz told police they would not aid in the prosecution. Walls told police that he just wanted the relationship to be over.

Get on a jury - Free a political prisoner

For more on this check out the Fully Informed Jury Association at http://fija.org.

Don't think of jury duty as the government cheating your out of a few days of your wages. Think of jury duty as your way of kicking a government tyrant in the balls and freeing a political prisoner.

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Anderson: Jury duty is your duty

Mark Anderson is a judge in West Mesa Justice Court.

Posted: Monday, April 15, 2013 9:12 am

‘But your Honor, I didn’t know you actually had to show up!”

This was the excuse given by Michael Hanley (*not his real name), a construction worker ordered to the West Mesa Justice Court recently to explain why he failed to appear for jury duty.

On March 21, a group of 18 otherwise typical citizens were surprised to be held in contempt of court for failure to appear for jury duty. They paid fines ranging from $75 to $250. They had failed to respond on two occasions to a mailed summons informing them that their service as a juror at the court was required by law.

“I always throw these letters in the trash” and “I’m just too busy to deal with this,” were among the excuses given by these citizens when asked to explain why they had ignored the jury summons.

In spite of some other more creative excuses, everyone left with their wallets lighter and a greater awareness of the importance of jury duty.

The reason for the hearings, called Order to Show Cause hearings, was the needless cancellation of two scheduled jury trials earlier this year simply because not enough prospective jurors showed up. In our court, a jury trial is set for every Friday. If a trial is cancelled, it is a hardship on the defendant, the attorneys who have prepared for the trial, and the court staff as well.

Jurors failing to appear never used to happen, but apparently, over time many people seem to have forgotten the importance of our system of justice and the wisdom of the founders who instituted the idea of being judged by one’s peers.

As Thomas Jefferson said, “I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.”

There are some legitimate reasons for someone to be excused from jury duty. These are explained on the jury summons. If you are over 75 years old, unable to understand English, are active military, a police officer, or if serving on a jury would cause extreme physical or financial hardship, you may be excused, but you need to provide the information to the jury commission by submitting the juror affidavit questionnaire.

The jury system only works when citizens participate. One day a jury may be sitting in judgment in a case where you are the defendant. If that were to happen, you would want the jurors to respond to their jury summons prepared to take their role seriously, listen attentively, and render a fair verdict. As judges, we are capable of conducting bench trials with no jury, but the right to request that a jury decide innocence or guilt is a cornerstone of our justice system.

So, when you get that envelope that says jury summons on the outside, don’t throw it away. Read it carefully and do your civic duty. Otherwise you might find yourself on the wrong end of a $250 or even $500 fine.

West Mesa Justice of the Peace Mark Anderson was elected in November 2010. Prior to his election to the bench, Anderson served 14 years in the Arizona State Legislature.

Brewer's budget axes public-defense funds

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Brewer's budget axes public-defense funds

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Mon Apr 15, 2013 10:52 PM

The “Fill the Gap” program was touted in the late 1990s as a way to bring meager funding for public defenders in line with government funding for police and prosecutors.

Because many counties report that nearly 90 percent of their criminal defendants require court-appointed counsel, the state program was seen as a way to make the criminal-justice system more equitable, as well as achieve the more noble and constitutionally required goals of fair and swift justice.

But the gap between respective funding for Arizona’s prosecutors and public defenders continued to grow along with the state budget crisis, and lawmakers began using money allocated for indigent defendants for other purposes — while leaving prosecutorial funding relatively intact.

Now, Gov. Jan Brewer’s latest budget proposal would likely spell the end of the program.

Brewer’s budget proposal would permanently end state aid to indigent defendants while keeping the prosecutors’ portion of the program in place. The proposal would reallocate the public-defense funds to the Arizona Department of Public Safety’s equipment fund.

The proposal would send $1.9 million to DPS instead of aiding indigent defendants, said Brewer spokesman Matthew Benson.

Benson said the state’s budget crisis is forcing administrators to make cuts across the board — even programs to help children and the infirm are not immune — making aid to indigent defendants just one more state effort likely to suffer.

“You always have to balance these things, and in the governor’s estimation, the more significant need right now is in public safety at DPS,” Benson said. He noted that a significant number of the agency’s patrol cars have put in more than 100,000 miles of service.

“We say that with the caveat that the counties have resources, too,” Benson said. “In our estimation, it’s appropriate that they pick up some of the slack here when it comes to indigent defense.”

But some county officials say the move is another example of the state pushing costs back onto county taxpayers in an effort to make the state budget appear balanced.

The amount of money involved was never excessive. The funding was distributed based on a formula that accounts for county sizes and the demands on their criminal courts. Maricopa County, the state’s largest, was was home to more than 3 million people in 2000, and typically has more than 40,000 felony cases filed each year.

The county received just under $700,000 in 2001, when the fund was relatively flush.

Rural counties in particular have come to rely on that funding to supplement their public-defense obligations. It is short-sighted to believe that removing those funds will not have an impact on the court system, said John Blackburn, executive director of the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission, which distributed the money.

“It’s not a lot of money, but in some of the jurisdictions, it’s a big deal,” Blackburn said. “But it’s part of the system. You can’t take stuff away from one part of the system and expect it to continue to flow as effectively as if you fund all of it.”

The funds have not been consistent recently.

When the state’s budget crisis was at its worst in 2011, administrators swept the aid for indigent defendants into other areas. Last year, the money sat in an account and went unallocated.

But the prosecutors’ portion of Fill the Gap funds has remained relatively constant, with the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office allocation falling about 15 percent since 2001, and Yavapai County’s dropping by about 10 percent in the same period.

Dean Trebesch, the Yavapai County Public Defender who formerly served the same role in Maricopa County, said the decision to permanently remove the money could put the state back on the path it sought to avoid when the Fill the Gap funds were first enacted.

Trebesch was among the advocates, along with county prosecutors and judges, who pushed for state indigent-defense funds in the 1990s because an influx of state and federal money had added more police and prison beds, but suspects were languishing in jail because there were not enough public defenders to take their cases.

The state’s chief justice at the time grew outraged after learning of a case involving teenage gang-rape suspects who had been in jail for two years without a trial.

“The counties were strapped financially and it was a huge burden on the counties, naturally, to fund all three elements of the criminal-justice system,” Trebesch said of the reasoning behind state funding. “Jail costs were high. And it’s not of value to the victims to see the case languishing in the system unnaturally.”

Public defenders and court administrators in counties too small for a dedicated public-defense office used the money in a variety of ways to supplement their operations, according to annual reports.

In fiscal 2010, Coconino County court administrators used the money to help pay for urine tests to expedite more than 100 drug- and alcohol-related cases and for diversion programs.

That year, Maricopa County used the funds to offset the costs for nine attorneys and a secretary, and Yavapai County used the funds to support an attorney assigned to juvenile cases.

Trebesch said the effort to push that cost back to the counties could lead to lengthier jail stays for inmates who have not yet gone to trial and longer delays for trials, which does a disservice to the suspect, the victim and the taxpayer.

“I’m not here sitting as a bleeding heart,” he said. “I’m a pragmatist, and a person who has a burden. While it (Fill the Gap) never produced the reality we expected, it was a step in the right direction, and now we’re back to square one again.

“That money’s got to come from somewhere. ... You can’t close your eyes. It’s not going to go away. The best way to address it is to provide adequate funding so the cases move through the system.”

Heroin use surges in suburbs, small towns

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Heroin use surges in suburbs, small towns

By Donna Leinwand Leger USA Today Mon Apr 15, 2013 9:33 PM

Heroin in Charlotte has become so easy to get that dealers deliver to the suburbs and run specials to attract their young, professional, upper-income customers.

These lawyers, nurses, cops and ministers are showing up in the detox ward at Carolinas Medical Center, desperate to kick an opiate addiction that often starts with powerful prescription painkillers such as OxyContin and Vicodin.

The center analyzed the patients’ ZIP codes to find out where heroin had taken root, says Robert Martin, director of substance abuse services at the medical center.

“Our heroin patients,” he said, “come from the five best neighborhoods.”

What Martin and others like him are witnessing is a growing and more dangerous wave of drug addiction sweeping the country, ensnaring a new population — several hundred thousand Americans — in the heroin trap and importing crime to America’s suburbs. Feeding the frenzy: Prescription painkiller addicts are finding their drug of choice in short supply, so heroin becomes their drug of last resort.

As addicts move from legitimate prescriptions to the black market of pure, precisely measured narcotic pain pills to the dirty world of dealers, needles and kitchen table chemists, health officials and police are noting sharp increases in overdoses, crime and other public health problems.

“When you switch to heroin, you don’t know what’s in there from batch to batch,” says Karen Simone, director of the Northern New England Poison Center, which in September documented a spike in heroin overdoses in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.

What’s driving the shift

America arrived at this moment after a decades-long increase in the number of people using, and abusing, powerful pain pills. The narcotics had become easier to obtain — some pain clinics issued prescriptions by the thousands — and many found a quick path to the black market.

To stem the abuses, authorities over the past decade began cracking down on clinics, and drug companies began creating pill formulations that made them harder to crush and snort for a quick high. Thus, opiate addicts have found it more difficult, and expensive, to get their fix. An 80 mg OxyContin can cost $60 to $100 a pill. In contrast, heroin costs about $45 to $60 for a multiple-dose supply.

OxyContin, a narcotic painkiller in the opiate family, came on the market in 1996. By 2001, it became the nation’s best-selling brand-name narcotic pain reliever. Although it’s a highly effective drug for people suffering from chronic pain from diseases such as cancer, the Drug Enforcement Administration noted high levels of abuse, particularly in West Virginia and Kentucky, where it became known as “hillbilly heroin.”

Once tighter restrictions were in place, prescription painkiller abuse declined, particularly among young adults 18 to 25, according to the most recent National Survey of Drug Use and Health. At the same time, the number of heroin abusers rose sharply.

Painkiller abuse. The number of people who say they regularly abuse painkillers dropped from 5,093,000 in 2010 to 4,471,000 in 2011, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Young adults who said they regularly abused painkillers dropped from a high of 1.62 million in 2006 to 1.22 million in 2011, the survey found.

Opiate use. The survey estimated that 281,000 people 12 and older regularly used heroin in 2011, up from a decade low of 119,000 in 2003.

Treatment requests. Another study that measures the number of people seeking treatment for heroin found increases in 30 of 39 states reporting data in 2011 to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. In 2011, 238,184 sought treatment for heroin addictions, up from 224,198, SAMHSA spokesman Brad Stone said.

Legal substitute

Doctors, substance abuse counselors, police and federal agents from Portland, Maine, to San Diego, in cities such as Charlotte and small towns in central Pennsylvania, also report surges in heroin use. In Illinois, the state crime commission in March called heroin an epidemic after authorities noted that the Chicago metro area ranks first in the nation for people admitted to the emergency room for heroin use.

Public health authorities in Portland, Maine, which struggled with pain killer abuse for nearly a decade, expected an increase in heroin abuse and are dealing with the fallout of overdoses, says Ronni Katz, substance abuse prevention program coordinator for the city.

The trend to heroin bore out in Mark Publicker’s 24-bed detox ward at Mercy Hospital Recovery Center in Portland, where as many as half the patients are addicted to opiates. Publicker saw a startling change six to eight months ago as patients, who once favored oxycodone, reported intravenous heroin as their opiate of choice.

IV heroin is particularly dangerous because addicts may share needles, exposing themselves to blood-borne diseases such as HIV and hepatitis, and can easily overdose when injecting heroin directly into their bloodstream, Publicker said.

“As bad as oxycodone is, heroin is worse,” Publicker said. “It’s worse because here in Maine, it’s injected. We’re talking about a novice population of drug injectors who are not educated about needle use.”

Drug is ‘huge’

Once considered an urban drug, heroin has found an unwelcome home in small towns and suburbs.

In Minnesota, one in five people seeking treatment is addicted to opiates, says Carol Falkowski, the former drug abuse strategy officer for Minnesota and a member of the Community Epidemiology Working Group at the National Institute of Drug Abuse, which tracks trends in drug use.

“Heroin is huge. We’ve never had anything like it in this state,” she says. “Most people did not believe that heroin would happen here in Lake Woebegone, but it really has a grip, not only in the Twin Cities, but all around the state.”

In Elizabethtown, Pa., a borough of 12,000 people in Lancaster County, Police Chief Jack Mentzer noted prescription pill addicts gradually turn to heroin over the past 18 months.

“Folks are looking for that better high,” Mentzer said. “Lots of them started with prescription drugs. When that didn’t do it, they would start crushing them. And when that didn’t work, they turned to more of the street drugs.”

With the street drugs came the crime wave.

“The No. 1 thing that we see are the crimes that are directly or indirectly related to the drug abuse,” Mentzer said. “They will do almost anything for a quick dollar, stealing from mom and dad, committing burglaries.” [And if drugs were re-legalized these crimes would stop overnight, just like most of the crime cause by the Prohibition stopped when alcohol was re-legalized.]

Chandler police, Target host community drug turn-in event

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Chandler police, Target host community drug turn-in event

Posted: Monday, April 15, 2013 8:51 am

Tribune

A community drug turn-in event, in partnership between Target and the Chandler Police Department, will be held 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, April 27 at the Target located at 3425 W. Frye Rd., Chandler.

Residents can turn in unused, expired or unwanted prescription and over-the-counter medications for proper destruction. Medications should be in their original containers. [Why should the medications be in their original containers??? Do the cops want to run your name thru the computer looking for arrest warrants??] Thermometers, needles or other medical waste cannot be accepted.

Saudi religious police make it illegal for woman to drive???

Saudi prince: Letting women drive means fewer foreign workers

By Emily Alpert

April 15, 2013, 2:46 p.m.

A Saudi prince has renewed his argument that women should be allowed to drive, saying on Twitter that doing so would eliminate the need for hundreds of thousands of foreign drivers.

Activists point out that driving is not actually legally prohibited for Saudi women, but traffic officials refuse to grant them licenses because clerics in the country forbid it. As a result, women rely on drivers to ferry them around, one of many factors pulling foreign workers into the Arab kingdom.

Saudi women have repeatedly protested the ban by driving in the kingdom, and faced detentions and death threats for doing so. Activist Manal Sharif, who has championed the campaign, says driving is part of a broader push for women to enjoy a host of freedoms now denied to them, including the ability to work, study, marry or travel without getting written permission from a male guardian.

“For the religious establishment, this is like their last castle, so if they lose this castle, they lose their grip on women, on controlling women,” Sharif said at a United Nations forum this year.

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal appeared to be making a very different argument for allowing women to drive, however, one rooted in economics rather than gender equality.

If women could drive, Saudi Arabia could “dispense with at least 500,000 foreign drivers, and that has an economic and social impact for the country,” the prince wrote on Twitter on Sunday. His words, retweeted more than 2,300 times, set off a torrent of online debate over the restrictions.

The Saudi prince, who is known more as a businessman than a political leader, has spoken up for allowing women to drive before, saying two years ago that the ban created “an additional burden on households,” according to Reuters. His wife, Princess Ameerah al-Taweel, told the “Today” show that women being able to drive was “a social need.”

His words this time come as the Saudi government has been cracking down on immigrants, aiming to boost the number of jobs held by local workers as unemployment has increase. A rash of deportations was suspended this month by the king, who offered foreigners a three-month grace period to gain legal status, Gulf News reported.

Cops read everything you post online???

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Police: Galewood neighborhood man tries to sell alligator on Craigslist

By Rosemary Regina Sobol Tribune reporter

2:30 a.m. CDT, April 16, 2013

A Northwest Side man accused of trying to sell a baby alligator on Craigslist for $300 was arrested Monday evening, police said.

Juan A. DeJesus, 19, of the 1700 block of Meade Avenue, was charged Monday with one count of misdemeanor possession of wildlife, police said.

A state Department of Natural Resources police officer responded to an advertisement that was posted on Craigslist and went to DeJesus' home Monday afternoon under the pretenses he was going to purchase the alligator, police said.

The ad, which has since been pulled from Craigslist, stated:

"Baby gator for sale, id consider a trade for a leachie gecko. Sale price is 300 obo asap."

DeJesus came out of his home with the alligator and said he would like to have $300 for it, but the officer identified himself and told DeJesus of the violation, police said.

The alligator was seized as evidence and given to other IDNR agents and DeJesus was transported to the Grand Central District police station to be processed, police said.

DeJesus could not be reached immediately Tuesday morning. He is scheduled to appear in court at the Daley Center on May 31.

rsobol@tribune.com

Tempe prosecutor Kathy Matz arrested for domestic violence

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Tempe assistant prosecutor, boyfriend held in assaulting each other

By Cecilia Chan The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Fri Apr 12, 2013 10:08 PM

A Tempe assistant city prosecutor and her live-in boyfriend were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of assaulting each other, according to Tempe police.

Kathy Matz and Keith Walls were arrested late Wednesday night at the Tempe home they shared and transported to the city jail, according to a police report. Both had been drinking, police said.

Each posted a $500 bail Thursday, police spokesman Michael Pooley said.

Police arrived at the home at about 11:10 p.m. Wednesday after Matz called 911.

According to the report, Walls and Matz were on the bed, watching television when he asked Matz to move over. When he returned from the bathroom, she still had not moved and as he laid down in bed, she told him to get out and sleep on the couch, the report said.

Walls told police he refused and when he sat up in bed, Matz punched him in the back of his head.

They both got out of bed and Matz began shouting obscenities and swinging her closed fists at him, hitting him in the eye and kneeing him in the groin, he said.

Walls said he then threw water on Matz from a cup before he walked out of the room and proceeded to pack his clothes.

Matz told police that Walls was upset with her being on his side of the bed and he began to push her off the bed causing her to fall to the floor.

The report said Matz told police that Walls also threatened to shoot her with her gun that she kept under her side of the bed. She then pushed Walls away from her and he picked up a plastic cup of water and threw it at her, hitting her in the eye, the report said.

Police found no visible injuries on Matz when they arrived, but doctors found a bruise on the back of her head that she claimed was from hitting the headboard when she was being assaulted by Walls, according to the report. Doctors were unable to determine when she received the contusion and she never told officers on scene about the injury, police

Matz also complained that Walls gave her two bruises to her left wrist when he grabbed her. But police said they were unable to determine when she received the injuries and she did not tell officers on scene about the bruises.

Walls had a small bruise under his right eye, according to the report.

Matz will be placed on paid administrative leave while the matter is reviewed under the city’s Personnel Rules and Regulations, according to the city spokeswoman Nikki Ripley.

Her case will be transferred to a different jurisdiction in Maricopa County, she said.

Matz has worked for the city since 1998 in a number of roles, including city clerk and assistant to former Mayor Neil Giuliano, Ripley said. Her current salary is $115,045 and she is one of seven prosecutors on the city staff.

Both Walls and Matz told police they would not aid in the prosecution. Walls told police that he just wanted the relationship to be over.

Tempe prosecutor Kathy Matz arrested for assault

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Tempe assistant prosecutor, boyfriend held in assaulting each other

By Cecilia Chan The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Fri Apr 12, 2013 10:08 PM

A Tempe assistant city prosecutor and her live-in boyfriend were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of assaulting each other, according to Tempe police.

Kathy Matz and Keith Walls were arrested late Wednesday night at the Tempe home they shared and transported to the city jail, according to a police report. Both had been drinking, police said.

Each posted a $500 bail Thursday, police spokesman Michael Pooley said.

Police arrived at the home at about 11:10 p.m. Wednesday after Matz called 911.

According to the report, Walls and Matz were on the bed, watching television when he asked Matz to move over. When he returned from the bathroom, she still had not moved and as he laid down in bed, she told him to get out and sleep on the couch, the report said.

Walls told police he refused and when he sat up in bed, Matz punched him in the back of his head.

They both got out of bed and Matz began shouting obscenities and swinging her closed fists at him, hitting him in the eye and kneeing him in the groin, he said.

Walls said he then threw water on Matz from a cup before he walked out of the room and proceeded to pack his clothes.

Matz told police that Walls was upset with her being on his side of the bed and he began to push her off the bed causing her to fall to the floor.

The report said Matz told police that Walls also threatened to shoot her with her gun that she kept under her side of the bed. She then pushed Walls away from her and he picked up a plastic cup of water and threw it at her, hitting her in the eye, the report said.

Police found no visible injuries on Matz when they arrived, but doctors found a bruise on the back of her head that she claimed was from hitting the headboard when she was being assaulted by Walls, according to the report. Doctors were unable to determine when she received the contusion and she never told officers on scene about the injury, police

Matz also complained that Walls gave her two bruises to her left wrist when he grabbed her. But police said they were unable to determine when she received the injuries and she did not tell officers on scene about the bruises.

Walls had a small bruise under his right eye, according to the report.

Matz will be placed on paid administrative leave while the matter is reviewed under the city’s Personnel Rules and Regulations, according to the city spokeswoman Nikki Ripley.

Her case will be transferred to a different jurisdiction in Maricopa County, she said.

Matz has worked for the city since 1998 in a number of roles, including city clerk and assistant to former Mayor Neil Giuliano, Ripley said. Her current salary is $115,045 and she is one of seven prosecutors on the city staff.

Both Walls and Matz told police they would not aid in the prosecution. Walls told police that he just wanted the relationship to be over.

Supremes - Cops must get a warrant before drawing your blood!!!

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Supreme Court rules police must usually try to get warrant before testing blood in DUI cases

By Associated Press, Updated: Wednesday, April 17, 8:25 AM

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police usually must try to obtain a search warrant from a judge before ordering blood tests for drunken-driving suspects.

The justices sided with a Missouri man who was subjected to a blood test without a warrant and found to have nearly twice the legal limit of alcohol in his blood.

Sens. Heidi Heitkamp and Tim Johnson join other prominent figures in endorsing marriage rights.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the court that the natural dissipation of alcohol in the blood is generally not sufficient reason to jettison the requirement that police get a judge’s approval before drawing a blood sample.

Missouri and the Obama administration were asking the court to endorse a blanket rule that would have allowed the tests without a warrant.

Eight of the nine justices rejected that plea. Only Justice Clarence Thomas would have held that a warrantless blood test does not violate a suspect’s constitutional rights.

The case stemmed from the arrest of Tyler McNeely in Missouri’s rural Cape Girardeau County. A state trooper stopped McNeely’s speeding, swerving car. The driver, who had two previous drunken-driving convictions, refused to submit to a breath test to measure the alcohol level in his body.

He failed several field sobriety tests. The arresting officer, Cpl. Mark Winder of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, said McNeely’s speech was slurred and he was unsteady on his feet.

There seemed little dispute that Winder had enough evidence to get a warrant for a blood test, but chose not to. Instead, he drove McNeely to a hospital. A technician drew blood from McNeely, who was handcuffed throughout the process.

McNeely’s blood-alcohol content was 0.154 percent, well above the 0.08 percent legal limit.

But the Missouri Supreme Court upheld a lower court order that threw out the results of the blood test. The state high court said the blood test violated the Constitution’s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures. Police need a warrant to take a suspect’s blood except when a delay could threaten a life or destroy potential evidence, the Missouri court said.

About half the states already prohibit warrantless blood tests in all or most suspected drunken-driving cases.

The Supreme Court did not offer much guidance Wednesday about when police may dispense with a warrant. Justice Anthony Kennedy, in a separate opinion, said a later case may give the court to opportunity to say more on that subject.

The case is Missouri v. McNeely, 11-1425.

Pressure cooker bombs common in South Asia

Pressure cooker bombs common in South Asia

By Alex Rodriguez

April 17, 2013, 7:16 a.m.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistani militants rely on a wide array of explosive devices to terrorize the South Asian nation, from suicide bomb vests and car bombs to rocket-propelled grenades.

But within that arsenal, pressure cooker bombs such as the ones probably used in the attack on the Boston Marathon on Monday are a mainstay, accounting for roughly half of the explosive devices defused in the country’s volatile northwest, a top Pakistani bomb disposal squad official says.

“We are defusing pressure cooker bombs almost daily,” said Shafqat Malik, chief of the bomb disposal squad for Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, which includes the violence-wracked city of Peshawar, Swat Valley and Pakistan’s militant-ridden tribal areas along the Afghan border. “They’re very common. Pressure cookers are one of the favorite IED containers for the terrorist groups.”

Since Malik began leading the province’s bomb squad in 2009, his officers have defused more than 5,000 explosive devices — roughly half of which have been pressure cooker bombs, he said. This year alone, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province bomb disposal technicians have defused about 125 bombs that have been contained in pressure cookers, he said.

The most recent prominent attack involving such an explosive occurred Sunday in the Swat Valley town of Banjot. Mukarram Shah, a member of the secular Awami National Party (ANP), was killed when a pressure cooker bomb planted near his car exploded.

The ANP, a longtime ally of President Asif Ali Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party and the dominant political party in Pakistan’s northwest, has been rocked by a wave of terror attacks against its leaders and candidates ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for May 11.

On Tuesday, a suicide bomber killed 16 people and injured 50 others at a late night ANP election meeting in Peshawar. One of ANP’s most prominent leaders, Ghulam Bilour, was at the meeting but survived the attack.

The Pakistani Taliban, the Al Qaeda-allied militant group responsible for the majority of suicide bombings and other acts of terror in Pakistan over the last five years, claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s blast, as well as several other attacks on ANP leaders and officials in recent weeks. It has also vowed to target members of two other secular parties, Zardari’s party and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, which governs the country’s largest city and its commercial capital, Karachi.

Pakistani Taliban militants rely heavily on pressure cooker bombs, Malik said. because they allow pressure to build up inside the steel before the blast occurs, creating a more intense explosion.

“Blast waves don’t escape suddenly — the pressure builds up before the cooker gets broken,” Malik said. “So the effect can be more lethal compared to other kinds of containers. The pieces of the cooker move outward like projectiles, hitting the target like a bullet.”

A drawback to pressure cooker bombs, Malik says, is that the blast radius is reduced because a significant portion of the energy generated by the explosive agent is expended in the break-up of the cooker’s thick steel walls.

The blast radius of a pressure cooker bomb depends on a variety of factors, including the size of the cooker. But typically, the area in which a pressure cooker bomb can cause lethal injuries is about 27 yards, Malik said.

Other improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, can disperse shrapnel over a greater distance.

Pakistani militants often detonate pressure cooker bombs by remote control — with a cellphone, for example — and usually bury the devices in the ground, Malik said.

Only police officers can be trusted to handle guns properly!!!!

Retired cop drops gun, shoots self at Des Plaines school

By Jonathan Bullington Tribune reporters

8:18 p.m. CDT, April 16, 2013

A retired police officer accidentally shot himself when he dropped his gun inside a Des Plaines school while attending his grandson's Boy Scout troop meeting.

Police and school officials said the man was carrying his licensed, loaded gun inside a fanny pack Monday evening at Iroquois School, and that the gun went off and a bullet struck him in the leg after he dropped the pack.

The man, who school officials called a troop leader, was taken to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge. Des Plaines police Chief William Kushner said the man is a retired Chicago police officer.

No one else was injured, and police did not file charges because no laws were broken, Kushner said.

The retired officer is licensed to carry the firearm, according to a letter to the school community from Iroquois Principal Michael Amadei.

"Of course, the district does not condone bringing firearms on school grounds," the letter states.

Kushner said he initially heard that the retired officer was in serious condition, but school officials said the man's injuries were "not as serious as anticipated."

Amadei's letter said the school "will continue to work with" police and Scouting officials "to clarify any questions that arise. ... Student safety is our number one priority."

Representatives of the Boy Scouts of America Northwest Suburban Council could not be reached for comment late Tuesday.

Tribune reporter Robert McCoppin contributed.

jbullington@tribune.com

US drug war laws not enforceable in foreign countries

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Justices Bar U.S. Suit in Nigerian Human Rights Case

By ADAM LIPTAK

Published: April 17, 2013

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that Nigerian plaintiffs who said foreign oil companies had been complicit in violating their human rights may not sue in American courts. The decision severely limited the sweep of a 1789 law that had been used to address human rights abuses abroad.

The decision was unanimous, but the court members divided along ideological lines on their reasoning.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said a general presumption against the extraterritorial application of American law barred the suit. He added that some contact with the United States would not be sufficient to overcome the presumption.

“Corporations are often present in many countries,” he wrote, “and it would reach too far to say mere corporate presence suffices.”

Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined the majority opinion.

The 1789 law, the Alien Tort Statute, allows federal courts to hear “any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.”

The law was largely ignored until the 1980s, when federal courts started to apply it in international human rights cases. A 2004 Supreme Court decision, Sosa v. Álvarez-Machain, left the door open to some claims under the law, as long as they involved violations of international norms with “definite content and acceptance among civilized nations.”

In a concurrence, Justice Stephen G. Breyer, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, said he “would not invoke the presumption against extraterritoriality.”

He said suits under the law should be allowed when “the defendant’s conduct substantially and adversely affects an important American national interest, and that includes a distinct interest in preventing the United States from becoming a safe harbor (free of civil as well as criminal liability) for a torturer or other common enemy of mankind.”

Justice Breyer said that standard had not been satisfied in the case decided Wednesday, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., No. 10-1491.

4 years in prison for killing alleged burglar

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4 years in jail for killing alleged burglar

Henry K. Lee

Updated 10:43 am, Wednesday, April 17, 2013

(04-17) 08:45 PDT SAN JOSE --

A San Jose maintenance worker who shot and killed a man while trying to make a citizen's arrest for burglary at an apartment building will receive a four-year jail sentence after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter, authorities said Wednesday.

Luis Ricardo Hernandez, 26, had initially been charged with murder in the slaying of 36-year-old Christopher Soriano at the apartments on the 200 block of Lewis Road where Hernandez works.

Prosecutors agreed to the reduced charge because "the evidence shows the defendant never had the intent to kill the victim," said Matt Braker, a Santa Clara County deputy district attorney. "The evidence shows that Mr. Soriano died because of the defendant's extremely reckless and criminally negligent behavior."

The prosecutor said Hernandez "has accepted responsibility for his actions" and will be sentenced to four years in county jail.

The incident began when Hernandez got a call Dec. 31 from his boss, who had spotted Soriano driving a truck into the apartment building's garage. The supervisor believed Soriano had burglarized his and other apartments in the past, police said.

The supervisor didn't think police had responded promptly to the burglaries and had no confidence officers would show up this time, so he told Hernandez to help him make a citizen's arrest, police said.

Hernandez armed himself with a gun, investigators said. When he and his boss tried to hold Soriano, however, the suspected burglar broke free and Hernandez shot him, police said.

An autopsy indicated that Soriano was shot from less than a foot away and was either lying on the ground or crouching when he was hit, according to the medical examiner's office.

Surveillance footage from the garage shows Hernandez fighting with the suspect while holding a gun, according to police.

Henry K. Lee is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: hlee@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @henryklee

LA shoots itself in foot with silly porn condom law!!!!

Porn filming declines sharply since L.A. condom law passed

By Kurt Streeter

April 17, 2013, 3:21 p.m.

Film permits issued for porn shoots in Los Angeles County have dropped to almost zero since a law was enacted requiring actors to use condoms during shoots.

So far this year, only two permits have been issued for pornographic filming, far off the pace for an industry that typically gets about 500 permits annually, according to Paul Audley, president of FilmLA, a nonprofit agency that oversees permitting throughout Los Angeles County. “It’s a steep drop,” Audley said, adding that “both of those applications came in January.”

Coupled with an apparent increase in filming in nearby Ventura County -- where one politician says some residents have complained about “seeing people naked” during film shoots -- the decrease has been seized on by porn industry insiders who have long claimed that efforts to regulate their industry would end up hurting Los Angeles’ pocketbook.

“We’re not surprised by this,” said Diane Duke, chief executive of the Free Speech Coalition, a film industry trade group. “Movie companies are beginning to look for other areas,” outside the San Fernando Valley, the longtime home base for most of the industry.

Duke said that Measure B, the ordinance passed by Los Angeles voters in November mandating condom use during film shoots, has created difficulties for the industry because most consumers want to see scenes without condoms. She added that many film companies are simply deferring production, waiting for the results of a lawsuit expected to be heard in U.S. District Court challenging the measure on free speech grounds. The new law also requires studios to apply to Los Angeles County for health permits.

Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which like many other public health groups has strongly advocated the restrictions, said that porn studios in Los Angeles simply need to accept the vote.

The industry’s prediction of a filming exodus that would create a deep economic hole was “heard by the voters in L.A. County, and 57 percent voted for Measure B.” Weinstein said. “We live in a democracy.”

Weinstein added that there was no evidence the industry has started filming elsewhere, nor was their evidence that nearby states such as Nevada were keen to allow X-rated filming.

But parts of Ventura County are already grappling with an increase in porn film permits since the Los Angeles law took effect, said Linda Parks, a Ventura County supervisor. Parks said residents of a neighborhood she represents near Thousand Oaks are upset because companies from Los Angeles have started shooting and “people are hearing moans and groans and seeing naked people.”

The supervisor said she is planning to introduce legislation modeled on Measure B -- and a similar law in Simi Valley -- in an effort to regulate porn filming in her county.

State Assemblyman Isadore Hall (D-Compton) has proposed an Assembly bill similar to Measure B that would cover all of California.

The decline in permits was first reported by the Daily News of Los Angeles.

Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema gets $333,000 in campaign contributions

OK, they are not bribes, they officially are campaign contributions, but for the man on the street it's hard to see the difference.

And of course people who give suitcases full of money to Congressmen, expect something in return for their cash.

U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema recently sponsored a $5 billion dollar corporate welfare program for corporations which make solar cells. I am sure she will say it wasn't a result of the campaign contributions she receive from the solar industry. But the rest of us have our questions.

Last but not least Kyrsten Sinema when she was a member of the Arizona State Legislator sponsored a bill which would have slapped a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana in an attempt to flush the will of the people down the toilet who voted for Prop 203 which legalized medical marijuana in Arizona.

Source

Sinema, Barber flex fundraising muscle

By Ronald J. Hansen and Rebekah L. Sanders The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Apr 17, 2013 3:51 PM

Though she is only a freshman on Capitol Hill, U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema has quickly established herself as one of the more prolific fundraisers in Congress.

Sinema, a Phoenix Democrat, collected $333,000 between January and March and ranked 55th among all incumbents in the House. Her haul wasn’t far behind the $345,000 raised by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Posting an impressive fundraising total in the beginning of an off-election year could help Sinema ward off potential challengers to her toss-up seat — or at least intimidate them. Two fellow Arizona Democrats, Reps. Ron Barber of southern Arizona and Ann Kirkpatrick of northern Arizona, were close behind in total fundraising, reflecting the importance of campaign cash for the three incumbents who took narrow victories last year.

Barber raised $297,000 and Kirkpatrick $314,000.

By contrast, Reps. Trent Franks of Glendale and Paul Gosar of Prescott, two Republicans holding among the safest conservative seats in the country, raised less than $100,000 combined. Both ranked near the bottom of fundraisers among incumbents, Federal Election Commission records show.

“The first quarter fundraising shows that Kirkpatrick, Barber and Sinema are taking their re-elections seriously,” said Nathan Gonzales, deputy editor of the non-partisan Rothenberg Political Report, based in Washington, D.C. “If you raise a lot of money early, it does give challengers pause. But I don’t think at this early stage potential challengers look at a fundraising number and think, ‘It’s too big, and there’s not enough time to get there.’ ”

“By the time we get to next summer and fall,” Gonzales added, when the election cycle will be at its peak, “both sides will be dumping money in.”

Among potential challengers to Sinema, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Wendy Rogers, a Tempe Republican, raised $103,000 in the first quarter. Rogers’ total was among the highest in the country among non-incumbents. Sinema represents parts of Phoenix, Tempe, Mesa, Chandler, Paradise Valley and Scottsdale.

Rogers, who has begun sending e-mails touting her campaign bid, ran in the district last year, as did Vernon Parker and Martin Sepulveda. Parker, who won the Republican primary and lost to Sinema in November, raised $11,000. Sepulveda took in 70 cents.

Republicans in Barber’s district appear to be pinning their hopes on retired Air Force Col. Martha McSally. Barber barely scraped by her in November, but easily raised more cash than McSally in the first quarter. McSally reported $8,400 in contributions, half of which came from a Georgia-based GOP PAC.

Barber’s district includes part of Tucson and all of Cochise County near the U.S.-Mexico border.

In recent months, McSally has appeared on national news shows, sent out e-mails from her campaign account and visited political groups in the district, sending signals that she will run again, but she has declined to make it official.

“If we see a couple more quarters from McSally with that showing, there will be concern on the Republican side,” Gonzales said. But “for someone like McSally who just got off the campaign trail, I think there’s usually a natural pause before getting things ramped up again.”

Rep. Raul Grijalva, a Democrat, raised $75,000; Rep. Ed Pastor, a Democrat, raised $90,000; Rep. Matt Salmon, a Republican, raised $94,000; and Rep. David Schweikert, a Republican, raised $172,000.

Senate filings were not yet available.

Cops are as honest as choir boys - Honest (OK my fingers are crossed)

Sheriff demotes top supervisors over relay race

By Robert Faturechi and Jack Leonard

April 17, 2013, 4:49 p.m.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca demoted three top supervisors this week in connection with an alleged cheating scam during a regional law enforcement relay race last year, officials said.

The allegations arose from the “Baker to Vegas” event – a foot race for charity that draws police agencies from several states. After that race, the event’s organizers received word that one of the contest’s faster participants was not a law enforcement employee.

It turned out that the team representing the sheriff’s Transit Services Bureau allowed someone not listed on their roster to run a portion of the race, officials said.

“What could have been in your noggin to think you could get away with something like that?” asked Chuck Foote, a retired LAPD officer who helps organize the race. “This is for law enforcement…. As far as I know he wasn’t anything.”

The event's organizers banned the team from participating this year.

Baca opened an internal probe into the matter, and this week, disciplined those involved.

Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore said five employees were disciplined, with three getting demoted – considered one of the worst reprimands next to getting fired.

“Whenever there’s deception, the sheriff believes it's inappropriate and action has to be taken,” Whitmore said. “The sheriff has always been this way and will continue to be.” [Yea, and the guilty will receive a gentle slap on the wrist as they always do!!!]

Whitmore declined to identify the officials disciplined, or say specifically what each did wrong. A sheriff’s source briefed on the matter said the three supervisors who were demoted included a commander and two captains.

Most Glendale tax dollars go to the POLICE!!!!

Glendale city finances could be nearing steep cliff

By Paul Giblin The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Apr 17, 2013 8:59 AM

The mostly new Glendale City Council is contending with a mostly old problem. The city’s financial position has been on a downward slope for years.

In an effort to offset declines in tax revenues, the state’s fifth-largest city has nearly chewed through its financial reserves while it has shed employees and cut services.

Yet, according to the city’s projections, its financial position is about to get far worse.

According to current forecasts, the city will have $3.4 million in reserve in the general fund at the end of fiscal 2014. Without serious restructuring, by 2015 the city would be $3.8 million in the red, and by 2018, the city would have a $20.3 million shortfall.

One option city bookkeepers recommend is to make $3.5 million in cuts for the fiscal year opening in July, followed by $10.8 million in reductions for 2015, and an additional $8.2 million in cuts in 2018.

The seven-member council, with its four new members, is trying to determine how to shape a budget that will keep enough police on patrol and parks in good repair.

But those goals seemed to border on unachievable during an opening series of budget workshops in recent weeks.

If all goes as scheduled, the council will offer a draft of the 2014 budget and a 10-year capital-improvement plan May 28, then authorize a final budget June 11.

Glendale’s financial experts project the city to finish the current fiscal year with an $11.4 million reserve in the general fund.

Ending with any savings, or a reserve, in 2014 requires $3.5 million in reduced spending that would be accomplished by eliminating vacant positions and related costs, Financial Services Executive Director Sherry Schurhammer told the council.

With those cuts and deeper ones recommended by staff, the city could build its reserve to nearly $20 million by fiscal 2018.

Without changes, the city’s financial position is set to become particularly grim in 2018, because that year marks the first year without revenue from a current, but temporary sales tax.

“What I want to make clear here — or hope I’m making clear — is that this ongoing structural operating deficit exists even if that sales tax does not sunset, because you’ve got this negative fund balance,” she said March 27.

The general fund is important because it’s the city’s largest operating fund and it supports the widest range of programs, she said.

The city’s financial position is headed downward because municipal spending patterns were based on prerecession tax collections, and spending was not reduced enough to keep pace as tax collections tapered off during the recession, Schurhammer said.

Most city departments have reduced spending by letting vacant positions remain unfilled in recent years, but those efforts aren’t enough to balance the books, she said.

The heads of most municipal departments told council members that staffing cuts already have cut into their programs.

Acting Police Chief Debby Black and Fire Chief Mark Burdick told council members that they have run out of ways to cover the staffing cuts by adjusting employees’ work schedules and assignments. Both departments need more employees, they said.

Likewise, the number of positions in the Community and Economic Development Department has fallen from 78.5 in 2009 to 39.8 this year, according to city records. Projections call for the department to lose three more positions next year.

Yet the city’s economic development officials are handling more business prospects than they have in years, Executive Director Brian Friedman said.

In addition to anticipated budget expenses across the city, council members are expected to consider an array of new expenses in coming weeks. Among them:

Payments to the potential new owners of the Phoenix Coyotes or a separate management firm to operate Jobing.com Arena. Next year’s budget assumes the city could pay an arena manager $6.5 million.

Funding air-traffic controllers at Glendale Municipal Airport beginning in June when the federal government discontinues the service.

Securing permanent parking and perhaps even building a parking garage around University of Phoenix Stadium.

Possible pay raises or cost-of-living adjustments for city employees, whose pay has been frozen for years.

Union contract prevents corrupt cops from being fired

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Chicago police officer escapes discipline despite inspector general's findings

Probe finds that contract prohibits reprimand

By Bill Ruthhart, Chicago Tribune reporter

8:58 p.m. CDT, April 17, 2013

The Chicago Police Department declined to discipline an officer who improperly used the job to generate business for a friend's firm, according to a quarterly report released Wednesday by the city's inspector general.

The Police Department agreed there was "substantial probability" that the officer acted improperly but said its contract with the union prevented it from taking action, according to the report.

Inspector General Joseph Ferguson said his investigators determined that while serving court summonses for building violations, the officer sought to drum up business for a friend whose company offered to resolve such violations.

The officer visited homes with "an official city summons in one hand" and a "friend's business card in the other," according to the report. The report did not identify the officer.

Ferguson's office, which also accused the officer of lying to investigators, recommended that the officer be fired.

The Police Department said its contract with the Fraternal Order of Police prevented it from disciplining the officer in a noncriminal case because any complaint — even one from the inspector general — must be filed by a "firsthand witness," according to the report. The city's Law Department agreed.

"The underlying issue here is that the city's Law Department and Police Department do not differentiate between an inspector general's investigation and a general complaint from a layperson," said Jonathan Davey, a spokesman for Ferguson.

Law Department spokesman Roderick Drew said the city recommended no action against the officer because Ferguson did not conduct his investigation properly and any discipline could have led to a union grievance or unfair labor practice complaint.

Drew said Ferguson's office should have presented the accusations to the officer in writing before investigators conducted a formal interview.

Davey declined to respond to the reasons given by Drew for not taking action against the officer.

The case is the latest example of the inspector general's reach being thwarted.

The Illinois Supreme Court ruled unanimously last month that Ferguson cannot independently go to court to enforce a subpoena for documents from Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration. Ferguson said he has asked the mayor to turn over documents despite the ruling but that Emanuel has not responded.

"The IG has the same power and capability that the state IG and federal IGs have," Emanuel said Wednesday. "I don't think they're not capable of doing their job, and I think he's a good IG. Therefore, I think he can do his job."

When asked whether he'd reappoint Ferguson when his term is up at the end of November, Emanuel demurred.

"I have plenty of time," he said. "I have a couple other appointments I'm going to be working on between now and then."

bruthhart@tribune.com

Twitter @BillRuthhart

Drunk DPS piggy busted at Country Thunder

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DPS officer arrested, accused of disorderly conduct at Country Thunder

By Yihyun Jeong The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Tem Tue Apr 16, 2013 12:06 PM

A Department of Public Safety officer was arrested Saturday on suspicion of disorderly conduct at Country Thunder, according to the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office.

Just before 10 p.m., the Sheriff’s Office was called to Moonshine Willy’s, a bar inside Country Thunder, for a male patron who was being disorderly and refused to leave the women’s restroom area, Tamra Ingersoll, a public information officer for the Sheriff’s Office said.

Deputies noticed obvious signs of alcohol intoxication as they approached Steven Svestka, 41, who was still in the area of the women’s restroom, Ingersoll said.

Svestka is believed to have walked into patrons, knocking them down, as he was being led out of the bar, Ingersoll said.

Deputies asked Svestka to leave the area and when he refused, deputies were forced to escort him from the property at the request of the bar employees, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

Outside, the Sheriff’s Office said Svestka became enraged and assumed a combative posture with the deputies, as they tried to talk to him. Svestka refused to comply and was placed into handcuffs.

Svetska was taken to the Pinal County Adult Detention Center, where he was booked on suspicion of one count each of disorderly conduct and hindering a government operation.

DPS Officer Arrested for Refusing to Leave Women's Restroom

DPS Officer Arrested for Refusing to Leave Women's Restroom

By Weston Phippen Wed., Apr. 17 2013 at 4:11 PM

Pinal County Sheriff's Department

Something interesting was happening last Saturday during Country Thunder in Moonshine Willy's women's bathroom, because DPS officer Steven Svestka refused to leave it.

Pinal County Sheriff's Department received a call around 10 p.m. saying that Svestka, 41, was "being disorderly and refused to leave the women's restroom area," according to a report.

Moonshine Willy's is a "family-friendly honky-tonk" located in Florence, according to its website. It's got a full-size rodeo arena and roping dummies. When sheriff's deputies got to the bar, they noticed Svestka was pretty trashed, and after they asked him to leave, he refused.

Deputies had to escort him off the property.

But no sheriff's officer is going to bully Svestka around (c'mon, check out that Viking-looking beard), so to prove to everyone who really was calling the shots, Svestka knocked into other patrons and caused some of them to fall as deputies escorted him outside, the report says.

But now it was the sheriff's turn to get a dose of the Viking-beard fury, because after he got outside, Svestka "became enraged and assumed a combative posture."

Deputies finally cuffed Svestka, and booked him on one count of disorderly conduct and hindering a government operation.

So what was so interesting in the women's bathroom that officer Svestka refused to leave?

DPS spokesman Bart Graves says Svestka's wife was sick in the bathroom. As a good husband, Svestka might have been a little more adroit at dealing with the law, since, well, he's an officer of the law and all.

Alexander Wilson murdered by the Arizona DPS???

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A Teen's Shooting Death Was Avoidable, Even If the Cops Call It "Justified"

By Stephen Lemons Thursday, Apr 18 2013

The kid had it coming.

That's the impression conveyed by the press release from the Phoenix Police Department on the recent shooting death of 16-year-old Alexander Wilson by an Arizona Department of Public Safety officer.

Wilson was cruising the west side with his friend Will Brown, 18, in a Chevy Tahoe when the unidentified DPS officer ran the Tahoe's plate and learned the vehicle was stolen.

The officer tailed the Tahoe and "requested backups from his agency," the release states.

When the Tahoe pulled into a Chevron station, the officer followed, then got out of his patrol vehicle with an AR-15 and "positioned himself toward the front of the vehicle."

According to the release, the officer wanted "to see the occupants and to give them verbal commands until his backup could arrive."

Supposedly, the driver "did not comply and revved the vehicle's engine before putting it into gear, telling his passenger he was going to 'slam it.'"

Then the driver "drove at the officer," who fired one shot, killing Wilson.

The Tahoe crashed into a wall. The passenger fled the scene but later turned himself in to police, who eventually cut him loose with no charges.

The DPS officer is listed in the statement as the "victim" of "aggravated assault on a police officer," allowing the Phoenix PD to withhold the name of the "8-year veteran."

Why not accuse the dead kid of attempted murder while you're at it?

Sure, a car can be used as a lethal weapon. But this was a 31-year-old DPS officer wielding a semi-automatic long gun who made the decision to step "toward the front" of the Tahoe.

That's unlike any "victim" I've ever heard of, unless it's in some Monty Python skit in which a prisoner "assaults" a policeman by butting his head against the cop's billy club.

We do know the DPS officer is a white male. Both Wilson and Brown are black. But we don't know what the DPS officer could see inside the Tahoe.

One thing the DPS officer didn't see: a weapon. Both Brown and Wilson were unarmed, a fact omitted from the statement.

PPD spokesman Sergeant Trent Crump also tells me that no drugs were found in the vehicle. A toxicology report done for the autopsy will take several weeks.

The press statement notes that the teen had an "outstanding felony warrant for armed robbery."

Sounds like a bad-ass criminal on the lam, eh?

The court record tells a different story. As my colleague Weston Phippen recently reported as part of his dogged coverage of this shooting, the "armed robbery" in question occurred in 2012, a month after Wilson's 16th birthday.

Wilson approached two males in a park "with his hand in [his] waistband," threatening that "somebody's gonna get shot" and demanding the keys to one man's car and their wallets and cell phones.

In the eyes of the law, a simulated weapon is the same as an actual weapon. So when Wilson was caught, with a small amount of crack on him, he faced his first adult felony and adult misdemeanor charges.

He pleaded guilty to armed robbery and possession of drug paraphernalia. In a sentencing memorandum to the judge, Wilson's public defender discussed that Alex had "substantial mental health issues" and a "serious substance-abuse problem."

The lawyer wrote that Wilson's father "spent a substantial period in prison" and that Wilson lacked a positive male role model. He got probation, with a ton of conditions. The warrant was issued because he missed a court date.

All of this, of course, is irrelevant to the shooting. Because unlike some, I'm not willing to write off the life of a 16-year-old and say he deserved the death penalty because he was in a stolen car and previously had committed a crime.

This child of God was not expendable, as many of the online commenters to Phippen's reports on the killing maintain.

Granted, Wilson's family and friends have not done their loved one any favors by protesting at PPD headquarters wearing T-shirts that read, "Fuck the Police."

In their defense, outrage is often not politically correct or well-thought-out.

But back to the shooting itself. Phoenix cops say there's no video of it.

Some DPS cars have dash cams, and some don't. Crump says the DPS officer's did not.

Phippen checked with the Chevron station at 35th Avenue and Camelback Road, where the shooting took place. The manager told him there's a camera in the store, but it doesn't capture anything from the outside.

The clerk on duty that night didn't see anything 'til after the fact.

Leaving two witnesses: Brown and the DPS officer.

Brown told Phippen a slightly different version of events. He says Wilson didn't say "slam," but "smash," which Brown explained as slang for getting out of there fast.

He also maintains that Wilson threw the car into neutral by accident, revving it. Then the DPS officer fired.

And he says the DPS officer never activated his flashing lights.

I asked Crump whether the DPS officer had put on his lights or put a spotlight on the vehicle.

"No," he responded. "He didn't pull the car over. The driver pulled into the [Chevron] market prior to the stop. I don't know if he got his spotlight turned on."

For the sake of argument, let's say the shooting happened exactly the way the PPD says it happened.

What was the rush for the DPS officer after he ran the plate and it came back stolen?

Cops I know tell me that standard operating procedure would be to tail the car and wait for the requested backup. Why didn't he do that?

Did the officer request assistance from the Phoenix PD?

"I don't believe [the DPS] dispatcher notified Phoenix until the shooting occurred," Crump told me.

And while we're at it, why is a highway patrolman policing the city of Phoenix? Sure, the DPS has statewide authority, but . . .

Why did this DPS officer escalate the situation, particularly at a gas station?

The officer didn't know exactly who was in that car or whether they were armed. If they had been killers armed to the teeth and ready to throw down, does a firefight at a gas station really sound like a genius move?

Plus, what's the deal with the AR-15? Is that the go-to weapon of choice for cops these days?

I know they're as common as bubblegum in our heavily armed society — and I wouldn't argue against cops having them — but the streets of Phoenix are not exactly Afghanistan.

What's next? Will cops be carrying bazookas and hand grenades?

As far as the "aggravated assault" goes, I want to know whether the DPS officer was standing directly in front of the vehicle or off to the side, as the language of the press release suggests.

Indeed, Brown told Phippen that the DPS officer was aiming at them from behind a metal clothing-donation bin.

If he was not directly in front of the Tahoe, then his life was not in danger.

And if he was in front of the car, that was the officer's move, suddenly making deadly a situation that was not deadly to begin with.

For most of these questions, we'll have to await the conclusion of the PPD's criminal investigation and the internal one by the DPS.

Investigators may be able to "justify" the shooting — and much of the public will just shrug.

But was this incident avoidable?

According to what the PPD is putting out there, it certainly sounds like it was, making the death of this 16-year-old unnecessary.

Sheila Polk is a habitual liar on medical marijuana???

Source

Sheila Polk Was Wrong: 16 Medical-Pot Dispensaries Now Open in AZ and Not Being Shut Down by Feds

By Ray Stern Tue., Apr. 16 2013 at 9:05 AM

Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk said last July that the feds would shut down medical-pot dispensaries in Arizona as they opened. With 16 dispensaries now open and more on the way, she's been proved wrong.

Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk announced in dramatic fashion last July that federal authorities would shut down every medical-marijuana dispensary in Arizona "as it opens."

Polk made the bad prediction in a letter she penned and sent to the governor after getting several other county attorneys to sign it. We checked into her assertion and reported to you at the time that Polk's claim appeared to be nonsense and was, in fact, a major exaggeration of something she'd been told by a retired drug agent.

How wrong was Polk's info?

As of today, there are 16 retail shops legally selling medical marijuana under Arizona law.

That's five more than were opened in late March, when we wrote of how the dispensary industry was taking off, finally. The first, Arizona Organix of Glendale, opened in November.

Now, there are legal weed stores for Arizona's roughly 40,000 qualified patients in Glendale, Phoenix, Mesa, Eloy, Wickenburg, Quartzsite, Globe, and many other towns and cities.

An additional 29 other shops are nearing their final inspection process, records from the Arizona Department of Health Services show, meaning those places will likely be open in a matter of weeks.

Another 25 would-be shops have requested dispensary applications but have not yet asked for inspections by DHS, the April 12 records show.

The lottery held last year by DHS granted 99 businesses the right to apply to open a dispensary in pre-planned geographic areas around the state.

Would-be pot-shop operators who won one of those "CHAA" areas in the lottery must request an inspection for their stores by DHS by June 8. Those who fail to do this will not be able to open a dispensary in the foreseeable future, and those "CHAAs" will go dark -- for a while, anyway.

Meanwhile, many "unauthorized" dispensaries, a.k.a. cannabis clubs, seem to be operating without much interference from authorities. Members of the Regulated Dispensaries of Arizona Association, have been urging law enforcement agencies to shut down the clubs, which provide marijuana for patients but aren't overseen by the state DHS. Patients may decide the issue by choosing to shop only at state-authorized dispensaries -- especially if the authorized shops can price their product more competitively.

So, Polk was wrong. Which isn't surprising considering that she exaggerated the quality of her information.

Arizona U.S. Attorney John Leonardo did not shut these legal Arizona dispensaries down as soon as they opened. Apparently, he has no imminent plans to do so.

Whether the feds ultimately do shut down Arizona's burgeoning dispensary industry is still an open question.

For now, with 16 dispensaries and many more on the way, the industry is beginning to bloom.

Life in prison for selling a few kilos of weed???

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UPS Driver From Chandler Found Guilty of Delivering Thousands of Pounds of Weed

By Matthew Hendley Tue., Apr. 9 2013 at 10:24 AM

What can brown do for you? Transport thousands of pounds of weed for your drug-trafficking organization -- that is, if Chandler resident Robert Gene White was your UPS driver.

White, 45, was convicted in federal court of several charges for helping drug traffickers get their product across the country through the UPS delivery system.

According to information provided by the U.S. Attorney's Office, federal authorities found out in "Operation Green Parcels" that a drug-trafficking organization was getting various drugs into the country from Mexico via backpackers.

The substances, mostly marijuana, would be repackaged and dropped off to White, who strategically introduced the packages to the UPS mail stream.

White helped out on the receiving end, too, as the buyers would send money for the shipments -- between $20,000 and $30,000 -- to real addresses, so they would end up on White's delivery route, but to fake suite numbers, so he would know it was the cash.

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, White shipped between 200 and 300 pounds of marijuana per week, while taking in as much as $50 per pound for his services -- thus making as much as $15,000 in one week.

Another man, 61-year-old Tempe resident Nadunt Chibeast, was convicted in the case for helping the drug traffickers. His role mostly was money laundering, as the dirty money would filter through his bank accounts before he physically handed it over to the traffickers, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

The two men face a maximum sentence of life in prison for drug-trafficking convictions alone, which doesn't include their money-laundering convictions. The men are due to be sentenced on July 8.

It's not rape if you have a gun and a badge???

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New Orleans officer booked with forcible rape

Associated Press Thu Apr 18, 2013 8:51 AM

NEW ORLEANS — A New Orleans police officer has been arrested and booked with the alleged forcible rape of a 15 year-old girl.

Police spokeswoman Remi Braden says 42-year-old Desmond Pratt was also booked on charges of sexual battery.

Braden says Pratt was placed on emergency suspension without pay following his arrest early Thursday morning.

Pratt has been with the department since 1997 and was at one point a member of the Community Public Housing Force.

It was unclear whether Pratt has an attorney.

Mayor Scott Smith wants more drunks in Mesa???

Usually it is the other way around, the prudes on city councils attempt to run the bars out of town.

Source

Bar-less hotel idea next to stadium catches flak from Mesa council

By Gary Nelson The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Apr 18, 2013 4:00 PM

A hotel next to the new Chicago Cubs stadium is on hold until the full City Council can decide whether it’s willing to accept one without a bar.

The lack of drinking and dining amenities in the proposed Marriott Springhill Suites appeared to be the main stumbling block Monday as the council, with only four members on hand, hashed out the project.

Mesa-based Sunridge Properties Inc. announced last month its intent to open the first property in the “Wrigleyville” commercial area between the stadium and Riverview Park.

But at the time, some council members wondered why Sunridge was proposing a limited-service facility.

The reason, Scott McAllister told them Monday, is money.

McAllister, a vice president for lodging development for Marriott, came from Bethesda, Md., to explain his company’s rationale.

He said Marriott has developed more than 4,000 hotels worldwide over 80 years and does extensive research before deciding which of its 18 brands will be built in any particular location.

In fact, he said, Marriott has previously looked at, and rejected, other sites in Mesa.

But Wrigleyville is a great spot for a Springhill Suites, he said, because the brand offers free breakfasts and large suites that can accommodate families visiting for sports events.

“Wrigleyville is a game-changer,” he said. “We all want the same thing. We all want to make the most amount of money at the end of the day. And Springhill Suites is that brand.”

But, he said, only about 10 percent of Marriott’s 300-plus Springhill Suites properties have bars, and those properties typically are “in the middle of nowhere.”

It doesn’t make economic sense, he said, to put a bar in the Wrigleyville property when guests can walk to next-door restaurants.

No announcements have been made regarding the Chicago-style restaurants that Mesa and the Cubs hope to attract, but Mayor Scott Smith said Monday that Marriott’s announcement has spurred recent interest from restaurant companies.

Councilman Dennis Kavanaugh pressed McAllister and Sunridge CEO Paul Welker on the issue, saying some limited-service hotels do have bars. “I don’t think it’s a foreign concept to have a bar as part of the amenities package when the hotel opens here,” he said.

McAllister rebuffed Kavanaugh’s arguments. “This is an economic decision,” he said. “It does not make economic sense to put a bar in, and that’s our position.”

Welker said his company operates a Springhill Suites next to Chase Field in downtown Phoenix and that hotel does not have a bar. If there is future demand for a bar in the Mesa hotel, he said, one can be added.

When the council was first briefed on the project in March, some members requested above-average architecture to match the expected ambience of what will be Mesa’s premier tourist destination.

Welker said Monday that has been addressed with an urban-flavored design that features lots of brick, stone and steelwork. The enhanced design, he said, will add considerably to the normal cost of a 100-room hotel.

“I appreciate the improvement in design,” Kavanaugh said. “It is really coming along very well.”

Smith and Vice Mayor Alex Finter seemed generally favorable to the Marriott proposal Monday, and Councilman Dave Richins said he is not interested in micromanaging the business decisions of companies that will invest in Wrigleyville.

According to a proposed memorandum of understanding with Sunridge, Mesa will sell the hotel site for $250,000. The council was scheduled to vote on the agreement Monday, but Smith delayed the vote because council members Dina Higgins, Scott Somers and Chris Glover were absent for the study-session discussion.

The hotel deal also represents a change in the approach to developing Wrigleyville: Mesa has now agreed to take the lead on hotel projects, and the Cubs will oversee other development.

Cop pulls gun on McDonald's customer for taking too long in line????

Source

Posted: 4:39 p.m. Wednesday, April 17, 2013

DeKalb cop arrested for alleged assault at McDonald’s

By Alexis Stevens

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A sergeant with the DeKalb County police department was arrested Wednesday morning following an alleged assault against a teenager at a McDonald’s, according to police.

Scott A. Biumi, 48, of Cumming, was charged with aggravated assault for the April 9 incident at the McDonald’s on Old Atlanta Road, the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office said.

Biumi was in the drive-through of the restaurant at 10:30 p.m. when he allegedly became upset with another customer, according to police.

“He exited his car, and following a verbal exchange with the customer, Biumi drew a gun and pointed it at the victim,” Deputy Courtney Spriggs with the Forsyth sheriff’s office said in an emailed statement.

Video footage from McDonald’s and released by the sheriff’s office shows a man, identified as Biumi, lunging into a pickup truck at the drive-through window. The alleged teenage victim, Ryan Mash, told Channel 2 Action News that Biumi got mad because it was taking too long to get his order.

“He grabbed me on my right shoulder and pinned me against my driver’s seat, and the next thing I know, I have a gun in my face,” Mash told Channel 2. “He goes, ‘Do you know who you’re messing with,’ and ‘You shouldn’t be holding up the line’ and all this and that.”

While investigating the incident, deputies determined Biumi was employed as a detective sergeant with DeKalb police, Spriggs said. At the time of the alleged incident, Biumi was driving a department-issued, unmarked Chevrolet and had a department gold star badge on his belt.

Biumi’s bond was set at $22,000 and he was in the process of bonding out of the Forsyth County jail Wednesday afternoon, Spriggs said. Biumi’s court date was set for May 23.

At an afternoon press conference, DeKalb County police Chief Cedric Alexander said he is awaiting the outcome of the Forsyth County investigation, but does not tolerate this type of behavior.

Source

Frustrated by delay, Georgia cop allegedly pulled gun in McDonald’s drive-thru line

By Michael Walsh / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Thursday, April 18, 2013, 3:17 PM

Food, folks and fun? More like gall, grouch and gun.

A young Georgia man was not "lovin' it" when a hold up in the drive-thru lane at McDonald's allegedly led to an armed holdup with an off-duty officer Tuesday night.

Student Ryan Mash, 18, was waiting for his order at the drive-thru window of a Forsyth County McDonald's when he was taken by surprise — and it was not a Happy Meal toy.

It was a gun allegedly brandished by Sgt. Scott Biumi, 48, a member of the DeKalb County Police Department for more than 20 years, authorities suspect.

Biumi apparently grew frustrated that the fast food experience was not faster, so he stepped out of his car and yelled, "Stop holding up the drive-thru line," according to Mash.

Mash claims Biumi thought his sincere apology was sarcastic. Then witnesses reported hearing Biumi scream, "You don't know who you are (messing) with!"

"And that's when he pulled the gun on me," Mash said, "and kept on yelling at me for about 30 more seconds. And then walked off."

A McDonald's security camera recorded the incident.

One of Mash's friends saw that the man had a police badge on his belt. The high school students also wrote down the man's license plate number.

Forsyth County Sheriff Duane Piper linked the license plate number to Biumi and the DeKalb County Police Department. The teenagers identified Biumi from a photo lineup, and he was arrested Wednesday, reported Atlanta station WXIA.

"It's a betrayal of a trust to the public," said Piper. "We're expected to handle ourselves correctly in high-stress situations, and it's very disappointing that an officer would snap like this. It's a break in judgment that can't be excused."

Biumi was booked at the Forsyth County jail and released the same day on a $22,000 bond.

"I'm just not going to stand for any behavior that goes outside that of the scope of the law," said DeKalb County Police Chief Cedric Alexander.

He is on administrative leave with pay from his job as the investigation proceeds. Mash, however, thinks Biumi should be stripped of his gun and badge permanently.

"He shouldn't be serving in our community," Mash said, "because you never know, he could get angry at somebody for speeding, and pull a gun on him."