Homeless in Arizona

Marijuana in Chinese & Hindi

麻 - Chinese

It consists of 11 strokes if you want to look it up in a Chinese or Japanese dictionary.

गांजा/গাঁজা - Hindi

First drunk-driving conviction can cost nearly $16,000 in California

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First drunk-driving conviction can cost nearly $16,000 in California

By Jerry Hirsch

March 14, 2013, 8:32 a.m.

Beware of the $16,000 cocktail.

Just in time for St. Patrick's Day partying, the Automobile Club of Southern California has calculated that a first-offense misdemeanor DUI conviction can now cost up to $15,649 in California.

That’s up 29% from 2011.

The penalties are even higher for teenagers. The expense of an under-age-21 first-offense misdemeanor DUI is up to $22,492.

“It only takes one or two drinks to slow physical and mental skills that affect vision, steering, braking judgment and reaction time,” said the Auto Club’s Senior Researcher Steven A. Bloch. “Drivers should be aware that the California Highway Patrol and law enforcement agencies regularly use sobriety checkpoints to look for drinking drivers during heavy drinking periods, such as St. Patrick’s Day.”

A recent AAA report found that 10% of motorists admitted to driving when they thought their blood alcohol content was above the legal limit in the past year.

The Auto Club developed its cost estimate by totaling up mandated state and local fines, penalties, restitution, legal fees and increased insurance costs. The calculations do not include thousands of dollars of other potential expenses drivers might face if they lose work time for a criminal trial or to go to jail, need to pay bail or incur injury or vehicle damage from a crash they caused.

It also doesn’t include other potential drunk-driving-conviction consequences such as the risk of a civil trial or the requirement to install an ignition interlock in a vehicle.

"This is entirely preventable," Bloch said.

You think you will get a fair trial??? Don't make me laugh!!!!!

The way the system works is people are almost always grossly over charged with crimes which will send them to prison for 20+ years, and then the people are offered a plea bargain which will only send them to prison for a year if they plead guilty.

And sadly 99 percent of the people charged with crimes accept these plea bargains because they don't have the money to fight the charges, or they know if the do fight the charges and are convicted they will effectively be sent to prison for the rest of their lives.

As a Libertarian I don't think people should get free lawyers.

On the other hand the system clearly does not work and is unfair because it is too complex and confusing for a normal person to understand without the help of a lawyer. And I suspect it was intentionally designed that way to give the government the upper hand in both criminal and civil cases.

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Experts: Right to attorney is at risk as cuts hit

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Mar 16, 2013 10:01 PM

As landmark civil-rights cases go, the Gideon case doesn’t have the renown of Brown vs. Board of Education or the notoriety of Miranda, a local case that went national and led to the “right to remain silent” warning familiar to any suspect or fan of TV crime dramas.

But the impact of Gideon vs. Wainwright, published 50 years ago Monday, has fundamentally altered the American legal system in a variety of ways, according to experts. And they suggest budget crises at the state and federal level are a threat to those protections.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision of March 18, 1963, guaranteed the right to representation by an attorney in state courts for any suspect who could not afford one. It came 25 years after a ruling made the same guarantee for defendants in federal courts. It stemmed from a case involving a man accused of burglary in Florida who showed up for court without an attorney.

Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, who wrote the opinion, believed the decision was the most important he rendered in the court, said Larry Hammond, a Phoenix attorney who served as a law clerk for Black.

Hammond said the system has since fallen short of the promise the decision offered.

“I have mixed feelings about it,” Hammond said, noting the unrealistic workloads and lack of resources that tie the hands of public defenders at all levels. “It breaks my heart a little bit that we’re not better off, but I love the public defenders. What they’re doing is God’s work.”

It took awhile for Maricopa County to get on board with the notion of a public defender’s office. Two years after the decision was reached, the county Board of Supervisors paid for a division with an appointed administrator, five attorneys and a handful of investigators and staff members.

Craig Mehrens, a Phoenix attorney, went to work in the office shortly after it opened and said the variety of cases — ranging from first-degree murder to contributing to the delinquency of a minor — and staff shortages offered ample opportunity for young lawyers to hone their skills. For Mehrens, whose introduction to the legal community came through books he read, it solidified the value of a vigorous defense.

“Until you’re involved in the criminal-justice system, you have no concept how frightening it is. The public defender is the only human being that stands between that person and his going to prison or put to death. And, of course, in almost every case, the person accused has no concept of how the law works, has no idea what their rights are,” Mehrens said.

“Unfortunately, the public sees defense lawyers as thinking, ‘How do I get this guy off?’ Almost all the defense lawyers I know, they see their job as simply to make sure that person’s rights are not violated. We all know we are going to lose most of our cases.”

The office encountered problems almost from the outset. The first appointed public defender was dismissed after several years because he was alleged to have run his private practice from the public defender’s office, Mehrens said.

His successor held the position for 18 years, but he was fired by the Board of Supervisors in 1987 after he allowed attorneys in the office to testify in a court case about staffing shortages and caseloads.

Bob Storrs, a criminal-defense lawyer who began practicing in Arizona 45 years ago, said the Gideon decision also led to a host of other changes in the system.

Court-appointed lawyers conducted investigations and challenged prosecutors where a suspect might have been unwilling or unable, Storrs said. As investigations and prosecutions became more technical, those court-appointed lawyers became even more vital, he said.

“All of these kinds of things really have evolved out of Gideon. You have to look at it, and you try to make a determination and say, ‘Is this a good case? Do they have the right guy?’ It’s interviewing witnesses, getting a second opinion on the state’s experts,” Storrs said.

“Before Gideon, if they didn’t have the money to hire a lawyer, they went without a lawyer. The number of defendants that hire lawyers is still low in comparison with those that have court-appointed lawyers.”

Court-appointed attorneys accounted for about 80 percent of the lawyers in non-capital felony cases filed in Maricopa County in the last fiscal year.

Today, the system in Maricopa County relies on an administrative office that doles out cases to public defenders as well as to private attorneys who are assigned to cases as contract counsel. But time has not changed many of the issues that made Gideon such an important decision, said Paul Bender, an Arizona State University law professor and constitutional-law expert.

“In a principled way, everybody would agree, I think, that people — regardless of whether they have money or not — are entitled to an adequate defense. If public defenders are swamped the way they are, that means that it’s going to be impossible for some people to get an adequate defense. That can lead to innocent people being convicted. It also leads to plea bargains of cases that shouldn’t be plea- bargained,” he said.

“People should be concerned about that ... just as a matter of fairness and constitutional principle. It’s in everybody’s interest to have that system work well.”

On the 50th anniversary of the landmark decision, it is the notion that budget cuts are once again jeopardizing the chance for indigent suspects to receive a fair trial that concerns legal observers, particularly at the federal level, where the right to counsel was solidified by a 1938 court decision.

Last month, the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Arizona laid off 10 staff members, including six attorneys, because the budget gridlock in Washington, D.C., has led to stagnant funding while prosecution costs have increased, said Jon Sands, federal public defender for Arizona. The sequester just made that worse, he said.

And the federal budget crisis comes at a time when the focus on certain crimes, including drug smuggling, immigration-related offenses, mortgage fraud and crime on tribal lands, has led to a deluge of cases in Arizona’s federal courts. Much of that falls on the shoulders of the Public Defender’s Office.

The federal public defender opened slightly more than 12,000 cases in Arizona in the most recent fiscal year, compared with 5,500 cases in fiscal 2001.

“What this (layoff) means is that indigent defendants will not be given counsel as quickly as they have in the past; cases will not be processed as quickly,” Sands said.

Employees who remain in his office also face furloughs, as do federal prosecutors, U.S. marshals and FBI agents.

“The whole system slows down, which seems to be counterproductive to everyone’s interest in having justice delivered fairly and swiftly,” Sands said.

The federal budget cuts also will affect private attorneys appointed as counsel for indigent defendants, said David Eisenberg, Arizona’s representative for a panel of attorneys appointed through the Criminal Justice Act.

The private attorneys pay experts and other expenses associated with their clients’ defenses and submit reimbursement vouchers. Eisenberg expects delays in attorneys’ voucher reimbursements but said it should not fundamentally alter the work the defense attorneys do on behalf of their clients.

“I think the delay in paying is going to make it more difficult for lawyers to run their practices,” he said.

Right to Lawyer Can Be Empty Promise for Poor

But I think this article shows that the government courts and government criminal justice system doesn't serve the people it pretends to serve, but rather serves the government rulers who run it.

If the court and criminal justice system is impossible to navigate with out a highly paid lawyer it certainly isn't working.

And if a judge who is supposed to be unbiased can't tell people what they need to do to get a fair trial, again the system isn't working.

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Right to Lawyer Can Be Empty Promise for Poor

By ETHAN BRONNER

Published: March 15, 2013 186 Comments

ADEL, Ga. — Billy Jerome Presley spent 17 months in a Georgia jail because he did not have $2,700 for a child support payment. He had no prior jail record but also no lawyer. In Baltimore last fall, Carl Hymes, 21, was arrested on charges of shining a laser into the eyes of a police officer. Bail was set at $75,000. He had no arrest record but also no lawyer. In West Orange, N.J., last summer, Walter Bloss, 89, was served with an eviction notice from the rent-controlled apartment he had lived in for 43 years after a dispute with his landlord. He had gone to court without a lawyer.

Russell Davis, 37, was jailed three times over child support payments during court proceedings that he faced without a lawyer.

Fifty years ago, on March 18, 1963, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright that those accused of a crime have a constitutional right to a lawyer whether or not they can afford one. But as legal officials observe the anniversary of what is widely considered one of the most significant judicial declarations of equality under law, many say that the promise inherent in the Gideon ruling remains unfulfilled because so many legal needs still go unmet.

Civil matters — including legal issues like home foreclosure, job loss, spousal abuse and parental custody — were not covered by the decision. Today, many states and counties do not offer lawyers to the poor in major civil disputes, and in some criminal ones as well. Those states that do are finding that more people than ever are qualifying for such help, making it impossible to keep up with the need. The result is that even at a time when many law school graduates are without work, many Americans are without lawyers.

The Legal Services Corporation, the Congressionally financed organization that provides lawyers to the poor in civil matters, says there are more than 60 million Americans — 35 percent more than in 2005 — who qualify for its services. But it calculates that 80 percent of the legal needs of the poor go unmet. In state after state, according to a survey of trial judges, more people are now representing themselves in court and they are failing to present necessary evidence, committing procedural errors and poorly examining witnesses, all while new lawyers remain unemployed.

“Some of our most essential rights — those involving our families, our homes, our livelihoods — are the least protected,” Chief Justice Wallace B. Jefferson of the Texas Supreme Court, said in a recent speech at New York University. He noted that a family of four earning $30,000 annually does not qualify for legal aid in many states.

James J. Sandman, president of the Legal Services Corporation, said, “Most Americans don’t realize that you can have your home taken away, your children taken away and you can be a victim of domestic violence but you have no constitutional right to a lawyer to protect you.”

According to the World Justice Project, a nonprofit group promoting the rule of law that got its start through the American Bar Association, the United States ranks 66th out of 98 countries in access to and affordability of civil legal services.

“In most countries, equality before the law means equality between those of high and low income,” remarked Earl Johnson Jr., a retired justice of the California Court of Appeal. “In this country for some reason we are concerned more with individuals versus government.”

With law school graduates hurting for work, it may appear that there is a glut of lawyers. But many experts say that is a misunderstanding.

“We don’t have an excess of lawyers,” said Martin Guggenheim, a law professor at New York University. “What we have is a miserable fit. In many areas like family and housing law, there is simply no private bar to go to. You couldn’t find a lawyer to help you even if you had the money because there isn’t a dime to be made in those cases.”

Even in situations where an individual is up against a state prosecutor and jail may result, not every jurisdiction provides lawyers to the defendants. In Georgia, those charged with failing to pay child support face a prosecutor and jail but are not supplied with a lawyer.

Mr. Presley lost his job in the recession and fell way behind on support payments for his four children. In 2011, he was jailed after a court proceeding without a lawyer in which he said he could not pay what he owed. He was brought back to court, shackled, every month or two. Each time, he said he still could not pay. Each time, he was sent back.

A year later, he contacted a public defender who handles only criminal cases but who sent his case to the Southern Center for Human Rights. Atteeyah Hollie, a lawyer there, got him released that same day, helped him find work and set up a payment plan.

An important service lawyers can provide defendants like Mr. Presley is knowledge of what courts want — receipts of medical treatment, evidence of a job search, bank account statements. On their own, many people misstep when facing a judge.

In Adel, Ga., a town of 5,000, child support court meets monthly. On a recent morning, a dozen men in shackles and jail uniforms faced Chuck Reddick, a state prosecutor, on their second or third round in court.

“In most cases, they simply can’t pay,” said John P. Daughtrey, who was sheriff here until losing an election in November. “An attorney could explain to the judge why jail is not the solution and how to fix it. As a sheriff, I want criminals in my jail, not a debtor’s prison.”

Mr. Reddick and Judge Carson Dane Perkins of Cook County Superior Court in Adel both said they would welcome lawyers for defendants because it would make the process clearer and smoother.

“If we could extend the right to a lawyer to civil procedures where you face a loss of liberty, that would be good,” Judge Perkins said. “Lawyers can get affidavits from employers and help make cases for those who can’t pay.”

The Southern Center for Human Rights has filed a class-action suit seeking a guarantee of a lawyer for such cases in Georgia. Sarah Geraghty, a lawyer there, said the center had received thousands of calls from Georgians facing child support hearings. Among them was Russell Davis, a Navy veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder who was jailed three times and lost his apartment and car while in jail.

Georgia also offers a case study on the mismatch between lawyers and clients at a time when each needs the other. According to the Legal Services Corporation, 70 percent of the state’s lawyers are in the Atlanta area, while 70 percent of the poor live outside it. There are six counties without a lawyer and dozens with only two or three.

Mr. Bloss, who faced eviction in New Jersey, went to legal services, which won for him the right to stay in his apartment while his case is under appeal.

In Baltimore, where Mr. Hymes was accused of shining a laser at a police officer and assigned bail of $75,000, first bail hearings do not include a lawyer. Tens of thousands are brought through Central Booking every year, facing a commissioner through a glass partition, who determines whether to release the detainee on his own recognizance or assign bail and at what level.

“For the poor, bail is a jail sentence,” said Douglas L. Colbert, a law professor at the University of Maryland. A study he conducted on 4,000 bail cases of nonviolent offenders found that two and a half times as many detainees were released on their own recognizance and bail was set at a far more affordable level if a lawyer was at the hearing.

Mr. Hymes was relatively lucky. When he eventually faced a judge with the help of a public defender, bail was slashed to $200 cash. It took his family a few weeks to pay. A student of Mr. Colbert’s, Iten Naguib, acted as an intermediary.

“If there had been an attorney involved at the initial stages,” Ms. Naguib said, “Mr. Hymes would likely have been released much earlier.”

Strikers bills - how our elected officials prevent us from knowing what they are doing.

OK, I guess if you spend 20 hours a day monitoring these striker bills you could figure out what the crooks in the Arizona legislator are doing, but for most of us that takes too much time.

Source

It’s 'striker' season at the Capitol

By Alia Beard Rau The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Mar 16, 2013 10:18 PM

Watch out, it’s striker season.

No, that’s not some obscure reference to spring training or a new term for haboobs, but a favorite subversive tactic of Arizona lawmakers at the Capitol this time of year.

About halfway through the legislative session, as proposed bills get bogged down in the politics or lawmakers come up with a bold new idea they neglected to introduce in January, they begin to file what are called strike-everything, or “striker,” amendments.

Lawmakers take a bill that offers only a technical change or that they don’t mind sacrificing and propose an amendment that strikes out all the existing language and replaces it with an entirely different proposal.

The motivation varies. Strikers can revive an idea that was voted down in its original bill form, introduce an entirely new idea or allow a controversial idea to skip parts of the public-hearing process.

House Minority Leader Chad Campbell, D-Phoenix, is critical of the tactic.

“One strike-everything is one too many,” he said. “I don’t think it’s an appropriate way to do business. It’s not a transparent process.” [Well then why haven't you introduced a bill to out law this practice??? Probably because you like this tactic because it keeps the people you pretend to represent from knowing what you are doing!!!!]

But Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Glendale, said the tool has value, such as in a situation where a particular committee chairman refuses to hear a bill that’s vital to a lawmaker’s constituents. [Well if that is the case then the system is NOT working and needs to be change!!!]

Striking that bill for another that’s been past the chairman can keep the bill alive.

“It’s kind of like attorneys. You don’t always like them until you need one,” she said. “In some cases, it’s not fair that one person can block an important bill. A striker allows you to get around that person and get a fair hearing.” [Again, if that is the case then the system is NOT working and needs to be change!!!]

Lawmakers introduce dozens of strikers each year.

This year, 75 have already been approved, covering topics that include boosting campaign contributions, establishing a Cowboy Day, creating tax incentives for employers and tax exclusions for religious institutions, and banning goldfish prizes at school fairs.

The Cowboy Day striker appears to be a case of timing as opposed to trying to avoid a public hearing or certain committee. [What rubbish!!! That is the whole purpose of these "striker bills", to keep the public from hearing about the bills] Senate Bill 1139 started out proposing technical changes to existing state law regulating the sending of unsolicited goods.

At some point after the session deadline for introducing new bills, Republican lawmakers decided they wanted legislation honoring cowboys as a symbol of Arizona’s culture.

Sen. Gail Griffin, R-Hereford, allowed a striker to SB 1139 declaring the fourth Saturday of July as Cowboy Day during a Senate Government and Environment Committee hearing.

The revised bill passed that committee, the full Senate and then the House Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Committee. It still needs a final vote of the full House before going to the governor.

If the trend follows prior sessions, hundreds more strikers will be introduced over the next month. All but two striker bills already approved belong to Republicans.

So far, nothing enormously controversial has emerged. But that’s not always the case.

Last year, Sen. Kimberly Yee, R-Phoenix, then a state representative, and Sen. Steve Yarbrough, R-Chandler, replaced a House bill addressing attorney fees with a striker making numerous changes to state abortion laws.

They added the striker after the more mundane bill had already passed the House Government Committee and the full House, meaning the more controversial abortion bill only had a public hearing in the Senate instead of both chambers.

Strike-everything amendments

Arizona lawmakers each session propose dozens of strike-everything, or "striker," amendments. The amendments propose to replace all of the wording in an unrelated bill with an entirely different proposal. This year, lawmakers have already approved 75 strikers. Here are some of them:

Tax credits: Converted House Bill 2037 from making technical corrections to malpractice law to a proposal to allow school tax-credit money be spent on certain sports programs.

Animal prizes: Converted HB 2121 from funding security barriers at the Capitol to banning live-animal prizes.

Tax incentives: Converted HB 2264 from making technical corrections to mobile-home-park law to creating tax benefits for businesses that create new jobs and for the self-employed.

Drones: Converted HB 2269 from a technical correction on liquor-supplier law to a proposal creating a study committee on the use of drones.

HOAs: Converted HB 2371 from a technical correction on construction materials to proposing numerous changes to homeowners-association regulations, including limiting local government ability to require planned communities, allowing HOAs to vote by e-mail and prohibiting HOAs from charging extra fees to renters.

Special education: Converted HB 2395 from a technical correction on medical-malpractice laws to proposing limits on civil lawsuits based on negligence by private schools that provide special-education services.

Religious exemption: Converted HB 2446 from a technical correction on limited partnership laws to proposing property-tax exemptions for religious institutions.

Contribution limits: Converted HB 2593 from technical correction on veterans issues to proposing an increase on campaign-contribution limits.

Early ballots: Converted Senate Bill 1003 from a technical correction on agricultural regulations to proposing restrictions on who can return an early ballot for another person.

Cowboy Day: Converted SB 1139 from a technical correction on unsolicited merchandise to a proposal to make the fourth Saturday of July Cowboy Day.

Adoption subsidies: Converted SB 1062 from a technical correction on boating laws to proposing expanded behavioral-health services for adoptees.

Independent expenditures: Converted SB 1336 from regulating the election commission to a proposal to make it a felony to violate independent-expenditure regulations.

Justice Department wins the Rosemary Award - Again

The Rosemary Award, a distinction given by the National Security Archive annually to a public agency whose performance on transparency and openness is downright dismal.

The Rosemary Award is named after Rose Mary Woods, secretary to President Richard Nixon. Woods who famously erased a crucial 18 minutes of White House tapes.

Source

Posted at 08:00 AM ET, 03/15/2013

Justice Department ‘wins’ award for secrecy

By Emily Heil

In the category of dubious achievements, the Justice Department is now a back-to-back winner of the Rosemary Award, a distinction given by the National Security Archive annually to a public agency whose performance on transparency and openness is downright dismal.

Congrats, or something to the Justice Department (as our colleagues at The Fix say to the winners of their Worst Week in Washington)!

To merit the eighth-annual award, Justice obstructed and cloaked its doings in secrecy, the Archive says, much like the award’s namesake, Rose Mary Woods, secretary to President Richard Nixon. Woods famously erased a crucial 18 minutes of White House tapes (an innocent mistake, she claimed, that accidentally happened when she stretched to answer a phone call).

Justice “clinched the intensely competitive award “ just this week with its performance at a Senate hearing in which an official refused to answer questions about litigation that could undermine an open-government law Congress adopted in 2007 to speed up requests from the public filed under the Freedom of Information Act.

And Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy might have tipped the scales in the Rosemary sweepstakes when got in this zing chiding Justice for slow-walking its rewrite of its own FOIA policies to comply with the 2007 law:

“It’s been five years since we changed the law,” Leahy said. “It took me less time to get through law school.”

Suburban Chicago officer charged in fatal crash

And of course it's more of the old "Do as I say, not as I do" coming from our government masters.

Source

Suburban Chicago officer charged in fatal crash

Associated Press Sun Mar 17, 2013 2:16 PM

CHICAGO -- A suburban Chicago police officer accused of killing two people in a wrong-way collision on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive appeared briefly in court Sunday and a judge set bail at $500,000.

During the hearing, prosecutors said Terrell Garrett’s blood alcohol content after Friday’s wreck was measured at 0.184, which is more than twice the legal limit of 0.08. The North Chicago police officer is charged with two counts each of reckless homicide and aggravated driving under the influence of alcohol.

Garrett, 35, was in serious condition at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center and didn’t attend the hearing.

Witnesses said Garrett’s car was driving at least 60 mph as it sped in the wrong direction on the scenic highway, where the speed limit is 45 mph, according to prosecutors. The collision totaled both vehicles and killed 25-year-old Joaquin Garcia and his friend Fabian Torres, 27.

Relatives of the men said they couldn’t believe the judge granted bond for Garrett, who wasn’t on duty at the time of the crash.

“I believe he should be in jail,” Julian Garcia, Joaquin Garcia’s uncle, told the Chicago-Sun Times.

Garcia’s mother, Cecilia Garcia, told the newspaper that learning that the man suspected of causing a crash that killed her son makes things “10 times worse” for her.

“He’s supposed to be protecting us,” she told the paper.

Joaquin Garcia was studying to be a surgical technician at Malcolm X College in Chicago and was set to graduate in May, according to family members. Torres was a first-year student at DePaul University.

“We were supposed to be going to my brother’s graduation in a month,” said his sister, who is also named Cecilia. “Now, we’re planning his funeral.”

Garrett, who has been relieved of his police powers, has been placed on administrative leave from his job in North Chicago.

Bail set at $500K for cop charged in Lake Shore Drive double fatal

Bail set at $500K for cop charged in Lake Shore Drive double fatal

By Mitch Smith and Dawn Rhodes Tribune reporters

10:45 p.m. CDT, March 17, 2013

A judge set bail at $500,000 Sunday for a North Chicago police officer accused of causing the deaths of two men, driving drunk and going the wrong way on Lake Shore Drive last week.

Relatives of both victims said that bail was too low and that they believed the officer received preferential treatment.

Officer Terrell Garrett remained hospitalized Sunday and did not appear in court. If Garrett posts bond, Cook County Judge James Brown ordered that he not consume alcohol or possess a firearm. He must also wear an electronic monitor.

"He will wear that monitor so that I can prevent him from driving while this case is pending," Brown said.

Garrett, 35, told authorities he had been drinking to celebrate his birthday, said Assistant State's Attorney Michael Rusch. Garrett refused a DUI kit at the hospital, Rusch said, but a blood draw revealed a blood-alcohol content of 0.184, more than twice the legal limit of 0.08.

The families of both victims, Fabian Torres and Joaquin Garcia, said at the courthouse they believed that bail should have been denied and that Garrett was getting special treatment because he is a police officer.

Garcia expected to graduate from Malcolm X College in May. "I was going to have a big party and now I'm planning his funeral,'' said his mother, Cecilia Garcia.

Torres' mother, Asuncion Torres, also expressed grief and anger.

"He's getting a slap on the wrist because he's a police officer," Torres said.

Garrett, who lives in Zion, has been a police officer since 2008. The officer's attorney, Richard F. Blass, said Garrett is the custodial parent of his 2-year-old daughter.

The crash occurred about 4 a.m. Friday after Garrett drove his silver Chevy Trailblazer north for a mile in Lake Shore Drive's southbound lanes, police and prosecutors said. Torres, 27, of the 2800 block of South Avers Avenue, and Garcia, 25, of the 2200 block of West 18th Place, were pronounced dead at the crash scene between Diversey Parkway and Belmont Avenue.

Garrett faces two felony counts of reckless homicide and two felony counts of aggravated driving under the influence. He also faces misdemeanor DUI charges and a traffic charge for driving the wrong way. His next court date is Monday.

He has been put on administrative leave by the North Chicago Police Department, according to a news release.

Tribune reporter Carlos Sadovi contributed.

mitsmith@tribune.com

cdrhodes@tribune.com

$4 million in marijuana found on Santa Barbara beach

$4 million in marijuana found on Santa Barbara beach

March 17, 2013 | 11:14 pm

Santa Barbara County officials discovered $4-million worth of marijuana next to a boat Sunday at Arroyo Camada Beach.

Officials said they found an estimated 2,000 pounds of marijuana wrapped in plastic bags on the beach.

Santa Barbara County sheriff's officials "located an apparently abandoned 30-foot “Panga” style boat with two outboard engines and 20+ fuel containers on board," the department said in a news release. "Sheriff’s detectives located a significant amount of evidence that was consistent with marijuana smuggling activities, including trash and debris that was strewn about the beach and nearby coastal access trails."

Officials are now testing the drugs and other evidence found at the scene.

This is the second big pot discovery this month in Santa Barbara County.

Earlier this month, marijuana with an estimated value of at least $1 million was discovered Thursday near a boat that had crashed on a beach near Vandenberg Air Force Base.

The marijuana was found near an overturned boat north of Wall Beach and was removed by Homeland Security investigators.

NYC plan would keep tobacco products out of sight

If you ask me this silly law also sounds like it violates the First Amendment!!!

Source

NYC plan would keep tobacco products out of sight

Associated Press Mon Mar 18, 2013 1:21 PM

NEW YORK — A new proposal would require New York City retailers to keep tobacco products out of sight under a proposal aimed at reducing the youth smoking rate, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday.

The legislation would require stores to keep tobacco products in cabinets, drawers, under the counter, behind a curtain or in other concealed spots. They could only be visible when an adult is making a purchase or during restocking.

Bloomberg has backed a number of public health measures, including a crackdown on extra-large sizes of sugary drinks and adding calorie counts to menus. A judge blocked the drinks ban but the city is appealing.

Bloomberg said similar prohibitions on displays have been enacted in other countries, including Iceland, Canada, England and Ireland.

“Such displays suggest that smoking is a normal activity,” Bloomberg said. “And they invite young people to experiment with tobacco.”

Stores devoted primarily to the sale of tobacco products would be exempt from the display ban.

The mayor’s office said retail stores could still advertise tobacco products under the legislation.

“We have made tremendous strides in combatting smoking in New York City but this leading killer still threatens the health of our children,” said Dr. Thomas A. Farley, the health commissioner.

Farley said the city’s comprehensive anti-smoking program cut adult smoking rates by nearly a third — from 21.5 percent in 2002 to 14.8 percent in 2011 — but the youth rate has remained flat, at 8.5 percent, since 2007.

Smoking remains the leading preventable cause of death among New Yorkers, Farley said.

The legislation, to be introduced in the City Council on Wednesday, is comprised of two separate bills that Farley called “logical, important next steps to further protect our teens from tobacco.”

The second bill, called the “Sensible Tobacco Enforcement” bill, strengthens enforcement of discounted and smuggled cigarettes. It would prohibit the sale of discounted tobacco products, impose packaging requirements on cheap cigars and create a price floor for cigarette packs and small cigars. The city would have the authority to seal premises where there are repeat violations.

The bill would also increase penalties for retailers who evade tobacco taxes or sell tobacco without a license.

The bill would also prohibit retailers from redeeming coupons for tobacco products.

Request for quick medical-marijuana ruling is denied

Request for quick medical-marijuana ruling is denied

Associated Press Wed Mar 20, 2013 12:56 AM

The Arizona Supreme Court has refused to accelerate consideration of an appeal of a judge’s ruling that the state’s medical-marijuana law is constitutional.

The justices without comment Tuesday denied Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery’s request to transfer the appeal to the state Supreme Court so that it bypasses the midlevel Court of Appeals.

Transferring the case would have hastened an ultimate ruling by months.

Montgomery’s office had said the law’s interpretation is important across Arizona and needs to be decided quickly.

A judge ruled in December that the county must provide zoning clearance for a Sun City medical-marijuana dispensary because federal drug laws don’t stand in the way of Arizona’s medical-marijuana law.

Montgomery contends county employees could be federally prosecuted if they help to grow, distribute or market medical marijuana.

NY cops ordered to stop and frisk "the right people"???

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Recording Points to Race Factor in Stops by New York Police

By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN

Published: March 21, 2013 49 Comments

For years, the debate over the New York Police Department’s use of stop-and-frisk tactics has centered on whether officers engage in racial profiling. Now, a recording suggests that, in at least one precinct, a person’s skin color can be a deciding factor in who is stopped.

The recording, played on Thursday in Federal District Court in Manhattan, was of a conversation between a patrol officer and his commanding officer in the 40th Precinct in the South Bronx, a violent command that recorded the highest number of police stops in the Bronx in 2011.

The commanding officer, Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack, urged the officer to be more active, emphasizing the need to conduct more street stops. “We go out there and we summons people,” Inspector McCormack said. The way to suppress violent crime, he said, was for officers to stop, question and, if necessary, frisk “the right people at the right time, the right location.”

The officer who surreptitiously recorded the conversation last month, Pedro Serrano, began pressing Inspector McCormack about who he meant by the “right people.” The conversation grew heated.

After an exchange about Mott Haven, a particularly crime-prone neighborhood, the inspector suggested that the police needed to conduct street stops of the people creating “the most problems” there.

“The problem was, what, male blacks,” Inspector McCormack said. “And I told you at roll call, and I have no problem telling you this, male blacks 14 to 20, 21.”

The conversation was played on the fourth day of a class-action lawsuit covering several million stop-and-frisk encounters in the city, a police tactic that the Bloomberg administration has embraced, citing its effectiveness in driving down gun violence. But the tactic has proved divisive in many parts of the city and has become a major issue in the mayoral race.

The authority of the police to use stop-and-frisk tactics is not at issue, but how the Police Department conducts these street interactions — and whether it stops blacks and Hispanics in violation of the Constitution — is the matter at hand before the judge in the case, Shira A. Scheindlin.

The question of what commanders mean by “the right people” is central to the trial.

Civil rights lawyers have long maintained that the term “right people” is police code for young black and Hispanic men, who make up an overwhelming share of those stopped. But the police, on the other hand, say that they use this phrase to describe habitual lawbreakers, and that by focusing on the “right people,” they are trying to avoid giving tickets to the construction worker drinking a beer on his way home or the couple strolling through a park that is closed for the night.

Officer Serrano, 43, testified on Thursday that he believed his supervisors used the expression to pressure officers to stop blacks and Hispanics without reasonable suspicion.

He testified that he once told a teenager he had been ordered to issue a ticket that “they should take my name down and if they sue, they could use me as a witness.”

Officer Serrano is the second Bronx police officer to take the witness stand in the trial and assert that police supervisors institute quotas that encourage officers to stop people unlawfully. He said he began taping interactions with supervisors in the station house because “they’re asking me to do something that’s illegal, I believe, and I was worried.”

Officer Serrano, who continues to work in the 40th Precinct, said that as a Hispanic man in the Bronx, he himself had been stopped many times. “It’s not a good feeling,” he testified.

When he went to Inspector McCormack’s office last month to complain about his work evaluation, he immediately came under criticism for having reported only a couple of street stops for all of 2012.

“It seems like you are purposely not doing anything to help prevent the shootings, the robberies and the grand larcenies,” Inspector McCormack said. To conduct so few stops in a year, amid so much crime, he said, was “not fair to the public.”

“I could see in Central Park maybe that would be fine, but this ain’t Central Park,” Inspector McCormack said.

Officer Serrano explained that his interactions with the public did not always rise to stops, as a matter of law, and so he rarely filled out the UF-250 form, which officers are supposed to fill out each time they conduct a stop.

At first, Inspector McCormack can be heard lecturing Officer Serrano about how “99 percent of these people in this community are great, hardworking people” who deserve to go about their days in peace. But the citizens, he said, were troubled by crime, and he went on to describe how a woman in her 60s was shot coming out of an elevator at 10 a.m.

The ambiguity in how the phrase “stopping the right people” is used by police commanders, and how it may be interpreted by patrol officers, was evident in the recordings played in court.

Pressed by the officer on what he meant, Inspector McCormack offered examples of people who should not be stopped, like an elderly person violating a parks rule by playing chess. He also cited the stop of a 48-year-old woman who was intercepted on her way to work as she took a shortcut through a park that was closed for the night.

“You think that’s the right people?” Inspector McCormack asked the officer skeptically.

But with Officer Serrano challenging him, the inspector never offered a clear answer.

“So what am I supposed to do?” Officer Serrano asked, after Inspector McCormack used that expression again. “Is it stop every black and Hispanic?”

The exchange continues until the inspector brings the conversation to a close, telling the officer, “You’re very close to having a problem here.”

The inspector continued, “The problem is that you don’t know who to stop and how to stop.”

In a later passage of the recording, which was not played in court, Inspector McCormack seemed to suggest to others there that Officer Serrano was trying to put words in his mouth. “He’s adding on that I wanted him to stop every black and Hispanic.”

Inspector McCormack is expected to be called as a witness in the coming weeks.

Wall Street sees opportunity in marijuana

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Wall Street sees opportunity in marijuana

By Andrew Tangel, Los Angeles Times

March 23, 2013, 8:00 a.m.

BELVIDERE, N.J. — Amid the whir of fans and the glow of soft white light, workers tended to bright green seedlings sprouting in a giant greenhouse.

Located about an hour's drive from Manhattan in the hills of northwestern New Jersey, the facility produces basil, chives, oregano and other herbs that are sold in grocery stores around New York City.

But if Ken VandeVrede has his way the facility will one day be growing a much more valuable plant: marijuana.

VandeVrede is chief operating officer at Terra Tech, a hydroponic equipment maker based in Irvine. The small company wants to double the five-acre New Jersey greenhouse operation. The aim is one day to supply the exploding U.S. medical marijuana trade and to prepare in the event that recreational marijuana ever becomes legal nationwide.

"We can scale this thing very, very quickly," said VandeVrede, clad in blue jeans and a pumpkin-colored sweater as he surveyed his indoor fields of produce and flowers. "When hemp and cannabis become legal, we're ready to rock and roll."

To do it, Terra Tech needs to raise $2 million. And like a number of small businesses in the burgeoning U.S. cannabis industry, it's trying to enlist Wall Street's help. Business owners have been pitching their ideas to potential investors, coming to New York in some cases to meet with would-be financiers.

Wall Street has good reason to smell potential profits.

Washington, D.C., and 18 states, including California, have already legalized medical marijuana; there are formal measures pending in 10 additional states, according to the National Cannabis Industry Assn.

Colorado and Washington legalized recreational marijuana use in November. In addition, a measure allowing "adult use" of pot has been proposed in Maryland, according to the association's tally. Various bills to legalize marijuana and hemp have been proposed in Congress too.

Although pot remains contraband under federal law, some entrepreneurs see marijuana heading down the same path as Prohibition, which banned the manufacture, transportation and sale of alcohol from 1920 until it was repealed in 1933.

"More and more people see the inevitability," said Brendan Kennedy, chief executive of the Seattle private equity firm Privateer Holdings, which targets cannabis-focused start-ups. "They see that the Berlin Wall of cannabis prohibition is going to come down."

Privateer is raising $7 million to acquire small companies that have a hand in the trade but don't grow or distribute marijuana. Its first acquisition: Leafly, a Yelp-style online rating site in Seattle for dispensaries and varying strains of marijuana.

With pot still federally outlawed, others are making similar bets — funding firms that supply equipment or ancillary services while steering clear of marijuana farming and sales.

Take Lazarus Investment Partners, a $60-million hedge fund in Denver, for example. One of Lazarus' investments is in AeroGrow International Inc., a maker of hydroponic kitchen appliances geared toward growing herbs, lettuce and tomatoes.

Lazarus, which owns 15% of AeroGrow's shares, has suggested that the company tweak its products to accommodate taller plants, including marijuana, said Justin Borus, the fund's managing partner.

"We want to be selling the bluejeans to the gold miners," Borus said. "We don't want to take a bet on which state is going to get legalized and which dispensary is going to succeed, or [which] cannabis growers are going to be successful. We want to just make a bet on overall legalization."

In California, MedBox, a West Hollywood maker of automated dispensing machines for doctors' offices, pharmacies and pot dispensaries, is on the hunt for funding.

Vincent Mehdizadeh, MedBox's founder, said the company is actively exploring raising $20 million in equity to boost staffing and fund research and development, acquisitions and marketing.

Mehdizadeh said he's seen a "major spike" in interest from potential financiers looking to invest in the small company since Colorado and Washington legalized recreational pot use last year.

"Everybody's loosening up a lot because they realize the momentum has shifted and the financial world is going to have to make room for this industry," he said. "Wall Street and investment banks are going to have to come along for the ride, eventually."

Derek Peterson, president and chief executive of Terra Tech, is working to get his company's shares listed on a stock exchange by the end of the year. The company may try for NYSE MKT, which was formerly known as the American Stock Exchange and is geared toward smaller companies, or perhaps the Nasdaq Stock Market, he said.

"The stodgier Wall Street types are starting to realize there's money to be made here," said Peterson, who worked in wealth management at Wachovia Securities and Morgan Stanley Smith Barney.

The company has taken steps to get the word out to investors. It tapped Midtown Partners, a small New York boutique investment bank, to help it explore financing options as it planned the New Jersey greenhouse expansion. Terra Tech is merging with the farm's owner, NB Plants, and retail gardening center and nursery. Both are owned by VandeVrede's family.

Initially, the vast majority of Terra Tech's revenue will come from cultivating fresh herbs and flowers from the New Jersey farm, with the rest coming from equipment sales. The idea is to first feed urban consumers' growing appetite for pesticide-free produce, then add pot or hemp when the legal climate is right.

"There is this huge demand for organic food," said Prakash Mandgi, Midtown Partners' director of investment banking. "Marijuana cultivation, in my opinion, is a potential driver in the future, but it's so tied to government rule and regulations.... Federally it's illegal."

Estimates for the marijuana industry's size range widely, since much of the trade remains on the black market. Bloomberg Industries recently pegged it at $35billion to $45 billion.

Still, Wall Street is by no means opening the floodgates of capital.

Companies in this space are still quite tiny, not to mention risky, compared with large corporations trading on the New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq.

Moreover, Wall Street firms face a significant disincentive to investing in the industry: federal law. Growing and distributing marijuana can still lead to raids by federal agents — not to mention prison time and huge fines.

Major banks have come under intense scrutiny by the federal government in recent years for violating laws aimed at preventing money-laundering. The British banking giant HSBC paid $1.9 billion to end a U.S. investigation into its role processing cash for drug cartels and customers in rogue nations.

Marijuana dispensary owners have complained of difficulty opening bank accounts, forcing them to operate in cash only.

"This is messy," said Dan Richman, a former federal prosecutor who handled narcotics cases and now teaches at Columbia Law School in New York. "This might be complex politically. It's not complex as a matter of federal criminal law."

Investors in businesses involved in growing or distributing cannabis could face civil forfeiture actions to seize their investments or other assets, Richman said.

"I would think the prospectus would have to say: 'The government might come and take all of your money and possibly go after you,'" Richman said.

Federal law may not deter all investors. After all, the government can choose what laws to strictly enforce, and it's unclear how the federal government will ultimately treat legalized recreational pot in Colorado and Washington.

Alan Valdes, a floor trader on the New York Stock Exchange, expects some of Wall Street's more adventurous investors to put up money for a project he's involved with called Diego Pellicer Inc.

The business idea is to open a dozen Starbucks-like high-end shops for pot in Colorado and Washington. Valdes said he and his partners might begin tapping investors — wealthy individuals, family-run funds — later this year.

"These are more mavericks — these are gunslingers," he said of potential investors. "The big houses are off the table right now."

andrew.tangel@latimes.com

More on those dope dealing Schaumburg cops

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Questions arise over supervision as probe widens into 3 Schaumburg cops

By Christy Gutowski and Robert McCoppin, Chicago Tribune reporters

11:10 p.m. CDT, March 22, 2013

They are accused of betraying their badges by stealing cash, cocaine and marijuana from suspected dealers, fueling a scheme that funneled more drugs into the streets the men were sworn to protect.

The alleged illicit activity of the three former Schaumburg police officers often occurred while they were on duty and, at least once, while their unsuspecting supervisor was standing nearby, authorities said.

Though village officials insist that even strict supervision isn't foolproof, law enforcement experts say the men's unit operated like a force unto itself, and lack of oversight might have allowed the alleged rogue cops' behavior to go unchecked.

The Tribune has learned from law enforcement sources that the men worked independently of regional, state and federal task forces. Their supervisor was out for months with a medical condition during their alleged crimes, leaving oversight to two sergeants and a commander for the entire investigations division.

"No one was paying attention," said Mark Piccoli, director of the DuPage Metropolitan Enforcement Group, a multijurisdictional drug task force. "That's the problem. If you are lax on supervision, the potential for abuse is high."

John Cichy, Matthew Hudak and Terrance O'Brien have pleaded not guilty since their January arrests and are free on bond. The scandal has since resulted in four federal lawsuits and two dozen failed criminal prosecutions in three counties.

Then, this week, the embattled Schaumburg police chief resigned.

But that might be just the start. Authorities confirmed that a DuPage County grand jury has continued to hear evidence as more witnesses come forward with allegations of corruption dating back to 2010, rather than just months as originally alleged.

Authorities said they have no evidence that other officers took part in the alleged conspiracy. But the extent of the allegations suggests a lack of checks and balances, experts agreed. The charges and fallout follow a classic pattern, they said, seen in big-city police scandals where undercover narcotics officers have been charged with committing the very crimes they're sworn to prevent.

Jack Riley, special agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Chicago field division, said the arrests are an aberration in an otherwise upstanding police department. Still, he could not recall another time three officers on one suburban police force stood accused of such brazen acts.

"Many times ... this goes right back to a lack of supervision and controls," he said. "It leads me to believe someone should have been watching a little closer."

After nearly a year of investigations into harassment allegations by an ex-girlfriend, Chief Brian Howerton said this week that he will retire April 5. He denied any wrongdoing, and prosecutors declined to pursue charges, but the chief said he no longer wishes to fight the allegations. The village's review of his conduct is due out by late next week.

Howerton insists his personal controversy did nothing to affect departmental supervision. But Village Manager Ken Fritz previously called the matter "a distraction and a disruption" for the police.

The village has hired a security consulting firm, Hillard Heintze, to review police operations and policies. Its report is due in May.

"There's no way you can put a blanket of supervision over your special investigators that could possibly prevent this from happening ever," Howerton said. "We give our officers an incredible amount of autonomy to do their jobs. … Supervisors can't make it to every call. Officers have to search cars. They can take drugs or money if they want — until they get caught."

Playing the part?

Just as state police were wrapping up the Howerton investigation, authorities in DuPage County said they were hearing wild allegations from a man in custody after a Jan. 2 raid of his Carol Stream home turned up cocaine.

Seeking leniency, the 25-year-old man alleged he had been selling and buying drugs for the three Schaumburg officers for several months, prosecutors said. During the next few weeks, as the informant wore a wire, prosecutors said they recorded illicit transactions and compiled evidence from texts and video surveillance.

A second law enforcement informant, who spoke to the Tribune on the condition of anonymity, said he had helped the accused officers sell drugs.

The 23-year-old northwest suburban man described himself as a close friend to Cichy and said his cooperation with authorities began after they confronted him with the secret recordings, which implicated him as well.

"I'm not proud," he said of turning in Cichy. "I feel like he was just caught in a Catch-22. He didn't want to rat out his buddies and just got caught up in it, too."

In one final sting set Jan. 12, authorities said they planted $20,000 in a Roselle storage unit rigged with video cameras. They said the first informant told the suspected officers that a drug dealer was using the unit to stash his wares, including 33 pounds of marijuana.

O'Brien is accused of surveilling the perimeter of the unit as Cichy and Hudak, wearing masks, broke in and made off with the cash. The money later was recovered in the officers' homes and cars, authorities said. The men were arrested four days later. [They are trying to convince us that these cops who broke into a building stole $20,000 from a safe would not have done it if they were properly supervised??? What rubbish!!!!]

Prosecutors said O'Brien, 46, admitted he did it "for the thrill of it," while Hudak, 29, said "everything you have on tape, I did. You got me on that." Cichy, 30, in the special operations unit the shortest time, confessed to stealing the money, prosecutors said.

Only Hudak provided a written statement, prosecutors said.

The former officers are charged with unlawful delivery of a controlled substance, armed violence, criminal drug conspiracy, official misconduct, theft and burglary.

McHenry County court records show Hudak was sued in 2011 and accused of defaulting on a mortgage. His paychecks were garnished after a February 2012 judgment for $24,300, according to the records. Months later, Hudak was released from the judgment after he paid in full.

Attorneys for the officers, all of whom resigned, say their clients were set up by unreliable snitches.

"They're dealing with informants, drugs and people on the street," said Hudak's attorney, Thomas Glasgow. "You have to act, look and be the part or else you're not going to get very far with making arrests in the narcotics trade."

But in an account spelled out in a federal lawsuit and, authorities say, under oath before a grand jury, another man alleges he has proof that O'Brien and Hudak victimized him as a confidential informant.

Jordan Miller, 29, said Hudak and O'Brien raided his Hanover Park home in May 2010 after he tried to cut ties with them. Miller claims O'Brien and Hudak seized two of his rifles — weapons that authorities said have been found in the officers' possessions.

The discovery prompted prosecutors to seek out Miller as a witness after the officers were indicted, court records showed. Unlike the others who filed lawsuits, Miller did not have a pending criminal case and said he came forward reluctantly after authorities sought him out to ask about the stolen guns.

His lawsuit alleges "a pattern of racketeering activity" in which he says the officers ran a robbery ring that included illegally searching homes, false arrests, stealing narcotics and cash, physical abuse, intimidation and threats. Miller, a felon who went to prison for impersonating a police officer, said he was set up by O'Brien in 2010 while acting as their informant.

"These guys did whatever they wanted, wherever they wanted," Miller told the Tribune. "I think as long as they got results, no one asked questions."

Training and audits

The DEA's Riley said there's a certain amount of acting in undercover narcotic enforcement, but officers doing legitimate work do not take the character — or the money — home with them.

Though many local police agencies run independent narcotics units, Riley and other experts said multijurisdictional and state police task forces offer increased training, financial background checks of officers and annual audits to better safeguard against corruption.

"The bottom line is if there's proper supervision, this shouldn't happen," said Terry Lemming, president of the Illinois Drug Enforcement Officers Association.

DuPage and Lake counties have large Metropolitan Enforcement Group units, Lemming said, but a "huge void" resulted when the Cook County counterpart shut down in 1999.

Schaumburg officials, however, insist they set safeguards. In fact, as prosecutors confirmed, the men are accused of skimming marijuana during a Jan. 11 raid in Wheeling while a supervisor was outside. Fritz, the village manager, said it shows close supervision won't catch everything.

"It comes down to the ethics and morals of these officers," Fritz said. "At some point, they're going to be out of your sight and you have to trust them."

Since the officers' arrests, prosecutors tossed out drug charges against nearly two dozen defendants. Besides Miller, three other men are suing the village.

One lawsuit, filed by Diangelo Beasley, 25, of Chicago, claimed Hudak pistol-whipped him to get the name of a drug supplier, then planted drugs on Beasley to justify felony charges last year. The charges were dropped after Beasley spent seven months in jail. He had prior criminal convictions but said he had straightened out his life after having a daughter.

As he watched news reports about the officers' arrests from jail, Beasley later told the Tribune, he thought, "Maybe I can finally get some justice."

"It should have been discovered earlier," said his attorney, David Lipschultz. "Nobody was making sure the officers were following policies and procedures, not to mention the Constitution."

In another case, John Abel, 23, was released from jail in February after prosecutors dropped felony drug charges against him. Abel has a prior conviction of aggravated robbery. He and his mother, Christine Abel, told the Tribune that police trashed their house in Schaumburg while searching for drugs last spring. The Abels allege that police falsified reports, stole $4,000 and broke his hand.

"I don't understand why they don't have anything to oversee these guys," Christine Abel said. "They were running rampant."

Such fallout doesn't surprise Riley.

"I don't think in Schaumburg's case it was systemic at all," he said. "I think it was one of those things where three guys get together, something breaks down and it snowballs."

Freelance reporter George Houde contributed.

cmgutowski@tribune.com

rmccoppin@tribune.com

Colorado pot growers gear up for ‘green rush’

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Colorado pot growers gear up for ‘green rush’

By T.W. Farnam, Published: March 25

Denver — The pot industry in Colorado is undergoing a massive makeover as it prepares to begin selling marijuana for recreational use legally under state law. Businesses are ramping up production, and trade associations are cleaning up their image, anticipating what could be a billion-dollar industry.

But the entrepreneurs who are hoping to cash in on the “green rush” starting next year are struggling with the unique challenges of conducting a business that the federal government considers a crime.

The state’s pot producers and retailers are having trouble securing business financing because banks won’t give them loans — and most of the time, not even an account.

State lawmakers are about to shake up the marketplace in unpredictable ways with regulations covering everything from the shape of containers to the labeling required for pot-laced brownies and other “infused products.”

And business owners say they’re anxious about the intentions of the federal government, which could seize millions of dollars they have invested or even send them to prison.

At a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said that he would soon announce a response to the initiatives in Colorado and Washington last year legalizing pot for recreational use. The federal government, which deems marijuana a controlled substance, could upend the plans of Colorado entrepreneurs at any moment.

Last year, the state’s voters approved a constitutional amendment to “regulate marijuana like alcohol” for adults to buy in small amounts, building on the state’s 13-year-old law allowing the sale of marijuana to medical patients. Under the new measure, marijuana stores, or dispensaries, must register with the state, but many of the other regulations governing pot sales are still being finalized.

Kristi Kelly, 35, began selling medical marijuana three years ago and plans to grow the business when recreational sales become legal in 2014. Her Good Meds company includes three stores and two industrial indoor gardens.

Wearing a blue blazer and knee-high leather boots on a recent tour of her operation, Kelly was more dressed up than most of her customers and employees. Some sat on couches in hooded sweatshirts and dreadlocks trimming dried marijuana plants. Jimi Hendrix played in the background.

She led the way through one of her “grow facilities,” a 65,000-square-foot garden where plants at different stages were segregated into different rooms by maturity.

“We have about 10 rooms that look exactly like this,” Kelly said over the hum of a humidifier. A chain of 1,000-watt fixtures showered bright light on dozens of plants so heavily laden with large flowers that they were supported by a net. A valve on the wall periodically spurted carbon dioxide.

A Washington, D.C. native, Kelly has a high-energy demeanor that seems more at home on the East Coast than in laid-back Denver. A former ad agency executive who once managed accounts for government agencies such as the U.S. Mint, she said she deals with the uncertainty of operating in a legal gray area by keeping a close watch on risks she can control, such as security and compliance with state rules.

“I tend to stay as conservative as possible on as much as possible,” Kelly said.

More than 500 businesses are already selling medical marijuana, and many are now preparing to burst into the new marketplace for recreational pot. These dispensaries sold $186 million worth of cannabis for medical purposes in the last fiscal year, according to tax receipts. The Colorado Legislative Council predicts that figure could rise to $920 million next year once the new constitutional amendment legalizing recreational sales takes effect. This estimate does not account for the anticipated influx of pot tourists who are expected to arrive in search of a Rocky Mountain high. With steep excise and sales taxes proposed, the industry could be a big revenue booster for the state.

Many of the entrepreneurs, like Kelly, have had little previous experience with marijuana. “We’re not those Woodstock hippies who have had secret grows in the mountains for decades,” Kelly said. “We’re business people.”

This isn’t business as usual, however. The federal government has cautioned many banks against handling marijuana finances. Many smaller pot businesses have been unable to find a bank to take their money and must operate on a cash-only basis, creating vexing problems with security and accounting. Kelly said she lost four bank accounts last year as one institution after another said they could not risk doing business with her company.

“The people who are lucky enough to have bank accounts guard them with their lives,” she said.

In her Lakewood, Colo., store, a two-ton safe bolted to the floor behind the counter holds a dozen gallon jars full of cannabis. With a doctor’s prescription, you can buy marijuana in just about any form in this store: rolled into joints, filling an e-cigarette cartridge, baked into chocolates and cheesecake cupcakes, or concentrated in Cannacap pills, lemon drops, Cheeba Chews, hard candies and liquid tinctures with flavors such as orange and agave.

Kelly says she has to pay premium rent for her storefront because landlords are wary of marijuana businesses, considering them risky ventures that can attract an undesirable clientele. She has also spent thousands of dollars upgrading her operation’s security to guard against thieves who could be attracted to the copious amounts of cannabis and cash.

Making her financial situation even worse, distributing marijuana isn’t a legitimate business expense under the tax code, so her company can’t deduct most of its expenses. Kelly’s business lost money last year, she said, after paying income tax.

Nor can these retailers use many of the traditional means for promoting consumer goods, such as advertising. Denver bans outdoor ads for marijuana, and most mainstream media outlets won’t run them. Kelly recently tried to sponsor a radio public service announcement about safe driving, but had her money returned by the station management.

Complying with a thick and evolving book of state regulations is another challenge. The rules, for instance, require each marijuana plant to be placed under video surveillance and tracked from seed to sale, at times by carrying a bar code.

Many more regulations are coming. Under Amendment 64, the legislature must tax and oversee cannabis stores for the general public as well. A task force appointed by the governor this month issued recommendations for those laws, which must be finalized before the legislative session ends this spring.

Many medical marijuana business owners, including Kelly, opposed Amendment 64 over concern that it would upturn their growing businesses or prompt action from the federal government. But now she and many other owners see the legalization of pot as a great business opportunity.

And medical marijuana businesses are seeking to have the tight regulations they follow expanded to recreational use, deploying a bevy of lobbyists to work the task force and the legislature. That has led advocates for liberalization to complain that the industry is trying to limit competition. For the first year, only retailers that sell medical marijuana will be allowed to sell pot for recreational purposes.

Business owners counter that by tightly regulating their industry, Colorado has avoided the kind of federal scrutiny given to other states, such as California, which largely leave regulation of medical marijuana to local jurisdictions.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency is watching Colorado, but has yet to intervene in a dramatic way. The agency sent letters to some Colorado dispensaries within 1,000 feet of schools, warning them to shut their doors. Some business owners took that as a tacit endorsement of the state’s approach.

Federal policy on marijuana businesses will likely be fluid for some time, and disruptions in the marketplace may yet come. For Kelly, it won’t be the first time.

“We’ve changed our business plan like five times,” she said.

Discuss this topic and other political issues in the politics discussion forums.

Court: Drug dog sniff is unconstitutional search

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Court: Drug dog sniff is unconstitutional search

By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press

Updated 8:51 am, Tuesday, March 26, 2013

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that police cannot bring drug-sniffing police dogs onto a suspect's property to look for evidence without first getting a warrant for a search, a decision which may limit how investigators use dogs' sensitive noses to search out drugs, explosives and other items hidden from human sight, sound and smell.

The high court split 5-4 on the decision to uphold the Florida Supreme Court's ruling throwing out evidence seized in the search of Joelis Jardines' Miami-area house. That search was based on an alert by Franky the drug dog from outside the closed front door.

Justice Antonin Scalia said a person has the Fourth Amendment right to be free from the government's gaze inside their home and in the area surrounding it, which is called the curtilage.

"The police cannot, without a warrant based on probable cause, hang around on the lawn or in the side garden, trawling for evidence and perhaps peering into the windows of the home," Justice Antonin Scalia said for the majority. "And the officers here had all four of their feet and all four of their companion's, planted firmly on that curtilage — the front porch is the classic example of an area intimately associated with the life of the home."

He was joined in his opinion by Justices Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

On the morning of Dec. 5, 2006, Miami-Dade police detectives and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents set up surveillance outside a house south of the city after getting an anonymous tip that it might contain a marijuana growing operation. Detective Douglas Bartelt arrived with Franky and the two went up to the house, where Franky quickly detected the odor of pot at the base of the front door and sat down as he was trained to do.

That sniff was used to get a search warrant from a judge. The house was searched and its lone occupant, Jardines, was arrested trying to escape out the back door. Officers pulled 179 live marijuana plants from the house, with an estimated street value of more than $700,000.

Jardines was charged with marijuana trafficking and grand theft for stealing electricity needed to run the highly sophisticated operation. He pleaded not guilty and his attorney challenged the search, claiming Franky's sniff outside the front door was an unconstitutional law enforcement intrusion into the home.

The trial judge agreed and threw out the evidence seized in the search, but that was reversed by an intermediate appeals court. In April a divided Florida Supreme Court sided with the original judge.

The Supreme Court's decision upholds that ruling.

"A drug detection dog is a specialized device for discovering objects not in plain view (or plain smell)," Kagan wrote in a concurring opinion. "That device here was aimed at a home — the most private and inviolate (or so we expect) of all the places and things the Fourth Amendment protects. Was this activity a trespass? Yes, as the court holds today. Was it also an invasion of privacy? Yes, that as well."

The four justices who dissented were Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Stephen Breyer, Justice Anthony Kennedy and Justice Samuel Alito.

It's not trespassing when a mail carrier comes on a porch for a brief period, Alito said. And that includes "police officers who wish to gather evidence against an occupant," Alito said. "According to the court, however, the police officer in this case, Detective Bartelt, committed a trespass because he was accompanied during his otherwise lawful visit to the front door of the respondent's house by his dog, Franky. Where is the authority evidencing such a rule?"

Alito also said that the court's ruling stretches expectations of privacy too far.

"A reasonable person understands that odors emanating from a house may be detected from locations that are open to the public, and a reasonable person will not count on the strength of those odors remaining within the range that, while detectable by a dog, cannot be smelled by a human."

___

The case was Florida v. Jardines, 11-564.

Follow Jesse J. Holland on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jessejholland

Wash., Colo. bars test limits of legal pot laws

Wash., Colo. bars test limits of legal pot laws

By Gene Johnson Associated Press Tue Mar 26, 2013 9:26 AM

TACOMA, Wash. — John Connelly leaned forward on his barstool, set his lips against a clear glass pipe and inhaled a white cloud of marijuana vapor.

A handful of people milled around him. Three young women stood behind the bar, ready to assist with the preparation of the bongs, as the strains of a blues band playing downstairs sounded faintly off the exposed brick walls.

“It feels so comfortable in here,” said Connelly, 33. “It’s just a great social aspect.”

Welcome to the Stonegate — puns welcome. It’s one of a tiny number of bars, cafes and private clubs catering to the stoner class in Washington and Colorado since voters last fall made them the first states to legalize marijuana for adults over 21.

Both states bar the public use of marijuana — which typically would include bars and restaurants — and most bars are steering clear of allowing pot use at least until officials come up with rules for the new weed industry.

But a few have been testing the boundaries of what’s allowed in hopes of drumming up business and making a political statement.

“I’ve been running a bar a few years now, and people would always go outside around the corner, into the shadows, to smoke up,” said Jeff Call, the Stonegate’s owner. “People shouldn’t have to hide. There’s no rules yet, but I’m trying to do this thoughtfully and responsibly.”

Washington’s law bans pot distribution by anyone but a licensed seller — and no such licenses will be issued until the end of the year at the earliest. There’s also a statewide smoking ban that prohibits smoking where people work.

So the establishments are trying various strategies to allow on-site consumption.

Frankie’s Sports Bar and Grill in Olympia is less than a mile from the headquarters of the Washington State Liquor Control Board, where officials are writing rules for the pot industry. It allows members of its private smoking room to use tobacco or marijuana.

The owner, Frankie Schnarr, said his revenue has jumped by nearly half since he started allowing pot smoking in December.

In Denver, Club 64 — named after Colorado’s law, Amendment 64 — charges a $30 yearly membership for the privilege of getting high in a private social setting. Members receive emails alerting them to the locations of club “meetings,” like a recent St. Patrick’s Day party hosted by a local bar, featuring marijuana-infused green beer.

Club 64 owner Robert Corry, an attorney, wants to open a bar where he can welcome members on a daily basis.

“A marijuana club is exactly what the voters wanted,” Corry said. “Colorado voters knew exactly what we were doing.”

The Front Tea & Art Shop in Lafayette, about 20 miles north of Denver, offered “cannabis-friendly” evenings six nights a week at which customers over 21 were allowed to bring their own pot.

Owner Veronica Carpio said the cafe attracted 25 people a day — until last month, when Lafayette declared a moratorium on pot use at businesses. She’s suing, arguing the city overstepped its authority.

Anyone who wanders up the stairs to the Stonegate’s second-floor smoking lounge is charged a nominal fee — $1 a day to $20 a year — to become a member of the private club. To evade the smoking ban, there’s no smoking allowed — only “vaporizing,” a method that involves heating the marijuana without burning it.

Call provides space in the lounge — an L-shaped bar of blond wood, painted with portraits of Keith Richards, Stevie Ray Vaughn and other rock heroes — to the proprietor of a local medical marijuana dispensary.

People who don’t have a medical authorization have to bring their own pot, then rent a vaporizer — $10 by the half-hour — or pay to have one prepared for them. For $5, those who do have an authorization are offered various preparations of “shatter” — a hardened oil of powerful marijuana extract.

Call opened his rum-and-pizza joint a few years ago in a brick building along a formerly seedy stretch of shops, bars and restaurants. The second floor had recently been operated as a brothel, he said.

On a recent Friday night, a gentle scent of fresh marijuana filled the room. At one table, a handful of 20-somethings inhaled deeply from a rubber hose attached to a rented vaporizer, a black box that toasted the cannabis to 375 degrees.

Those who wanted a more powerful dose grabbed a seat at the bar, where Jenae DeCampo, a 21-year-old in a black tube-top, pulled out a small blowtorch.

DeCampo held the hissing flame to the metal stem of a clear glass bong until the metal glowed orange. With a wand, she picked up a small piece of what looked like amber — a chunk of potent, hardened marijuana oil — and rubbed it on the scorching metal.

A white cloud filled the pipe, bubbled through the water at the bottom and rushed into Connelly’s lungs.

“A lot of people are shocked by what we’re doing because it’s so uncommon,” DeCampo said. “I like being part of something that could possibly be big.”

Tacoma’s code enforcement staff is reviewing the Stonegate’s operation, a city spokeswoman said.

Justin Nordhorn, the state liquor board’s chief of enforcement, has some concerns about bars that allow pot use. Most importantly, he said, is that marijuana can compound alcohol’s intoxicating effects, meaning people might be even more dangerous when driving.

He also doubted whether the “private club” aspect of the establishments would keep them out of trouble. A truly private club that serves alcohol — say, an Elks Lodge — would have to have a liquor license specific to private clubs, and members of the public couldn’t be allowed in.

For now, Nordhorn noted, there is a loophole in the state board’s ability to block bars from allowing pot use. Its rules require bars to address on-site criminal violations, but public use of marijuana is only a civil infraction — meaning officials can’t necessarily punish bars that let people partake, even if police could come in and write tickets to toking customers.

That’s something the board could address as it makes rules for the new pot industry.

For now, Call’s goal is to get more people into the bar — people who will get hungry and order pizzas.

“People are just smiling and friendly and happy,” Call said. “I just really like the feeling you get when you’re up here.”

Wall Street sees opportunity in marijuana

Wall Street sees opportunity in marijuana

By Andrew Tangel, Los Angeles Times

March 23, 2013, 8:00 a.m.

BELVIDERE, N.J. — Amid the whir of fans and the glow of soft white light, workers tended to bright green seedlings sprouting in a giant greenhouse.

Located about an hour's drive from Manhattan in the hills of northwestern New Jersey, the facility produces basil, chives, oregano and other herbs that are sold in grocery stores around New York City.

But if Ken VandeVrede has his way the facility will one day be growing a much more valuable plant: marijuana.

VandeVrede is chief operating officer at Terra Tech, a hydroponic equipment maker based in Irvine. The small company wants to double the five-acre New Jersey greenhouse operation. The aim is one day to supply the exploding U.S. medical marijuana trade and to prepare in the event that recreational marijuana ever becomes legal nationwide.

"We can scale this thing very, very quickly," said VandeVrede, clad in blue jeans and a pumpkin-colored sweater as he surveyed his indoor fields of produce and flowers. "When hemp and cannabis become legal, we're ready to rock and roll."

To do it, Terra Tech needs to raise $2 million. And like a number of small businesses in the burgeoning U.S. cannabis industry, it's trying to enlist Wall Street's help. Business owners have been pitching their ideas to potential investors, coming to New York in some cases to meet with would-be financiers.

Wall Street has good reason to smell potential profits.

Washington, D.C., and 18 states, including California, have already legalized medical marijuana; there are formal measures pending in 10 additional states, according to the National Cannabis Industry Assn.

Colorado and Washington legalized recreational marijuana use in November. In addition, a measure allowing "adult use" of pot has been proposed in Maryland, according to the association's tally. Various bills to legalize marijuana and hemp have been proposed in Congress too.

Although pot remains contraband under federal law, some entrepreneurs see marijuana heading down the same path as Prohibition, which banned the manufacture, transportation and sale of alcohol from 1920 until it was repealed in 1933.

"More and more people see the inevitability," said Brendan Kennedy, chief executive of the Seattle private equity firm Privateer Holdings, which targets cannabis-focused start-ups. "They see that the Berlin Wall of cannabis prohibition is going to come down."

Privateer is raising $7 million to acquire small companies that have a hand in the trade but don't grow or distribute marijuana. Its first acquisition: Leafly, a Yelp-style online rating site in Seattle for dispensaries and varying strains of marijuana.

With pot still federally outlawed, others are making similar bets — funding firms that supply equipment or ancillary services while steering clear of marijuana farming and sales.

Take Lazarus Investment Partners, a $60-million hedge fund in Denver, for example. One of Lazarus' investments is in AeroGrow International Inc., a maker of hydroponic kitchen appliances geared toward growing herbs, lettuce and tomatoes.

Lazarus, which owns 15% of AeroGrow's shares, has suggested that the company tweak its products to accommodate taller plants, including marijuana, said Justin Borus, the fund's managing partner.

"We want to be selling the bluejeans to the gold miners," Borus said. "We don't want to take a bet on which state is going to get legalized and which dispensary is going to succeed, or [which] cannabis growers are going to be successful. We want to just make a bet on overall legalization."

In California, MedBox, a West Hollywood maker of automated dispensing machines for doctors' offices, pharmacies and pot dispensaries, is on the hunt for funding.

Vincent Mehdizadeh, MedBox's founder, said the company is actively exploring raising $20 million in equity to boost staffing and fund research and development, acquisitions and marketing.

Mehdizadeh said he's seen a "major spike" in interest from potential financiers looking to invest in the small company since Colorado and Washington legalized recreational pot use last year.

"Everybody's loosening up a lot because they realize the momentum has shifted and the financial world is going to have to make room for this industry," he said. "Wall Street and investment banks are going to have to come along for the ride, eventually."

Derek Peterson, president and chief executive of Terra Tech, is working to get his company's shares listed on a stock exchange by the end of the year. The company may try for NYSE MKT, which was formerly known as the American Stock Exchange and is geared toward smaller companies, or perhaps the Nasdaq Stock Market, he said.

"The stodgier Wall Street types are starting to realize there's money to be made here," said Peterson, who worked in wealth management at Wachovia Securities and Morgan Stanley Smith Barney.

The company has taken steps to get the word out to investors. It tapped Midtown Partners, a small New York boutique investment bank, to help it explore financing options as it planned the New Jersey greenhouse expansion. Terra Tech is merging with the farm's owner, NB Plants, and retail gardening center and nursery. Both are owned by VandeVrede's family.

Initially, the vast majority of Terra Tech's revenue will come from cultivating fresh herbs and flowers from the New Jersey farm, with the rest coming from equipment sales. The idea is to first feed urban consumers' growing appetite for pesticide-free produce, then add pot or hemp when the legal climate is right.

"There is this huge demand for organic food," said Prakash Mandgi, Midtown Partners' director of investment banking. "Marijuana cultivation, in my opinion, is a potential driver in the future, but it's so tied to government rule and regulations.... Federally it's illegal."

Estimates for the marijuana industry's size range widely, since much of the trade remains on the black market. Bloomberg Industries recently pegged it at $35billion to $45 billion.

Still, Wall Street is by no means opening the floodgates of capital.

Companies in this space are still quite tiny, not to mention risky, compared with large corporations trading on the New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq.

Moreover, Wall Street firms face a significant disincentive to investing in the industry: federal law. Growing and distributing marijuana can still lead to raids by federal agents — not to mention prison time and huge fines.

Major banks have come under intense scrutiny by the federal government in recent years for violating laws aimed at preventing money-laundering. The British banking giant HSBC paid $1.9 billion to end a U.S. investigation into its role processing cash for drug cartels and customers in rogue nations.

Marijuana dispensary owners have complained of difficulty opening bank accounts, forcing them to operate in cash only.

"This is messy," said Dan Richman, a former federal prosecutor who handled narcotics cases and now teaches at Columbia Law School in New York. "This might be complex politically. It's not complex as a matter of federal criminal law."

Investors in businesses involved in growing or distributing cannabis could face civil forfeiture actions to seize their investments or other assets, Richman said.

"I would think the prospectus would have to say: 'The government might come and take all of your money and possibly go after you,'" Richman said.

Federal law may not deter all investors. After all, the government can choose what laws to strictly enforce, and it's unclear how the federal government will ultimately treat legalized recreational pot in Colorado and Washington.

Alan Valdes, a floor trader on the New York Stock Exchange, expects some of Wall Street's more adventurous investors to put up money for a project he's involved with called Diego Pellicer Inc.

The business idea is to open a dozen Starbucks-like high-end shops for pot in Colorado and Washington. Valdes said he and his partners might begin tapping investors — wealthy individuals, family-run funds — later this year.

"These are more mavericks — these are gunslingers," he said of potential investors. "The big houses are off the table right now."

andrew.tangel@latimes.com

4 arrested in Glendale narcotics investigation; pot seized

4 arrested in Glendale narcotics investigation; pot seized

By Emilie Eaton The Arizona Republic -12 News Breaking News Team Wed Mar 27, 2013 3:34 PM

Glendale Police arrested four suspects Friday in connection to a narcotics investigation and confiscated $12,000 worth of marijuana, according to a police document.

Ernest Hatcher, Keera Atkins, Belinda Murphy and Devinson Weekes were arrested on suspicion of possessing marijuana with an intent to sell.

Glendale Police were observing a home around 7:30 p.m. Friday when they saw a red car pull into the home’s garage, the document said.

Police followed the car after it left the home and pulled it over for a traffic violation. Police found 20 pounds of marijuana in the car.

Police later found 35 pounds of marijuana, a shotgun, scales and plastic wrap for wrapping narcotics in the home.

The suspects admitted the marijuana was worth $12,000, according to the document.

Gilbert messy yard cops want to run drunks and dopers out of town???

Regulations weighed for ‘sober houses’ in Gilbert

By Parker Leavitt The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Mar 27, 2013 12:28 PM

Gilbert officials are weighing new regulations on “sober houses” that would require them to seek a special permit through a public process before opening their doors to people recovering from substance abuse.

The proposed code amendment stems from an apparent proliferation of the facilities, also referred to as halfway houses, and a series of neighborhood complaints related to disturbances, noise and an unfavorable perception of the group homes’ residents, Gilbert zoning administrator Mike Milillo said.

Sober houses provide a transitional facility for 10 to 15 residents adjusting from life in an institution to a “real-world” setting without supervision or caregivers. By living with a group, the residents can support one another in their efforts to abstain from drugs or alcohol before moving on to greater independence.

The concept is nothing new, but Gilbert’s Land Development Code does not address that type of use in residential neighborhoods. The town’s definition of a “family” allows for as many as five unrelated individuals living in a single household, but sober houses always include more, Milillo said.

Gilbert’s code does allow group homes for people with disabilities, but the sober houses differ in that they are not licensed by the state and do not provide care for residents, Milillo said.

Last year, town officials became aware of at least two sober houses operating in Gilbert, though one has since shut down, Milillo said. Rather than take action against the other facility, town officials are working with the Small Business Alliance through the town’s Independent Regulatory Advocate program to provide a legal way for the house to operate.

Town officials must consider federal law while crafting the new regulations, because the Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988 includes substance addiction as a disability and requires municipalities to make a “reasonable accommodation” for those needing to live in a community residence.

“This provision does mean that a city is required to bend its zoning rules,” said a report from the American Planning Association.

Gilbert officials this year began meeting internally to examine how other communities regulate sober houses, Milillo said. None of the Valley communities they looked at had a good model, so town administrators turned to Newport Beach, Calif.

Eventually, the town decided on a conditional-use permit process to allow prospective sober houses to apply for permission to operate. That will allow for neighborhood involvement and a Planning Commission decision that can be appealed to the Town Council.

“There are neighborhood impacts, potentially,” Milillo said. “You want to make sure whatever you put in your neighborhoods is compatible with the primary uses, which are other residences.”

The sober houses could create issues with traffic, parking and substance abuse because there are no caregivers, Milillo said.

Officials hope to mitigate those impacts by creating separation requirements for the facilities. Town staff would track the location of each approved sober house to ensure a new one could not open within a certain radius of another, Milillo said.

While the language of the code amendment has not been finalized, the town likely will limit the number of occupants in a sober house using a formula based on bedroom square footage, Milillo said. A Planning Commission hearing is tentatively April 3.

“We don’t really think that anyone wants to have a house where people are sleeping all over the living room, where there aren’t enough bathrooms and it basically turns into a slum dwelling,” Milillo said. “That’s contrary to everything we try to do in our neighborhoods with our zoning regulations.”

The housing bust and ensuing flood of foreclosures appear to have contributed to a rise in the number of sober houses as investors look to find a way to make their properties more productive, Milillo said.

“Obviously there’s some demand out there, some sort of population of recovering substance abusers, so they saw an opportunity here,” Milillo said.

Are the DEA and FBI listening to your cell phone calls????

F*ck the 4th Amendment, I got a gun and a badge and can do anything I want!!!!

Source

Little-known surveillance tool raises concerns by judges, privacy activists

By Ellen Nakashima, Published: March 27

Federal investigators in Northern California routinely used a sophisticated surveillance system to scoop up data from cellphones and other wireless devices in an effort to track criminal suspects — but failed to detail the practice to judges authorizing the probes.

The practice was disclosed Wednesday in documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California — in a glimpse into a technology that federal agents rarely discuss publicly.

The investigations used a device known as a StingRay, which simulates a cellphone tower and enables agents to collect the serial numbers of individual cellphones and then locate them. Although law enforcement officials can employ StingRays and similar devices to locate suspects, privacy groups and some judges have raised concerns that the technology is so invasive — in some cases effectively penetrating the walls of homes — that its use should require a warrant.

The issues, judges and activists say, are twofold: whether federal agents are informing courts when seeking permission to monitor suspects, and whether they are providing enough evidence to justify the use of a tool that sweeps up data not only from a suspect’s wireless device but also from those of bystanders in the vicinity.

In Northern California, according to the newly disclosed documents, judges expressed concerns about the invasive nature of the technology.

“It has recently come to my attention that many agents are still using [StingRay] technology in the field although the [surveillance] application does not make that explicit,” Miranda Kane, then chief of the criminal division of the Northern California U.S. attorney’s office, said in a May 2011 e-mail obtained by the ACLU.

As a result of that, she wrote, “effective immediately, all . . . applications and proposed orders must be reviewed by your line supervisor before they are submitted to a magistrate judge.” [I suspect a "line supervisor" will rubber stamp the request with no questions asked, just like judges usually rubber stamp them with no questions asked]

The Justice Department has generally maintained that a warrant based on probable cause is not needed to use a “cell-site simulator” because the government is not employing them to intercept conversations, former officials said. But some judges around the country have disagreed and have insisted investigators first obtain a warrant.

“It’s unsettled territory,” said one U.S. law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the record. [Unsettled territory my *ss, the Fourth Amendment has been around since the 1700's]

In a statement, Christopher Allen, a spokesman for the FBI, said the bureau advises field offices to “work closely with the relevant U.S. Attorney’s Office to adhere to the legal requirements” of their respective districts.

One of the problems is there is “scant law” addressing the issue of cell-site simulators, said Brian L. Owsley, a federal magistrate judge in the Southern District of Texas, who in June wrote a rare public ruling on the issue. He denied an application to use a StingRay, in large part because he felt the investigating agent failed to explain the technology or how it would be used to gather the target’s cellphone number.

Moreover, the government did not explain what it would do with the numbers and other data “concerning seemingly innocent cell phone users” that were also picked up.

“Neither the special agent nor the assistant United States attorney appeared to understand the technology very well,” Owsley wrote. “At a minimum, they seemed to have some discomfort in trying to explain it.” [I suspect they didn't WANT to explain it and risk the judge not issuing their search warrant]

At a recent conference on cellphone tracking issues at Yale University, Owsley said he thought that “there are magistrate judges around the country that are getting these requests and not realizing what these requests are,” in some cases perhaps because the agents are not clear about their intent to use the technology. [Again, I suspect the agents intentionally don't explain the technology, because they don't want to risk a just refusing to rubber stamp the search warrant]

“By withholding information about this technology from courts in applications for electronic surveillance orders, the federal government is essentially seeking to write its own search warrants,” said Linda Lye, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Northern California.

Judges “need the opportunity to require privacy safeguards, such as rules on how to handle the data of innocent people that may be captured by the devices as well,” she said.Lye will be arguing the issue on Thursday in a federal case in Arizona, in support of a defendant charged with tax fraud and identity theft. Daniel Rigmaiden, known as “the Hacker” to acquaintances and federal agents, was tracked in part with the use of a StingRay. He has alleged that investigators did not seek a court’s approval to use the technology.

“The main concern we have in Rigmaiden is the government was not being forthright with the magistrate when it was seeking to use this device,” said Lye, whose organization is one of several that have filed an amicus brief in the case.

The newly disclosed documents suggest that “Rigmaiden was not an isolated case,” she said.

The government said it obtained a warrant to track Rigmaiden, but the ACLU is arguing that the government did not present key information about the surveillance device to the magistrate, rendering the warrant invalid.

Chris Soghoian, the ACLU’s principal technologist, said cell-site simulators are being used by local, state and federal authorities.

“No matter how the StingRay is used — to identify, locate or intercept — they always send signals through the walls of homes,” which should trigger a warrant requirement, Soghoian said. “The signals always penetrate a space protected by the Fourth Amendment.”

Man accused of using fake penis for drug test

Source

Man accused of using fake penis for drug test

Associated Press Thu Mar 28, 2013 5:07 PM

ST. CHARLES, Mo. — A man accused of using a prosthetic penis to try to pass a drug test is now facing charges in eastern Missouri.

Authorities allege that 34-year-old Sydney Levin was submitting a urine sample last week as part of his probation when an officer allegedly spotted him using a prosthetic known as a Whizzinator. The prosthetic is advertised as a discreet device that includes synthetic “medical grade urine.”

Levin, of Lake St. Louis, was charged last week with possessing a forging instrument, KMOV-TV reported. He was arrested and released after posting $25,000 bond, and pleaded not guilty on Monday.

Levin was on probation for possession of a controlled substance and felony stealing in 2009. Authorities said Levin’s probation required that he submit a urine sample as part of drug test.

Levin did not have a listed phone number. Court records show that he does not yet have an attorney.

In 2010, Gerald Willis of Los Angeles was sentenced to six months in federal prison for running a company that sold the Whizzinator to cheat on drug tests. Willis’ company disbanded, but the Whizzinator is still sold online as a sex toy. A message seeking comment Thursday from the company selling the device was not returned.

FBI Pursuing Real-Time Gmail Spying Powers

I suspect if George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were alive today they would tell us that these FBI tyrants are far worse then King George and that it's people like them that they passed the Second Amendment for.

Can you imagine how people would complain if the FBI demanded the right to open and read our snail mail letters? Well this is far worse and I don't hear any public out cry against the FBI tyrants.

On the other hand I suspect the people in Nazi Germany were just as passive when Hitlers goons turned Nazi Germany into a police state.

Source

FBI Pursuing Real-Time Gmail Spying Powers as “Top Priority” for 2013

By Ryan Gallagher

Posted Tuesday, March 26, 2013, at 4:58 PM

For now, law enforcement has trouble monitoring Gmail communications in real time

Despite the pervasiveness of law enforcement surveillance of digital communication, the FBI still has a difficult time monitoring Gmail, Google Voice, and Dropbox in real time. But that may change soon, because the bureau says it has made gaining more powers to wiretap all forms of Internet conversation and cloud storage a “top priority” this year.

Last week, during a talk for the American Bar Association in Washington, D.C., FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann discussed some of the pressing surveillance and national security issues facing the bureau. He gave a few updates on the FBI’s efforts to address what it calls the “going dark” problem—how the rise in popularity of email and social networks has stifled its ability to monitor communications as they are being transmitted. It’s no secret that under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the feds can easily obtain archive copies of emails. When it comes to spying on emails or Gchat in real time, however, it’s a different story.

That’s because a 1994 surveillance law called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act only allows the government to force Internet providers and phone companies to install surveillance equipment within their networks. But it doesn’t cover email, cloud services, or online chat providers like Skype. Weissmann said that the FBI wants the power to mandate real-time surveillance of everything from Dropbox and online games (“the chat feature in Scrabble”) to Gmail and Google Voice. “Those communications are being used for criminal conversations,” he said.

While it is true that CALEA can only be used to compel Internet and phone providers to build in surveillance capabilities into their networks, the feds do have some existing powers to request surveillance of other services. Authorities can use a “Title III” order under the “Wiretap Act” to ask email and online chat providers furnish the government with “technical assistance necessary to accomplish the interception.” However, the FBI claims this is not sufficient because mandating that providers help with “technical assistance” is not the same thing as forcing them to “effectuate” a wiretap. In 2011, then-FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni—Weissmann’s predecessor—stated that Title III orders did not provide the bureau with an "effective lever" to "encourage providers" to set up live surveillance quickly and efficiently. In other words, the FBI believes it doesn’t have enough power under current legislation to strong-arm companies into providing real-time wiretaps of communications.

Because Gmail is sent between a user’s computer and Google’s servers using SSL encryption, for instance, the FBI can’t intercept it as it is flowing across networks and relies on the company to provide it with access. Google spokesman Chris Gaither hinted that it is already possible for the company to set up live surveillance under some circumstances. “CALEA doesn't apply to Gmail but an order under the Wiretap Act may,” Gaither told me in an email. “At some point we may expand our transparency report to cover this topic in more depth, but until then I'm not able to provide additional information.”

Either way, the FBI is not happy with the current arrangement and is on a crusade for more surveillance authority. According to Weissmann, the bureau is working with “members of intelligence community” to craft a proposal for new Internet spy powers as “a top priority this year.” Citing security concerns, he declined to reveal any specifics. “It's a very hard thing to talk about publicly,” he said, though acknowledged that “it's something that there should be a public debate about.”

Arizona ruling on DUI test for pot appealed

Source

Arizona ruling on DUI test for pot appealed

Associated Press Sat Mar 30, 2013 8:00 AM

The Arizona Supreme Court is being asked to review a lower court’s ruling that marijuana smokers can be prosecuted for driving under the influence even when there is no evidence that they are actually high.

The Court of Appeals on Feb. 12 overturned a trial judge who said it doesn’t make sense to prosecute people with no evidence they’re under the influence.

At issue are the chemical compounds in marijuana that show up in blood and urine tests after people smoke pot.

The case stems from a motorist’s blood test. It revealed only a chemical compound that is found in the blood after another compound produced from ingesting marijuana breaks down.

The Supreme Court will receive additional legal briefs before deciding whether or not to hear the case.

Case against Horne not over; judge sets hearing

Source

Case against Horne not over; judge sets hearing

By Lindsey Collom The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Mar 29, 2013 10:49 PM

An administrative-law judge who recommended that the campaign-finance case against Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne and one of his top aides be dismissed on technical grounds has agreed to hold a hearing on the merits of the case.

In an order issued Friday, state Office of Administrative Hearings Judge Tammy Eigenheer said she will hear arguments May 7, a date originally set for an evidentiary hearing. The motion was quickly followed by responses from attorneys for Horne and Kathleen Winn, a campaign supporter who became a Horne staffer, imploring the judge to let her original decision stand.

Eigenheer’s order and the responses came hours after Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery filed his response to Eigenheer’s March 19 recommendation to dismiss the matter because she believed the method used to prosecute Horne and Winn was inappropriate.

Eigenheer contends the secretary of state did not follow statutory protocol by referring the case to Montgomery for prosecution, rather than to the Attorney General’s Office.

Horne and Winn are accused of unlawfully coordinating an independent-expenditure committee during the 2010 election, when he was the Republican candidate for attorney general and she was chairwoman of Business Leaders for Arizona. Both have denied any wrongdoing.

Horne and Winn are fighting a civil compliance order Montgomery issued in October for the pair to revise their campaign-finance reports and refund about $400,000 in donations, or face three times that amount in penalties. Horne and Winn appealed to the Arizona Office of Administrative Hearings, an independent arbiter over decisions made by certain state agencies, boards and commissions.

According to Montgomery, a 14-month inquiry by the FBI and his office revealed that Horne collaborated with Winn’s committee to quickly raise more than $500,000 to run negative ads against his Democratic foe, Felecia Rotellini.

The Arizona Secretary of State’s Office found that there was reasonable cause to believe a campaign-finance violation had occurred, and it referred the case to Montgomery.

In his motion Friday, Montgomery stood by his argument that the attorney general was disqualified from reviewing or enforcing a case against himself, or referring it to an outside agency, the latter of which Eigenheer says Horne should have been given a chance to do.

Montgomery said he rejected Eigenheer’s dismissal recommendation and directed her to proceed with the May 7 hearing.

Winn’s attorney, Tim LaSota, said he was perplexed by Montgomery’s motion. “It’s like a runner being called out by the umpire and ordering the umpire to call him safe,” he said.

In his motion, La Sota suggested that if Montgomery wants Eigenheer to hear the case, he should first ask a Maricopa County Superior Court judge to determine whether he has jurisdiction to prosecute.

Horne’s attorney, Michael Kimerer, wrote in his motion that Montgomery “is illegally claiming to be both advocate and judge in this matter.”

Obama's DEA thugs continue their war against medical marijuana!!!!

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Man secretly owned chain of pot stores

By Joe Mozingo, Los Angeles Times

March 29, 2013, 10:00 p.m.

The marijuana shops evoked health and homeopathic care, with names like Dana Point Safe Harbor Collective, Belmont Shore Natural Care, Alternative Herbal Care and Costa Mesa Patients Assn.

Nine dispensaries in all, they appeared to be run by different owners around Orange and Los Angeles counties, little different than any of the hundreds of dispensaries that have popped up in the last five years.

But they were secretly owned and operated by a 56-year-old convicted drug dealer from San Clemente, who used the stores to make millions.

Federal drug agents say John Melvin Walker, who was arrested in October, was one of the biggest players they have prosecuted in Southern California's medical marijuana trade. They could recall only one similar case, a man who used the proceeds of his seven dispensaries to buy land in Costa Rica.

On Monday, Walker is expected to appear at the U.S. Courthouse in Santa Ana to plead guilty to two felony counts: conspiracy to distribute more than 1,000 kilograms of marijuana and tax evasion. He must forfeit more than $25 million in assets, cash and business interests — including his Tuscan manor high above the Pacific in San Clemente, two homes in Long Beach and four mobile homes in Mammoth — and possibly pay $4.3 million in tax restitution.

He faces 10 years to life in prison, but prosecutors say sentencing guidelines call for 21 years to 27 years.

The Orange County Sheriff's Department started the investigation with the help of federal agents.

They took the case to the U.S. attorney because federal penalties are more severe and federal law is clear — all marijuana possession is illegal — avoiding the ambiguity of California's medical cannabis laws, which do not directly address whether commercial sales of pot are legal.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Christine Bautista said it was common for "drug-traffickers like [Walker] to hide behind the facade of medical marijuana laws and compassionate care, to make millions of dollars and conceal their identities as the true owners/operators of a string of marijuana stores."

She didn't know of any other cases involving so many stores.

"It appeared from evidence that he ran a tight ship," she said. "He instituted regular procedures at all nine shops. He regularly visited to observe. He required managers to report midday and end-of-day figures to him to show cash on hand."

At the Dana Point shop, detectives found spreadsheets showing sales over 10 months totaled $3.17 million, with $2.47 million cash on hand, according to an affidavit.

When Orange County sheriff's detectives first conducted searches of properties owned by Walker and his cohorts, they were staggered by the cash. At a Walker rental in Long Beach, they found $390,160.00 in four grocery bags in his garage, along with a shotgun, a Beretta handgun and a Chinese AK-47 with a bayonet. At a stash house in San Clemente, they found stacks of bills stuffed in furniture, in an Igloo cooler and on an ironing board, totaling about $700,000.

In February 2012, 14 people, including Walker — also known as "Pops" — were indicted on 14 counts and arrested.

The indictment alleged that Walker failed to report any income from the shops to the IRS and that he told his bookkeeper "to destroy all records pertaining to income generated at the marijuana dispensaries shortly after they were generated and not to create records that fully identified Walker's connection to the marijuana dispensaries."

According to his plea agreement, he might have to forfeit his properties, $535,291 in currency and give up any benefits he got from a $700,000 loan he made to a Charles Westlund and Silent Strippers LLC, and whatever interests he had in six businesses.

Walker's attorney, Kate T. Corrigan, said Walker is a "devoted family man, a very active parent" to young children. She declined to say how many.

"He is completely devastated that he is going to be separated from his children, and they'll be separated from him," Corrigan said. "They're going to be growing up fatherless."

joe.mozingo@latimes.com

Another attempt to flush Prop 203 down the toilet???

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Petition asks Arizona court whether someone who uses marijuana should be allowed to drive

Posted: Sunday, March 31, 2013 1:12 pm

By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services

In what would be a precedent-setting case, the state's high court was asked Friday to decide, in essence, whether someone who smokes marijuana -- even legally -- can ever drive in this state.

In a petition to the Arizona Supreme Court, the attorney for Hrach Shilgevorkyan does not deny that his client had at some point inhaled prior to his December 2010 arrest by a Maricopa County sheriff's deputy who had pulled him over for speeding. That was confirmed by a blood test which showed the evidence of Carboxy-THC, a metabolite of the drug.

But Michael Alarid III said this particular metabolite can remain in someone's system for up to a month after marijuana has been used. More to the point, he claims it is "inactive.''

And Alarid pointed out that the blood test found no evidence of tetrahyrocannabinol, or THC, the principal psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, as well as Hydroxy-THC, which is what THC breaks down into. State law clearly makes the presence of either chemical presumptive evidence of impairment.

Hanging in the balance is whether marijuana users in Arizona can be convicted of driving under the influence for some activity that has occurred weeks before.

The issue takes on even more importance because Arizona allows those with a doctor's recommendation to legally use the drug. While that does not grant anyone permission to drive while impaired, a Supreme Court ruling against Alarid could effectively preclude any of the state's nearly 38,000 registered medical marijuana users from driving at any point given the long-term presence of Carboxy-THC in their blood.

Alarid called that result "absurd,'' given the lack of evidence of impairment.

Central to the debate is the law the makes it illegal to drive where there is any drug defined in the criminal code or its metabolite in the person's body.

THC is on that list. And Hydroxy-THC is a metabolite.

Prosecutors argued the law includes all possible metabolites of THC. But a justice of the peace tossed the charges, a decision upheld by Maricopa County Superior Court Commissioner Myra Harris.

"This court has not been persuaded that the Legislature necessarily intended to include all possible derivatives of drugs -- particularly inactive end products that no longer affect an individual -- within the statutory scheme of controlling impaired drivers,'' Harris wrote. "Where, as here, there is no showing of a drug or metabolite that causes impairment, the driver should not be subjected to criminal penalties that can include up to 10 consecutive days in jail and assessments of over $1,000.''

Last month, however, the state Court of Appeals decided otherwise.

Judge Michael Brown, writing for the panel, said the laws on impaired driving "must be interpreted broadly to appropriately effectuate the legislative purpose and intent underpinning the statutory language.''

That leaves the question in the hands of the high court.

Alarid said the state's own expert conceded that Carboxy-THC does not cause impairment. He said it would be "absurd'' to allow someone testing positive for this chemical to be convicted of driving under the influence.

But Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, whose office is prosecuting the case, said there is no good way to determine whether someone is "impaired'' because of marijuana use.

"We don't know at what rate most of the population would be able to break down marijuana to when it's in its non-psychoactive elements,'' he said. And that, Montgomery said, makes it legally acceptable for the Legislature to decide that the proper standard should be zero.

Alarid told the justices that the appellate court ruling is wrong because it relied in part on a 1994 ruling which concluded the Legislature was reasonable in determining there is no level of "illicit drug use'' which can be acceptable when someone in driving.

But since that time, Alarid pointed out, Arizona and 17 other states have adopted medical marijuana laws. "Thus, marijuana is no longer a completely proscribed illicit drug,'' he wrote.

In her ruling, Harris noted the changing legal scene. And she pointed out that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled there is a "constitutional right to travel.''

Harris said if Arizona can determine that anyone with Carboxy-THC in the blood can be arrested for driving, that could effectively impair that constitutional right.

"There's a right to travel,'' Montgomery acknowledged. "But no court has ever found that there is a right to a driver's license.''

Anyway, he said, there is an argument to be made that anyone who has a medical need for marijuana probably should not be driving in the first place.

He said someone with chronic pain -- the most frequent reason cited by those seeking permission to use the drug -- probably would need to be using some other prescribed drug. And he said most of those have warnings against using them while driving or operating machinery.

Alarid has one other legal argument in his bid to allow those with Carboxy-THC to drive without nfear of arrest.

He said the law makes it illegal to drive with THC and "its metabolite'' in the blood. That, he said, means a singular metabolite, in this case, Hydroxy-THC.

"Therefore, based on the plain meaning of the statute, (it) does not prohibit driving with Carboxy-THC in the body,'' he said in his legal petition to the Supreme Court.

The justices have not decided whether to accept the case.

Arizona officials target synthetic drugs like 'spice,' 'bath salts'

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Arizona officials target synthetic drugs like 'spice,' 'bath salts'

By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Mon Apr 1, 2013 10:46 PM

Politicians from the White House to the state Capitol — including Arizona’s county attorneys — have made an issue of the proliferation of legal synthetic drugs like “spice” and “bath salts,” which mimic the buzz users get off illegal street drugs.

Their efforts to address the problem, which began to take shape several years ago, have started to make their way into the courtroom. A federal indictment filed late last week in U.S. District Court in Phoenix reveals the international scope of the conspiracy to traffic those drugs and the amounts of money that may be involved.

Court documents highlight the cat-and-mouse game that investigators play with drug manufacturers, who try to stay one step ahead of expanding bans on chemicals used in making synthetic drugs. They also demonstrate the unique steps prosecutors have taken to make their cases stick against manufacturers and distributors.

By October 2011, when the federal Drug Enforcement Administration took emergency action to outlaw three chemicals commonly found in bath salts, the potential dangers of synthetic drugs were already well-known. Nearly a year earlier, federal officials had banned five chemicals commonly found in the synthetic marijuana-like substance commonly called spice amid reports of frantic teens showing up in emergency rooms around the nation strung out on the legal chemicals.

Some observers immediately questioned the strength of the bans, speculating that financially motivated manufacturers would start substituting new chemicals for those that were banned.

And that is exactly what federal prosecutors allege Nicholas Pascal Zizzo and Michael Rocky Lane set about doing: shopping around the world for someone who could supply them with a legal version of MDPV, a chemical that the federal government had recently prohibited and which was used in the manufacture of bath salts.

The men secured the chemicals legally from China and made a few other cosmetic changes to remain on the right side of the law, according to court documents.

“After October of 2011, defendant Zizzo and others ceased using the name ‘Eight Ballz Bath Salts’ and started utilizing the name ‘Eight Ballz Ultra Premium Glass Cleaner,’ ” according to the indictment.

The new chemicals were legal, but a 1986 law makes it illegal to manufacture, distribute or possess substances that have a similar effect on the nervous system as banned drugs.

And invoking that law in criminal prosecutions in Arizona is unique, said Bruce Feder, an attorney for Lane who has practiced for 35 years and is aware of one other case where the Analogue Act was cited.

“Something must have happened in the Justice Department to precipitate these indictments,” Feder said. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona did not respond to a request for comment about this case or the government’s efforts to target synthetic drugs in general.

The federal sting that originally took down Lane, Zizzo and three others was part of a nationwide undercover operation in late July known as “Operation Logjam.”

The operation had been going on for months and was made public about two weeks after Congress passed a law targeting synthetic drugs.

The local defendants were done in by federal agents posing as Hells Angels who purchased 2,500 powder packets of “Eight Ballz” from one of the defendants, Benjamin J. Lowenstein, in a late June meeting at a parking lot on Thunderbird Road, according to a federal affidavit.

Federal officials at the time speculated that the Arizona suspects generated “tens of millions of dollars” in profits.

The most recent indictment indicates the government is trying to seize more than $1.4 million in Zizzo’s accounts and more than $800,000 in Lane’s accounts, in addition to property including homes, an SUV and Lane’s custom motorcycle with vanity plates reading “SALTS.”

While the federal prosecution takes shape, Arizona legislators are taking another crack at outlawing synthetic drugs. The state has tried twice before, with manufacturers making enough changes to keep their products readily available.

A 2012 statewide survey of eighth-, 10th-, and 12th-graders by the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission found that 10 percent had used synthetic drugs sometime in their lifetime. The prevalence of its use was greater than that of smokeless tobacco and inhalants like glue or spray paint.

In recent years, Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law a bill that added to the banned-substances list seven primary chemicals commonly used to make bath salts, and the Legislature banned substances used in spice.

Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, R-Gilbert, the bill’s primary sponsor, said the bill is not intended to be a cure-all, but rather a “step in the right direction.”

But there are more wrinkles: The chemicals at question in the federal case predate the Analogue Act and do not duplicate the psychoactive qualities of drugs in the federal government’s top two tiers of banned substances, which raises questions about whether the act applies, Feder said.

Republic reporter Lindsey Collom contributed to this article.

Drug cartels dispatch agents deep inside U.S.

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Drug cartels dispatch agents deep inside U.S.

Associated Press Mon Apr 1, 2013 9:46 AM

CHICAGO — Mexican drug cartels whose operatives once rarely ventured beyond the U.S. border are dispatching some of their most trusted agents to live and work deep inside the United States — an emboldened presence that experts believe is meant to tighten their grip on the world’s most lucrative narcotics market and maximize profits.

If left unchecked, authorities say, the cartels’ move into the American interior could render the syndicates harder than ever to dislodge and pave the way for them to expand into other criminal enterprises such as prostitution, kidnapping-and-extortion rackets and money laundering.

Cartel activity in the U.S. is certainly not new. Starting in the 1990s, the ruthless syndicates became the nation’s No. 1 supplier of illegal drugs, using unaffiliated middlemen to smuggle cocaine, marijuana and heroin beyond the border or even to grow pot here.

But a wide-ranging Associated Press review of federal court cases and government drug-enforcement data, plus interviews with many top law enforcement officials, indicate the groups have begun deploying agents from their inner circles to the U.S. Cartel operatives are suspected of running drug-distribution networks in at least nine non-border states, often in middle-class suburbs in the Midwest, South and Northeast.

“It’s probably the most serious threat the United States has faced from organized crime,” said Jack Riley, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Chicago office.

The cartel threat looms so large that one of Mexico’s most notorious drug kingpins — a man who has never set foot in Chicago — was recently named the city’s Public Enemy No. 1, the same notorious label once assigned to Al Capone.

The Chicago Crime Commission, a non-government agency that tracks crime trends in the region, said it considers Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman even more menacing than Capone because Guzman leads the deadly Sinaloa cartel, which supplies most of the narcotics sold in Chicago and in many cities across the U.S.

Years ago, Mexico faced the same problem — of then-nascent cartels expanding their power — “and didn’t nip the problem in the bud,” said Jack Killorin, head of an anti-trafficking program in Atlanta for the Office of National Drug Control Policy. “And see where they are now.”

Riley sounds a similar alarm: “People think, ‘The border’s 1,700 miles away. This isn’t our problem.’ Well, it is. These days, we operate as if Chicago is on the border.”

Border states from Texas to California have long grappled with a cartel presence. But cases involving cartel members have now emerged in the suburbs of Chicago and Atlanta, as well as Columbus, Ohio, Louisville, Ky., and rural North Carolina. Suspects have also surfaced in Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania.

Mexican drug cartels “are taking over our neighborhoods,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane warned a legislative committee in February. State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan disputed her claim, saying cartels are primarily drug suppliers, not the ones trafficking drugs on the ground.

For years, cartels were more inclined to make deals in Mexico with American traffickers, who would then handle transportation to and distribution within major cities, said Art Bilek, a former organized crime investigator who is now executive vice president of the crime commission.

As their organizations grew more sophisticated, the cartels began scheming to keep more profits for themselves. So leaders sought to cut out middlemen and assume more direct control, pushing aside American traffickers, he said.

Beginning two or three years ago, authorities noticed that cartels were putting “deputies on the ground here,” Bilek said. “Chicago became such a massive market … it was critical that they had firm control.”

To help fight the syndicates, Chicago recently opened a first-of-its-kind facility at a secret location where 70 federal agents work side-by-side with police and prosecutors. Their primary focus is the point of contact between suburban-based cartel operatives and city street gangs who act as retail salesmen. That is when both sides are most vulnerable to detection, when they are most likely to meet in the open or use cellphones that can be wiretapped.

Others are skeptical about claims cartels are expanding their presence, saying law-enforcement agencies are prone to exaggerating threats to justify bigger budgets.

David Shirk, of the University of San Diego’s Trans-Border Institute, said there is a dearth of reliable intelligence that cartels are dispatching operatives from Mexico on a large scale.

“We know astonishingly little about the structure and dynamics of cartels north of the border,” Shirk said. “We need to be very cautious about the assumptions we make.”

Statistics from the DEA suggest a heightened cartel presence in more U.S. cities. In 2008, around 230 American communities reported some level of cartel presence. That number climbed to more than 1,200 in 2011, the most recent year for which information is available, though the increase is partly due to better reporting.

Dozens of federal agents and local police interviewed by the AP said they have identified cartel members or operatives using wiretapped conversations, informants or confessions. Hundreds of court documents reviewed by the AP appear to support those statements.

“This is the first time we’ve been seeing it — cartels who have their operatives actually sent here,” said Richard Pearson, a lieutenant with the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department, which arrested four alleged operatives of the Zetas cartel in November in the suburb of Okolona.

People who live on the tree-lined street where authorities seized more than 2,400 pounds of marijuana and more than $1 million in cash were shocked to learn their low-key neighbors were accused of working for one of Mexico’s most violent drug syndicates, Pearson said.

One of the best documented cases is Jose Gonzalez-Zavala, who was dispatched to the U.S. by the La Familia cartel, according to court filings.

In 2008, the former taxi driver and father of five moved into a spacious home at 1416 Brookfield Drive in a middle-class neighborhood of Joliet, southwest of Chicago. From there, court papers indicate, he oversaw wholesale shipments of cocaine in Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana.

Wiretap transcripts reveal he called an unidentified cartel boss in Mexico almost every day, displaying the deference any midlevel executive might show to someone higher up the corporate ladder. Once he stammered as he explained that one customer would not pay a debt until after a trip.

“No,” snaps the boss. “What we need is for him to pay.”

The same cartel assigned Jorge Guadalupe Ayala-German to guard a Chicago-area stash house for $300 a week, plus a promised $35,000 lump-sum payment once he returned to Mexico after a year or two, according to court documents.

Ayala-German brought his wife and child to help give the house the appearance of an ordinary family residence. But he was arrested before he could return home and pleaded guilty to multiple trafficking charges. He will be sentenced later this year.

Socorro Hernandez-Rodriguez was convicted in 2011 of heading a massive drug operation in suburban Atlanta’s Gwinnett County. The chief prosecutor said he and his associates were high-ranking figures in the La Familia cartel — an allegation defense lawyers denied.

And at the end of February outside Columbus, Ohio, authorities arrested 34-year-old Isaac Eli Perez Neri, who allegedly told investigators he was a debt collector for the Sinaloa cartel.

An Atlanta attorney who has represented reputed cartel members says authorities sometimes overstate the threat such men pose.

“Often, you have a kid whose first time leaving Mexico is sleeping on a mattress at a stash house playing Game Boy, eating Burger King, just checking drugs or money in and out,” said Bruce Harvey. “Then he’s arrested and gets a gargantuan sentence. It’s sad.”

Because cartels accumulate houses full of cash, they run the constant risk associates will skim off the top. That points to the main reason cartels prefer their own people: Trust is hard to come by in their cutthroat world. There’s also a fear factor. Cartels can exert more control on their operatives than on middlemen, often by threatening to torture or kill loved ones back home.

Danny Porter, chief prosecutor in Gwinnett County, Ga., said he has tried to entice dozens of suspected cartel members to cooperate with American authorities. Nearly all declined. Some laughed in his face.

“They say, ‘We are more scared of them (the cartels) than we are of you. We talk and they’ll boil our family in acid,’” Porter said. “Their families are essentially hostages.”

Citing the safety of his own family, Gonzalez-Zavala declined to cooperate with authorities in exchange for years being shaved off his 40-year sentence.

In other cases, cartel brass send their own family members to the U.S.

“They’re sometimes married or related to people in the cartels,” Porter said. “They don’t hire casual labor.” So meticulous have cartels become that some even have operatives fill out job applications before being dispatched to the U.S., Riley added.

In Mexico, the cartels are known for a staggering number of killings — more than 50,000, according to one tally. Beheadings are sometimes a signature.

So far, cartels don’t appear to be directly responsible for large numbers of slayings in the United States, though the Texas Department of Public Safety reported 22 killings and five kidnappings in Texas at the hands of Mexican cartels from 2010 through mid- 2011.

Still, police worry that increased cartel activity could fuel heightened violence.

In Chicago, the police commander who oversees narcotics investigations, James O’Grady, said street-gang disputes over turf account for most of the city’s uptick in murders last year, when slayings topped 500 for the first time since 2008. Although the cartels aren’t dictating the territorial wars, they are the source of drugs.

Riley’s assessment is stark: He argues that the cartels should be seen as an underlying cause of Chicago’s disturbingly high murder rate.

“They are the puppeteers,” he said. “Maybe the shooter didn’t know and maybe the victim didn’t know that. But if you follow it down the line, the cartels are ultimately responsible.”

———

Follow Michael Tarm at www.twitter.com/mtarm .

GOP should stand firm against drug legalization

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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

BP thugs bust woman for having chicharrones????

For those of you who don't know, chicharrones are just potato chips made with pig skins instead of potatoes. They are fried in oil, salted and sometimes sprinkled with chilli.

You can buy them at any convenience store or supermarket in Arizona in the isle with potato chips and other junk food.

If you go to the Latino stores like Food City they often sell chicharrones with chucks of pork still attached.

Mmmm. I love chicharrones.

Source

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

And of course without their guns the people of Connecticut won't be able to do much about it.

Source

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

Mesa JP Markel K. Chiles busted for shoplifting

More of the old "Do as I say, not as I do" from our government masters.

Source

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.

More Tucson marijuana stores opening

2 medical pot dispensaries poised to open

Outlets in OV, Marana must meet rules set by towns, state before sales can start

Medical marijuana dispensaries are close to opening in Marana and Oro Valley since both municipalities have given the go-ahead to let them operate.

There are currently three dispensaries in the city of Tucson.

On March 27, Oro Valley issued a business license for Catalina Hills Botanical Care, 12152 N. Rancho Vistoso Blvd. That follows the Marana Planning Commission's January approval of Nature Med, a 6,220-square-foot facility with on-site cultivation at 5390 W. Ina Road. The business will request a conditional use permit from the commission April 24.

Both facilities await state approval before they can open and begin selling marijuana to card-holding patients.

"The process with the state isn't tied to our process," Oro Valley spokeswoman Misti Nowak said by email, adding that the processes can run concurrently and that the dispensary would have to pass town inspections before receiving a certificate of occupancy.

In 2010, Arizona voters approved a proposition that legalized medical marijuana use.

The Arizona Department of Health Services says dispensaries must use exterior lighting, surveillance cameras and security equipment to restrict access to certain areas.

ADHS spokeswoman Carol Vack said neither business has applied for approval to operate.

After they apply, ADHS representatives will check the dispensaries' security measures and policies before granting them approval to operate.

Neither business seems to be causing many ripples in their respective communities.

"No one has come forward to complain about the proposed Ina Road dispensary," Marana spokesman Rodney Campbell said. "It's an industrial area that doesn't have many homes."

Dave Perry of the Greater Oro Valley Chamber of Commerce said he's open to the possibility of Catalina Hills joining his group.

"I don't see any reason we would not have them as a member," he said. "It's a legitimate business and a legal operation."

Oro Valley Town Council member Joe Hornat said he's ambivalent about having medical pot for sale in the town.

"I just don't know. I'm taking a wait-and-see attitude," he said. "If there are problems with it, I'm sure there will be solutions offered. If it truly is what it says it is, then I suppose it will be OK."

Did you know?

Patients can qualify for marijuana registry identification cards on the Arizona Department of Health Services website (www.azdhs.gov).

Patients who have been diagnosed with a debilitating medical condition can submit written certification from their doctor. Approved applicants receive a registry identification card that allows them to use marijuana. The card costs $150. Qualifying debilitating illnesses include HIV, AIDS, glaucoma, cancer, hepatitis C, ALS and other ailments.

Names of cardholders are confidential. Qualified patients can possess as much as 2 1/2 ounces of marijuana or 12 marijuana plants. Patients may not consume medical marijuana at a dispensary, and may not smoke medical marijuana in public.

According to the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act, employers may not penalize qualified, cardholding patients for positive marijuana drug tests. Employees, though, are not protected from discipline for possession of or being impaired by the drug during work hours.

Qualified patients who live more than 24 miles from a dispensary are allowed to grow marijuana in an enclosed, locked facility.

Patients who have already qualified for registry identification cards when a new dispensary opens within 25 miles of their homes can continue to cultivate. When those patients renew their cards, they'll lose those privileges.

Source: Arizona Department of Health Services

Contact reporter Phil Villarreal at 573-4130 or pvillarreal@azstarnet.com

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

Personally I think all these laws against victimless crimes should be repealed including the laws against illegal drugs.

Source

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

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

Under the old law where a DUI fine was a min of $1,000 that is a cool $2.5 million. Under the new law DUI fines are a min of $2,000 and that is a cool $5 million a year in revenue.

Source

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.

Police teach tactics for handling 'sovereign citizens'

Remember even if the laws they enforce are unconstitutional, they have guns and will kill you if you don't obey them.

While all of American's drug war laws are probably unconstitutional, saying that isn't going to help free the millions of Americans unconstitutional jailed for victimless drug war crimes.

And of course those millions of people jailed for victimless drug war crimes are why American jails more people per capita then any other country on the planet.

Source

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

Source

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

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.

Less Culpable, but With Longer Sentences

Source

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.]

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.

Perverted Phoenix Park Employee

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.

Yale MBAs, tech investors seek profits from legalized marijuana

Source

Pot entrepreneurs chase green rush

Yale MBAs, tech investors seek profits from legalized marijuana

By Tim Mullaney USA Today Tue Apr 9, 2013 8:29 AM

Brendan Kennedy and Michael Blue are nice boys. Really. They’re bankers. Yale MBA classmates. Wearers of ties.

And, if luck and changing laws cooperate, they’ll be drug barons of a certain kind.

Kennedy, 40, and Blue, 34, are in the vanguard springing up to seize the market for legal marijuana, which is accelerating with last fall’s legalization of most personal pot consumption in Colorado and Washington state. They’re running a Seattle private-equity fund, Privateer Holdings, designed to buy up the smaller marijuana-related businesses to create one big fat one.

After Washington and Colorado, the pot business is, if not mainstream, at least ready to push toward it. Advocates hope to legalize personal use in another 14 states by 2017, mostly among the 16 states besides Washington and Colorado where medical pot is legal (it’s also legal in Washington, D.C.). Industry estimates say today’s $1.5 billion legal market could quadruple by 2018.

The public is trending toward legalization. In a Pew Research Center poll, a majority of Americans (52 percent) favored legalization, the first time that threshold has been reached since polling on the issue began in 1969.

Business ‘roll up’

What’s striking is how conventional many of the business people’s backgrounds — and their plans — increasingly are. Instead of backing marijuana dispensaries, investors such as Privateer and San Francisco-based ArcView Group are rushing to find consulting firms, software companies and insurance agencies to serve the new market. Even Privateer’s strategy of merging small companies to form a big one is familiar: In traditional buyout shops, it’s called a “roll-up.”

Just don’t say that word to Kennedy, unless you want him to blush. Scratch the term “growing the business” — he catches that one, correcting his wording to “expand.” And forget weed, ganja or pot. He uses the scientific term, cannabis. And the cannabis business is good, he said.

Just like Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, start-up pot investors such as Kennedy, Blue and ArcView Chief Executive Officer Troy Dayton — whose company runs an angel-investor network matching companies with rich activists — talk about how big and fragmented the market is. They also talk about how the relative handful of legal businesses out there lack the leadership and tools they need to grow the industry. That leaves the field open for people who can bring capital and experience, they say.

Huge market

That part is true. The best way to estimate the potential size of the legal market for cannabis begins with the illegal market — which is somewhere north of $18 billion a year in pot Americans consume already, said Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron. The trade journal Medical Marijuana Business Daily says the $1.5 billion legal market could reach $6 billion by 2018.

The challenges are myriad. Some are specific to selling a product still illegal in most states. But others are very ordinary, thanks partly to the business’ Bohemian roots.

“It’s not an industry loaded with operating talent,” said Josh Rosen, a former Credit Suisse stock analyst who runs Phoenix-based MC Advisors, which backs renewable-energy companies and is experimenting with pot. “But the economics are very similar to other businesses. You can run a Harvard Business School analysis.”

Increasingly, the cultural overlap between the pot business and just plain business is occurring because they’re attracting the same people.

Upscale shops planned

Adam Wiggins, a member of Dayton’s investor network, sold software-as-a-service company Heroku to Salesforce.com for $250 million. Alan Valdes, chairman of Seattle-based Diego Pellicer — which plans 24 upscale marijuana shops as the anchor of what he hopes will become a Harley-Davidson-like lifestyle brand — is director of stock-exchange-floor operations for DME Securities. He appears sometimes on CNBC, talking about stocks. Kennedy, meanwhile, came from Silicon Valley Bank.

“The industry has grown up a lot since we launched in 2011,” said Chris Walsh, editor of Medical Marijuana Business Daily. “It was the activists and hippies. We’re seeing more grown-ups over the past two years, and accelerating in the last six months.”

Even so, selling pot is a federal crime.

Many investors, including Privateer, plan to cut their risk by not buying and selling marijuana itself.

Purchased Leafly website

Privateer’s first buy was Leafly, a Yelp-like website and mobile app that reviews 500-plus strains of cannabis, luring 2.3 million monthly visitors.

The people at the most legal risk, Kennedy and Blue reason, are marijuana dispensary owners, because the federal government could raid the stores and confiscate the investment.

For Amy Poinsett and Jessica Billingsley, who run Denver-based MJ Freeway, helping store owners keep track of valuable product from field through the cash register is a valid software market: They sell to 400 legal stores in the 16 medical-marijuana states, making their company profitable.

Nothing about the rapid growth of marijuana markets, or even the hands-off-the-pot business strategy, is an automatic winner.

Clearly, the feds could cripple the business. Even the strategy of profiting from marijuana without touching it could run afoul of money-laundering laws, if those services are bought with drug proceeds, said UCLA professor Mark A.R. Kleiman, who is advising Washington’s liquor board on regulating legal pot stores.

There’s also a good chance that a legal pot market won’t expand consumption as much as entrepreneurs think, Miron said.

“To the extent that there’s money to be made, a lot of it is already being made,” by illegal operations, Miron said. “The notion that there will be new wealth is exaggerated.”

That uncertainty doesn’t bother those lining up for a green rush.

The marijuana business is packed with people who aren’t much on conventional opinion, and pot smokers are used to legal risk, Rosen said.

Wiggins said the open-source software industry that made him rich “used to be a long-haired hippie business, too.” Risk means less competition, because the weak-kneed won’t jump in, Rosen said. “The extra layer of risk is where the opportunity comes from,” he said.

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

The only good news about this article is that the crooks at the Arizona State Legislator seem to realize that they are crooks and need to protect themselves from the people they pretend to serve while they rob us blind.

Last if Rep. Bob Thorpe really is a "Tea Party" members who wants to protect us from the other government crooks, why is he trying to help protect his fellow crooks???

I suspect Rep. Bob Thorpe isn't really a "freedom fighter" and just ran on the "Tea Party" platform because it would help him get elected.

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…

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

And of course as long as the mayor and city council of New York allows this illegal activity there ain't jack sh*t we can do to stop it.

Of course that is why the Founders gave us the Second Amendment. So when our government masters refuse to obey the law, the people have a means to force them to obey the law.

Of course in New York State the people's right to own guns has pretty much been flushed down the toilet by these same tyrants who allow the police to terrorize us.

And of course this isn't limited to New York State or New York City, it is happens all over the USA.

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.

Obama proposes 94-cent tax hike on cigarettes

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.

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

I discovered that the FBI, Homeland Security, TSA, DEA, BATF, Secret Service, or some other Federal agency is spying on me after I installed Google Analytics on my website.

Every day I get one or two hits from an IP address in the Washington, DC suburb of Shady Side, Maryland which I suspect is a headquarters for some Federal government site that spies on Americans.

I should say the city and the IP address changes over time, but it is pretty obvious that somebody in the Federal government is spying on me.

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.

Google will give you the following code, which you will have to cut and paste on to your web pages. The account number which has been replaced with "*************" will be replaced with your account number.

Last but not least you don't need to understand any of this computer mumbo jumbo to use Google Analytics.

Just cut and paste the code Google gives you and you will be on your way to seeing the government thugs that are spying on you.

Once you create the Google account you can visit the Google Analytics site and get reports on who is visiting your websites on an hour by hour basis.

I suspect if enough people start doing this Uncle Sam's goons will cut a deal with Google Analytics and order them not to tell you when Uncle Sam's goons visit your website.

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

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.

Flushing the 4th Amendment down the toilet????

And sadly the 4th Amendment is being flushed down the toilet to help city governments raise revenue their their DUI tickets, which are mostly about raising revenue and have very little to do with safety.

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.

With Police in Schools, More Children in Court

Let's face it, it's not about the kids. It's about high paying, cushy jobs for cops.

Well at least that is probably how the cops and police unions feel about it.

Source

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???

La frontera sí está seguro: Napolitano

"The border is secure: Napolitano"

Or maybe she was talking about the drug war?

If so I bet the 18 million or so people who regularly smoke marijuana are laughing their butts off over that headline. Well at least the ones who can read Spanish!!!

Here is the URL for La Prensa

www.prensahispanaaz.com

We need answers in Border Patrol murders???

But Linda Valdez is very naive expecting the cops to arrest and jail one of their own buddies for murder. It ain't going to happen.

I have posted 100's of articles on other police crimes and the police routinely do get away with murder and they rarely get more then a slap on the wrist, if that much for their crimes.

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

This makes as much sense as giving bank robbers a video camera and telling them they are on the honor system to turn on the video camera before they rob any banks.

Of course I suspect now and then a cop will forget to turn off his camera before beating up a person.

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.

Police can now draw your blood to prove your drunk???

"the driver’s blood is taken by an officer trained to do the procedure. The department has 110 trained officers"

Last if you ask me this practice seems to violate the spirit of the 4th Amendment, if not the letter of the law when a pig can just hit an electronic button on his computer to pretty much get a rubber stamped search warrant from some electronic robot that pretends to be a judge.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized

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.

Electronics ban starts today at Cook County courthouse

I guess if they really want to make themselves safe from their subjects in court houses they will soon only allow us to enter court houses when we are naked and handcuffed. Something I have heard the TSA would love to do on airlines.

Source

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

Of course don't count on that happening, because the "war on drugs" is a jobs program for millions of overpaid and under worked cops who pretty much have the political clout to prevent the war on drugs from ending.

Source

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????

From this article it sounds like the Scottsdale City Attorney’s Office and the Scottsdale Police Department are creating a jobs program for themselves to they can create more jobs for cops to arrest hookers and lawyers to prosecute them.

Oddly not one person other then the Scottsdale Police and Prosecutors complained about any problems with massage parlors or prostitutes in this article. So I suspect that as I said before this "problem" was invented by the cops and prosecutors, and the only solution to the problem is more laws, which will create jobs for more cops and prosecutors.

Source

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

Source

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

Source

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

Do your civic duty and get on the jury of a person arrested for a victimless crime such as any drug war crime, prostitution or gambling and vote to acquit the person.

It's your RIGHT as a juror to vote to acquit when the person accused of the crime is guilty as hell, but the laws are unfair and unjust.

In the days of slavery in America, jurors routinely voted to acquit people who were guilty as hell of helping slaves escape, because slavery is unjust.

The same thing happened in the days of the American Prohibition. Bootleggers and drunks who were guilty as hell were routinely acquited by jurors because they thought the laws were unjust.

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.

Source

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

I have read that at the Federal level two thirds of the people in Federal prisons are their for victimless drug war crimes.

Some people have said that number is wrong, but whatever it is there is a huge number of people arrested for victimless drug war crimes.

Source

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

Oddly while heroin is demonized as being an evil, evil bad drug, it is pretty harmless.

The only real negative thing about heroin and other opiates is that they are physically additive. But so are legal drugs like caffeine and tobacco.

Heroin doesn't have any harmful effects on the body, like tobacco or liquor. Despite the fact that it has been demonized as the worst drug on the planet.

While you can overdose on heroin, most of the ODs are caused when people mix heroin with other drugs and you have a synergistic effect where the combined drugs cause the overdoes.

Back when heroin and all the other opiates were legal the drugs didn't cause any real problems.

Almost all of the health problems caused by heroin use are not because of the drug itself, but because the drug is used illegally. Such as sharing dirty needles.

Source

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

I suspect it's mostly propaganda by the Chandler PD, so they can get an increase in their budget.

Source

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.

Cops read everything you post online???

This Chicago teenager was busted for the victimless crime of posting a Craigslist ad selling his pet alligator.

I also posted articles before about Phoenix and Tempe cops who work full time posting internet ads posing as hot, horny, underage teenager girls looking for old men to have sex with.

On these web pages I get at least one visit everyday from a site in the Washington D.C. area (IP address 76.114.145.234 located in Shady Side, Maryland), which appears to be a Homeland Security office that is spying on me for my posts documenting crimes committed by the police.

The site that logs the visits was broken into several times, by I suspect police with the Homeland Security, or perhaps hackers hired by the Homeland Security and they modified the logging software.

Sadly only 30 years after 1984, America is beginning to look like the police state written in the novel 1984.

Source

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

Source

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

Source

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!!!

I am sure that if the Founders were around they would tell us that it is for tyrannical things like this that they gave us the Second Amendment for.

Source

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.

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

In those cases the American government has either extradited the people to the USA [I think], or kidnapped them and illegally brought them to the USA to stand trial [This has happened. I remember cases where Mexican nationals have been kidnapped and brought to the USA and put on trial for drug war crime. Also if you remember the American government invaded Panama, overthrew dictator Manuel Noriega and then brought him to the USA for drug war crimes, which I think were for exporting cocaine from Panama to the USA].

But in this case the Supremes said that the American government can't force people in foreign countries to obey American laws.

Sadly I suspect the Supremes will be hypocrites on this issue and say that the government can arrest people in foreign countries, who have never been to America for violating our "drug war" laws.

Source

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.

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 cheat in police relay race by letting non-cops run

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!!!!

That is followed by the fire department which gets 22 percent of the budget.

And all other departments combined share the remaining 37 percent of the budget.

They had a second graph that showed the number of Glendale police employees was 550, the number of fire department employees was 250. All the other city employees on the graph were 500. So the police and fire departments have more employees then all the other departments combined.

Those numbers are typical for other city budgets I have seen and the money spent on the cops is usually twice as much at the fire department, and that the police and fire departments budgets are always more then that of all the other city departments combined.

Which leads me to say that America cities are police states because most of the money is spent on the police.

The sad part is that most of the arrests the police make are for victimless drug war crimes. I have read that at the Federal level two thirds of the people in prisons are there for victimless drug war crimes. I am not sure what percent of people in state prisons are there for victimless drug war crimes, but I suspect it is also a huge number.

Glendale city finances could be nearing steep cliff

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

Of course those same cops forget to say they are the ones that wrote up the contract.

If you are a criminal the best place for you to get a job is either as a police officer or an elected official. In both jobs you can usually get away with committing crimes that would send any of us normal serfs to prison for years.

Source

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

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.

Drunk DPS piggy busted at Country Thunder

Source

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.

Cave Creek Unified School District drug use forum

Free home drug testing kits!!!!!

According to the web site in the ad Rural Metro is one of the largest 911 service providers in the country, and I suspect that one way or another they have a financial interest in continuing the drug war.

Kits are available 8 am to 5pm Friday at

Southwest Ambulance
708 W Baseline Road
Mesa

Chandler Boys & Girls Club
300 E Chandler Blvd
Chandler

http://notmykid.org

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???

"The two men face a maximum sentence of life in prison for drug-trafficking convictions"

Sadly the American government is just as evil when it comes to punishing people for victimless drug war crimes as the Catholic Church was when it came to punishing people for victimless religious crimes.

Source

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.

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 McDonal'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."

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